Page 7

The tear swallows my hellfire like I never threw a damn thing at it.

“Carnage!” Sentinel’s voice cuts through the pressure pounding behind my eyes, and something inside my chest pulls tight in answer.

That fucking thread.

The one that’s been there since the first time our powers collided, buried so deep inside me I can usually pretend it isn’t there. Except now it’s humming beneath my ribs, pulling my attention away from the darkness and straight toward the angel standing behind me.

I can feel him through it.

Not his hand or his voice, something deeper. Something warm and bright that pours down the connection between us and reaches inside me, finding the piece of his power that never completely left after that first blast.

My hellhound feels it too.

The bastard lunges.

“Carnage, wait!”

Too fucking late.

I reach through our bond and grab hold. Heaven slams into Hell so violently my back bows. White-gold light detonates through the hellfire burning beneath my skin, the two powers crashing together somewhere behind my ribs before tearing down my arms. A roar rips from my throat as fire bursts from my throat again, only this time it isn’t the red-orange flame I’ve carried my whole life.

Instead, gold burns through the center of it.

Bright enough to hurt.

It goes against every fucking thing Heaven and Hell are supposed to be. Still, my hellhound pushes harder, feeding more fire into the celestial power twisting through mine until they are tangled so tightly I can’t separate one power from the other.

Fucking ours.

Sentinel sucks in a sharp breath behind me, and the bond yanks tighter. His power pours through it faster now, clean celestial heat feeding the hellfire already raging through my veins until my entire body starts shaking under the force of trying to contain both.

“Hold it!” Sentinel shouts.

I slam my palms into the dirt on either side of the tear, and the merged fire races from beneath my hands, gold twisting through red as it crawls along both edges of the split earth. The darkness below pushes back immediately, cold surging upward hard enough to frost the dirt beneath my fingers and bite deep into my palms.

“Come on, fucking work.” I dig my hands deeper and shove more fire into it, but the thing below pushes right-fucking-back, the ground bucking beneath my knees as that pressure drives harder against the opening.

Sentinel’s hand clamps around the back of my neck, and the bond blows wide open. Power floods through me so fast my vision whites out, Heaven pouring into one side of me while Hell rises to meet it from the other. They collide inside my chest with enough force to steal my breath before exploding down both arms and into the ground.

The dirt beneath my knees splits. Pain tears through my shoulders. Every muscle in my body locks against the force trying to throw me away from that opening, but I bury my fingers deeper and refuse to fucking move.

Slowly, the tear shudders between my hands, and one edge jerks toward the other.

“That’s it,” Sentinel grinds out behind me, his fingers tightening against my neck. “Again.”

I don’t know if I’m pulling from him anymore or he’s pushing into me, and right now I don’t give a shit. I open myself to the bond and drag everything we have into that impossible place where his Heaven meets my Hell.

White-gold Grace floods through me.

Hellfire surges up to meet it.

For one suspended second, they push against each other inside my chest, two powers that have spent eternity existing on opposite sides of creation with absolutely no fucking business touching.

Then they lock together.

My entire body arches, and something changes.

The roar grinding through my chest drops so deep I feel it in my bones before I hear it, gathering behind my ribs until there isn’t enough room left inside me to hold the fucking thing.