Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

PIPER

She was going to be smashed into goo by a minotaur.

Piper dove for the floor as the daemon’s arm swung over her head, so close she felt its massive limb catch on her ponytail. She hit the dingy linoleum and rolled.

Magic exploded against a nearby wall with a violent crack .

Piper came out of her roll and whirled around. A new gouge, five feet across, had sliced clean through the drywall and into the metal studs, leaving bits of debris scattered across the hall.

The minotaur sagged, blood splattering the floor all around it—a lot of blood. But mortally wounded or not, it wasn’t dead yet.

She backed away as it took a stomping step closer. Seven feet of muscle, hoof, and horn. How the hell was she supposed to survive this?

With a snarl, it charged her.

She darted sideways. Its hooves clattered as it changed direction to follow. Grabbing a metal chair sitting outside an exam room, she swung it with all her strength into the side of the minotaur’s knee.

The chair bounced off with a clang. The beast didn’t even flinch.

Abandoning the chair, Piper made another rapid direction change, her boots offering way better traction on the linoleum than hooves. If gory wounds weren’t enough to incapacitate this thing, nothing she could do would stop it. Better to just get away.

She spun around, bolted five steps down the hall—and skidded to a stop.

A pack of eight armed prefects blocked the corridor, each one holding a raised rifle, the barrels pointed in her direction.

“Is that the Griffiths girl?” a prefect shouted.

The Griffiths girl? Why was he worrying about any girl when there was a seven-foot-tall bull daemon right behind her?

The thundering clack of the minotaur’s hooves shook the floor. She pivoted back around to find the minotaur feet away, blood all over it, beastly hands reaching for her.

She ducked between the minotaur’s legs. It charged past her, its attention jumping to the armed prefects.

The thing about shaded daemons was that they weren’t picky about who they murdered. Everyone was an enemy when they were in that state.

Roaring, the minotaur rampaged straight toward the prefects. Rifles fired, and Piper pressed into the floor, arms clamped over her ears.

The nonstop gunfire petered out, and the screaming started. Another roar from the minotaur, and more rifle shots.

Piper pushed up on her elbows and peeked over her shoulder. The minotaur was smashing prefects around like ceramic dinnerware, but with so many of them—and a lot of bullets in the daemon—it wouldn’t last much longer.

She hopped to her feet, head swiveling one direction, then the other. Go in the waiting room or get past the prefects to escape?

A boom of exploding magic erupted from within the waiting room. Chunks of obliterated metal chairs hurtled into the wall, embedding themselves into the drywall.

The hallway and the prefects it was.

She turned back—and found two prefects bearing down on her. They’d swung their rifles over their shoulders, clearly intending to take her alive while their comrades finished off the minotaur. Piper didn’t move as they reached her. The nearer one tried to grab her wrist.

Piper’s fist snapped out, hitting him in the diaphragm.

As he doubled over, she spun, foot flying, and slammed her boot into the thigh of the second guy. He stumbled, then lunged for her. She dodged him, caught his arm, and twisted it. With a yelp, he went down, yielding to the pressure before his limb dislocated. She stomped on his belly. He rolled sideways, spewing his supper.

The other guy was moving again, his face tight with anger. She dropped low and swung out a leg, sweeping his feet out from under him. A third prefect rushed in on her left. She rolled onto her back and slammed a double-footed kick right into his groin. His face went bloodless, and he sank to his knees.

Piper flipped off the floor and onto her feet in a single movement, just in time to meet prefect number one again as he let a punch fly at her face.

She stepped inside his swing and ducked to shove her forearm into his hip. She grabbed his ankle with her other hand and shoved the two-hundred-pound man off his feet. Amazing what a little leverage in the right spot could do.

Dancing away, she looked past her downed opponents—and froze.

“Steady,” a prefect called.

The minotaur lay unmoving in a puddle of blood. The rest of the prefects had formed up again, and every gun was pointed at her.

“Hit one more of my men and we’ll open fire,” the man at the back called. “Lie on the floor with your hands on the back of your head. Now!”

Piper hesitated. Getting a hundred holes blown into her would end any escape attempt, but if she obeyed, they’d take her prisoner.

The air crackled like lightning was about to strike. She could suddenly sense someone directly behind her, their breath stirring the fine hairs that had escaped from her ponytail.

“Go ahead and shoot—if you all want to die.”

The voice was deep and resonant, shivering through her skin and sliding across her bones like silk. It sounded familiar but undeniably alien.

Every gun was now aimed at a point just over Piper’s right shoulder. Terror tightened the prefects’ faces, their complexions bleached of color and their hands shaking on their rifles.

Fear bordering on panic built in Piper’s gut. “Ash?”

He shifted closer, so close she could feel his heat.

“Do you have what we need?” he breathed.

“Yes,” she replied.

He huffed, sounding almost normal for a second. Then he slid an arm around her waist, the movement oddly careful, as though he were afraid of accidentally crushing her.

“Don’t move!” the prefect leader yelled shakily. “Not even daemons are bulletproof!”

“Are you sure about that?” Ash asked as he extended one hand in front of Piper.

She stared at his hand, too shocked to react. His outspread fingers were black with a dull gleam like leather, the tips smoothly transitioning into pointed claws. Large black scales covered the back of his hand and ran up the top of his arm like plates of armor. The scales gave way to skin, leaving the underside of his arm disconcertingly normal. Somehow, that was even freakier.

The air sizzled around them. The lead prefect jerked like he was about to yell the word that would riddle Piper and Ash with bullets, then dark power flashed in Ash’s palm and everything exploded again.

A whirlwind of magic that looked like flames—except it was all shades of ghostly black—blasted the prefects off their feet. Ash scooped Piper against his chest, and he launched forward with so much force it felt like she’d been shot out of a cannon.

They whipped past the prefects. A solid wall at the end of the corridor rushed to meet them, but Ash wasn’t slowing.

His hand snapped outward, and he unleashed another blast of dark power. They burst out of a brand-new hole in the wall in a rush of cool night air and flying debris, three stories above the road—but they didn’t fall.

Somehow, they glided in a wide curve toward the ground. As they touched down, Piper looked over her shoulder and saw giant, graceful, black leathery wings folding against Ash’s back. A shimmer rippled over him, and magic crackled along her skin.

She wrenched away and spun to face him, but his glamour was back in place.

A small shape flew out of the darkness. Zwi landed on Ash’s shoulder, and Piper watched the little dragonet’s wings fold flat against her back, miniature versions of her master’s hidden appendages.

“Come on,” Ash said roughly. “Lyre is this way.”

Piper shivered as his voice rubbed against the inside of her skin, but he didn’t sound as inhuman as he had while out of glamour.

Ash started in the direction Zwi had come from, his steps lurching. The dragonet clung to his shoulder, chattering in a low, distressed way.

“Ash?” Piper rushed to his side. “Are you okay?”

His mouth thinned. “Just keep moving.”

He said that as though she was holding them up, but he was the one limping.

She leaned forward to look at his left leg. In the darkness, all she could see was the wet gleam of blood—a lot of blood—drenching his pants.

“Holy shit,” she hissed. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m aware,” he gritted out. “Lyre can?—”

His knee buckled. Zwi flapped wildly to stay on his shoulder as Piper grabbed his arm. His weight almost dragged her down before he caught his balance and straightened, keeping his weight off his injured limb.

“Fuck,” he snarled.

“We should wait for Lyre,” she said. “I can bind the wound?—”

“No.” He managed another step—barely. “Cottus is still alive. We have to keep moving.”

“Cottus” must be one of the daemons he’d fought. She scooted around Ash to his other side and grabbed his wrist. A low, clipped growl vibrated his throat, but she ignored it as she pulled his arm over her shoulders.

“Come on,” she said, sounding a lot braver than she felt.

She kept her gaze on the alley ahead, not wanting to look at his face and see his black eyes. Standing within fifteen feet of a shaded daemon was dangerous enough. She really hoped Ash’s unusual self-control while shaded would last.

He leaned on her as they hobbled down the alley. Zwi jumped off his shoulder and flew ahead, her mottled gray scales vanishing in the darkness.

Footsteps crunched ahead. Lyre appeared from the gloom with Zwi clinging to him. He sped straight to them and pulled Ash’s other arm over his shoulder.

Together, he and Piper hauled Ash to the end of the alley, across a barren street, and through a few more alleys before ducking into an abandoned mechanic’s shop. Piper pushed the rusty door closed and shoved a metal shelving unit in front of it, then hurried to where Lyre was helping Ash sit against a wall.

The space was empty except for one sedan propped on cinder blocks, its wheels and engine parts stripped away. There were no tools—anything remotely useful had been stolen decades ago—and all that remained were scattered, broken auto body parts for vehicles that didn’t exist anymore.

Lyre flicked his fingers toward the ceiling. A tiny golden light shot off his fingertips like a glowing drop of water. Instead of falling, it hung in the air above their heads, illuminating Ash’s bloody leg.

“Stop the bleeding,” Ash ground out.

Lyre pushed his hands down hard on what looked like multiple knife wounds in Ash’s thigh, and Piper assumed the incubus was using healing magic. Her jaw clenched. Once again, she was useless—not that haemons were capable of healing wounds the way some daemons could. But she didn’t even know how magic worked . You had to experience it to understand it, or so every haemon claimed.

“This is bad, Ash,” Lyre muttered. “I can stop the bleeding, but there’s too much damage. You need a real healer if you plan to walk anywhere in the next several months.”

Ash swore.

“What happened?”

“Cottus,” Ash growled. “He was waiting for me.”

“Cottus?” Lyre repeated, obviously recognizing the name. “Why would he attack you? Unless?—”

Ash made a hissing sound that silenced Lyre. The incubus glanced at Piper, then looked back to Ash. “You need a healer.”

“We can’t go to a healer. Cottus thought I had the Sahar. Any daemon in the city might have heard the same rumor.”

“But—”

“Just stop the bleeding, Lyre. I’ll deal with the rest later.”

Lyre clenched his jaw. His attention dropped back to Ash’s leg, blood oozing between his fingers as he kept pressure on the wounds.

Zwi, perched on a rusted lift a few feet away, let out a sudden chirp.

The door Piper had barricaded rattled.

Shooting to her feet, she whirled toward it. Had that Cottus guy followed them here? A weapon would be really handy right about now—not that any weapon would help her much against a daemon powerful enough to injure Ash.

The door clattered again. Lyre stepped up beside Piper, and his eyes were dark, almost black. There was no sign of the flirty, kind of foolish incubus she knew—only calm, dangerous calculation.

A blast of magic slammed the door open. The shelves crashed to the floor, and a daemon stepped over the threshold.