Chapter 21

Fucking Anderson. Goddess dammit!

I yelled into my HID, “Anderson’s missing. He went backward, but I have a feeling he’s going around behind us to try and trap us. Please keep your eyes peeled, rearguard.”

I got a bunch of, “Yes, sir,” which was weird as hell, but I chose to ignore it since there wasn’t anything I could really do about that right now.

I wasn’t sure how I ended up giving orders, but as long as people had our backs, I didn’t really care. The front line had enough shit to deal with.

With enemy number one out of the picture, I focused on my next target: the Supreme Rose. That prickhole needed to be taken down. No, not just taken down, taken out.

It was clear that they had a hell of a lot more power than anyone else here, at least on their side, so it made sense for Jude and me to take them on. I didn’t want anyone else getting hurt because this dude was too strong.

Which I probably should’ve been more worried about when I was attacking Anderson, but my magic wouldn’t let me ignore him when he was right in front of me.

I hit the Supreme Rose’s shield with a new vigor fueled by my hatred for them and Anderson and my frustration that Anderson had gotten away. Again.

But if I couldn’t take him out, I could get the next best thing. And I would. I was going to take out the leader of the Red Cloth and stop this fucking terrorist group from ever doing anything like this again.

So I hit them over and over and over again, and I saw Ash, Wren, and even Logan join in, throwing everything we had at the prickhole.

They tried to throw shield melting spells at us, but Jude figured out how to shoot them out of the air with his energy balls. I could tell it was burning him every time, but he knew I needed my concentration and all of my strength to take care of this evil witch.

Through our bond, I could feel Jude’s stubbornness about this, so I knew there was no point in trying to get him to stop and let me take on the burn. Damn him.

So we hit and hit and hit, and finally, the shield came down again.

But the Supreme Rose put another one up.

So I decided to try something different. These guys were getting their strength from killing all the beasts that were stuck behind their shields, but what if they couldn’t get to them?

I activated a set of wall-shield runes and used air and fly to push it over the top of the witches to land behind the Supreme Rose. Then I curved the wall-shield around the circle of dead bodies so that the taragorians were running into my shield instead of straight into the Supreme Rose’s circle. That should at least stop them from regaining more power. We had to end this cycle somehow. It was the only way I could think of.

We went through the whole double-bomb, taking the shield down, and the Supreme Rose putting up a new one two more times.

But the third time, a new shield wasn’t put up right away.

Which meant… they were running out of magic. It had to mean that, right?

They put up a personal shield, and I wanted to cheer.

I doubled down and kept hurling freeze and bomb spells at them even though they now had a smaller, less effective shield up around themselves.

They’d only covered themself, leaving the others open, so I wasn’t surprised when my shifters were able to shoot the other witches in that circle, taking them out so that the only one left standing was the Supreme Rose.

“Surrender now,” I yelled as loud as I could over the noise of the raging battle.

They shook their head. “Never.”

I didn’t think they deserved even that much of a chance, but I’d had to give it to them or I would’ve been accused of… whatever for not doing it. Plus, if they would’ve surrendered, they would’ve ordered the others to stand down and would’ve saved us all a lot of time and pain. But that wasn’t going to happen.

And I didn’t think they needed me to ask them a second time. Once was enough for me to be given permission to take them out.

So I hit them with another bomb spell, and another. And their shield shattered.

I didn’t hesitate to use three bullet spells in rapid succession, hitting the Red Cloth leader straight in the torso with each one. They were knocked back a few steps before they fell to their knees, and to my surprise, it was Cos who came forward with his assault rifle aimed at the leader. My mate didn’t hesitate to put five bullets in the witch’s chest. We all rushed forward, and before anyone could double check that they were really dead, Cos shot them three times in the head.

So… they were really dead. Really, really dead.

Good.

I thought I’d feel some kind of relief, but the truth was that I didn’t feel much at all. Maybe because we were still in the middle of a huge battle that wasn’t going to just end suddenly because of this, or maybe because I was exhausted.

Maybe later tonight, I’d feel relief when we weren’t in the middle of such a colossal shitstorm. Not only was the battle still going strong—I was sure most of the witches on the other side of the battlefield probably didn’t even know the Supreme Rose was dead yet—but the entire time we’d been fighting, the veil tear had been growing, and more and more taragorians had been coming through.

This had the potential to become a major problem. A major event like the New York City breach from years ago.

We had to stop the veil from growing. We needed to close it. But we couldn’t really do that with more witches attacking us.

At least some of the People’s Liberation Union magi seemed to be trying to hold the one end of the tear to keep it from growing more. It was a start at least.

Jude pointed forward. “Move through the hole we created, and we can come at the witches from the side and back. Go, go, go, before they see our plan.”

I didn’t look around to see if there was a different path—if Jude thought this would work, then it would work. I just ran, dragging my shield with me while our entire group ran straight through.

We had to trek around the witch circles because there was a lot of magic still floating around since it didn’t go away, even when the magic wielder died. There was just enough room for us to fit with our shields still over us. I opened a gap up in my shield all the way around for the shifters’ guns, and Jude called out orders.

A few witches did notice us, but they weren’t nearly as well trained as Anderson and the Supreme Rose, so we were able to get a sneak attack in before they got their shields up. The big wall-like-shields in front of them were no help here.

But after the shifters shot down three witches, the others got smart and used personal shields on themselves. But even with that added annoyance, attacking from the side was a good idea because it was difficult for them to take us on at the same time as the others were still attacking from the front.

I used my magic, shooting at them with bombs while the other magi did the same—except Jude, who used energy balls and his gun—and the shifters fired on them as much as we were.

We took out another three witches in the circle that Anderson had used, and that made the front shield fall. Soon, all the witches in that circle were dead, and another TRD team was joining us in attacking the witches from the middle.

We turned to face the other side so the new team could move toward the right while we went left.

It felt like it took an eternity, but we very, very, very slowly made our way through the entire witch platoon. Every single one of them fought us with everything they had, even the last witch standing. They battled against us until we had no choice but to take them down. We’d tried to take a few captive, but they’d used their very last reserves to kill themselves to avoid being taken in for questioning and being arrested.

The second they were finished with, we turned our attention to the many, many taragorians roaming about—some were free and others were under shields—and the absolutely huge problem in front of us. The tear.

I turned to Logan and said, “I think you can start sending some of the taragorians back through, but I don’t think we can spare anyone else. There’s just too many of them already through and the tear is way too big. We need as many magi as we can spare to close it.”

He patted my shoulder. “I know, Mads. I get it. Maybe before we leave here, I can talk to the People’s magi and give them the spell I came up with?”

I nodded. “I think that’s a great idea.”

He nodded. “I’ll stay beside you the whole time, so I’ll just worry about the taragorians closest to us and the tear.”

“Sounds good.” I turned to Cos, but Jude had already taken care of it.

“All the shifters are going to start taking out the taragorians. I’m going to keep watch and try to make sure no one gets snuck up on. And Harriet and a few others have drones up and ready to help watch everyone’s backs. You guys only need to worry about closing the tear unless I tell you to release a beast from under a shield.”

“You’ll tell me if you guys need help or need a capture?”

He managed not to roll his eyes at me, but just barely. “Obviously.”

With a nod, I faced the veil tear, and since I was completely out of energy, I decided fuck it and sat right on the ground as I pulled up six sets of veil-closing runes.

Sometimes I was still amazed at how easily I could pull up an absolutely insane number of runes these days. Practicing at home and at work was really growing my abilities. In most cases, I didn’t even really need to keep track of the number of runes I was using. I could always tell when I was reaching the maximum, but that number was so high I didn’t bother to count. And honestly, that number kept growing and growing the more I practiced. It was pretty badass, if you asked me.

I attached my weaves to the ends of the tear next to a few People’s weaves, and I used all my might to try and pull the ends together. Ash and Wren placed their weaves up right next to mine, almost mixing together, and I was relieved to have their familiar magic beside mine. I never used to have such an easy time working with any other magi before the two of them came into my life.

More and more magi put their weaves up against the veil tear, and together, we all pulled and pulled and pulled.

It was slow going. So freaking slow.

The tear was probably close to fifty feet high at this point, if not more, and half a mile long, if not longer. So it took a lot for it to close. It was a patience and strength game—not something any of us had much of left after that horrible battle.

I hadn’t even really taken stock of how many dead there were—from the bodies that had been here before we arrived to the dead witches to anyone from our side. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the death toll from today. Plus, adding in the taragorians would make it even worse.

I was sure it was something I’d find out eventually, but I wasn’t about to seek out that information.

This battle had been… bad.

And fucking exhausting.

I felt like I could fall asleep right here.

“Hey,” Ash said as he sat beside me and nudged me with his shoulder.

Wren sat on my other side, also nudging me. “You hanging in there?”

“Yeah.” I sighed and glanced at each of them. “You two are so sweaty, you’re lucky I’m not making you move over.”

Ash chuckled, and Wren snorted, saying, “You should look in the mirror, buddy. I honestly don’t know why I thought sitting this close to you was a good idea. You’re disgusting.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and I gave their knee a light push, all three of us still concentrating on the tear. “This thing is going to take hours to close.”

“Yep,” Wren said.

Ash grunted. “Ugh. I don’t want to be out here for that long.”

“Me, either.” I yawned.

“Oh goddess,” Ash said. “Don’t start yawning already.” He yawned. “Shit, you already passed it to me. Now we’re doomed.”

I snorted, and Wren yawned on my other side, making me snicker before I yawned again. “Shit. We used a lot of magic today.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Still got a lot left to use, too.”

I sighed, and we fell quiet for a moment as we concentrated on the tear. I grunted in effort a minute later when a taragorian tried to push its way through right up against the spot we were closing. “I mean, you’ve got the whole fucking thing to come through, and you have to push through the edge?” I yelled at it, waving my arm out even though it couldn’t see me… or understand me for that matter.

“Right? Like why the hell is it pushing against our magic?” Ash asked. “That’s just rude.”

“So rude,” Wren agreed.

The beast moved over and came out right beside our spell, but Logan caught it in a shield and immediately got to work on returning it home.

“Maybe he shouldn’t do that one,” Ash said. “It doesn’t seem too smart.”

I snorted and elbowed him. “That wasn’t nice at all.”

“Well, it’s true.”

Wren snorted this time. “I don’t think Logan’s using any specific criteria for returning them. He’s just doing whoever’s closest.”

“Ugh. I know.” Ash ran a hand over his face. “It’s not like I actually want any of them to die. Obviously. It was a joke.”

I patted his knee. “We know.”

Jude stood behind us, keeping an eye on the shifters for us and guarding our backs even though we were all under my shield.

I added three more tear-closing rune sets to the tear, hoping that adding more would speed up the process. I wasn’t sure I could tell a difference, but I was willing to try adding even more if I could. But I didn’t want to add too many and not be able to jump in to help the shifters if they needed it.

I was pretty sure I’d already overdone it, so I didn’t need to add to it.

At times, it felt like even more taragorians were passing through now than they had during our fight. But that was probably only because I was so focused on the tear now, and before it had barely been an afterthought.

Hours passed with us just sitting there, using all our magical strength to close the veil tear. Sometimes, we had to capture loose taragorians, other times, we had to release them from our shields, but the entire time, we were working on the tear.

I was sure it looked like we were doing nothing at all to the shifters and humans, but I didn’t think I’d ever used this much magic in one day or at one time—ever. Not even during the wars I’d been in. Well, maybe it only felt that way in this moment, but I didn’t think so because I’d grown my magic so much since then.

As we came up on the last small section of the tear, I could feel my energy ebbing, but I didn’t let up. I kept pushing and pulling and bringing those ends together as much as I possibly could.

And then finally, after what felt like forever, the loud pop resounded across the Great Divide, followed by the absence of the buzzing sound.

Everyone cheered. It was done. The tear was closed.

Holy shit, that had been a lot. I glanced around at all the other magi, all of whom were sitting or even lying on the ground, and they looked as exhausted as I felt.

I hated when the First Veil Tear opened that wide. It was fucking awful.

I fell onto my back so my eyes were skyward, and I let out a long sigh and a groan. We were done.

With that part at least.

Logan rejoined us since he could no longer send the beasties through the tear anymore.

“Ugh.” I pushed myself back up to take in the scene around me. There were still a lot of beasties running around or trapped in shields. I should probably stand up and try to help more.

When I went to push up to my feet, nothing happened. Like absolutely nothing.

I looked down at my body with a frown. Why the hell wasn’t it working right?

I tried again, and my limbs moved but they didn’t actually push up to my feet the way I wanted them to. “Why isn’t my body working?” I asked out loud.

Ash snorted. “You’re exhausted and used way too much magic today.”

I frowned at him. “But we need to help them.”

He nodded. “I know, but you’re going to have to do it from here because there’s no way I can help you up.”

“Why not?”

He lifted a brow, but it was Wren who answered. “Because we’re just as tired as you and can’t get up either.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Ash said, “Oh.”

I sighed and looked around before activating shield runes, weaving a shield together, and capturing a loose taragorian. It looked like I’d gone in slow motion. Wow. My reaction time was terrible.

I did the same thing again, but this time, the beastie evaded my shield for a few minutes while I chased it around, trying to capture it. I finally got it, but it was annoying as hell.

I caught three more before realizing I needed to take a break because I was dangerously close to falling asleep on the battlefield and letting all my runes go. That would be bad. That would be really bad.

While I knew that my family would keep me safe, the last thing I wanted was to become a liability or for all the beasts I had under shields to suddenly be let out and try to eat all the shifters.

So I held what I had and waited. It sucked. Especially when I realized my work wasn’t even close to being done.

I needed to break and clean all the witch magic. And boy was there a lot of it.

I started with the witch magic nearest me since my magic could reach it without me getting up. It was slower going than usual because I didn’t want to screw up when I was so worn out. The other magi caught on to what I was doing, and I heard quite a few groans when they realized they should help, too.

After the witch magic around me was broken, Ash, Wren, Logan, Jude, and I helped each other stand up so we could make our way over to a section that the others hadn’t reached yet. They were all pretty much sticking to where they’d sat, too, and I didn’t blame them for being unable to walk to a new area.

Jude stayed with us, but he was busy coordinating things with the shifters and the non-humans from People’s. I honestly couldn’t even focus on what he was doing because I needed all my concentration for my magic—and not falling asleep standing up—but I knew he was doing important work.

Eventually, one by one, the taragorians were put down until there were none left standing. And the witch magic was cleaned and broken until there was no useable magic and no longer a danger to anyone walking around.

The magi were all dead on our feet and just about every one of us was sitting again, and I just wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t even care if I had to take a nap right here, on the ground, in the middle of the Great Divide.

Just when I was seriously debating lying down, Cosmo made his way over to me.

I thought it was to help me off the ground, but he actually knelt in front of me and asked, “Do you want to come with Jude, Harriet, Simon, and me to check out the Supreme Rose’s body?”

Um, not really, but I figured I should, so I simply nodded at him. I didn’t put up a fight when he decided to pull me to my feet.

Once I was standing, he stared at me with a concerned expression on his handsome face. “Are you okay?” He asked it quietly enough that even Charlie, who was helping Ash stand beside me, likely hadn’t even heard.

I nodded. “Yeah. Just worn out. I’ll be fine.”

He stared at me for another few seconds before sighing and kissing my forehead, murmuring, “We’re going to take tomorrow off so everyone can recover.”

“I think everyone who was here today should get a rest day, maybe two for some of the magi. We all used a hell of a lot of magic today.”

“I know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

I glanced around, afraid that someone outside of our pride might’ve heard him say that—no one but the Ono-Nais knew that he could see magic now—but then I realized that even if they’d heard him, it was unlikely that they’d think he meant he could actually see the magic. It was sort of an expression, and anyone could’ve seen the results of magic, anyway. I was being paranoid. Probably because I was tired.

He put an arm around my back and led me across the battlefield. We had to weave around a lot of bodies and blood puddles, and while I mustered up the strength to wrinkle my nose at them, it didn’t carry its usual disdain for anything gross. I just couldn’t care right then.

Sleep. I really needed some freaking sleep.

“Since I know you’re going to find out anyway, I wanted to tell you… the local police were called earlier today when three employees from the same coffee shop didn’t show up to work and none of them were answering. Apparently, they were from the same pride, and the manager even called their alpha, and he didn’t answer, either. The police went to the street where this pride lives and no one was answering their doors. Officers saw broken windows, so they forced their way inside and they found no one… in any of the pride’s homes. But they did find canisters that’d been thrown through the broken windows.”

“Canisters…?” With my brain slow, it took me way longer than I would’ve liked for his meaning to click. “Gas? The pride was gassed?”

Cos nodded.

That meant those poor shifters hadn’t even had a chance to fight off their attackers and kidnappers. Those poor shifters. This was a terrible story, but I didn’t understand why Cos was telling me this now when I was exhausted and not thinking straight. Did he want us to start searching for them? I’d have to sleep first. There was no way I’d be able to traipse around town in my condition. No way in hell.

I stopped walking and stared around the field, seeing all the shifter bodies that had been here before we’d arrived and the shipping containers sitting open and empty on the other side of the field. Oh. “Are these the shifters? Are you telling me that’s how the Red Cloth was able to get so many bodies for their spells today?”

“Yes. The same technique they used to kidnap Haiden and the cubs.”

I winced, my heart hurting. For all these shifters, for Haiden, El, and Teo, for all the others the Red Cloth had hurt or killed.

Cos kissed my hair and started ushering me across the field again. “You okay?”

I sighed. “Yeah… no… I mean… not really, but yes.”

He snorted. “Clear as mud.”

With a shrug, I murmured, “Too tired to think.”

“I know, baby. Sorry. I just wanted you to know before you saw it on the news.”

“No, I’m glad you told me. I just don’t think I can process it right now.” I paused. “Wait, what neighborhood?”

“Sannia. In Shifter City.”

“Fuck.” Shifter City had been getting hit so hard by witches and bigoted humans alike lately.

Cos stopped walking suddenly, and I blinked, then moved my gaze to the ground where a pile of red cloth was all bunched up. My nose wrinkled again because the Supreme Rose’s body was buried under all that fabric, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see it.

But it needed to be done. So here we were.

Harriet, the brave soul that she was, moved over to it and started pulling the red fabric back. It seemed to take both forever and no time at all for her to get the cloak off the Supreme Rose’s face and for her to roll the body over so we could see it more clearly.

I could only blink.

For some reason, I’d been expecting the Supreme Rose to be, like, a grumpy old person, but instead, what I saw was a fairly young, very pretty face—or at least from what was left of their face, I assumed they were young and pretty.

I gathered enough reserves to take a step forward and crouch down nearby to get a better look. Their eyes were left open, so I could see the brown, although they looked milky with death. Their hair was a lighter brown and shaved on one side with the other side long enough to hang past their chin.

If I would’ve passed this person on the street, I would’ve thought they were nice looking. Well, maybe not since I didn’t tend to pay enough attention to that kind of thing regularly, but if someone would’ve asked for my opinion on their looks, I would’ve said that.

“Who are they?” I asked, glancing up at Harriet.

She shrugged but stepped closer again and found their wrist under the fabric. She tapped something on her own HID before it scanned the Supreme Rose’s. Harriet stood up straight as she waited for the system to find our mystery cult leader.

It didn’t take long. Less than a minute later, Harriet said, “Their name is Rubin Telum—well, his name, according to this. He’s a thirty-year-old, originally from Florida. He worked at a grocery store for a year before he quit his job one day and seemed to go off grid for a while. Wait, there’s a police report attached to his file. Give me a second to scan it over.”

She was silent for a minute before a huff of breath left her. “He grew up in a human-only town, but moved to a bigger city after college. That’s when he started working at a grocery store. Apparently one day at work, he was caught kicking the shit out of a teenager. It was a shifter kid, so he didn’t get arrested—because people suck—but I guess the grocery store owner didn’t like what they saw because Rubin here was fired. And the next day, the owner’s car was scratched up, the windows were broken, and someone had taken a bat to the hood and wrote shifter lover and freak and a bunch of other shit all over it. The police couldn’t prove Rubin Telum did it, and he disappeared the following week, anyway. There isn’t anything to report after that.”

I stared down at this disgusting, horrible human being and couldn’t help but say, “Did he seriously go on a genocide mission because he lost his job when he was caught beating one of us up? What the actual fuck?”

Harriet shrugged. “I’m sure that didn’t help, but he obviously had a lot of hatred in him before that. I mean, he was beating up a thirteen-year-old kid. Who the hell does that?”

“Good point.”

“Holy fucking shit,” she said a few seconds later. She didn’t really curse like that very often, so my head snapped up at that.

“What is it?”

Her gaze met mine. “His mother’s from Fairview City. Her maiden name was Anderson…”

I stared at her for a beat before cursing under my breath. “He’s fucking related to Anderson?”

“Yes. Looks like he was his nephew.”

“Holy fucking shit.” I ran my hand through my hair and winced.

Well, I suppose that explained why it was always the two of them who ran away from previous battles together. I wondered why this prickhole had sent Anderson away this time alone. Not that I could complain since I was able to take him out without the other prickhole here.

“Anderson’s going to lose his shit,” Jude said, and I couldn’t help but agree.

“I suppose it doesn’t change anything.” Cos crossed his arms over his chest. “But we’ll obviously need to look into the rest of Anderson’s extended family. They were cleared when his treason was first discovered, but whoever cleared them apparently didn’t do their job.”

Harriet sighed. “Clearly. I’ll send a message to Dipshit so she can start investigating.”

“Thanks, Harriet.”

I shook my head in disbelief at the entire situation, then reached out for Cos so he’d help me stand back up. I didn’t even have to tell him what I wanted. He just stepped forward and hauled me up to my feet again, wrapping an arm around me so I didn’t faceplant.

Cos said, “I think we need to get out of here while we’re all still functioning. We have a name now, so the techs can do a deep dive on him and figure more out. We should let the clean-up crew do their thing.”

Everyone murmured agreements, even me, which probably proved how worn out I was, and we turned our backs on that disgusting human and headed for our pick-up location. The copters were on their way over to meet us so we didn’t have to walk two miles to get to them.

My mate kept me by his side in the copter, and when we made it back to HQ, we didn’t even bother stopping back inside our office. Cos led the way from our TRD truck through the parking garage to our van, saying, “We’ve done enough work today. They can deal with it. We can shower at home.”

I nodded, not even caring. All I wanted was to find a bed to climb into—as long as that bed had my mate in it, too.