Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

My heart would save or doom us all, right?

But while everyone was distracted by Gideon’s moment of glory, I knew two things.

One: I had claws.

Two: that wasn’t my bead Cain had just eaten.

I launched at Cain like a sprinter off a starting block, spread my fingers, claws glinting, and swiped across his generous middle. It was so fast, so unexpected, and so not-me, he didn’t see it coming. The dark sorcerer gasped, gulped, and right around then, he probably began to suspect something wasn’t right.

I spun, and sliced a five-fingered slash across his chest.

Blood bloomed.

Cain lashed out, smacking me back, off my feet and into the air. A few seconds of weightlessness, and I slammed into a windshield. Glass in the corners of my vision scattered like stars. That kind of blow would have killed a human, so it was a good thing I was beginning to feel a lot less human, and a lot more like me .

A growl simmered up my throat, starting somewhere in my chest, or even deeper. Starting deep, in a primal part of me that didn’t take kindly to being tossed around like a rag doll.

“He’s back, baby,” Zee crooned, then tossed a smug grin at Cain. “You about to get cooked.”

“How—” Cain gasped, clutching his lower torso. Streams of dark blood ran between his fingers.

I dropped off the hood of the broken car, onto my feet, and ruffled glass from my bouncy hair. Cuts across my hands and up my arms stitched themselves closed. Because this skin I wore? It was just a mask—just pretend.

“We made a deal, Mr. Vex!” Cain boomed.

“We did, and I told you how to access my power. Just like we agreed.” I started forward again. Zee joined me on my left, and Victor to my right. Tom Collins zipped from gap to gap like an electric ghost. “All you had to do was swallow it.”

Cain swayed on his feet. His weirdly warped human outline twitched and jerked. “Then how are you restored?”

“No idea.” I shrugged. “Although, it may have been something to do with the bead I switched mine out for earlier. Did I forget to mention that part?”

Zee’s theatrical gulp had Cain sneering. “Gasp! You ate the wrong bath bead?” Zee exclaimed in dramatic Zee fashion. “Gah, been there, done that. It is not fun.”

Cain scanned our small frontline—me, Tom, Zee, and Victor. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still more powerful than all of you combined!” His whole body pulsed, expanding. Lashing black tendrils, like a hundred Zee-tails, sprung from his back, and writhed larger and larger behind him.

Zee raised his hand and clicked his fingers, and in just a few seconds an array of colorful stars fell from the sky.

The Razorsedge demons landed around us like candy, bristling with razorblades and a gooey center of vengeance.

And they weren’t alone.

Behind us, a whole swathe of Lost Ones marched onto the Golden Gate Bridge. Some we’d saved from becoming vampire gifts, others we’d saved from illegal fights to the death. Demons who’d had their body parts stolen and sold off by Agatha de La Cour. Fae who’d been forgotten and had to live out of vans selling human trash just to get by. Wrongly imprisoned gargoyles. Pixies once trapped in glass jars, and djinn used against their will to infuse warded FaeMade ? jewelry. Those freed djinn smoked the sky, turning the air pink and purple.

And a whole bunch of others who had just wanted to survive and get along... just wanted to be left to live in peace.

We hadn’t planned to be the heroes in their lives, it had just turned out that way. It had all been an accident. But a happy one.

Cain’s bolstered size kept on growing. More than ever it was clear he wasn’t a man and never had been. The dark mass was the man.

We had an army.

And I was its general.

Cain reached peak ugliness—nightmare-ness—and unleashed a howl, flinging out a blur of whipping tendrils.

One came at me. I slashed it back. Others darted toward Victor and Zee. They whisked into action, slicing and tearing. Cain became the eye of a Lost Ones storm, holding back the barrage of Lost Ones tearing at him.

In the chaos, a moment of calm opened up, and Zee poofed back beside me.

“This lightning is fuckin’ wild, right?” He grinned, and right on cue a jagged bolt of purple lightning snapped at the bridge’s tower, and danced down the thick cables, lighting the battle scene in neon purple.

“You know you’re doing that?” I told him. “That’s all you, Zee.”

“It is?” He looked up, and the whole sky was a spiderweb of purple zigzags. “I have lightning powers now? Fuck, yeah!” He flung himself into the fray, slashing Shareen at Cain’s enormous and endless, dark, lashing eels.

We were doing great, beating him back step by step, until Cain’s already larger than normal, human-shaped outline of vicious power gave several sudden, shuddering jerks. The bridge jolted around us. Cables twanged. Cars slid.

The Lost Ones eased off, backing up.

Something had changed.

Cain’s laughter built, howling around us, and the dark sorcerer’s outline began to split apart, swell and crack, then snap again, getting bigger with each twitch.

“Uh . . . Kitten?”

Bigger, he grew.

Enormous, smoky hands grabbed the Golden Gate Bridge’s tower.

“Get off the bridge,” I told Zee.

“Eh?”

Victor blurred to a sudden stop beside me. “Adam?”

“Get them all off the bridge,” I told them both. “Get everyone to safety.”

The bridge gave a larger, sudden jolt, and Zee flung out his wings and tail to balance himself. “What’s happening?”

I peered up, and up. At the giant dark sorcerer who was about to make San Francisco look as tiny as a Lego town. “The random bead has kicked in.”