The vargs snarled in warning.
Shadows writhed and danced in a way that was very not natural, and as one, the vampires looked up.
Phantom black wings outstretched and long feathers rippling, Zak dropped off the guild’s roof. He landed in a crouch in the vampires’ midst, rose to his full height, and swept both arms wide.
Black blades of shadow slashed out from his hands, tearing through the vampires. They screeched and hissed, scattering under the onslaught.
Zak’s eyes met mine, and they shone with electric fae magic. Lallakai was back, concealed in his body and filling him with her power.
“I’ll keep them out of the guild,” he rumbled. “Help the others.”
The vampires regrouped, their inverted black and white eyes fixed on the druid with ravenous hunger. Vampires were created by fae possession, and fae couldn’t resist the lure of a druid’s power.
“But—”
“Go!” he snarled, stretching his hand toward the nearest vampire.
My throat closed, and I spun on my heel, the two vargs still attached to my sides like well-trained German Shepherds.
Crimson power exploded far too close.
Debris pelted me, and I threw my arms over my face. When I lowered them, my chest seized with terror.
Girard was on the ground, unmoving. Alistair was on his knees, struggling to rise with blood coursing from a slashing wound across his chest. And Nazhivēr had just grabbed Darius by the throat, lifting the GM off his feet.
Darius thrust his dagger at the demon’s face, but Nazhivēr caught his wrist. The demon bared his teeth in a vicious smile.
I wasn’t close enough to help. No one was close enough to save Darius.
Nazhivēr paused. His head turned, glowing magma eyes narrowing as something else caught his attention.
In an empty gap between battles, thirty feet away, a man stood alone. Unmoving. Waiting. His garments were solid black and the hood of his combat-styled jacket was pulled up, hiding his face in shadows.
Nazhivēr opened his hand, letting Darius drop. He pivoted to face the stranger.
The man sank into a low defensive stance—and crimson light ignited over his hands. The power streaked up his arms, and six-inch phantom talons formed over his fingertips.
A demon mage?
Snarling, Nazhivēr summoned near-identical talons. His tail snapped, wings flaring. The mysterious demon mage waited a heartbeat more—then sprang forward.
Fast. Way faster than Ezra. Impossibly fast!
Nazhivēr lunged to meet his charge, and the man dove. He slid past the demon, launched off the ground, and slammed both sets of talons into Nazhivēr’s lower back.
The demon roared furiously and snapped his tail up, shoving the man away. Demonic power blazed up the man’s arms as he caught his balance, then leaped a full eight feet into the air from a standstill.
He caught one of Nazhivēr’s long horns, wrenching his head to the side, and almost got his talons in the demon’s throat before Nazhivēr snatched the man’s leg and flung him off.
The man twisted in mid-air and landed on his feet a few yards away—and the streetlight’s glow caught on movement directly behind him.
A thin, whip-like tail lashed back and forth behind the man.
And I realized he wasn’t a man.
As Nazhivēr spread his wings, two more figures ran out of the darkness—a slim, petite one and a tall, willowy one, both dressed in similar black clothing with hoods drawn up. But I recognized that mismatched pair.
“Robin?” I shrieked. “Amalia?”
The shorter one glanced at me, the light catching on her pale face and large eyes, then she streaked toward Nazhivēr as the demon began a blazing crimson spell.
Darius was back on his feet, and his daggers gleamed as he circled around the furious demon. But he wasn’t angling to join their fight. He was heading toward the other end of the intersection, where the most violent battle raged. The combatants had mixed, and he could no longer blind a large group of them.
Between one step and the next, he disappeared.
Assassin. The word whispered in my mind. He was going in there. Invisible, undetectable—and utterly lethal.
But alone, he wasn’t enough. The full might of the Court’s demons and demon mages were tearing through what remained of the Keys forces. They were being overwhelmed. They were dying.
And we were next.
“Stay with Zak,” I told the two vargs, then sprinted toward the western avenue where Tabitha and her team fought the stone golems. They’d pushed—or lured—their enemies down the street, away from everyone else.
“Tabitha!” I shrieked.
I dashed into the chaos—the ground littered with motionless gargoyles and a few terrifyingly motionless human bodies that I didn’t stop to identify. Up ahead, Tabitha and a handful of remaining mythics were dodging the swinging claws of the golems.
In her hand was the rippling purple fabric of the Carapace of Valdurna, its shimmering light dancing over the nearby buildings.
As a golem spun to attack Sylvia, Tabitha flung it over the creature. The fabric settled over its stone head and its glowing runes dimmed. The magic sucked out of it, and she swept the cloak off as the golem toppled.
“Tabitha!”
She spun to face me, eyes wide. “What’s happening?”
“We need you!” I grabbed the fae artifact from her hand. “Leave the last few golems—we have bigger problems.”
As I clutched the soft fabric, numbness tingled through my hand. I ignored it, running back toward the intersection, my feet pounding. I rushed back onto the battlefield.
Screaming, howling violence. I careened past the vampires ringed in front of the guild, their bodies marred by gory wounds and missing limbs that didn’t affect them. Zak’s dark form was like a bonfire of black shadows amidst them.
Praying he could handle the undead horde, I raced toward the northern street where the werewolf battle still raged, the beastly monsters almost as difficult to kill as vampires. Orange light flickered wildly—the buildings were on fire.
I squinted, searching for Aaron’s fiery shape among the spreading flames.
“Tori!”
My head snapped in the other direction, and I veered off course. I didn’t need to go get my three mages. They stood together, ready, waiting, as though they’d somehow known what I planned to do.
Aaron, his heat-resistant shirt burned away,
