“Anya…” Helgi’s tone was tight.
I glanced over my shoulder. The darkness was lit by red orbs.
Eyes.
Rats’ eyes.
I made a grab for the lever and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
And then Helgi let out a bellow. I heard the whoosh of Jezebel’s blade, felt the vibration of it meeting its target as I tugged and strained on the lever. What the fuck?
“Anya, hurry it up!” Helgi was a mini tornado, cutting and slicing while the rats swarmed her, screaming at her in rage.
Why wouldn’t it—
I spotted the second safety.
Bastard. I unhooked and pulled, muscles straining as a grinding noise filled the air.
The turbine made a rattling, hissing sound and then began to rumble. It was shutting down.
I leapt into the fray and joined Helgi in the impromptu massacre.
I stabbed a rat in the face and kicked another out of the way before shoving Helgi around the side of the turbine.
“Run!”
She broke into a sprint and I followed, huge monster rats at our backs, screeching in indignation. Helgi hit the double doors and pushed through them. I followed a second later. We slammed them closed just as the rats hammered against them.
“They’re going to push down the bar any minute,” Helgi said.
“I know.” I looked to the stairwell. “On the count of three.”
She nodded, muscles straining to hold the door closed.
“One. Two. Three.”
We let go of the doors, running for the stairwell exit without looking back.
* * *
Helgi was first to exit the building and stood, hands on hips, breathing deeply. “Fuck this shit.”
“My sentiments precisely.” I joined her, winded but less so.
She handed me my axe and took the sword back. “She’s a beaut.”
“I know.”
“You think it worked?”
I shielded my eyes from the sun and looked up at the pylons linked by cables. They fizzed and crackled, and my heart sank.
“I don’t—”
The crackle died, followed by the buzzing noise.
“Yes!” Helgi pumped the air. “Yes!”
We met in a hug, relief a bubble in my chest.
“Now let’s go get your dragon,” Helgi said, giving me a sly look.
Yeah, I wasn’t even going to try and explain all the ways that Vesper was not my dragon.
That was a story for much, much later.
* * *
“I’m not leaving you,” Helgi said.
I knew this would happen. I knew she’d never agree to leave me, but I needed to know if things went wrong…if I didn’t make it back…the kids would be taken care of.
“Helgi, you’re the only one I trust with the kids. They love you as much as they love me.”
She stopped and glared at me. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare do the self-sacrifice shit with me. Vesper isn’t family, he’s not one of us. You don’t have to go back for him.” Her eyes glittered with tears of frustration.
She didn’t mean it. She wasn’t heartless. It was just that when it came to me, Helgi was selfish and selfless all at the same time.
“He saved my life.”
“Dammit.” Helgi stomped off.
“He’s a Dreki lord and one of the only people who can command a lethal army to stop the Draco.”
“Shut it,” she threw over her shoulder.
I jogged to catch up. “I have to save him.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll go. Those kids need you, not me.”
And here came the truth. “It has to be me. I can communicate with the thing that has him. I could hear it when it spoke. I can also hear Dante and Vesper when they speak in my mind.”
She stopped once again, but this time she just stared at me. “Anya…what does this mean?”
“I don’t know, I just…I know I have to save him.”
She sighed. “I swear if you get yourself killed, I will find a shaman in the Furtherlands, drag your sorry-ass soul back from the beyond, and then exorcise you. Painfully.”
I hugged her, then took the book tucked into the small of my back and handed it to her. “Take care of this for me. It’s meant for Orion’s eyes only—he’s a Dreki lord. No one else, okay.”
She studied it, her expression hard. “You’re not coming to see the kids before you go after him, are you?”
“I’m not saying goodbye, Helgi.”
She grinned. “Damn straight you’re not.”
No goodbyes because I was coming back. I had to.
Chapter Six
It was eerie jogging through the warped streets with the power off. The silence was like a blanket pressing in on me, and even though no mechanical spiders were tracking me, the prickle up my spine was intense.
Foreboding.
But surely with the power off the huge wolf and its minions would be incapacitated or weakened.
Right?
I hit the heavy warp zone a moment later and walked down the wide street we’d escaped not so long ago. A sense of emergency filtered through my veins and I broke into a jog, past the spot we’d left Vesper and deeper into the heavy warp zone. The air crackled and fizzed with magick. It clung to me, pushing against my limbs and making my head fuzzy. Danger was a warning in the back of my mind, because cutting the electrical power may have deprived the creatures in this place of fuel, but the warped magick was still very much active, and instinct told me spending too much time here would be a bad thing.
There was no time to do a search of this place. I needed to draw the creatures to me and then use them to lead me to Vesper and the huge wolf.
“Vesper!” I slowed my pace. “Vesper, where are you?” Silence greeted me. Come on… I drew Jezebel from her holster. “Vesper!”
I continued down the street, turning in a slow circle, eyes scanning the buildings for movement, muscles taut and ready for action.
A flash of silver to my right had me jogging
