“I knew as soon as you reached the Rift—my Harpy told me, and I watched you through her eyes before you ended her.” Rigelus advanced another step into the throne room, power brewing in his hand, dancing along the golden rings on each long finger.
Bryce and Hunt tensed, eyeing the distance to the exit. A smaller door lay behind the thrones, but to reach it they’d have to put their backs to Rigelus.
In the city, light sparked and boomed—brimstone missiles. Made and fired by the Asterian Guard on the rooftops, spearing toward the demons of Hel’s armies. Arcing, golden, the missiles slammed into the dark ranks atop Mount Hermon. Earth and rock shattered, light blooming upward.
“And like the rodents you are,” Rigelus said, “I knew you’d leave an escape route for yourselves and your allies. Right to Hel. I knew you’d leave the Rift open.”
Hunt grabbed Bryce’s hand, preparing to get them out.
“So I sent three legions of my Asterian Guard to the Rift last night. I think they and their brimstone missiles will find Hel quite unguarded, with all its armies here.”
“We have to warn Aidas,” Hunt said, squeezing her hand. Bryce looked at Rigelus once more—at his smirk of triumph at outwitting them—
And with a shove of her power, she teleported herself and Hunt out of the palace.
Right to the chaos of the hills beyond the city.
Ruhn and Lidia raced along the palace corridors, veiled in his shadows.
They’d found no sign of her sons. Nothing in the dungeons, the sight of which had given Ruhn such a jolt of pure terror he had nearly dropped their concealing shadows. And nothing in any of the holding cells. They’d made their way through the palace as quickly as they could while staying undetected. Dec had disabled many of the cameras, and Ruhn’s shadows took care of the rest. But after twenty minutes of fruitless searching, Ruhn grabbed Lidia’s arm before they could race down yet another hallway.
“We need to stop and reconsider where they might be,” Ruhn said, breathing hard.
“They’re here—he’s got them here,” Lidia snarled, struggling against his grip.
Ruhn held firm, though. “We can’t keep running around blindly. Think: Where would Pollux take them?”
She panted, eyes wide with panic, but took a breath. Another.
And that cold, Hind’s mask slid over her face. “I know how to find them,” she said. And Ruhn didn’t question her as she took off again, this time heading back down the stairs, down, down, down until—
The heat and humidity hit him first. Then the smell of salt.
The one thousand mystics of the Asteri slumbered in their sunken tubs, in regimented lines between the pillars of the seemingly endless hall.
“Traitor,” a withered, veiled female hissed from a desk in front of the doors, rising to her feet.
Lidia pulled out her handgun and sent a bullet through the female’s skull without hesitation. The blast rocked like thunder through the hall, but the mystics didn’t stir.
Ruhn stared at Lidia, at the place where the old female had been standing, at the blood now sprayed on the stones—
But Lidia was already heading for the nearest tank, for the controls beside it. She began typing. Then moved to the next mystic, then the next, and the next.
“We don’t have long until someone comes down here to investigate that gunshot,” Ruhn warned. But Lidia kept moving from tank to tank, and he peered at the first monitor to see the question she’d written. Where are Lidia Cervos’s sons?
She stopped typing at the seventh mystic, and stalked along the rows of tubs.
Ruhn moved to the doorway to keep watch, hiding himself in shadows as he monitored the hall, the stairs at their far end. They’d be lucky if it took even a minute for inquiring ears to get down here—
Lidia gasped. Ruhn whirled toward her, but she was already running.
“Pollux has got them under the palace,” she said as she reached the door and raced out, Ruhn running alongside her.
“Under?” Ruhn asked, trailing her down the stairs.
“In the hall with the firstlight core that your sister discovered—under the archives.”
“Lidia,” Ruhn said, grabbing her arm. “It has to be a trap. To have them at the core—”
She pointed the gun at his head. “I’m going. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. But I’m going.”
Ruhn held up his hands. “I know, and I’m going with you, but we have to think through the—”
She was already sprinting again, the gun back at her side. The castle had filled with sound now, a cacophony of shouting, scared people trying to get out as fast as possible. It masked the sound of their creeping about, but … Lidia was frantic—desperate. Which made for a dangerous ally, Hind or no. She’d get herself killed, and her sons, too.
He couldn’t let her jeopardize herself like that. If anyone was going to put themselves in that lethal danger …
It’d be him.
Ruhn vaulted down the stairs behind Lidia. And when he caught up to her, he clicked the safety off his gun.
Lidia heard that click and halted. Turned to him—slow, disbelieving. She didn’t glance at the gun. She already knew it was there. Her eyes were on his. Unreadable, cold. The eyes of the Hind.
Ruhn rasped, “I can’t let you get yourself killed.”
“I will never forgive you for this,” she said, voice like ice itself. “Never.”
“I know,” Ruhn said. And fired.
One shot, right to her thigh.
She shouted in pain as she crumpled, the bullet passing through the wound and ricocheting off the stairs behind her, the thunder of the gun and her scream spinning into a chorus that shredded his soul. A chorus that, thankfully, was muffled by the chaos unfolding levels above.
She pressed her palm to the open wound, which he’d inflicted far from any dangerous artery, and her eyes blazed with pure, flaming rage. “I will kill you—”
She reached for the gun at her other thigh, as if she really would blast his face off.
Ruhn bolted down the stairs before she could take aim. Holstering his own gun, he raced onward, leaving her to bleed behind him.
The waterways of the Eternal City were old, and strange, and unfriendly.
Tharion hated them. Especially with the amplified power in his veins, freed from its bonds. His body and soul recognized the very essence of his surroundings. They did not like what they encountered.
There was no mer court in the river wending like a snake through the city. There was barely any life at all beyond bottom-feeders and skittering things that clung to the shadows.
Above, the world was chaos. Armies and missiles and wings.
Here, the sounds were muffled. The water whispered to him where to go, where to bring the bag of sealed antidotes. Flowed with him, guided his powerful tail, right to the grate in the riverbank. His gills flared as he hauled away the metal. As he swam into the dark, lightless tunnel and switched on the aquatic headlamp he’d had the good sense to bring.
And with the water guiding him, Tharion swam like Hel for the Asteri’s palace.
Bombs ruptured, and it was so much worse than the past spring. Brimstone missiles rose from the city, from the Asterian Guard hidden within it, from the mech-suits stirring to life atop Mount Hermon—
So much destruction. Hyperconcentrated angelic wrath.
Atop one of the hills beyond the city, Bryce was gasping for breath, a bit dizzy, as she yanked the Mask from her face. Hunt ran for where the Prince of the Chasm stood overlooking the dark beasts swarming toward the city walls and said, “Phase Two starts now.”
Bryce mastered herself enough to stagger up to Aidas and Hunt. The armies of Hel, both terrestrial and airborne, all hungry and raging, were no fucking joke.
She knew it had been the only way. To stand a chance, unleashing Hel had been the only way. Even so, its army was petrifying, allies or not. She had to trust that Aidas and the other princes had them on tight leashes.
“They’re almost close enough,” Aidas said, clad in black armor akin to Thanatos’s. Bryce could only assume that his brothers were either among the fray or overseeing their own divisions of the teeming black mass.
There was nothing to do for a moment but watch the Asterian Guard decide they had the beasts on the run and begin advancing beyond the city walls.
Wings fluttered nearby, and Isaiah and Naomi touched down beside Hunt.
“Ready?” Isaiah asked, clad in the black battle-suit of the 33rd.
“Soon,” Aidas said. The angels still maintained a healthy distance from him, but had at least lost their disbelieving, wary expressions in his presence.
The Asterian Guard swept out into the hills and valleys below, their mech-suits marching among them, and where they struck, demons died.
“Do you think,” Aidas mused, “that they have any idea what’s about to happen to them?”
“No,” Hunt said, smiling darkly. “And neither does Rigelus.”
Bryce slid the Mask back on, and its ungodly, leeching presence ate into her soul. But the star inside her seemed to hold the Mask at bay.
“That’ll teach him to think he can outsmart us,” Naomi said.
The Asterian Guard, white plumes of horsehair on their helmets shining bright in the daylight, advanced through the field of demons. The feet of the scores of mech-suits among them shook the earth.
“I think the three legions he sent to Nena,” Naomi said, “will be in for quite a surprise when they find that half of Hel’s army is still there and waiting for them.”
Isaiah said, with no small amount of satisfaction, “They should be getting word to the Asteri right about”—he checked his phone—“now.”
“Perfect,” Aidas purred. “Then we’re ready.”
“Messaging Declan,” Naomi said, typing into her phone. The Fae warrior was waiting in the van, the hacked imperial military network laid bare at his fingertips.
The Asteri’s mech-suits halted mid-stride. The Asterian Guard paused, glancing at the fancy new machines that had malfunctioned all at once. The glowing eyes of the mech-suits faded and died out.
“Magic and machines,” Isaiah said. “Never a good combination.”
“It’s a go,” Naomi said, reading a message on her phone. “Do your thing, Quinlan.”
They all looked to Bryce.
Alive and not-alive. Dead and undead. Bryce reached out a hand toward the stilled metal army below. Cold, awful power went through her. But her will was their will. Her will was everything.
Rise, Bryce said, blasting the thought out. Fight. Obey Isaiah Tiberian and Naomi Boreas. Hel is your ally—you fight beside them.
Only she could see the twinkling souls of the Fallen, drifting toward those suits from the nearby hilltop, alighting on them one by one by one.
The eyes of the suits blazed again. Bryce saw the nearest mech-suit lift its metal arm in front of its face. Watch its fingers wriggle with something like wonder.
Then it turned to the closest Asterian Guard and bashed the soldier’s head in.
“Holy gods,” Naomi breathed as the mech-suits, one after another, began to march away from the Asterian Guard.
The souls of the Fallen had waited for the moment the Asterian Guard and their mech-suits had begun to march toward the city below.
And the remaining souls of the Fallen that didn’t have a mech-suit to slip into … Well, there were plenty of dead demons and Asterian Guards with bodies intact enough for occupying. Twitching, as if adjusting to the new limbs, those corpses lurched to their feet. Came to stand beside their Fallen brethren in their mech-suit hosts.
“You’re up,” Hunt said to Isaiah and Naomi. “Time to get into the city.”
The angels bowed their heads. And with a great thrust of their wings, they launched skyward. Isaiah’s voice boomed out. “Fallen, you are now Risen! To the gates!”
Isaiah looked back at Hunt, his eyes brimming with pride and determination. The warrior touched his heart and flew off. Hunt lifted his arm in salute and farewell, as if beyond words.
It was indeed a sight beyond words—beyond any description. An army of the undead, of machines and demons, marched for the city walls.
“Incoming,” Hunt said. “Seems like that footage kept them distracted until now.”
“Right on time,” Aidas confirmed, as the glowing figures approached the battlefield spread before the northern gates of the Eternal City, come to exterminate this threat themselves.
The Asteri.
And walking toward them, the armies parting before him, was the Prince of the Ravine, with the Prince of the Pit trailing close behind.
