Page 10 of Ruin

“Down!” I bellowed, hoping the innocent women would listen and protect their babies, though I knew some of those closer to the blast would die. I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my ears. The blast wave was not hot as you would expect with an explosion, but startling in being just the opposite. Ice crystals scored my skin, the pressure of the explosion throwing me to the ground. Even though I covered my ears, they still rang. Screams were the only sounds I could hear.

I pushed myself up, straightening my elbows. About six feet away, B’nar was covering Blue. Literally. He’d engulfed her with his large body until I could barely see her.

“Get off me, you idiot!” She shoved him backwards.

He allowed it, but didn’t drop his hold on her. He merely looked her over then grunted as if satisfied she was unharmed before letting his hands drop away. His icy green glare rested on me and then Alex before he stood. Pulling another gun, he prowled forward ending the still moving Weres with a magic infused bullet in the brain. They didn’t move again. Apparently decapitation, burning them, and shattering their frozen bodies apart weren’t the only ways to end them.

Dead bodies surrounded us, but some of the women were still alive, their babies clutched to their chests.

“Come on, Em, up you get.” Alex helped me to my feet. I shook the ringing from my ears and started helping the women. They looked emaciated, barely strong enough to stand, their babies scrawny and wasting away. I had no idea what horrors they’d been through, but they really needed to get out of here before more of the demon horde descended on us. As if on cue, roars resonated down the corridors, coming from every direction. I sent a quick prayer to the Mother Wolf, hoping she could guide the spirit animals of the women and babies back to her. “Please take them, help them find a way home,” I whispered under my breath looking at a dead Were. His eyes were a clear deep brown, Unfocused in death, but devoid of that consuming blackness.

I bent and swooped up the bow. Pulling another clip of arrows from the quiver on my back and clipping it into place. I jogged down to B’nar who was peering around another corner. Immediately, he began to fire. His eyes started to glow with magic and he slammed one of his weapons into its holster.

“We aren’t going to be able get to Connor right now, if he’s down here. There’s too many of them.”

My heart sank. Carefully, I peered around the corner. A sea of deformed bodies rushed down the corridor towards us. Oddly, with no sound except their claws scratching on the tiled floor. Frustration tied my belly in knots. My mate could be behind one of the nearby doors, and I couldn’t get to him. I kept my hold light but steady as I levelled up the bow and homed in on my target. I squeezed the trigger. “Down!” I yelled, but Blue and Alex were already ushering the survivors back through the doors and up the stairs. They were right, those women and babies needed to get outside. We’d help them survive—somehow. Or rather Blue and Alex would, I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, firing another arrow. “You go and catch up with Blue, I’ll be right behind you.”

I pretended not to notice B’nar’s icy gaze resting on me before he loosed another volley of bullets into the oncoming wave of crazed Were’s. Some dropped to the ground, others ran on.

“Forget it, Ember.” His large hand grabbed my shoulder and hauled me back towards the stairwell. “You aren’t staying behind to risk getting caught. My world relies on you remaining out of Berith’s hands, so you will come with me.” And he shoved me through the doors.

I tripped up the first step but soon got my balance. “You bastard! I have to find him!”

“You can’t do that if you’re chained to the gates of Hell.”

I hated that he was right, but instead of admitting it, I welcomed the anger that burned in my chest. Fire stirred and Prime howled, wanting out to go and search for his other half. Claws pushed through the nail beds of my left hand. Ignoring the desperate need I had to shift, I slipped my free hand under a naked woman’s arm and hauled her at a run up the stairs just as the door at the bottom crashed against the wall.

“They're coming! Run!” bellowed B’nar, turning and shooting ice at the floor and walls.

“That won’t stop them! Here! Take her! I’ll stop it, but you all need to be gone!”

At my warning, a determined look crossed his face. He grabbed the woman and hauled her over his shoulder taking the steps three at a time. I heard Blue’s gun popping from a distance and hoped to the gods there weren’t as many monsters up above us.

Come on, lovely, I need you. Help me save those poor women and babies. Don’t let me down,I beseeched my phoenix. My fingers stretched wide though my hands remained down by my sides. Tension made my body rigid but I wasn’t scared of my gift like I had been. It did take an enormous amount of concentration, though, to summon the power buried deep inside me. My wolves roared as fire flooded my body; even Prime was pushed down by her. My whole body lit on fire, until I was swathed in flames. She didn’t harm me or my clothes, merely waited to be told what to do.

Kill the monsters,was my only instruction. And though my feet remained where they were, I felt her stir to life. She grew and grew until heat and flames engulfed the air of the stairwell. As the first wave of monsters rounded the corner of the steps, I let her fly. She shot forward and engulfed our enemy. The demons inside these suits of flesh didn’t even have time to screech before the Were bodies they inhabited burned to ash. Scorched by the bright burning light, the demons were sucked away. Calmly, I walked forward, burning each one as I went. But though my phoenix was powerful, I had not learned how to make her burn for long periods of time and already I was weakening.

“Ember!” roared B’nar as he rushed back down the steps followed closely by Alex.

Alex’s eyes widened at the sight of my burning body. He’d seen me train and summon flames to burn objects, but he’d never seen my whole body on fire. I turned more of my kind to ash, but my body began to quiver, my flames stuttering.

B’nar’s eyes narrowed on me. “Let her go! We need to get out! Now!”

I let Fire recede and leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. B’nar blew out a deep breath and sprinted down the steps. He’d sensed my weakness.Empathic, I remembered him saying.

Alex ran past me and stuck his gun out of the door, firing into the corridor where the demon possessed Weres hid. Light bathed my face. B’nar’s magic glowed, engulfing him much as Fire did me. His skin became covered in ice, his blue hair turning white and crystalised. Then he let his magic fly, commanding that power to build a wall of ice between us and our enemy. As soon as the door was sealed, he turned to me. “That won’t hold them forever,” he said, and just as he had done to the other woman, he threw me over his broad shoulder, running up the stairs with an ease that made me jealous. I swallowed my frustration at being so weak, but Prime and Mea soon stepped up, feeding me gentle waves of energy to keep me conscious. By the time B’nar and Alex barged through the doors into the arena, I fought to be let down.

B’nar lifted me and unceremoniously lowered me to my feet. But there was nothing I could do to prevent the shift Prime and Mea forced on me. They would not let me put myself at unnecessary risk, not when they could sense my weakness. Together they burst through my skin, the shift so quick very little pain registered. I marvelled at the way they were joined and could only wonder what they looked like merged together.

I bounded past both men into what had been the fighting arena. My wolves snarled as the stench of old blood and death flooded our senses. My kind had died by the hundreds in here. I had been forced to kill a friend here, and nothing could change the hate I had for this place—that we all had.

Blue was pinned nearby. With her were six naked women. Five cowered against the wall holding their babies, but one, the woman whose baby I’d caught, stood proud by Blue’s side, utterly naked, skinny and bleeding, her body was covered in scars and I didn’t want to imagine the horrors she’d suffered at the hands of the demons. She had one of Blue’s guns and was firing into the on-slaught of Were animals piling in through the far doors of the arena. I looked up to the destroyed balcony. Prime weighed leaping up there to make an escape.

We could do it, but that would mean leaving all the others behind, and I won’t do that.I felt his confusion, these people were not his pack, he didn’t owe them anything. He wanted to get me, and Mea, his chosen mate, out of here and to safety, and then return to find Connor.

Mea snarled, not happy with his decision to remove us from the fight.

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