Page 28 of Hellfire to Come
On the other side, Echo leaned toward Chester, voice barely a whisper. “If he lashes out again, I’ll stop him. Possessed or not.”
“No,” Brooklyn said, keeping her eyes locked on Rowan’s. “He’s one of us. And we don’t kill our own.”
Rowan’s fingers spasmed.
And then… his knees buckled.
He crumpled to the floor, unconscious, blood trickling from his nose and down his chin.
The sigils around him flickered out like extinguished candles. The tension dissolved, leaving only silence. Thick, aching silence.
I stood trembling, everything inside me clenched tight. The iron pipe was still clenched in my hand, streaked with sweat and blood. It felt like a joke now, absurd in its inadequacy aftereverything we’d just endured. But I held onto it anyway, white-knuckled and shaking.
My gaze met Brooklyn’s.
Then the adrenaline gave out.
The room tilted sharply. My knees turned to water. I wobbled a step forward, but the floor was a wave and I was drowning on it. The stone walls swam in and out of focus, growing dimmer with every blink.
“Brook…” I started, but the word didn’t finish. My voice failed me.
Everything became a blur.
I saw her move before the floor started spinning and I lost my footing. Before the darkness swallowed me, I felt my friend’s arms catch me so I didn’t hit the ground.
“I got you,” she said, and I was lost to the dark.
Chapter Eleven
BROOKLYN
We had to move.
The moment Rowan collapsed and Alice slumped against my chest, everything crystallized with a cold clarity. The silence surrounding us wasn’t safety, it was the breath drawn before the scream. Frederic wasn’t dead, much as I longed for it to be true. He hadn’t even been injured badly enough to grant me a fleeting illusion of justice.
No, he was regrouping. Somewhere in the bowels of this cursed stronghold, he was gathering his wretched forces again, sharpening the blade he meant to drive through us.
And he would return. To gloat, to punish, to claim what he believed was his.
I shifted my grip on Alice, securing her limp form against me as her head lolled gently onto my shoulder. Her pulse, though faint, beat steadily against my fingertips, a fragile rhythm that was enough. She lived. That was all I needed.
But she couldn’t walk. And Rowan…
“Is he breathing?” I asked, my voice sharp with urgency.
“Yes,” Echo answered grimly. “But just barely. He won’t wake anytime soon.”
Dominic didn’t speak although I could feel his eyes on me, checking if I was injured without getting me upset by fretting over me. He merely lifted Rowan’s inert body over his shoulder like a burden he had carried a thousand times before. The witch hung lifelessly, limbs dangling, his face pale and hollow, as though the spell that had bound him had scraped out his soul and left the husk behind.
“Go,” I commanded, my voice low but absolute. “Move fast. We need to vanish before Frederic finds his footing.”
The wolf flanked my side, hackles raised, his entire body quivering with tension. He padded in silence, his eyes ever scanning the shadows. We began our retreat, our footsteps echoing down ruined corridors that groaned around us like a wounded beast. The very walls seemed to close in, sagging beneath the weight of the secrets they held. There was magic here, rotting and old, clinging to the air like mildew on stone.
Dried blood painted sigils across the cracked flagstones. They whispered as we passed, voices from beyond the veil, echoing remnants of pain and madness and centuries of imprisonment. The kind of echoes you didn’t answer if you wanted to keep your soul intact.
But I couldn’t afford to listen. Not now.
Alice’s weight leaned heavier into me with every step, her heat bleeding into my side. The way her body hung, half-conscious and unmoving, was a blade twisting in my gut but I pushed it down. There would be time to grieve, to rage, to fall apart.
