A door loomed ahead. The shapeshifters crashed through it, drunk on blood fumes and anger. People spun to us, a familiar face among them. Shane. I lunged and disemboweled him with one precise strike.
He clutched at his stomach, trying to hold the slippery ribbons of his intestines inside. I sliced across his chest and neck and kicked him to the ground. He crashed at my feet, bleeding to death.
The device loomed in front of me, a cylinder of gleaming metal, encrusted with gems and inlaid with glyphs and patterns, spinning magic from its top in feathery glowing strands. A control console rose next to it, bristling with levers. Three gauges, long narrow rectangles half-filled with pale light, glowed above the console.
Around the cylinder, the shapeshifters tore into the Keepers like sharks into baby seals. I pulled Kamen’s instructions from the pocket of my jeans and unfolded them, careful to keep my bloody fingerprints off the text. According to Kamen, shutting down the machine required pushing the levers in a precise sequence. He said it would take anywhere from three to ten minutes. I had no idea how many minutes I had left.
Don’t think about it; just do it.
I pushed the first lever. The gauge on the left turned blue. If it turned bright green, the device would become unstable and we’d all vanish in an explosion of magic. I jerked my hand back.
The gauge glowed with blue, slowly growing lighter and lighter.
Seconds ticked by. Come on. If I ever commissioned a world-destroying device, it would have a two-second shutoff: turn the key and that’s it.
Come on.
The gauge turned white. I pushed the second lever. The third gauge shot into blue-green. I held my breath.
The light shone, holding at the almost-green mark.
Turn white. Turn white, damn you.
Behind me someone snarled.
White. Turn white.
The gauge paled, sliding into pale gray. Good enough.
I pulled the first lever again. All three gauges remained steadily pale.
Third lever.
Second lever.
Third lever again. When this was over, I would screw Kamen’s head off his shoulders like a cap off a beer bottle. First lever.
All three gauges turned green.
Fuck.
The top of the device slid open, magic curving around it like veils of white smoke, nipping at my skin.
Don’t blow up. Just don’t blow up.
The gauges slid into blue. Wait for it.
My hands shook. I clenched them into fists.
Wait for it.
Wait.
Wait.
The gauges turned white. I pushed the final lever.
Nothing.
What the hell?
I had done it right, I’d memorized the instructions, they were in my hand . . . Maybe Kamen had lied.
Maybe he wanted the device to activate . . .
Something clanged within the machine. The gauges drained, the glow vanishing. The veils of magic dissipated, dissolving into nothing. The last sparks of power melted from the device and it sat inert, just a hunk of metal, dull and harmless.
I slumped on the floor. Around me shapeshifters moved. Someone threw a body out the window.
We’d won. Somehow we’d won.
My gaze snagged on Shane, sprawled on the floor in the mess of his innards. He stared at me, his eyes wild.
“We won,” I told him.
He glared at me with eyes full of hate.
Behind him Curran loomed in the doorway. He was human and smeared with blood. He stepped over Shane and crouched by me. I put my arms around his neck and we kissed, both covered in gore and neither one caring. We kissed while around us, the soldiers of the Pack tossed the bodies out the windows, stepping over Shane as he lay dying slowly, bleeding his life out, watching his intestines contract and shiver on the floor in front of him.