I shriek, taken aback.
“Never turn your back on a battlefield,” Desi sings.
Gillian came for me while the demon and the fallen angel were fighting, my distraction a weakness I can’t afford.
I am way out of my league. They all move too fast for me, they’re stronger, and they have more power. I am a puppet being forced to join a battle I don’t know how to win.
Gillian stumbles backward, her hand swiping at her face. Blood beads up from a gash on her forehead, the crimson fluid smearing where she’s touched it.
Furiously, she kicks at the mace, and it rushes away from her in the snow, leaving a trail of turned up white powder. “Damn you, Destroyer,” she hisses.
Her gaze finds mine, and I know, even before she sends me flying, that I’m no match for this fight. I’m no match for the massive serpent, flaming wings, and glamour-spelled woman.
I know even before I go flying that I’m going to die.
Power hits me like a brick wall, the force of it throwing me into the air before shoving me into the snow, the weight of it stealing my breath and pressing me into the ground.
A howl rises from the forest, and a wolf emerges from the woods. Ric Kasun. Even from a distance, I know it’s him. Behind him, Saundra Beaumont steps free of the trees, her face angry. Other faces emerge with them, but my vision blurs as I struggle to breathe.
Gillian ignores them, her laughter loud on the echoing ridge as she approaches me.
Desi rushes through the snow, plowing a line directly under the power shield holding me captive, and a bright light flares. Sparks rain down around us, and I cover my head. The power’s weight no longer suffocates me.
“Remember where you came from,” the mace growls.
Something lands in the snow beyond our small circle, the force of it shaking the ground. Fire flames outward, so bright I have to look away, and I know by the golden hue coating the ground that it’s Lucas.
Shaking snow off of himself, the fallen angel rises, a glorious sight, the size and breadth of him too much for human eyes. He’s discarded his shirt, his fiery wings coating his skin in undulating flames.
As a bare-chested Seraph in full battle mode, Lucas is magnificent.
He launches himself into the sky, his blazing wings barely moving as he glides up, his face fierce when he roars, the sound filling the mountains. It sounds like thunder in the night, and I wonder if that’s how the Court will tell this story one day.
The night when thunder fought thunder in the mountains.
I stumble to my feet.
“Remember what you are!” Desi yells.
Gillian stalks me, circling me like a predator.
What am I?
Raising her hand, Gillian clenches her fist. Once again, I fly into the air, my back slamming against the trunk of a bare oak tree, before being dragged up the rough bark.
Pain rips through me, and even though I try not to scream, it comes out anyway.
Desi soars into the scene, flitting from side to side like an annoying house fly before swiping at the demon’s feet and knocking her onto the ground.
My back slides down the tree.
Snarling, Gillian grabs the mace and throws it into the night, and I watch, horrified, as it sails over the side of the mountain.
When she turns back to look at me, Gillian’s eyes are the color of blood. “Pledge your soul to Levi and this ends, Harper. All of it.”
“What did you do to my mother?” I ask, losing sight of the fight in the sky.
Gillian smiles. “I gave her what she wanted. I sank my blade into her womb, destroying what was killing you, before using my power to give you new life. You should thank me. You are here because of me.”
“I lost everything because of you.”
“I could take away your pain,” she offers. “Pledge your soul to Levi and this ends.”
Burning heat sears my back from the scrapes and gashes left behind by the tree, and I grit my teeth against the hurt. “I’d rather die,” I finally manage.
Gillian marches toward me, a ball of red flame forming in her hands. “Maybe you’d rather die, but would you trade your soul for your angel’s?”
Stepping aside, she gestures at the heavens, the red blaze dancing in her palm.
Terror engulfs me.
In the night, a great firestorm appears in the sky. It’s a conflagration of unnatural light hanging unchecked in the atmosphere. Blue and red sparks shoot up and down a tower of orange flames like fireworks.
Lucas hovers beneath it, his colorless gaze on the fire. He doesn’t look afraid, but I know by the gleeful grin on Levi’s face and the way the archdemon circles in the air above Lucas, that the blaze between them is Lucas’s weakness.
Sailing to the side, Lucas avoids the flames, his fiery sword swinging. It connects with Levi’s tail, and the beast roars.
The firestorm barrels toward Lucas.
Gillian smiles. “That’s my cue.”
In a blur, she’s closed the distance between us, her breath on my face, her fingers circling my neck. A familiar athame materializes in her free hand, and she places the point against my stomach.
Howls rip the air.
Behind Gillian, wolves gather, Ric Kasun leading the pack. Flanking him are his sons, Conall and Tate Kasun. Even in wolf form, I can tell them apart. By spending most of my days hiking or camping in the mountains and woods, I have developed a respectful relationship with the shifters in Havenwood Falls. We’ve barely talked in the years I’ve known them, but I’ve learned that shifters don’t always need words. They protect me from a distance, and I don’t take any pictures of them.
Members of the Luna Coven gather with the wolves. Roman Bishop, a lean, tall warlock and a member of the coven’s High Council, watches with narrowed eyes and crossed arms. Flanking him are Ronya Augustine and Addie Beaumont. Both are witches. Addie is the closest to my age, and she nods at me, her brown eyes staring from behind black-framed glasses. She is the only girl who attempted to spend time with me in high school. Even though she says nothing now, her gaze yells, “Fight, Harper!”
Saundra Beaumont stands before them all, her gaze on me. There’s something violent and powerful about the way she looks at me.
Lifting her hand, she shakes her head at the wolves and the witches, and I know she’s ordering everyone not to interfere. I don’t know if she has that much faith in me and Lucas or if she’s just biding her time.
Remember what you are.
Gillian chants against my ear, the words foreign, and even though I don’t understand what she’s saying, I know when I see the black hole that opens in the air above us what she’s doing.
She’s opening a portal to the Infernum.
In the air, fire beats down on Lucas. He doesn’t scream, but I know by the look on his face that the pain is agonizing.
He falls to the ground. Dead silence fills the area.
Struggling, I cry out, the sound strangled by Gillian’s grip. He has to be okay.
Lucas’s head rises in the snow, his gaze meeting mine across the distance, his eyes full of fury when he sees Gillian’s hand wrapped around my neck.