Harley Merlin and the Cult of Eris (Harley Merlin, #6)

“Hey, get your hands off me!” I snapped, as the security personnel strode right up to me and slapped a pair of Atomic Cuffs on my wrists, doing the same to Finch. Levi wanted us first, by the looks of it. I expected to feel the sapping energy of the Cuffs at work, but they burned instead.

I gathered my Chaos into myself and fed the energy down my arms. It sputtered against the Cuffs, pressure gathering beneath them like a bubble. I pushed again, feeling the connectors crack, and the sapping power of the Cuffs drifted away harmlessly. It looked like I was wearing them, but I could still feel my energy brimming in my veins. It wasn’t stopping me the way it should. Good.

On the other hand, it looked like the rest of the Rag Team were coming to a pretty grim conclusion, judging by the resignation coming off them in waves. The security personnel clapped Atomic Cuffs on Alton’s wrists next, and then Isadora’s. My aunt looked back at me with a reassuring smile. She’d definitely been in worse scrapes than this. I just hoped she could come up with some way to escape, now she had the Cuffs on. She wouldn’t be able to use her Portal Opening abilities with those things sapping her. I didn’t want anyone spending the rest of their life in Purgatory because of me, although that was probably a little self-centered. They hadn’t gone to Tartarus and plotted the cult infiltration for me. They’d done it for the world, and the terrible things Katherine would do to it otherwise.

I almost lashed out at a guard as he yanked Santana out of Raffe’s arms and slapped the Cuffs on her wrists. I noticed Raffe about to spring for the guy, when Wade shot out his arm and held him back, with a slow shake of his head. The red flash in Raffe’s eyes subsided. Neither Raffe nor the djinn was stupid. They knew how dire the situation was, and punching security personnel would only add to our sentence. Whatever that might be.

One of the guards was just about to clamp a pair of Cuffs over Tatyana’s wrists, when the ground shook violently. A few of the security personnel toppled over like tin soldiers, while the one who’d tried to cuff Tatyana staggered backward. I glanced at Wade in alarm. There was a very slim chance this was just a regular old earthquake, but I knew all too well that the interdimensional bubble wasn’t affected by that sort of thing. Which left one horrifying possibility…

The SDC was under attack.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, another shudder rippled through the Luis Paoletti Room, knocking me back into the table. Wade had his arm around my shoulders before I even knew what had happened. Another shock ricocheted through the floor and the walls, the savage vibrations shaking the beds. Jars and vials of spell ingredients tumbled from the surrounding shelves.

Alarms blared all around us, red lights flashing. The security magicals’ radios crackled with terrified voices, an underscore of screams ripping through the speakers. I dodged a falling jar of sharp tools, a few jeweled knives thudding into the table where my torso had just been.

“What’s happening?” I hissed at Wade.

“I think she’s here,” he replied, confirming my own guess.

A sickening rumble tore through the coven, a crack splintering across the floor. The inner windows of the Luis Paoletti Room shattered into a thousand jagged shards. Over the radios, desperate voices cried out for help.

“The Bestiary! It’s the Bestiary!” One, solitary voice exploded through the speaker. Time seemed to freeze, all of us staring at the radio where the voice had come from.

Alton paled. “The Bestiary is failing.”

Another gut-wrenching rumble shuddered through the room, the bronzed glow of the interdimensional bubble rippling in fractured waves, spitting and sparking like a frayed wire. It was similar to what I’d seen when Jacob accidentally broke the bubble in the training room, but far, far more terrifying. This was on a coven-wide scale, and the cracks were getting wider with each rumble. The walls thrummed with pent-up energy, and that energy had nowhere else to go but out.

I hit the deck as a massive explosion erupted from the far side of the Luis Paoletti Room, blowing right through the decimated door. All the windows and glass jars burst into a waterfall of glinting fragments that skittered across the floor. A huge crevasse opened in the hallway opposite, dragging chairs and tables down into the abyss, where the pressure of the bubble crushed them into nothing. It was like watching a black hole devour a planet, drawing everything around it into the gaping emptiness. Soon, it would reach us.

“We have to get out, now!” I yelled.

For the first time ever, Levi didn’t argue with me. He took the lead, rushing out of the office and into the main body of the coven. We followed him, even those of us with Cuffed wrists, leaping over the fissure that was getting wider, dragging more and more things into it. One of the security magicals stumbled at the lip of the hole, teetering for a fleeting moment, before he fell headfirst into the darkness. The sound and sight that followed didn’t bear repeating. It was like watching a can get crushed, only that can was made of flesh and bone and had been flattened to a pancake before it dissipated in a flurry of ashes that glinted bronze in the dark pit.

Cuffing us and taking us away didn’t matter now, even though a few of the security magicals were keeping a suspicious eye on us as we ran. No doubt they thought we’d done this, too. But this was all Katherine’s handiwork. It reeked of her.

The corridor beyond the Luis Paoletti Room was far worse. Enormous cracks spider-webbed across the bubble that was holding everything together, with blinding light bursting through them. Sparks jumped toward us in white-hot flecks, the forcefield around the SDC phasing in and out in a way that made my legs turn to jelly. If this thing collapsed, we’d all be crushed inside it, the dimensions colliding in the most horrific way. I could see Balboa Park through one of the sputtering fissures as everything inside the SDC spilled out into the human realm, the bubble trying to divert its energy wherever it could.

In the hallways, screaming people sprinted for their lives, trying desperately to jump the cracks that were opening in the floors. One got sucked out of a gap in the wall. His howl sent a chill up my spine. I had no idea whether he’d been squashed, or he’d simply been spat out into Balboa Park. I hoped it was the latter.

“The kids… oh my God, the kids!” I stared at a group of frightened children huddling together on the opposite side of one of the interdimensional ravines. If I could’ve leapt to them without being sucked in, I would’ve. Judging by the way the ravine was devouring the walls and the paintings and the chairs and the carpets, however, I knew I’d never have made it.

At that moment, Bellmore barreled out of the nearby corridor and grabbed the first child by the hand, leading them away in a terrified train. I prayed they’d find a way out of here. There had to be protocols for this type of thing. Glancing at Levi, I started to doubt it. He looked like a lost, scared little boy who’d been backed into a corner by a rabid dog, with no way out. Besides, the exit to the Fleet Science Center was on the opposite side of the coven, and there was an enormous crevasse between us and that exit.

I whirled around as someone grabbed me. It wasn’t Wade—he was standing right in front of me, staring in silent shock as the SDC fell.

“There’s no time,” Finch hissed, his hand tight around my forearm. “We need to fix this before we’re all burger patties.”

“What do you—” Before I could finish my sentence, Jacob had torn open a portal, and Finch had dragged me through it, leaving the rest of the crew behind. I heard myself scream “Wade!” as the portal snapped shut again, separating us.

“What the hell, Finch?” I roared as we staggered out into the crumbling Bestiary.