He’d sacrificed himself so I could get this done. So we could save our people. I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t let any of them down.
Determination competed with the ongoing torture of my flesh. Anger stole in to block my sorrow. I blinked my eyes and snapped out my wings, everything hazy but seeming to work. My descent slowed as I set my sights on the mages below me, looking up with wide eyes. Gun blasts pummeled me, those points of pressure I’d felt.
Summoning my magic forth, I put up a defense, deflecting most of the blasts and attempting to heal.
It felt like a light bulb with a faulty wire, though, flickering and catching, only to blink out again. It would have to do. I just needed to live long enough to send two mages to the grave.
I tilted my wings and dove at them, struggling to get my hands and feet out, claws up. Fell. Their arms worked faster now, their bodies moving. The spell must almost be complete. These were the final moments. The final chance.
I adjusted my course a moment before my vision distorted and I lost feeling in my legs. I still had my arms, though. That was all I needed.
My body slammed into the mages. I dug my claws into them and held on for dear life, taking them to the ground and sliding on top of them. Their screaming reminded me of a dog’s squeaky toy, and I started laughing through my dislocated jaw. Or maybe it wasn’t dislocated, but it didn’t seem to work properly. It didn’t matter, though. I didn’t need it.
Feet moved around us, bodies bent, guns firing at me from mere feet away. They weren’t worried about killing their mages, which meant the mages must’ve had magical protection from the blasts.
Magic wouldn’t help them against claws, though.
I scratched and scraped, ignoring their hands trying to push me off or pull me away. Closing my eyes, trying to keep my defensive magic and healing going, I continued to scratch, slowly losing feeling in my arms. Didn’t matter. I kept clawing, digging at the soft parts. Feeling the sticky wetness that must’ve meant I was getting somewhere.
“Hang on, ” Ivy House said distantly. I could barely hear her through the blackness. “Hang on.
He’s coming. Your mate is coming.”
Reality wobbled. My God, I was so tired. The mages had stopped moving, at least. That was probably good. Now, it was just a question of whether it had been enough. If Sebastian had been correct and taking out this one point would bring down the rest. He hadn’t been right about some of the other stuff.
The blackness rose around me, and I breathed out a sigh, welcoming its embrace. The ground fell away, and I was once again flying.
Tristan
SHE WAS NOTHING BUT PULP. Her body lay broken and blackened from crashing into the spell and burning alive within it. She’d done it, though. She’d broken it. The magic had drained from it quickly, and as soon as it hit orange-yellow, Tristan risked diving through, his aversion to magic helping him at least keep his wings intact. Austin did the same, sprinting at it even as Cyra and Hollace dove forward.
The mercenaries watched the great polar bear with wide eyes. His white coat was singed black and red, but he didn’t notice. Tristan was already there, dropping from above them. He didn’t attempt to fight. Not yet. There wasn’t time. Jessie needed healing immediately. She wasn’t quite dead yet.
The connection that held them all together was intact, their hub fading fast but still clinging to life.
He didn’t bother being gentle, either. Ripping her off the disemboweled and mutilated mages and hugging her close, he pushed hard into the sky. Blasts from guns struck him as he took off before
Austin scattered the mercenaries across the ground. The great bear took one moment to watch Tristan carry Jessie away before he was the nightmare this town had thought him. They’d now see what an invaluable asset he had always been.
Tristan also looked forward to showing them what a gargoyle—or mostly gargoyle—could do.
Later, though. There were plenty of enemies to go around. First he needed to secure Jessie.
He flew faster than he ever had in his life. Her blood smeared against his chest and fear began to crowd his thoughts. She couldn’t die. She was the one who held them all together. She kept that big alpha in check and created a soft, safe space for them all to coexist, even the most dangerous of them.
Maybe especially the most dangerous of them.
She’d given him a family. A unit. She trusted him, believed in him, wanted the best for him. Hell, she’d called off the others and looked the other way when it came to his past. It didn’t matter to her where he’d come from or what his blood signified—she respected him for the man he was. That meant more to him than anything else in his life, because she was the only person to ever do so. She’d offered him a life as a normal person, something he’d struggled for in his life with the cairn but never achieved.
He’d die for her. But she was the one who was ready to die for him. For all of them.
He couldn’t let her make that sacrifice. He wasn’t worth it.
Tears filming his eyes, he swooped down at breakneck speed toward the square, where he knew Indigo was waiting along with every able-bodied person who could help with the wounded. She hopped up as he landed, her eyes widening, then ran toward a cot at the side.
“Here,” she said, patting the surface. “Here, quick. Oh my God—” She put her hands on Jessie before Tristan had even laid her down. “Oh my God, what happened?”
“She tried to trade her life for all of ours,” he said, his words clipped and strangled because of his gargoyle jaw. All these years, and he hadn’t yet perfected speech in this form. “Can you help her?”
Indigo shook her head slowly, her hands on Jessie’s chest, her gaze drifting down her body. “Not unless she can help herself. She’s too far gone. I can keep her at the brink, but she’ll have to come back on her own.”
His breathing hitched, shallow and painful, emotion threatening to overwhelm him. “She will,” he got out, tears coming faster now. “She will. She has to.”
And then he was flying, hiding his fear and worry in anger.
The enemy would pay for this. They would rue the day they came up against this convocation.
Sebastian
THE FINAL COLOR bled from the spell, and Sebastian urged his winged chariot forward, trying not to think. If he allowed himself thought, he’d remember the sight of Jessie’s ruined body. Of Nathanial’s blackened, lifeless form as Jasper scooped him up and hurried back toward the town. If he thought of those things, he wouldn’t be able to go on. Because he was the reason they had ended up like that.
He hadn’t, in his wildest dreams, thought Momar could ever pull off something of this magnitude.
He hadn’t predicted his mages would be able to cooperate to such a degree, let alone that they would