hell. Had Stefan gotten Ryder to safety before the veil fell? I didn’t think so. Either way, I couldn’t help either of them now.
The closer I got to Dorchester, the louder the sounds of battle became. Deep booms, and high-pitched demon cries rattled and shook the night air.
I stumbled on a group of militia corralling a handful of lessers with Tasers and rifles. I could have made short work of them, but they had it in hand. Drawing unwanted attention to myself wasn’t wise. The militia would just as likely lash out at me.
I felt the tug of Akil’s element with every step. He was somewhere up ahead. There were other elements mingling nearby. Princes? I would have to face them. My brother too. And any remaining half bloods. I’d kill them all. Boston was mine.
An explosion buffeted the air. Troops pounded the street, hurrying ahead of me, heading into the fray where the sky bled crimson rain and the park writhed with things not of this world. And I marched on, wondering if I was walking headlong into my final moments.
* * *
MOVIE BATTLES SEEMED SO ORGANIZED COMPARED to the chaos churning inside the park. As many people fled, as rushed into the mayhem. You can’t smell the battlefield at the movies. I smelled it before I could see it: the stink of hot, wet metal, of choking oil-black smoke, sweat, and shit. I coughed the stench from my mouth—or tried to—but a fug hung several feet off the ground. As I broke through a hole in the fence surrounding the park, my steps faltered. Swaths of parkland suffocated under the rippling crawl of lurid black and purple netherworld undergrowth. Demons tore into militia and enforcer lines, their sheer numbers enough to plow through human barricades. People died in the time it took me to blink. Fear and disgust clawed into my thoughts, trying to pull me free, wrench me away from the madness. Forcing my feet to move, I skirted the fringes of the park, weaving between the burned-out husks of abandoned cars. It hadn’t taken long for the world to go to hell. The netherworld had washed over this part of Boston like a tsunami of devastation. What would happen if we couldn’t stop it? How long before Boston drowned?
Spotting a footbridge spanning Old Colony Avenue, I quickly pounded up the steps. All along the bridge, snipers reloaded and fired. The cacophony and the visceral odors overloaded my senses and draped me in blessed numbness, but the sprawling sight below stole my breath and briefly, my wits. The battle on the park was just the beginning. Further back, where Old Harbor used to be, the netherworld had invaded in all of its vicious, surreal glory. Poison consumed the city I called home. When Akil had said the veil would fall, I’d heard the words, but I couldn’t have known it would be like this. Ragged lightening sheared the sky asunder. The netherworld boiled like the storm inside my mind. It rolled and heaved forward, a hungry crawling monster devouring everything in its path.
“You gonna make yourself useful?” One of the snipers nudged me away from the handrail. I stumbled, reeling out of his way, and then ducked as a high-pitched screech blasted me from behind. The hunter came in hard and fast. It swooped so close I felt its reaching talons snag my hair. It sunk its claws into the sniper’s back and hauled him skyward. He screamed, arms and legs flailing. The hunter cawed, snapped its long beak, and beat its wings, trying to rise.
“No, you don’t.” I spilled heat through me, over me, and sent it out in one vicious whip. Fire licked up the back of the lesser. Its screech burrowed into my skull, and then it let go of its prey and took to the air. The sniper collapsed at my feet, stunned, face gray, but coherent enough to witness me burn the hunter from the inside out.
I helped him up, ignoring his wide-eyed thanks and turned my attention to the demons below. I could kill them. No, I could destroy them. One by one, I hooked into their internal heat, singled out each demon from the melee, and blasted their existence from Boston with a mental click of the fingers. It was too easy, like squashing ants. I steeled myself against the cruel lust, packing the demon desires neatly behind the restraints of my humanity. This was my purpose. My name. And