to remember something so trivial…except maybe it wasn’t.
“Don’t you dare sneer at me. I’m a bitch. I’m The Bitch!” Darcy punched him, her fist bouncing off his rock-hard abs. “Fight her, Fenrir! You have to push her back, or we’re all going to die!”
Something flickered in those hellfire eyes. Just for an instant, they were copper-flecked, agonized, desperate.
“Darcy,” he said, his voice cracking on her name. “No!”
He wrenched himself away from her, doubling over. The mark on his back flared, and a vicious hiss ripped from his lips. He straightened, Uncegila reasserting her control—and the butt of Buck’s gun came down hard on the top of his head.
“Sorry,” Buck said, as Fenrir dropped like a puppet with cut strings. “Didn’t look like true love was getting anywhere.”
“No. But I saw you behind him.” Darcy’s breath came in gasps as adrenaline caught up with her. “Kept him distracted.”
Buck grunted, his gun trained on the motionless Fenrir. “Nice work. Shame it’s not going to make any difference.”
Darcy cast a wild glance around. Demons were still swarming the crew. No matter how many Seren and Edith cut down, more sinuous horned shapes kept pouring out of the crack in the ground.
Above, the Thunderbird’s wings pulsed with power. Its blank white eyes glowed like the heart of a star, cold and pitiless. Electricity ran over its body in snapping arcs, gathering in its clenched talons.
Blaise looked up at the Thunderbird. In its harsh, glaring light, Darcy saw her expression smooth into eerie calm.
“Buck,” she said. “Be ready to shoot me.”
The Superintendent, understandably, stared at her as though she’d lost her damn mind. “What?”
Blaise was already turning away. She threw back her head, arms spreading, lifting onto her toes.
Wings unfurled from her back.
They opened like holes in the world, the very air shredding apart into pure nothingness. Jagged pinions spread wide, arcing over them all. They were black as the depths of space, a void so absolute that the demons seemed dull gray in comparison. The horned snakes hissed, recoiling from Blaise in sudden fear.
Even the blazing light from the Thunderbird fell into those shadowy wings, swallowed without a trace. The great bird seemed to hesitate. Its head turned, all its attention fixing on Blaise.
“Everyone,” Blaise said—not loudly, but her voice carried clearly in the sudden silence. “Cover your eyes.”
Something about her tone made Darcy obey without so much as a second thought. She scrunched her eyes shut—and then threw up her hands to shield her face as light stabbed through her closed eyelids anyway.
A blast of heat roared across the back of her hands, as though someone had opened the door of an immense furnace. She dropped to her knees, burying her face against Fenrir’s shoulder, trying to shield his limp body as best she could.
The white-hot light dimmed a little. Darcy dared to crack open one eye. Billowing clouds of steam surrounded her, lit dull orange by scattered patches of fire. The previously snow-covered ground was now bone-dry, the dirt cracked and baked as though it was mid-summer rather than February.
No trace remained of the demons.
Blaise still stood, wings still outstretched. Fire edged every feather, bright gold against black. The Thunderbird hung over her like a storm cloud, light still blazing from its own wings. For an instant, the two stood poised, wing tip to wing tip, fire against lightning.
The Thunderbird’s vast beak opened. Thunder rumbled, shaking the ground. Yet it didn’t sound angry, or like a challenge. Despite the deafening volume, Darcy had the strangest conviction that it was a cry of recognition…and yearning.
The fire consuming Blaise’s wings flared brighter in answer. The Thunderbird flinched, shying away as though burned. With a single beat of its wings, it soared into the sky, and was gone.
Blaise was shaking, teeth clenched, face a rictus of agony. The flames gnawing at her dipped, flickering, as though fighting against some force that was trying to blow them out.
Then the flames roared up even more fiercely. They spread further along Blaise’s wings, reaching down toward her human body. At the center of the inferno, Blaise looked straight at Buck, and there was no mistaking the desperate plea in her dark eyes.
Buck’s aim had been rock-steady throughout the fight with the demons, but now the muzzle of his gun shook. With a curse, he flung the weapon to the ground. “I can’t. Seren! Knock her out!”
The shark shifter lunged, sword raised. Blaise turned, her eyes filling with fire. The flames around her wings lashed out like living things.
Seren