A spider thing leapt at them and bounced off an invisible barrier, flying backward in an arc over my head. Relief washed over me. Azazel had been right, the monsters couldn’t get in. And then something scraped across my scales, reminding me of my predicament. It was on me. One of the fuckers was on me, and shit it weighed a ton. There was no leverage, no way to buck it off. My pack? Where was my pack? There it was, a brown lump a meter in front of me. The book was inside. Sorry, Dad. So sorry.
“Anya!”
I raised my head to see Helgi framed in the doorway, a screaming Gemma clutched to her chest. Gemma’s eyes, my baby’s eyes, were wide with fear and wet with tears, forcing me to acknowledge the inevitable. She couldn’t see this. She couldn’t watch me die. Helgi must have thought the same because she shoved Gemma into the darkness behind her and stepped out of the building. But she was unarmed. No crossbow, no blades. Those had been claimed by the Draco and the arena.
“No!” My voice was a bellow that stopped her in her tracks. “Protect the fucking children!”
She let out a strangled sob and fell to her knees. But she kept her eyes locked with mine, letting me know she was here, she was with me. I exhaled away the fear, letting numbness take its place, because any minute now the thing on top of me would stop stabbing at my back and find a new fleshy spot. And when it did, its venom would fill me.
Its friends, cheated of a hearty meal by the library wards, turned their attention to me. The thing above me let out an angry screech. Not into sharing then? But they advanced anyway. This was it. This was death, but I wasn’t alone, because Helgi’s focus was on me, her phantom hand in mine. My eyes burned, but damn if I’d cry.
I’d let Dad down. I’d let the kids down. I’d failed, and there would be no more sunrises.
Anya... Azazel’s voice soothed my mind. Close your eyes.
The world lit up with blinding light a fraction of a second later. I squeezed my eyes shut and stared at the inside of my lids decorated with a corona. The pressure on my back vanished and then I was being lifted into the air.
Eyes closed, Azazel said.
It was him, he’d done this, whatever it was. “What did you do?”
Used their power to materialize, but it’s different, electric, and I can’t hold it much longer. I hit the ground and was immediately enveloped in an embrace. Helgi, this was Helgi.
Open your eyes, Azazel said in my head.
I was inside. In the gloom. Safe. Helgi’s tears soaked into my shirt. “You bitch, you fucking bitch. Don’t you ever do that again.”
But I hadn’t done anything. Azazel had saved me. Hadn’t she seen?
Just the light, Azazel said. She saw the light. He sounded drained. Weak. Hurt. My pulse kicked up. I couldn’t find him just to lose him again. Panic gripped me with lethal talons.
I pulled away from Helgi. “Azazel? Are you okay?”
Where was he? Why wasn’t he showing himself to me?
“Anya?” Helgi gripped my shoulders. “What are you talking about?”
Why wasn’t he responding, dammit. “Azazel!”
A soft brush against my cheek. I’ll survive. Just need to rest.
Oh, thank God. The tension flowed out of my muscles.
“Azazel?” Helgi frowned. “Your imaginary friend?”
For the past ten years we’d had no secrets, and then I’d kept two big ones from her in the space of a couple of days. Guilt stabbed at my chest. She knew about Azazel, she knew my fears about my sanity, and she’d held my hand through the loss of my childhood companion. She deserved to know the truth.
Bran was visible behind Helgi, but he was busy keeping the kids calm.
I leaned in toward my friend, offering a silent apology to Azazel for breaking his confidence. “He’s back, Helgi, and he’s real.”
There was no disbelief, no doubt on her face, because that was how it was with us. We believed in each other, we trusted each other implicitly.
“Where is he?” She glanced about.
“I’m not sure. Whatever he did to save me messed him up.”
Helgi blew out her cheeks, her eyes wet. “Thank God he was here. I thought...I thought I was going to have to watch you die.”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “It’s okay. We’re okay in here.”
Bran approached us, his expression grim. “We need a plan. We can’t stay in here forever.” He jerked his thumb toward a large wooden table where the kids were huddled, their faces ashen. June rocked Gemma and made soothing noises, but the little tyke’s eyes were on me. I smiled reassuringly, but obviously not reassuringly enough because she whimpered and turned her face away, burying it in the crook of June’s neck. Stefan was hugging Neddie, his wide eyes dark with fear.
Oh man, this whole episode was dredging up the nightmares, reminding them how easy it was to lose those they loved, how easy it was to be hurt and how fucked up our world was. All the work we’d put in to providing them with a safe haven was being undone. Heat bloomed in my chest, anger and disappointment and grief because we’d lost people, so many people over the past few days, and so many more would die if something didn’t change. My gut told me the book Dad had left for me was the key.
Shit. “My pack is still outside.”
Helgi pushed the pack into my hands. “Azazel must have grabbed it and you.”
He’d been back for less than a day and was already acting like my other half, as if he’d never been taken from me.
Bran is right. We need a plan.
His voice soothed my frazzled nerves. It meant he was alive, in his own unique way. Did he know I’d told Helgi about him? Probably. And he’d scold me about that later, but right now we needed to focus. He was always good at that.
This was a place of knowledge, of books and silence. Illyrian had told me about the world before, tales of places such as this where humans would go to read and borrow books—a place that may have answers.
“What do we do?” Helgi asked. “Those things are everywhere. If we go out there, then we’re dead.”
Power...
Power? Yes! The power lines. The spider beasts had been using the power lines to recharge or something, and Azazel had drawn from them and tapped into that electrical energy. The answer was so fucking obvious. This place was warped. The magick and tech somehow entwined to create new creatures, monsters that needed both elements to survive. They thrived on the power. They needed the electricity to function, and if there was power then there had to be a power source.
“Anya, you have that look on your face,” Helgi said. “The struck-by-lightning look. You have an idea.”
“Yeah, I do. We’re dealing with machines here. Biological and mechanical, and the only way to stop them is to take away their power source.”
Helgi’s face cleared as she hit the same page as me. “We take away their energy source.”
“And how do we do that?” Bran asked.
It was easy to forget that not everyone was educated in the ways of the old world. Many had been raised in the Outlands by the next generation, who’d lost the knowledge. I’d been lucky to have Illyrian as a guardian. “There used to be places called power plants. They’d supply energy to whole regions using cables like the ones suspended between pylons outside. We find the power plant for this region and we shut it off.”