An unnatural scream tears through the gym and echoes. Next door, idiot students cheer, thinking the spooky sound effects got one over on them.
But those aren’t sound effects, and I can’t tell if that scream came from one of my demons or the angel.
I put up a hand and shove Kastros’s wing back, desperate to see if one of my guys is hurting, despite the fact that I only know CPR for Adam’s sake and I’m the most useless member of our group. My giant demon clamps down harder on my wrist and pulls me back against his chest before he lowers his wings so I can see a little.
The small gymnasium, which is usually relegated to the girls—because Lakewood Prep is sexist like that and makes the girls’ teams practice in the room with only three rows of bleachers so they can get used to a non-existent audience—does not look like a gym anymore.
It looks like Hell. There is no ceiling, only a vast stretch of blackness. I see a tornado of blood whirling in the corner, and my free hand automatically reaches back to clench around Kastros’s waist as the blast of wind splatters me with blood. His free hand comes around my torso, just under my breasts, and secures me to him. The wooden floor beneath my feet looks like clouds. But when I move my foot, I feel the steady boards of the gym floor beneath them instead of the buoyancy I always feel in my dreams.
Hesitantly, I feel my shirt for blood. But it feels dry.
Is it real? I don’t know.
Molten glass blocks the doors, both the one the angel came in and the emergency exit I’d hoped to sneak out of. It rises up in deadly bubbles, and a scent like beeswax drifts over to me from the molten glass droplets.
That certainly smells real.
My eyes dart around, wondering how this is possible. I have no idea what’s happening right now or where this magic comes from, but I do see all of my demons and they’re all upright. It doesn’t look like they were the ones who screamed.
Raz, with his sandy brown hair, has black ram’s horns protruding from his head and his wings fanned out, the back of his shirt falling in tatters down his spine as he extends one hand towards the angel. But I don’t see magic emanating from his hands, so I’m unsure what he’s doing.
Next to him, the tornado is whipping Akor’s once-tame mohawk up so that it floats eerily. His white suit is wrinkled, the jacket unbuttoned and flapping in the wind from the blood tornado, streaked here and there with little lines of red as a random droplet or two hit him, which makes him look a little more wild and unhinged than normal. Both of his hands are extended, and a strange, orange-colored lightning flickers between them before shooting out and hitting the angel in the leg.
Immediately, I hear the unnatural scream from before, and bile shoots up my throat when I see the angel’s kneecap dislocate.
My eyes try to close, but I force my lashes apart. I’m no help to anyone if I’m cowering and unaware of the dangers around us. I’m no help anyway in a battle between Heaven and Hell, but I figure it’s like dodgeball—you don’t have to be any good to survive, you just have to be alert and aware.
Damn my clit for stealing so much blood from my brain. I’m making stupid dodgeball references when I should be doing something. But what?
I look towards the emergency exit and see Zolroth to my left, his short cropped hair and dark skin lit eerily by the light shining from the foyer and refracting off the molten glass. His hand is raised, and I hear glass shattering somewhere. A ripping sound starts, and one of the wall pads underneath the basketball goal shreds to bits before an axe with a bright red handle flies through it. The axe zings through the air and lands in Zolroth’s hand. I realize with a start that he’s holding the emergency fire axe, the one that our school should have gotten rid of ages ago, but hid behind some wall pads instead.
It takes another second for my shocked brain to process the fact that he literally just lifted his hand and something flew to him.
What the fuck?
The angel isn’t as slow on the uptake as I am. None of this shit is brand new to him. His damn mates didn’t keep their magical powers a secret like mine did, so he’s not in shock and he doesn’t hesitate. The white-winged fury swings his scythe in a deadly arc toward Zolroth, who turns the axe sideways and throws it with a flick of his wrist, like it’s a frisbee.
Watching that scythe swing down makes my stomach roil in agony, and I lurch towards Zolroth on instinct.
Kastros yanks me back, and Van hits me with a bolt of lust that dazes me enough to stop my feet, but not enough to stop my eyes from watching that scythe slice through the front of Zolroth’s abdomen like it’s butter.
1
Van
I linger in the halls of Lakewood Prep like a pervert, my eyes searching the sea of short blue uniform skirts for a girl with pink curls and a smile so lush, it makes my fiery heart freeze up. Underage girls bat their eyes, but I look right past them, searching for my mate, my beautiful Center, Katrina.
When she first summoned us, I thought that her summons would be like any other human spell—a selfish wish cast by some lazy human too entitled to work for what they actually want in life. But when we popped into this realm at the address we were given for the soul in question, I was shocked.
We saw Adam, Katrina’s four-year-old little brother, a little tike with a mop of sloppy brown hair that nearly stood up as straight as Akor’s mohawk, playing in the early morning light in his living room, holding a train while he sat on the leather couch in a fancy-ass room all alone. At the time, I thought that there was some angel flock snickering in the bushes, pointing at us as their shoulders shook with silent laughter because they’d somehow managed to teach an infant how to conduct a summoning spell.
We’d responded anyway—part of the pact demons make when they join a murder is to answer summons and try to convert souls to Hell—but this summons wasn’t a prank. And it wasn’t a spell by some entitled nitwit.
When I’d seen Katrina at the base of the stairs that led from her living room, my mouth had gone dry and my dick had perked up (not that unusual of an occurrence for a lust demon), but what was unusual was the way that my heart had gone thu-thud.
Just like it does when I spot her now, head down, books clutched tightly to her chest, those luminous blue eyes glued firmly to the speckled tile floor as she tries to dart from class to class unseen. As if she could ever be invisible.
My Katrina is just precious, and I both love and curse the fact that we got her a new set of uniforms that stretch in a delicious way across her breasts. I both appreciate and hate how she’s covering them from view so that no one else can see, because I can’t see either. I both adore and despise how she’s trying so damn hard to protect us because she cares. I love that she cares that damn much. It’s the most selfless thing any being has ever done for me. But I hate that she believes that being our Center leaves us too vulnerable, and that we should turn our backs and act like she doesn’t exist.
It leaves us vulnerable, yes, but sometimes, the risk is worth it.
She’s worth it.
I dart forward into the crowd, sliding down the beige hallway between students, using the taller football players to block her view of me in case she dares to look up from her adorable pink Keds.
I just have to get close enough to convince her that what happened the night of the dance was an accident. A fluke. No big deal.