“Not bad, but we have to sort some stuff out that won’t wait.” His eyes never left mine, as if trying to impress something important on me.
My stomach clenched. He was talking about the secrets he’d been keeping the last few months. I’d wanted to know, pestered him about them, and now that the moment had drawn close, I wasn’t so sure anymore I had any desire to know what he’d been keeping from me.
He kissed me, quick and clean, and then backed away, shifting. Moments later, a chorus of howls broke the night air; at one time, the sounds would have sent shivers down my spine. Not anymore. Though I couldn’t tell them all apart, I could hear Alex and Liam adding their voices to the mix, and their voices soothed my fears. I had my boys; they would stand by me no matter what.
Pamela helped Coyote, boosting him with her magic onto Blaz’s back, and then followed him up. Frank and Berget were right behind them, then Kyle and India. I paused, looked to Erik and saw the same hesitation on his face.
“What?”
He shook his head, his eyes narrowing. “Something big is coming.”
“Yeah, four horsemen, end of the world, all that shit.” I said the words, but in my heart I knew he was talking about something else.
“Don’t dismiss this, Rylee. You are always going to be the center of things and your intuition is trying to tell you something, isn’t it?”
I flicked my hand at him, silently asking him to follow me, and we walked to the edge of where the light touched the night.
“The witches are dealt with. No more demons should easily be able to possess supernaturals. The ogres have been outed. But that damn doorway, it’s still open, and we are planning on walking right by it to get to London.”
Erik put a hand to the back of his neck, rubbing at the skin. “The horsemen shouldn’t be coming through yet, not until the packs do some serious damage in preparation for them. I think we have time in that regards. But there is something else. Like a crux in time, a moment where we aren’t going to be able to fix whatever it is that happens.”
I swallowed hard. Erik had hit the nail on the fucking head. We’d heard nothing in regards to the demon packs and what they were up to other than the one we’d run into at John’s motel. That was not a good sign. Either we were too far out of the loop, or the packs were working on something big. Not good, not good at all.
“We’d better go. The longer we take, the worse this is going to be. We’ve just got to rip the fucking Band-Aid off.” I strode toward Blaz and climbed up, Erik right behind me.
The flight was cold, but easy. No demons popped out of the sky, no explosions sent us spinning into nowhere. The mineshaft was as we’d left it, ropes and climbing gear still set up and waiting.
Will you wait for Liam in the shaft, or in London?
That was a good question. “We’ll wait for him at Jack’s.” It galled me, not waiting for him, but there was no other way. Doran and the others were waiting.
Our group slid down the ropes with ease and Pamela lit up the inside of the cavern with three floating balls of fire. The mineshaft was cool, but the doorway through the veil felt hot to the touch. I pressed my hand against it. Why the hell would it be hot?
Without another thought, I pushed hard on the door, shoving it open. A burst of flame curled out and I fell back from it with a yelp.
Pamela stepped up and the flames bent away from us, but only by a few feet. Her face turned into a deep scowl. “I can’t put it out, it’s not regular fire.”
“Can you hold it back long enough for us to get through?”
“I think so.”
“Then we make a run for it.”
Erik grunted. “What about Liam and the wolves?”
“I can wait for them,” Pamela said. “I can get you out and then come back here and wait.”
I didn’t like it, didn’t want to see her put herself in that kind of danger, but there was no other choice.
I gave a sharp nod, not happy about the newest twist in events. “Let’s do this.”
Pamela nodded and her hands clenched into fists. The flames were fucking hot, but we bolted through, all of us.
Except Berget. I stood inside the castle and looked back to see the fear on her face.
“I can’t, Rylee. Even from here, the heat is too much. I will wait for Liam and the werewolves, tell them how to get through.”
A gust of hot air whipped around me, drying the sweat on my forehead. “I can’t leave you again.”
“You aren’t. I’ll find a way to get to London. I can always catch a ride with Blaz.” She gave me a soft smile and I knew there would be no changing her mind. Berget was right. There was no way for her to get through the fire without going up in flames. Too damn combustible.