Page 27 of Of Flame and Fury

I press my hands harder against the wall. “I’m trying, Shayna.”

Emme’s agonized grunt almost makes me lose my focus. She is awake and pissed.

She holds Tweedledum suspended in the air. Gemini’s twin and Bren the wolf leap toward it. The twin grabs an arm, Bren gets a leg. They rip Tweedle in half like a pinata and…more Tweedles pop out.

The baby Tweedles are tiny, naked, and bloody. They bounce around the room like tennis balls, shrieking and rolling toward the fray.

“Oh, my God,” Celia says over Aric’s “What the fuck?” remark.

Celia glances up at Aric, no longer certain she wants into the room and likely thinking she’ll take her chances with the suckling tails.

“It’s Johnny Fate,” Gemini tells them.

Aric meets him square in the face. “How do you know? Did you see him?”

Gemini shakes his head. “No. Taran feels him, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Shit,” Aric says. Throw in the fact that Johnny almost killed something as strong as Destiny, and yeah, he knows we’re screwed.

Warm liquid splatters me in the back. The guests who remain in the ballroom are done with these freaks. They’re stomping them, ripping them in half, beating them with candelabras.

I make the mistake of glancing toward the corner. The limbless vamp whose hand I accidentally fed to the snake has a mini-Tweedle clutched between her fangs. She shakes it like a snarling dog with a squirrel. It screams, screams like something being eaten alive, ’cause it is.

Jesus, I’ll never recover from that visual.

Frustrated and overwhelmingly skeeved out, I give one last dose of magic. “Let. Them. In,” I command. “Let them in now!”

My hand breaks through, creating an opening. I push it down, widening the slit.

“Time to go, love.”

Aric’s voice remains steady as he holds my sister. Unlike Celia, who falls apart. “Aric,” she says. “I don’t want to raise our baby without you.”

His lips pass gently over hers. A small war is literally taking place behind them, but for now, only she exists. “Nothing will keep me from you or our child. Get to safety. I’ll be with you soon. I swear it.”

She sniffs, tears streaming down her face as he kisses her.

Aric breaks away when something smashes against the rear of the manor. I’m almost finished making an opening Celia can fit through.

“I have to go,” Gemini says. “I won’t be long.”

I swallow hard. “Don’t you dare make me cry,” I tell him. “I’m trying to focus.”

Like Aric, he’s making promises he may be unable to keep.

“You are my love…”

“Baby, stop,” I beg.

“My pain in the ass…”

I choke out a laugh, my vision blurring as the opening expands farther.

“And the woman I want to carry our children.”

I swipe my eyes against my shoulder. Children. He said, “children.” As in more of us and more years to come even as the fight and gore amplify. “You had to go there,” I say, my voice splintering. “Didn’t you?”

He kisses my forehead. It’s sweet but no less lovely. I push open the way. “It won’t hold long,” I admit. I grunt. Already, it’s fighting to close.

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