Page 10 of The Darkest Night

Mae stormed past him and exited the lab. Hodge joined her in the basement corridor, feet dragging.

“Can you hear that?” she said.

The director’s eyes rounded when he finally registered what Mae had perceived a moment ago. Screams punctuated the alarms blaring through the hospital.

“What the devil is going on?!” Hodge mumbled, teeth chattering.

Mae recalled the sulfurous pupils of the creature who had possessed Antonovich. Her eyebrows drew together.

The devil may very well be among us right now.

Rose’s face swam before Mae. Her mouth went dry.

Please be okay!

They were halfway to the emergency stairs when a figure appeared at the end of the gloomy passage. It was a man with a colostomy bag. A woman followed, the drip stand she was attached to clattering across the concrete floor as she dragged it behind her.

Mae didn’t have to be a genius to figure out they were no longer human. A cloud of darkness swirled above their heads and enveloped their bodies. Their pupils were yellow disks in a sea of black.

Their eyes flared at the sight of her.

Hodge flinched. Mae’s fingers tightened on her makeshift weapons.

“Stay behind me,” she said grimly.

Chapter 6

Alastair squawkedwhere he whirled in the night sky above Nikolai. The familiar dropped down onto his shoulder when he reached the intersection of First Avenue and East 33rd Street, his dark wings fluttering agitatedly against his neck.

Nikolai staggered to a stop, heart racing and breaths coming in short, sharp pants. His chest grew tight.

Panicked screams rent the air as staff and patients streamed out of Grandview General Hospital. Many wheeled, carried, or dragged the injured with them. Their fear had spilled onto the streets, bringing traffic to a screeching halt.

“Fuck!”

Nikolai could sense the corruption of demons and the magic of the Dark Council coming from the glass-covered buildings that took up the block overlooking FDR Drive and the river estuary separating Manhattan from Brooklyn and Queens. He clenched his jaw and bolted across the avenue toward the nearest entrance. Horns blared around him, the few cars and trucks trying to navigate the jam slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting him.

I can’t believe these assholes actually attacked a human facility with this many witnesses around!

Then again, nothing should surprise Nikolai anymore when it came to his father and the Dark Council. He had witnessed their cruelty enough times in his wretched life to know they were arrogant enough to carry out such a barbaric attack.

Considering what was at stake, their desperation seemed to have made them even more reckless.

People ran past him as he entered the main bay of the Emergency Department, faces blank and eyes blind with terror. They stumbled and fell over the bodies of the dead before picking themselves up and racing toward the exits, unheeding of the blood staining their skin and clothes.

Rage churned Nikolai’s stomach upon seeing the injuries on the fallen. They were the work of demons.

He located the emergency stairs and headed to the second floor, where the artifact seemed to be drawing him. A dark sphere sailed toward him when he entered the main corridor. Nikolai cursed and ducked. The spell crashed into the wall behind him, scorching plaster and concrete.

He reached for his magic and unleashed his spear. Alastair’s claws sank into his flesh, the familiar amplifying his power. Their gazes found the black-caped witch who had attacked them where she skulked in the doorway of a medical bay.

Nikolai’s stomach twisted as the witch brought forth another sphere of magic, a sibilant noise leaving the python coiled around her waist. The adrenaline rushing through his veins would only keep him going for so long before his exhaustion caught up with him and made him slip up.

Still, it could be worse. I really need to thank those two for saving my ass back there.

Had it not been for the unknown witch and sorcerer who’d appeared on the rooftop where he’d been surrounded by Oscar and the Dark Council, Nikolai doubted he would have made it this far.

The artifact around his neck grew hot under his shirt, its crimson light radiating through the cotton. He tensed.

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