Page 17 of Hellfire to Come
Brooklyn slipped past me, darting into the opening, vanishing into shadow.
I followed, heart pounding, blood roaring in my ears.
Inside, the mansion breathed. Not with air, but with memories. Pain clung to the stone like mold. Chains and old screams lingered in the cracks. Familiar scents assaulted my nose so hard I was dizzy enough that my sight blurred.
I shifted back mid-stride, panting hard, chest rising with every breath.
“We’re in,” I said, voice hoarse. “She’s close. I can feel it.”
But Brooklyn didn’t look back. Her shoulders were squared, her steps silent.
“We must find her, Dominic, or we die trying.”
The air inside the mansion was thick, like stepping into wet ash. The temperature dropped by degrees with every step we took, but it wasn’t just the cold that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
It was the feeling of being constantly watched.
Every cracked stone, every twisted beam above us remembered the evil that spread like a parasite through time. I could smell it in the walls, blood old enough to have soaked into the foundation. This wasn’t just a prison. It was a shrine to suffering.
Brooklyn moved ahead of me in absolute silence. She didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. Her rage hovered just beneath the surface of her skin like heat waves, warping the space aroundher. She moved like she belonged here. Not as a prisoner this time, but as a reckoning.
I kept close behind, scenting the air, every muscle coiled. Magic brushed against my senses, faint, complex, and full of poison.
A sharp crack split the air ahead of us.
Brooklyn jerked back and stopped.
So did I.
A shadow moved at the end of the hall. Then another. Cloaks dragging across stone, pale fingers lit with runes. My vision sharpened to the curve of a lip twisted in amusement under the hood made of moth-eaten fabric.
Four witches emerged from the gloom like ghosts coming home. All female. All deadly.
“So disappointing. You’re not supposed to be here,” one of them said, voice silken and cruel coming from everywhere at once. “We had such high expectations of you, Brooklyn.”
She didn’t blink. “Yeah? Well, I’m fresh out of fucks to give, as Alice would say.”
I barked out a laugh, unable to stop myself.
The witches moved as one, forming a half-circle to block the corridor.
My instincts screamed. These weren’t novices. Their magic ran deep into the old blood, the kind that didn’t need spells. It lived in the marrow. It was part of this place long before the building rose above it.
“We don’t want to kill you, you have another purpose. Our fates depend on you and the prophecy,” another said. This one was older, eyes too calm for my liking. “But we will because we have no choice, our hands are tied. The girl is not yours to take.”
Brooklyn cocked her head. “She was never yours to keep to begin with.”
No more words.
One of them struck without warning, a bolt of emerald lightning lancing through the air toward us. Brooklyn threw up a shield instinctively—her mother’s magic coming to the front to protect her, the spell cracking against it like a gunshot. Her feet ground to the grimy floor, sliding back from the pressure. The impact pushed her back into me and I caught her, grounding us both.
Then we moved.
I shifted mid-leap, my body stretching into the sleek, familiar weight of my animal who burst forward willingly, eager to fight along our mate. No hesitation. No doubt. I hit the stone floor running, claws throwing sparks as I launched at the nearest witch.
She disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared behind me, but I was already turning, tail whipping to catch her in the ribs. She screamed, skidding across the floor, crashing into a crumbled archway.
Brooklyn was already in the middle of the other three.
