Ambrose gripped my arm at the threshold to the exit. “I will miss our conversations.”
The bite of his nails in my skin caused sweat to sheen my palms. “Me too.”
A slow breath parted his lips, and he squared his shoulders. I got it then, that he wasn’t preventing me from leaving. He was preparing himself to go back to a shadowed half life. I could sympathize, but I had a lot to learn before I cracked open Pandora’s box on his behalf again. He might want to be my friend, or ally, or whatever, but he had given me a firm reminder of his nature I couldn’t afford to forget.
Eyes closed, he stepped through, one last solo act before he succumbed to the shadows.
Eager to be done with this place, I barely gave him a full thirty seconds before jumping in behind him.
Bishop must have felt the same. He hit me in the back and staggered me forward a few steps.
“Oh frak,” I breathed. “This is…not good.”
The portal spat us out where we began, back at the warehouse in Buckhead. Rather than it being empty, as we had hoped, it was filled to the rafters with witchborn fae not yet deployed.
As our heads breached the watery surface, the gathering turned in unison to scowl at our sudden arrival.
With the faegate into Faerie down, the ring of guardians had disbanded and stood among their coven.
Once Bishop and I were clear, I turned to Ambrose. “Take the portal down.”
We might not make it out of the warehouse alive, but we could do this much for the others still fighting.
Behind us, Ambrose gulped the magic fueling the portal. That left Bishop and me to face the pissed-off leftovers of a coup gone horribly wrong. From their perspective. I mean, I was pretty proud of us.
Go, Team Atlanta.
“Leave now,” Bishop offered to anyone willing to listen, “and we will let you live.”
The coven, women and men, laughed softly among themselves. Until they spotted the head in his hand.
A hysterical giggle threatened to escape me over their shocked faces.
Intimidating as Bishop might be, holding his bloody souvenir, we had no way to fight this many practitioners. They had to know that. Still, I kept my expression blank, hoping to bluff them, but I felt cracks forming as they made ready their spells.
“Close your eyes,” Bishop told me, a lilt in his voice. “I don’t want you to see.”
“We can fight our way out.” I gripped his arm. “You don’t have to do this.”
The glamour he wore like a second skin, the one that muted his sharp edges until he almost passed for normal, unraveled to show him as he truly was in all his wintery glory.
Skin the color of freshly fallen snow, hair the shade of newborn flakes twirling on a chilly breeze, eyes a bottomless silver that dropped my stomach into my toes.
“I’ve done too much,” he rasped, musical and lush. “I’ve pushed too far.” The temperature around him dipped enough to chill me. “I must feed if I’m to continue on.”
The portal collapsed behind us with a pulse of foul magic that rustled my hair into my eyes.
Ambrose, done with his duty, swirled around my legs like a cat stropping its owner’s ankles.
“All right.” I closed my eyes, more terrified than I wanted to admit. “I won’t look.”
Icy lips brushed my cheek, their imprint frostbitten into my skin. “Good girl.”
Screams pierced my ears, and I clamped my hands on either side of my head to muffle them. I kept my lids screwed shut tight, and I didn’t peek once. Not because I wasn’t curious—I was—but because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see me feed when Ambrose had claimed my body to hunt in.
What felt like hours later, I started as a chill hand touched my arm. “Is it safe to look?”
“Yeah,” Bishop said, sounding more like himself. “You can open your eyes.”
The first thing I saw was him, and I couldn’t help noticing how the platinum hair he kept trimmed short was as black as pitch. His eyes glowed a brilliant emerald green. A flush rode his cheekbones, and his skin tone matched mine. If I had passed him on the street, I wouldn’t have recognized him.
The version of Bishop who was my friend starved himself to maintain control over his hungers.
This Bishop was brimming with health, with vitality, with…death. So much death.
I held his gaze, both to show him I wasn’t afraid of him and to prevent myself from looking past him to the slumped figures. I didn’t want to know how they had died. I didn’t want that mental picture popping in my head every time I looked at Bishop. I had been gifted acceptance from him, and I intended to return the favor.
“Ready to go?” The words rushed out, too bright and too loud. “The others will be waiting.”
He stepped closer to me, and I almost held my breath, but I forced myself to calm.
This is Bishop, my friend, and he won’t hurt me.
Ignore the head swinging from his hand, and his makeover, and it was like any other night at the office.
“The portal is closed.” He stared past my shoulder. “The archive is sealed.”
Natisha was locked in a box where she could do no harm.
For the time being.
“We’ve hit the coven where it hurts.” I smiled at him, lips wobbling. “They’ll be limited to whatever form they brought with them, and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.” Eyes on the exit, I started walking. “Any idea how we get back to Atlanta?”
Ambrose pointed to the nearest corpse, but I really, really didn’t want to look too hard at them.
“Keys.” Bishop took the cue when I was slow to act. “I’ll get them.”
When he turned his back, I collected myself and readjusted my expression, going for calm and collected.
“We can take one of the vans.” He jiggled the key ring at me. “They might provide cover too.”
Probably not for long, since there were no more practitioners coming, but we only needed time to reach the others at the Active Oval. Assuming they had waited for us there. They might have gone on to the Faraday to get between the coven and their final target: Liz.
A teeny shred of pity for Archimedes wormed its way through me. He was being born into a new life and a new world, and, if Remy was right, he would recall his life before and how he got there. He would no longer be alpha. He would have no power he didn’t earn. He would have to start over from scratch.
He had been given the second chance any one of his neighbors in the archive would have given their immortal souls for. He would get to live again, to laugh again. Maybe, if he was lucky, to love again too.
I hoped he did more with this life. I hoped he learned kindness. I hoped Tisdale didn’t hit the roof when she found out one of her founding fathers was about to become her newest pack member…
Ambrose led us to the vans, and Bishop located the correct one. We encountered no one along the way.
The warehouse had gone as silent as a tomb.
Bishop drove us back to Atlanta, and I must have fallen asleep at some point. I jerked awake when he jabbed me in the shoulder with a fingertip, confused about where I was, who I was, and why I was in a stinky van. A trail of drool smudged the window where my lip had peeled back as my face slid down the glass, which was super sexy, and I had to wipe it clean to see anything.