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The vibrant hum of his aura stroked through my skin. I mentally traced the invisible trail, following his warmth up the wall and over the ledge. He was still up there, still alive. What happened to the Drone? He’d been right behind me when he pushed me over. Had Michio hauled him back? Were they tearing each other limb from limb?

I couldn’t help him. My pulse sprinted. Fuck, I couldn’t protect him.

The rope jerked, and I bumped against the wall, squinting against the blinding sun, refusing to remove my eyes from my lifeline. Who or what was holding the other end?

A black wing blurred over the wall then snapped out of view. The rope pulled, hitching me up then sliding free, plunging me downward and collapsing my stomach, as it dragged sideways along the edge.

The cord snapped taut again, stopping my downward spiral and whooshing the air from my lungs. Was Michio holding it? While he was fighting the Drone and the spiders?

My heart hammered as I strained my hearing, listening for pained grunts or scuffing boots.

Silence closed in around me. I expected to see the Drone’s sinister eyes emerge over the ledge at any moment, followed by the stretch of his wings and the swipe of his talons as he severed the rope. I waited, my throat constricting and my breath slipping.

Something jerked the cord, bouncing me up and down and side to side like a swinging yo-yo. It yanked and slacked and yanked again, the nylon rubbing along the ledge and back, fraying the threads from the friction. Whatever secured the other end wasn’t stationary.

My funny bone slammed against the cement, shooting pinpricks through my arm. The disorientation was nauseating as I spun again. None of my limbs were free to buffer the constant collisions against wall, but I tried to keep my head angled as my spine and shoulders took the brunt of the abuse.

A black shoe appeared on the ledge, joined by its twin. The Drone rose up, towering above me as he stood on the wall. Crimson rivulets dripped from the gouges in his melted face, his black shirt and pants shredded, exposing bloody gashes beneath. He turned, and his furious eyes locked on the rope.

No, no, no! My chest heaved, and my mouth stretched to scream when something whistled above my head.

The Drone staggered, his gruesome visage contorting with outrage as he stared down at the black and red feathered arrow harpooned in his chest.

“Jesse.” My whisper came out shaky, breathless, and full of stunned disbelief as I tried to whip around, frantically tracing the path the arrow had flown.

The Drone ripped the shaft free from his chest, tossed it, and launched for the rope.

But my lifeline was moving, yanking sideways, away from the Drone, and sliding downward…oh shit, it was loose, plummeting me into the gorge and shoving my guts to my throat.

I fell several heart-gripping feet before I crashed to a stop. I raised my head and found Michio, the source of my salvation, as he tackled the Drone’s back. The end of the rope coiled around his arm, cutting off his circulation and turning his skin red and blue. Blood smeared his face, his eyes and fangs feral, as his hands curled around the base of the Drone’s wing.

In the distance, shots rang out, followed by men shouting and cursing. Somewhere near the entrance of the dam? I didn’t know how Jesse and Roark had found me, but I was certain that it was them wreaking havoc on the Drone’s guards.

A guttural howl snapped my attention back to the Drone. Instead of standing on the ledge, he was now bent over it. He clawed at the wall, his cheek smashed against the concrete, and his eyes wide with… Panic? Fear?

Above his blood-soaked face, Michio leaned over and raised the skeletal arm of a torn-off wing. Hunks of flesh hung from the joint where it had been ripped from the Drone’s body.

Michio’s slivered eyes cut straight to me, piercing through my soul as if sharpened on the lethal edge of a blade. His expression was chillingly beautiful, like an ice storm, paralyzing and enchanting, the harsh lines of his bone structure hardening with brutality. No longer was his bearing frozen with indifference. He was malice and fangs and vicious strength, a blood-thirsty guardian angel.

With the end of my rope wrapped around one arm and chords of muscle flexing in his other, he flipped the wing in his hand and reared it back like a spear.

“Eveline.” The Drone’s fanged smile dripped with venom, his madness peering out of the darkness of his eyes. “Fate cannot be changed.”

His words shivered across my skin as Michio stabbed the clawed joint of the wing into the back of the Drone’s head.

The sound of crushing bone echoed through the canyon. The corner of the Drone’s frozen smile tented outward into a bubbled point, stretching the melted flesh of his face until the clawed tip burst through his cheek with a pop of blood and bone fragments. I saw the moment his life evaporated from his eyes and felt his insanity flicker out, releasing my insides from the black stain of his aura.