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Max began to turn, wondering what had spooked Ivy so badly?—

Ivy stopped him with a hand gripping his arm.“Don’t turn around.”

“What’s going on?”

“Shadowmasters,” she hissed. “Right behind us.”

Max caught the eye of Kylar just down the way—near that other ambulance, his face hidden under a blanket he was using as a hood. His eyes were bolted wide; he’d clearly spotted the Shadowmasters, too.

Ivy shifted, putting herself directly in front of Jack—using her body to block him from view. “Nobody move,” she whispered.

The voices of several Shadowmasters came into hearing range as they greeted each other on the busy road.

“Any sign of them?” Male. Brusque. Vaguely familiar.

“No.” Another male—a voice Max didn’t recognize.

“You checked the house?” This question came from a female. Also familiar.

“That’s the first place we went. No one was there but some old dude. Pax’s aura has completely disappeared.”

“Maybe he’s dead,” said a deeper voice, his words coated with sick hope.

Max became aware of the sound of Travis’s heart—thumping with pure rage. His aura had sharpened; Max knew that if he could’ve seen it, it would have been a deep scarlet-black with stark edges.

Max placed a hand on Trav’s shoulder—a gesture intended not only to comfort, but to also warn. Restrain. If Travis let his aura get out of control, there was a chance the Shadowmasters would pick up on it. Even with the Avertera talisman glimmering in the hollow of his throat—glimmering aroundallof their throats—the risk was too great. The Shadowmasters might not be able toseetheir auras, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t feel them, couldn’t detect shifts in emotion if they were strong enough to set off warning bells.

And rage tended to ring a very loud bell.

“Let’s split up again,” said the first male. “You guys check his school, we’ll try the theater. No one rests until we find Paxton. Clear?”

“Clear.”

“Meet us at the House of Black in two hours.”

They’d checked the house—Roman’shouse. They had to mean Roman’s. The very place where Paxtonshouldbe. There was a chance he’d escaped, maybe—left town with Loren, Malakai, and the others…

But the Shadowmasters had said that no one was at the house except‘some old dude’. Arthur, no doubt. And if Arthur was still here, there was no way the others had left him behind—a defenseless man in his seventies, who’d done countless favors for them, left to die in a destroyed city. No chance. So?—

If they hadn’t escaped… If they were still in Yveswich…

Then where the hellwerethey? And what did that mean for Arthur and the others?

“Those assholes are looking for my little brother,” Travis said, his voice as lethal as the glare he threw over his shoulder at the departing Shadowmasters. Blaine and Larina Barlowe were among them—the voices Max had recognized from the night Don and his people intruded on Roman’s property, dragging him off to the House of Black.

“We have to find him,” Max said, his pulse shifting into a determined drumbeat. “Before they do.”

4

Underground

YVESWICH, STATE OF KER

Even without theaid of Venom, his fatigued body ready to collapse, Darien’s dark power was a force to be reckoned with.

Lethal waves of his magic smashed like battering rams into the hordes of beasts trapping him and Roman against the pit. Heads were blasted off in sprays of blood. Bodies were launched into walls at lightning speed, necks and spines snapping on impact.

But it still wasn’t enough, because the monsters…