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CHAPTERONE

Jade

Ifelt the spell growing behind me and dropped to a crouch so it sailed over my head. I realized a moment too late that avoiding it meant it was going to hit one of my squadmates—a fae named Grove.

“Spell!” I called—which was a horrible way to warn him because there were spellseverywhere. But one-word, half-strangled shouts were about all I could manage.

Grove seemed to share my belated opinion because he swung around, his thick eyebrows bunching together. “What kind of spell—” Magic hit him square in the chest with a fizzle of light, and he dropped like a sack of rocks.

For a moment my blood turned cold and I feared the worst, then a loud snore erupted from him a second later. He was still alive.

If I don’t do something he’s going to get stepped on. First, the spellcaster.

We were in the middle of a fight between two opposing fae Courts or rather what hadstartedas a fae fight between two Courts. As the spell proved, the fae were starting to attack my team more than they were fighting each other.

I kicked the spiky haired fae that had thrown the spell, aiming my blow so I knocked the air out of her. She collapsed with a strangled gasp. I was on her before her head hit the ground, placing a booted foot on her chest to keep her down. Yanking a pair of standard issue magic-canceling cuffs from my belt, I knelt to fasten them around the fae’s wrists before she could recover.

With the target secure, I guiltily peered at Grove’s prone form.Maybe I should drag him out of the fight? Wait. Protocol first. I need to warn the team he was taken out.

Thankfully another one of my squadmates—a petite, beautiful blonde vampire named Tetiana—was on it. She stepped over Grove’s prone body without batting an eyelash. “Grove’s down,” she announced as a troll—who must have been a juvenile, because he wasn’t even seven feet tall—flung a decorative boulder that was the size of Tetiana’s torso. She casually sidestepped it, and watched as it smashed into a metal bench bolted to the sidewalk.

With Tetiana handling the verbal updates, I hooked my arms under Grove’s armpits and lifted him high enough so only his heels dragged on the ground. Then, I pulled him away from the fight to position him so that he was somewhat shielded by a sign for a bus stop.

“We’re supposed to use the radios,” Brody, a werewolf, said before he tackled the troll— making the large supernatural fall to his knees with a rattle that sounded like it might have cracked the asphalt.

“Oh, right.” Tetiana pulled her handheld radio off her belt and pressed a button. “GROVE IS DOWN!” she shouted, her Ukrainian accent even thicker with the raised volume.

Whatever button she had pressed wasn’t the right one because none of our radios even crackled, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. Instead, I jumped onto the back of a centaur who was bearing down on Tetiana. I gripped his horse torso with my legs before wrapping my arm around his human neck and pulling tight, cutting off his air supply.

Brody didn’t share my reluctance in correcting our vampire teammate. “Jeez, Tetiana! You did it wrong.Again.” His voice was strained as he tussled with the troll, yelping when the juvenile yanked on his arm. “Pressed the wrong button.”

The centaur tried to rear, but he was already weak from a lack of oxygen so he couldn’t manage it and instead dropped to his knees.

It’s soniceto fight opponents who don’t recover insanely fast.

As a former vampire slayer, I was used to fighting vampires whose powerful healing abilities meant sometimes they could heal faster than I could inflict damage on them depending on their abilities and age.

The change was a pleasant one.

“I didnotuse this blasphemous hunk of metal incorrectly,” Tetiana imperiously declared. “It is the machine’s fault. It is possessed.” She shook the radio for emphasis.

Still cut off from air, the centaur collapsed. I had to spring from his back to avoid getting crushed when he flopped to the side. Based on his fishmouthed gasps and red face he was probably down for at least a minute, giving me time to subdue another opponent.

I scanned the crowd, inventorying the still standing fae. The sides weren’t even pretending to fight each other anymore; they were focusing on us—the squad that had been called in to subdue their territory fight.

There weren’t many fae left on our street—we were on the fringe of Magiford which divided one of the residential areas from the industrial area. But I spotted a fae noble—a handsome male—crafting a spell that glowed an ominous red.

He’s the last spellcaster in the bunch, so I’d better take him out first.

I backed into the thick shadows the dim night provided—surprise was an excellent element to use in a fight against fae since they lacked the extra senses vampires and werewolves had—and crept towards him.

Brody slammed the troll’s head into the asphalt. This made a spiderweb of cracks appear in the road—werewolf strength was no joke—and the troll finally stopped struggling thanks to his probable concussion. “Face it, Tetiana: you’re incompetent with tech. Though I would have thought radios—as old as they are—would have been around long enough for you to get used to. Just how old are you?” He shook out the arm the troll had pulled, was it injured?

Tetiana, who’d been skeptically studying her radio, scowled at Brody. “Are all werewolves as rude as you or are you just special?” Brandishing her radio she spun around and smashed the plastic contraption into the skull of a naiad that had been sneaking up on her, downing the naiad and denting her radio.

Vampire strength wasn’t nearly as powerful as werewolf strength, so the naiad fell to her knees with a moan but wasn’t unconscious. Instead, she managed to fling her arms out… splashing Tetiana with algae-hued water.

I checked to make sure Tetiana wasn’t hurt—she wasn’t, she was just frowning down at the naiad as a patch of algae fell off her uniform—before focusing on my target.