Page 33 of Another Damned Storm (Another Damned #3)

NEVER

It was a bloodbath.

Bodies littered the ground outside the main building at Salus. Men and women. Human and shifter. It didn’t matter. The demons responsible for the attack were indiscriminate in their killing.

And merciless.

I swallowed down the acid that seared my throat when I stumbled over the body of a majestic red wolf that looked like it had been sliced in two. My heart, my pulse, and my thoughts were all tangled up in knots.

Please tell me Lily and Angie weren’t here. I threw the thought out into the universe knowing damn well how pointless it was. They were there. Lily, because Salus was her stronghold—her pack. And Angie, because it was farther away from the churches.

It was supposed to be safer.

With every body I stepped over or around, anger prowled up my back and shoulders. “Lily!” I called out.

Nothing .

“Angie!” I yelled, my voice cracking.

Silence.

My heart was pounding so hard it battered my ribcage, the vibrations from each blow reverberating out to my fingertips. I closed my eyes, sucking in heavy breaths through my nose, and pictured Lily’s face. Her smile. Her familiar brown eyes.

The warm wind tugging at my hair fell away and suddenly the world around me, was filled with a fresh kind of horror.

Moans and wails rent the air as the overwhelming stench of antiseptic stung my nose.

Dozens of people were laid out on the polished wood floor of the gymnasium.

Some obviously dead, others clinging to life, and a precious few who might actually make it if an infection didn’t set in and take them before they’d had a chance to heal.

My abrupt arrival startled those closest to me, but I didn’t care. I needed to find?—

“Never!” Angie barreled into me and wrapped her scrawny arms around my waist.

I hugged her back, trying to ignore the buckets of blood staining her hands and clothes. She was okay. Maybe not entirely unscathed, but alive and well enough to squeeze me tight.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I whispered. That just made her hug me tighter, so I returned the favor, being careful not to accidentally crush her.

The relief that poured into me was a very real thing, nearly tangible, but it wasn’t until I spotted Lily kneeling beside a frightened boy that I was able to draw my first decent breath.

Thank fuck.

“Have you heard from your dad?” I asked into Angie’s hair.

She pulled back, tears streaming down her face. “No.”

The tremor in that single syllable cut me open inside. I may as well have carved out my still beating heart and strapped it on my sleeve for all to see.

She shook her head like she couldn’t believe what was happening. “The witch who was handling the radios on our side was killed in the attack. We haven’t been able to reach anyone since.”

Sonofabitch.

A jolt of pain shot through my link with Hook, followed quickly by a surge of anger.

He had our connection throttled, giving me just a trickle, and to be honest, I was grateful for it.

I needed to know he was alright, but I was barely holding my own seething thoughts and emotions in check as it was.

“Ang, listen to me. I need you to go to Lily and help her until I get back. Okay?”

Alarm colored her expression. “Where are you going?”

“To find your dad.” Then to find the demons who did this and make them pay.

Her fingers were talons when she latched onto my wrists. “I’m going with you.”

I shook my head. “You’re needed here.” And I wasn’t about to test whether I could flash with a passenger on my only niece. If anything went wrong, my brother would never forgive me. “I promise, as soon as I find him, I’ll come back here and tell you he’s okay.”

She held on tight, her short, painted nails digging into my skin. Her honey brown gaze searched mine desperately, but she must have found whatever she was looking for because she let go after a moment. “The second you find him.”

I traced an ‘X’ over my chest. “Cross my heart.”

I didn’t bother trying to find a quiet place to flash. The time for hiding what I had become was long past. Instead, I just focused on my brother, let my power rise, and boom, there I was—right smack in the middle of a whole different shit show on the other side of the park.

It took me a minute to realize there were no demons in this fight. This was straight up human on human. Well, and the few magical creatures that had been staying at Rutledge waiting for this showdown.

What the fuck were they doing? We were supposed to be working together.

“Enough!” I bellowed, letting my rising power bleed into the command. I didn’t really expect it to work, but enough people were startled that the fighting came to a quick end. “What the hell is happening here?”

The few people pinned to the ground fought to get free, but for each of them at least three others held them down. Several others backed away looking terrified, but that just made it easier to spot Matt peeling out of the crowd and working his way toward me.

“You have to get to Salus,” he said when he was closer. His voice had the calm, clear cadence of a battle-tested leader, but his eyes gave away the panic hiding beneath the surface.

“I was just there.”

He swallowed hard. “Angie?”

“She’s fine. Lily too. But not everyone was so lucky.”

He closed his eyes. “Son of a bitch.” When he opened them, he was nearly shaking with anger. He turned to the crowd. “Throw them all in the cells. Check them for weapons and anything they might be able to use to escape and give them nothing until I say so. No food, no water. I mean nothing.”

“What are you doing?” I asked, a little horrified by his order.

“We were betrayed. Thrain’s followers knew we were coming, and they attacked Salus.”

I looked at the faces of the people who were being hauled off. “Humans did this? ”

He nodded. “I’m not sure who all among them was involved, which is the only reason they’re still breathing.”

Fuck it. Kill them all.

I balled my hands into fists and shoved the dark thought back down.

There would be time for vengeance. Maybe there was a way I could latch onto the turncoats and take their worthless asses to the Alius with me, so their souls would be trapped in a place where they would be torn apart by monsters over and over, every day for eternity.

That seemed a fitting punishment.

I looked down at my hands, zeroing in on the one stained with Thrain’s blood, and I had the sudden, clawing need to scrub it with searing hot water until my skin was raw. I didn’t want even a drop of that asshole’s blood touching me.

Did he know? Was that why he was alone in the park?

Motherfucker. Was the whole damned storm a setup meant to weaken our side?

“Of the people you’re detaining, who among them would be the most likely to turn on you?” I asked.

Matt raked a hand over his head. “Arthur Klinebold.”

“Was he the one who was doing most of the yelling at the meeting?” The man I remembered as the loudest was short and stocky, with a basketball for a belly and a shiny bald head.

He shook his head. “I don’t think he said a word at the meeting.”

A silent traitor. How long would his silence hold out once I got my hands on him? “I need to talk to him.”

“Not before I do, Never. Look around. We’ve suffered our own losses here. People are going to need answers.”

Losses? He thought a handful of injuries amounted to losses?

I gripped his wrist, and without weighing the consequences, flashed us both to the bloody scene just outside the main building at Salus. The energy drain was significant, but so was the shock contorting my brother’s features as he took in the carnage.

“Just so we’re clear, I’ll be questioning anyone I damn well please,” I said coldly.

He glanced over at me and took a step back. “Hey, whoa. I’m not the enemy here, Never.”

No, he wasn’t, but he still wasn’t getting it.

I grabbed a handful of his shirt and flashed him inside the gymnasium.

He sucked in a harsh breath. “Oh god.”

I pointed. “Your daughter is over there.”

It took him a minute to find his voice, and when he did, it was tight with desperation. “Angie!”

Her head whipped up. Then she was running, dodging bodies and gurneys to get to him.

He ran too, and when they collided, he hauled her up into his arms. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

She shook her head furiously. “I’m fine, Dad,” she sobbed.

When he finally set her on the ground, Lily was there. I braced for a tense exchange, but Matt pulled her into a bear hug, and she returned the embrace. It was a real hug too, not one of those one-armed, awkward-pat-on-the-back type hugs.

But she was the one to pull back. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, but you need to get back to Rutledge. Now. You’ve got traitors?—”

He held up a hand. “I know. We’ve detained everyone who might be involved.”

“Oh, I already have the list.” She tossed a look at the blood-soaked body of a man slumped against the cinderblock wall at the far end of the gym. Then she licked her lips. “It wasn’t all that hard to get him to talk.”

A feat she’d apparently accomplished with the use of her tiger’s claws. Or maybe her teeth ?

“Fiskers?” he asked, disbelief lacing his voice. “I thought…”

When he didn’t finish the statement, Lily lifted her chin. “He wasn’t the only one.”

Angie ducked under her dad’s arm, and he looked down at her, clearly in shock. “I’m so sorry.”

“You couldn’t have known,” she said.

Matt shot me a look that was heavy with guilt. “I should have?—”

Before he could finish the statement, an electronic whine from his back pocket cut him off. Followed by a short burst of static. “…mons! Holy sh… ey’re ev… where.” The voice on the other end was so panicked and broken it took me a second to piece the message together.

Demons. Everywhere.

As if the sky itself had just decoded the message, a bolt of lightning shook the building, and we were plunged into darkness. That was when I realized that within the cacophony of emotions churning inside me, I wasn’t feeling anything from Hook anymore.

My heart stalled.