Page 16 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Sixteen

DOMINIC

The sky had surrendered fully to night, soaked in ink, stars like silver needles pricking through velvet black.

Brooklyn hadn’t moved in over an hour, though I knew the dusk had returned her strength.

She sat curled at the base of the gate, arms wrapped tightly around her knees, eyes locked on the path ahead as if sheer willpower could summon the shaman from thin air.

The wards shimmered faintly before her, their glow strained and unsteady, stretched to the limit.

I stood behind her, quiet, unmoving. A sentinel in the dark.

The air was brittle with silence, and something about it frayed the edges of my instincts.

My panther paced beneath my skin, restless, teeth bared in anticipation.

I fought to hold him back; my language faltered in that form, and I needed to speak.

But the line between man and beast had begun to blur.

I sniffed the wind. There was something foreign threading the air now, like iron and ash. Something that didn’t belong to this place or its people. Unease prickled my skin.

Then the sound hit.

Footsteps. Dozens.

I turned just as they emerged from the tree line across the road, so many of them, moving with eerie precision, as if summoned by some silent command.

One by one they stepped out of the shadows, their presence coalescing like a storm front made of flesh and menace.

Men, or something close enough to wear their shape.

Tall, impossibly broad-shouldered, their skin stretched taut over sculpted muscles that glistened under the silver wash of moonlight.

They were shirtless despite the cutting wind, clad only in black leather pants and harnesses that wrapped their torsos like restraints rather than armor.

Not a sound passed between them. Not the rustle of breath, not the scuff of boot or the crack of twigs beneath their weight.

Just that dreadful stillness, broken only by the slow, synchronized pace of their advance.

Their eyes glowed faintly blue, unnatural and cold, like the last flicker of a dying flame. Not vibrant, not alive but dimmed, dulled, as if whatever spark of will they once had had been stripped away and replaced with something... hollow.

I took a step back, instinct prickling along every nerve. These weren’t Guardians. Not truly. They were too clean. Too perfect. No scent of blood, no flicker of thought. Just constructs wearing flesh. And I couldn’t smell them.

“Brooklyn,” I said quietly, placing myself between them and my mate while my animal thrashed under my skin.

She didn’t need more. She was on her feet before her name left my lips.

The Guardians or whatever they were closed in fast. Too fast. They moved in perfect sync, not like soldiers but puppets. Controlled. Manufactured. Each footstep landed with the same weight. Each hand held the same curved blade, gleaming despite the darkness.

My hackles rose. My panther stirred behind my ribs, already pacing for release.

“They’re not Guardians,” Brooklyn hissed. “Something… Something’s wrong.”

Wrong was an understatement. Their magic reeked of precision. Synthetic. Not the brutal, volatile wildness that marked most Guardians. This was laced with illusion, suggestion, mimicry. A spell made to look like them.

But not feel like them.

Still, we couldn’t afford a mistake. Not if they were real.

“You take the right; I’ll take the left side,” she said sharply, drawing her favorite blade from her thigh. “Don’t let them corner us.”

I shifted before I could speak, bones breaking, fur tearing through skin. In seconds I was down on four legs, muscle rippling, claws carving shallow trenches in the dirt. I let the beast take over, but only just. My mind stayed sharp, tethered to hers.

They struck first.

Brooklyn blocked one blow, ducked a second, then slammed her blade through the chest of the first Guardian to reach her. It split apart, not with blood, but smoke unraveling in moonlight.

An illusion.

But the next three came without hesitation.

I lunged, jaws sinking into the arm of one, but it dissolved in my mouth, leaving only the taste of burnt sage and bitter root. The scent of spellwork. I turned, dodging a strike, slashing across the belly of another. Again, smoke. Again, not real.

“They’re testing us,” Brooklyn said through clenched teeth, spinning and slicing through another three. “This isn’t an attack…it’s a damn test.”

“For what?” I growled, voice ragged through my half-shifted throat.

“To see if we meant what we said.” She panted. “To see if I’m truly not like the rest of my kind.” Her tone was laced with disgust.

Another wave came. I tackled two at once, twisting midair, ripping through what wasn’t flesh.

Brooklyn danced through the chaos like a storm; Elegant, brutal, relentless.

Her blade left arcs of black light behind it.

Her eyes glowed not just with rage, but conviction.

The Guardians might not have been real and they turned to smoke when we landed a hit but we were real.

Everywhere their blades touched opened our skin and blood poured from the wounds.

And then, just like that, the Guardians vanished.

Smoke. Ash. Gone.

Silence fell.

Brooklyn stood in the center of the clearing, chest heaving, silver blade covered with nothing but moonlight.

Her eyes searched the trees, her power still thrumming like an exposed wire.

Blood dripped from under her sleeve where a particularly deep cut was still oozing.

I shifted back immediately and rushed to check her injuries.

Scrape of a boot over gravel alerted us to another presence.

Then, from the path beyond the gate, the man returned.

Unscathed.

Expression unreadable.

He regarded us for the longest time, then stepped forward just enough that we could see the glint of something ceremonial hanging from his neck. A carved wooden pendant shaped like a crow’s talon.

“You fought,” he said calmly. “But you did not kill.” Suspicion laced his words and glinted in his dark eyes.

Brooklyn’s voice was a low rasp as she wiped sweat from her forehead with the bloody sleeve of her shirt, marking her face like with war paint. “There was no one to kill. But, I hope I bleed enough to prove myself to you.”

He nodded once, a small smile tugging on one side of his lips.

“You may speak with Laughing Crow now.”

He’d barely finished the sentence when the wards parted for her like mist before moonlight.

I had no idea what I was expecting but it was rather uneventful after all the drama with conjuring spells and everything else.

There was no sound, no thunderous snap of magic, no chorus of ancestral judgment.

Just the subtle unraveling of an invisible thread as the man nodded and gestured for us to follow.

Brooklyn stepped forward, and the air bent around her.

I followed on instinct, shadowing her movements without hesitation, my muscles taut, still riding the edge of a shift I hadn’t fully decided was a good idea or not.

We played our card. If they didn’t know I was a shifter, they knew now.

And, it wasn’t trust in the land that made me go after my mate. It was trust in her. Where she walked, I followed. I will willingly walk into death to follow her.

But, the moment I stepped past the boundary, the air thickened.

Power hung like smoke in this place, woven into the very dirt under our feet.

It pressed against my skin, curious like a child yet, ancient, older than the roots of the trees.

It felt like walking into the mouth of a great beast that hadn’t decided yet whether it wanted to feast.

Brooklyn said nothing, but I saw the tightness in her jaw, the way her fingers brushed the handle of her blade not out of threat, but caution. This was sacred ground. She knew that, she respected it enough to not draw a weapon. And for all her fury, all her anxiety, she treated it as such.

We followed the man down a winding path lined with cedar and the gnarled trunks of trees so old they seemed fossilized.

Puddles of old water were sprinkled on all sides, our boots splashing through them occasionally.

Symbols carved into the barks glowed faintly, not bright enough to see clearly, but enough to feel like we were being watched. Judged.

And then they appeared.

The first wolf emerged like a whisper from between two trees, silent, massive, fur dark as charred earth. Its eyes gleamed with recognition, not aggression. Then another appeared. Then another.

Within seconds, we were surrounded.

Not wolves, shifters.

A whole pack of them lined up one side of the road then the other, all their eyes locked on my mate.

I slid closer to Brooklyn instinctively, my hand tightening into a fist, every muscle in my body ready to fight but they didn’t move toward us. They circled, yes. But not like hunters. More like a congregation showing respect.

No growls. No baring of teeth. Only silent acknowledgement.

“What the hell…?” I murmured, glancing around.

“They remember,” the man said simply, not turning to face us. His voice carried like it was bouncing off a canyon wall. “They were Syndicate targets once. Until she freed them.”

I stared at the wolves again, now recognizing the differences between them, the color of their fur, the subtle shade of their eyes. These weren’t just any shifters. They had been weapons once. They had fought against the Council and I believed them to be dead. And she had let them go.

“You saved them.” I said to my mate. A statement, not a question.

She didn’t answer at first. Just stared at the wolves, her expression unreadable. Then she said, very quietly, “I gave them a choice. That’s all. I didn’t know if they’d survive.”

The silver-gray wolf, the largest, stepped forward and lowered his head to her. Not in submission. In reverence.

My breath caught. Not because of the gesture, but because of what it meant. I had always known Brooklyn was feared. I had always known she was powerful. But this… this was different.

She wasn’t feared here. She was honored.

The wolf’s gaze flicked to me, and for one suspended second, it felt like he was measuring me not just as her mate, but as a being. And then he dipped his head ever so slightly.

“Good for you. You’re marked by her,” the man said, glancing at me now. “The land knows it. The wolves know it, too.”

That truth sank deep. Not just into my ears, but into my bones. I wasn’t just with Brooklyn. I was bound to her, claimed not only in body, but in presence. And whatever magic lived in this place, it could see that.

Warmth spread through my chest, and I had to hold myself back so I didn’t take my mate into my arms. “You’re saying they trust me… because I am her mate?”

“I’m saying,” he said, voice like roots cracking stone, “they won’t tear you apart. Because she won’t like that.” A smirk grew on his smug face and I debated for a split second if I should wipe it with my fist.

Before I could do something entirely too stupid, he gestured toward a structure ahead.

A low, cedar-framed house, its windows glowing softly from within.

Smoke drifted up from a chimney, carrying the scent of juniper and something older.

Protective wards were carved directly into the lintel, sharper, more personal than the ones at the boundary gate. Not mass deterrents. Personal defenses.

We reached the fence and the closed gate. The man knocked once on it.

It opened.

She stood there, shorter than I expected.

Braids laced with feathers and bone, a robe of layered wool and dusk-colored fabric that didn’t cling, but flowed with a weight of purpose.

Her face was lined by age, but not weakened by it.

Her gaze struck me harder than any blow I’d ever taken in a fight.

Eyes so dark there was no pupil to be seen accessed Brooklyn from head to toe.

Laughing Crow.

Her name felt too small for the presence in front of us. She didn’t look at me first. Her eyes locked on Brooklyn like twin daggers unsheathed.

“She came,” the man said behind us.

Laughing Crow didn’t move. Didn’t smile. Didn’t speak. Her presence was like standing in front of a storm, still, but brimming with coiled energy.

Then, after an eternity, she stepped aside.

“Enter,” she said. Her voice was smoke over stone. “And speak your truth. But know this. If you lie, you will not leave the way you entered.”

Brooklyn nodded and walked past the threshold like a queen entering her trial.

And I followed.

As always.

I will go to death for my mate.