Page 40 of Royally Scr*wed
All the blood rushes from JJ’s head at once. “But—but he always picks up his phone. He?—”
“Cass would never ignore calls from both of you.” Obie’s shoulders are stiff and his voice is grim. “The Sanctum must be there already. And, without rifts, they’ll already be gone by the time we get there.”
Bile rises in JJ’s throat. “No. No, they can’t?—”
They can’t take Cass away from JJ. They can’t take Cass away from him and Ez and Obie andDesiand?—
“We can still save him,” JJ says, and he tightens his grip on Desi before taking off at a sprint.
Cass’s front door explodes inward, flying off its hinges with the shriek of splintering wood and tearing metal. The back door shatters at the exact same moment, glass crackling to the floor as hunters in black tactical gear flood in from every direction. At least two dozen adversaries, no rifting away, no escape routes?—
Cass will have to fight his way out.
Luckily for him, though, he’s never backed down from a fight. As far as he’s concerned,they’rein here withhim.
Snarling, Cass transforms into his true form and lunges for the nearest hunter, opening his muzzle wide to bite through her ballistic helmet. Metal and bone crunch under his fangs as she falls to the floor with a shriek, and he dives for the next hunter, closing his jaws around the man’s leg and bodily flinging him through the window.
Much as he’d love to leave a trail of bodies in his wake, a demon massacring nearly thirty hunters—even if provoked—is grounds for a war. His best option is a tactical retreat. He rams one hunter out of the way, rips his claws through the belly of another, bounds for the gaping back door?—
All at once, there’s a blur of motion in his peripheral vision. He doesn’t move fast enough to dodge the arrow, and it buries itself in his side with the sear of corrosion burns. Growling, Cass whips his head around to grab it in his teeth, to rip it out before it can eat through his flesh?—
White-hot agony explodes behind his eyes. His anguished howl twists into a scream as the pain forces him back to his human façade, and he collapses on his side, jaw locking shut and limbs jerking uncontrollably.
That isn’t an arrow imbued with a corrosion spell. That’s an arrow that can shoot a corrosion spellthrough his body.
That could actually kill him.
Abruptly, the pain decreases—not gone completely, but just manageable enough that he can think. Gasping for breath, he raises one arm to defend himself, tries to drag himself backward?—
“Well, this was anticlimactic,” one of the hunters says, strolling towards him. She’s maintaining a glowing ball of sickly purple magic above her hand—a control spell, Cass realizes with a jolt, to modulate the arrow’s corrosion. “I expected more from the great Cassius Chin. Didn’t you nearly decimate both sides in the Battle of Saratoga? And blatantly start World War I with only minimal assistance? Frankly, I’m disappointed.”
There’s a quiver of arrows on her back and a bow held loosely in her other hand. And, even with the tactical helmet, Cass would recognize the final member of Strike Team Kappa anywhere. “Bryant Nehemiah,” he rasps. “But you—you told Roma that?—”
Horror slams into him.
Roma tricked JJ. She trickedall of them.She conned her way into Cass’s house, gave the Sanctum his address, separated him from JJ?—
“JJ,” Cass whispers.
Bryant pulls off her helmet, her jaw set in a grim line. “Don’t worry. Roma’s taking good care of him. You might even get put in adjacent cells—at least, until we undo whatever you did to him.” She nods at the hunters next to her. “Find the kid, too.”
Panic jolts through Cass as the strike force storms down the hall, doubtlessly headed for Desi’s room. She might be safe with Ez and Obie right now, but the fact that the Sanctum is still looking for her is a bad sign. “What’s your game?” he manages, trying to look more confident than he feels—a difficult feat when he’s currently naked, wounded, and defenseless on the floor. “Why does the Sanctum want JJ back so badly?”
“Not sure. Council’s orders.” She leans forward, eyes narrowed. “ButIwant my friend back. Oh, and speaking of which—” The purple orb suddenly swells larger, and Cass throws back his head and screams as the corrosion claws through him.“That’sfor taking him away from us.”
Her words barely make sense in Cass’s ears, his entire brain consumed by the caustic pain. The spell splinters through his veins, digs into his bones, scrapes over all the most vulnerable parts of him, on and on for what feels like centuries?—
He almost doesn’t hear the new voice from the hallway. “No sign of the kid, Nehemiah.”
The pain simmers down again. “Where’s the wyvern, Chin?”
Cass’s laugh sounds raw in his own ears. “On another continent. Not sure which one. Good luck.”
Bryant’s jaw twitches. She turns to the hunter next to her. “Bring the van around for transport. Two out of three isn’t a bad day’s work, and Jackson and Chin are the highest priorities, anyway. Let’s head home.”
This time, the control sphere blazes to twice its original size, and this time, Cass barely has enough breath left in his lungs to scream before everything goes black.
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