Vindicated by Bella Klaus

Chapter Seventeen

My hackles rose. My ears pulled back and lay flat against my head. I splayed out all four legs for balance, and reached into my bond with Fenrir.

“Something’s happening in the square,” I said into the bond.

“What is it? I’m on my way.”

“Lydia,” Umber’s voice shook. “Tell Alpha.”

I barked, hoping he would understand that I’d already gotten in contact.

Without another word, he sprinted into the square, and yelled at everyone to evacuate.

“Lydia!”Fenrir’s panicked voice echoed in my skull.

“It’s an earthquake,” I said.

“Fly above it,”he growled.

“What?”

“Get in the sky. I won’t have you getting caught.”

Tremors shook the ground. Subtle at first, like the paving stone I’d stood on that had been rattled by the movement of water running down the drain.

Some of the people ran to the square’s outer edges, while others remained in place. I guess they were hoping it would subside.

“I don’t see a flying wolf in the air,” Fenrir growled.

Shit.

I leaped upward and launched above the stores, my wings unfurling. The air was still, even though the rumble continued under the ground. Every bird in Lunaris flew around in manic circles, some of them crashing into my wings.

“Okay,”I said, my voice shaking. “I’m in the sky.”

His relief was so palpable, I felt it through the bond. “I’m a few minutes away. Tell me what’s happening.”

My gaze swept across the square. The rumbling hadn’t gotten any louder, but from the way some of the shifters below splayed their arms out for balance and others stumbled to the side, the tremors had intensified.

Vehicles driving around the square stopped moving, and as the seconds passed, the people below fell to their hands and knees. My breaths became shallow. How on earth was this happening?

“What’s happening?” Fenrir’s voice cut through my shock.

“It’s getting worse,”I said.

“You think that creature is responsible?”

I gulped. “It didn’t seem that powerful, but who else could be behind it?”

“Hel.”

Of course. She had practically threatened revenge yesterday while burning down the courtroom, and with the amount of demons under her command, she was capable of anything. Hell, she had made the ground shake during my heat.

The stalls wobbled, and even the hotdog van swayed from side to side. Umber and the other enforcers ran through the square, their steps unsteady, trying to usher people to safety.

“Shit,” Fenrir growled.

“What’s happened?”I asked.

“We had to stop the car.”

“It’s reached the road?”I asked.

“We’re outside the square and getting there on foot,” he said. “This has to be someone burrowing through the wards.”

“If they’ve reached Lunaris, then they must have gotten to Logris first,” I said. “Even if the Council doesn’t give a shit about shifters, they can’t stand by and let this happen.”

Fenrir’s harsh laugh made my fur stand on end. “You should know by now. Those bastards are capable of anything.”

A cacophony of crashes, smashes, car alarms and screams rose from the sky. Shop displays tumbled to the ground and rooflines fell off the stores, splintering onto the sidewalks below. Trees swayed, lampposts shook, and the stalls below collapsed. I released a snarl. Whoever was doing this to our village would pay.

I flew a loose circle around the square, looking out to make sure nobody got trampled as they moved to safety. Dogs and cats and other small animals sprinted out of the way, but the earthquake became so bad that people had to crouch down.

A tight fist of terror squeezed my heart. The wards should have held.

“Have you spoken to Mum?”I asked.

“That attack diminished Sybil’s strength,”he said. “The apprentices are doing whatever they can.”

Then everything went quiet.

I surveyed the space below. Debris from the stores lay strewn across the sidewalk and cracks formed in the gaps between the cobblestones. Most of the people who had evacuated didn’t hang around and scattered further down the roads that led to other parts of the village.

“Fenrir?”I asked into our bond.

“We’re trying to help a family stuck in an SUV,” he said. “Is everyone all right?”

“Umber and the other enforcers have got it under control. Did the earthquake spread any further than the streets around the square?”

“No,” he replied. “But thank fuck you predicted the location of the next attack. I would have left all my men in the woods.”

“Well, it looks like they’ve stopped,” I said.

Fenrir growled. “If the Council is behind this—”

“Then it’s war.” I gazed down into the square to find people coming back to survey the damage. “Listen, maybe this bride competition you’ve set up for Dolph was a good idea. If we can attract shifters from other packs to settle into Logris, their presence might strengthen the city.”

“And its wards,”Fenrir said with a grunt of approval. “The sooner we fill the other villages, the safer Logris will become for all of us.”

An almighty boom filled my ears, and the air trembled from the aftershock. Birds tumbled from the sky, some of them hitting me on the way down.

“Lydia!”

The hotdog van toppled over and descended into a sinkhole. Screams spread across the square only to be muffled as people disappeared into an expanding crater.

Cold shock slammed into my gut.

The earth had opened up and was devouring shifters.

Without thinking about it, I pulled back my wings and dove down into the square, through the hole, into the dark, and chased after the falling people.

“Lydia!”

My mind went blank. All I could say was, “Come quickly.”

It was like quicksand. Worse, because the ground was sinking at a faster rate than it was sucking up the villagers. A few of them transformed and used their lighter body weight to crawl on their bellies and cling to the hole’s walls, but other shifters remained in their human forms.

“Lydia,” Fenrir growled. “You’ve disappeared from the sky.”

My gaze caught a red hoodie attached to a small figure flailing their arms. I swooped toward them, my heart beating faster than a drum. Everything around me—the soil, the stones, the climbing shifters—it all disappeared, and it was me and the hoodie dropping out of reach.

Another thunderous boom accelerated the sinkhole’s descent.

Panic spiked. Tilting, I dropped down head-first like a stone and plummeted. Gravity pulled me down toward the disappearing child. I sliced my wings through the air with another burst of speed.

Alarm bells rang through my skull. I had to save that child.

Fenrir might have shouted something into our bond. Whatever he said was muffled by the roar of blood through my ears. I was free falling. Falling through the ground with my gaze locked on that scrap of red fabric.

Magic shimmered across my skin as I passed an invisible barrier. The temperature rose, and my nostrils filled with the scents of earth and blood. Streams of light flared through the ground, bringing with them the overpowering scent of brimstone.

Bloody hell. This was just like my last nightmare of Marchosias.

In an instant, I was on my target. I opened my jaws and caught the child by the hood. Triumph roared through my chest, but a voice in the back of my mind screamed that this was a trap.

The child’s weight strained the muscles of my jaws, and the cords of my neck ached from the burden of pulling him from the earth. I flapped once, twice, three times, before he came free. Then with another beat of my wings, I righted myself and tilted up my head.

Earth surrounded us at all angles—including overhead. Above us stretched a tunnel of about a hundred feet, maybe more. The distance to the surface was more than a ten-story building.

Anxiety knitted through my stomach, making it churn. Until now, I hadn’t realized how far I’d fallen.

“Lydia.”Fenrir’s bellow hit like a bludgeon. “Get out of there now. The cavity is closing!”

The light streaming down from the opening dimmed. The child in my jaws screamed and squirmed and flailed. I thrashed my wings, trying to propel myself up through the narrowing space, but I was moving too slowly.

A boulder of dread plummeted through my stomach. This wasn’t going to work. The ground was closing in on us at an alarming rate. Fenrir appeared at the edge of the crater, reaching down from the ledge with his arm outstretched.

My pulse pounded a rapid beat, urging me to fly harder, faster, to reach safety before we got trapped.

A heavy weight pulled us down, and the child cried out.

One of Queen Hel’s red-skinned demons glared up at me, his arms wrapped around the child.

“Release the boy or I will tear off his legs,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Stop it,” the child screamed.

Clamping my jaws tighter around the hoodie, I flapped harder. Frustration welled through my insides. If only I could blow fire in the bastard’s face.

The demon roared. “Let go, or I will crush his little throat.”

Before I could act, a heavy fist landed on the back of my head. My jaws opened, and the demon snatched the child from my grip.

“This makes our mission much easier.” He folded his wings and plummeted toward the bottom.

Another fist struck my temple hard enough to send me spinning across the crater. I slammed head-first into the soil wall with a painful thud.

“Lydia.”Fenrir’s voice sliced through my haze. “Return.”

A different demon flew toward me on leathery wings, his yellow eyes gleaming with malice. “Your turn.”

I opened my mouth and spewed a stream of fire, hitting the demon in the face.

“Bitch.” He lurched backward with an agonized roar.

Fenrir’s power surged through my body and took control.

“Return,” he yelled.

Without volition, I raised my head and flew up through the narrowing chute, with the demon’s claws around my hind leg. The weight of a seven-foot muscle-bound demon should have dragged me down, but Fenrir’s power kept me going.

“Lydia?”His voice was breathy with panic.

“Someone’s trying to pull me down,”I said.

“Who?” he snarled.

A second hand grabbed my other leg and yanked. I stopped ascending, and my lungs released a howl.

“Your sister’s henchmen,” I replied. “They took the boy I was trying to save.”

Fenrir’s fury surged through our bond, and filled my veins with a cold blast of power. “Fight them,” he said, his voice filled with command. “Return to me, now.”

The opening above us narrowed, and the earthen walls closed in around me until the soil held my wings in place.

More light streamed from below than from above, and the familiar scents and sounds of Hell overwhelmed my senses. My wings cleaved through the tapering cavern and propelled me toward the surface.

An avalanche of dirt tumbled from above. I dipped my head, closed my eyes, clamped my jaws, and tried to breathe. This was worse than falling through Hell, worse than clawing my way out of a grave.

“I’m coming.” My jaw clenched, and every muscle in my body strained from the weight of the demons trying to drag me down. Fenrir’s power surged through every bone, every vein, every muscle, and kept me going.

When a tingle of magic touched my nose, my lungs expanded with relief.

“The wards,”I cried through the bond.

“Are you close?” he asked.

“I’ve reached the edge.”

“Keep going,”Fenrir said, his voice breaking.

The claws at the ends of my wings snagged on something that felt like cloth, reminding me of my failure to rescue the child. As I tore it apart, my chest filled with a sob. “The demons took that boy.”

“We’ll deal with them together. Just come back to me.”

My head passed the wards, followed by my neck, my wings, my chest. I kept going, welcoming the tingle of power against my flank, my rump, my tail. As my hind legs traveled through the magical barrier, the scent of searing flesh pierced my nostrils.

With ear-shattering screams, the demons released my hind legs. The weight pulling me down vanished, and my wings tore through the earth.

“The wards just burned off the demons’ hands,” I said.

“Good,”he growled.

I continued through the soil at a rapid pace, propelled even faster by Fenrir’s magic. Just as I thought my lungs would burn with a lack of air, my head breached the surface, and I took a noisy breath.

Every muscle in my body burned from crawling through all that dirt. The ache spread into my bones and reached the marrow, and light streamed into my eyes.

I blinked to focus my vision and found the square a mess of soil, sunken stalls, and debris. Naked people lay around us—some still in their animal forms, while Healer Asena and some of the other physicians from her clinic tended to their wounds.

Fenrir hooked his arms beneath my forelegs, extracted me from the soil, cradled me to his chest, and carried me through the square.

“I thought I’d lost you to those bastards,”he rasped.

“If it wasn’t for your power, they would have taken me.”I released a pained whine. “Sorry for making you worry.”

He placed a kiss on my muzzle. “Never apologize for trying to do the right thing.”

“People got sucked into that hole,”I said, my voice shaking as hard as my limbs. “I don’t know how many managed to escape, but demons came at us from beneath the wards and carried them to Hell.”

We reached the edge of the square, where a line of armed enforcers blocked off the road. They parted for Fenrir, letting us continue down the street toward a white tent.

I rested my head against Fenrir’s shoulder and sighed. “What are we going to do about the stolen villagers?”

“Tell me what you saw from the beginning.”

He stepped into the tent, a cool white space that was larger on the inside and lined with over twenty cots. Only half were occupied, some of them containing creatures as small as rodents. I didn’t recognize any of the medics tending to the injured villagers, making me wonder if they’d come from the hospital.

Fenrir stopped at the cot in the far corner, and laid me on my side. “Don’t see this as a failure.” He stared down at me, his eyes shining with compassion, and ran a gentle hand over the fur on my back. “They’re saying the casualties would have been much worse if you hadn’t disrupted market day.”

My throat thickened. He was right, but that didn’t stop the gut-wrenching guilt that twisted through my insides. Nor did it ease the bitter taste in my mouth from having the little boy snatched from my jaws.

“What if it was just a coincidence?” I asked.

“Explain.” Fenrir stepped back to allow a healer to step forward.

She was a silver-haired witch with eyes as dark as the midnight sky. I could barely hear what she was saying through the ringing in my ears, but it looked like she was asking permission to perform a spell.

I gave her a brief nod, and she erected a bubble of yellow magic. It hit me like thousands of pinpricks to my skin, making me flinch, but a moment later, the burning in my muscles subsided to a dull ache. With a relieved breath, I let my eyes flutter shut, and I focussed on my conversation with Fenrir.

“That piece of Marchosias’ power managed to sink into a tree, right?”

“Correct,” he replied.

“What if he burrowed beneath the square at the same time your sister’s henchmen were trying to find their way in?”

Fenrir grunted. “Hel probably stationed demons beneath the wards to take advantage of weaknesses.”

“She’s got enough of them at her command,”I muttered. “Besides, they only attacked once we’d passed the wards.”

“Shit,” he said. “Do you really think that scrawny piece of Marchosias could cause that much damage?”

“You said it attacked Mum and left her without power.”

When Fenrir didn’t reply, I cracked an eye open to find him breathing hard through his fury. His turquoise eyes were pale from the tiny sparks of white-hot power sparking through his irises. I gulped. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that the thing that Mum and her trainee shamans had lifted off me was capable of stealing her magic.

“Alpha.” Umber jogged to our side, holding up his phone.

“What is it?” Fenrir growled without looking at his beta.

He held up his screen to landscape mode. “It’s from the Sixth Faction of Hell.”

As though synchronized by magic, both of us glowered at the handset.

I’d been to Hell before. What I had seen consisted of flaming Ferris wheels hurtling through a black void among other instruments of torture. The scene playing out on Umber’s screen was nothing like what I’d witnessed.

A giant skull with curved horns hovered above a stone dais, which held a throne obscured by flames. Surrounding it were metallic walls that formed a large dome. It was hard to tell the room’s exact size. Hundreds of demons crowded around the base of the dais. Some wore metallic armor, others were just clad in their scales. A pair of dragons stood at each side of a staircase that led to the throne and stared out at the demons with fiery eyes.

My breath caught. This was beyond horrific.

Fenrir growled. “Show yourself and put an end to the theatrics.”

A rasping chuckle echoed from the speakers. It was barely female, but I would recognize the sound of Fenrir’s sister anywhere. “Come closer.”

Whoever held the phone or camera or broadcasting enchantment swooped down over the demons’ heads, up the stone staircase and paused in front of the throne.

Up close, and without the flames obscuring the view, the throne consisted of a misshapen hand fashioned into a chair with five elongated claws as a canopy. If I had hands, or any energy left in my limbs, I would have clutched them to my chest.

“Enough,” Fenrir roared.

Hel walked into the frame wearing a red halter-neck dress tailored to her uneven figure. The camera zoomed in to highlight the chunky silver jewelry that matched a familiar-looking ring on her withered finger.

My eyes narrowed. “What’s that ring?”

“It marks her rulership of the Sixth Faction,” Fenrir said. “It’s the only way a weakling like her could wield so much power.”

“Right.” I licked my snout. “I’m sure I’ve seen something like that on King Hades.”

“It’s possible, since he’s in charge of the Fifth.”

She lowered herself onto the seat and crossed her legs. “Do I have your attention, brother?”

“What do you want?” he growled.

“A trade.” She raised her healthy hand, shooing someone back.

The person holding the camera panned out to a wide shot of the dais, where the demons who accompanied her everywhere jostled about twelve people up the stone staircase. I recognized enough of them, including the little boy in a red hoodie, to know that these were the villagers who had been sucked into the earth.

My jaw clenched, and my insides warred between rage and relief. They were alive, but for how long?

Hel rested her chin on her steepled fingers, both sides of her face grinning. “Step outside the wards and hand yourself over, or your little shifters will burn.”

The volume and ferocity of his snarl made everyone in the tent freeze. My gaze snapped to Fenrir, whose features twisted into a rictus of fury.

“If you so much as harm these innocent people—”

“I will broadcast their deaths across Supernatural London unless you walk out of those wards and hand yourself to my attendants.” She wagged her blackened finger. “I act in the name of justice. Justice, which you have eluded for too long. Your place is in Hell with me, and not among these mortals.”

Blood roared through my ears, and my pulse pounded hard enough to make my limbs twitch. She didn’t care about justice. Not when she was threatening to murder shifters. All Queen Hel cared about was getting Fenrir under her control.

Her rusty cackle grated on my nerves.

“You have until dawn. Plenty of time to announce to your new worshippers that you’re a false god.”

Fenrir snatched the phone and threw it onto the ground, making it smash against the hard floor. Umber stared at his broken handset and frowned.

“Bloody bitch,” he hissed. “She’s given me no choice.”

My tail sagged, and the rest of my body went limp with defeat.

I couldn’t let Fenrir step out of those wards and hand himself over to Hel, but I also couldn’t let those innocent people die.

Fenrir’s gaze locked onto mine. The light in his eyes dimmed, and our bond went silent.

My stomach plummeted.

Fenrir was going to sacrifice himself to Hel.