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I glanced around and found one of the guards staring at me suspiciously. My hands tensed around Calaeno’s inert form, and it looked like we were going to have to start the distraction ahead of schedule.

But Charlie, bless his heart, showed impeccable timing. The ground began to tremble ever-so-slightly beneath our feet. Adrenaline pumped through my body, heightening my senses to a razor-sharp point. The tremors grew in strength and I had trouble staying on my feet, especially with the added burden of the Harpy on my shoulder.

Mac threw a questioning look over his shoulder, and I nodded. “Oh, goody,” I drawled, setting Calaeno on her feet just before the ground stopped shuddering. “It’s showtime.”

Mom lowered Sense and we shifted in unison. The Harpies raised their bound arms, stretching as far as the material allowed, and Mom and I slashed with well-placed swipes of our talons. Mac and Ellie were already occupied with two of our guards. The other four had barely managed to lift their weapons when we fell upon them. I disarmed my opponent easily, knocking his head against the wall and watching as he crumpled to the floor.

We subdued all six guards in less than a minute, but it didn’t matter. A group of technicians on the far side of the room saw us and fled in the opposite direction—after one of them tripped the nearest alarm.

Sirens blared and red lights flashed overhead. Normally, I might have freaked out, but the technicians had played right into our hands. We
wanted
all eyes focused on the six of us.

Mac gestured ahead to where a corridor intersected our own. “So where to now, big sister?”

I yanked out Dre’s magical BlackBerry and pulled up the electronic version of the map now stuffed into Charlie’s back pocket. It only took a moment to scroll to the area displaying the three choices spread out before us, but it was a moment too long.

The softest of sounds caught my attention. “Down!” I screamed, throwing myself at the person between the cocking gun and myself, careful to cradle the BlackBerry in one hand while striking with the other.

Elliana barely had time to get her hands underneath before I sent us both crashing to the ground. Even so, her chin whacked the cement floor ‘with an audible crack—just before bullets roared directly overhead.

“There!” I pointed to the bisecting hallway, where the barrel of a gun poked out from around the corner. Its wielder heard me and promptly darted out to send further gunfire blazing our way. Ellie and I rolled toward opposite walls while Mac and Mom ducked into an open doorway for cover. Calaeno and Sense, on the other hand, launched into the air, hurtling at the gunman at speeds my eyes couldn’t keep up with.
Damn, those girls are fast.

They hit the man hard, one from each side, claws and blood flying through the air. Harpies channeled Rage far

differently than Furies, since they lived just past its razor-sharp edge at all times, plunging deep into its depths whenever locked in combat. Also unlike Furies, they nearly always went for the killing blow. This time was no different.

I averted my gaze when the rest of us caught up to the Harpies standing over the bloodstained corpse.

Too many lives were at stake for me to get squeamish.

Calaeno’s yellow-green eyes bled to red at the edges, a sure sign of the bloodlust she’d just unleashed.

Her voice sounded amazingly calm when she spoke. “Which way?”

I consulted the map and pointed down the left side corridor. “That’s the direction the others will be coming from.” I jerked my hand toward the right. “But that’s the most likely place for them to keep—”

Something slammed into my side, throwing me several feet back the way I’d just come. A hammer slammed into my exposed abdomen, once, twice, three times, before I managed to get my hands into a protective pose. Shouts rang out, only some of them voices I recognized. My glance flew upward and I saw an unfriendly face I
did
recognize. The Sidheborn prick who’d mesmerized me at the softball field, then scurried away.

He still wore the same mortal guise as before, along with an absolute look of hatred. He raised his steel-toed boot to ram it against my stomach again, but this time I was ready. I grabbed on to the boot and twisted, throwing every ounce of my superhuman strength into the motion, using the momentum created by swinging him away to leap to my feet. He hit the wall with a thud but didn’t fall to the floor as I’d hoped.

“Ready to die, little Fury? I’m going to rip your throat out like you did my brother’s.”

His brother? Oops. No wonder he looked so pissed-off.

I spared a millisecond to check on the others. Voices

rose and fell in threats, grunts of pain, and plain old cursing. Several more Sidheborn clones pressed their attack on my companions, and it looked like they had the upper hand.

Movement flashed at the corner of my eye. I spun just in time, raising my arms to take the brunt of the Sidhe’s attack. Pain stabbed through both forearms as his boots snapped against them with sickening force. The bones remained intact, but just barely.

I shifted Nemesis and Nike from tattoos to spitting, hissing serpents. They blunted the pain shooting down my arms and turned their attention toward our opponent. Their sudden surge of anger indicated they’d also recognized the prick.

“The only throat that’s going to get ripped here is yours, traitor.”

He wove around me in a graceful dance, poised on the balls of his feet and hands raised in a martial pose. “No traitors here, Fury.”

I ducked one of his feints, twisting my body to keep his in front of me. Nemesis and Nike wound themselves around my waist, leaving my arms free to swing. “Sure you are. You’re actually helping the bastards who imprisoned your parents, raped and tortured them, and are doing the same thing to other arcanes. Sounds like a traitor to me.”

His eyes lit with insane fervor. “Those Sidhe freaks got no less than they deserved. Full-blooded arcanes are a plague upon the earth, sowing bloodshed and violence wherever they go. And since you won’t willingly go back to the realms where you belong, you must be made to with whatever weapons it takes.”

“Weapons like you?”

“Yes, living, breathing weapons like me. And once we crush your kind completely, our mortal brethren will eradicate all signs of arcane genes from our body, purifying us and allowing us to live in harmony with…” .

He rattled on a little more, but I shut his psychobabble out and tracked his every movement, tuning my body into the rhythm of his. When I saw a break, I leapt forward in a blur, jabbing talons toward his throat. And missed.

The prick both outfoxed and outmoved me, whipping his body around and behind mine and seizing me with ,an iron-hard grip. He slammed my body into his, hands digging into my upper arms painfully.

Nemesis and Nike surged toward him, but he ignored them. Hot, sickly-sweet breath fanned along my bare neck, tickling my ears and fanning toward my nostrils. “Didn’t anybody ever warn you not to let a Sidhe get hold of you twice, little girl? You’re mine, now.”

And I was. Horror flooded through my brain when I tried to push away from him—and couldn’t.

Nemesis and Nike reached my arms and spat venom in the one and only warning shot he was going to get. But he didn’t need the warning. They did.

His tongue flicked against my ear, raising competing shivers of pleasure and revulsion. “Banish the Amphisbaena.” I shuddered, but did as he asked, returning Nemesis and Nike to tat form. His words had become music to my ears. I wanted only to please him.

And yet, that seemed somehow wrong. The sounds of feet slapping the ground, flesh hitting flesh, and cries of pain coming from the crossroads drew my gaze. I wanted to give a cry of my own, wanted to warn them I was in trouble, but couldn’t.

He turned me to face him, and this time I did whimper. He dropped the veil of mortality, flashing a smile filled with razor-sharp teeth that glinted in the harsh fluorescent glare. Silvery-white skin, glittering copper eyes, and darker copper-colored hair that had never graced mortalkind paid proof to his Sidhe heritage, but his rows of sharklike teeth made me wonder exactly
what
creature Sidhe DNA had been blended with to create him. Then he snapped those teeth and I decided I did
not
want to know.

“I said I’d rip your throat out, Fury. And Sidhe always keep their promises.”

Terror battled my sudden intense need to please him. He’d lessened the trance just enough to let me know what was coming. Bastard. Tears slipped down my cheeks as he lowered his head, a cruel smile playing about his lips. Funny, I’d never imagined it ending like this, and I’d been close to death a hundred times or more. I closed my eyes and prepared to die, waiting for those horrible teeth to close around my throat.

“And a Warhound always defends his mate.”

My eyes snapped open just in time to see silver burst through the Sidhe’s chest and slash downward.

Blood spurted, coating my vest and pants thickly. The Sidhe gave a single, startled sound and then crumpled to the floor, revealing a very pissed-off Scott. He yanked a wicked-looking blade from the Sidhe’s back, It sizzled, glowing with unnatural silver light, and the blood dissolved in an instant. One of the weps we’d picked up from Al.

He sheathed the blade and took two quick steps forward, ‘jerking me into his arms and planting a bruising kiss on my lips. His hands moved to my cheeks, brushing my tears away with tenderness in direct opposition to the punishing kiss. Gentle and rough, darkness and light. No wonder I loved him so much.

A dozen things to say buzzed through my mind. “Did you mean it?” I blinked because that had been the last thing ‘I’d expected to pass my lips.

He pushed me away slightly so he could see my face. “What?”

“When you called me your mate. Did you mean it?”

His eyes seared mine hotter than the Phoenix’s flash and burn. “I’m a man of my word, baby. You know that.”

My lips trembled and I was dangerously close to a crying jag. And the middle of the mess we were in was hardly the place for that. I broke away from him, struggling to get back into the ass-kicking frame of mind. Suddenly, the incongruity of what had just happened hit me. “Hey, how the hell did you get here from that direction? The Giants were supposed to tunnel in through the other corridor.”

“They did. Once they broke through, I assumed doggie
form and circled around to provide cover.

Good thing I

did, too.”

This time, I jerked
him
close for one hard kiss.

Gunfire punctuated the sounds of fighting that were still going on behind us. We nodded at each other, turned, and ran straight into the fray, he with sword swinging and I with talons—and restored Amphisbaena—at hand. And damned if I didn’t have the biggest, scariest grin on my face. As The Thing would have said, it was clobbering time.

MADNESS HAD BROKEN OUT IN THE CROSS
roads. A dozen more Sidheborn clones and mortals, along with some welcome reinforcements from our own group, had waded into the battle. Charlie towered in front of Trin, providing a bulletproof shelter from which she darted out to take well-aimed shots with the Sig. She was a damned good shot, too; miles better than I’d even been. I was an up-close-and-personal kind of gal.

Which was my way of saying that, other than up close,

my aim sucked.

My eyes ran over our allies, anxiously searching for the ones I loved most. Mac looked bruised but mostly intact, dividing his attention—and his wep—between a mortal guard on his left and a female Sidhe to his right. Elliana was in Hound form, darting in and out to take chunks of enemy flesh from legs that came too close to her canines. Mom had taken a rage from the Harpies’ earlier tactic, leaping into the air, swooping down, and raking claws across any exposed ‘backs she could reach.

Speaking of the Harpies, Calaeno was currently guarding Serise’s back while she took off down the right-hand branch of the intersecting hallway. Serise’s eyes flashed and her nostrils flared as she sniffed the air. That immediately caught my attention.

I turned to Scott. “I think she has Olivia’s trail again.”

He nodded. “Theø1 you have to go.”

My glance flew back to my friends and allies scattered about the left side branch. I bit my lip. Part of me wanted nothing more than go leap into the fight, rending and ripping those who dared raise hands and weapons against them. But the rest of me—the rest of me remembered the deathbed vow made to the dearest friend I’d ever had.

Scott smacked me on the ass. “Get while the getting’s good, idiot! We’ll give you as much time as we can.”

I planted a kiss on his lips and ran after the Harpies. Calaeno gave me an approving nod as I jogged up.

“Serise says the girl is very close.”

“Good. The others
are going to buy us enough time to track them down. But we have to hurry.”

“Of course.” We fell in step with Serise, eyes roaming the hall and the branching hallways we came across, seeking any signs of trouble that Serise, in full-on hunting mode, would miss. She led us in an unerring path down the corridor, straying from her arrow-straight path only once to lead us down a narrow, dimly lit hallway that raised the hairs along my neck and arms. Nemesis and Nike writhed along my arms, radiating unease. Something was definitely giving us all the heebie-jeebies. Even Calaeno the unflappable seemed to feel it. She stepped in front of Serise when the hall dead-ended at a reinforced steel door.

The other Harpy tilted her head as if listening to some voice we couldn’t hear. She raised her hand and pointed at the door. “There,” she said in a singsong voice straight from one of those evil-children horror movies that scared the bejeebus out of me. “They’re both in there.”

A grim smile split my lips. “Excellent. We’ll kill two birds with one stone. And however many assholes get in our way.”

Calaeno spared a smile of her own. “I like your thinking, Fury. Now, let’s go.” She stepped forward, digging her talons into each side of the door. Sickly green light pulsed along her hands. A low humming sound throbbed rhythmically, setting my teeth on edge as it echoed through the air. It reached a fever pitch, and then her talons slid
inside
the door. Her back muscles strained as she bent slightly. grunted in effort, and ripped the door completely off its perfectly solid, made-from-steel hinges.