Fallen University: Year Three

“Go!” I shoved Buford toward the kitchen just as fallen began spilling out of the foyer and into the hall where we stood.

Fuck.

These weren’t Gavriel’s soldiers. They were his minions—the ones he’d been unleashing on earth in greater numbers for the past year to turn more and more humans.

And they looked hungry as hell.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Oh, shit.”

Jayce’s muttered words perfectly summed up my feelings about our situation as we watched a pack of underworld creatures barrel toward us. There had to be close to a dozen of them, demons and gargoyles and a few monsters I couldn’t identify.

“Run!” I screamed.

There was a time to take a stand and fight, and there was a time to book it as fast as you could, and we were definitely in the latter situation right now. Not only were we outnumbered, but if we had this showdown here, there was a very good chance the humans in the house would end up dead—collateral damage in a fight that would probably raze the house.

I turned on my heel and bolted for the back door, with my men and Hannah hot on my heels.

Fuck. Is it just a coincidence that these fallen showed up here? Were they just looking for more humans to turn? Or were they looking for us?

No time to think about it now.

We careened through the halls of the massive mansion, dodging blasts of fire sent at us from the demons on our tail.

Xero raised a hand and hurled a fireball behind us, not even bothering to turn around enough to aim properly. He caught the hellhound on the shoulder though, and the thing stumbled as its fur caught fire.

“Nice shot!” I yelled.

A second later, we burst out of the house into the cool fall air. One of the topiary animals ahead of us exploded in a shower of leaves and twigs as a blast hit it, and I ducked quickly, still sprinting as fast as I could.

“Right!”

Kingston waved his arm wildly, and we all veered in that direction, racing alongside the rear of the house.

The property was so fucking huge that we were nowhere near the edge of it, and I was starting to get a bad feeling about our chances of outrunning our pursuers.

Maybe Jayce felt the same way, because he glanced over his shoulder and panted, “Should we use a portal?”

“Can’t,” I huffed back, keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead, arms and legs pumping as hard as I could. “If they lose us, they’ll go back into the house.”

“Fuck.” He grimaced, picking up his speed slightly.

“There!”

Kingston pointed again, and I let out a groan of relief as I followed the line of his finger. A massive detached garage loomed ahead of us. Fuck, yes. If we couldn’t escape by magical means, then at least we wouldn’t have to do it on foot. I’d gotten into pretty good shape after all my training at FU and having to survive in the underworld, but I really only ran like this if something was chasing me.

Which, you know, things were.

When we reached the garage, Kingston yanked open a door on the side. “Wait here!” he called before disappearing into the large space.

“Yeah, okay. We’ll just be here then,” Jayce called after him, rolling his eyes as he panted for breath.

Xero was lobbing more balls of fire at our attackers, and Hannah, who’d obviously been doing all her homework like the sweet little nerd she was, used some kind of levitation spell to lift the monsters at the front of the pack a foot or so off the ground and slam them back into the creatures behind them, creating a sort of fallen pile-up.

Still, it didn’t keep them down for long. One of the gargoyle flexed its massive stone wings and took to the sky, slipping out of the tangle of bodies and making a beeline for us.

Shit. Would persuasion work on a rock?