55
Jaxson
The two possessed fuckers lunged as soon as the door opened.
I charged forward and rammed my shoulder into the chest of the first and sent him flying to the other end of the bridge. The second werewolf rammed his claws into my chest and pressed me backward so I was leaning half over the guardrail.
I hooked one leg between the bars of the railing so that I didn’t slip, and then, with a single swift motion, I seized the bastard and heaved him up and over my head. His claws tore into my flesh, but they ripped free as he fell. I turned to watch his body disappear into the whirling maelstrom of magic and sleeping gas below.
Savy was on the other werewolf before he could get all the way up. She slapped her hand on his back and released a jolt of magic that drove him straight down into the ground.
I ran over and prodded him with my boot, but he was unconscious.
Whether Savy was aware of it, her power was growing. Fast.
Chests heaving, we peered over the side of the bridge. The lower levels of the prison were in chaos, and of course, Dragan in the body of the Crusher stood in the eye of the storm. He looked up at us and pointed with a massive grin.
Suddenly, werewolf cultists from the second level swung themselves out onto the railings and began climbing toward us, moving from level to level.
This was going to get messy.
I turned to Savannah, Devi, and the agent. “I’ll go this way to keep them distracted. You three take the stairs, and I’ll join you at the bottom. We need to take out Dragan before his ritual is complete!”
I turned, grabbed the guardrail, and hurled myself to the seventh-floor railing below.
I wrapped my claws around the bars of the guardrail that fenced in the landing and looked down. Having already reached the third floor below me, the werewolves were using the same route to climb up.
The metal posts reverberated next to me, and I whipped my head around.
It was Savy, clinging to the guardrails for dear life.
“What are you doing here?” I growled. “I said take the stairs! Are you trying to break your neck?”
“I’m trying to break Dragan’s neck,” she snapped, then dropped a level to the railing of the sixth floor below.
A madwoman. My mate was a madwoman.
I jumped down to her position, catching the railing with my claws and swinging to her side. “Are you crazy? Two weeks ago, you were afraid to climb down a cliff.”
“The thought of the Dark God loose in Magic Side really puts things in perspective. Anyway, you jumped first.” Then she leapt down to the fifth level, and with a grunt of frustration, I followed.
We were only two levels above the ascending werewolf cultists. One howled in mad delight, and they scrambled upward toward the fourth floor.
At that moment, Savannah cloaked the lower railing in shadow. There were shouts of surprise as the werewolves flew into the darkness, and then a metallic clang and sounds of scrabbling. One howled and dropped from the shadows.
“Hoped I’d get more of them,” Savy grumbled, and then she jumped down into the darkness.
“Fuck!” I shouted. Did she forget I couldn’t see in there, just like the werewolves? Or was she so hot under the collar that she was going to take them on solo?
Well, that’s what you were planning to do,my wolf observed.
That’s because I’m a godsdamned alpha. I flipped down onto the fourth-floor walkway as a bloodcurdling shriek echoed out from the patch of darkness. A werewolf flew back, sparking with Savy’s magic.
I flipped myself over onto the catwalk, then rushed forward on foot into the darkness. “I need to see, godsdamn it!”
The black cloud of shadows vanished, revealing an inmate with white eyes clinging to the other side of the rail. I recognized him as one of the bikers from Pere Cheney. Reaching through the high bars, I grabbed him by the head, which I rammed against the metal rails again and again until his grip loosened. He dropped unconscious to the ground below.
“Nice wo—” Savannah’s shout turned into a scream as the entire railing suddenly shuddered and bent inward. Her grip slipped.
I lunged forward and caught her hand before she plummeted, then pulled her up and over the twisted rail onto the catwalk.
Dragan had landed on the railing only twenty feet away. His new host was more like a giant than a man, a behemoth of flesh and swollen muscle. He couldn’t have weighed less than four hundred pounds, and his landing had bent the railing inward.
The monster heaved himself over the crushed rail onto the catwalk and eagerly flexed the fingers of his hands that were the size of my head.
The Crusher.
Before we could move, he hurled himself down the catwalk toward us with deceptive speed.
I pushed Savannah out of the way and took the brunt of his blow.
My body hurtled backward through the air, and I slammed into the bars of a jail cell. Pain shot through my newly fractured ribs, and I wheezed for air.
But there was no time to breathe.
The monster swung at Savannah. She moved like the wind, and his fist rammed into the wall. It cracked, and concrete crumbled away. One blow could kill a man.
He pulled back, but Savannah shot low beneath his grasp, gouging his leg with her Soul Knife.
He roared, and his head shifted into that of a wolf. She dodged his snapping jaws, but his backhand caught her and sent her skidding across the ground.
“You could have been like me, Savannah. But now, you will become nothing!” He flicked his hand and sent a wave of fire in her direction.
With his back turned to me, I sprang forward and sunk my claws into his neck. But his muscles were so thick, it was like cutting into steel. He rammed himself into the wall, trying to crush me, but I twisted away just in time.
“You think you can stop this? That time has passed!” he roared as the chanting of the possessed inmates surged from below, resounding to a fever pitch. With a single swift motion, the beast seized a cell door and ripped it off its hinges. He swung, bashing me backward down the walk.