Page 90 of Peacemaker

His eyes held a bright spark of savagery that I hadn’t seen before. No matter what he was, or what he’d done, only the rifters would ever bring out that particular spark.

And then the visitors came. As though everything wasn’t quite bad enough, wasn’t quite chaotic enough, the visitors came.

Not just one.

I felt them pounding on the walls of the way station, urgent, terrible, and I knew who they were.

The elders had followed the rifters. They, however, couldn’t just come. They couldn’t force their way through invisible walls of Willow-Wisp.

They had to come through the way station. Through me.

I screamed with the pain of it, the pressure, but I shoved it away as best I could. “I can’t go yet,” I cried, my voice hoarse. “Find Shane.”

“Trinity—”

“Find Shane!”

And I wielded Silverlight with renewed energy, with desperation, with speed. Still, the rifters came. Not dozens of them.

Hundreds.

It was too much, very nearly, to comprehend.

Then Amias flung Shane at my feet, his face a mask of rage. Shane had fought him.

But Shane was injured, bloody and pale, and I didn’t care about his anger.

I forced Silverlight into his hand. “You stay alive,” I told him. “I can’t lose you.”

“You cannot give her away,” Amias yelled, then turned to tear apart a rifter at his back. “She may not come to you again.”

That was a chance I was willing to take.

Fight for Shane. Protect him. Kill for him. That’s what I told her. She was the only hope my hunter had of surviving the night.

A rifter, in a blur of speed, reached for me. Almost before I could react, a blade shot through his body and he fell, and Clayton stood behind him. “Go, Trinity. We can’t hold them.”

I glanced back once before Amias took me out of there. Clayton and Shane fought back to back, one with a black blade and one with silver, my silver, as they cut through the horror and tried to stay alive.

And then I left them there.

I wrapped my arms and legs around Amias and he carried me to my car. I hid my face and listened to his grunts as he killed, to the screams of the humans, the roars of the rifters, and the savage growls, howls, and death screams of supernaturals pouring into the city.

They were few, though, compared with the rifters, and I wondered how many would remain when the night was over.

I felt sudden warmth, strange and wet, at my back. “What—?”

“Jade Noel,” Amias said, his voice low and harsh. “She lent us a temporary circle of protection. Hold on to me. I will run.”

And despite the fact that my back was to the wind, I lost my breath when he ran. The pressure was excruciating—I was underwater, unable to breathe or hear as someone rammed a car against my body. That was what it felt like.

The seconds he ran felt like an eternity but then I was at my car, on the ground, drawing air into my aching lungs.

“No time,” Amias said, and yanked me to my feet. He shoved me into the car. “I will meet you at the graveyard. Hurry.”

I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled, but I started the car, tried to block out the images of the slaughter going on around me, and rammed my foot down on the gas.

My car shuddered and jerked as I ran over whatever—whoever—stood in my way. I ground my teeth and drove on. I had my place in the battle, but it wasn’t in the city. Not yet.