Page 51 of Your Final Resting Place

We had more than one vampire too.

The werewolf lunged again, and snapped its teeth together, too close for my liking.

I kicked out. My heel smacked its snout. A whimper sounded and the werewolf vanished, toppling outside the racing car.

“Hold on!” the driver yelled. He slammed on the brakes.

Tires screamed on asphalt and the sudden deceleration flung me against the back of the passenger seat. I dropped, slumped in the rear footwell. This had not been part of the plan.

“What the fu—” The windshield exploded and the driver’s final words lodged in his throat, stuck there by an enormous tentacle made of thick, oily darkness.

We had extra company.

“Adam!” Victor threw himself into back of the car, grabbed me under the arms and lifted me out of the footwell, onto the back seat. “Cain’s here. And he’s brought a sizable force. We are currently outnumbered.”

I held Victor’s panicked, swirling mercury eyes. “Alright, we can do this. You got your phone?”

He nodded.

We were going to need more help.

Tendrils of shadow looped around Victor’s middle and snapped him from my arms, out the back of the car.

Snarls and growls sounded outside.

It was time.

“Gideon Cain,” I vowed. “Let’s show the world what you’re really made of.”

I climbed across the back seat and hopped out of the car. People scattered, abandoning their vehicles on the bridge . . . and up ahead, under the first huge tower, stood Gideon Cain. He’d clearly had a rough few days, which had probably started around the time Agatha’s jewelry store got broken into and his plans to contain my power were stolen. Then Agatha was killed, and all her notes on Cain had been sent to the press. He’d been exposed as a megalomanic, and an unregistered sorcerer. After that, someone had trashed his security at home, and sent him a dead demon pimp in a crate.

Yeah, the stress showed in his crazy salt and pepper hair and unshaven face, but mostly in the fact he wasn’t even trying to hide behind human glamor anymore.

“Adam Vex!” Gideon roared. An aura of sparkling smoke pulsed around him. His human features had been stretched over inhuman bones—his glamor too sharp, too surreal. He’d gone beyond caring what people thought. “There you are. Outside your wards and finally mine.”

Whiplike tendrils of shadow lashed from his aura. All that darkness . . . that rage and hate? That was the true heart of him. A vicious, hateful creature who wanted more and more power. But mine had eluded him.

“Did you think your little ruse would work?” Gideon laughed and began walking forward. “Did you think I’d fall for your pathetic lies?” Closer, he strode. So confident. So full of himself. I was human, and no risk to him. Or so he believed.

Cain stopped with a few strides left between us. “The text messages, the fake news. Did you think I wouldn’t know this is a setup?” His dark eyes were bottomless pits that drilled down into his dark soul.

I’d known he was a monster in disguise, but seeing it was something else.

I smiled back at him and thrust my hands into my pockets. “Do you think I wouldn’t know that you’d know this was a setup?”

“What nonsense are you spouting, boy?” he snapped.

Alright, maybe that hadn’t been clear. “I mean . . . This is obviously a setup, right? So of course I’d know that you’d know it’s a setup.”

“I do know. I just told you that. Your ruse didn’t work.”

“I’m agreeing with you. It’s obvious. Like you said.”

Cain frowned, then snarled. “Have you lost your mind as well as your power? Enough. Come with me, and I’ll see to it your associates aren’t harmed.”

Speaking of associates, Victor blurred to my side, fangs and claws on display. He’d been fighting, so he had that dramatic, disheveled look that he wore so well.

A whole bunch of lupine shifters climbed onto cars and slunk between trucks, encircling us. They were probably mercenaries or a local gang Gideon Cain had paid to be here. He didn’t have friends—only staff.