Guards…but not. They advanced, faces blank, movements jerky and wrong, like someone had heard of fighting but never witnessed it.
One staggered forward, sword swung too wide. Dominic caught the wrist, snapped the arm backward, and buried his claws in the creature’s throat. Instead of a spray of blood, it burst apart in a plume of black smoke that curled through his fingers.
Another charged. Dominic seized a decorative vase from a pedestal and smashed it across the thing’s head. Porcelain exploded. The figure staggered two steps, eyes flickering, then collapsed into shadow that seeped between the floor tiles.
“Effigies,” he spat.
Conjured muscle. Made to delay, not defeat, and they kept coming.
Claws flashed. Wood splintered. Smoke filled the corridor in choking waves as one after another dissolved beneath his hands. But for every effigy he destroyed, two more emerged.
What they lacked in skill, they made up for in endless numbers.
His own blood slicked his knuckles. His breath tore from his lungs. Fury pounded through him hotter than exhaustion. Still, they crowded him from every side, sluggish but relentless, buying time while the house shifted and hid his mate deeper inside.
“Dominic?”
As if conjured by thought alone, Sammy’s voice rang inside his head, his tone strained, concern sharpened by fear.
“On my way,”he assured him, dropping his head and charging through the advancing swarm.“Just hit a bit of a roadblock.”
There was a pause, a moment of hesitation, then Sammy asked, “What kind of roadblock?”
Magic exploded from him, charged and jagged like bolts of lightning, dusting half the guards in the corridor.“Hold tight,colibrí. I’m coming.”
Then he muted the connection, leaving it open but controlled, not wanting Sammy to accidentally glimpse the true extent of what they faced.
Nearing the end of the hall, Dominic sidestepped abruptly, barely avoiding a collision when Saint materialized directly in front of him. His brother grunted, grabbed one of the effigies by the throat, and buried a dagger in its temple.
“I hate this fucking house,” he growled.
“Old money buys old magic,” Dominic commented, dispatching two more haunted puppets.
And this was someveryold magic. He hadn’t seen anything like it in centuries.
“What the hell are we supposed to do?” Saint demanded. “We can’t keep running in fucking circles.”
No, they couldn’t, but maybe they didn’t have to.
The shortest distance between two points was a straight line. In theory, if one didn’t exist, he could make his own. If he couldn’t break through the enchantments, he would tear through the house itself.
He had no way of knowing if it would work until he tried, but he couldn’t keep fighting shadows and hoping for better results.
“Fuck it.”
Magic surged through him, blistering and violent, as he called forth the change.
He braced as every muscle locked tight. Bones snapped and lengthened beneath his skin. Tendons stretched. The corridor filled with the brutal music of cracking joints and tearing fabric as his human shape gave way to something far larger and far deadlier.
Dark fur burst across his shoulders and spine in a rippling wave. His hands twisted into massive paws tipped with claws that carved trenches through the floorboards. His jaw thrustforward, teeth sharpening into lethal points as a growl rolled from deep in his chest.
By the time the transformation finished, Dominic loomed over the ruined effigies and the narrow hall alike, a twelve-foot nightmare of fang, muscle, and fury. Saint stared up at him, and in his eyes, Dominic caught the burn of his own gaze—amber lit from within, glowing like banked embers.
The scent of ozone and wild magic thickened the air. Raw power rolled off him in waves, primal and vicious, pressing against the walls hard enough to make the sconces rattle.
When more effigies spilled into the corridor, he hit the horde like a battering ram, scattering them like confetti. One of the conjured guards barely had time to lift its sword before Dominic’s jaws closed around its torso. Smoke burst between his teeth as the thing came apart in a black plume.
He spat the remnants aside and lunged for the next.