Having Connor living four doors down freshman year had been the worst sort of temptation. But Danika had given the order to stay away until Bryce approached him, and even though they hadn’t yet formed the Pack of Devils, Connor obeyed. It seemed Danika had lifted the order tonight.
Lovely, wicked Danika. Bryce smiled as she half crawled onto the third-floor landing, found her balance, and dug her keys out of her purse—which she’d managed to hold on to by some miracle. She took a few swaying steps down the hall they shared with one other apartment.
Oh, Danika was going to be so pissed. So pissed that Bryce had not only had fun without her, but that she’d gotten so wasted she couldn’t remember how to read. Or the code to the building.
The flickering firstlight stung her eyes enough that she again squinted them to near-darkness and staggered down the hall. She should shower, if she could remember how to operate the handles. Wash off her filthy, numb feet.
Especially after she stepped in a cold puddle beneath some dripping ceiling pipe. She shuddered, bracing a hand on the wall, but kept staggering ahead.
Fuck. Too many drugs. Even her Fae blood couldn’t clear them out fast enough.
But there was her door. Keys. Right—she had them in her hand already.
There were six. Which one was hers? One opened the gallery; one opened the various tanks and cages in the archives; one opened Syrinx’s crate; one was to the chain on her scooter; one was to her scooter … and one was to the door. This door.
The brass keys tinkled and swayed, shining in the firstlights, then blending with the painted metal of the hall. They slipped out of her slackening fingers, clanking on the tile.
“Fuuuuuuck.” The word was a long exhale.
Bracing a hand on the doorframe to keep from falling clean on her ass, Bryce stooped to pick up the keys.
Something cool and wet met her fingertips.
Bryce closed her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning. When she opened them, she focused on the tile before the door.
Red. And the smell—it wasn’t the reek of before.
It was blood.
And the apartment door was already open.
The lock had been mangled, the handle wrenched off completely.
Iron—the door was iron, and enchanted with the best spells money could buy to keep out any unwanted guests, attackers, or magic. Those spells were the one thing Bryce had ever allowed Danika to purchase on her behalf. She hadn’t wanted to know how much they’d cost, not when it was likely double her parents’ annual salary.
But the door now looked like a crumpled piece of paper.
Blinking furiously, Bryce straightened. Fuck the drugs in her system—fuck Fury. She’d promised no hallucinations.
Bryce was never drinking or polluting her body with those drugs ever again. She’d tell Danika first thing tomorrow. No more. No. More.
She rubbed her eyes, mascara smearing on her fingertips. On her blood-soaked fingertips—
The blood remained. The mangled door, too.
“Danika?” she croaked. If the attacker was still inside …“Danika?”
That bloody hand—her own hand—pushed the half-crumpled door open farther.
Blackness greeted her.
The coppery tang of blood, and that festering odor, slammed into her.
Her entire body seized, every muscle going on alert, every instinct screaming to run, run, run—
But her Fae eyes adjusted to the dark, revealing the apartment.
What was left of it.
What was left of them.
Help—she needed to get help, but—
She staggered into the trashed apartment.
“Danika?” The word was a raw, broken sound.
The wolves had fought. There wasn’t a piece of furniture that was intact, that wasn’t shredded and splintered.
There wasn’t a body intact, either. Piles and clumps were all that remained.
“DanikaDanikaDanika—”
She needed to call someone, needed to scream for help, needed to get Fury, or her brother, her father, needed Sabine—
Bryce’s bedroom door was destroyed, the threshold painted in blood. The ballet posters hung in ribbons. And on the bed …
She knew in her bones it was not a hallucination, what lay on that bed, knew in her bones that what bled out inside her chest was her heart.
Danika lay there. In pieces.
And at the foot of the bed, littering the torn carpet in even smaller pieces, as if he’d gone down defending Danika … she knew that was Connor.
Knew the heap just to the right of the bed, closest to Danika … That was Thorne.
Bryce stared. And stared.
Perhaps time stopped. Perhaps she was dead. She couldn’t feel her body.