No sign of danger, no sign of anything except—
There. A prickle at the back of his neck. Like a chill wind had skittered over the top of his spine.
“Dec’s new security system picked up some kind of anomaly,” Flynn said, scanning the party below. He’d gone into pure Aux mode. “It’s making all the sensors go off. Some kind of aura—Dec said it felt like a storm was circling the house.”
“Great,” Ruhn said, the hilt of the Starsword cool against his back. “And it’s not some drunk asshole dicking around with magic?”
Flynn assessed the crowds. “Dec didn’t think so. He said from the way it circled the house, it seemed like it was surveilling the area.”
Their friend and roommate had spent months designing a system to be placed around their house and the surrounding streets—one that could pick up things like the kristallos demon, formerly too fast for their technology to detect.
“Then let’s see how it likes being watched, too,” Ruhn said, wishing he was slightly less high and drunk as his shadows wobbled around him. Flynn sniggered.
The mirthroot took hold for a moment, and even Ruhn laughed as he moved for the staircase. But his amusement faded as he checked the rooms on either side of the foyer. Where the fuck was Bryce? He’d last seen her with Fury, Juniper, and Athalar in the living room, but from this angle atop the stairs, he couldn’t see her—
Ruhn had made it three steps down the front staircase, dodging discarded beer cans and plastic cups and someone’s zebra-print bra, when the open front doors darkened.
Or rather, the space within them darkened. Exactly as it had when those demons had stormed through the Gates.
Ruhn gaped for a moment at the portal to Hel that had just replaced his front doors.
Then he reached for the sword half-buckled at his back, working past his brain fog to gather shadows in his other hand. Laughter and singing and talking stopped, and the firstlights guttered. The music shut off as if someone had yanked the power cord from the wall.
Then Bryce and Athalar were at the archway into the living room, his sister now wearing Athalar’s hat, and the angel armed with a gun discreetly tucked against his thigh. Athalar was the only person Ruhn would allow to bring a gun into one of his parties. And Axtar—who was now nowhere to be seen.
Ruhn drew his sword as he leapt down the rest of the stairs, managing to land gracefully on the other side of his sister. Flynn and Dec fell into place beside him. His shadows swirled up his left arm like twining snakes.
A faint light glowed from Bryce— No, that was the glow stick on her arm.
A figure stalked from the darkness in the doorway. Straight out of Hel. And in that moment, Ruhn knew three more things.
He wasn’t looking at a portal to Hel after all. Shadows swirled there instead. Familiar, whispering shadows.
It wasn’t just the glow stick coiled around Bryce’s arm that was shining. The star-shaped scar beneath her T-shirt blazed with iridescent light.
As a familiar golden-haired Fae male strode from those shadows and into the foyer, Ruhn knew his night was about to take a turn for the worse.
4
“Oh, come on,” Bryce hissed at the glowing scar between her breasts. Or what she could glimpse of it with the neckline of her T-shirt and her bra in the way. It lit up the fabric of both, and if she hadn’t been facing the towering Fae male who’d appeared out of a cloud of shadows, she might have used the moment to ponder why and how it glowed.
Partygoers had stopped dead in their revelry. Waiting for whatever shit was about to go down.
And what asshole had turned off the music? Dramahounds.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ruhn prowled closer to the stranger.
The male’s tan face might have been ruggedly good-looking were it not for the complete lack of feeling there. His light brown eyes were dead. Humorless. His thin white sweater over black jeans and combat boots told Bryce he’d come from somewhere colder.
The crowd seemed to sense danger, too, and backed away until only Hunt, Bryce, Ruhn, and his friends remained facing the stranger. She had no idea where Fury and Juniper were. The former was likely strategically positioned in the room to make sure she could intercept any danger before it reached her girlfriend. Good.
The stranger stalked forward, and Bryce braced herself, even as Hunt casually angled himself between her and the male. Bryce held in her grin at the gesture. And found that grin vanishing instantly when the blond spoke, his accent rolling and rich.
“I was invited.”
The stranger turned to her and smirked, lifeless as a dead fish. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” A nod toward her—her chest. “Though I know who you are, of course.” His eyes flicked over her. “You look better than expected. Not that I was expecting much.”