Page 102 of Anomalies

There’s a reflective sheen, like gas rising off burning pavement, and it stretches across the whole room, floor to ceiling.

I rip off my mask. “Motherfucker.”

“What is it?” Phoenix asks, prowling forward. He looks at Easton when I can’t bring myself to answer.

“They’ve put up wards.”

Devon stands nose to nose with the ward, a vicious snarl on his sweat-slick face. “They suspected we’d come through here?”

“Not just here,” I grit out, tracing the ward to the far wall where it runs through stone. “If I had to guess, it’s up around the entire Palace.”

No one speaks. Phoenix shifts his weight, and Easton steps forward to study it.

I cast my gaze to the ceiling, then to the floor. “E, is it a blood ward?”

He nods solemnly. “A strong one.”

“Fuck,” I curse, running my knuckles across four days of stubble. My thoughts churn, silence falling for a moment as they wait for me to speak.

I snatch my mask off the ground and pull it back over my face. “Devon, you’re with me.” Easton and Phoenix meet my gaze. “You two stay here, see if you can figure out how deep the ward runs, surely it can’t go that far.”

“What’s your plan?” Easton asks as Devon joins me by the door, the same question in his dark eyes.

“To test it,” I reply. “If we’re going to find a way through, we need to know whose blood can pass.”

Easton’s black brows furrow. “You can’t be suggesting—” His voice trails off when I look back at him unblinking. “Boss, only dark blood can pass; it has to be that.”

“We need to be sure.” I wedge the door open further, stepping out into the tunnel.

“Chiaros,” Devon mutters, unsheathing his dagger.

We need a Rogue.

We make quick work of it, taking a shortcut through an exit we found on our way down here, and within a couple of hours, we’re back on the surface. The sun has set, the ground over Streatham suffocated by fog dense enough to cover us as we slip through the ruined city.

Not a single building was left untouched. They ripped everything apart all those years ago. They stole anyone they could from their houses… from their yards…then they obliterated everything. But here, where we stand, it used to be the heart of the city. The cracked cobblestone streets at one point were lively and always filled, vendor tents pitched in front of the blacksmith markets and Flora’s shops. There was music, beautiful music, and laughter.

Children used to play in these streets.

I used to play in these streets.

“There,” I whisper, nodding to a figure stumbling past the Palace gates. It’s a male, peppered black hair, dark skin, and serpentine yellow eyes that cut through the fog like sinister beacons in the night. He’s drunk. Drunk enough that when Devon spins an illusion of a woman, wandering through the broken homes of the surrounding city, he stumbles his way to her.

As soon as the Rogue locks his gaze on the woman, I palm a dagger in each hand, slipping through the shadows of a nearby building. Devon shoots me a warning glare but my steps never falter.

The Rogue stumbles past, a hungry look on his face that makes my blood boil and my vision blur. It’s because of him that the music is gone. It’s because of him that there is no more laughter here. His kind is an infection, a plague that has swept through the entire territory.

Territory that belongs to us.

Suddenly, I’m sixteen again, hunting Rogues on my own for no other reason than to satisfy the violent desire to avenge and destroy and make suffer. It never mattered how many I killed. It never mattered how many times I’d sneak back into Pirn covered in dark blood. I’d still be out the next night, chasing something I’d never satiate. A mission that would never be completed.

But fuck, it felt good to watch the life leave their eyes.

The illusion Devon is holding moves to stand along a crumbling brick wall, her yellow eyes fluttering as the drunk male approaches.

“What’s your name, darlin?” he slurs, the cold hiss of his voice making my skin crawl. “You shouldn’t be out here alone⁠—"

His forehead slams against the brick, skewered by the dagger I’d thrown. “Neither should you,” I mutter as rivulets of dark blood run down the wall and into the dirt. Devon exhales when I wrench the blade out, and the lifeless body slumps to the ground.