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Another crack tears through the wall beside it.

Then another.

Three sets of fiery eyes open in the darkness.

Goddammit! Apparently Malgrave brought the welcoming committee.

The dead keep crawling around our feet while the first guardian rolls its shoulders and fixes burning red eyes on me.

A scream tears out from somewhere deeper inside the cavern.

Not one of the dead.

It’s something alive.

Something that really fucking wants out.

Echo’s head snaps toward the entrance, and before I can follow her gaze, movement flashes through the trees to our left.

The Conclave enforcers step out of the darkness together, pale eyes fixed on Echo, those sleek black weapons already in their hands.

Every exit just disappeared.

Dead below us.

Infernal Guardians blocking the entrance.

Conclave at our flank.

Malgrave somewhere inside.

My lips pull back from my teeth.

Fine! If the bastard wants to make us fight for every fucking inch, we’ll leave him nothing standing when we get there.

Four different kinds of hell converge in the same clearing, and none of them are on our side.

I go in low and fast, my jaws closing around a guardian’s throat before it even registers I’m there, and the thing comes apart in my mouth like wet paper soaked through with rot. Sentinel drops out of the sky a heartbeat later, wings flared wide enough to blot out the moon, sword already carving a line of white-gold light through three skeletal bodies at once. My back finds his the second the fighting closes in around us, and for the length of a breath the only sound in my head is the rhythm we’ve built over years of doing exactly this, hellhound and angel, hellfire and Holy Grace, moving like two halves of the same weapon.

Something happens where our powers brush against each other mid-fight, a spark neither of us summons on purpose, gold threading briefly through the flame pouring off my back before it snuffs out again. Sentinel goes still for half a second, just long enough that I feel it, too, that low hum in my chest that’s never fully gone quiet since the fracture. We both pull back from it at the same time, instinct sharper than curiosity. Whatever we made together, we’re not doing it again here, not with the Devil’s fingerprints already smeared across half this fight.

An enforcer gets close enough to matter, and Sentinel puts him down without breaking stride, and I bury my claws into whatever’s coming up out of the ground behind us and don’t look at what it used to be.

Something slams into my ribs. I roll with it, hit the ground, and come up on all fours as the second guardian charges.

My hellhound reacts before I do.

My jaws open wide, my chest expands—every muscle braces for the roar.

Nothing.

The same empty fucking silence Malgrave left behind.

Rage hits me hard.

Fuck this!

If I can’t give the bastard sound, I’ll give him something else. Hellfire surges up my chest, and I open my jaws wider and let it. Fucking. Go! Fire explodes from my mouth in a solid blast, hitting the guardian square in the chest, driving it backward. Flames pour over scorched flesh, forcing their way into every glowing crack until the red beneath its skin turns white-hot.