I kept my sword in front of me, climbed to my feet, and waited for it to launch.

And then there was a different sound, a new smell.

The padding of heavy feet. A low growl. And suddenly beside me, the thick fury of a gray wolf.

Connor, I thought with a mix of relief and fear.

“Rose is the demon,” I said. “I think she’s influencing the panther.”

He sniffed, raised his muzzle toward me, noted the blood on my arm, and snapped his head back to the panther, lips pulled back and teeth bared with obvious fury.

I looked back at Rose. Once again, she hadn’t moved, presumably because she’d been busy drinking in the energy from the cacophony she’d orchestrated. But she did look surprised, and not a little worried. Patience had said demons didn’t like dogs. I guess that feeling extended to their lupine cousins. Was it Connor? Did the wolf frighten her? Because we could use that.

The panther screamed again as it faced its new foe. Connor was bigger than the cat, but they were both plenty large. The cat bounded and Connor followed suit, so they hit each other midair. The panther clawed and Connor snapped, tried to catch the nape of the panther’s neck in his own enormous teeth. They grappled, and the panther screamed its disturbingly human sound.

The air snapped with energy, and the ward unleashed its wrath.

“Take cover!” I screamed, and huddled back against the building’s wall beneath a narrow ledge that extended over the sidewalk.

Even the panther could feel the energy in the air. It wrenched itself from Connor, slunk behind a stand of shrubs. Connor came to me, crouched at my side beneath the overhang.

The lightning came at us like a barrage of arrows: fast, furious, and deadly. Maybe because the three of us were so close to each other—demon, shifter, vampire—the barrage seemed worse, stronger, more than the others. Concentrated weaponry intended to annihilate its target and damn the consequences. The bolts speared into buildings, sidewalk, road, vehicles—sending concrete, asphalt, glass, and metal flying. I heard a human’s cry some yards away, knew they’d been struck, and was newly furious at the Guardians and the demon who’d tripped their infernal “defenses.”

Rose had gone absolutely still, but either the lightning or the beam of light had given her skin a strange green cast. To make her noticeable, I guessed. Either for the ward to identify her or for humans to know she was other.

A bolt struck a plot of brick town houses across the street from where I crouched, right in the seam between the last two houses, as if trying to shear one away like a slice from a loaf of bread. Occupants screamed as they ran outside to escape, only to be faced with the torrent outside. They huddled as we all did, hoping the odds were in our favor.

A final crackle, and the attack stopped.

I looked up toward Rose.