Sarafina had the gut reaction to turn and tell them to go—to run—even though she knew they’d come to fight. They stood there like a bunch of moths drawn to a flame. Whatever Stefan held in his hand had to be deadly.

“Do you remember what it was my father tried to do to you, Mira?” Stefan said with a hard smile. His blue eyes glittered in the light. “Right before you pushed him out the window?”

“It’s kind of hard to forget,” Mira responded, her voice edgy and thin sounding.

“He set you in a demon circle and almost squeezed the power from your seat. But my father failed. He underestimated you and underdrugged you. He didn’t take into account the love you shared with Jack McAllister and the fact that nothing could prevent him from coming to your aid.” Stefan paused. “Here’s how I succeed where my father failed.” Stefan’s hand moved.

“Everyone hit the floor,” Thomas yelled.

Theo pulled Sarafina down and covered her body with his. From beneath the protection of his chest, she could see Stefan standing triumphantly in the middle of his bitterest enemy’s lair. A smile had spread across his face—the beaming smile of a man who finally had victory within his grasp.

Stefan threw the small glimmering object up into the air and murmured a few words like an earth witch would.

But this was not elemental magick. This was daaeman magick.

The small ball of alien power crackled and pulsed for a moment, hanging suspended in the air above Stefan’s head, glowing like a tiny blue star. Acridness filled the air, burning their noses, tinged with the scent of both familiar and strange plant life. The very molecules around them seemed to pulse and expand, like the object drew the essence from everything around it, growing pregnant and swollen with power.

And then it exploded.

THE ONLY THING THEO COULD THINK ABOUT WAS keeping Sarafina safe from whatever that blue egg of death had hatched in the air.

A bolt of sizzling light blue magick whizzed past his head and exploded on the floor near him. It did nothing, only evaporated on the marble in a shower of sparks.

Near him one of the bolts hit a brown-haired earth witch Theo thought was named Brian. Brian gasped and hit the floor, grasping fistfuls of his shirt near the center of his chest and curling into the fetal position.

Dragging gulps of air into his throat and his eyes bulging, Brian reached out to Theo with one hand. “My magick, it’s gone. It’s completely gone.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-EIGHT

“COME ON, BABY, WE GOTTA GO.” HE PULLED SARAFINA to her feet, shielding her body from the scattershot and made his way toward one of the corridors. The rest of the Coven had also figured out the score and were doing the same thing, trying to dodge the magickal shrapnel.