Ch. 33

The first assault hit at noon, though afterwards Carolina would remember it as happening in the colorless ambiguity between hour and moment, with the sunlight so sharp it broke the stained-glass tape and painted killshot halos everywhere. Sybil’s mercs—twenty maybe, but the way they moved it felt like more—came through the side door with military symmetry, rifles up, gas masks huffing, not bothering with announcements. Sybil herself, petite and iron-strung, stalked directly behind, dressed in a suit that looked plucked from the 1930s but cut to look faster, meaner, entirely modern. When she saw the altar, the pack crowded on and around it, she smiled a cut-glass smile.

Xander was already moving. He sprinted the nave, hit the first merc from behind and brought him down in a tangle of knees and teeth. Gunfire erupted: three percussion cracks, then the whole room deafened by echo. Carolina’s ears rang, but her eyes stayed wide open; she counted how many guns, saw three of her own already down, blood leeching through their street-camouflage. Cas and Marcus barrelled the right flank, vaulting pews, flanking like it was muscle memory. She watched Briony break the sound barrier, tumbling through broken glass, face painted in lipstick war mask, shrieking like a banshee at child-pitch.

She lost sight of Xander. The world became flashes—Lyra flat-tackling a merc, the woman’s gun spinning out of her hands; Teagan, eyes feral, whirling a chair-leg and knocking a mask clean off a man’s face to reveal a spasm of surprise and pain. Carolina dove for the flagstone, grabbed a spent rifle, and crawled toward the altar on her elbows, every inch an ask from her battered ribs. Above her, Sybil climbed the steps, a scalpel flash in her hand, already heading straight for Briony, who was cornered, crying but still swinging at the air.

Carolina screamed, and the sound of her voice seemed to rally every cell in her body. She leapt from her hiding spot and ran at Sybil. Yanked Briony out of reach, twisted, and met Sybil’s blade with the barrel of the rifle. The two locked eyes, less than a foot apart. Sybil laughed, a low, delighted sound, then headbutted Carolina in the brow so hard she saw purple fireworks.

The next second was swallowed in confusion. Lyra howled—a real, inhuman throat-peeling noise—and the whole floor seemed to ripple. Half the mercs turned as if jerked by puppet strings, distracted by the sudden violence crashing through their rear guard: new wolves, old guard, Teagan’s reserves from the crawlspaces under the sanctuary, ripping through masks and flesh with a hunger that was almost religious.

Carolina’s mouth filled with the taste of blood. She looked up and saw Sybil above her, face impassive, ready to bring the knife down, slow and certain. But from out of nowhere, Xander tackled Sybil off the altar. They fell, wrestling, rolling toward the nave, Sybil’s clothes blooming with blood from somewhere. Xander didn’t stop when he hit the floor—he kept clawing, biting, every ounce of power leveraged from rage and loyalty. When Sybil finally stopped moving, Xander stood over her, face a mess of blood and triumph, chest heaving, eyes wide enough to swallow the sun.

The gunfire stuttered, dwindled, then stopped. The pews were slick with gore and strewn with the unconscious or dead. Cas and Marcus limped up to the altar, both breathing like punctured bellows, both grinning so wide it made them look like skeletons. Lyra, one sleeve torn off, lit a cigarette with still-trembling hands and surveyed the carnage.

Briony was crying, but smiling under it, her lipstick smudged to hell. Teagan, blood running down one leg, propped herself against the altar and called out, “Count off!”

One by one, every new and old wolf left standing did, voices ragged, some only half-conscious, but every one alive enough to shout a name.

Carolina put an arm around Briony, then called, “Xander?” He answered from the back of the room, where he was dragging one of Sybil’s mercs by the ankle, unconscious but alive.

“We get to keep any of these?” he called, a ragged joke, and Cas and Marcus both barked out a laugh.

When it was clear the fight had ended, Carolina looked over the ruined church. Shredded pews, glass crunching underfoot, red smeared up the pillars and down the altar steps. Her hands shook—post-battle, superhuman, and faintly ridiculous. She could taste the future in her mouth: coppery, electric, limitless.

She turned to Teagan, who now regarded her with an entirely new calculus.

“We’ll have to move,” Carolina said, and Hyra and Briony nodded in unison, as if it had already been decided.

“Where to?” Cas asked.

“Home,” Carolina replied, and felt with absolute certainty that she knew exactly where that would be.

*

It was dusk by the time they left the church, the sky pale and sickly, and the bodies left to rot or mend as suited them. The shadows ran long across the city, the early evening filling with police sirens, horns, the usual urban symphony, but tonight it sounded a little like applause.

They traveled in a pack, never in a line, every one of their wounds displayed with pride and bandaged with filched scraps. By the time they reached the woods, the city behind them was already humming with rumor. They didn’t look back.

Carolina led. Xander flanked her, limping but grinning with every step, Lyra and Cas and Marcus behind, Briony last, lighter held high, waving an unlit cigarette like a wand.

Everything felt lighter. No one spoke about the dead, not directly, but every word out of their mouths was a promise not to forget. They walked until the moon was up, then walked some more.

When finally they reached their old manor house, it loomed enormous against the night, scorched and battered from the battle days before. It looked less like home, more like something fresh out of a myth. Carolina watched as her people fanned out, climbing steps, pushing open the battered front door, breathing in the dark with the kind of awe reserved for miracles and forgiven mistakes.

She paused behind, on the weed-choked porch, and looked back at the splinters of the world that had tried to exterminate her. She remembered, in a flash, the way Sybil had smiled through blood, the cold joy of predation, the total belief in her own victory. Carolina felt it surge through her—not fear, or even hunger, but certainty.

Xander appeared behind her, hands pocketed, hair wild and bloody.

“You said home,” he murmured. “You sure?”

She nodded. “We fix it.” She looked him dead in the eye. “We change everything.”

Together, they stepped into the darkness, and the whole, ruined house came alive around them.