Hell, had everyone heard of my indiscretions? Likely, since that was something my father was wont to do; announce how very far his half-breed daughter had fallen.

“Something like that.”

Pulling the katana from its sheath at my hip, I slashed it through the air to the left of me, whispering the words, “Velata facie terroris. Take us to Rylee.”

The cut in the air shimmered and split open wide, but there was nothing on the other side. No world, no farm.

I let out a sharp breath. “Pamela.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means she isn’t on this plane of existence. Right now, she is somewhere within the seven Veils.”

Pamela grabbed my hand. “But what does it mean?”

“That right now we can’t use her as a pinpoint.”

‘Then use Alex. He’s on his way there with Eve and Marco,” she said.

“They are flying, Pamela. We can’t jump through to them.” But Belladonna should already be waiting for us at the designated waypoint. With a flick of my wrist, I brought the blade through the air again. “Velata facie terroris. Take us to Belladonna.”

This time, the cut opened up in the middle of a cornfield, the long waving stalks lolling back and forth in the breeze. Finley and the other Undines went through first. The young queen went right to my sister and embraced her as though they were long lost friends, even though I knew they hadn’t seen each other in many years.

I did a head count of the Undine’s who came through. A little over three hundred. Added to the two hundred of my family that gave us a tiny army.

But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Fiametta and the queen of the Sylph’s didn’t agree to fight at our sides, we were done for.

My heart clenched. To have come so far and to fail yet again . . . it was as though I heard the laughter of all those who’d told me I was not strong enough; that I was a useless half-breed with nothing to her name but a vague connection to royalty.

“Lark?” Bella called to me and I opened my mouth to answer her only I was unable to speak. The sight behind my sister stilled my tongue.

The sun was at the edge of the horizon, but that was not the image that froze my blood.

No, it was the black wave of demons pouring out toward us. Slashes in the Veil opened at a speed I couldn’t count, both on the ground and in the air. Thousands of openings, and out of each, thousands of demons leapt into our world.

A fierce anger ripped up through me, my connection to the earth opening fully. I was the Destroyer.

Time to do what I was created for.

“We have to keep them busy, long enough that Rylee has the time she needs. Fight with all you have!” I shouted to those assembled.

The Terralings and Undines spread out in a line. Five hundred against millions of demons.

Pamela put herself right beside me, her face tight with anger. “I’m not letting them get through.”

Ahh, to be so young. To believe one could conquer a horde with a faith so fierce that it shone. To think I’d been that young once was hard to recall.

I sent a wave of power through the earth. The ground heaved and rolled at the height of a redwood. It slammed into the first line of demons, sending them flying backwards, breaking them in half, tearing limbs from their bodies. A cheer went up around me and the other elementals joined in.

Cactus worked with Brand and his family, lighting fire to the corn and Pamela pushed the flames with her connection to the air. She caught it up into a tornado of fire and sent it spinning toward the demons. The smell of burning tar ignited the air as she cut a swath through them.

I ran forward, pulling my spear free. Whirling it around my head, I cut through the demon closest to me. His eyes widened and his mouth opened in shock, as his body began to dissolve. “You are not the Slayer; you can’t kill me.”

“Watch me,” I spit out as I whipped my spear around, clearing a circle around me the full length of the shaft. Everywhere the blade touched the demons evaporated.

Rylee was the Blood of the Lost, a Slayer in truth. But the makeup of her blood and mine was the same.

And while I did not have the blood needed to close the Veil and defeat Orion on my own, I did have the blood needed to destroy demons.

I closed ranks with a big boy, a creature that towered over me. His body was serpentine, lithe, and lightning fast. He snaked his head toward me, his mouth open and fangs dripping with venom. I got my spear up in time to deflect the bite, but the momentum drove me to my knees. I found myself looking right into the demon’s mouth as he tried to clamp down on me.

Both hands on my spear, I held it against him. I softened the earth under his feet, and sank him to his neck in a split second. Yanking my spear from his teeth, I spun it around and drove it deep into his mouth. The demon dissolved and I was grabbed from behind. The force of the grip crushed me to the point where my ribs creaked from the pressure. A blast of water slammed into us both, sending us flying.

“Sorry, couldn’t direct it better,” came a voice that I thought might have been Finley. In a puddle of mud, I spun on my knees, and dispatched the lobster clawed demon that had me in its pincers.

Around me, earth exploded, fire spun through the ranks, and deep lakes sprung up. The water swallowed the demons whole, dragging them down, but the lakes were quickly filled with writhing pissed off demons.

“Lark! I need more space for the water!” Finley cried out.

“Bella!” I ran for where I’d seen her last. “We need to work with the Undines!”