The District felt like a ghost town.

  The wreckage from the earlier attack, coupled with the eerie silence that had settled on everything now that it had been evacuated, gave it an unsettling, haunted feeling. It didn’t help that Lucas was constantly blurring around the place like a shadow, keeping watch, checking to see if there was any danger inbound.

  “Nothing yet,” he said, for what had to be the hundredth time in the hour since the District had been evacuated before groaning and joining them at the table in the Grove. “Are you sure there’ll be more?” he asked, his gaze narrowing at Jin.

  It was evident he still hated her but had now accepted that she knew more about whatever was going on than any of them did.

  “Certain.” Jin’s eyes were pointed upward at the clouds that had pooled overhead in the night. “I do not know how soon. But they will come. We need only wait.”

  “How long are we talking here?” Hardy asked, groaning as he lifted his head from the table. He was decked in full tactical gear now, with two rifles strapped to his back, two pistols holstered on either side of his waist, and a small utility pouch dangling from his belt containing a combination of flash grenades and frags. “A few hours? A day? A week?”

  “Soon.” Jin did not take her gaze off the sky.

  “Great,” Hardy muttered and lowered his head to the table again.

  Aiden arrived in the Grove a few minutes later, his hands and gear stained with dirt. “I just buried Spike,” he announced, voice flat and empty, devoid of feeling. “Didn’t want the bastards getting any more of their filth on her.”

  He sat between Lucas and Jon, directly across from Jin, who was sitting next to Hardy. Aiden’s gaze flickered toward her for a moment, and the edges of his lips curled into something ferocious, but then the expression quickly vanished, and he shook his head as though he’d just had some sort of silent debate with himself.

  Another hour passed where nothing happened, except, of course, for a now-asleep Hardy snoring loudly at the table. At the other tables in the Grove, a number of the guards had started to nod off, too, and some of them slept much louder than Hardy did. Chloe didn’t mind, though. The sound of their collective snoring did a great deal to make things feel less gloom and doom. If these would be their final moments, she was a little glad she’d gotten to see what a sleeping Hardy looked like before the arrival of the end.

  “What are you doing?” Jon asked Jin another half hour later, finally done trying to pretend like her focus on the clouds wasn’t uncanny and a little disconcerting. He glanced upward, then back at her. “The attack’s not coming from above, is it?”

  “No.” Jin shook her head. “I’m just waiting for the shift.”

  “The shift?” Chloe repeated.

  “Yes.” Jin nodded. She provided no further explanation.

  Jon and Chloe exchanged looks and shrugged, deciding against pressing the matter any further. A full hour later, the two of them got tired of sitting and rose to their feet, taking a walk through the deserted District.

  “You know, it’s funny that I’d kind of always hoped for this, but not like this,” Jon said when they were some distance away from the Grove.

  “For a bunch of angry gods to come knocking?”

  Jon laughed. “No, not that. For the District to be empty. Quiet. No ruckus, no crowds, no bustling. It’s just peaceful. It feels kind of like relief, you know, like most of the weight of expectation is gone. No one around is looking to me or to us, expecting the most of us, trusting their lives to us. And I know it’s ironic considering this is the one moment where the expectation’s highest, where everyone’s lives are sort of in our hands… and somehow, for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel burdened.”

  “I think that might just be Jin’s blood talking.”

  Jon laughed again. “Yeah, sure, could be.” They walked a little further in silence before Jon spoke again. “What’s Jin’s blood make you want to say?”

  Chloe looked at him and raised one eyebrow over the other. “What makes you think there’s something?”

  “Dunno.” He shrugged. “Isn’t there?”

  Chloe shook her head. “Nah, it’s stupid.”

  “Something tells me that if there was ever a time to be stupid, it’s now. So go on, spill… I won’t stop nagging you about it, mind you.”

  Chloe let out a loud and hearty laugh then, a little surprised by how much like his old self Jon had sounded just then. When at last she stopped laughing, his eyes were still locked onto her. He really wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know; I guess I’ve just been thinking, you know… assuming all of this isn’t bullshit, and she’s not playing some game with us, which she probably is, say we do win here and we do figure things out and take back the world and whatever. Good ending and all of that. What then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean what next? I mean, we’re different now, altered, and as far as I can tell, I don’t think it’ll be possible to reverse that. I don’t know if there’ll be a place for us in the world if things do ever get back to normal, and I don’t even know that they could. But even if things weren’t totally weird afterward, there’d still be the question of what we do next. What do killing machines do when there’s nothing left to kill?”

  She saw Jon’s shoulders sag a little and knew at once that some of the weight he’d just spoken about no longer feeling had just returned to him. His brows furrowed as he thought about what she’d asked. He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess for starters, we’d have to rebuild stuff, put things back like they should be… maybe a little differently than before, of course.”

  “Sure, sure. And then what?”

  “Well, I’d really like to go back to my life,” Jon answered truthfully. “I’d like to enroll in college, join a frat, attend the stupid parties and make the stupid decisions, skip some classes, flunk a few… just everything that my life would have been if the end of the world hadn’t taken it away. Just be Jonathan Taylor again. Chloe Taylor’s annoying older brother.”

  Chloe’s eyes went wide, and she felt them water just a little. “Really?” she asked. “You’ve never said that before.”

  “It never seemed possible before.” Jon threw his glance to her again. “But as you said, if Jin isn’t playing some twisted game with us, then maybe, you know, it is possible, right? And you could also go back to being some nerd, go to college, join chess club, all of that weird stuff.”

  Chloe shoved him in the shoulder then, playfully, and laughed a little. He laughed too and threw one arm around her.

  “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, alright?” he said. “Let’s save the world first.”

  They returned to the Grove twenty minutes later and found that Hardy was wide awake now, pacing the Grove while on the comms with Cole and Glenn, checking that they had everything rigged as they ought to be and that the fences were ready to come back up as soon as the monsters had been lured in.

  They sat at the table, and only a minute after they’d taken their seats, Jin rose suddenly, her gaze leaving the sky for the first time in hours and fixing itself upon them. Her face was grim, as was her tone when she spoke.

  “They’re here.”

  The Servants charged in first—around a hundred of them, give or take a dozen more—growling, snarling, and chittering as they ran. This was the fastest Chloe had ever seen them move. They retained their usual clumsiness, tripping and stumbling, limping as they ran, but they moved like they were driven by glorious purpose, charging straight for the center of the District, where Jin stood unarmed, placing her faith in Chloe and the others.

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  The Nighthounds appeared next, blurring in and surging straight past the Servants, overtaking them with ease. The hounds seemed much more aggressive than the ones Chloe and the others had encountered before, and they seemed larger too, as if they were made entirely of muscle. Jin twitched slightly in the center when she heard the Nighthounds, but she didn’t move from her spot.

  And then, just as the hounds and Servants were closing in on Jin, the angry gods appeared.

  At first, it looked like there was only one—a single crimson eye glowing in the distance. Then more eyes appeared. Three more. From every cardinal direction of the District. The plan had been to close them in, to attack from all sides.

  Perched atop the rooftop of one of the taller buildings in the District, Chloe and Jon saw the angry gods emerge. A shiver ran down Chloe’s spine. Her skin crawled. She watched and waited, as did Jon, until the angry gods had crossed the boundaries of the District. And as soon as they had, Jon reached for his earpiece.

  “Cole. Glenn. Now.”

  At once, the light-blue shade of the field flickered into being around the District as the electromagnetic fences fired into function again. The angry gods wailed in response, but they did not bother with the fences. They continued toward the center—toward Jin, who was now only moments away from being at the mercy of the Nighthounds. Still, she hadn’t moved an inch.

  “Now,” Jon said.

  At once, guards emerged from buildings around the District and from the Chancellor’s Hall, roaring at the top of their lungs, weapons firing from the go.

  As soon as the battle started, Jin turned on her heel and vanished in a blur. She was taking no risks by participating in the fight herself—not until the numbers had changed and the chance of capture was slimmer.

  The Nighthounds, frustrated by their prey’s sudden disappearance, went into a frenzy. They ran at tents, snapping away at them, clawing straight through with ferocity. When the district guards fired at the Nighthounds, the creatures turned their attention to them. They attacked at once, moving far quicker than any of the guards could possibly handle.

  Chloe and Jon joined the fight, as did Lucas and Aiden, the four of them landing on the battlefield from the rooftops they’d been perched on. As soon as they landed, they wasted no time. They surged forward, tearing through Servant after Servant, each blow delivered with the intent to obliterate. Maximum lethal efficiency was the goal. The hounds and the angry gods were the more pressing concerns—they couldn’t let the Servants take up too much time. And with Jin’s blood supercharging them, the Servants were significantly easier than before to breeze through.

  The angry gods, however, were a problem. They thrashed about with their limbs, striking at anything below them, foe or ally, slicing buildings in half with ease and sending concrete and bricks raining down to the ground. Chloe saw one of the angry gods swing a limb at her.

  Rather than dodge, she grabbed onto it and let it move her through the air. As the limb swung again, she timed it, letting go and using the momentum to launch herself toward one of the Nighthounds—one that had been running straight for Hardy. She slammed into the Nighthound just as it leaped at Hardy and tackled it to the ground. The hound snarled beneath her, trying to break free, but found it difficult to do so. Chloe slammed an elbow into its head and heard a satisfying crack. A whimper followed, and the hound’s body went completely still a few seconds later, a pool of blood quickly forming beneath its head.

  Four Nighthounds came at her then. Before, they had seemed too fast, too difficult to deal with. Now, she saw them coming well enough. She spun on her feet and slammed a fist into the neck of one, snapping it in a single blow. Quickly, she turned and swatted at two that had leaped at her, knocking them to the ground. A fourth went for her feet.

  “Not again,” she snarled, avoiding the Nighthound’s bite before bringing her foot down on it—hard. She crushed the hound’s spine beneath her foot, then put it out of its misery by stomping on its head.

  The two Nighthounds she’d knocked down came at her again. She snarled and lunged at them, both hands shooting out and wrapping around their necks. Angrily, she brought their heads together, slamming them against one another—again and again—until they had gone limp in her grasp.

  Breathing heavily, she let the hounds drop. Four Nighthounds taken care of, and she didn’t even feel tired yet. In fact, it felt like she’d gotten more fuel in the tank. Adrenaline—and something else—coursed through her, egging her on. She was unstoppable. Invincible. She could take on the monsters singlehandedly.

  Snarling, more animalistically than she knew, she surged into battle again.

  Snarling, more animalistically than she knew, Chloe surged into battle again.

  She grabbed a Nighthound that had taken down a guard and was now separating flesh from bone, lifted it up, snapped its neck, then hurled its body straight at an angry god. The dead hound hit the angry god in the eye, staggering it. A flash grenade from Hardy disoriented the creature further, sending it crashing into the side of a building.

  An opportunity presented itself to Chloe.

  She moved quickly, grabbing a rifle from the ground that had belonged to a now-dead guard, then sprinted toward the dazed angry god. Between her and the creature was Jon, who was tearing through the hounds like they were nothing.

  Jon saw her coming, looked to the angry god, and immediately understood.

  “Lift!” Chloe yelled.

  Jon kicked away one of the hounds closest to him, then crouched, intertwining his hands and holding them out. Chloe built up speed and leaped toward him, landing atop his hands. As soon as she did, he heaved with all his might, launching her high into the air.

  At the peak of her jump, she hurled the rifle at the angry god with all the strength she had. This time, she did more than just pierce it—the rifle shot straight through its eye. The monster convulsed violently, its entire body twitching as its limbs went limp. A second later, it collapsed completely.

  Chloe hit the ground, rolling with the impact before quickly pushing herself up. Some distance away, the angry god lay still, its massive form unmoving. She didn’t stop.

  She sprinted forward, quickly scaling the top of the fallen creature’s head. Even now, she could feel it twitching—vibrating, almost. She held up one hand, pressing her fingers together in the same way she had seen Jin do before. And then she thrust her fingertips down, striking the top of the creature’s head.

  Her fingers didn’t pierce all the way through like Jin’s had, but she dug in deep enough. The angry god twitched more violently beneath her. She repeated the move—again, and again, and again—until the creature stopped moving, its eye dimming entirely.

  At this point, she had its disgusting head slime all over her. But she didn’t care. She reveled in it. There was something thoroughly pleasing about it, something almost… sensual.

  She slid off the dead angry god and started walking back toward the battlefield. Her breathing was heavier now, and she could feel fatigue creeping in. The effects of Jin’s blood were starting to wane. But she still had enough left in her. Enough for more carnage.

  As she advanced, Hardy watched her. At first, he looked impressed—but then his expression shifted to something else. Concern. Maybe even fear.

  She ignored him.

  Ahead of her, the remaining Nighthounds seemed to hesitate. They were afraid. They had seen her take down an angry god. They had seen how much more primal than them she had become.

  Another angry god fell, this time to the combined efforts of Lucas and Aiden, who had disoriented the creature with multiple flash grenades before quickly putting it down—if something like that could even be put out of its misery.

  Chloe blurred forward, grabbing one Nighthound by the throat and ripping its head clean off. Another charged at her, but she was faster. She punched it straight through the stomach, her fist protruding from its back. She yanked her hand free just in time to grab another hound, slamming its head against the ground with enough force to flatten it completely—Nighthound brain splattering everywhere.

  The few remaining hounds cowered now, clearly debating whether to keep fighting or to flee. Their hesitation only deepened when Jin finally reappeared, joining the battle.

  In the blink of an eye, six Nighthounds were gone—separated from their heads, limbs, and hearts. Jin moved with terrifying precision, cutting through them without getting herself needlessly dirty.

  The two remaining angry gods, however, grew agitated the moment Jin reappeared. Eager. Hungry. They swept their limbs across the battlefield, sending guards and Servants flying like ragdolls.

  And then, the lights came on.

  Every light in the District flickered to life at once—blinding, overpowering. Chloe winced, shielding her eyes with a hand.

  The lights were so brilliant that bulbs literally exploded, shattering, plunging the District right back into darkness.

  But the damage had been done.

  The two angry gods shrieked in agony, disoriented, their massive forms writhing in the dark. That was when Jin and Jon moved in for the kill, bringing both creatures down onto the Chancellor’s Hall. Their final, soul-rattling screeches rang long into the air—then, sudden silence.

  The battle was over.

  After that, the rest was easy.

  The Servants stood no chance. The remaining hellhounds tried to run—but Lucas had no intention of letting them escape. Neither did Aiden.

  By the time the sun rose over the District, the fight was done. Limbs, entrails, and heads were scattered across the battlefield, soaking in puddles of blood—some fresh, some rotten.

  The strength had all but faded from Chloe now. She staggered to a pile of rubble and dropped onto it, drawing in deep, shuddering breaths.

  Jon joined her a moment later. Then Lucas. Then Aiden. Finally, Hardy.

  All of them were breathing heavily, sweat mixing with the blood that had already stained them, their chests and backs heaving.

  None of them spoke for a long time. Ten minutes, at least. They simply sat there, trying to catch their breaths.

  Lucas lay down on his back.

  Chloe felt sore all over. Every inch of her ached. Her muscles throbbed, her head pounded. The crash from Jin’s blood was brutal—not a pleasant feeling at all.

  But it had done its job.

  They had won.

  At last, a proper victory.

  But she knew, of course, that this wasn’t enough.

  Sure, it was a start—but only that. There was no doubt in her mind that Tarran would be enraged by yet another failed attempt to retrieve his daughter. Furious that they had thwarted him again.

  She looked up. Jin was watching her, eyes locked onto hers.

  Her gaze was not one of celebration.

  Not of relief.

  Jin was thinking exactly what Chloe was thinking.

  This was far from over.