The wind nipped at Naomi’s face like the jaws of winter. Their little boat was coming up on Alcatraz now. Stone cliffs peppered with trees and shrubs jutted up into the night sky. High up on a hill sat the prison. A few months ago, the enormous building’s walls had bled rust and dirt, but now they sparkled like crushed diamonds. The Magic Council had given the whole island a facelift. The stone tower was freshly rebuilt, replacing the one that Sera had burned down last year.

Alcatraz had once been the Magic Council’s go-to prison to store the world’s nastiest supernatural criminals, before they abandoned it in favor of Atlantis many years ago. A few months ago, however, they’d reopened the old prison to handle the overflow of criminals the new enforcer squad had captured.

And now the escaped prisoners of hell were hiding inside of a prison, of all places.

The boat stopped at the dock, and Naomi and the others followed the road up to the cell house. Logan’s eyes panned across the island.

“What do you see?” Naomi asked him.

“Three guards on the water tower, six on the cell house.”

“Well, this is a prison of highly-dangerous criminals. You can’t blame Kai for being paranoid,” she pointed out.

“Drachenburg is more paranoid than this.”

Makani’s eyes followed Logan’s visual scan of the area. “He’s right.”

“How many convicts of hell made a run for Alcatraz tonight?” Naomi asked Cloud.

“Seven.”

“But hell has been leaking criminals for weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Why am I getting the feeling that we will be facing a lot more than seven convicts?” Alex said.

Naomi flashed her a grin. “It must be your bright and cheery outlook on life.”

“Yeah, you know me. I’m all unicorns and rainbows.”

“Try demons and hellfire,” Makani said. “This place is swarming with dark energy.”

Naomi felt it too, the slow, oily slither of black magic against her skin. It permeated the whole island. “The convicts from hell have taken over the prison.”

“Yes, and they’ve freed the convicts imprisoned here,” said Makani. “We’re looking at over two hundred hostiles, including the hell beasts.”

It didn’t take a genius to do the math. “So we’re looking at five of us against two hundred of them,” Naomi said.

She supposed they should be counting their lucky stars that this confrontation had come now, shortly after Alcatraz’s reopening—rather than a year or so down the road, after they’d filled many more cells with misbehaving supernaturals.

“Suggestions?” Naomi asked.

“We need a distraction,” Makani decided.

“Such as?”

Alex glanced up at the water tower. “How angry do you think Kai would be if we blew up his water tower?”

“It’s the Magic Council’s water tower, not Kai’s,” replied Naomi. “And I guess how angry he’ll be depends on how good of a reason we had for doing it.”

“Oh, I have a good reason,” declared Alex. “I’m going to create a deluge that washes those convicts right out of their bunker.”

“Help her with that, would you, Your Majesty?” Naomi said to Makani, chuckling.

“I’ve noticed you only call me Your Majesty when you’re teasing me.”

“I’ve always said dragons are clever,” Naomi said with a grin. She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Be safe.”

He set his hand on her back, drawing her in closer. “I will not leave you unprotected.”

“Hey, I’m a kickass demon hunter. I’ll be fine.”

“A kickass demon hunter whose fight with a demon tonight almost killed her,” replied Makani.

“You’re exaggerating. I was just fine.”

“You passed out,” he pointed out.

“Only for a moment.” She flashed him her most charming smile. “And I woke up recharged.”

“You forget that I can feel magic. And yours is depleted right now.”

“Then it’s a good thing I won’t be needing any magic. You worry too much. I have an assassin and a monster hunter to protect me.”

Makani’s gaze flickered to Cloud. “That monster hunter has already betrayed you once before.”

“If he tries anything, I’ll kill him.”

The serious way that Logan said it—and Logan’s reputation—must have convinced Makani because he nodded.

“Hey, don’t I get a long, overly-protective speech about how you’re sticking to my side?” Alex said to Logan.

“Darling, if I thought it would do any good whatsoever, I’d give it.”

Alex blew him a kiss. “Love you too.”

Logan snorted. “Try not to do anything reckless.”

“More reckless than blowing up a water tower on top of a prison of two hundred escaped convicts and hell beasts?”

His brows drew together. “Stay out of the flood’s path, Alex.”

“I wasn’t going to swim in it. How crazy do you think I am?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Logan said drily.

“Of course.” She smirked at him. “I find your brutal honesty endearing.”

“Well, honestly, love, I’m right now remembering a certain tsunami you created in the tunnels under London. While we were inside them.”

“Good times.”

Logan laughed, a rare gesture of emotion from the assassin. Alex seemed to bring it out in him.

“We’ll direct the water into a stream that follows the road,” Makani said.

Alex blinked. “We will?”

“Of course. We can’t just let it go everywhere. We don’t want to drown our allies.”

“See, that’s what I’m always telling her,” Naomi said, winking at Alex.

Alex pouted out her lips. “Spoilsport.”

“You’d better get moving before we’re spotted. There will be time for fooling around later,” Logan told her.

“You promise?”

Chuckling, Logan nudged Alex along the path.

“Any idiot with a hint of elemental magic can make a flood, but it takes a true master to direct the deluge’s path,” Makani explained to Alex as they walked off.

“I’m feeling rather superfluous right now,” Naomi commented as she, Logan, and Cloud headed back down to the bottom of the trail.

“Don’t worry,” replied Cloud. “When the flood washes the convicts and hell beasts down here, we’ll all have more than enough to keep us busy.”

He was right. Makani and Alex would be focused solely on directing the deluge. It was up to Naomi, Logan, and Cloud to secure the prisoners and hell beasts.

Naomi took a moment to watch the water lap the docks, calming herself before the storm. Wood and water, rock and stone, wind and earth. The elements were at peace here.

A loud, explosive boom punctured the tranquil scene. Naomi looked up at the white tower as water plunged out of its bottom like a waterfall. It crashed against the three nearby guards, pulling them into the stream. Like a water cannon, it shot against the cell house, blasting the six guards standing there into the flood.

The flood reformed, as though it were clay being manipulated by the invisible hands of a master artist. It pounded against the building, a shrill cry shrieking as every window shattered simultaneously. Water poured in through the broken windows, filling the cell house. When this was all over, the Magic Council would be replacing more than just a water tower.

Water spilled out of the building’s skeleton windows, like juice squirting out of a ruptured container. Bodies swirled in the stream, flapping around frantically. The water reformed again, merging into a single stream that roared down the hill like a stampede of thunder beasts. The flood followed every bump, dip, and switchback on the road. Then it emptied into a paved open area. Contained by magic, it swirled in a loop. People tossed and turned inside the whirlpool. Beasts made of metal and fire tossed around with them.

Naomi, Logan, and Cloud stood off to the side and waited. The flood spat out the beasts. As they were ejected from the water, their bodies dissolved into smoke. Their metallic armor crumbled into tiny pieces. The wind caught the silver ash, blowing it away. Apparently, the beasts were weak against water magic.

That left only the people in the water. Only. As though fighting them would be easy. There were over a hundred convicts in there. It took a special sort of psychopath for the Magic Council to decide death was too good for them and instead banish them to an eternity in hell. It took an even more special someone to survive that hellish sentence long enough to become a demon’s lackey. Joining a demon’s army wasn’t for the faint of heart—or for the bright of conscience.

The flood belched out a bunch of convicts. Logan launched a storm of knives at them, taking them down before they could shake out their dizziness. More former prisoners fell out of the whirling water. Naomi shot them with Fairy Dust to knock them out, and Logan moved in for the kill.

Beside her, green Fairy Dust sizzled across Cloud’s hands. Except it wasn’t only Fairy Dust. Elemental magic swirled inside the Dust like a thousand tiny fireworks. Like Naomi, Cloud was a fairy-mage hybrid. He ignited his Fairy Dust with fire magic, blasting the convicts.

“Where did you learn that?” Naomi asked him.

It was a spell Naomi had tried desperately to master—and failed at horribly. Her study of spirit magic had pushed those elemental exercises to the sidelines.

“I got the idea from you,” he admitted with a sheepish smile. “I hope you don’t mind.”

He was asking her for permission to use the spell? He really did seem like a nice guy, as though his betrayal had simply been a momentary lapse, a temporary case of bad judgement. Or he could be playing her. Again. She couldn’t afford to just trust him blindly.

“Use it if you want,” she said, shrugging. “It’s not like I trademarked the spell or anything.”

The whirlpool continued to pop out the convicts. Naomi and Cloud continued to knock them out, and Logan finished them off.

“This one is the leader,” the assassin said, dragging a man by his leather belt. He plopped him down at Naomi’s feet as the flood subsided.

The water spilled down gently, draining over the rocks and into the ocean. Makani and Alex were already jogging down the road. Alex looked uncharacteristically wiped out. Controlling that much water couldn’t have been easy. Alex usually tended toward hitting things hard and fast, rather than controlling every drop of water in a flash flood.

“What happened here?” Logan asked the convict leader.

“We came here, killed the guards, and released the prisoners. And we did it so thoroughly and covertly that no one on the outside even knew what was going on. In other words, we won,” said the hell-hardened convict. “Isn’t that obvious?”

He was pretty cocky for someone who’d just lost an entire army.

“How did you get to earth?” Naomi asked him.

His mouth split into a crooked smile, but he said nothing.

Naomi tried again. “There were hell beasts with you, which means you’re serving a demon. Which one?”

He folded his arms over his chest, his smirk growing wider. His fingers brushed across a sun tattoo on his arm. Magic burst out of him, throwing them all backward. A glyph activated beneath his feet. Logan darted forward, but even he wasn’t fast enough to beat the spell. The glyph sucked in the convict.

“Damn it,” Naomi growled, stomping her foot down on the spot where he’d stood just a moment ago. “He got away.”

“At least we cleansed Alcatraz of conspiring convicts,” Alex pointed out.

Naomi looked up the hill, her eyes panning across the broken windows and toppled tower. “Kai will be so pleased.”

Alex wrapped her arm around her. “Then let’s go tell him the good news.”