I swing the axe again, this time breaking the fucking weapon, while making barely a dent in the metal.

“Violet’s going to be beaten to death in a game of tag. Instead of wagging your chin, perhaps you could fucking help out,” I bite out, my anger steadily rising, as my wolf tries to surface.

“Go get the sword out of your chest, since that’s probably not very safe. I’ll work on this,” he says as he picks up another axe and gives me a nod, his eyes dipping to the blade poking through my chest.

“If you’ve never seen battle, how are all the legends about you true?” I ask the possible imposter.

“I’ve seen plenty of battles and stabbed a lot of hearts. Most of them die. They don’t immediately start stabbing into metal,” he says, as I turn my back to him.

“Pull it out. It’s silver. It’ll likely work better against this metal,” I tell him, glancing back to see him staring at me in some mild horror.

“Could you at least pretend this is causing a significant amount of pain instead of being nonchalant about it? I have big balls too, but I still cry when I’m stabbed. Wolves are more especially allergic to silver.”

Damien Morpheous has to be his idol. It’s like speaking to a true protégé.

After a breath of my frustration is released, his lips thin and he reaches over and pulls the sword out. I wince, feeling the burn of the silver sliding through me.

“It’s moderate compared to the burn of Van Helsing silver,” I assure him. “And wolves have a stronger allergy than most, likely because we were the most aggressive the night of the sacrifice. Incensed, really. We’d sacrificed loved ones for immortality. Then it was all slipping away. At the time all the rules first went into play, we were the biggest threat, due to our rage and constant anger.”

Turning, I take the silver sword from him and start hacking into the metal with it, finding some better results. I talk to distract myself from the severity of my wound, because I’m half woozy by the time I finally make a big enough tear in the metal to be of some use.

“I’m bleeding heavily and not far from blacking out, unless—”

He pulls some vials from his pocket and hands them to me. “I had more, but they didn’t survive my less-than-graceful landing, when I had to abruptly abandon the helicopter.”

He kneels and grabs the edges of the ripped metal, pulling hard enough to start bending it, as he grunts and groans, straining with enough effort to redden his face.

I drink both vials, hesitating only after finishing. Fuck’s sake, I simply drank them without even sniffing them first.

“If you turn out to be on Idun’s side, I’ll kill you, Talbot Lane,” I inform him.

He moves to the other side, grabbing the metal and pulling it as well, quickly bending it.

My wound starts closing very slowly, but enough to stop the extreme blood loss, the potion slowly working its magic.

As he finishes making a hole wide enough to drop through, he glances up at me.

“I’m here for January Violet Carmine, and I have a very respectable reputation, especially for an incubus. I can imagine it’s hard to trust me. I don’t expect it from you. But I fully intend to prove myself to Ms. Carmine, because I genuinely want to be a part of what she’s doing.”

He drops down the hole, and I struggle to join him. The hacked metal scrapes my shoulder deep enough and rough enough to cause a slight wince.

I land with a pained grunt, feeling my sword wound really start to ache now that the adrenaline from the brief fight is winding down.

I spot Talbot’s eyes wide, and I follow his gaze through an open wall that leads to…

I’m not sure how to describe it.

Black chains hold a silver man to the wall.

“What the bloody hell is this?” I ask on a quiet breath, as I hurry to pull at the chains.

My hand scrapes the silver and sizzles, forcing me to hiss out a breath.

“It’s his own damn silver,” I say in confusion.

“Pandora is a powerful blood witch. I’m not sure why you left her be all these years,” he says as he analyzes the silver, careful not to touch it.

“Because Pandora never intended to destroy the world. She picked people who wanted to make it better, back when we thought we knew how to do that. Then we made the mistake of only thinking of our own people.”

“A mistake you continue to make,” he’s fast to interject.

“Our punishment for our ambition was a greater responsibility than any of us ever intended. The world’s still a mess and certainly imperfect, but it’s better than it was—in many ways,” I tell him through gritted teeth, as I strain to no avail to break the chains.

“That’s entirely subjective to argument, based on who you are and what you have grievances about,” he murmurs, his attention more focused elsewhere.

“I can break Van Helsing chains easier than this,” I state, studying the black metal more closely.

“It’s rumored that when the dragon blew fire against the ground, it fused the minerals together and created a dark metal. It was also rumored that an army fitted with this metal as armor slayed ten thousand men with only one hundred trained soldiers, and all without a single loss of life.”

His eyes meet mine, and I let out another frustrated breath.

“If you’re telling me this is some sort of ancient dragon-fire metal, I’m going to mess up your face.”

He stares at me, almost hesitant to continue. He clears his throat and carries on.

“Pandora is rumored to be obsessed with the dead dragon. It’s very likely she’d seek out anything remotely rumored to be related to the creature,” he continues, definitely stating this is dragon-fire metal.

“So this metal’s been lying around for thousands of years and is so powerful that ten-thousand men were slain by a mere one-hundred. Tell me, Master of Random Rumors, why hasn’t it surfaced until now?”

“Because Pandora doesn’t share. If she found all of the metal, she’d hoard it and save it for something important. Such as holding a Van Helsing to the wall, while casting him in his own silver. He was supposed to rot down here, and he can probably hear everything we’re saying, because Idun would have wanted him conscious, so as to leave him to suffer to the fullest for his crimes against her.”

He makes a fist and raps on Vance’s head, but there’s no sound or movement. A hollow tink sound is all that answers that suspicion.

“We need to break the chains and get him out of here. It’ll be a long trek on foot, and—”

My foot bumps something on the ground, and the mirrors light up, as a loud whistle blows in the air.

“I can’t keep knocking them out, because they’re getting closer and closer to salting me. They really want to rescue her,” Anna says to the camera, as though she’s talking to the TV, while gesturing to Arion and Damien—or rather, gesturing to their unconscious bodies. “So hurry it up, boys.”

My eyes land on Violet, who’s slow to get up. Her body is covered in bruises, as she turns and flashes her bloodied smile toward Idun.

“I’ve seen Vance hit Damien harder than that,” Violet tells Idun. “Surely you’ve got more power behind your punches, since you’re supposedly the queen of badass.”