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We are both wolf and human, vampire. Is it unusual we have bonds with those who are all one or the other?
No, come to think of it. But it was pretty damn cool. Cai nodded in the general direction of the wolves. "They're here to make sure this stays between you and me. If Brutus, Malvin and Hector want to be up to their armpits in pissed-off wolves, all they have to do is help you in any way. Though if that happens, I'll be disappointed. You make yourself out to be such a badass, it's going to be surprising if you scream like a little bitch for their help. But on the plus side, it'll be extremely gratifying to me if you do."
Goddard was measuring him and the wolves, his brain doing a lot of calculations, Cai was sure. Cai didn't see Rand, and expected he and a couple of the other wolves were circling to the back as he'd suggested. Fane had taken lead position for the pack. He looked damn intimidating, glittering eyes leveled on the vampires, teeth bared, a low growl rumbling from his throat and matched by that of all the other wolves and shifters. Good as the beating of drums and yelling by an invading army.
Goddard was holding the same frozen, I-will-kill-you all expression, but his boys were looking a little nervous.
Cai dropped to his heels, tenting his fingers on the ground, his gaze leveling on Goddard. Yeah, this was about a distraction, on the surface, but as things narrowed down to this moment, another part of him opened up. Cai wasn't leaving this field until Goddard was dead. Every inch of his hated face stomped into the ground, every finger broken that had ever taken from Cai's flesh. His tongue ripped out to destroy any more words he could say to rip apart a soul.
Cai wanted him dead, and he wanted to personally be the one who sent him to hell. He didn't care that Goddard was faster and stronger, that a two-hundred-year-old vampire was no match for a four-hundred-year-old one. Cai had enough hate built up in him to balance the scales. He was fucking sure of it.
Goddard opened his mouth to say something more, but Cai was done with dramatic monologues. He surged up from the ground and went for the stakes, moving at a speed only vampires and astronauts knew was possible.
Cai's idea might buy them time, but it didn't make Rand feel any better about it. The vampire was risking a hell of a lot on factors that might or might not pan out. But when the cache of pent-up pissed-off broke loose inside Cai, Rand recognized that rage.
When hurt beyond what you could bear, and something broke and had to be remade from what was left over, it would never be as good or whole as what had been before. That spawned a festering anger that got buried so deep, a soul often didn't realize how strong it was, until a moment like this one happened. Then it took over like the wrath of a god.
Rand could hear the wolves moving, circling, feinting an occasionally snap at the other vampires to keep them mindful of the threat if they interfered with the fight. He wasn't going to get a better shot at Dovia.
He had Stalker and Windrunner with him. The teenage girl was devoted to her older brother, and had refused to be left behind, even when Fane brought all his pack authority to bear on her, mandating she and Darcy would remain at home with Lynn and Sangra.
Windrunner had insisted she would follow them, if they left her behind. Rand was sure Fane's children didn't often defy him, but Windrunner, even cowed down to a submissive position from her father's anger, had a look that said she wasn't letting Stalker go without her.
She was a wolf, but she was also a teenager. After a long look between Fane and Lynn, Fane had allowed it, if she promised to stay at the back and out of any direct confrontation. It was part of why Rand chose her to accompany him now.
When they found the rotted wood, he and Stalker shifted to human, using feet to kick and break it, and those helpful opposable thumbs to pull it loose. Windrunner stayed wolf, but pitched in with some enthusiastic digging. Thanks to her smaller size, she was able to fit through the opening pretty quickly. Kid had a lot of guts.
The wind direction kept them apprised of the vampires, but Stalker shifted back to wolf and went to the corner to keep a visual on the three. As Cai had predicted, all the vampires seemed to be caught up watching the fight, but Stalker's tense body posture suggested things weren't going well.
Rand didn't dwell on what would happen if Cai were killed, if he would feel whatever mortal wound Cai took the same way, or if he would simply drop. All that mattered was Dovia.
He heard Windrunner's whine, and she was there again, nosing and nudging Dovia. The girl's eyes were wide in her delicate face, but at the sight of Rand, she reached through the opening without hesitation so he could pull her out. Windrunner squirmed out behind her. Dovia was still naked, since they'd only provided her a "blanket" for her comfort, but they'd figure that out. In his earlier exploration of the cabin, Rand had found no clothes for her. Bastards.
Cai, got her.
He wasn't expecting a response, so he jumped when the emphatic reply blasted through him like a shout. The staccato-fast syllables told him Cai was fighting for his life.
Get her to Daegan. Run. Gum.
Shit, he had almost forgotten. Windrunner pressed up next to him and he felt for the slim collar Lynn had fashioned for her daughter to wear, buried in her ruff. They'd fixed the small container of gum to it. He pulled it off, opened the tin and dumped the handful of gumballs into it, no bigger than peas. "Chew this now," he told Dovia. "It erases any blood tracer they put on you."
She was lucid enough to obey immediately. He turned to Stalker. Thank God male shifters were bigger than even the largest breed of wolves, and Dovia was a petite thing. He put her on Stalker's back, closing her hands on his ruff. "Just hold on tight with your knees and hands," he told her. "Can you do that? Are you strong enough?"
She nodded. He squeezed her hand and met Stalker's gaze. "Head southwest. Daegan's coming for her from that direction. He can't be far now, and he won't be difficult to scent. He's very, very old. He carries sword, a lot of weapons, he and his servant. Find a safe place to hole up until we come for you. Don't take her to your home or anywhere they could track her by other means and cause harm to your family."
Dovia reached out and clung to his arm. "You have to come, too."
"He and Windrunner will take good care of you," Rand said firmly, putting her hand on Stalker again. "I have to stay. Cai is here." He hesitated at Stalker's look, but then he said it, because he couldn't not say it. "I'm his servant. I won't leave him."
Understanding crossed her face. That was good, because he wasn't sure he understood it himself. He just knew it was true. "Pull a couple of the others as a rear guard, in case," he told Stalker. "Don't let their absence be noticed. Go."
Stalker nodded and bounded off, Dovia clinging to him, Windrunner on his heels. A couple yips to signal, and Rand knew that another pair would be joining them from those surrounding the clearing. He shifted again, fast, and used the cover of the forest to return to the camp outskirts. He stayed screened by foliage so a sudden appearance by a wolf familiar to the vampires wouldn't be noted. Or, more importantly, make them question why he'd been absent until now.
It was all he could do to keep position, though, when he saw what was happening.
Cai was losing.
Hell, the vampire was giving it all he had. It wasn't enough. And yet...
Maybe someone not blood-bound to the vampire couldn't pick it up, because Rand didn't see any reaction to it from the watching vampires or shifters. But energy was starting to build, an energy with one magnetic hub.
Amid that fierce, determined storm inside Cai, a weapon was shaping itself. Something Goddard wouldn't expect to be facing; something Cai himself might not realize was just waiting to be called. Sooner would be better than later. A shiver went through Rand, a need to jump into the fray, do something to alert the vampire, remind him of it...but any distraction could prove fatal.
It was a wonder, to be so closely linked to the male's mind, feel all those emotions, the waves of violence, fight strategy made and remade in split second decisions. Cai
was using every scrap of energy, including any emotional defenses, to fight Goddard.
Rand hated watching him fight without helping, but at least he could hold that line, that connection. Some intuitive--or foolish--part of him thought it helped, closing his mental fist around that rope, keeping it steady. Unbroken.
While that wave of energy kept building like a tsunami.
Now the wolves felt it. Some of the ones closest to him shifted uneasily, ears twitching and eyes flashing. Rand's lips curled back from his fangs. This was about to get ugly.
But hopefully in the right way.
Cai snarled as Goddard put him down on the ground once more, with a blow like an anvil slamming into his torso. He even folded over it, like the proverbial cartoon character. When Goddard fell upon him, trying to drive the stake he clasped into Cai's chest, he rolled with a flash of desperate speed.
The older male had thought he'd play with Cai, emphasize his superiority, but he was finding it was a hell of a job to spear a cockroach with a toothpick. Especially if the cockroach had had about a hundred years to study every fight tactic and cue his opponent had. Cai couldn't match him in strength or speed, but he could out fucking think him. Which would work until Cai got too tired to think.
