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I pushed forward, beyond the guards, any sense of reason fleeing, and burst through the doors. There, staring at us from a large table in a very large room, sat Anadey—Peyton’s mother. She was with Geoffrey and Leo. We were fucked. We were so fucked. Caught between two sadistic forces, with nowhere to run.
Peyton stared at her mother and then let out an oath. “What the fuck? You are still with them? Even after they killed Rex? Even after they attacked me? You bitch!” She lunged forward, but one of Check’s men caught her back and, kicking and struggling, she finally submitted, the look on her face murderous.
Geoffrey stood, very slowly, a steel-cold grin lighting his face. “Oh, isn’t this lovely. We knew you were in the building, but waiting was definitely a torture. Leo and I had a bet going on whether you’d make it this far, Cicely, before Crawl caught you. I won.”
And he moved—in a blur—stopping just out of reach of my guards, who drew their daggers of silver. Geoffrey took a cautious step back. Leo was brooding, staring at us with open hatred. The gangly look was gone—the vampiric glamour having taken hold of him—and I felt a thud in the pit of my stomach as he gazed at me, a malefic grin spreading across his face, then turned his attention to Rhiannon.
“My sweet little whoregirl. And her ever-so-soft boy toy, Chatter. You have a big fat cock for my sweetheart? For my fiancée? You stick that big old cock of yours up her cunt? Did she scream? Did she squirm and say, ‘Oh, Chatter, fuck me, fuck me up the ass?’” The look on Leo’s face turned from perverted to baleful, and Rhiannon paled, crying out as she stumbled back a step.
Chatter stood firm, holding her tightly, but he said nothing. I could tell he wanted to rise to the bait, but he was smart, and he held his tongue.
All too aware that Crawl was coming behind us, I wanted to shout for the guards to go after Geoffrey and Leo, but my fear that they’d all die before Lannan’s reinforcements could arrive stayed my order.
But then the odds turned, and not in our favor. A door on the far side of the room opened and a group of vampires—no doubt Geoffrey’s cronies—entered. We were outnumbered by a good fifty percent. We were going to have to fight. With a heavy heart, I motioned for Chatter to move Rhia out of the way.
“I think…I have no choice,” I said softly, closing my eyes to summon the winds—my strongest ally. “Let her fly, and make it a good one, because folks, we are not going to get a second chance.”
A brief pause, then three deep breaths as the ticking of the clock on the wall slowed to almost no movement. In that framework between making a decision and acting on it, a world of thoughts can run through, a river flowing wide and deep—so full, we cannot see the individual images. We cannot hear what our minds are saying, because the adrenaline is building as we prepare ourselves to die.
In every battle, there is a death. The loser may laugh it off if the war is short and sweet and without cost. Or the loser may bleed out, if the war is to the death. Either way, when the call to march comes, there’s that one moment when we stop, reflect, and realize that yes, today we may die, today may be the end. And then—we move. And that pause, that breath, becomes forgotten in the heat of the battle.
And so it was here, as always. I pivoted on the fulcrum of my feelings, feeling the swing from fear to acceptance to readiness to…action.
As the guards moved forward, their silver blades flashing, the vampires cautiously spread out to form a half circle around us. They were leery, but truth was, unless the tip went center into their hearts, no harm would come to them. So they had fairly decent odds of surviving an attack by my men.
Check would not let me move to the front. He and two of his men pushed us back, but Grieve and Chatter joined the guards, and though I didn’t want them to, so did Luna and Peyton. Peyton looked fit to kill, and I was afraid she’d head directly toward her mother, but instead she quickly stripped off her clothes, tossing them to the side, and turned into her werepuma self. Then she launched herself onto the table, growling low and rumbling. Anadey screamed and backed away.
Luna began singing a low dirge, and Ysandra glanced at her, then joined in. Somehow they were amplifying their powers, joining together as they cooked up some sort of spell. Whatever it was, I let them be and focused on my own source of power—the wind.
I called up the winds, trying to keep control of them, not letting them entrance me like they usually did. And then, as they began gusting lightly around my fingers and through my hair, I closed my eyes, sinking into their siren song. Ulean was not here to help pull me out of it this time if I got lost, and neither was Lainule, so I’d have to manage on my own.
I lowered my chin to my chest and then, as the power settled within, raised my head, staring ahead at the vampires, and under my breath, in the lightest of tones, I whispered, “Gale Force,” and a stiff breeze sprung to hand, quickly gusting into a howling wind that raced past me, carrying my spirit with it. I spun up and around, growing tall. Like Myst, I towered over the room, looming larger than life in my spirit. My body was still below, but I was rising out of it, trembling in the storm that raged around me.
The howl of the winds ripping past me tore anything light not rooted down off whatever surface it had been on and sent it flying through the air, spinning topsy-turvy into the maelstrom. Within moments, the room was in chaos, with both my guards and the vampires struggling to stay on their feet.
I moved forward, growing still stronger, my spirit rising still taller, laughing as the power began to take hold. I leaned back, letting loose my laughter, and it echoed, a shattering of crystal, over the roar of the storm.
But somewhere inside, I could feel the caution—the warning signs as my delight in controlling the forces grew—and I struggled to compose myself, standing on the edge of the insanity that the power brought with it. As I wavered, holding back just enough so that I didn’t destroy the building as well as the town, my guards launched themselves at the vampires.
Geoffrey had moved back, as had Leo, and their grunts were fighting the battle for them, trying to wear down my forces. The slash of the blades glinted in the light, though the sound had been lost in the face of my storm, and I watched in horror as the vampires attacked my men.
This is war; this is what it means. This may be in your future yet again, so you’d better get used to it. The thought ran through my head and I tried to shake it away, but the conviction grew. After we took care of Geoffrey and Leo, we still had Myst to battle, and she would not make it easy on us.
I gathered my breath and went back to holding the storm steady, preventing myself from sinking deep into thrall. I couldn’t see what was going on. If I tried to focus on the fighting, then I lost track of the winds and they would either fall away or catch me up, neither of which would help. As it was, even though they also hindered my men, they were throwing the vampires off track. My guards knew what to expect from them, but the vamps—Geoffrey and Leo included—had no clue of how to handle the whirlwind raging around them.
But then, a shriek raced through the room, and I lost my concentration. It was Peyton, and she was screaming in pain. As I let go of the storm, the energy suddenly wrested away from me and spiraled out to fill the room. A great groaning and creaking shattered the air as the sudden twister—the remnants of my gale—spun out of control and crashed through a nearby wall, the brick spraying pebbles on anyone near the area. The building shook, moaning as it took the direct hit, but all I could think of was that Peyton was being hurt.
Geoffrey had caught her in his arms, and he was biting into her neck. I raced forward, but Check caught me before I could travel more than a few paces, motioning for his men to go in my stead. As I watched, helpless and terrified, they pushed through the fighting, but before they could get there, Anadey began to scream and beat on Geoffrey’s back.
“My daughter—don’t you hurt her! Let her go!” Mother Bear was out, it appeared. She clawed at him, and in that moment, Geoffrey dropped Peyton, who fell to the ground and immediately scrambled away. He turned to backhand Anadey against the wall so hard the room shook again.
She snapped against the brick, her head jerking forward, then back again in a whiplash motion. Then, slowly, she opened her mouth to speak, but slid down the wall to puddle the bottom, and her eyes closed as her head lolled to the side. A bloody streak covered the wall where she’d landed. As far as I could tell, Anadey was dead.
Peyton began to sob, but she had the presence of mind to get out of Geoffrey’s reach. My men advanced on him, blades cautious and glittering, but then—in one of those moments where the ground shifts and the world changes—everything stopped as someone yanked me away from Check, out of his arms.
Gasping, I turned to gaze upward at my captor. And there, staring down, leering with uncontrolled desire and hunger, stood Crawl.
As my stomach flipped and I realized he was launching his fangs toward my throat, I began to scream, and scream, and I couldn’t stop.
