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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.
Chapter 17
Crawl stared at me, holding me tight by the neck, preventing me from moving without cutting off the breath flowing through my windpipe. His lurid face was a mask and mockery of what once had passed for human. But his birth had been so many thousands of years ago that there was no telling what race the Blood Oracle had been, or what he’d looked like, or even if he’d been old or young when turned.
With blackened skin that looked like it had been long ago burnt to a polished hue, he was limber and thin, like sticks held together by a taut, wired force. And he was hungry—ever hungry. I could see it in his eyes. I could feel it in his aura. I could hear it in the energy crackling around him. When he leaned down to sniff me, brushing his tongue over his fangs, I knew I was simply a snack to him, a plaything until I broke and couldn’t be fixed.
Grieve moved to run forward, but I struggled, holding up my hand. Chances were, if anybody interfered, Crawl would squeeze and that would be it. He liked his blood fresh, but freshly dead was nearly as good, and chances were he wasn’t going be too particular.
I struggled to breathe, trying to slow down my heart so I didn’t go into a panic attack.
Crawl leaned in, looming over me, sniffing at me. His lidless eyes were black as night. “We have missed this one, we have. She is known to us, we remember the scent, we remember the taste. We remember how sweet the blood rolled onto our tongue, and how loud her screams were.”
“L-let…m-me go.” I managed to stammer out a few words. Begging would do no good. While I wanted to tell him, I’m the Queen of Winter and you endanger your people by threatening me, I couldn’t get it out, and it would have been a waste of breath. The room started to spin, and all I could see was his hideous face staring down at me.
Grieve’s voice rang out. “If you hurt her, you’re staked. Put her down and we’ll come to a calm end.”
My wolf growled, shifting, and I knew that Grieve was one step away from attacking Crawl. I prayed he wouldn’t. Crawl would break my neck, then mow down the entire party, and Regina had warned me that he had powers we knew nothing of.
“Her blood is sweet and hard to forget. Yes, it is.” He pressed the remnants of blackened lips against my throat, and once again the scent of mothballs and decay filled my nose. I let out a cry, shifting slightly as he opened his mouth to strike.
