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Rahvyn watched as the portrait was once more covered by the symbols, and she thought of the young on the Queen’s hip.
Closing her eyes, she shook her head as she started to weep. “I cannot stop what is destiny,” she said aloud. “Whatever it is… I cannot interfere.”
It was a statement she had made many times recently. But as she spoke it now, it was not from some duty to maintain balance.
She was just too consumed by her own pain to prevent anyone else’s.
And her powerlessness increased her mourning tenfold, for the Queen would surely feel as she did the now if aught were to happen to her beloved.
“I am so sorry,” Rahvyn said unto the great gray landscape that existed… only in her own mind.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Lash stood outside the Tudor mansion with a detonator in his hands. Just before he triggered the charge, he had a thought that he had learned all about explosives from the Brotherhood. Kind of ironic, really. As a result of having been in their training center program, he had been taught about bombs—how to make them, how to buy them, how to set them, how to release their power.
Zsadist had conducted many of those classes, and he could picture the Brother even now, perched with one hip on the corner of a desk, an IED next to him, his scarred face a thing of nightmares as he described exactly how a Crock-Pot and some nails could be deadly. How C-4 could be used.
How you could set up explosives in… say, just randomly… cars. Windows.
Doors.
Lash had given himself quite the refresher course the night before. Real hands-on, in vivo sort of stuff. Fun. And now he was here—at one of the two sites he had rigged.
The Brotherhood hadn’t been around the evening before for some reason—which had given him plenty of space to work. But he knew they’d be back, and sure enough, they were.
Glancing to the left, he saw that his new crop of slayers were at the ready. He’d charged two of the women recruits to raid a black market arms dealer they knew, and they’d performed brilliantly. Courtesy of their little foray into Caldwell’s commercial underground, the rest of the Lessening Society had firepower and ammo that was worth talking about, as opposed to a couple of shotguns that had been boosted from Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Looking to the right, he saw his second and third classes of male slayers lined up with more of the women.
None of them seemed to care one way or the other about the equal-opportunity thing with the sexes. They were all just ready to fight because it was in their nature. As humans, they hadn’t cared about vampires—hell, they hadn’t known that the species existed. But it was a case of right person for the job. Each was on a hair trigger, in the best sense of the word. At least from his vantage point.
They hadn’t cared one way or another about what the target was.
As he turned back to the fragile glass expanse of the mansion’s conservatory, he fucking hated that the demon had been correct.
Except Devina had been. Thanks to her advice and efforts, he was so much further ahead than he had any right to be. But he couldn’t think about that right now. As a huge shadow passed by in a darkened parlor, he thought that the Brotherhood were so fucking stupid. Like anybody would be fooled into thinking what was currently inside the mansion were the aristocrats who owned the place?
Come on.
Nope, the Brothers had taken over the site, as if they’d known that Lash had intended to use the family who was supposed to be there as a training ground for slaughter techniques.
Alas, no time to develop skills.
The war restarted properly… now.
As he triggered the charges, the explosions went off all around the mansion, brilliant fireballs and loud sounds breaking through the night.
And talk about kicking a bees’ nest. What came out of the house was vengeance personified.
The Brothers streamed out onto the lawn, not from the doors that had been blown apart but from all around the roof, the second floor, the first floor.
As his slayers started shooting and there were shouts, he shoved his phone into his pocket, palmed his own gun—
And joined the fray with a bloodthirsty war cry.
* * *
In the wake of the explosions, Eddie broke out onto the grass, took a bullet to the shoulder, and kept right on steaming. Pile-driving into one of the dozens of slayers that were shooting, he fell immediately into a hands-on ground game, the undead possessing incredible strength—
As he felt himself get flipped over, he looked up and lost his concentration.
It was… a woman… on top of him, her long dark hair braided in rows on her skull and flowing down the back of her leather jacket, her face, though full of rage, set with very definite feminine contours.
