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Juliette waved her hand dismissively, “Why would we have gone to all this trouble to track you down if we didn’t want you to show us your loyalty?”
Juliette twitched a finger, and a vampire stepped forward. Adeline tried to recall her name, but she hadn’t bothered to learn the names of the newest members - for a reason. She wanted nothing to do with them these past hundred years. If the coven wanted her obedience, they got it, but nothing more. Adeline held her arms out to her sides, and the vampire patted her down, pulling out all of her knives and sliding them onto the kitchen counter behind her. Four, five, six, and then her trademark number of seven blades lined up in a row. Their sharp, silver-dipped edges glinted in the firelight. The vampire stepped back in line, confident she had found all the hidden weapons.
Adeline reached for her favorite blade, a Turkish dagger that she never went without. Juliette stepped forward, as did two other vampires, their bodies tense and waiting. Adeline laughed, “Apologies for the assumption, but did you think I was going to kill the werewolf with my bare hands?”
Juliette hesitated, thinking it over, but then nodded and gestured for Adeline to continue.
Adeline pressed her lips into a tight line. Then she bent down and lifted the rug from the floor.
Juliette pressed her mouth to Adeline’s ear and hissed, “If you try anything, I will quarter you alive in front of your lover myself.”
“Understood,” Adeline said, turning her head to give Juliette the stare-down. Was she coming across as genuine enough? Adeline didn’t care anymore; she needed them in the cave.
A murmur traveled through the vampires at the sight of the silver door. She grabbed an iron poker from the fireplace and threaded it through the handle, turning it slowly to unlock the trap door. Moving as slow as she dared, she grabbed the lantern from near the fireplace. A final glance outside, and she had less than twenty minutes until moonset and over an hour before sunrise if she had calculated her timing correctly.
Returning to the tunnel entrance, she held the lantern over the hole to double-check that the rope ladder was still secured to its hooks.
Still barefoot, Adeline climbed down the rope rungs. She hoped she had covered herself with enough of Rolf’s blood that her presence wouldn’t trigger the werewolf too early.
Slow, slow, slow,she told herself over and over. A mantra that she hoped wasn’t useless.
The rope swung as one of Juliette’s new vampires followed Adeline down. And then another. And another. Adeline’s feet touched the wet ground, and she took a moment to center herself. She wanted to reach up and palm the last hidden blade she had strapped to her skin but thought better until the coven was further into the cave.
Once all the vampires were on the ground, Adeline led them down the tunnel as slowly as she dared. Juliette brought up the rear, but Adeline refused to turn around to see. She lifted her head a little higher, hoping Juliette would buy into her display of fake loyalty.
The werewolf huffed, the echo a shot to her heart. She hoped with all of her lifeless being that he wasn’t in too much pain. When Rolf had suggested that he chain himself up, she had protested, not wanting him to be too injured in case he couldn’t fight back. He had kissed her nose in the predawn before she slept and told her not to worry, that he would be okay.
But she couldn’t stop worrying about him the closer they got.
An enormous shape loomed in the dark, covered in chains. A solitary lantern hung down the tunnel on the right, the amber glow a beacon of hope.
Juliette was at Adeline’s shoulder in the blink of an eye. She kept her voice low, but Adeline could feel the fear running through her maker’s body as she asked, “How did you manage to chain the beast?”
Adeline turned to Juliette, held a finger up to her mouth, and shook her head slowly.
Juliette visibly swallowed, and Adeline almost laughed at the fear reflected in her maker’s eyes.
Of course, she’s afraid,Adeline smirked to herself.
She stepped over to the werewolf, noting that most of the chains that held the beast down were caked in mud to hide the iron. The most visible one around its neck was the only one that actually glinted silver in the low light. Adeline shuffled her bloodied feet next to its snout. Its warm breath caressed her skin. The beast’s eyes met hers, and she swore there was a flicker of recognition behind the amber-colored orbs.
Here we go, she thought and palmed the dagger.
ChapterSeventeen
In one swift motion, Adeline knelt, slid the blade underneath the chain around the werewolf’s neck, and flung the metal toward the vampires.
Chaos erupted around her.
The chain ripped free from the werewolf’s neck and somehow pinned one of the younger vampires to the cave floor. The smell of the skin burning filled her nose, and the shrieks of the vampire being singed alive enraged her werewolf even more.
Her beast lunged toward the younger vampires at the mouth of the small tunnel who were trying to scramble away. Juliette grabbed Adeline by the throat, forcing her back against the cavern wall, but not before Adeline got a silver-edged swipe at her maker’s shoulder. The dagger sliced through fabric and skin but got caught on Juliette’s corset’s edge and flew into the dark.
Juliette hissed as the silver burned a crescent-shaped wound into her skin. She pressed her sharpened nails into Adeline’s neck, drawing blood. Juliette’s purple eyes burned with a vengeance at the rebellion from her former golden child.
Adeline held Juliette’s wrist to keep her claws from driving into more tendons and veins. The snarl of the werewolf and a bloodcurdling scream from a vampire distracted them enough for Adeline to take a hand and claw at Juliette’s face.
Juliette cursed and let go.
