Wicked All Night

by Jeaniene Frost

  “Get her, I’ll be fine!” I shouted as Ashael and Ian began hacking at the vampires and ghouls attacking me.

  The sky suddenly filled with so many Remnants that they blocked out the stars. More filled the perimeter, until our entire area was domed under the writhing, deadly mass. All the while, the ground kept trembling as Marie’s army ran toward us.

  Morana might be running, but with Phanes still frozen on the ground, Remnants blanketing the perimeter, and Marie’s ghoul army marching up the mountain, she was trapped.

  She must have known it, because she threw another freeze bomb at us. Several moments of blinding pain later, I unfroze myself and Ian as fast as I could, hearing Ashael shout, “Don’t worry, I’ll get her,” before his voice was suddenly cut off.

  My blindness cleared and I screamed. A jagged bone knife now jutted from Ashael’s eye, which blackened and smoked. The ghoul next to him yanked it out, drawing his weapon back for that second, final stab—

  Ian teleported over and yanked the ghoul’s arm away with such force, his limb tore off. His head followed suit with a brutal fly-and-twist maneuver that would have impressed me, if I wasn’t so horrified by seeing Ashael slump to the ground.

  Only one thing could kill demons: stabbing through their eyes with bone from another demon. With one eye remaining, Ashael would survive, but he couldn’t teleport anymore. He’d barely be able to move. Every part of me screamed with vengeance.

  How dare they harm our brother!

  I ripped the blood out of the vampires and ghouls, which is what I should’ve done as soon as they’d swarmed, had I not been distracted by Morana’s freeze bombs. Ian slipped in the new pools of it before teleporting over to grab Asahel. They both disappeared, only to reappear inside my net.

  Before I could gasp out that I was being crushed by their combined weight, Ian was gone, and Ashael was curled next to me.

  “You guard his remaining eye, and you guard her heart,” Ian said. “I’m getting Morana and ending this.”

  “You can’t touch her, she’ll freeze you solid!” I snapped. “She’s going subzero on everyone. Look!”

  I gestured down the mountain. Marie’s army was now being swept aside by huge sheets of ice that rushed down the mountain like an endless, glittering avalanche. Bones and Mencheres were farther up the mountain, standing side by side, the ice forking around them as their power swelled. Moments later, the ice broke around Marie’s army, too, as the vampires’ combined telekinesis shredded it into something that resembled snow.

  Then Remnants began falling from the sky. I was shocked until one glance at Marie explained why. She’d been hit by a freeze bomb, and the Remnants were controlled by Marie’s will and her blood. Right now, both were frozen solid.

  “If you touch Morana, she’ll freeze you so hard that you’ll shatter,” I said to Ian as I blasted Marie free. “I’m the only one that can survive her, so find a way to get me free.”

  Ian cursed, but began to teleport among the vampires and ghouls, alternatively ripping through their hearts with silver or tearing off their heads. With all their blood on the ground turning into crimson ice from the freezing temperatures, they were no match for Ian. Soon, they were all dead.

  Morana must have realized that, because ice began shooting at us like it was coming from a warship firing on all guns. I screamed as countless shards ripped into me, making me deranged with pain.

  What are you waiting for? my other half snapped. Fight ice with ice!

  I pushed past the pain enough to form a barricade around my net that was so thick, Morana’s ice bullets didn’t get through. After a few moments, I healed enough to see and hear again . . . and let out a scream when I realized that Ian was on the outside of the barricade. Not protected within it.

  Liquid darkness shot out of me with the same velocity as the ice bullets that kept chipping deeper dents into my barricade. That darkness flowed past the hole I’d made at the bottom of my barricade without even thinking about it. From there, the darkness spread out in search of Ian.

  I didn’t need to see him to know when it found him. As soon as it did, I could feel Ian, and I grabbed at him with hands made of liquid midnight instead of flesh.

  I pulled Ian into the barricade, closing it around him and building up the ice thicker against the endless barrage of bullets. Next to me, Ashael groaned, and tried to flip over.

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “He’ll be fine,” I said, watching as countless holes over Ian’s body began to close and the smashed pieces of his skull knit itself together. He’d been hit so fast that he hadn’t had time to use his cursed fruit power, and for that, I was glad.

  Then, I was blind, deaf, and immobilized again as another freeze bomb hit me. I broke out of it, but it took longer this time. All the freezing, unfreezing, and healing was taking its toll, especially on my wits, and all the while, the temperature kept dropping.

  Morana wouldn’t need individual freeze bombs soon. This whole place would be a massive, frozen prison.

  “We need heat to counter this,” I said to Ian as soon as I unfroze him and Ashael, since Ashael’s injury left him too weak to do it himself. “You have to teleport away and get some.”

  Ice shards fell off Ian’s brows from how sharply he drew them together. “Leave you? Are you mad?”

  “Not yet,” I said, and made a doorway in the ice dome around us before remembering that Ian could teleport away. Gods, my brain must be getting freezer burn, like a poorly packaged piece of meat!

  “Behind you,” I shouted when I saw a glint of silver as someone rushed through the door I’d made.

  Ian spun around, and I slapped out a wave of the inky darkness still pooling beneath me. The advancing vampire screamed when it touched him and fell to the ground, clawing at his body as if his own skin were attacking him.

  Ian picked up one of the discarded silver knives and ripped through the vampire’s heart with it. Then, he teleported back to my side, but his movements were a little slower than normal. I wasn’t the only one suffering side effects from being repeatedly flash-frozen, and the temperature just kept getting colder.

  I grabbed Ian through the net. “Leave me and go get heat,” I repeated. “Only massive amounts of heat can counter this, so don’t take no for an answer from him.”

  His eyes widened in understanding. Then, he shoved a silver knife in my hand, gave me a hard kiss, and disappeared.

  The sudden quiet was unnerving. I couldn’t see what was going on outside without lowering my ice barricade, and from the repeated chipping sounds, Morana was still spraying down ice bullets.

  I’d have to lower it, though. It was too quiet outside. That meant Marie, Bones, Mencheres, and Marie’s army was probably frozen. I was the only one who could unfreeze them, so I had to drop the barrier and—

  Pain ripped through me, followed by instant blindness and immobility. Sonofabitch! Another freeze bomb.

  I burst the ice within me and around me. As usual, it felt like being stabbed by a thousand burning knives at once. When I was free, I broke the ice away from Ashael, too. Then, I gripped my brother’s hand.

  “This is going to hurt, but I have to do it. Brace.”

  With that, I tore down the barricade, keeping only a half dome above us to, hopefully, protect our heads. Ice bullets immediately tore into me, their velocity flinging me against the sides of my net trap. Wonderful relief followed when Ashael wrapped his arms around me, covering half my body with his. He was taking my fire, so I had to make this count.

  I forced my head to turn so I could see down the mountain. Once I did, I was appalled. Everything was covered by ice. I couldn’t even see the tallest points of the ruins anymore. For several kilometers in every direction, there was only smooth, white, deadly sheets of ice.

  Morana wasn’t just raining down ice bullets and freeze bombs. She was forming a fucking glacier right on top of us!

  I sent my power out to break apart the ice. Between the sounds of it s
hattering and the ringing from the endless rounds bouncing off the ice roof above me, let alone the ice bullets that hit me, I couldn’t hear anything else. Dizziness filled me, competing with ripping pain as more and more bullets hit me despite Ashael’s selfless efforts to shield me.

  I couldn’t see Morana, but she must have been able to see me, and she was unleashing arctic hell.

  Another blinding flash of pain later, everything went black.

  Chapter 43

  Wake up. Wake up!

  I will, I thought groggily to my other half. In a moment.

  We don’t have a moment, was her pitiless reply. Can’t you feel her coming toward us? She’s almost here, so wake up!

  I tried, but while I could hear my other half, I couldn’t access our power to do what she said. I could feel it, and yet somehow, the power seemed to be far away.

  I tried again, harder. Now, it felt almost within my grasp . . .

  I exploded. At least, that’s how it felt. I didn’t actually blow up, because a few blinks later, I could see again. I was facedown in the net, Ashael’s body draped over mine, and . . . what was all this water? And how was I free from Morana’s latest freeze bomb? I hadn’t done that. Had I?

  “Veritas!”

  I turned toward Ian’s voice, catching a glimpse of him next to a dark-haired man. For a second, I couldn’t make out who that was because of the thick clouds of steam pouring out around him. With a start, I realized that steam was billowing around me and Ashael, too, and shockingly, the puddles of water beneath our net were warm where before, there had been solid ice.

  Ian teleported over and pulled me into his arms through the holes in the net. “Brought you your heat,” he murmured.

  Now I knew what had happened. Vlad Tepesh, who’d once signed his name Dracula, meaning son of the dragon, had turned the ice into steam so fast that it had exploded away from me.

  “Yes, and the next time your husband fetches me, it had better be to bring me to my promised brunch,” Vlad growled.

  “It’s a date,” I said with a weary laugh.

  Vlad raised his hands. Blue flames licked them as he stared at the tons of ice that had buried the entire mountainside.

  Ice bullets rained down anew upon us. I tried to marshal my powers to throw up another shield, but then the ice bullets turned to warm rain. Moments later, they vanished entirely as Vlad spread out a canopy of blazing fire above us and around us.

  The blast of warmth felt so good that I had the insane urge to get close enough to burn myself. I didn’t, not the least of which because I still couldn’t get out of the damned net. Instead, I kissed Ian through the net until I felt a different, even more wonderful form of heat. All the while, sounds of ice shattering merged with the shrill whistles of steam under compression as Vlad tore into the glacier with fire and heat.

  I finally broke our kiss, murmuring, “Think I’m well enough to help now.”

  “Oh, let him keep showing off,” Ian said, with a low laugh. “It’s what he lives for.”

  “I can hear you,” Vlad said in a grating voice. “And while it might be true, it’s still rude to say it.”

  I pushed Ian back, my eyes widening when I saw through the door-shaped hole Vlad had made in his fire wall to the mountain beyond. What had been kilometers of glacial ice was now rivers of water raging down the slope, carrying along pieces of ruins, trees, and people in its path.

  Then the wall of fire parted in a new place and Mencheres strode through, looking as pissed as I’d ever seen him.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said to Vlad. “My powers didn’t work on the ice goddess, and the polar vortex she dropped on us was . . . debilitating.”

  Vlad grinned. “I saw. Froze you into your own tomb, did she?” Then, his smile was wiped away. “No need to thank me, Mencheres. Ian told me you needed me. That’s all I had to hear.”

  Mencheres touched his forehead to Vlad’s for a silent moment. Then, he stepped back.

  “My powers might not work on Morana, but they can still move things around her, and this landscape is full of trees.”

  I gripped the invisible chords of my net. “If you can get her to me, Mencheres, I can stop her forever.”

  Ian stood up, flashing a cruelly expectant smile at his sire. “Club Morana with a whole bloody forest, if need be.”

  “I’ll cover you,” Vlad said to Mencheres, opening another fire door for him.

  Mencheres nodded at Vlad and left through it. Moments later, I heard the sound of multiple trees snapping.

  “She’ll use more freeze bombs,” I warned Vlad.

  He flashed a charming smile my way. “We’ll see how many of those she can muster while I’m firebombing the ass off of her.”

  Another set of explosions punctuated his threat. I thought I heard a scream, but I wasn’t sure. Between Vlad’s bombs and Mencheres knocking down trees, it was too loud to tell.

  Next to me, Ashael finally stirred. “What did I miss?” he asked in a drowsy tone.

  My throat briefly closed from the gratitude that swelled in me. “You missed our friends helping us when we needed it.”

  Why had I fought so hard against relying on others for help? Everyone needed help sometimes, no matter how old, strong, or powerful they were. If only it hadn’t taken me thousands of years to learn that.

  “Ah, look, there’s Bones using his telekinetic powers to go ghoul fishing,” Vlad remarked in a conversational tone. “He just pulled Marie and two of her people from the river.”

  “I should help,” I said, giving Ian a light push back. “I’m feeling better, and water is easier for me to control than—”

  Power blasted out, so explosive that Ashael and I were hurled backward toward Vlad’s flaming barricade. The fire wall vanished only an instant before we hit it, and we rolled to a stop against a crumpled block that used to be part of a far larger set of temple ruins. At once, we were pelted with ice bullets that stopped when another fire canopy was flung over us.

  “What?” I gasped out.

  Frenzied movement right outside the original fire barricade caught my eye. Then, I gasped again.

  Phanes and Ian were locked in battle, blipping in and out of my vision as Phanes tried to teleport away, and Ian kept forcing him back. Oh. My. Gods. Phanes must have defrosted when Vlad heated up this area, and I hadn’t even noticed!

  “Hit Morana with everything you’ve got,” I shouted to Vlad. “If she blasts Ian with another freeze bomb now, Phanes could get away and take Morana with him!”

  Another blast hit me like a full-body punch. At first, I thought it came from Vlad, because, from the deluge of explosions outside, he was taking my advice seriously. Then, my heart seized up when I realized the source of the incredible bursts.

  They were coming from Ian. He was using the cursed fruit power to fight Phanes, at levels that I’d never felt before.

  “Ian, don’t!” I screamed.

  He either didn’t hear me, or he didn’t care. His power grew, until even the flames making up Vlad’s barricade seemed to shrink back in fear from it. Then, Phanes and Ian fell out of the sky, hitting the ground hard enough to make it shake.

  Phanes roared in rage as they rolled over the terrain, pummeling each other, making sounds more akin to rocks smashing together than fists meeting flesh.

  “Fool!” Phanes shouted. “You cannot best an immortal!”

  “Can’t I?” I didn’t even recognize Ian’s tone for its new savageness. “Let’s find out.”

  Another blast of power rocked us back. I grabbed the nets, trying to right them so I could see what was happening. Even when we stopped rolling, it was hard to make out because Ian moved so fast. I caught a glimpse of a brutal, twisting shape, and then Phanes screamed, a high-pitched, agonized sound.

  Ian jumped back from him, and my jaw dropped. Ian was now holding up one of Phanes’s large, golden, severed wings.

  He threw it aside as if it were garbage. Phanes spun and fell as he tried to retriev
e it. Ian was on him in a flash, ripping off Phanes’s remaining wing while more power boiled out of him. Even after he threw that aside, he didn’t stop tearing into Phanes, who was now nearly limp on the ground beneath him.

  “He has to stop,” Ashael breathed out. “He’s using too much power. It will kill him.”

  It absolutely would. I could see it in the new scars that ripped over Ian’s body like the ground opening up from a violent earthquake. His body was dying even as the power swelled to such astonishing levels that it stripped the bark off the nearby trees.

  “Ian, stop, please!” I screamed.

  He didn’t turn his head. Maybe he didn’t even hear me. From the look on his face, I doubted he could hear anything at all. He seemed utterly lost to the power as he tore at Phanes, trying to rip him limb from limb.

  “If you want to live, take the source of his power from him!” Ashael shouted to Phanes, and stretched out his hand.

  A red glow appeared below Ian’s ribs, no bigger than a peach pit. Phanes’s gaze fastened on it as if it were a diamond.

  “There it is. Take it! He’s becoming too powerful, and he’ll kill us all!” Ashael continued in a hoarse shout.

  Hope crashed through me. Ian was too lost to the power to stop, but Phanes could tear off any spell from someone. He’d proved that the first time he met Ian, and the cursed fruit was, in essence, no more than a very powerful spell.

  “Don’t, Ashael!” I yelled, while hoping that Phanes would do exactly what Ashael said. “If Phanes rips that power out and keeps it, he’ll use it to heal his wings!”

  That galvanized Phanes into flipping over and grabbing at the red glow beneath Ian’s sternum. All the while, firebombs continued to go off, and trees crashed to the ground as Vlad and Mencheres aimed their combined, fearsome abilities at Morana, keeping her from ending this battle with another freeze bomb.

  Ian grabbed Phanes, power spilling out of him so fiercely, Phanes’s skin began hyper-extending away from his frame. I sucked in a horrified breath. Ian was going to kill him, and killing an immortal would make his power go supernova, taking both of them out at the same time.