by Tanith Frost
The energy around us shifts, the change barely perceptible even to me. I stand to look back at the battle, and my stomach sinks. Tempest’s vampires have resumed something close to normal movement—still slower than us, but there’s a change. They sense it. The confusion or anger they showed earlier is gone.
I crouch beside Odette and press my fingers to her chest. Her heart is still fluttering, but weakly. Whatever advantage we had relies on her, and she’s fading fast.
“Hold on,” I tell her though I know from personal experience with a wound of this sort that I’m asking for the impossible. “Come on. We still need you, and so does Imogen.”
She doesn’t answer.
A soft, greenish glow surrounds us, illuminating Odette’s ruined body and the blood soaking into the grass. For one foolish second, I think maybe this is what happens when an enchantress dies and her connection to magic is released, and I back quickly away. Then I look up. Long curtains of light have opened across the night sky, green and blue fading to purple as they trail upward.
The Northern lights.
Gideon’s signal. Two minutes until he releases the light and ends the battle.
Miranda has to have seen the signal, but she’s still fighting. Of course she is—there’s no reason to call for retreat. We’ve got our enemy right where we want them, and as far as she knows, my end of the plan is going to work perfectly. Now that I’ve got some distance, I can see that even Lachlan is on the field though he’s hanging well back from the worst of the fight.
Odette lets out a rattling gasp beside me, and the energy shifts again. Tempest’s vampires move freely as though there was never any magic affecting them.
And if they’ve failed, so have her other protections. Our talismans are useless, and the light is coming.
Ten seconds gone. The lights above me fade.
I forget the pitiful body at my feet and run toward the blast zone.
31
Miranda’s soaked in blood from the vampire whose throat she’s just ripped out when I reach her. I grab on to her arms, heedless of the danger of attacking her in this moment. Hate blazes in her eyes until my identity registers, and she takes in the blood on my hands—not weak and pale as it should be in this battle, but red, thick, and recently full of life.
“Odette’s dead!” I tell her, louder than is strictly necessary given the circumstances. I lower my voice slightly. Miranda’s eyes continue to dart, watching for danger, but she’s listening. “Her protections depended on her being alive to sustain them. If we don’t get Maelstrom off this field—”
She pulls away from me, raises her fingers to her lips, and lets out three quick whistles that carry the length of the field—the signal for true retreat.
Not one vampire on this field aside from Miranda and me understands why this is so urgent, though she’s stressed the importance of immediate compliance. If they choose to ignore the pleasures of the hunt and run, it will be out of obedience to their leader, not fear of what happens if they don’t.
I hope it’s enough. Vampires were made for this—violence, bloodshed, bringing pain and terror. Even a reluctant fighter quickly gets a taste for it. I would know.
But Maelstrom is listening. They’re breaking free from whatever fights they’re engaged in, running together toward the hills without looking back, as directed.
Tempest’s vampires hesitate, then regroup, no doubt following their own strict orders.
I should be running, too, but I can’t help looking back when I reach the edge of the property, hoping to see Lachlan fall. I draw on the void, letting it quicken my perceptions, and time seems to slow around me.
Thirty seconds left, if I’ve tracked it correctly. Tempest is still waiting for orders, save for a few who still have Maelstrom’s vampires locked in their fights, unable to escape. Most of them are milling around near the low hill that blocks our view of the new church building, at the edge of the property where they’ve just seen Maelstrom retreat. They’re pacing, straining like leashed hunting dogs as they await their orders. Lachlan stands closer to the road, talking to what must be a lieutenant. It’s clear that they don’t want to run into a trap, but there’s no way he’s going to let Maelstrom escape.
And Bethany—I spot her long ponytail whipping through the air some distance from the others. She’s still fighting, too. She’ll be caught in the blast, but so will her opponent.
Daniel.
He’s focused entirely on her. Maybe he heard the order. Maybe he tried to leave.
But maybe, after everything he went through while he was a prisoner of Tempest, after everything he saw his team suffer and the war he had to fight with himself simply to survive, he doesn’t care about Miranda’s orders or his own safety.
He’s not the traitor. I’ve never felt more certain of anything.
Bethany stumbles and falls. She’s badly wounded, but Daniel is limping, too.
I race towards them, circling around the crowd in the middle of the field, pushing my legs to carry me faster than they’ve ever needed to before, drawing on everything in me to get me to him.
Lachlan looks up, moving in what seems to me like slow motion, surprise registering in his eyes as he spots me.
Time speeds up again. I feel how that trick has drained me, but still push ahead, willing to spend every part of myself.
Twenty seconds.
“Daniel!” I scream. When he looks up, I throw my arms over my head, gesturing toward the road. “Run, now!”
He may have been willing to postpone obeying Miranda’s call for retreat, but he listens to this. He turns and races toward the road, still limping.
“After them!” Lachlan yells, nearly screaming—rightly assuming, I suppose, that wherever Maelstrom has gone is safe. “Fast as you can!”
“Lachlan!” Bethany calls as she struggles to her feet. She takes a step, and one leg buckles beneath her. “Help me!”
He looks at her, then bolts toward the road, following the path to safety I laid out for Daniel. He’s closer. He’ll make it.
Stupid, smart motherfucker.
My muscles scream for mercy, but I ignore the pain.
Two seconds. Lachlan has reached the road. Daniel’s not going to make it. Neither am I.
One.
Screams ring out behind me, from the direction of the new church building. The light is coming.
Daniel glances back, and his eyes widen.
My throat is so dry I can’t speak—can’t call for Gideon, who said he’d be free to come once he’d released the light.
I squeeze my eyes closed and force myself to keep running in spite of the feeling that I’m being crushed from all sides at once, and smack into a solid form that wasn’t there a second ago. I bounce back, landing on my ass, and scramble backward.
But I’m fine, save for the renewed searing sensation in the scar beneath my ribs.
Gideon stands before me, his shining black wings held slightly open behind his shoulders. Dark circles shadow his eyes, though, and a sheen of sweat covers his brow.
Everything around us is frozen.
He offers a hand to help me up, and I accept.
“You—” I begin. “Why?”
“You’re an asset worth protecting,” he says gruffly. “Come. I can’t hold this for long—your little favour took more out of me than I’d anticipated, and I need time to recover. But we’ll get you off the property.”
He starts walking toward the hills—toward the clan, the tiny rift Odette used to work her magic, and whatever should come next for me, but I don’t follow. He sighs and turns back. “What?”
“Not without Daniel.”
“Ah. I see.” He looks toward the road, where Daniel is frozen mid-stride, just a few paces from the ditch at the edge of the road. “I am sorry about that, believe me. Not just for your sake. He’d have made a fine addition to my collection if I ever decided I wanted more vampires in my debt.”
I rub my side where the burning is beginn
ing to ease. It may have been Gideon’s decision to come, but it’s clear that this favour has been added to the debt I owe him. “Daniel would never be your slave.”
Gideon shrugs. “No loss for me, then. I am sorry it has to be this way, but this is a consequence of the deal you made with me. You got what you wanted.” He gestures toward Tempest’s vampires. Far too many made it to safety, but plenty have been caught by the light. They’re frozen in place, falling and writhing. I search for Bethany, whose face is locked in an agonized scream—she’s turned the grey of spent firewood, ready to crumble to dust. I’ve cut the enemy’s numbers in half.
It would have been all of them if Odette hadn’t died… or if I hadn’t tried to warn Daniel.
My throat tightens, and for a moment, I hate myself—not because I regret what I did, but because I don’t.
Or at least, I won’t if he survives. So much for my high ideals.
The air around us wavers. “I’m losing my hold on this space,” Gideon says. “We must go now.”
“How valuable an asset am I?” I ask.
Gideon grits his teeth. “Not valuable enough that you should test me.”
“No?” I back away a few paces. “I wonder.”
I turn and run in the direction opposite of what he intended, aware that at any moment, I could meet the boundary of the time bubble, or that Gideon could lose his grip on it entirely, plunging me back into the pain and misery of the present. His footsteps come hard and fast behind me, but I’m quick enough to make it across the field before he can catch up with me.
The air shimmers. Time resumes. My mouth feels full of spiderwebs, and my muscles tighten painfully as I throw myself at Daniel, knocking him to the ground with my arms locked around him, pressing my body as fully against his as I can.
Trying to protect him, though I know the light will consume us both without hesitation.
The light washes over and around us like a wave breaking on the shore, and the pain increases until it’s all that exists. I can’t even draw a breath to scream.
And then the wave recedes. I still feel the effects of the light—it’s as if iron bands are clamped around my ribs, crushing and cracking them, and my body is crying out for water, parched as the cracked dirt of a desert floor.
But I’m here. And in a moment, the sensations are gone.
Daniel stirs beneath me, but I’m afraid to let go. “Aviva?” he whispers.
“Shh. It’s okay.”
I look over my shoulder. Gideon kneels behind me, hands braced against the ground, his outstretched wings now feathered in white so bright that I have to look away—but not before I catch his pained, contorted features.
When I close my eyes and turn away, his wings still glow against the darkness behind my eyelids.
The pain in my side explodes, sending tendrils of burning agony deep into the core of my body until I can’t draw a breath to speak.
“Go,” Gideon orders. I force my eyes open and find him standing over us, shining wings folded, still aflame with white light. “It should be no worse than crossing any other land associated with holy ground. You’ll make it.”
His tone leaves no room for argument, and I’m not about to defy him again. I force myself to my hands and knees. As the burning fades, the muscles in my abdomen remain cramped.
But I pause for long enough to pull my shirt up. I have to see.
The marking on my skin is coated again with black ash where this new debt has been burned into me. But this time, when I brush it away, the colour doesn’t change. The lines are blacker than ink and seem to absorb the light from Gideon’s wings that reflects off the rest of my skin.
I glance up at Gideon, expecting to see him taking pleasure in what I now owe him, but his brow is creased, his eyes narrowed.
“There’s no more you can promise me,” he says, and meets my eyes. His burn now with the light he shielded us from.
“So I owe you—”
“Everything. I hope it was worth it.” He turns away and strides across the field, then glances back over his shoulder. “Don’t you dare fuck up and get yourself obliterated. I will not be pleased if your debt goes unpaid.”
That’s it, then. I can’t owe him more than this, and he can’t offer any more unearned favours.
We’re on our own.
Daniel looks from me to Gideon’s retreating form. “What—”
“Don’t worry about it.” I tug on Daniel’s arm, and we crawl toward the road and roll into the ditch. Ice cracks beneath me, and I let my hands plunge into the filthy water beneath. Then my face. The water tastes terrible, but I could guzzle an ocean’s worth at the moment.
Daniel’s ahead of me as I pull myself up the slope to the road and look around. There’s no sign of Lachlan.
“What the hell?” Daniel asks as he pulls himself to his feet, hunched over as though he’s shielding injuries.
“Light. The church buildings… connected.” I gasp. “Gideon hid… Odette’s talismans should have protected, but…” I take a deeper breath to stretch the remaining tightness out of my torso, then stand on shaking legs. “I’ll have to tell you everything later. Some of Tempest’s vampires escaped and went after Maelstrom.”
My steps become more certain as I follow the road, taking the long way around behind the old church so we won’t tempt the light to turn on us again. Daniel walks beside me, his left leg dragging slightly.
“What about the talismans, then?” he asks, pulling his from his pocket. “Why didn’t they protect us?”
“Because Odette is dead.” I wish I had the energy to feel anything.
Daniel’s steps slow, then quicken again. I hurry to catch up.
“Daniel, what’s wrong?”
“There was a backup plan in case yours failed or you turned out to be the traitor,” he says grimly. “Miranda didn’t give me details, but I get the feeling it relied on opening the rift to use magic to weaken the enemy. That’s why we retreated toward it.”
He doesn’t have to finish the thought out loud.
Odette said it herself—Imogen can’t open the rift alone. And we sure as hell can’t win a fair fight.
A scream rings out over the hills. The battle has resumed.
32
“This way,” Daniel says, leading me up a rocky slope. “We’ll need to find another route to the battle. If Tempest has caught up with them, we’ll never get through the way the rest of Maelstrom did.”
Miranda scouted the area with Odette and Imogen while the rest of us were feeding. I assumed they were looking for a likely place to open a rift so they could access magical resources, but I didn’t have time to come out and look for myself. All we have to guide us are Miranda’s orders and the sounds of the fight.
“I thought it was you,” I say, barely loud enough for him to hear—I kind of don’t want him to, but it needs to be said. “I told Miranda about your phone call.”
He stops and turns back. “I suppose I should be hurt by that.”
“In my defence, you told me to.”
“I did.” He turns to analyze the hill before us, which has become steep and treacherous. “Maybe it was to ease my guilt over doing the same to you—I checked with her after you left that first night to make sure she knew you’d gone out. I didn’t want to think you’d ever betray us, but…”
“I know. Better safe than sorry. And she couldn’t give you any reassurances, right?”
“Nothing for certain, no.”
He offers a hand to pull me up the steepest part of the slope.
We could both feel bad about this, I guess. I always thought love meant absolute trust, even blinding oneself to flaws and pitfalls. But if either of us had been Lachlan’s mole and we’d spilled everything or protected each other from Miranda, we’d have been screwed. Not just us, but the clan, the supernatural world, and all of the humans Lachlan would have continued to steal light from in his mad quest for supremacy of the void.
Love could have made us weak
and vulnerable. It didn’t. We kept our eyes open and did our fucking jobs. No blindness. No mercy.
I think I love him more for it.
When we reach the top of the hill, the lights of Twillingate are visible on one side—not within shouting distance but close enough for me to feel uncomfortable. For once, I’m actually thankful for the cold. It will keep people from wandering tonight, and by the time they’re up and about to celebrate Christmas, we should be long gone.
My stomach tightens at the thought.
One way or another…
The other side of the hill pitches steeply downward and connects with another, forming a deep, sheltered valley in the landscape where they join. It’s to this space that Maelstrom’s vampires have retreated.
It would have been perfect if all had gone according to plan and we’d had fewer enemies to deal with. As the situation stands, we’re still outnumbered. Tempest’s vampires mill about at the open end of our shelter, blocking any chance of escape.
“This is it,” Daniel says softly as we crouch, not wishing to draw attention to ourselves up here. “We can slide down there, but—”
“But not climb back up. I know.” I pause. “We could run.”
“We could. And go rogue. I’ve learned enough over the years about how they cover their tracks and how they fuck it up. We could make it work.” He sounds wistful.
“Shall we?” I ask, nodding down into the little valley.
“I suppose we shall.”
He begins his descent, and I follow close behind after one more look over the Tempest crowd. There’s no sign of Lachlan among them. Then I glance up and spot a silhouette on a low slope behind them. He paces, peering into the darkness where the hills meet as if he can make his prey emerge by sheer force of his will.
Loose rocks slide under my feet, clattering down the cliff-like slope.
“Watch it!” I can’t see him below me, but Edwin’s voice is unmistakable. I drop off the steep vertical edge of the hill and hit the ground hard, and he catches me around the waist. “Hey, kid. How you doing?”