Salvation

by Tanith Frost

  “Hanging in there. You?”

  He grins in spite of the vicious gash someone has opened in the skin of his face, carving its way across his cheek and over the bridge of his nose. “Having the time of my life, obviously. Or death.”

  I don’t even think he’s joking. He’s pulsing with energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet, clearly eager to jump back into the fray.

  I pat him on the arm. “Hang in there. You’ll get your chance.”

  We’re packed tight in here, but the space does widen a little at the closed end, forming a sort of roofless cave. That’s where I find Imogen and Taggryn—she with tears in her eyes as she speaks to Miranda, he with his back pressed against a wall, eyes wide as he watches the vampires milling about.

  “This will not do,” he mutters as I reach him. He’s dressed in regular men’s clothing tonight, but his wild violet eyes and long, tangled hair make him look less human than any of the vampires present do. “I was told to wait here, protect the girl in case the others tried to capture her. I was not told there would be this… this invasion of the space.” He glances upward, and I suspect he’s considering whether he might be able to climb out.

  “No one is being told everything,” I say. “We just have to work with what’s available to us. If Miranda gives the okay, are you ready to transform and crunch some vampires?”

  He glowers at the crowd. “I’ve been waiting to do so since the first night I met your kind.”

  “Just the enemies,” I clarify. “Right? Believe me, if you help us survive this, you’ll be like a god to this clan. The other will destroy you if they win.”

  He snorts. “You are not the good guys.”

  “No. But they’re the worse guys.”

  He nods. “If it is the only way out of this, I will do what I can. But I am trapped for now. I cannot change form without more magic to strengthen me.”

  “Thanks, Taggryn.”

  I move along the rock wall toward Miranda and Imogen. I can’t tell whether Imogen looks more heartbroken or terrified. Miranda gives me a quick look that I can’t quite read and leaves us, moving through the crowd toward the jeers and taunts being hurled at us by the enemies who stand outside.

  The magic hums stronger here. I can’t see anything that might mark the location of the rift, but this has to be where they found their source.

  “I can’t do it,” Imogen says before I have a chance to speak. “We—we were supposed to widen the rift if it came to this. She was supposed to do it. I told her not to go, but…” She trails off, leaving the obvious truth unspoken.

  If the light was Plan A, magic was Plan B.

  I don’t know whether there’s a Plan C.

  “You said you know how to do it,” I remind her. “You’ve studied her methods.”

  Imogen dries her eyes on her coat sleeve. “I have. But I’ve never done it. She said I wasn’t ready—that I wasn’t strong enough.”

  Exactly what Odette told me. But she’s gone now, and Imogen is as fucked as any of us if Lachlan realizes we have no more tricks up our sleeve and decides to press his advantage. I suspect the only reason he hasn’t yet is that Bethany isn’t here to confirm that there are no dangerous powers present.

  Score one for us, I guess, thanks to Daniel.

  “She told me you were ready.” The lie tastes bittersweet on my tongue, and it only gets worse when Imogen looks at me, eyes wide and brow furrowed as if she wants to believe me but can’t quite.

  “But she said I couldn’t—”

  The shouting from behind us is growing angrier. They’ll attack any moment now. Miranda’s voice rings out, daring the enemy to come closer and taste what we have in store for them. I wish she weren’t bluffing.

  “I think she told you that so you’d study harder and work to prove yourself,” I tell Imogen. Maybe it’s even true. “Now, it’s time. If not for us, then for yourself. When those vampires attack, a rift is going to be the only way you and Taggryn make it out of here alive. You have to try.”

  Imogen nods. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She kneels, and with shaking hands, pulls a knife from her bag. I can’t tell whether she’s muttering some kind of spell or just reminding herself of instructions—the words are too faint and garbled. In either case, as she presses the blade to her skin and draws blood, the magic around us swells slightly. Imogen glances up at me, eyes shining with tears. “It’s going to take so much. If I faint…”

  Taggryn pushes past me and removes his coat as he sits beside her. “You will not faint, little human. My magic is stronger than yours, as is my body.”

  “But—” Imogen says.

  Taggryn glances up at me. “I choose who my power serves and how. The vampires will fight without me. I have no desire to be trapped in this world.”

  Imogen hands him the knife. “You do it, then.”

  Taggryn digs the knife into the flesh above his wrist without hesitation, grimacing at the pain. “Hurry, now.”

  I leave them to their work. Taggryn is right. As impressive and effective as it might have been to have a massive dragon snapping at our enemies, this is where he needs to be. The fight is in our hands.

  I only hope we’re right about magic, that it will harm our enemies as fire would have. Surely it’s time for something to go our way.

  It only takes me a few seconds to rejoin the vampires, who have given Imogen her space and stand crowded in the narrow confines of our shelter—our prison, if we’re unlucky. I shoulder my way closer to the front. None of Tempest’s vampires have dared to step too close, but there are enough of them to block our way out. Miranda stands near the front, just two rows of Maelstrom’s vampires keeping her from becoming an obvious target. Though she appears calm, it’s impossible for me to shut out my perceptions of her power—roiling, agitated, angry.

  “Is this all you have, Miranda?” Lachlan’s voice rings out, silencing the taunts of his soldiers. I rise on my toes to look over the shoulders of the vampires ahead of me and spot him standing where I saw him before, on the lower slope of a hill.

  Miranda looks to Daniel, who stands nearby, fists clenched, jaw tight. He shakes his head. “I tried.”

  A chill spreads over my heart. There was a Plan C.

  Was.

  Miranda motions to Jia, Clark, and Crawley, who join us in a tight circle.

  “We’re trapped,” Clark says. “They can starve us out.”

  “They won’t have to,” Crawley says, looking up at the stars visible between the tops of the hills that protect us from direct attack. “They’ve got sun gear. We haven’t. We won’t last long enough to starve.”

  Fear creeps over my skin, prickling and cold, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. It’s not Crawley’s words, though.

  It’s magic. The increase has been gradual, and my attention has been elsewhere. But when I let myself feel it, it’s there. Stronger. Strong enough, in fact, that my old reactions are rearing their heads even though Imogen’s symbol is still inked into my flesh.

  I hate to think what this kind of power would feel like if I didn’t have it there, fighting back against that reaction. If the old rift was terror, the one Taggryn’s blood has helped her open would be pure madness.

  “Imogen’s doing her work,” I tell them. “The magic is coming. If it weakens our enemies, we might cut a path through.”

  Crawley glances back over his shoulder. “They’re still too many. Most of us will fall.” I’m about to object when he looks to Miranda, his dark eyes sharp and determined. The volume of his voice rises. “But as long as our high elder survives, Maelstrom exists. And I for one would rather go down fighting than trapped like a coward, waiting for the sun to claim me.”

  Someone a few paces away lets out a wild yell, and others join in.

  Crawley gives a slight bow. “I hope you know I’ve served Maelstrom faithfully, Miranda. If I stood against you, it was for the good of the clan. And if I’d known Viktor’s true plans—”

/>   Miranda places a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve always known your intentions and valued you for them.”

  Crawley turns to Clark. “Keep her safe, whatever it costs.”

  “I will.”

  The magic swells again, and my chest tightens painfully as my thoughts swirl in an overwhelming blur of fears—capture, pain, torture, oblivion…. The feeling passes, but I have to run my fingers over the bumpy ink on my arm to remind myself that I’m safe from the worst of this. The magic is strong, but Imogen’s curse against its effects won’t fail me.

  “For Maelstrom!” Edwin hollers, and I realize it was he who let out the first cheer.

  “For the fallen!” Hannabelle adds, her voice clear and strong, completely unlike the soft-spoken ghost of a vampire she was before she accepted her power.

  For blood, I add to myself. For chaos. For destruction. For everything we are, and everything we choose to be.

  We turn as one, the remnants of a clan thought weak by most others, determined to fight to the end.

  Daniel takes my hand in his and squeezes tight before letting go. There’s no time for anything else, and what would we say? Nothing waits for us but oblivion. We can face it bravely and without regrets, but then all of that will cease to matter.

  But maybe there’s a chance that what we leave behind will matter.

  We swarm out of our shelter, weapons ready. Tempest presses back. One of them catches me by my left arm, and I twist closer, bringing my knife around, pulling my arm free, pushing her head back to seek the opening between her helmet and her body armour. Blood spurts over my hand, cool and watery. It’s hurt her, but she doesn’t need that blood to survive. She pushes back, and I fall to the ground, rolling out of the way of the feet thundering and stomping around me, knife clutched tight in my fist.

  I can’t stand—the bodies are too thick, and the magic is keeping me from thinking as clearly as I should. I’m not panicking, but I’m on the verge of it, strung tight and close to snapping.

  Given how little I felt at the other rift when Imogen created this symbol to protect me, she must be creating something far larger than what she and Taggryn need to escape. And it’s working. As I break free from the edge of the fight and clamber up the low slope of a hill so I can stand again, I see enemies falling. Not as quickly as we’d like—they’re still armoured, still so numerous that when one falls another replaces them. But their movements and reactions are slowing. Some seem to be squinting as though the void-given sharpness of their vision is failing.

  I was right about all of it—about the source of our strength, about how frail Tempest’s untested purity is when faced with the opposition they’ve so carefully stamped out in their own lands. What others have seen as Maelstrom’s failing is its greatest success.

  If only we were going to survive to prove it.

  Tempest is slowly forcing us back, narrowing our reach, ensuring that only those at the front can fight, making even our small numbers useless.

  “Hold!” Lachlan calls. He’s farther away now. Of course he is. He can’t feel magic directly, but Bethany taught him to be sensitive to the shifts in the void in himself and others. If magic is weakening him, he feels it.

  Tempest’s vampires back away but remain ready to fight if we try to escape. Lachlan will gladly sacrifice them if he has to, but there’s no need. He just has to make it until dawn.

  His laugh rings out, cold and humorless. “Are you glad you fought, Miranda? You could have prevented all of this pain and loss. Now Maelstrom will be nothing but a memory, a cautionary tale in the history of vampire clans.” He takes a few steps closer, pauses, and pulls back. “You believed there was strength in giving space to enemy creatures and enemy powers as though they had a right to exist. And what good are they to you in the end? What—”

  An eerie howl from behind Tempest’s ranks cuts him off and sends a shiver up my spine. Another quickly joins it, and a third. Tears spring to my eyes as something I never expected to feel again blossoms in my chest.

  Hope.

  Chaos breaks out among Tempest’s vampires as the howls turn to snarls.

  “Forward!” Miranda yells, and Maelstrom’s remaining members rush ahead again, taking advantage of the confusion. Magic swells, mingling with the fire carried by the werewolves who are attacking the enemy from the rear, closing them in just as surely as they thought we were seconds ago.

  A big wolf with a torn-off ear breaks through and pushes her way toward Miranda.

  Daniel grins down at her. “Took you long enough!”

  She snarls at him and gives Miranda a nod.

  “Just the armoured ones,” Miranda tells her, and Violet races back into the fight. “Preserve the wolves!” Miranda adds, loud enough to be heard by all of Maelstrom.

  I can’t help the laugh that escapes me as I turn to Daniel. “You?”

  He looks mildly affronted. “I know how to negotiate. But I didn’t think they were coming. It was a close thing, and she never said what she’d decided.”

  “But why—” I duck as a Tempest vampire swings a sword at my head. Right. No time to talk now.

  Our enemies are falling quickly now, mostly under vampire weapons. Though the wolves are doing their part—knocking enemies to the ground, distracting with the pain of their bite—it’s their power that’s done Tempest in. Lachlan may have been experimenting with fire, but he hasn’t been generous enough yet to share whatever strength he’s gained with the weaker troops he thinks so little of. With no previous exposure, they have no defence, and the void in them is struggling against the assault.

  They’re not completely helpless, but they’ve lost the advantage, and they know it. The desperation in their eyes is almost enough to make me feel sorry for them.

  Almost.

  I push my way through the battle, dodging and running instead of fighting back. Sure enough, when I break free, I spot Lachlan’s form, dark against the night sky, disappearing over the hill.

  Jia is prying open the armour of an enemy she’s immobilized, wooden stake in one hand.

  “Jia!” I call, and she glances up. I nod toward Lachlan. “We can’t let him get away. Tell Daniel and Miranda to follow when they can!”

  I don’t wait for her reply, and I don’t wait for backup. I know it’s dangerous to go alone, but I don’t care.

  Lachlan doesn’t get to fall back, regroup, and come up with a new plan. Not this time. Whatever it takes, it’s time to finish this.

  33

  Lachlan’s not hard to track. Though he seemed to be trying to stay out of the fight, he’s been injured. Between the faint scent of blood and the void power working hard to heal him, I’m able to follow even when I lose sight of him.

  My own injuries, old and newer, are calling for my attention, but I press on. Clarity returns to my mind as soon as I’m away from Imogen’s rift, and though I still feel magic pressing heavy around me, the symbol is once again able to do its work. Anger replaces anxiety, razor-sharp focus replaces confusion, and my pain means nothing. There is no fear because I’m not thinking about the past or the future. I’m not thinking about why I’m hunting him or what’s at stake if I fail. There’s only the void, my own strength, and my desire to see my enemy fall.

  His trail leads toward the ocean—inevitable, I suppose, on a relatively small island. I push myself to run faster. I have to cut him off before he changes direction.

  But when I find him, he’s standing calmly on the uneven rocks jutting up from the water’s edge, waiting for me.

  The magic is faint here—present, but unlikely to harm him.

  He wasn’t fleeing. He was choosing his battleground just as Miranda chose hers.

  I grit my teeth and let my fire rise as I cross the pebbles above the waterline, stepping over the driftwood that litters the ground. Fire floods my body, loosening my frozen muscles, strengthening the void that’s been weakening since my last meagre meal.

  There’s no such weakness in Lachlan, though. His
black eyes are bright against his pale skin, his energy sharp and deep and dark. He’s killed recently. Rage joins fire in warming me as I think of the humans trapped inside the Inferno’s tunnels when Lachlan attacked, all of them destined to become vampires someday, but a fine meal as long as they remain alive.

  Even if Lachlan can’t feel fire directly, he sees it in my eyes. His handsome features, now marred by rough claw marks gouged into his left cheek, twist into an ugly expression of hate. As I step closer, I catch the wild desperation in his eyes that borders on a look of insanity.

  “How did you do it?” he asks. He paces away as I move closer, stepping onto a higher plane of rock. “You, young and weak, inexperienced and ignorant. How did you forge the connection to fire?”

  I don’t answer. I also don’t move closer, not wanting him to bolt.

  The whites of Lachlan’s eyes are showing as he looks me over. “Their death was supposed to be the answer.”

  I adjust my grip on my knife, ignoring the thin, sticky blood that coats the handle. “You killed the werewolves?”

  “They were no good to me alive.” Lachlan narrows his eyes, studying me as if I’m some strange creature that horrifies him even as he envies what I possess. “Bethany realized that a loss of life might have sealed the fire into you after you fed. And yet…” One shoulder twitches upward.

  I freeze, my mind racing with memories of the night Silas died, leaving me scarred by his power. I, too, had assumed his life was the answer—I felt it burning through me at the moment he died, felt my heart beat once under its power as it left the world forever.

  I think back further, and an unexpected, uncontrolled laugh escapes me.

  “I didn’t forge the connection,” I say, spitting his own words back at him as tears sting my eyes. “I did nothing. It was Silas—an alpha werewolf determined to protect someone he considered a member of his pack. The blood I fed on and the power it gave me were a gift. His life was a gift, given to save me. I thought for a long time that his power was a curse, but when I accepted it for the gift that it was—”