“Now?” I scowled.
“Why not?” she asked. “This crap is routine, Miles. It’s not like we haven’t squashed stealth squads recently. We’re on the way. Head down to those ridiculously heavy doors.”
I raised my eyebrows as movement at the edge of the tree line caught my eye. A heat signature appeared and then disappeared.
“Miles!” My brother’s voice came over the com. “Do you have any hopping heat signatures?”
Shit. Djinn.
Calliope’s alarmed voice was next. “Boys, there’s someone nasty out there with them. I just felt them. Rose?”
“Keep on track. It’s only one Djinn. I can feel it, too. Harrison has the town ward up right now, so they won’t be able to blink inside. They’ll have to walk, just like the soldiers.”
I focused on the group to the west as they stepped from beneath the cover of the trees. My vision changed from heat-seeking to telescopic. “Eli!” I bellowed. “Get down to Hannah and Meredith. Get them inside the Castle now. Grenade launchers! I’ll get Harrison.”
“No!” Rose yelled over the com, but I didn’t listen. “Don’t leave that Castle! Miles!”
Guilt drove me faster, than Rose’s commanding tone pulled me back. I wasn’t going to let the girls lose their father. Rose could scream until she was blue in the face. I’d shift into my Drakonae form and burn them all to ash before I allowed Hannah and Meredith to suffer again on our behalf.
I practically launched myself from the parapet walk into one of the open courtyards, landing with a thump on the soft turf. I ran across the grassy area, throwing open doors in my wake as I made my way to the front of the Castle. The Lycans were behind me. I could hear their footsteps.
Turning the last corner, I burst into the foyer to see Hannah and Meredith bawling and Calliope trying to get them to calm down. We needed them. We needed their magick and the wards they’d created to protect this town. They were the only ones who could activate them. The only person I didn’t see was Eli.
“Where is he?” I roared and the two witches gasped through their sobs.
“He went for Harrison,” Calliope answered, as the first hit shook the town. The wards were strong enough to keep out bullets and missile launchers, but grenades were a different speed. They traveled slow enough to penetrate the magickal barriers we had surrounding the town, which meant our plan to use the Bateman witches to throw up a shield for us was out of the question. They couldn’t survive one blast, much less multiple ones.
A thud hit the door and I yanked it open to find a black-haired, female Djinn dressed in an SECR stealth ops uniform. Even though her violet eyes were shielded by blue contacts, I could smell her. Djinn lived and breathed magick. It clung to them like a sweet perfume, stronger than most other supernaturals.
What my eyes couldn’t believe was that her hand was inside Harrison’s chest. Eli had one hand on Harrison’s arm and was crouched to pounce on her at the slightest misstep.
Something told me this woman didn’t make mistakes.
The girls behind me screamed, the pain in their voice wrenching at my heart.
“If anybody moves, I reintegrate my hand and rip out his heart. I don’t want to kill him. All I want is the female dragon. Nobody has to get hurt.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
Kieran inched slowly out of the doorway to stand next to me.
“I meant it, Lycan,” she snarled. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Do you know who am I, Djinn? Who the man crouched ready to tear your throat out is?” I growled.
She narrowed her gaze. “I can blink out of here before anyone could get close. Even your esteemed Sentinel can’t make a move while my hand is in this human’s chest.”
I glanced to the café. Rose stood on the porch as white as a ghost, her eyes glued to the place where the Djinn’s arm disappeared into Harrison’s chest. But I knew Rose. She would sacrifice Harrison to save the town. To save my brother and me.
We were the only thing standing between Xerxes and the Sisters. Nothing and no one had more value to her than the sect of women she’d protected for thousands of years.
Chapter 29
ELI
I watched and waited. The Djinn woman was steady. Her hand didn’t tremble and her heart wasn’t racing. She knew she had the upper hand and every minute she stalled allowed the soldiers to get closer. I cringed as another grenade struck, and another, and another.
Refusing to turn my head, I hoped the Lycans patrolling the streets were safe and able to take down the SECR soldiers. The protectors were out there with them. It would be slower, but they could get the job done just as well. Soon this bitch wouldn’t have any backup at all.
“They’re blasting the fallout shelters. The fucking assholes are shooting at the ground,” Brogan’s voice shouted across the com.
The Djinn’s eyes widened, a look of concern passing through her purple-blue eyes. She tried to mask it, but it was too late. I knew.
Lunging, I wrapped my arms around her and tumbled through a vortex that made my stomach churn. Bitch took me with her. We landed on our backs somewhere. I couldn’t tell where. Her fist caught my jaw, but I refused to let go of the vice-like grip I had around her neck.
She choked and kicked and we blinked again.
This time landing in salt water. Fucking bitch. “You’re not leaving me in the middle of the ocean, demon spawn.” I kicked with my legs and shoved her beneath the waves, taking a deep breath as we sank into the blue depths.
It didn’t last. The vortex opened again and this time we hit and I was on the bottom. Hard rock tore into my back and she writhed in my arms, her voice coming out in choking screeches as she fought for air. She was coughing up saltwater all over my chest.
I took a second to consider my surroundings. The air was freezing and thin. It appeared we were on the top of some gods-awful mountain range. “Jump again, bitch. You don’t want to die here.”
She started to go limp and I loosened my grip just a hair. I had no idea where I was and I couldn’t fly home. The damn satellites would shoot me down before I made it even a few miles.
I lay down on the rocky ground and pulled her tightly to my chest, encircling her body with my arms and legs. My heat would keep us from freezing solid until she woke enough to jump again.
About ten minutes later she wiggled in my arms and I hissed into her ear to jump somewhere warmer or I’d start squeezing harder.
“You bastard!” She screeched, trying to get loose. “They will kill people if I’m not there to intervene.”
“Maybe,” I growled. “But they will all die in the process. Why were you bluffing about killing the warlock?”
She was silent.
I squeezed her chest harder, listening for the telltale snap of a rib.
She cried out in pain.
“Tell me, bitch. I know you’re working with Xerxes.”
“Not really,” she gasped, a small gurgle in her throat.
“I have to find the dagger. She was the last one who had it. I just want to free my people. If I can threaten his agreement between the damned Drakonae kings, I can free my father … my whole race. I wasn’t bluffing. I would’ve killed him.”
Father? No fucking way did I have Mandana Farrok in a chokehold.
“You’re lying. I saw you hesitate when you heard the soldiers were bombing the family shelters.”
“Ahhhhhhh!” She screamed and bucked in my arms, wailing when the pain of the broken rib caught up to her movement.
We blinked again and this time we were free-falling through the air. Fucking hell. “If you kill me,” I shouted into her ear through the wind noise. “Diana will turn and never be human again. You’ll never find out where she put the dagger. She and Miles will hunt you to the end of the earth and kill what little is still left of your pathetic race.” It was a half lie, but she didn’t know that.
I swallowed as another vortex opened seconds before we would’ve hit the ground
. We disappeared through it, landing in the center of Sanctuary.
“Let me go,” she begged. “Help me. She’s the only way I can save my people.”
“No.”
She squirmed again, but froze when Rose and others in the town came into our line of sight. Miles stood a few yards from my head. Calliope stood next to Rose and the Protectors stood spread completely around us, their teeth bared and their eyes blood red. Everyone was ready to tear this woman to shreds.
A single female voice rang through the growling and the tension.
“Let her go! Stop! Manda!” It was Eira. She came flying at the group, but was stopped by a tangle of snarls and gnashing teeth. Snarls she returned with a violence that spoke to the years she’d spent fighting to survive.
“Eira!?” The surprise in the Djinn’s voice caught me off guard. She took advantage of my loosened grip and elbowed me in the neck. My arms opened and she was gone in an instant.
“Damn it, vampire! We had her. That was Mandana Farrok! She fucking ruled the Djinn for two-thousand years.” I jumped to my feet and stormed at the offending woman, but stopped short when Diana stepped between me and her friend.
“It’s okay, D. I can handle him.” Eira stepped around Diana to face me.
“The hell you can, bitch! You may have saved our mate, but you just cost us one of the most valuable prisoners we could have in this war,” I said, allowing the heat from my anger to rise and flow from my body.
“Eli.” It was just one word, but when Rose spoke everyone listened—even if they didn’t want to. “Let her speak.”
I shuddered, trying to push the rage I felt back down into the beast pacing angrily within. When my thoughts quieted, I also noticed the gunfire and grenades had stopped. They must’ve taken care of the squadrons already.
“Tell us, vampire. Why do you seek to protect our enemy?” Rose crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
Eira squared up and turned to face Rose, ignoring the ugly glare I threw in her direction.
“Manda works with the Mason pack. She helps us stay ahead of her own troops. I know exactly who she is and she wasn’t lying when she said she wanted to free her people.”
“She’s playing both sides of the fence, Ms. Rennir,” Rose replied. “That is a very dangerous place to be in a war.”
Eira frowned. “She’s not evil. She has saved countless lives, but she can only do so much. Diana made too big of a splash; she couldn’t hide it from her people. I don’t know why she started coming after her now, though. We never told her Diana had one of the daggers of Shamesh.”
“Xerxes did,” Rose answered. “She answers to him, Ms. Rennir. She is not on your side unless it is convenient to her. Now she knows how we protect the town and how many of us there are. You should not have interfered,” her voice thundered and her eyes flashed white for a brief moment. Then just as quickly, she turned on her heel and walked away.
“Miles and Eli, please take care of the bodies,” she called over her shoulder.
I grunted and glanced at my brother. He nodded and grabbed Diana’s hand. She didn’t object and followed us quietly through the empty streets of the town. As we passed the dead soldiers on the street, I knelt down and let my dragon fire burn from my hands, turning their corpses to ash in mere seconds. We couldn’t actually breathe flame unless we allowed our body to shift. It was easier to just use my hands. This way felt more respectful to the dead, too. The remains would be carried away on the breeze and no one would be the wiser.
Diana’s breath hitched behind me. I hated that she had to see this. But Miles had been right to bring her along. She needed to know what kind of world we lived in now. We might be some of the most powerful beings on the planet, but technology and weapons had caught up to our strengths.
Humans didn’t fight with swords anymore.
It took several hours of trudging up and down the streets before we’d cleared all the bodies. Miles and I took turns cremating the remains. Diana didn’t speak a word until we turned back toward the Castle.
“Why?” She pulled her hand from mine and peered up at me and then at Miles. “What is going on? Why does everyone want that damned dagger?”
We moved slowly down one of the Lycan residential streets. Luckily, the shelters had held up to the grenades and none of the families had been injured. It was a good fight for Sanctuary, not a soul had been lost on our side.
I motioned to a picnic table situated in the center of the neighborhood green space. Their playground had been demolished. Trees were lying across the swings and the climbing tower had been shattered into a thousand pieces.
“The place you came out of is called the Veil. It’s our home. The Blackmoor family ruled it. There was fighting between us and another Drakonae family, the Incanti. They took advantage of our trust and killed our fathers and mother under the guise of a peace talk.” I sat down on the table across from her and Miles sat next to her.
“Was my family killed as well?”
“Your immediate family visiting the capitol was, yes,” Miles answered for me, his voice softer than normal and choked with emotion. “We thought they had killed you, too, except that we never turned.”
“Then they brought you into the throne room and …” I couldn’t tell her. It was a memory I didn’t want her to have. I hated the thought that if Hannah succeeded in healing Diana’s mind, all the horrors she’d seen and experienced would come rushing back to her like a tsunami of pain.
“What?” she whispered.
“It was terrible, my love,” Miles said, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. “What happened that day haunts us more than any pain we’ve ever experienced, second only to losing you the day we escaped the Veil.”
Diana shrugged off his arm and turned to face Miles. “Then tell me what happened or help me remember. I can’t do this unless I know the truth—the whole truth. You just burned forty-two people to ash before my eyes.”
“We would not be sane were it not for Rose,” I said.
Diana looked back to me. “The small woman who told you to let Eira speak?”
I nodded. “She is the Sentinel. The guardian of Sanctuary.”
“Did she kill all those soldiers?”
I nodded and watched Diana cringe in horror.
“Was it completely necessary to kill them?”
“Dead men do not tell tales,” Miles said, releasing a long sigh. He ran his hands through his dirty, black hair and grimaced. “At first didn’t kill them, but they always came back stronger.”
“More prepared,” she said, her voice flat as understanding washed over her face.
I nodded.
“And the dagger?”
Taking a deep breath, I began. “Sanctuary protects a coven of women called the Sisters of the House of Lamidae. Rose and her people have protected them for over five-thousand years. When Rose came upon us, drunk and lying in a ditch not caring if we lived or died, she gave us a purpose—something to fight for. Until her, we had no hope of ever getting back to you. We assumed the Incantis had all the keys … the daggers. It wasn’t until centuries later we learned Xerxes had one of them.”
“It also helped that the Sisters said you would eventually come back to us,” Miles added.
“How would they know?” Diana asked, her skepticism evident.
“The Sisters are seers. They can see the past, the present, and the future. Each is gifted differently, but all can see,” I answered.
“That seems quite farfetched.”
I chuckled and rested my elbows on the table. “I would say that until a few weeks ago, you thought being a dragon was a bit farfetched.”
Her lips turned up, just a hint of amusement. “Well said.”
“Magick is everywhere in this world, Diana. When the Incanti brothers took over the Veil, they pushed out so many. Killed so many. All magick originated from that land. Every paranormal species once called it their home,” I said.
“You intend to go back.” Sh
e said it as if she knew it was a fact.
“One day. Right now we’re honor-bound to protect the House of Lamidae. Until that vow is fulfilled and the spell is cast to protect the Sisters permanently from Xerxes, we stay.”
Miles shifted beside her and turned to cup her face in his hands. She didn’t pull away and I was thankful for that. “We cannot say how thankful we are to have you back with us after a thousand years. I know Eira has spoken to you about a spell Hannah can try to use to retrieve your memories. I want to caution you. You may not like what you remember. We’re perfectly willing to build a new relationship with you … right now. You don’t have to go backward to move forward with us.”
Miles’ words rang true in my heart. I didn’t want her to remember certain moments, but I knew there was more hiding in the darkness than the ugly assault at Orin. But whatever she chose, like Miles, I would stand by her.
The temperature dropped around us and instantly I could see my breath in a fog. “Diana,” I soothed. “Whatever you choose, we will be there for you. No matter what.”
Her eyes were glassy and tears ran down her cheeks, dropping from her face to the ground in frozen form. Snowflakes whirled through the air around us and I closed my eyes, allowing my heat to radiate outward. Miles did the same and she slowly stopped crying.
The temperature returned to its normal chilly-for-Texas winter, but the wintry mix Diana had conjured was gone. Mother Nature didn’t usually visit Texas with anything like that until well after the New Year.
“I have to know,” she finally said. “I have to know why I dream about a baby crying. It haunts me every time I fall asleep.”
Miles met my gaze. We were thinking the same thing.
Fuck.
Chapter 30
XERXES
A crash outside my bedroom door signaled Manda’s return. I chuckled and glanced over at Lily, then snapped the bull whip hitting her directly on the left ass cheek. She moaned, wiggling on the spanking bench where I’d fastened her earlier this morning.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 39