by Bianca D'Arc
Maria smiled as she pulled her power back, thanking the plant and the earth for answering her call. This sort of thing was beginning to feel natural to her. Who’d have thought she’d be communing so easily with plants even just two days ago?
Jesse returned a few minutes later, a bulky ball of fabric in his arms. He pulled the fabric apart and Maria could see it was three dark robes. Long, black with deep-hooded cowls. Small, medium and large, judging by the lengths of each. Jesse kept the longest one and shoved the medium at Zach, still in bear form, and the short one at her.
“There’s a crowd inside. They’re all wearing these. Zach, shift and put it on. We need to get to the center of the pavilion and this is the best way I can see to do it.” Jesse was tugging the robe on as he spoke.
His main weapon had been moved from slung around his back to resting comfortably right in front of him. The robes opened down the front, so he’d have easy access to the assault rifle should he need it. He looked up at the sky, seeming to search for something. It was still eerily quiet in the eye of the storm, but it had gotten appreciably darker.
“The sun is going down fast now. Less chance of being seen. The only light around the edges of the pavilion where the crowd is gathered is from torches. They saved the spotlights for the center.” Jesse looked grim as he said it. No doubt he’d seen what those bastards were doing at the center of the building.
“My parents?” Zach asked, now in human form and covered from head to toe by the robe.
“They’re there. Alive from what I could see.” Jesse nodded with a grim expression on his face. Zach started forward, but Jesse grabbed his shoulders. “We need to do this calmly. With a plan. Don’t let the animal take over. We’re going to save them. We’re almost there.”
Zach gulped and swallowed hard a few times, but he calmed under Jesse’s influence. Finally, after a few very tense moments, he met Jesse’s gaze.
“I follow you, Alpha.” It felt like a ritual vow of loyalty, which impressed the hell out of Maria. She was glad Zach wasn’t going to go charging off and get himself killed or captured. At least for now. Who knew how the boy would react when he saw his parents?
Hopefully, by then she and Jesse would be in a position to do something about those evil people in the pavilion. But they had to get in there first.
“All right.” Jesse checked them over to see how they looked in the hooded robes. “Let’s go. Follow my lead.”
They walked in past the unconscious guard roped to the pillar by vines, and nobody seemed to notice. The round pavilion was full of people, all wearing these spooky black robes with the hoods up over their heads. They were chanting and moving their feet in unison as they stood in place, row upon row of them standing in pews that had a permanent look to them. As if this pavilion was used for theatrical or religious events. They were near an aisle that led down to the center. There were six aisles that led from top to bottom and just as many that led only halfway down in the middle of the wedges of seats. Probably to make it easier to get to the seats in the middle as the rows lengthened.
But nobody was sitting. They all stood, chanting words she couldn’t understand in an ominously low tone, their feet shuffling as their bodies swayed slightly in place, in unison. Maria’s skin crawled. The creepyness factor was off the charts.
They walked in time with the chanting, probably to avoid drawing attention to themselves for as long as possible. Jesse was in the lead. Maria was behind him with Zach bringing up the rear. Their progress was painfully slow, but it made sense to be careful and hang back in the shadows as long as they could.
The area in the center of the pavilion was lit brightly. As they drew closer, she could just make out two figures slumped over in chairs near the center of what looked like a massive fire pit. There was a fire in it, but only a small one off to one side.
At the very center stood a woman in a red robe. The hood on her robe draped down her back and her aristocratic cheekbones and petite frame were surrounded by crackling power. She had one hand stretched out to her side, pointing directly at the two slumped, seated figures. Her other hand stretched skyward, toward the big round hole in the center of the roof. It looked like she was the one using the bears’ magic to power the storm.
The woman’s icy-blonde hair shone in the spotlights trained on her as night descended more fully. It was almost completely dark now, though the center of the storm was still eerily quiet and lit with the red glow of the last embers of a dying sun. The way they had lit the scene made the woman take on an unearthly aspect. Her body was outlined in pulsing white from the spotlights—or it could actually be magic.
The closer they got to the center, the more she could make out. It was hard to see past Jesse’s broad shoulders, but she managed to get a glimpse every now and again. She hoped Zach didn’t realize his parents were nearly unconscious and bound to the chairs with shiny silver chains.
She didn’t like silver. A guy she was dating had given her a silver bracelet for Christmas once and it turned her skin black. Since then, she never went near the stuff, though she had no problem with gold, oddly enough. As long as it was fourteen karat or above.
Her family always gave her gold if they gave her jewelry. She wondered now if her parents were aware that silver was poison to magical creatures like weres and dryads? It didn’t seem to affect the humans at the center of the ring, but it certainly seemed able to keep two full-grown grizzlies from breaking the laughably thin chains and walking away.
Suddenly, someone stepped directly into Jesse’s path, challenging him. Jesse didn’t even try to pretend they belonged there. The man was standing so close that Jesse could only use his fists to drop the guy. Of course, as quiet and efficient as Jesse did it, the commotion still drew attention. Within moments, they were surrounded.
She heard growling behind her and realized Zach had shifted form again and was scrambling through the crowd in the aisle, slashing as he went. He was making for the center of the pavilion, only a few yards away now. He’d seen his parents and was going for them.
Maria put her back to Jesse, fighting as best she could. The robe had to go. She shrugged it off even as someone grabbed her sleeve. She let him take it, twirling out of the robe and knocking her attacker on his ass in a tangle of fabric at her feet. That kept the rest of them off her for a precious few moments.
Long enough for a shot to ring out. Jesse had a handgun in his left hand and had shot the woman in the center of the pavilion, breaking her concentration. Blood flowed down her arm as she clutched her shoulder. The chanting ceased and pandemonium broke out all over the pavilion as some people began to run for the exits. Others ran to intercept the young bear who was clawing at the silver chains, working to free his parents.
The only reason more people didn’t try to get to where Jesse and Maria fought back-to-back was the narrowness of the aisle they were in. They could hold here for some time, but it wouldn’t get them any closer to the center of the action and the bear family who needed their help.
At the very moment the thought crossed Maria’s mind, a shudder went through the pavilion and a gray mist entered through the hole in the roof and swirled around too fast for the eye to follow. Maria felt the change in the air as an icy cold swooped down from above, smothering all the open flames in the pavilion. All the torches around the perimeter went out in one whoosh. The small cauldron on one side of the enormous fire pit was extinguished as well.
A moment later, bodies started flying from the center of the pavilion out into the crowd. More chaos erupted as more of the acolytes lost their nerve and turned to flee. Jesse pressed forward, down the aisle slowly, working his way through those who remained to block him. Maria fought at his back, though she faced a lot less trouble on the far side of the real action than Jesse did.
He didn’t use his gun again, though she thought he would have been well justified to kill anyone who had added their voice to that sickly chant. Still, he was showing restraint and it impressed
her on the calmer level of her consciousness.
Finally, they broke through to the bottom of the aisle and the center of the action. There were far fewer people left in their path. Most were running from the combination of bear claws and whatever it was that was launching bloody bodies into the seats in all directions.
Maria finally got a good look and realized the vampire had arrived. Marco was flinging bodies left and right with reckless abandon and superhuman strength. He seemed to be wading through the VIP section of seats off to one side within the fire pit, trying to get to someone in particular. The man in the suit from the woods behind the motel. She saw his face in the chaos before someone else got in her way. That’s who Marco was going after.
A quick glance told her Zach was standing in front of his parents, guarding them with equal fervor. Anyone who got within swiping range wound up with bloody furrows in their skin.
It was all very confusing from Maria’s point of view, and it got even more so when a new roar echoed through the pavilion, bouncing off the cement pillars and hard surfaces of the curved roof. She looked for the source and wasn’t too surprised to see a massive, full-grown grizzly bear wading through the aisle she and Jesse had just left. It was still filled with people trying to get out that were easily swatted aside as the bear forged a bloody path for itself.
No doubt, this was Zach’s uncle, Rocky. He didn’t even pause when he reached Jesse and Maria, but charged straight past to where Zach stood trying to defend his weak parents. Rocky took care of anyone still willing to go up against a juvenile grizzly with killing swipes of claws and teeth. Rocky wasn’t playing nice. When he used those massive claws of his, he meant business.
Jesse grabbed her hand during a lull and made for the center of the pavilion. The blond woman was still there, sobbing and screaming orders, but few of her followers were still listening to her. When Jesse, Marco and even Rocky tried to get close to her, some kind of magical force kept them away. She had a shield, for lack of a better word, that they could not penetrate.
Maria had an idea and crouched down, touching the cement floor of the old structure. This cement was just sand and rock. No foul magic had been included in its manufacture, and it was old with many cracks that let her reach the earth beneath. She wondered…
Yes. There it was. Just what she needed.
Maria let her power flow downward through the cracks and into the earth, coaxing a deep root she found just where she needed it most. The pavilion began to rumble beneath their feet as the root moved through a crack in the foundation at the center of the fire pit. It rose and erupted directly behind the blond woman in the red robe, sprouting tendrils of the new tree just coming into being.
A mighty oak grew from the sapling, its branches imprisoning the blond woman who had no apparent defense against this sort of magic. Maria felt a moment of triumph as she concentrated all her effort on imprisoning the witch who had caused so much misery. The woman screamed obscenities and then harsh, unintelligible words of dark magic that hurt Maria’s ears.
With a flicker of thought, she asked a nearby branch to gag the witch, and it complied, happily doing Maria’s bidding. The harsh words ended abruptly, their echoes drowned out by the ominous rumble of breaking concrete as the tree rose higher and the trunk took shape and widened into something very substantial.
The oak was claiming this place, taking on the task of cleansing it. Purifying it. Though it would take a great deal of time. Maria heard all this information in a nonverbal way she couldn’t actually explain or adequately describe, but she knew it for the truth. The oak would do what it had been created to do. It would stand sentinel while the dark places were cleansed of evil over the generations of man.
When Maria was satisfied the woman was well and truly trapped and the tree as large as she could get it at the moment, she let go of the power and came back to herself. She wasn’t surprised to find Jesse standing over her. What did surprise her was the ring of armed men who surrounded her, protecting her.
They had to be some of Jesse’s men. More were all around the pavilion, mopping up the chaotic scene. Prisoners were being secured. Wounded were being segregated for eventual medical attention.
Which reminded her…
“How are Zach’s parents?” She stood, addressing Jesse in a rough, weary voice.
He grabbed her arm when she swayed on her feet, dismissing his men to other duties now that Maria was out of danger. Jesse hugged her quickly and then drew her over to where the bears stood vigil over the man and woman still chained to the chairs.
“Silver is poison to many magical races. Marco can’t help and even we can’t handle it for long periods of time. We’re taking turns trying to break the links.”
“Hold on.” Maria had an idea. Sending a mental request to the nearby tree, she asked it a favor and it complied.
Two branches swayed near enough to work their way into the links. Maria moved to touch the little branches and give them her power. They quickly grew wide enough to pop the links from the inside. She used a piece of torn fabric she found on the floor to shield her hand as she unwrapped the chains holding the adult bear couple in place. They had awful burns on their skin where the chains had held them and Maria felt more than just silver in the links. The chains had been enchanted, but with the witch held prisoner the spell had been weakened enough to break at the touch of Maria’s magic.
She stepped back as the couple were freed. Some of Jesse’s men had first aid supplies and appeared to have medical training suited to emergency medicine. Maria was a vet. She didn’t deal well with human patients, but would have tried to help if there wasn’t anyone else equipped to do so.
“Good job, sweetheart,” Jesse complimented her as she moved back. Using so much magic had drained her, but the result was worth every effort. They’d freed Zach’s parents and captured some seriously bad people to boot.
“What are you going to do with her?” Maria pointed to the witch being held so efficiently aloft in the tree.
“Good question.” Jesse turned to face the vampire who’d stayed well clear of the silver. He had blood all over him and a few dead bodies littered the area where he’d been fighting in the VIP section. “Marco, what are your plans for the mop up? You are the highest authority in these parts. My men stand ready to help and we can transport prisoners back to Wyoming or to the Lords, if you prefer.”
“No,” Marco said, moving forward with strangely fluid movements. “I have planned this action for many years. The bears’ involvement drew you into it and moved up my timetable, but I would have taken action against this group regardless. The owner of this estate is now dead at my hands. I will move in and buy it at the earliest opportunity, then tear it apart, cleansing this area of the evil taint.”
Maria swallowed, realizing exactly where some of that blood on his hands and clothing had come from. She wondered if he’d bitten anyone, but his mouth looked clean. If he had noshed on any of his victims, he was a neat eater.
“I have a dungeon prepared and already the Masters are gathering. We intend to question the witch and her minions until we have learned all we can from them,” he went on. “The Venifucus threat is real, and this will prove it once and for all to some of my brethren who still doubt.” His eyes glowed with anger for a moment before he quelled the show of emotion. “I would, however, welcome assistance in transporting the prisoners to my dungeon. It’s not far. I built it especially with these people in mind. I also welcome your Lords or a selection of Alphas to observe the questioning, if you will pass along the message. I am of the opinion that all would-be Guardians of the Light must work together again if we are to thwart Elspeth as we did once before.”
“I share your opinion,” Jesse said in a grim tone. “My men will deliver the prisoners to your facility at your convenience. I will leave my lieutenant in charge here while I escort the bears to safety. I hope you understand.”
At that the vampire cracked a smile. It was a sad smile, but a
smile all the same.
“I do understand the need to take them away from this cursed place so they can heal. Go with my blessing. I will work with your junior and look forward to the day our paths cross again.”
He held out his hand and Jesse shook it warmly. If she wasn’t much mistaken, Maria thought maybe a new friendship had just been forged. At the very least, a new ally had been made. And if evil people really wanted to bring this Elspeth back, Jesse and his folk would need all the allies they could get.
Then the vampire turned to his full attention to her. Maria tried not to gulp.
“Lady, you have begun the work I always intended to do, bringing forth the guardian oak to dispel the evil of this place. Thank you for sharing your gift so freely. You are indeed a true daughter of the woodland.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, making her skin tingle in a scary sort of way, though she wasn’t really afraid of him. “I once knew one of your talents, many centuries ago. It is clear you are mated to the wolf.” Marco’s expression turned mischievous and his smile was decidedly inviting. “But if you ever tire of him, I hope you’ll look me up.”
Was he serious? Maria didn’t know how to take his teasing. She’d never been teased by a vampire before. Hell, she’d never even met a vampire before.
“Sorry, Master Marco.” She wasn’t even sure if she was using his title correctly, but she didn’t dare call him by his first name alone. It seemed too presumptuous with such an ancient being. “I’m a one-man woman, but thanks for the compliment.” She smiled to soften her rejection, but she wanted to be clear. If nothing else, she didn’t want Jesse growling at the guy. Not after they’d just formed an alliance. Maria wasn’t about to play the Helen of Troy role here.
Thankfully, Marco laughed. “Good to know. Frankly, I always enjoyed baiting werewolves. They’re so easy to get a reaction from, but your Alpha is stronger than most. He didn’t even growl at me…much.” The vampire laughed again and moved away.