There’s a heavy clambering that’s never sounded so sweet before, rushing straight toward us.
Emit’s come.
And he’s brought a big fucking alpha pack.
“I could fucking cry right now,” Amos informs me, sounding damn serious.
A body drops to my side, and my eyes dart to my right to see Vancetto Van Helsing, just as he straightens to his full height. He stares at me with what can only be described as miserable anger.
“We need to talk. Just as soon as they’re all dead,” he says, gesturing to the now trapped Vampyres, who’ve taken the defensive stance.
The wolves circle all the Vampyres, who are circling us, and Emit moves to the front, eyes meeting mine.
“Nobody else lays a hand on him. He’s mine,” I say, directing a look at my father, whose eyes have gone from smug to incensed. Pretty sure there’s some dread mixed in to, because I’m certainly gonna slay that prick. “We’ll find Violet and save her from Idun first. Then you can talk, Van Helsing.”
“Fair enough,” he concedes. “Only, I have no idea where they went. I feel scatter-brained for possibly the first time in my life, because I have no idea what to do.”
He catches a Vampyre by the throat, when Arion’s second-to-least favorite cousin tries to attack us, using our distraction against us.
“Chat later. Kill now,” I say as I shove him into the fray.
He stumbles, taking the Vampyre he’s choking with him, but he picks right up, fighting like it’s always going to be second nature.
It lights the metaphorical match.
Wolves attack.
Vampyres attack.
Marta is already hacking another head off.
Van Helsing, father and son, work as a team.
My eyes land on my own father, and I bend over to pick up a second sword that’s been discarded by the dead.
“One of these days, you’re going to realize just how much better I am than you are, and you’ll quit causing me problems,” I tell him, my lips turning up at one corner. “So long as it’s a fair fight, that is. Which is why you poisoned them all against me all these years, isn’t it? You’ve just been waiting for an opportunity like this.”
He glares at me from the ground, as he slowly pushes up to his feet.
“I’m going to make this quick, because there’s a lot of fighting to be done tonight,” I tell him.
His eyes widen when I’m suddenly right in front of him. Too late does he realize he’s watched a brief illusion of me standing in the same place.
My lips curve at one corner once again, as my hand flies to his head. He grabs my wrist a second too late, and I stagger, toppling to the ground on top of him when I lose my balance from forcing my mind into his.
There’s a splitting slice of pain that slashes through my temple, as images flash through my mind too rapidly for me to cipher anything. I don’t have time to look around, because I’m racing straight for the center, dragging a trail of my own memories with me too fast for him to process the chaos.
He tries to fight back, but it’s no use, because, with great effort, I repel all the things he attempts to hit me with. I overwhelm his head, doing what I can with what little power I’ve got left in me.
It takes less than five seconds for his body to stop struggling under me. When I my gaze finds his, his eyes are glazed over, and I take in a steady, deep breath.
“I’ve just been waiting for an opportunity too, truth be told,” I say on an exhausted sigh, as I heave myself to the upright position by sheer willpower alone. “Dorian’s stronger than you. Just for the fucking record. He’ll be kicking your ass in your shitty fucking dreams for a while, courtesy of your first Morpheous son.”
My gaze moves back to the thick of the bloodthirsty battle. A Vampyre is launched back when it gets too close to Amos’s back, my brother aided by some unseen force.
I spot Diva lying on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands. Her knees are bent and her ankles are crossed, while her feet sway from side to side in the air.
She deliberately bats her lashes at me. Then she licks her lips and gets a lusty haze in her eyes when Vance slices through the middle of a Vampyre.
Vance shouts at me. “You sitting on your ass and watching me do all the work is typical behavior, but for once, could you please be fucking useful?!”
Cursing, I struggle to even lift my sword, my energy exhausted and my power absolutely drained.
“I’m too out of shape for alpha battles, Van Helsing. I’m going to need some help,” I confess.
“Like the Rubio Isles?” he asks, as we both work to fend off our next Vampyre attackers.
Arion’s going to be one pissed off fucking monster.
I’m really starting to understand why Vance stayed on my ass about feeding and staying fit. Fuck my life.
“We sunk the Rubio Isles,” I remind him, straining with effort I don’t have enough energy to be able to produce.
“That was the volcano. Not us.” he argues, taking down one of the eldest and strongest without breaking much sweat.
“Sure. It’s a coincidence that dormant volcano erupted. Saving everybody was a pain in the fucking ass, Van Helsing,” I dutifully remind him.
I end up leaning on my sword for a moment, after exerting almost the last of my energy to take down one of the weakest Vampyres. Must be nice to be a Van Helsing, who can carry on idle chit-chat, while fighting like it’s a day job.
“I told you to feed more often—”
“I don’t want to hear ‘I told you so’s’ right now, you smug prat. I want you to kiss me,” I tell him.
“I’ll fucking die first,” he assures me, quickly knocking the head off the Vampyre, who damn near crept up on me.
After Vance does some fancy sword skills, clearly showing off, five Vampyres lose their head, leaving only two.
I stick behind Vance, shamelessly using the sword-happy Van Helsing as a shield.
“Should we discuss the ghost fanning herself right now?” I ask, as Emily slides up next to us, moving with us toward the remaining Vampyres.
“Pssst,” the ghost stage whispers. “The threat’s over. You can be cool again.”
I step out from behind Vance, adjust my jacket, and ignore the fucking ghost who thinks I have pride or something.
“Uh-oh. Somebody’s in trouble,” Emily says, grinning broadly, like the wicked wildcard she is.
Without warning, Arion is suddenly standing behind the remaining traitorous Vampyres, eyes fully red.
Before a single Vampyre can react, he moves like a blur, and blood sprays into the air.
Arion goes from behind them, and in a blur of motion, ends up standing in front of them, and closer to us. The Head Alpha has a clutched hold on the spines he’s severed.
No one makes any sudden moves or noises.
The spineless bodies drop, completely devoid of life. Their heads fall off the second the bodies hit the ground.
I never even saw him make much of a move.
“I’m officially at odds with the rest of our family,” Arion says to Emily, as he drops the spines to the ground.
Blood drips from his fingertips, as he moves toward us. Emit shifts back to his two-legged form, making his way toward us as well.
“The Neoprys still haven’t made their move yet. Move all the pups and omegas in the area to Sanctuary,” Emit tells his alpha pack.
Wolves nod and bow, and his mother nuzzles his hand. His father gives him a worried but understanding look, before he turns and starts leading the alpha pack away.
Emit cuts his gaze back to us, and I want to kick him in the bollocks. I hate that big bastard for making it look that easy. His family fucking adored him. Mine…not so much.
Then my brow furrows and I lose interest, when I see Talbot moving this way, hands in his pockets, and a mysteriously calm look in his eyes.
“Why is my beta here?” I ask no one in particular.
Arion goes to grab a bo
ttle of whiskey that’s survived the wreckage. Instead of answering me, Arion flips the subject.
“I can’t find Violet. I’ve scoured the town and beyond. Nothing. No trace of either one of them,” Arion grinds out.
“Fucking perfect,” Vance says, as he wipes his sword clean.
Looking back, I spot Marta sitting on the ground, a dejected look on her face.
“Bloody hell, woman, would you pull it together? What is going on? Explain it in words that make sense this time,” I shout, going to stab a finger in her face.
“He’d be better at telling you the story. Since he’s the reason this is happening at all,” Marta says, cutting her eyes to Talbot. “You stole her from me the moment you put that thing in her.”
Whirling around, I feel my eyebrows hit my hairline.
“What the fucking hell is she talking about?” I ask him, wondering if Marta’s gone off her rocker at last.
Talbot’s jaw grinds, and his neck cracks. “For the last time, I didn’t put Hyde inside your child, Marta. It was the perfect storm of events, and it spiraled out of control.”
Why does it sound like my beta and Marta Portocale have history?
Why am I just now learning this?
I try to recall one instance where they’ve seemed familiar with each other, but I can’t seem to summon a single memory to support such a thing.
“Seriously, somebody tell me what the fucking hell is going on!” I state, my voice growing increasingly louder with each spoken word.
“Your new beta is Pandora’s son, and he ruined my daughter’s future,” Marta says with all the finesse of a bulldozer crashing very unexpectedly through a wall.
“What?” I ask, since that’s entirely impossible, and no such person has existed.
Vance would have known about it.
“Your daughter’s future may not be ruined,” Talbot says, ignoring me, while keeping his attention on the Portocale woman, who is not his alpha. “Hyde has been the ultimate thorn in my side for so many centuries that I’ve lost count. But until Jack, I’d always been able to get it back in the box,” Talbot tells Vance, who, thankfully, seems equally as out of the loop as I am.
I have so many questions.
“Who the bloody hell is Hyde?” I ask, now getting angry enough to punch the irritating son of a bitch.
“Hyde is Anna,” Vance says, clearly knowing more than me.
“Hyde is all of Violet’s ghosts,” Arion adds, clearly knowing more than the both of us.
The wolf looks utterly perplexed. Awesome. I’m in the same dog house as he is. Isn’t life grand?
“Someone better explain to me, in grave detail, just what the bloody hell we’re standing around in a freak storm and talking about right now, or I might just kiss one of you and then kill you,” I assure all of them.
Arion says, “Make it quick. We have to find Violet. That’s our priority right—”
We all grow quiet when Bobo comes walking toward us.
“Yeah, I have something to tell you too. Actually, Bobo has something he wanted to tell all of us once we were together,” Vance says, as Bobo casts a sympathetic look toward Marta, who still looks positively devastated.
“Someone, anyone, start fucking talking,” I grind out.
Chapter 42
EMIT
I scrub a hand over my face, walking to the forest line to get some space and try to wrap my head around everything they’ve just said. Or tried to say.
None of it sounds…real.
“So you’re saying this thing is volatile, uncontrollable, manipulative, and takes root in the subconscious?” Vance asks, absorbing every word like he’s piecing together some puzzle.
“It’s also resourceful and clever. It’s never had a host as powerful as Violet,” Talbot tacks on.
“Theon was responsible for Jack,” Arion tells us, his head down. “That altar he made was no joke.”
We should have killed him sooner. We just knew Arion would retaliate, and now the vampire is showing contrition over it for the first true time.
It makes me almost hate him again.
“It’s hard to get Hyde back in the box. Since the first ceremony was never completed well enough to achieve immortality, the box stayed intact,” Talbot continues. “But since that first botched ceremony, anytime someone builds an altar, Hyde has the strength to break free, and it rushes into the first host with the most suppressed inner desires—not the one who has built the altar in hopes of receiving a powerful monster. Usually, it lands in a human, drives them mad, and takes over as the supreme ruler of the body, until it calls enough attention to itself for me to track it down.”
He gives Vance a tired look.
“All you did was make it harder and harder for me to trap it, every time you stepped in to play the fucking hero and kill it,” Talbot adds.
“I’ll stab you here and now if you’re somehow blaming me for this,” Vance assures him.
“This is boring and old news. But it is cute how it looks when the shoe’s on the other foot. I wish Violet could enjoy it,” Diva says, grinning, before she disappears.
“Why the hell is there a ghost everywhere tonight?” I demand.
“Aren’t you even listening?” Arion bites out, staring at me as though he wishes he could put his fist through my face.
“I still have no idea what the hell you’re even talking about, but I do know I’m seconds away from stabbing you if you don’t wrap it up and spell it out for me,” Vance says, stepping up beside me, as he glares at Talbot.
Two stab-threats in less than five minutes. Someone better hurry.
Talbot releases a heavy breath, as Arion stares down, saying nothing.
“Violet’s birthmother didn’t die the way Violet thinks she died,” Marta says very quietly, drawing our attention. “She was struck by lightning in her third month of pregnancy. She and Tom had a very real relationship, and he loved her very deeply. I lied and dishonored her name with that lie, because if anyone knew she’d been struck by lightning, they may have suspected the child to have Neopry blood. I panicked. Then I kept panicking and covering more and more truths, because Tom and Violet became my life.”
She shakes her head and runs both her hands through her hair, as she stares at a piece of the house crumbling.
“I thought I could pretend to be this woman he loved, because I’ve never been loved like that. For the first time in too long, I had the chance to have a family, so I took it. Then I buried my head in the sand and pretended everything would be okay,” Marta confesses. “And it was. At least until her thirteenth birthday when the life I’d forsaken came back to haunt me.”
“Why not feed her those damn green apples?” I ask, unable to help myself, as my own ire ratchets up. “No one would have ever smelled the Portocale blood, and she’d have been left alone.”
“She ate them all the damn time. However, she ate just as many oranges, so they cancelled each other out,” Marta states on autopilot, still numbly staring at nothing.
“Some fool unearthed the Book of Vales,” Talbot says. “An unnatural amount of blood magic had already been used to place Hyde back in its box time and time again. It was so powerful all on its own, that it managed to survive over a century in the ghost plane with no form. That book gave power to one altar after another, as it passed from greedy hand to greedy hand.”
“The sea swelled, and the gypsy moon was at its strongest,” Marta carries on. “I knew Tom had Neopry blood in his veins, but I had no idea it was from the original branch of the family—pre-immortality.”
“I had no idea I was speaking with the original Marta Portocale when I came to hunt Hyde down again. I sensed its presence in the world once more for the first time in ages. I didn’t know what to do when I found it in an innocent thirteen-year-old girl,” Talbot says, flicking his gaze to Marta.
“While I was still reeling and vulnerable, I shared some details with him, and in return, he told me all about Hyde and what the
monster is capable of,” Marta supplies. “He told me the electrical storm must have charged her body, while she was still in the womb. He told me about the perfect storm of events that had led the monster to my child—the botched first ceremony, Hyde’s constant deaths at the hands of Van Helsing, the persistent and reckless use of blood-magic to return the monster to the box, and the unnatural storm—”
“Which was caused by us,” Bobo cuts in, giving her a grim look.
We’re all so stunned to hear him speak, that none of us really react at first, including Marta.
My body aches, feeling a restlessness stir within me, as well as the urge to find and protect my mate clawing at me from the inside.
“We couldn’t stay under anymore, but we couldn’t go back to the way it was. So we all used our hope to wish for something awful, sensing each other’s feelings clearly enough to be on the same wavelength,” Bobo goes on, wiping the rain or tears from his face.
The wind blows, and the rain ceases over our circle, while continuing to pour all around us. Talbot’s eyes hold dilated pupils, signaling this is likely his blood-magic doing.
“We wished for a hero who could defeat Idun and cause the wheel of power to start moving once again,” Bobo says, his voice cracking. “Deep down, we knew we were damning some soul, but…”
His voice trails off, and I exhale harshly in understanding.
“But, considering your innate sensitive nature and the way you’ve had to view the world, you stopped having hope there was any good left in people. You figured it was better to try things with a new devil, in hopes someone else would move to the bottom for a change,” Damien interjects.
He gives a slow, sad nod.
“So the universe, being the humbling enigma it is, sent you a genuine, fair-hearted girl you now feel guilty for condemning,” Vance surmises.
The universe makes no exceptions.
“She was supposed to be someone else, and she didn’t ask for this. It was forced on her,” Bobo states in soft agreement. “She’ll have to become something she never wanted to be, and that’s our fault. She didn’t want Idun to be her problem. She just wants to build—not destroy.”
Gypsy Truths (All The Pretty Monsters Book 6) Page 37