by S. Young
And then they were there, hiding and peering out into the clearing where the house sat. A large daemon identical to the one she’d killed stood guard at the back door. She felt a tingle across her fading scar at the thought of that fatal fight. The taste of his disgusting blood still made her want to gag.
Ah, poor Aidan and Ryder, she mused, thinking of the plan. And just like that, Aidan sprang from her left a few yards away, launching through the air. He landed a few feet from the daemon who gaped in amazement and had little time to respond before Aidan pounced again, his jaw ripping into the daemon’s jugular. His brother was seconds behind him, clawing his way up the daemon’s struggling body, ripping into any part of it he could find before sinking his own teeth into the other side of its neck.
The death was quiet and sickening, neither lykan willing to stop their attack until, like Caia had done, the daemon’s head rolled from its body.
She let out a breath and looked at Lucien who was, to her surprise, studying her. His eyes were so unreadable. She wondered what he was thinking.
“One down,” she whispered, and he nodded sharply, breaking from his daze. They moved silently into the backyard to meet the brothers, their muzzles glistening gorily, ensanguined fangs still on display.
Caia waited with Lucien while the four wolves split into two and headed to either side of the building for their next attack. And then Caia and Lucien made their move. Caia opened the back door with magik so that it wouldn’t squeak, and the two of them entered the house like professional thieves. Her heart pounded the entire time, her senses feeling constantly for any change in the air that would warn her of Ethan’s presence.
They heard a whine outside and Caia flinched, her wide eyes flying to Lucien. He looked worried but shook his head, indicating for her to still lead the way. And then they were in the pantry and she was opening the door that would take them to Jaeden.
The smell of Jaeden hit like a gale-force wind, and Lucien’s snarl erupted before he could stop it. Until then only Caia had known the extent of Jaeden’s torture, but her blood was thick in the air coming from the basement, and her fear was like the stale scent of body odor.
Feeling no one of the Midnight variety down there in the dark, Caia gave up all pretense of quiet and rushed down into the blackness. Lucien was behind her with the flashlight.
“Holy … ” His voice trailed off hoarsely when the light came on.
The basement was nearly the entire size of the house, completely unfurnished except for the row of five cages that decorated the far end. In the first cage, they saw Jaeden curled on her side, recognizable by her long, dark hair. And in the other four cages were the remains of supernaturals. Caia gagged and turned to Lucien without thinking. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder and led her toward Jae.
Why hadn’t she seen this in her dreams? she thought, trying to rid herself of the images of these poor creatures and their mangled bodies. Now that she was aware of their presence, the smell of death, which she’d always put down to Ethan’s energy, was because of them.
“Jaeden,” she managed, kneeling and reaching through the bars to touch her friend. She got no response. “Jaeden.”
“Jaeden,” Lucien said urgently.
Jae whimpered.
“Jaeden!” Caia cried and shook her a little.
With that, her friend whimpered but moved, still curled into herself, her naked skin covered in dirt and blood and healing scar tissue. Her dead blue eyes blinked and blinked and then widened.
“Lucien? Caia?” Her voice was hoarse and cracked as if she hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Yes.” Caia smiled through tears, and then looked at the cage, trying to find a way in. Like the dream, there was no door and no lock.
“Are you really here?”
“Yes.” Lucien’s chocolaty voice would have comforted anyone. “We’re here. We’re going to take you home.”
Jae began to cry silently.
Caia retreated and pulled Lucien away too. “Jae, I need you to move to the rear of the cage.”
The girl complied without a word.
And with all her fury and all the impotence she felt in this disgusting situation her uncle had put the people she loved in, Caia threw out an arm of energy that twisted and bent the steel until there was enough room for Jaeden to crawl out. Lucien took off his shirt, still wearing a T-shirt underneath, and Caia knelt to draw it over Jaeden’s head.
“You’re really here.” Jae’s bottom lip trembled, and the blankness began to recede from her eyes. “You’re really here.”
Caia forgot her friend’s injuries and pulled her into a tight hug, not caring that Jaeden was too dazed to return it.
“Come on.” Lucien bent down now and scooped Jaeden easily into his arms.
Caia wished she hadn’t been so exultant, so cocky, as she followed Lucien up the basement stairs and out into the kitchen. She was smiling, actually smiling, as he made his way to the kitchen door. And then she felt it—like ice crawling slowly through her veins, freezing her in her tracks and icing over her heart so that the next frightened beat shattered it and all of her hope. Caia had never experienced such a malevolent trace before.
From behind her, she felt the blast of power like a train chugging past at full speed, blowing her hair up around her shoulders and face. It knocked Jaeden out of Lucien’s arms and across the room, her head slamming against a cabinet. She slumped limply to the ground. Caia whirled and stood a few feet from her uncle.
“My goddess, you look like Adriana,” he said, momentarily stunned.
She was stunned too. She looked like him—the same blond hair and slant to her eyes.
“Uncle,” she whispered. That brought him from his lapse and his dangerous blue eyes slid past her to Lucien. Without thought, Caia threw up a shield around the Alpha as he took a menacing step toward her uncle. Lucien banged against it and snarled at Caia. He wasn’t in lykan form. He wouldn’t stand a chance against Ethan.
“Well.” Ethan smirked. “Seems your powers are indeed blossoming.”
Lucien punched at the shield. “Drop it, Caia! Now!”
She shook her head, refusing to look at him.
“I’ll let them go.” Ethan smiled evilly. “All I want is you.”
“Caia, don’t listen to him! Drop the shield!”
Her eyes swept to Jaeden, a crumpled mess, and then to Lucien, whose eyes blazed once more with emotion. Anger. He was furious with her. And more than that, he was frightened for her.
Unflinching, she focused on her uncle. As calmly as she could, chanting at her heart to quit racing and stand strong for her, she asked, “You’ll let them go? You won’t go near Lucien and the pack … if I let you … ”
“Kill you without a peep?” Ethan said. “Of course.”
“Caia, NO!” Lucien bellowed, but she steadfastly ignored him. Ethan smiled triumphantly at Lucien and a wave of his emotions hit Caia like a battering ram to the gut. She gasped and clutched her stomach, actually staggering back from the blow.
She could feel him.
Her uncle.
Her disgusting, soulless uncle.
He never planned to let anyone go. He wanted them all here. This had been his original plan before everything had gone wrong. He wanted Lucien and the others to care about her, to care so much that they would give into their volatile natures and come crashing in like stupid, easy targets.
She dropped the shield protecting Lucien and Jaeden and raised her right hand, encasing Ethan in an invisible cage that circled around him with a power that traveled in golden light, before dissipating at completion.
Lucien’s sigh of relief met her ears.
“Caia,” he stumbled toward her just as Ethan also moved toward her, sneering at her display of power. He wasn’t sneering when he bounced back against the shield, disbelief on his face when he punched it and nothing happened. Satisfied but still wary, Caia kept Lucien behind her.
“So.” Ethan gazed incredu
lously around him. “you really do have some power.”
When he caught her eye and saw how carefully she watched him, he shrugged, pretending indifference. “It won’t hold for long.” And then he muttered something that sounded awfully like a spell.
Caia grabbed Lucien. “He planned all this. For us to come here like idiots, guns blazing, our emotions clouding us,” she hissed, feeling a riotous pain in her head. “I don’t know how long I can hold the shield. Get Jaeden—” She stopped abruptly, her heart slamming as she felt the tingling of another trace, their energy throbbing ten seconds away. “Lucien, get Jaeden quickly! There’s another one coming!”
He shook his head, his face twisted in anger. “I’m not leaving you.”
Caia swore. “You have to. That’s what he wants, for us to be stupid and emotional!”
“Caia—”
But it was too late. The trace she’d felt appeared in the kitchen in the form of a tall, rangy warlock. His wild eyes took in Ethan. “My lord …”
“Stop them, Lars!” Ethan cried, piercing one hand through Caia’s wall.
Caia looked back at Lucien in a panic. “Lucien, change!”
The bolt of white heat hit him before he had a chance to process her words and sent him soaring with incredible force straight through the pantry door, wood splintering everywhere as he collided with the floorboards.
“Lucien!” Her eyes burned with tears as he lay unconscious.
“Don’t worry, he’s not dead.” Ethan grunted as he punched another hand through the wall. “Yet.” He glared at Lars and pointed at Jaeden. “What are you waiting for? Kill the girl.”
“No,” Caia whispered, and she felt her own swell of white heat spring like a root from her tingling toes, up her calves, over her thighs. The kitchen window flew apart and a large lykan burst through and lunged straight for Lars’s jugular. His scream was cut off by the sickening spurt of blood that painted the ceiling above him.
Ryder. He mauled the magik to pieces.
Enraged, Ethan broke through her shield entirely, and one of his own shot up around her and himself, immediately blocking out Ryder. The lykan growled and snarled as he bounced against the wall of energy enclosing her with her uncle.
“Not well done at all, Caia,” Ethan tutted, shaking his head and prowling around her like a tiger taunting its prey. “I must say, I’m horrified to hear you feel a Midnight’s trace. That you could feel my plans for you …” He chuckled but without humor, his eyes soulless. “In fact, you’re my worst fear realized. I should make this quick.” He scratched his chin as if thinking, and then stopped, studying her body. “But I won’t.”
He snapped his fingers, never taking his eyes from her, and Lucien was suddenly behind him, his arms cuffed to chains that dangled him from the ceiling like meat on a hook. Ryder snapped viciously, his fur trembling with the frustration of not being able to get to his friend.
Ethan laughed at the horror on Caia’s face. “You know, my mother died in a similar situation.”
“You touch one hair on—”
“Oh please,” he scoffed, “enough with the threats, you pint-sized harpy.”
Caia wanted to cry. Lucien groaned, coming to, his silver eyes finding her, eliciting an involuntary noise of pain from her. She made a move toward him only to bang up against another of Ethan’s shields.
“Now, now, Caia,” he taunted. “Be good.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“What did I say about the threats? Hmm? And just so you know … you won’t kill me. Not even close. In fact, I’m going to kill all your little friends here.” He flicked his hand elegantly around the room and suddenly Jaeden’s and Lucien’s heads were snapped back by invisible hands. Jaeden cried out.
“Stop it,” Caia demanded, trying to hold on to her cool so her brain might function well enough to come up with a plan.
Ethan laughed. “Never. Once they’re gone, you and I are going to have a little showdown before I slaughter the rest of these mangy mutts. What is that death match you idiots have?”
Caia shuddered in offense and rage. “Lunarmorte.”
He laughed harder at her haughtiness. “That’s the one. My goddess … so uncivilized. Ripping your own people apart for a title.”
She snarled, “Isn’t that what you are doing now?”
“No!” he spat back viciously. “You’re a dog polluting the gifts of Gaia!”
“I’m your niece.”
“No. Your blood is nothing like mine. Blood of low-bred, vicious animals that threaten Gaia’s creation, that threaten the delicate balance of our existence with mankind, runs in your veins. Lykan … vampyre. What’s the difference? You’re all the same. A blight on the world and a danger to humans.”
A new fury, or perhaps an ancient one, flushed across Caia’s skin. “We’re not a danger to humans. We have been civilized for centuries. It’s you and your coven who endanger the world with this continual mindless war!” she fumed, surprised by her bravery considering Lucien was dangling before her like a carcass. “And you can paint it any way you want, Uncle … your blood still runs in my veins.”
Satisfaction spread through her as his jaw clenched, his fists curled into white knots. It seemed like forever as he glared at her in disgust. She could feel Lucien’s desperation building at the same time, the burning of Lars’s blast spreading up his right side. Ryder’s control was slipping, and Jaeden’s numbness was returning, like once more she’d given up, waiting for death to come.
“You know …” Ethan drew her attention again. He looked calm, a sly smile playing on his lips. “In a way, you’re right. Why don’t I finish with these mongrels?”
Caia could only watch in dread as a knife-shaped flame burst to life in front of Lucien and scored across his torso, slowly and painfully.
Caia sobbed, leaning against the invisible shield and gulping as the smell of burning flesh hit her nose. “Stop it!” she managed to plead. Ethan ignored her, far more interested in the lykan who refused to scream. Tears of agony tracked Lucien’s cheeks but not a syllable was uttered from between his clenched teeth.
Ethan eyed her thoughtfully. “If I had the time, I would enjoy breaking that one. But I’m far too eager to get down to a Lunarmorte of our very own.”
Caia tried to calm her sobbing as she met Lucien’s eyes. She’d done this to them all. How could he look at her like that, still fearing for her, when she had done this to them? She couldn’t even get out of this damn shield to douse whatever fire Ethan produced.
She searched the room, looking for something, anything, to help her think … and then her eyes caught sight of the moon through the broken window. It seemed as if a rush of wind rustled down from it and into the kitchen, through the shield, and stroked her skin. Caia blinked.
It had come through the shield.
She closed her eyes and pushed against Ethan’s energy with her own—gold meeting ice. Isn’t it funny, she thought distantly, that he should feel like ice when he’s a fire magik. She pushed. Hard. Hard enough to feel a blood vessel pop above her eye. She ignored it and continued, allowing the sounds of Ryder’s clawing and snapping beside her to deliver the animalistic, lykan fury she needed right now.
“It’s not going to work, Caia,” Ethan singsonged. Her eyes flew open at the sound of metal clanging, and she watched in fear as Ethan tapped a long, sharp, metal spike against the wall. She had no idea where it had come from.
“You should say goodbye, Caia.” He let go of the spike, and it danced in the air in front of him before tilting horizontally, its point aimed at Lucien’s chest. “Say goodbye to the dog you love, before I pierce his unworthy heart.”
The spike stilled, inching slowly closer to Lucien. Her breath caught, her eyes locked on his. No. No. No, no, no, no, no!
“Pity you can’t say goodbye to your precious pack, but that just makes this all a little sweeter.”
“NO!” she screamed as he pulled the spike back, ready to plunge.
&n
bsp; He looked at her, his eyes sparkling with perverse laughter. “Something to say before the end?”
She nodded and glanced outside, feeling that white heat in her stomach and chest; it crawled up her throat, clawed her face, and blew her hair back with force. She didn’t know how she must’ve looked, what her uncle saw in her eyes or on her body, but his mouth gaped in disbelief and his eyes blinked in fear.
“It’s a full moon.”
“What?” he whispered, stumbling back, and she felt the power spark like electricity between her fingers. She looked at him and smiled.
She exhaled the word, “Lunarmorte.”
May the best Alpha win.
The heat exploded from her, blasting out of her veins, blinding her with its deep and pure white.
Her head hit something hard.
And then everything went black.
29
Sebastian
“Caia.” Someone shook her and her eyes rolled back before opening. She felt exhausted. As if someone had taken all the muscles out of her body and left her limp and useless.
“What?” she croaked and tried to open her eyes.
“Caia.”
“Lucien?”
“Yeah.”
She opened her eyes at the same time she tried to sit up. Lucien hissed in pain as he helped her, and her eyes widened on his wounds.
Ethan!
She whipped her head around to see Lars, grotesquely dead on the floor, and a naked Ryder lifting Jae into his arms. His eyes found Caia; they seemed blank with shock.
Ethan was nowhere to be seen.
Her eyes fell upon the spot he’d stood, and she felt her stomach turn. Correction: Ethan was everywhere. Literally. Pulp blood and gore lay across the floor and over the counters. He was even stuck to the walls.
“Did I?” she whispered in disbelief, her eyes finding Lucien.
He nodded, speechless.
Alive. She cried out and pressed a hand against his cheek without thinking. He’s alive, she laughed happily. They were all alive. They had done it.