by Rye Brewer
I didn’t plan to do it. I wouldn’t have guessed I’d do it.
At the moment, it was all I could imagine. I just had to.
Even if it meant Gage’s father looked like he was ready to kill me along with Dad and all the others. His face went red as he snarled. “Move yourself.”
“I won’t. I can’t let you. I’m sorry.” I looked from him to Gage, whose jaw dropped. “I’m really sorry.”
“What are you trying to do?” he hissed. “Get out of the way! You know they would kill you!”
“I can’t believe that.”
“They would kill us!” Naomi whimpered. “Doesn’t that matter?”
“Of course it does.” Everything was such a mess. How did we end up here? No matter how much I hated my father and the people working with him, he was still my father. “You can’t ask me to watch you kill him!”
“Then don’t watch.” Fane looked over his shoulder. “Move her or I will.”
“Please, please, you can’t.” I looked at my father, who was behind me. “Dad, this has to stop. He’ll kill you.”
“Should we fire?” one of his men shouted.
“No, hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Dad’s hand closed over my shoulder. “Carissa, you shouldn’t have tried to run.”
“You shouldn’t have taken them to begin with.” Gage’s father took a step nearer, and I couldn’t have imagined anyone more menacing. “You shouldn’t have done any of this, Gil.”
“You know each other?” I gasped, looking back at Dad.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever had the honor of making your acquaintance,” Dad muttered, looking him up and down.
“No, but there isn’t a vampire in existence who isn’t aware of you. I know all about you, Gil. I know what you’ve done and what you wanted to do to them. And the only reason I haven’t put an end to your miserable existence is because of her. Because you’re not man enough to tell your daughter to get out of the way.”
“Shut your mouth,” Dad snarled.
“What? Does the truth hurt, murderer?”
“Murderer? It seems you’ve killed more than your share tonight, whoever you are.”
“I didn’t have to lock them away and torture them before I ended their lives.”
“Please, stop this! It doesn’t have to end this way!” I looked back to my father, who was good and shaken up. I hardly recognized him, wide-eyed and trembling. “You’ve seen what he’s capable of. He’ll kill you. All of you. Please. It doesn’t have to happen.”
“I can’t let you go. I won’t!” He spun me around until we were eye-to-eye. “Carissa, I won’t allow you to go on living like this. You cannot ask me to sit back and allow my daughter to exist as a vampire!”
“This is who I am now! You can’t honestly have expected to come up with an antidote,” I scoffed. “Be realistic. I know this isn’t how you wanted my life to turn out, but be honest. There were days, months, maybe even years when you didn’t have the first idea what my life was like, and you were okay with it.”
“I should have paid better attention, obviously,” he snapped. “Perhaps you wouldn’t have come to such an end.”
“You couldn’t have stopped it—and I wouldn’t want you to. Don’t you get it? I love Gage. I want a life with Gage.”
“What sort of life? It’s worthless!”
“I don’t see it that way, and it isn’t for you to say. This is evil. All of it. You’re doing evil things. But it doesn’t have to mean the end of your life. And it will, if you don’t tell your men to stand down and let us leave.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Please. I’m begging you. I don’t want you to die here. Please, just let us go!”
“That’s not going to happen. I won’t let it. I won’t let you go on like this.”
“Don’t you know they’ll kill me, too? This won’t stop with them. I’ll die, too, Dad. Doesn’t that matter?”
He at least pretended to fight with himself. I had to give him that. The men behind him held their rifles aimed at me and Gage and the others, ready to fire at the first signal from my father. My own father.
“Dad,” I pleaded. “Come on. You can’t want this.”
Any uncertainty he might have felt died, and his eyes went cold as his jaw tightened. “I can’t let you live like one of them.”
“You would let them murder me here? You would let that happen?”
“I wouldn’t have a choice, would I? I’ve devoted my life to banishing those of your kind. You stopped being my daughter when you turned into one of them.”
I let out something that sounded like a moan, like my heart was crying out one more time when I realized, once and for all, that he was a lost cause. He would never come back to me. His mind was too twisted by fanaticism to think like a reasonable person.
He didn’t see me. Not anymore. He only saw the enemy.
I was wasting my time trying to save him.
One backward step, then another. I didn’t know this man. It was stupid of me to try to get through to him. Stupid to offer myself as protection. He didn’t deserve it. He wasn’t even my father anymore.
“Cari,” Gage whispered, taking my arm and drawing me near. There was relief in his voice, like he thought I was a goner.
“That’s how it’s going to be, then,” the man who used to be my father announced, looking us over. “You could have contributed something to humanity. You could have been pioneers.” He raised his voice to a fevered pitch, like an evangelist in the middle of a sermon. He lifted his arms. “You could have brought an end to this terrible curse, but no! Did you think you could stop us? Did you think you could make us turn back on years of research? We will bring an end to this one day. Your kind will be no more.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Gage’s father whispered. “Stay near. Huddle together. We’ll be all right.”
“Waiting on your command, sir!” one of the armed men barked, his rifle leveled and pointing straight at my head. A vampire could survive many things, but could they live through a hail of silver bullets? Or even one through the brain? Not a chance.
“Ready!” he shouted, his face a mask of fury. He clenched his fists, eyes bulging, a dark red flush creeping up his neck and spreading over his jaw, his cheeks. He looked like he might be on the verge of a stroke, and I wondered for a split second what would happen if he actually had one.
I never had the chance to see whether he would.
Because that was when the ground started to shake.
We looked down.
All of us, our side and theirs, shocked that it felt like the earth under our feet would crack apart at any second.
“Earthquake?” Naomi cried out, and Raze wrapped his arms around her.
“I don’t think so.” Gage was staring out over the estate, past the armed men. “I think it’s her.”
“Her?” It only took a second for me to spot who he was talking about. It would’ve been tough to miss her. A girl with silver hair, a white gown billowing around her as she strode across the grounds. “How could she be causing this?”
“Oh, no.” His father backed away from her, closer to us, spreading his arm protectively. “You want to back away. Now.”
Thunder cracked overhead, loud enough to make me throw my hands over my ears, and a bolt of lightning almost blinded me.
“Sara,” Gage groaned. “This isn’t going to end well.”
32
Gage
“Sara? Who’s Sara?” Cari tugged at my arm, then covered one ear as another round of thunder split the air. The ground still shook, though not as strongly as before.
It was still enough to be unsettling, as evidenced by the way the armed men—so brave just moments earlier—looked at each other in obvious panic.
She seemed to float over the ground, calling the elements into play around her. The once-still pool turned choppy, waves crashing up and over the edge, water spreading across the cement patio. Lightning leapt from cloud to cloud overhead, as if the
bolts were playing a game of tag. The thunder never stopped, rolling on and on.
She was doing this. How was she doing this?
“Her!” Gil screamed, pointing. “Take her out! Now!”
At least ten men fired on her at one time, bullets screaming through the air—only to land at her feet without striking. “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted, looking wildly around himself. “I said, kill her!”
“They can’t,” Raze whispered. “That’s Sara. It can’t be, though. It can’t!”
“Who is Sara?” Cari demanded as all of us backed away one careful step at a time.
“Anissa’s sister,” I explained, unable to take my eyes from her. “But it’s not. It is, but it’s not. She’s a…”
“Witch,” Fane confirmed. “An elemental witch. The most powerful I’ve ever seen.”
And she had business to attend to, that much was clear. She stared at Gil as she approached, her eyes never leaving him, even as she called a storm to life around her. I wondered if she even realized what she was doing, or if the storm was simply the result of her fury.
“You!” she called out, raising an arm, pointing to Gil. “You evil, wretched man!”
“I think we need to go,” Raze said, his voice shaking. “This isn’t going to end well.”
He was right, but we might as well have all been glued to the spot. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Part of me—a deep, dark part, the part that wanted nothing more than the satisfaction of vengeance—wanted to watch her tear them to pieces.
“It’s her! She’s doing this!” one of the guards screamed, and it was as if he’d issued a command. Just like that, they broke rank and scattered, some of them running for the house while others spread out over the grounds.
“Where are you doing?” Gil screamed. “Get back here! All of you! I command it!”
“Your commands mean nothing,” Sara called out with a vicious smile. As if to prove her point, she glanced toward the pool where a handful of men were running through the water which had lapped up onto the patio.
She raised an arm, pointing to the pool.
A bolt of lightning zigzagged down from the sky and touched the surface, leaving me momentarily blinded. When the glow faded, and I was able to see, I almost wished I hadn’t regained the ability.
Cari screamed, clutching me, as the men caught on the soaked patio jumped and danced while current raced through them, turning their skin black as coal, sending smoke into the air along with the stench of charred flesh.
“My God!” she screamed, while Naomi retched and Raze stared in horror. Only Fane managed to keep it together, though even he appeared shaken.
Sara turned away from the pool with a sick look of pleasure on her face. She wasn’t the Sara I remembered, nowhere close to the vampire my brother had fallen in love with. This was an entirely different creature, one with streaks of silver in white hair that had once been dark, one who sent sparks from her fingertips.
One who took immense satisfaction in killing a half-dozen men at once.
And she didn’t stop there. She shot lightning from her hands, striking this one and that one as they attempted to flee. The thunder wasn’t enough to drown out their screams as they burned, twisting and flailing, dropping to the ground in heaps which still twitched as they eked out their last living moments in wrenching agony.
Gil stood firm, the way only the truly insane would ever dare do in the face of such devastation. He stared at her, almost welcoming her, daring her to strike him down as she had the others.
He didn’t realize she would, and that she would make his suffering the worst of all.
“We should go!” I shouted. I’d seen enough. She had this under control—and I wasn’t sure Cari needed to see what would come next.
Finally, for the first time since she’d arrived, Sara looked at us. Our eyes locked.
She raised her arms overhead, stirring up a swirling, green-black mass of clouds centered directly over the compound. Energy built in the air until the pressure was enough to make my ears pop.
“Go! Now!” she roared, and I wasn’t about to make her say it twice.
“Let’s go!” I cried, tugging my father’s arm before taking Cari’s hand and dragging her away.
Raze held Naomi by the waist as they ran ahead of us, and Fane followed close behind.
Lightning struck one tree, then another, splitting them in half, sending them crashing to the ground and lighting them ablaze. I covered Cari’s head with one arm, flinching as a nearby tree exploded into flame.
She was losing control.
In fact, it seemed like she was getting stronger with every passing second. Like she was trying her strength on for size and wanted more, more. She wouldn’t stop until the entire estate was destroyed, and every soul on it.
We had to move faster. “Go, go!” I screamed over the deafening roar. “She’s losing control!”
“Wait! Please!” Cari begged, still caring for the insane man who had only just been about to murder her. “What’s she going to do to him?”
“You don’t want to know!” I shouted, pulling her along in spite of her protests. I would’ve thrown her over my shoulder and in fact, was about to do just that when the strongest, loudest crack of thunder knocked me off my feet, sending me sprawling.
It sent us all sprawling—and, as I saw when I rolled onto my back and looked up, it wasn’t thunder that had done it.
It was the explosion of the compound. She had blown it sky-high.
Debris rained down all around—burning wood, bricks, tiles from the roof, even furniture. I covered Cari, and Fane covered both of us, as we waited for the worst of it to land so we could move again.
“Dad! Dad!” Cari tried to crawl out from under me, but I held her fast.
“He’s gone!” I shouted, taking her face in my hands. “He’s gone, and we have to get out of here before we join him.” Sure enough, when I looked back to where Gil had just stood, I saw nothing but a charred patch of grass. I couldn’t begin to imagine what she’d done, but I was glad Cari hadn’t witnessed it.
Sara, meanwhile, was like a maestro conducting a symphony. She pulled down one lightning bolt after another, striking the blazing ruins and the land surrounding them. She seemed to be enjoying herself.
This was the thrill of her life.
“We need to get out of here before this gets any worse,” Fane shouted, pulling Cari to her feet. “Come quickly. All of you.” He took my idea, too, throwing Cari over his shoulder before she could react and taking off at a flat-out run.
I had never seen fear in my father’s eyes until then—and that was when I knew we were in serious danger. He would never have fled like that, to say nothing of the way he handled Cari, if he didn’t firmly believe we were about to meet our end.
He used his powers to open the gate to the street beyond and didn’t stop running through the darkness until we were blocks away from the ruins.
I only looked over my shoulder once.
Just once.
What I saw was an inferno, with bolts of lightning still touching down here and there.
And a single, silver figure in the middle of it all, conducting the chaos swirling around her.
33
Branwen
It was a wonder I hadn’t worn a groove in the stone floor outside Stark’s bedchamber, having paced before it too many times to count.
“Why are you so nervous?” Anissa asked, standing against the wall.
She was holding Lena, who seemed perturbed by my pacing. Babies had an innate gift for understanding the energy in the air around them, and she was no exception.
“I’m sorry, dear heart.” I pinched her cheek and smiled, and the pucker in her forehead smoothed out. If only it were so simple to lift the spirits of those a bit older.
“Why the nervousness?” Anissa prodded. “You act like you expect him to be changed. Sirene said he’s just fine—weak, worn out, but he’ll recover. We need to give him ti
me.”
I shook my head. She didn’t understand, though I didn’t hold it against her. She had no way of knowing, and I would rather have kept it to myself.
Then again, I longed to unburden myself, and she had always been a good listener. I trusted her the way people do when they share something they love. I knew she loved Lena, and any respect she’d felt for me had grown in the days since the mission to retrieve the blood.
“He said something to me just before we returned,” I confessed in a whisper, huddled close to her. It was nearly comical, the way Lena appeared to listen just as Anissa did.
“What did he say?” she whispered, eyes wide.
“I never told you this, but… we were… together. A long time ago. I always thought he left me in favor of Elewyn.”
“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose. “As if anyone would ever turn away from you and toward that… thing.”
“She doesn’t impress you?” I couldn’t help snickering.
“Not one bit. Granted, I owe her my freedom—she made it possible for us to escape Shadowsbane Island, where I might currently be serving a life sentence—but she did it for her own selfish reasons. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself.”
“See? I’ve always known that, too. Which was why I never did understand why he would choose her over me. It may sound silly, but—”
“No, not at all.” She looked to the closed door, behind which Sirene examined him. “What did he say to make you think otherwise?”
I wrung my hands, feeling every inch the naïve, young witch I’d been when he left me. “That my grandfather, Dracan, orchestrated the entire thing. He hated Stark and refused to allow us to continue. He threatened to kill Sirene if Stark did not give me up.”
Her gasp echoed off the floor, the walls. “He didn’t! Good riddance to him. There’s no love lost, in case I’m being unclear.”
“Not at all. It’s just something he would do, too. So cruel. I do have to wonder how he found out, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that Stark told me he’s always loved me, that he never wanted to leave but did it for Sirene.”