by Cecy Robson
“Bren, you don’t understand. If I can pull off this spell, we’ll end up outside. Destiny told me it’s not safe out there. These creatures are swarming the grounds.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” he counters. “Have you been out there?”
“No,” I admit. “But anyone who’s stepped close to the entrance was reduced to blood and bones.”
He motions around. “It has to be better than this shit,” he says. “What if that thing at the entrance is the worst of them? It won’t know Celia is gone, and it’ll give you a chance to escape.”
The anarchy in the ballroom begins to dwindle down, unlike the mobocracy in the foyer. “Bren, I don’t know.”
“T, we’re the only ones aware of the escape route. Get Celia in here, and then you girls get out. We’ll meet you in a few.”
Bren’s leg is shredded, and blood and poison ooze from the exposed bone. His inner beast is trying and failing to heal him. For all Bren tells me he’ll make it out, I think he knows he won’t, not that he’ll ever admit it.
My legs tremble as I rise. This escape route is our Hail Mary play. I don’t want to take it, but I will. I only hope we’re not leaping from the frying pan and directly into the mouths of these creatures.
Pale-yellow light streams along the floor as I stride in the direction of the foyer.
“That’s right, baby,” Bren tells Emme. “Heal. I know you’re tired. I know you want to sleep. But we ain’t done fighting yet.”
Gemini jogs to me. “What’s happening?”
The way Bren holds and speaks to Emme tears me up. “Bren says it’s time for the Hail Mary pass.”
He glares at the magical partition where bloody corpses lay piled against it. “What if we just bring Celia in here? It’s safer than before.”
I like this idea better. Yeah, maybe we can just stay in here.
Except when I reach the invisible wall, I can’t step through. A timber wolf with three heads appears at the entrance, its predator eyes locking on my pregnant sister.
Chapter Ten
I slam my hands against the partition. “No.”
The three-headed Nyte bursts through what remains of the main entrance. As wolves, Aric, Gemini, and Bren tip the scales at over four-hundred pounds. Koda, closer to six hundred. This Nyte, covered in iridescent scales and more serpentine in his movements than lupine, matches their combine weight and size.
Aric could give a damn. He secures Celia between Koda and Shayna, ripping his bloody shirt off and gunning for the Nyte.
The Nyte stomps through the fray, swerving and coiling, ramming bodies through walls and partitions, no care for friend or foe. Without fear or hesitation, Aric leaps over the dense crowd scrambling out of the way or busy fighting other Nytes.
Aric punches the Nyte square in the chest. The sound of breaking bone reverberates the barrier against my hands. Black fluid splatters the rabid crowd. Aric doesn’t stop there. He fists the looser scales at the Nyte’s throat to hold him in place while his free hand rams him over and over, puncturing a hole through the chest.
Through the muffled barrier of magic, I hear the spurting of more fluid as Aric cracks open the Nyte’s chest. The center head collapses, its burnt orange eyes fading to black. Two more heads remain. So does Aric’s viciousness.
The brutality my brother-in-law demonstrates is hard to watch. Aric is no longer that leader of weres I hated for hurting my sister and the man I’d bleed for for loving her just as hard. He’s a predator promising carnage and destruction to anyone who dares threaten his mate.
I press my hand against the barrier and draw my magic, using Aric’s rage to feed the magic spreading from my palm. Aric snatches the head on the left by the throat, swinging his legs to avoid the snapping jaws of the other wolf head when it strikes at him like a cobra. Aric’s quick and aggressive motions crack the larynx of the wolf with his grip. He rips open the skin, pulling out innards through the tear.
Like the first head, the second collapses. With another few strikes, Aric fractures the snout of the remaining wolf head. The Nyte bleeds out through its indented chest. It was the largest of its kind and imposing. Yet it never stood a chance. Like me, Aric will do what it takes for Celia to live.
I scream, packing my power into the divide. Gemini rams it when it starts to give. When it splits, he shoves his body through, keeping it open. I look away as he kicks at the bodies to make more room. His callousness will bother and haunt him later. I’ll help him work through it when the time comes. For now, we have to survive.
“Aric,” Gemini calls just loud enough to be heard.
Aric, now with Celia, jerks our way. “Go, go,” he urges his small group.
The barrier erupts with power, thrusting Gemini back. He curses and slams his shoulder into the barrier. This time, it doesn’t give. “Taran, break this thing open.”
I’m already trying except this time, it’s different. “This thing knows my power,” I admit.
“Then let it know how strong you are,” he bites out.
He’s damn right I will, throwing more of me into the magic.
The were guards assigned to Celia are gone. Dead or spread thin among the melee. Aric tucks Celia against him, Koda takes up the rear, his giant red wolf form snapping at anything that draws close.
Shayna is in the lead, her long black ponytail whipping back and forth as she cuts her way through the crowd. She’s exhausted, her features pained yet no less determined. Even as her silk shirt sticks to her thin frame, her strikes remain lethal, graceful, exactly what’s needed to get Celia through.
Aric edges around the pile of bodies, to the one spot not completely covered with corpses. Celia covers her mouth, scanning the dead. She thinks they died because of her. I want to scream at her this was never her fault. Evil doesn’t care. It simply takes.
Aric pounds against the barrier. “We can’t get through, and we can’t stand here.”
“I know,” Gemini shouts through the wall. “Taran is working on it.”
I mix my magic up, chanting fast and hard. The blue and white mist permeating from my palms spread, making the barrier visible. “Let them in,” I demand through clenched teeth. “See them through safe and whole.”
“We still need to find Emme and Bren,” Celia yells.
Gemini keeps his voice steady, speaking as if we’re not out of time. “We have them. They’re safe.”
Celia nods, tears welling in her eyes as she scans the dead at her feet. “Okay,” she stammers.
She’s a wreck. Aric can do little more than hold her. “We’re going to make it,” he tells her. “I swear it, sweetness.”
I cast more power. My right arm lights up and illuminates the area surrounding us. It draws attention in all the wrong ways. Koda brings something down large and wiry when it charges. I can’t quite make it out, it’s too fast. Not to sound selfish, but I’m glad I didn’t see it. Tails, lots of them, with suckling mouths at the tips, flail up as Koda goes to town on it.
Aric and Celia jump away from it, cringing. It’s always extra disturbing when a were is grossed out. Koda’s large foot smashes down on it. Squealing follows before the twisted tail slapping against the barrier falls limp.
A toadish creature leaps at Celia. Shayna rams her sword through its eye. Its gooey tongue whips out, lapping the air near her throat. She shakes her sword, trying to set it free so she can kill it. “Um, dude? I know you’re like, totally kicking butt in there, but can you, you know, go faster?”
I press my hands harder against the wall. “I’m trying, Shayna.”
Emme’s agonized grunt almost makes me lose my focus. She is awake and pissed.
She holds Tweedledum suspended in the air. Gemini’s twin and Bren the wolf leap toward it. The twin grabs an arm, Bren gets a leg. They rip Tweedle in half like a pinata and…more Tweedles pop out.
The baby Tweedles are tiny, naked, and bloody. They bounce around the room like tennis balls, shrieking and rolling toward
the fray.
“Oh, my God,” Celia says over Aric’s “What the fuck?” remark.
Celia glances up at Aric, no longer certain she wants into the room and likely thinking she’ll take her chances with the suckling tails.
“It’s Johnny Fate,” Gemini tells them.
Aric meets him square in the face. “How do you know? Did you see him?”
Gemini shakes his head. “No. Taran feels him, and that’s good enough for me.”
“Shit,” Aric says. Throw in the fact that Johnny almost killed something as strong as Destiny, and yeah, he knows we’re screwed.
Warm liquid splatters me in the back. The guests who remain in the ballroom are done with these freaks. They’re stomping them, ripping them in half, beating them with candelabras.
I make the mistake of glancing toward the corner. The limbless vamp whose hand I accidentally fed to the snake has a mini-Tweedle clutched between her fangs. She shakes it like a snarling dog with a squirrel. It screams, screams like something being eaten alive, ’cause it is.
Jesus, I’ll never recover from that visual.
Frustrated and overwhelmingly skeeved out, I give one last dose of magic. “Let. Them. In,” I command. “Let them in now!”
My hand breaks through, creating an opening. I push it down, widening the slit.
“Time to go, love.”
Aric’s voice remains steady as he holds my sister. Unlike Celia, who falls apart. “Aric,” she says. “I don’t want to raise our baby without you.”
His lips pass gently over hers. A small war is literally taking place behind them, but for now, only she exists. “Nothing will keep me from you or our child. Get to safety. I’ll be with you soon. I swear it.”
She sniffs, tears streaming down her face as he kisses her.
Aric breaks away when something smashes against the rear of the manor. I’m almost finished making an opening Celia can fit through.
“I have to go,” Gemini says. “I won’t be long.”
I swallow hard. “Don’t you dare make me cry,” I tell him. “I’m trying to focus.”
Like Aric, he’s making promises he may be unable to keep.
“You are my love…”
“Baby, stop,” I beg.
“My pain in the ass…”
I choke out a laugh, my vision blurring as the opening expands farther.
“And the woman I want to carry our children.”
I swipe my eyes against my shoulder. Children. He said, “children.” As in more of us and more years to come even as the fight and gore amplify. “You had to go there,” I say, my voice splintering. “Didn’t you?”
He kisses my forehead. It’s sweet but no less lovely. I push open the way. “It won’t hold long,” I admit. I grunt. Already, it’s fighting to close.
Aric urges Celia through. I catch Koda snag Shayna in his massive arms. He smashes his mouth against hers. Their kiss is more impassioned and longer. That doesn’t mean I envy their goodbye.
Celia slips through and into the ballroom. Shayna follows a breath before I lose my grip.
Shayna presses her hand against the barrier to hover over Koda’s. His grief-stricken features are enough to shatter a thousand hearts. He never knew love until he found my sister and now, he may lose her.
He bows his head briefly. When he meets her gaze and says what he does, I almost unravel. “You’re the best thing that will ever happen to me,” he tells her.
Shayna smiles even as her tears fall. “I love you like the moon does the sun, Miakoda.”
She wipes her eyes and quickly helps me lead Celia away.
“Emme,” I call. “It’s time.”
Emme, although fully healed through her own power, walks carefully toward us. Bren snatches her into a tight embrace. “I won’t leave you,” he tells her. “Not like this. Remember what I said, you and me, we’re going to make it.”
As he releases her, he grasps her hands, kissing them, the gesture as intimate as our goodbyes with our wolves.
“Emme, honey,” I urge. “We have to go.”
Although it destroys her to walk away from Bren, her face lights up when she sees Celia. She throws herself into Celia’s arms. Celia embraces her, her husky voice falling to a reassuring purr. “I’m all right, and so are you. Stay strong, and I promise, I will too.”
I crouch down, calling forth a tiny stream of flame to create my magic circle and our way out of here. Ordinarily, I’d use chalk, or even a marker. The chalk I tucked into my dress earlier was smashed to bits during the first twenty-five ass-kickings I survived. And even though I hate using my fire, I don’t fret much over damaging Genevieve’s floors. They’re already destroyed, and my char marks aren’t any worse than the shit staining them.
I work through the words of the spell, punching my magic through each syllable as the last of Tweedle’s babies are stomped to bits. “Allow our departure,” I say.
Gemini’s head snaps up when another hard something strikes above. “Taran,” he says. “Work faster. Something else is here.”
Chapter Eleven
You know what? Fuck you, Johnny. Fuck you and your stupid Nytes and all the shit you’re doing to kill us.
I swear up a storm as I focus on the witch magic Genevieve and her groupies taught me. I’m not fond of it, and not being a witch myself, it doesn’t come easy.
Another crash to the ceiling.
Aric pounds on the partition, yelling at Celia to come back. Can I blame him? No. We’re the geniuses who thought she was safer in this hell pit versus the hell hole on the opposite side.
“Morrell, Adonis, Keisha, Elaine, take point around the Wird sisters,” Gemini orders. “Matthew, David, Amber, collect the injured and group them as one.”
“Yes, Gemini,” a chorus of weres answer.
More weres are hurt than are ready to fight and protect. I want to thank them. As the mate to the second in command, I think I’m obliged. But everyone is counting on me to get Celia out. I have to make it right.
More crashing resonates over the sound of splintering glass. Aric is busting through the divide, but it costs him. Shards of mystical glass soar into his skin, slicing through his muscles and coating the partition with his blood. The power he possesses is spilling into the divide and weakening it. It’s also weakening Aric. He needs his strength to fight what’s coming. And what’s coming is plenty big.
Uri is belting words in Russian, his tone hateful. Each word smacks at my back like a warning. I don’t speak the language, but the way he’s looking at Celia makes me think he believes his life is worth more than hers.
Gemini appears to suspect the same. He orders his weres to tighten the circle around us. He snarls, ready to challenge the master of all masters.
My body shakes with fear. I need Celia out before Uri rushes the circle and tries to take our place. He remains whole and strong, and his vampires appear to outnumber the weres. Once we leave, the vamps will have no choice but to abandon their fight with the weres and turn against the approaching Nyte.
A section of granite from the fireplace cracks and falls with the next powerful strike. The floor at my feet shakes from the beating the roof and the side of the manor are taking. This thing is stronger than that three-headed wolf, and it’s closing in fast.
“Aric,” Celia calls. “Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
She growls. I don’t have to look up to know Shayna has her and is keeping her in place.
Koda’s were essence has flowed through Shayna’s system since the time he tried to turn her to save her life. Still, Shayna isn’t as strong as Celia, and Celia can wipe the floor with her. Hell, Celia can wipe the floor with all of us. Shayna manages to keep her put only because Celia doesn’t want to risk harming her baby.
“Uh, uh, uh, little mama,” Shayna tells Celia. She keeps her voice bouncy and light, ignoring Celia’s guttural growl. “You and Aric, Jr., need to stay put. Dying is not part of the plan, cutie.”
It�
��s really not.
My magic spills into the spell. “Grant us peace,” I whisper. “Grant us safe passage. By the power of good that surrounds the Earth, make it be.”
I continue with the circle and the chanting, trying to keep the same width around since these things matter in witchcraft and wizardry. I reach the end and take a breath, just as something larger and heavier propels itself against the ceiling.
“We need to go,” Emme says. “We need to go now.”
“By the power of good, make it be.” I slam my foot down, sealing the circle, and…nothing happens. I try again. Nothing. What the hell?
“Dude,” Shayna calls to me. “That’s an oval. It has to be a circle.”
Jesus God help me. She’s right.
“Karen doesn’t know what she’s doing,” a wereraccoon mutters to a werebuffalo.
Gemini doesn’t panic. He never does. Well, except that one time when I pulled something that may or may not have caused an international incident. But it wasn’t my fault. Mostly.
While he’s not panicking, per se, he’s not happy. “Taran, we’re running out of time.”
Smoke billows from the hearth. I’m worried the manor is on fire. But then a stream of smoke with long stretching fingers latches around a vampire’s throat and yanks him up the chimney. He screams once before his shoes and one sock crash back into the hearth.
Oh, and I can’t make the damn circle fast enough.
“Grant us peace…”
Aric breaks through the partition.
“Grant us safe passage.” I shove more magic into the spell.
The crowd backs away from the hearth. Aric and Gemini take point in front of Celia.
More banging. Something rams what remains of the partition. The fight from the foyer spills over into the ballroom.
“Allow us to pass,” I scream over the noise.
“Get out of here,” Gemini growls.
“Allow us our peace.”
Several pummels to the house rattle the floor, knocking down the few plates that remain on the tables.