The Bite of Winter (International Monster Slayers Book 2)

by Bethany Helwig

  But where’s Hawk? It takes me a moment to spot him. He’s picking himself slowly off the floor a few feet behind Scholar. He’s bleeding from his scalp and there’s a sour grimace on his face but he’s alive. Scholar must have been able to separate him from the lamia. A wave of relief rushes through me.

  I jog as quietly as I can to the next pillar behind the lamia where they have Scholar and Hawk cornered. Another powerful blast pushes through the air almost like the pulse of a bio-mech gun but its shockwave sends cracks through the floor. Glancing around the support beam where I hide, I watch the lamia push themselves off the floor as Scholar leaps in. They’re both focused on stopping her from chopping their heads off and lose a few fingers instead. Now’s my chance.

  I pivot around the steel beam, feet crunching on broken glass, and in the same motion send my sword swinging for Epsilon’s head. An inch away from her neck, her hand snaps up and grasps the blade with her bare hand. While Zeta tries to bite Scholar’s arm, Epsilon spins about on me, fangs dripping with blood and serpentine eyes promising my death. She clenches her hand and the sword cracks in her grip. I swing with the machete but she grabs that too. We struggle with the blades between us and I push as hard as I can against her. Her feet slide across the floor from the force.

  Then she redirects my arms to the left as she lets go and spins right to send her elbow into my ribs. I stumble back and fall heavily when her backhand comes at me next. Glass presses against my face and pierces my skin. My hands grab at the splintered floor and I hurry to push myself up before I’m beset upon again.

  “Phoenix!” Hawk cries as Epsilon grabs the back of my hair and wrenches me up to bring a sharpened claw to the front of my throat.

  “Her blood is on your hands, demon!” Epsilon screeches.

  Out of the corner of my eye, Scholar’s eyes go wide as she dodges Zeta yet again. I grab Epsilon’s hand and fight against her trying to cut open my throat. She’s strong. Maybe she kept a little of my blood. My impending death distracts Scholar long enough so she leaves herself open. As the dragon raises her hand to blast Epsilon away from me, Zeta launches at her middle and they fall into a heap behind the cadaver table.

  In a desperate move, I twist Epsilon’s wrist at an awkward angle and manage to wrench her to the side. She drags me down with her by the hand still in my hair so we’re both on our backs. She’s hissing and spitting like an angry cat and removes her hand from my hair to wrap around my neck. I tug at her arm as it gets harder and harder to breathe and flail my body to try to throw her off. My toe catches something in the struggle and I realize it’s the machete I had dropped.

  Past the table I catch Hawk’s eyes as he scuttles forward, favoring one of his legs. I kick the machete across the floor towards him. He picks it up easily and rushes at the lamia, but doesn’t get a chance to end the fight. Epsilon lets go, shoves me away from her, and rolls across the glass shards to put ten feet between us. Hawk limps to my side with the machete in hand and we face off against Epsilon.

  She smiles. From out of her jacket she pulls a bag of blood—Charlie’s blood. She brings it up to her lips. Hawk hurls the machete end over end and it embeds itself in her chest above her heart, tearing through the bag of blood in the process. It sloshes over the floor and she screams. The hair on the back of my neck rises at the hideous sound. But there’s still some of his blood on her fingers.

  She licks it off and vanishes from sight.

  Claws drive into my back from behind and I scream. Her fingers dig into my flesh around my spine like she intends on ripping it right out of my body. Hawk snarls and turns around to grab her but the agony in my back dissipates as she reappears a foot in front of me. I send a jab to her face but she’s gone again.

  “Back to back!” Hawk shouts and angles about so his back is pressed against mine.

  She grabs my arm on the left and moves to throw me. Remembering my fight with Charlie, I grab her arm and refuse to let go even as she rips those vicious claws across the back of my hand and tries to sweep out my legs. Hawk spins around behind her and locks her head in a vice to get her claws off me. The machete is still sticking out of her chest like part of a zombie costume. Black blood runs from the wound, a dark sludge. I grab the machete and rip it free. She doesn’t even flinch but reaches over her shoulder trying to gouge out Hawk’s eyes.

  I grab her left arm, raise the machete, and chop off part of her hand. The claws twitch just once as three fingers roll across the floor. At least I’ve partially disarmed her—literally. She doesn’t scream or cry out in pain. In fact, it hardly seems to faze her at all. She kicks out and hits me in the gut. Hawk wrestles with her and their struggle sends them into the cadaver table.

  Scholar continues to dance around Zeta and manages to blast her off her feet. Once the lamia is prone on the ground, Scholar slides forward in order to deliver the killing blow. Epsilon shoves Hawk around so she gets a good look at the fight going on behind them. I lift the machete ready to take one of her hands when she vanishes again and takes Hawk with her. The pair reappear directly behind Scholar as she’s in mid swing and Epsilon lurches forward to bite at the dragon’s neck. Scholar seems to anticipate it and sends her elbow into Epsilon’s face, but it throws off her swing. The sword makes a divot in the floor and Zeta grabs Scholar’s arm to hold her in place—long enough for Epsilon’s fangs to puncture Scholar’s shoulder.

  “No!” I shout and rush forward as the lamia gets a taste of that powerful blood.

  A shockwave explodes in all directions from Epsilon. The cabinets around us burst into splinters, the remaining glass shatters in a deadly rain, the table blasts off its legs, and everyone apart from Epsilon is sent flying. I tumble like a doll through the air and bodily hit one of the metal support beams that manages to stay upright. Hardly able to breathe, I grab the edge of the beam and drag myself across the ground to shelter behind it as wave after wave blasts apart Scholar’s basement labs.

  “Hawk!” I scream through the sound of metal wrenching apart and wood splintering. I don’t know where he is. I try to peek around the beam but am forced back by glass pelting my skin.

  There’s got to be something I can do. Think, Phoenix. Shielding the back of my head with my hands against the debris getting blown past, I scan everything in front of me for something I can use to take Epsilon down. Where does Scholar keep her weapons? Shouldn’t she have weapons somewhere? I see Medical supplies, gauze, broken computers, busted bits of furniture, upended tables, and a glass case tipped on its side spilling out a collection of jewelry.

  Scholar’s artifacts—the same make as Hawk’s pendant that burned the lamia when they touched it.

  I try to time the waves. There are only seconds at best between them and in that gaping silence I can hear Epsilon laughing. Sucking in a breath, I lunge forward during those precious seconds and slide across the floor with both hands reaching out. My fingers grasp chains and tokens when the next wave hits. I ram my fist into the floor and create a handhold so I’m not blasted further into the room. The ripple of the wave rolls off my skin painfully and lifts my whole body for an instant before I fall back to the ground.

  In the next seconds I secure my grip on the trinkets and create another hold in the floor as I make for Epsilon. I move forward three times and when I look up to gage the remaining distance, Epsilon’s eyes lock onto me full of hatred. Zeta has managed to rise to her feet and stands in Epsilon’s shadow, enduring the shockwaves behind her comrade’s back. Scholar crouches behind another pillar holding her hands out in either direction in fierce concentration like she’s trying to stop the building from collapsing—which is probably exactly what she’s doing—and Hawk is pinned by the top of the cadaver table near the wall. One of his legs is trapped but he’s protected from the worst of the waves by that steel block.

  The closer I get, the more painful the waves become. It travels through my bones and boils my blood. It breaks me apart from the inside. What is this power?

  I c
an’t keep going. This is too much. I’m dying and I know it.

  Epsilon keeps on laughing and I’m starting to think that’s going to be the last sound I ever hear. Then I’m close enough that I can’t breathe during the waves and I just lay there in the dust and debris catching my breath before the next wave comes.

  “You thought you could defeat us?” Epsilon shouts between blasts. “We will sweep over your pathetic world. Your agents will be the corpses we feed upon, your homes our bonfires, your death our ecstasy. What clever quip will you say when we feast upon the bones of your brother?”

  She’s talked so long it’s given me time to regain my breath and say, “Catch.”

  I hurl the trinkets at the pair of lamia and the metal hisses as it hits their skin. They screech and bat the little pendants and rings off themselves. While distracted, I grab a jagged piece of table leg still bolted to the floor, and yank it free of its screws. I get my feet under me and leap forward to stick its sharpened end through Zeta’s chest. The metal goes right through and pins her against the wall. Spittle flies as the lamia hisses and wrenches this way and that trying to extricate herself.

  Unfortunately, that’s about as far as my plan goes. I duck beneath Epsilon’s blow and try to pick up the fallen talismans for weapons but a single powerful shockwave rips through my chest. I fall on my back again, the wind knocked clean out of me. I expect her to stomp on my head or rip it clean from my body next but she stalks away—right for Hawk pushing the tabletop off his leg.

  “Hawk!” I scream.

  He looks up to realize the lamia is almost on top of him. Epsilon clutches my machete in her hand from wherever it had fallen. I’m struggling upright when she reaches him. He’s fast and dodges her first and second blows but she manages to get her bloody mess of a hand around his throat and drives him to his knees.

  The machete rises in her hand.

  In that moment the world stands still, hanging on the precipice before a long dark drop into a void as I realize what my life will become if she drives that blade home. If Hawk dies, I will become the monster. It breathes under my skin. I’ve always known it’s been there biding its time.

  I reach for them as if I could stretch across the room and stop that blow—that world-ending blow. Something dangerous comes alive inside me and swells, breaking through my skin as I scream for my brother.

  A visible bubble-like pulse bursts from me and the air becomes much too hot. As if a vent opens up beneath my feet, wind gusts where I stand. Or is it wind at all? It feels solid and real and moves like a thick, deadly cloud away from me, expanding to fill every crevice.

  The lamia seem paralyzed by whatever power I’m channeling and the machete drops from Epsilon’s hand as her entire body shakes. Zeta chokes on words or cries, I don’t know. All I know is that whatever is pouring out of me is making them grimace and fold in on themselves despite trying to fight it.

  But this hurts. It hurts deep in my bones. The blood across the floor—my blood, I realize—sizzles.

  Hawk, my brave brother, grabs the fallen machete off the floor, rises, and with an almighty sweep cleaves at Epsilon. There’s just enough vitality in her that she manages to dodge the blow and lick at the drying blood on her fingertips, the remnants of what she took from Charlie. The next second she vanishes. I wait for claws to dig into my back or rip at my throat but there’s nothing but falling darkness. Hawk glances frantically around the room letting me know that Epsilon has fled this fight.

  I’m crumpling in on myself with my hand still outstretched to will the last lamia not to break free of where I pinned her, for her to simply end.

  Scholar appears from the other side of the room wielding that broadsword of hers and ends Zeta for good. The head of the lamia rolls until it halts against the twisted metal of the table.

  I let go of the energy rushing out of me and it comes crashing back, pulling me in with it into darkness.

  Chapter 24

  In the darkness I hear Scholar whisper my name. She’ll come back for me she says, but right now she has to run. That’s the only thing I remember until I wake up and don’t know where I am.

  I feel older somehow, as if I’ve been asleep for years. Deep in my core I’m different.

  Stronger.

  Apart from that, all of me hurts.

  My eyelids fight to open while a monitor somewhere on my left beeps a continuous two-beat rhythm. The smell of antiseptics and cleaner remind me of a hospital but there’s something more underneath that’s so familiar. It’s warm, and every now and again I catch the odd breathy snort of a deer.

  “I think she’s starting to wake up.” Hawk. He’s nearby.

  “You sure?” There’s Charlie’s skeptical voice. They both talk gently and each is a little hoarse. “Nah, she’s not waking up.”

  “I’ll bet your pudding,” Hawk says.

  “You already ate half of my fries. You’re not touching my pudding.”

  “Hey, you were moving so slow on that food I was just helping out.”

  Well, they both sound fine and if Hawk’s sneaking other people’s food, he’s definitely okay.

  There’s shuffling and a slapping of hands. “Hands off, Hawk!” Charlie protests.

  My brother’s laughter fills the room. The sound revives me and I open my eyes.

  I’m propped up on a hospital bed in a room with cement walls painted green. A heart monitor beeps beside me and an IV hangs next to it, feeding fluids into the back of my hand. On my other side asleep in a chair is Celina the faun. Her head is tilted back and she snorts softly in her sleep. Directly across from me on another hospital bed lies Charlie with Hawk perched in a chair between our beds. They’re each wearing pale green patient scrubs. Both boys smile when I focus my bleary eyes on them. With Celina here and the green painted walls, I know we must be in Underground’s medical unit.

  Hawk swipes a plastic cup of pudding off Charlie’s bedside table and hops away with it in his hands. “Winner!”

  Charlie rolls his eyes and stays where he is. He looks tons better but still has faint shadows under his eyes. There’s a pile of books on his food table and around his bedside. One even has a balloon tied to it wishing him to “get well soon” with a handwritten note in permanent marker beneath that says “you bloody idiot.”

  My brother hurries over to my bed and hops up to sit cross-legged against my feet. He’s got a horrible trail of bruises across his right cheek that disappears into his hairline. Battered and discolored but okay.

  “It’s good to finally see you awake. You had me so worried,” he says and gives me a huge smile before ripping into the pudding. “Man, I get hungry when I’m worried.”

  I work my throat and a scratchy voice comes out that doesn’t sound like mine. “How long was I out?”

  “About two days,” he says around a huge spoonful. “We’ve been sitting here waiting for you to come to so I could soundly scold you for scaring the crap out of me.”

  “And for stuffing me in a closet,” Charlie says sourly across from us.

  My lips tug into a smile. “Yeah, well, I was protecting you.”

  “I could have helped,” he argues.

  “How? As a human shield?” I scoff. “Because that’s about all you were capable of doing at that point. You fell unconscious the second we teleported inside.”

  He looks away and mumbles something under his breath. Hawk smirks and winks at me.

  Images flash through my mind of that horrible night. There was no time to think about any of it then, but now there is. I consider the fact that Charlie’s teleportation hardly hurt at all when it had brought Hawk to his knees, how Zeta grimaced every time she took a taste of my blood, how that . . . that force pushed out of me and seemingly paralyzed the lamia in Scholar’s labs. The implications are staggering and my heart starts to hammer which, unfortunately, is announced loud and clear by the stupid heart monitor. The boys both stare at me so I lay back and study the ceiling, trying not to think too hard an
ymore but I can’t get the thoughts out of my head.

  What’s in my blood is so much more than strength or a potential cure for the werewolves. If I can do all that, what else am I capable of?

  “You okay?” Hawk says and prods my foot.

  “Yeah,” I say hoarsely. “It’s just been a crazy week, that’s all.”

  All our talking must wake Celina because she jerks to and basically screeches when she sees me. Her ears stand straight up and she launches herself out of her chair to wrap me in a hug. My breath catches in my throat.

  “Oh, Phoenix!” she says and starts blubbering on my shoulder.

  “Ouch,” I croak. She hastily draws away but leaves her velvety hands on my shoulders.

  “I’ve been so worried! They brought you all here and you were unconscious and I told them, I told them tell me everything and don’t you dare leave a single detail to the void! They tried to keep me out but . . .”

  Celina keeps rambling on and I just smile. She leans in for hugs a few times while she talks as if to reassure herself more than me. Hawk sits on the end of my bed chuckling.

  I’m so distracted by Celina that I don’t even realize Jefferson and Melody have entered the room until Jefferson’s directly behind Celina. Seeing them both alive sends another wave of relief through me. Celina scoots over so Jefferson can approach my bedside. He gives my upper arm a gentle squeeze.

  “Still alive?” he says gruffly but his eyes crinkle as a ghost of a smile crosses his face. “It’s good to see you awake, Phoenix.”

  “And I’m glad you didn’t get bled dry by the vampires.”

  He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “I might be getting old but I’m not feeble.”

  Celina gets up so Jefferson can take the chair and he sinks down to close his eyes like he’s been having a long, trying day. On the other side of the room Melody has a private conversation with Charlie over one of the books at his bedside. I catch a few of his whispers—he’s rather excited about the plot.