by Zoe Winters
An explosion sounded in the distance. Sydney turned to see sparks of red and purple and green and blue rising into the air. The magic users were there; the fight had already started. It was much faster than she’d anticipated, even with Tam’s warning that they were on their way. What if Noah and Sydney had gotten home just a few hours later than they had? They would have walked in on the fighting. At least Tam had a few days warning.
Fiona moved faster, speaking each species’ language as she reached new animals. Each time, the animals gathered others of their kind and joined them.
When Sydney and Fiona made it down the hill, the melee had begun in earnest. It was almost impossible to tell who was on which side as sparks and incantations flew. Fiona raised her arms as glowing green light trailed from her hands, wavy like strands of electric hair.
Hundreds of animals both predator and prey, running and flying, had paused, waiting for her command. Fiona dropped her hands, and the animals flew into the fray, attacking and distracting the magic users who had come to do them harm.
“Leave no one alive,” Tam shouted from a few hundred yards away. “I’ve already got a messenger.” She held a young scrawny man with red hair by the scruff of the neck. Then she trapped him in a band of energy.
Sydney flinched at the order to kill everyone, even though she knew the score here. It was kill or be killed. Leaving survivors would just create a larger, angrier army to deal with later. Decimating their numbers was the only hope they might be left in peace.
Tam and Cain had brought in hundreds of demons from the demon dimension. They’d no doubt used a nearby portal while Fiona and Sydney had been out collecting animals. Even before the animals were introduced into the fray, the magic users were beginning to become overwhelmed by the demons they hadn’t expected to fight.
Maybe Uncle Cain felt guilty for staying out of the war years earlier. It hadn’t been his fight, and he’d refused to send his kind in to help. The preternaturals might have lost anyway, even with the demons. It was a big war. This, by contrast, was a battle, and the troops the magic users had sent in were ill-prepared to cope with hoards of unexpected demons and all the local wildlife turning on them, too.
Cain and Luc fought with the rest of them, creating a buffer for Tam, Anna, and Dayne to do defensive magic. Aunt Greta was nowhere to be found, but she wouldn’t be. Except for being able to shapeshift into a housecat, she didn’t have any real powers to speak of. She had more than human strength but she wasn’t strong enough for a fight like this. And she couldn’t do magic.
Sydney heard a hiss and looked up. A black cat sat on a limb high in the tree above her. The cat’s body was arched in angry panic. So maybe Aunt Greta hadn’t gone home. She’d pushed through her fear to stay near Dayne.
Fiona wandered up. The witch was wiped out from the magic and commanding the animals. Aunt Greta meowed at her, and Fiona communicated back.
“Dayne will be okay. I’ll head that way.”
The black cat looked mollified but climbed higher in the tree and kept her worried gaze in Dayne’s direction.
Noah fought nearby with a magic user Sydney recognized. It was the woman he’d let go on the night of their escape. What was her name again? Sydney edged closer.
“Kristen, I spared you once,” Noah said. “I can’t do it again.”
But Sydney saw the pain on her mate’s face, and knew that if he could, he’d spare her a second time. Irrational jealousy stabbed her. What had this woman been to Noah? Why did she hold such power over him? Had she only been kind when no one else was during his captivity? Or had it been something more?
Kristen flung a conjured ball of purple electricity at Noah. He growled as it scorched his skin, then she turned and ran. Kristen knew as well as Sydney did that Noah couldn’t bring himself to end her life. But Sydney could.
Hostility and rage surged through her. The woman had been kind enough when Sydney was captured, but the way she looked at Noah, the way he’d hesitated… Somewhere in the irrational place where the simultaneous claim and mating bond lived, Sydney couldn’t let the bitch live.
She pulled a knife from a concealment band under her top and put on a burst of vampiric speed. She’d slit the woman’s throat before Noah could reach them.
His eyes glowed golden. “Why did you do that? She was running.”
Sydney licked the blood off the knife, then bit into Kristen’s throat, draining the body before letting it drop. Killing with fangs felt too personal, but once her foe was dead, the call of her powerful magical blood had been too much to resist.
Shame washed over her. All these years she’d lived like a human with an odd diet. It was only now at her full power, confronted with jealousy and mating links and rage, that she’d let the monster out. And for the briefest moment, she’d felt that scary predatory calm and lack of remorse. She brushed past Noah to join the fight in earnest. She needed to do some killing she could more easily justify to paper over the petty murder she’d just committed. But he grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Sydney.”
“Don’t. I don’t know what I am now. I can’t believe I just…” Yeah, Tam had said to leave no survivors, and it was debatable if disobeying that order for one additional person would make a difference. But they both knew that wasn’t why Kristen was a drained corpse at the edge of the woods right now.
Noah pulled Sydney into his arms, and she laid her head against his shoulder. He petted her hair as she sobbed. “You’ve never been tested before. You’ve never had to deal with the consequences of your power before because it’s new.”
“Have you? Had to deal with consequences?”
He was silent, and she knew that it wasn’t the same for him. He hadn’t been damaged by the lives he’d taken.
“She made her choice to come here to fight,” he said.
“Was there something between the two of you?”
Noah’s eyes widened. “Is that why you…? No. She was just nice to me. She was a friend. Or the closest thing I had in there.”
If he thought that would make Sydney feel better, he was wrong. She just cried harder.
“I don’t think we should fight anymore unless they need us. You’re too upset.” He started to lead her away, but she stubbornly refused to go with him.
The fight started to die down, but she ran headlong into it, anyway.
Her father fought and ripped heads off bodies, his face covered in blood like a madman. Was that what she was, too?
Hundreds of bodies littered the landscape. The enemy. Not the preternaturals this time.
Tam, Dayne, and Anna were starting to run out of energy. A powerfully bright ball of fire hurtled toward the group of them. Dayne didn’t see it in time. Before Sydney could call out a warning, Fiona jumped in front of it.
“No!” Sydney shouted as the witch fell. Hadrian and Angeline rushed to try to heal her, but it was too late.
The black panther roared and attacked the magic user who’d thrown the fire. The two of them struggled and fought, the magic user unable to overcome Z’s pure rage and grief. The demons converged on the remaining few humans and killed them quickly.
Z emerged from his fight and struggled to reclaim his human form. He was wounded but alive.
The core group stood over the fallen witch as the demons faded back into the forest, no doubt headed back to Cain’s dimension.
Birds flew over Fiona, circling her, their shrill calls deafening in the forest fogged up from the smoke of too much magic.
Sydney was sure she imagined it, but it sounded like they were saying: “I told you so. I told you so.”
Z let out an agonized cry when he reached her, and the animals fled back into the forest. Even the birds dispersed as he sobbed over her.
Noah gripped Sydney’s hand. She knew he was thinking what if it had been her? It could have just as easily been her. Z held the witch’s limp body in his arms. He was shaking from grief.
A black cat tentatively approached t
he circle, then Aunt Greta shifted back. For the first time she seemed unconcerned with her nudity. “It’s my fault. I asked her to watch out for Dayne. I had a bad feeling. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt.”
Z didn’t seem to hear her, or else he refused to acknowledge the apology.
“We might not have won without her,” Tam said. “It was an honor to teach her her craft. She came so far from when we first met. Her animal communication gifts expanded and grew stronger. And she was much braver than she ever thought she was.”
But none of these platitudes soothed the angry and distraught panther.
“What was the point? She died, anyway. If she’d left well enough alone with the magic, we could have had decades more together. I didn’t care about the gray hair.” He looked up at Tam, his eyes glittering gold. “Bring her back!”
“I can’t, Z.”
“Bring. Her. Back. It’s your fault. Bring her back. If you’re so fucking powerful, bring her back. Or is your reputation just so much noise? Am I supposed to be impressed by you? I’ll be impressed when you can bring a motherfucking soul back from the grave. So do it!”
“I can’t. I can’t call her back. She’s in heaven now. She can’t come back to this body. It’s done. I can’t defy the laws of magic anymore than a normal human can defy physics.”
“Then send me to her.”
“You know how it is in heaven. You can’t be with her there like you were with her here.”
“The hell I can’t. Let them try and stop us.”
Sydney expected Tam to give the panther some speech about how time healed wounds, how he would recover and get better, how he needed to work through the grief. But she didn’t. She simply nodded grimly and raised her arms above her head. She chanted in Latin as the energy gathered around her into a ball of brilliant light, then she sent it straight into him.
Z slumped over Fiona, and it was done.
Tam turned toward the shaking, skinny guy whose magic had been bound. “You are going back to the hub city. You get to live. You’re welcome. You will tell them that we will not negotiate with them. If we see them near our borders, we will kill them. We have access to all the demons in the demon dimension. We will not be defeated any further. They will leave us alone, and we will leave them alone. They can’t have everything. They can’t have everyone. They most certainly can’t have us. Do you understand?”
“Y-y-yes.” The guy stumbled back when she released the energetic band that held him captive.
It was hard to believe he was a magic user. He seemed new, far too new to have been sent on this mission. He wasn’t foolish enough to try to use his powers now, not while so outnumbered with the bodies of his associates at his feet.
“Do you think he’ll make it back?” Noah asked as the lone survivor scrambled off the way they’d arrived.
“I’ll send Henry to find out later.”
“What about the bodies?” Sydney said. They couldn’t just leave them there. Fiona and Z should be buried properly.
“I’ll take care of it tomorrow after I’ve rested,” Tam said. “We’ll have a memorial service for the witch and the panther.”
“Do you remember them from when you were a pup?” Sydney whispered.
“Bits and pieces,” Noah said. “She made good grilled cheese.” He started to lead Sydney back toward town.
Anthony approached the two of them, wiping blood off his face and trying not to look like a total sociopath while he did it. He side-hugged Sydney and kissed her on the cheek. “Come see your mother tomorrow, okay? I’m sure she’ll be back to normal in a few days, but you should come by.”
“Okay.”
He looked over at Noah, his face going dark. “If you ever hurt her…”
“Oh my God, dad. Noah won’t ever hurt me.”
Anthony dragged his finger across his own throat, his eyes cold and dead as he continued to threaten her mate. “I will put your head on a pike if you do, boy.” Then before either of them could respond, he disappeared into the woods.
Cole and Jane fell into step beside them. Jane looked perfect as ever. It was hard to tell if she’d been injured and had already healed, or if she was covering injuries with a demon glamour. Cole had a gash in his side that still sparked with magic but was slowly closing. It might have killed him if he wasn’t fully immortal like Jane.
Cole clapped Noah on the back. “You need electrical and Internet at your place?”
“Yeah,” Noah said. It was still awkward between the two of them. The time and distance would take a while to close. “And running water would be nice, but it’s not necessary.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sydney said. “I’m not pooping in the woods.”
Cole winked at her. “We can’t let the princess poop in the woods.”
Jane shot Sydney a look that said, I told you he’d come around.
It was only then that Sydney realized their pack wasn’t there. And neither was Cole’s.
“Where are the wolves?”
“We voted after you left with Fiona. We didn’t want to risk them or anyone we couldn’t protect. It’s why we brought the demons in,” Jane said. “We didn’t want to give the humans the satisfaction of casualties.”
That plan had almost worked.
Jane and Cole left them and went back toward the hive. The entire group was going off in their own directions. Sydney wondered if once the wards were up they’d ever have the bonds they’d had so many years ago before all this.
They’d won. She should feel happy, but all she felt was tired. And it was still hours until the sun would rise.
Noah tugged on her hand. “Come on, Sydney. The world just changed. We’re free.”
Epilogue
A year later.
Noah sat at a long table on the roof of the penthouse next to his mate. The Cary Town Luxury Apartments were fully redone—almost back to their glory days from decades earlier. The pool had water. The elevators worked. And they’d managed to restore the cherry wood paneling in the lobby and hallways, much to Sydney’s delight.
That had been Anthony’s project. Who knew the vampire was so attached to paneling? Though perhaps it had been an excuse to spend time with his daughter to build a relationship that wasn’t based on keeping her under lock and key.
Jane and Greta were conspiring near the pool—Greta in her cat form and Jane mimicking it. They meowed at each other even though Noah was pretty sure Jane didn’t speak Catonese. Dayne was on the other end of the roof speaking with Luc and Anna, unaware that Cole’s mate was about to try to fool him with her shapeshifting disguise.
Anthony stood next to the grill making burgers and grumbling loudly about it.
“Make mine rare,” Noah said.
The vampire king wrinkled his nose at the meat as he flipped it. Charlee brought out more meat patties, and he growled. He didn’t do menial labor, and losing his former position as Master of All He Surveyed, wasn’t sitting well. But there was no longer any excuse he could give for why he had to be such a control freak.
After Tam had made sure the new borders and wards were secure—with several layers of magical security redundancy—Cole had come in and added his own brand of high-tech security to the mix.
As rumors spread, therians and vampires without a home began to seek refuge again in Cary Town. Cain brought gold he’d been hoarding in a cave in his dimension to create commerce as the city began to grow and flourish again.
At Noah’s suggestion, a large tree house was built in the place of a previous park, standing as a memorial to Fiona and Z.
Cary Town was not without its logistical problems in the absence of a human population. To deal with the lack of humans to feed from, therians who were given shelter in the city were required to donate their blood to a vampire.
Therians weren’t thrilled, but there was so much wildlife in the Cary Town forest and so much protection in the city itself, that becoming a vampire meal seemed better than the life they’d left behind
.
Tam’s message had indeed been delivered by the scrawny guy, and no one from the hub city—let alone an army—dared venture near their borders. It didn’t mean they never would, but for now there was peace.
It was full dark, and the whole gang was on the roof now. With the new wards and their city returning to life, they’d all come back together—for the first time feeling as if they were all on the same side. Even Hadrian, the vampire from the church, had joined them. His shy mate, Angeline, clung close to him.
The stories of the past were still told about this spat or that one, about one of them torturing or trying to kill another of them, about being on opposite teams, and about being on the same team only for expediency. They’d each been the heroes of their own stories and the villains of others. But for the first time, they were all truly united. Somehow along the way they’d found friends. They’d found family. And most importantly, they’d found love.
About the Author
Learn more about my other books at: http://www.zoewintersbooks.com You can also contact me or sign up for my newsletter to hear first about new releases!
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Unleash The Moon is the 6th and final book in The Preternaturals series. Watch out next for my upcoming dark paranormal serial in Spring 2015.
Full List of Books in The Preternaturals series:
Book 1: Blood Lust
Book 2: Save My Soul
Book 3: The Catalyst
Book 4: Life Cycle
Book 5: Forbidden
Book 6: Unleash The Moon
Thank you so much for supporting my work!
Acknowledgments:
Cover Art: Robin Ludwig at gobookcoverdesign.com (I think this is my favorite cover design so far! I said this exact thing about the last cover, but I really mean it this time. She’s gotten so good I’m going to make her redo my earlier covers. Robin, I’m just kidding, don’t read this! Look over there! A puppy!)