Broken Fae

by Caroline Peckham

  His fists flew at me and I bellowed a challenge in his face, casting a blade of ice in one hand and a wooden one in the other. I slashed at him as he reached for me, trying to burn my fucking eyes from my skull and I kicked him away before slamming the ice blade into his gut. I didn't hesitate, my protectiveness of Elise blinding me as I followed up by driving the wooden blade deep into the asshole's chest and he fell dead at my feet. Fuck – fuck!

  Leon was fighting two bastards with air magic and my gut lurched as I realised these monsters weren’t fighting Fae on Fae. They were teaming up, breaking the fundamental codes of our kind. It made me sick to my stomach. Leon’s fire magic was being extinguished again and again by their power as they battled to get close to him. But I couldn't turn to help as I spotted Ryder and Elise being overwhelmed, the two of them fighting furiously side by side as five unFae fuckers were taking them both on. And there were still more pouring through the window.

  Panic drove through my veins as I cast a vine which whipped around a guy’s neck in front of Elise, yanking him away from her. Ryder fought with the ferocity of a wild animal backed into a corner, cutting and ripping and tearing through the flesh of his enemies. But there were too many of them. There was no way we could win.

  I ran forward to try and reach them in desperation, but three more fuckers engaged me as they made it through the window, holding me back with blasts of ice and fire. It took everything I had to stay on my feet as they fought to get me on my ass and I used every combat trick I knew to hold them off. But I was being backed up and up as they advanced, slowly gaining the advantage on me as I fought to protect myself.

  Elise's scream pierced through my head and pure terror clad my heart as I hunted for her. A huge guy had her pinned to the wall and terror bled through me as I realised it was Felix Oscura himself. He held a blade of ice in his hand, and the wind storming around her wasn't enough to stop him as he drove it towards her throat.

  Ryder lunged at him, exposing his back to the three Wolves behind him as he collided with Felix, forcing him to the ground. He swung furious fists and bones crunched, but the other Wolves dove on him and one of them started stabbing and stabbing Ryder's back until blood was flying everywhere. Elise dove at them with a shriek of rage, using fangs, claws and magic to attack them, but for every fucker she floored, another one took their place.

  Panic cut into me as I fought with everything I had to try and get to them, but one of my attackers cast a fireball that slammed into my gut, searing my flesh as I flew backwards and smacked into the carpet. I scrambled backwards as pain burst across my body and I fought to heal myself as I pushed to my feet, knowing a second longer on the ground would equal my death.

  Leon was gaining the advantage on his assailants and Dante had two dead at his feet. But more came at him and he electrocuted one with a massive bolt of power from his body, ripping a hole through the motherfucker’s chest.

  I cast a huge wall of ice to block the assholes coming after me, my gaze fixing on Ryder across the room as I leapt onto the bed and ran to help. My friend was somehow on his feet again, taking down Fae after Fae with a wooden bat in his grip as Felix stood back and watched, healing himself from the damage Ryder had done.

  Ryder’s arms were burned badly and blood was pouring down his back in a steady stream. I had to get to him, had to give him a chance to heal.

  Elise was fighting alongside him and more and more of them fell, but it wasn’t enough.

  I leapt off of the bed with a blade of ice in my palm, aiming for Felix while he wasn't looking, determination and rage colliding inside me. `

  A huge wind knocked me aside and I crashed into the nightstand as Felix turned to me with a snarl, the two girls behind him holding hands to keep their combined air magic holding me down. I fought against its power, struggling hard as Felix stalked forward with death in his eyes. Fear licked up my spine as I gritted my teeth and strained harder against the power holding me down.

  More and more of Felix’s men were falling to the ferocity of Ryder's blows, but with every one he took out, he sustained another bloody injury.

  "Ryder!" I cried as I spotted a big bastard coming up behind Elise, not caring about anything else in that moment as fear blinded me.

  He grabbed a fistful of her hair and Ryder swung around, throwing a javelin of wood from his hand which slammed through the guy's eye and killed him in an instant. But the second of dropping his guard meant the assholes closed in from behind him.

  Elise was thrown against a wall by an earth Elemental, vines binding her arms to her sides with more holding her there. And the world fell apart in that single instant. A water Elemental slit Ryder's throat with a vicious swipe of an ice blade and another took out his legs with a tangle of vines before binding his hands. He crashed to his knees and blood poured as he stared up at Elise who was screaming and screaming as she fought her binds. But I couldn't hear it through the ringing in my skull as my friend fell and Felix turned away from me to finish him off.

  “No!” I roared, managing to force my way forward a step, but the hurricane holding me back was too fierce to get close enough to help.

  Dante yelled out and Leon roared in pain somewhere close by. Everything was falling to chaos and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't help. Not even the stars would aid us now.

  Ryder reached for Elise with bloody fingers, the words on his knuckles no longer visible. His dark green eyes full of his own pain and the sense of hers as he felt her heart shatter for him.

  He mouthed something that looked an awful lot like goodbye just before Felix kicked him squarely in the chest and planted a shard of ice between his eyes that ended the Lunar King for good. And all I could do was watch as the dark soul who’d become my friend, who’d been more than he’d ever let the world see, and who had loved our girl with all his heart, was sent into death.

  G abriel's hand tightened around my wrist so hard that I cursed as it forced me awake, trying to pull back from his bruising grip, but he wouldn't release me.

  "Gabriel?" I hissed in the dark, mindful of the other three guys in the room with us as I blinked the last flecks of sleep away from my eyes.

  I pushed up onto one elbow so that I could look at him in the faint moonlight which managed to make it into the room from the shutters. I found his eyes open but glazed as he stared up at the ceiling, his face written in pain and horror at whatever he was seeing in the vision that had gripped him.

  "Gabriel?" I said, louder that time as I tugged on my wrist again, trying to prise it from the iron grip of his fingers.

  I leapt out of my skin as something shifted against my chest, looking down to find a small, black snake sliding up my body from beneath my nightdress where it had been coiled between my breasts without me even realising it.

  The smooth glide of Ryder's scales against my skin were the only way I'd even noticed him now, his reptilian body having warmed up to match my body heat in the time he'd spent sleeping on me.

  Ryder made it out of my nightdress and shifted suddenly so that his weight pressed me back into the mattress and I found myself looking up at him as he braced his hands either side of my head.

  "Are you looking to start up round two, baby?" he asked with a wicked smirk. "Because I'll more than happily fuck you right here while you try not to wake the others. But I really don't think you'll be able to stay quiet if I do."

  I rolled my eyes at him and nodded my chin towards Gabriel on my left. "Help me wake him, he's caught in a vision and I don't think it's anything good."

  Ryder shifted to hold all of his weight with his left hand and then slapped Gabriel hard around the face. He didn't hold back and a bead of blood trickled from Gabriel's lip as he gasped like a drowning man who'd just made it to the surface.

  Gabriel's horrified gaze raked over me before instantly slipping to Ryder and he rolled towards him, throwing his arms around his neck and trapping the Basilisk in a firm hug which meant I was effectively crushed beneath the two of them.
/>
  "What the fuck are you doing?" Ryder snarled as he tried to shove Gabriel back. "My dick is rammed up against your thigh and that hard on isn't for you."

  "I saw you die," Gabriel said in a dark tone that had my lips falling open and a breath snagging in my lungs.

  "When?" Ryder demanded as he reared back so that he was kneeling over us, his narrowed gaze shooting to Dante like he thought it might have been him who was going to do it.

  "What the fuck are the three of you doing now?" Dante snarled from the other side of Leon who was still snoring between us.

  "Felix is coming," Gabriel hissed, shoving out of the bed and moving to the edge of the window to peer out. "He's going to break in through this window and attack us. I saw Ryder die and I'm pretty sure we were all headed the same way. We need to get out of this room to change the course of fate right fucking now."

  Dante was up in a matter of seconds and I strained my ears to listen for any sound of the attack coming our way as my pulse beat out of rhythm.

  "There are footsteps coming up the fire escape," I breathed, my lips parting in horror.

  Dante dropped his pants as Ryder moved to grab his and I shot out of bed, diving into the closet and switching my nightdress for a black tank and pair of leggings, kicking on my sneakers and returning to the room in under two seconds.

  "We have to move," Gabriel insisted, his wings bursting from his back and the silver scales of armour of his fully transformed Order rippling up his abs and back from beneath the waistband of his sweatpants.

  Dante was shaking Leon with a low growl as the Lion Shifter murmured something sleepily and Gabriel shot a handful of water at him to speed the process up.

  Leon snarled viciously as he bolted upright, water dripping from his perfect golden hair as he tried to get his bearings. "What the fuck?" he demanded. "The only one getting wet in this bed should be Elise!"

  "Felix is here," Dante explained darkly as he strode away from him, heading for the window. "And he's about to be reminded of what a Storm Dragon can do to a Wolf. If I take to the sky is that enough to change fate, falco?" he asked Gabriel as he made it to the shuttered window.

  Gabriel frowned for a moment then nodded. "We all need to get the fuck out of this room and that course of fate will be gone. But after that there are so many choices, too many paths, it’s changing so rapidly that I can't see the outcome."

  "That's good enough for me. The rest of you need to get out of this room too," Dante commanded before throwing the window wide and taking a running jump out of it, shifting in an instant.

  I shot forward to lean out and look after my Storm Dragon as he tore away from us and my heart began to race as fear swept through me. If Felix was here then that meant someone had helped him get through the wards. And the only Fae powerful and fucked up enough to do that that I knew was King.

  Thunder boomed in the sky overhead and the howl of a Wolf pack responding from way too close by made my heart stutter with terror as blasts of magic were hurled towards the Dragon who was circling around in the storm he’d created.

  "I'm going to shield him," Gabriel announced as he leapt up onto the windowsill, his wings flexing with the desire to take flight as he glanced back at the three of us. "Look after each other." His gaze lingered on me for a long moment and I took a step forward with my breath hitching, wanting to tell him to be safe, but I couldn’t find the words in time.

  He dove out into the storm and I summoned magic to my hands just as Dante shot a tremendous bolt of lightning at the Wolf pack who were climbing the fire escape below.

  The bolt of electricity slammed into an air shield and ricocheted off of it, jagged spears of lightning flying in every direction and lighting up the dark with their vibrant power before it dissipated.

  Two large bodies pressed tight either side of mine as Ryder and Leon joined me to watch the carnage breaking out and I took strength from the solid feeling of their powerful frames either side of me.

  “We need to destroy the fire escape,” I commanded as the sound of Felix’s pack drew closer while they continued to race up the stairs below us.

  “Give me your power, little monster, and I’ll blast the shit out of it,” Leon said, a manic grin on his face as he began to summon a fireball into his left hand while offering me his right.

  I dropped the barriers around my magic as I gripped his hand, inhaling sharply as the blazing heat of his magic dove beneath my skin and met with mine in a heady rush that made my entire body tingle.

  Leon began to wield our combined power, but before he could unleash it, Ryder took my other hand and I looked up at him in surprise just as the barrier around his magic fell away too.

  The deep and sultry press of his magic washed into me and I couldn’t help but moan at the heady feeling of having both of their magic rushing through my veins at once.

  “Oh fuck yes,” Leon groaned and the flames in his palms grew into something so powerful that I could hardly look at the brightness of them, the white hot heat crashing against my skin and making a bead of sweat run down my spine.

  Leon unleashed it with a Lion’s roar and I gasped as he tugged on the current of magic that connected us and sent the fireball careering into the fire escape beneath the window.

  An echoing boom sounded and Felix’s pack screamed as they were burned before the whole structure was torn away from the wall of the dorms and fell towards the ground.

  I leaned right out to get a look, cursing as I spotted a large group of them leaping to safety and using a combination of their magic to get them clear of the staircase before they hit the ground, but there were enough screams cut short with the crash to confirm we’d gotten at least some of them.

  “Remind me to do this again the next time we’re all naked,” Leon said with a growl before withdrawing his magic from us as we all released each other’s hands.

  “Deal,” Ryder agreed in a rough tone as we all leaned out of the window to get a better look at the chaos ensuing outside.

  I narrowed my eyes, using my gifted vision to see into the depths of the shadows and focus on the ground far below where Felix's pack were scurrying across the courtyard like a nest of ants.

  Dante was forced to circle around again and the Wolves who had leapt from the fire escape took their chance to escape him, using the skills of their air elementals to shield themselves as they huddled together.

  I glanced up again, hunting the roiling thunderclouds for a sign of my kings as spears of wood and ice were launched towards the sky from all around by the motherfuckers below in hopes of skewering the rightful Alpha of the Oscura Clan.

  "I'm going to get the Lunars out of bed," Ryder announced as he turned and headed for the door. "They've been wanting this war for a long time. Felix Oscura will die tonight."

  "And Dante?" I called after him just as he made it to the door. "What will your gang be doing about him?"

  Ryder's jaw ticked for a moment and his dark green eyes flared with untold emotions.

  "The enemy of our enemy is our friend," he hissed in a low tone. "For tonight, I’ll make it clear that our aim is to eradicate Felix and his pack. We'll figure out the rest of it once he's dead."

  My heart lifted at his words as he yanked the door open and headed out into the dark corridor without a backwards glance.

  "Come on, little monster," Leon said enthusiastically. "The dream team is about to unite and I want a front row seat to seeing the Rydikins and Dantesaurous bromance kicking off officially."

  "Let's just focus on not dying for tonight," I suggested as we jogged towards the door. "We can think about getting them matching friendship bracelets once we're sure we aren't all going to die."

  Leon grinned like what I'd said was exciting instead of terrifying and I rolled my eyes at him. Trust him to perk up from his depression over Roary just in time for a fight to the death.

  "Let's not waste time getting down there at mortal speed," I suggested as we made it to the door and I turned my back on him
. "Hop on, slow boy."

  Leon barked a laugh and leapt onto my back without a moment's hesitation, his thick arms winding around my neck as I gripped his powerful thighs either side of my waist, using my gifts to hold his weight before shooting out of the room and down all of the stairs to the bottom floor.

  We passed Ryder on the way just as he reached the Lunar floors and Leon reached out to slap his ass as we shot by, tearing a laugh from my lips as Ryder cursed loudly.

  When we made it to the bottom floor, the unmistakable sound of fighting overwhelmed my senses and I dropped Leon back to his feet with my heart pounding adrenaline through my limbs.

  "I say we go all super mates on their asses," Leon suggested, moving to the opposite side of the door to me as I listened for anyone close by before we headed out into the thick of it.

  "And what does that entail?"

  "We tag team them. You use your badass air shielding skills to keep us safe and I’ll barbecue them all with my fire power."

  "Sounds like you've got this all figured out," I teased, though my heart was racing with the fear of what we were about to head into.

  Leon grabbed my chin and captured my lips in a searing kiss that branded me right through to my soul.

  "The stars put us together for a reason, little monster. You and me are as unstoppable as the rising sun. So let's go show them what happens when they try to fuck with our boyfriends." He grinned at me widely, the thrill of the fight alive in his golden eyes and making the silver ring around them flash devilishly.

  "Come on then, Leo. Let's give them hell."