Shadow of Thorns

by Ripley Proserpina

  “It’s freezing,” she replied, shaking out her arm.

  He frowned, but didn’t answer and rubbed the spot where the dart had hit him. His hand, when it fell away, moved awkwardly, heavily, like he didn’t have full control over the limb. Hudson glanced at the windows again and stumbled.

  It took Briar a moment to process what she saw. People stumbled all the time. But not her guys. They were graceful, controlled.

  Something flew over Briar’s head, smashing into the wall behind them, and then, suddenly, all motion stopped. It was getting lighter by the second, the sun beginning to shine through the windows closest to the water. She watched it, creeping toward them, closer and closer like the tide. Hudson stumbled again and shook his head. Valen, Sylvain, and Marcus gave one final shove to the soldiers closest to them, toward the light, before retreating to cover her.

  The sun touched the soldiers’ shoulders, but it didn’t bother them. They stood, side-by-side, and stared at the five of them sightlessly. Waiting.

  The door to the warehouse slid open, metal hinges shattering the rusty sliders. When Asher walked inside, it was like a king entered his throne room. He swept his gaze across his soldiers, pausing on the dead ones, before coming back to them. From over Hudson’s shoulder, she met his eyes, and in that moment, knew exactly what was happening.

  As Hudson swayed in front of her, she caught Valen reach for Marcus’s shoulder to steady himself.

  The darts had contained the antidote to the medicine Hudson had made. Now, instead of being able to walk in the sunlight the way they had for decades, the sun sapped their energy. The natural rhythm of their body overtook them, dragging them toward the vampiric sleep they’d described but she’d never seen.

  “Getting sleepy?” Asher asked, a smile growing with every step he took toward them.

  Sylvain growled warningly, and he stopped, canting his head to the side to watch them. The sun backlit him like a saint, or an older god, one who required blood as sacrifice.

  Your blood. The voice came into her head, piercing her skull like the dart had pierced her skin.

  “You never had a chance.” Asher’s voice carried across the warehouse, echoing against the metal walls and tin roof. “I’ve let you believe you were free of me, but you never were. Your discoveries, Hudson? I took them, made them mine. Strategies. Battle plans. All worthless. But I let you have them because I knew it would make this moment sweeter.”

  “That’s what you wanted?” Hudson asked, his voice slurring. “To kill us?”

  “No!” For the first time Asher showed an emotion other than pride. Maybe he was lying. Probably he was lying, but it looked to Briar as if the idea of Hudson, Marcus, Valen, and Sylvain’s deaths filled him with sadness. “No. I never wanted you to die. You are my sons. My pride. But you are mine. You can only ever be mine.”

  “The world has changed, Asher. You have no need of us,” Marcus answered. “Vampires live in shadows. We don’t start wars or fight over territory. Not anymore.”

  “You’re a fool, Marcus, if you believe those things have changed. What is a vampire supposed to do with immortality? We build families. Civilizations. Everything you see around you is here because vampires willed it into existence. Because I willed it into existence.”

  Briar shivered at the pride in Asher’s voice. He truly believed what he said. Sylvain stepped backward. She touched his back, letting him know she was still there. He stepped back again, pushing until her back was against the wall. This was as far as she could go.

  “Come back to me,” Asher whispered. His gold eyes lowered, hidden under dark lashes—the tortured saint. “Please. Be my sons again. Be my family.”

  “And Briar?” Valen asked. “What would you do with her?”

  Standing on her tiptoes, Briar met Asher’s gaze. For a brief moment, he couldn’t mask what he felt—rage. Hate.

  “No one can come before me,” he answered through clenched teeth. “Ever.”

  Sylvain shrugged. “It was never going to happen, Asher. Send your soldiers after us. We have plenty of fight left.”

  “Do you?” he asked and spread his arms wide—now he was a merciful god. “Because the sun is rising, and you aren’t the only ones who will burn.”

  Sylvain hissed, and as if challenging him, stepped into the light. There was a smell, it filled the warehouse in a flash. Sylvain cried out, but Valen was there, yanking him back into the cool darkness. “Hudson.” Valen glanced back at him, and then down at Briar. Blond brows were drawn low over his eyes, and he frowned. “The medicine.”

  “I have the antidote,” Asher called out and reached into his pocket. The vials he withdrew refracted the sunlight like a prism, splitting the colors into a rainbow onto the dirty ground. “Be mine again, and you’ll live.”

  “Fine,” Sylvain answered. His voice was tight, and the acquiescence came too easily—it gave him away. Even Briar knew that he didn’t mean what he said. He’d get the antidote and then fight again. None of them had any intention of joining Asher.

  Which meant they would die here.

  Briar could see it in the set of Asher’s shoulders. He was prepared to watch the vampires he’d made burn in the sunlight if they refused to place themselves under his wing.

  “Sylvain,” Asher said his name on a weary sigh. “You are always too brash, too thoughtless. Do you think I’d make it easy? Do you think I’d accept this without a sacrifice?”

  Sacrifice.

  Me. Briar met Asher’s golden gaze and waited for what she knew was coming. “Briar was given a medicine. One that may, or may not, work on her. If she can step into the light and take these vials from my hand, you’ll live.”

  “Forget it,” Marcus said. “We’ll fight. We’ll kill you.”

  “Maybe.” Asher shrugged. “But it is certain my soldiers will kill her. It is their directive. Their one purpose. Look at them, see how their gaze fixes on her? All they wait for is a sign.”

  “So our choices are death or death?” Marcus asked. “I’ll take the death that comes after we kill you.”

  “Your choices are maybe she lives or certainly she dies. Are you so willing to give her up?”

  Sylvain didn’t wait, he leapt at Asher. But the soldiers swarmed him, and while they weren’t as skilled as Sylvain, not by any means, there were more of them. They piled on top of him. Briar cried out, and Valen threw himself into the pile, throwing the soldiers against the wall, tearing them apart. Marcus and Hudson stood with her, shifting from side to side. They wanted to go to them, to fight and save them, but they weren’t willing to leave her vulnerable.

  Briar wished she was stronger. If she put her arm into the sunlight, maybe she wouldn’t burn and they wouldn’t be afraid of leaving her or rushing her across town to Marcus’s house.

  They’ll only follow you.

  Whatever was going to happen today, was going to happen here, in this dirty, run-down warehouse on the edge of the Atlantic.

  Valen and Sylvain were slower than she’d ever seen them. Earlier, they fought too fast for her to track, but now, they got hit more than they connected. The soldiers threw them to the floor, overwhelmed them, and then jerked them upright, holding them locked in their grasp. Valen bit the first one, ripped off an arm, and they swarmed again. This time, instead of holding them upright, they kept them on the ground, soldiers on every limb. Valen and Sylvain growled, swore, but were held fast.

  “Two down.” This time Asher met her gaze, daring her to do something. “What do you want, Briar? Do you want them to live eternally, without you? Or would you damn them to death? So no one else can have them?” This was exactly what he was doing. They could exist with him or not at all. The vials in his hand slid against each other, glass clinking like guests at a party giving a toast. From the corner of her eye, Briar saw something else slide from the darkness. Their gray skin glimmered as they crawled over the floor.

  Crawlers.

  Like murky water, they flooded inside the warehouse
, oozing over the body parts littering the floor, pausing to flick gray tongues in the pools of blood gathered beneath their fallen comrades.

  They flowed toward Valen and Sylvain on the ground. Without thinking, Briar started toward them, to stop them somehow, but Hudson wrapped his arms around her. “No,” he whispered. The crawlers glanced their way, gazes intelligent. Briefly, they paused over Valen and Sylvain, striking like snakes too sink sharp teeth into their bodies, before sliding away to rest at Asher’s feet.

  Venomous. Briar remembered the story Marcus told about crawlers—she remembered their purpose—torture. The air suddenly filled with Sylvain and Valen’s cries. They writhed on the ground. Briar started toward them again, and now when Hudson wrapped her in his arms, she fought him. “Let me go to them!”

  “No!” Valen yelled. “No, you stay away, Briar!” It took all his energy to scream those words at her before his eyes rolled back in his head.

  “It won’t last long,” Asher said. “Even now, their body is fighting the poison. See how they still? Their cries become quieter?” He studied them curiously. “Again,” he directed to the crawlers.

  Marcus moved without thinking. He darted forward to stop the crawlers, Hudson yelled for him to come back. He whipped the first crawler into the wall, but like Valen and Sylvain, his actions were uncoordinated with the sun higher in the sky, and another crawler was able to clamp onto his heel before he could grab it. It sent Marcus to the ground immediately.

  Back arching, Marcus clamped his teeth together to keep in his screams, but the crawlers slid over and around him. Briar screamed as their yellowed fangs gleamed, biting over and over, leaving oozing red welts across his face, neck, and hands. They bit through clothes, through his coat. Nothing stopped them until Asher called out one word. “Stop.”

  Briar’s chest heaved. Somehow she’d landed on her knees, Hudson wrapped around her from behind, holding her in his arms to keep her in place. Asher had taken them from her, one-by-one, until there was no chance.

  But there was still hope. The medicine in his hands, it could save them.

  “I’ll do it!” she screamed. “I’ll get it.”

  The soldiers and crawlers rushed them, yanking Hudson from her even though he held on so tightly. She could make out all of their voices, yelling at her, cursing at her.

  “Briar! Fuck! Briar, listen to me!” Sylvain.

  “No! Stop! Briar, please,” Valen begged.

  Marcus cried out, the poison overwhelming him so it was all he could do to force sound past his vocal folds.

  And Hudson. She’d never heard Hudson’s voice break. “It won’t work! Briar, I tried it. It won’t work. Don’t do this!”

  The sun was higher now and the shadows inside the warehouse fewer. Asher stepped back into full sunlight while the soldiers moved her four vampires into the darkness.

  Briar forced herself to stand. Between her and Asher was a pool of sunlight, bright, unfiltered ultraviolet rays.

  It could kill her. It would most certainly burn her.

  And it would hurt.

  Already, her nerve endings were firing. Her brain had shut down—fight, flight, or freeze. Heart pounding, muscles clenched, she was ready for battle. Asher held out the medicine, golden hand bathed in golden sunlight. “Come on, little human. Take them.”

  Briar shut her eyes, ignoring the guys as they yelled at her, begged her not to try it. She remembered the ice filling her veins when the dart hit her, and stepped forward.

  It didn’t work.

  Right away, she felt the burn. It began slow, at first, a tingle on the surface of her skin, but then, it burrowed beneath her skin and exploded outward.

  She heard Sylvain scream, heard Valen cry, but it couldn’t stop her. She couldn’t go backward, she could only move forward. One step. Another. It felt as if the clothes on her body were on fire, and maybe they were. Her face swelled, eyelids burning so she could only see through a slit that grew narrower. “Briar!” Hudson’s voice broke, and with it, her heart. She didn’t want to hurt them, and she was. She was hurting them badly. As bad as it hurt her to see them bitten and smothered by Asher.

  All of her attention went to the hand holding the glass vials. Another step. This was what it felt like to die and walk through the gates of hell.

  Another step. It was right there. The hand that reached for the vials wasn’t hers—blistered, bloated, peeling. She could see her bone beneath melted skin, but couldn’t feel the vials when her ruined fingers touched them.

  They fell to the ground as her legs gave out, rolling out of the sunlight to the darkness.

  Things got louder then. Hudson, Valen, Marcus, and Sylvain screamed, yelled, and cried while Asher gathered the vials and flung them at the soldiers. “One more moment, then dose them.”

  The ground seemed to tremble beneath her cheek, as if the guys were destroying the earth to get to her.

  “One more moment.” Asher’s golden eyes met hers, and he smiled before reaching for her face. It was harder to breathe now. Briar opened her mouth to suck in air, but her lips and tongue were swollen, and she couldn’t pull it into her lungs. Asher drew his wrist to his mouth and bit. A drop of blood rolled down his wrist and landed in the dirt by her nose. She imagined if she could breathe, she would smell it. The coppery tang. The metallic sharpness.

  “I’m curious,” he said and traced her lips with a ruby red finger. In a flash, he was thrust away from her, and Sylvain had her in his arms.

  Arms that were blistered and black from where they’d been exposed to the sun. “Briar,” he cried, tears running down his beautiful face. “Briar. No.”

  He bit his own wrist and held it to her mouth, but her tongue and lips wouldn’t work right. Maybe it touched her skin. Maybe the blood rolled from her lips, to her tongue and down her throat, but she didn’t know. All she knew was the pain was going away, and the night was closing in. It wasn’t daylight anymore. It was a cool, pain-free darkness.

  As her eyes closed, she imagined Sylvain rocking her—kissing her hair.

  Briar drew in one more breath, and then nothing.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hudson

  Briar’s eyes closed and her chest stilled. Hudson was held down, felt the needle jammed into his neck and the ice fill his veins, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t.

  If Briar couldn’t breathe, he didn’t want to.

  “You could save her,” Marcus choked. “Hudson. Do it!”

  There would be no saving her, but Hudson moved anyway. The crawlers and soldiers let him. He felt their eyes on him, tracking him as he knelt beside the tiny woman held in his wild brother’s arms. She’d owned him—brought him back to life and given him his family

  What was he supposed to do now?

  “Save her!” Marcus cried and landed next to him on his knees in the dust. Sylvain, needle still stuck in his neck, held on to her tightly, as if Marcus and Hudson weren’t there. He rocked her back and forth, leaning over now and again to kiss her blistered forehead.

  Marcus stared in horror at Briar. With a shaking hand, he reached for her, touched her swollen eyelids and moved aside the sweat soaked hair that hung limp around her ruined face. Then he touched her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. He didn’t ask Hudson to save her again.

  Valen joined them next, collapsing next to Sylvain. He reached for her, but Sylvain growled low and warningly. “Please,” Valen whispered.

  Sylvain shook his head. “I can’t. Valen. I can’t let her go.”

  Valen touched Sylvain’s shoulder, sliding his arm around him and tugged him into an embrace. Head bent over Briar, Sylvain rocked. “I can’t, Valen.” Then he took in a deep breath, one that went from his head to his toes, and slid Briar’s body into Valen’s arms. Until Hudson drew his final breath, he would never forget the pain on Valen’s face or the way the tears tracked across his bloody, dirt covered skin.

  “It’s okay, little one,” Valen whispered. He kissed her temple, smoot
hed her hair. “My beautiful little human. You rest now.” He touched his lips to her ear, whispering something almost too low for Hudson to hear, except the words he said were the ones running a loop in his own mind. “I’ll see you soon.”

  Then, their brother, the one with the kindest, most forgiving heart, shifted Briar’s body to the floor and stood to face their maker. Hudson stood as well. He could sense rather than see Marcus and Sylvain at his back. This was how they went down. Together.

  Valen attacked first, then the rest of them flew at their maker. The soldiers who waited in the wings flooded the building, attempting to draw their attention away from Asher. But nothing could, not anymore.

  Valen was a man possessed. He leapt over Asher’s head, clawing as he flew to rake four even slices across Asher’s formerly perfect face. Blood, black as Asher’s heart, welled from the cuts, and he growled. For once, the patina of sophistication left their master, leaving the demon he truly was in his place. Lips drawn back, Asher’s fangs lengthened. His nails grew, long and sharp, and he attacked. Each swipe of his arm, Valen blocked. Their creator may have taught them how to fight, but it was clear in the years since they’d left him he’d become out of practice.

  The next swipe Asher took, Valen met with a downward thrust. Hudson tore the head from the soldier who attempted to keep him from Valen’s side and chucked it toward Asher. It was enough to distract him. Valen followed his thrust with a yank and threw Asher’s arm across the warehouse.

  Asher screamed, the pitch so high it shattered the remaining windows in the warehouse, raining glass over them. Hudson leapt toward his father, grabbed his arm, and twisted him as Sylvain reached for his shoulders, holding him tight. They spun, twisting Asher in two different directions. The force was enough to split the vampire at the waist, and he fell, blinking once at the sons who destroyed him.