Quinn battled one opponent after the next until finally she turned and came face to face with Drake. She did not waste any time thinking it through. In one swift motion she pulled her stake free of her last victim and thrust it toward him, aiming for his heart, without hesitation. A few days ago she would have died to protect him, but the consequences of his actions tonight were too great.
Drake dodged the lethal point, turning so that his shoulder took the brunt of the blow. The stake pierced his flesh and pain scorched through his entire body, as hot as the fires of hell.
“Quinn,” he grunted, using his other arm to knock her stake aside as she thrust forward again. “Stop it!”
Charlotte had had enough. She made a move toward Quinn, intending to snap her neck, but, before she could reach her, Drake stepped between them.
“No!”
Shocked, Charlotte hissed, her fangs fully extended. “Get out of my way.”
“You will not harm her. No more Guardians will die tonight.” It was as though he was seeing her clearly again, after all this time. Still reeling from what he had done to Blair, Drake felt as though a veil had been lifted, exposing Charlotte for who she really was. He had been taken in by her, again, despite everything. He was weaker than he had ever believed possible, but he would fight it. He could never make it up to Quinn, but he would not let Charlotte harm her.
Quinn located her stake and got to her feet, unsure of how to proceed. Daniel despatched the vampire he was fighting and looked around for his next quarry but they were no longer paying any attention to him. Nobody moved, all eyes on the stand-off between Drake and Charlotte.
“What are you doing?” Charlotte snarled. It was Tristan who provided the answer. With everything that had happened, Quinn had almost forgotten he was there.
“They’ve been working together,” he sneered hatefully. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“And yet you didn’t tell anyone,” Quinn pointed out.
“I was trying to seduce you,” he taunted. “I figured turning you in might hurt my chances... although you rolled over a whole lot easier than I ever expected.”
Quinn felt an ugly hot flush rise in her cheeks. Charlotte, who had finally recovered from her shock, turned on Drake.
“You... You’ve been working with a Guardian?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Drake drawled. “You’ve been doing exactly the same thing. Although,” he added insolently, “at least I aligned myself with a Guardian worth fighting for.”
Registering the barb, Tristan stepped forward.
“I wouldn’t,” Drake warned menacingly. Turning to Quinn, he whispered, so softly that she had to strain to hear him, “I’m sorry.”
Pushing her aside, he ran at Charlotte. They collided with the force of two bull elephants, fighting to the death and moving so fast that Quinn could not keep track. The spell that had frozen the other vampires broke and they attacked with renewed vigour. Quinn and Daniel fought back just as fiercely, but Quinn was stronger and more deadly than ever before, and slowly, they laid waste to their opponents.
Drake and Charlotte were still engaged in combat, their snarls of rage giving no indication as to who was winning. Out of the corner of her eye, Quinn saw Tristan lingering on the edge of the group and she started to move toward him, using his distraction to her advantage. She was almost upon him when she heard it; the sound of a stampede, and hundreds of vampires emerged from the woods, racing toward them.
Daniel saw them too and he issued a cry of warning, impossible for Drake and Charlotte to miss. Drake was hurt, though he was faring far better than Charlotte, but the sight of so many vampires coming to her aid left only one logical solution. He slapped Charlotte hard across the cheek with his right hand, while plunging his left into her pocket. A second later he grabbed Quinn’s elbow.
“Time to go!”
“No!” she screamed, realising what he was about to do. “We can’t leave Daniel!” But it was too late – Drake had already swept her up in his arms. To her relief, he stayed still, looking toward the heavens. “No!” Quinn yelled again, pummelling his chest. Her cries seemed to be amplified, echoing around them, and then she realised that it wasn’t her screaming. Hurtling out of the sky above them soared an Orochian dragon, its mouth opening.
Quinn saw the flames erupt from its throat and she shielded her face, expecting to be incinerated; only the pain didn’t come. Instead, the advancing army took the brunt of it, many burnt to a crisp and the rest scattering in different directions. Quinn watched over Drake’s shoulder as Tristan hauled at Charlotte’s arm, pulling her away to safety. The other vampires followed as the giant beast circled back again.
“Run!” Drake roared, and Daniel cast one last longing look at the departing horde before heeding the warning and sprinting in the opposite direction.
Drake forced himself to run alongside Daniel, at a normal pace.
“Friends of yours?” he asked, and Quinn followed the line of his gaze to see the Orochian flying parallel on their other side, with Monique and Braddon on its back.
“Put me down,” she hissed, in response. Drake obliged, but he stayed with them.
Reaching the courtyard, they found Isaiah standing amid ash and bodies. He turned as they approached, but relaxed when he recognised them. Nearby, Lenora was crouched beside Jonas and Monique slid from the Orochian’s back, hurrying over to them. The dragon stood perfectly still, the tips of his enormous wings sweeping the stone floor. Quinn was relieved to see Channon, Rafe and four other wolves on the other side of the courtyard, surrounded by shaggy corpses. The wolves were in a bad way, their coats wet with blood, most of it their own. Rafe was whimpering, the high-pitched sound even more desolate than a human cry, and Quinn felt her heart crash to a halt in her chest as she spotted the lifeless form of a pale auburn wolf at his feet. She forced herself not to approach them. There would be time to grieve for Rayna later. From the look of it, most of the pack had been eradicated.
“Where is everyone?” Quinn asked. In answer, Piper, Liam and Garrett emerged from a nearby alleyway.
“Lucas is dead,” Garrett announced immediately. Piper’s tear-streaked face crumpled.
“Where’s Blair?” Liam asked, scanning the faces. Before Daniel could answer, Liam’s eyes found Drake and he yanked his stake from his belt.
“No,” Quinn stepped between them.
“Blair didn’t make it,” Daniel intoned hollowly. He was eyeing Quinn curiously and she held her breath, waiting for him to implicate Drake, but he said nothing more.
“Tristan?” Piper asked, suddenly realising he was unaccounted for.
“Tristan betrayed us,” Quinn replied. “He is the one who brought them through the Gateway.” She had known there was a traitor in their midst for some time, but the other Guardians’ reaction to this announcement reminded her just how impossible it seemed. The fact that it was Tristan was even more incomprehensible. They wavered between disbelief and disgust.
“What do we do, Isaiah?” Quinn asked desperately.
“Monique?” he called her over. “Did you get it?”
Monique opened her palm, revealing the blood-red stone.
“Is that...?” Piper let the question hang.
“The Hawkstone,” Isaiah confirmed, placing a hand on Monique’s shoulder. “You did it!”
“Can we open the portal?” Daniel clutched at this new shred of hope but Isaiah shook his head.
“We need all twelve crystals.”
“Quinn,” Drake murmured low in her ear. She felt his hand brush hers and was about to pull away when he pressed something hard into her palm. The amber crystal felt oddly unfamiliar in her grasp. “I took it off her just before we fled. This one too,” he deposited Avery’s aquamarine into her other hand. “I should never have taken them; I’m sorry.”
Everyone had turned to watch, their eyes wide at the sight of the two stones which might have been lost forever.
“The Rose Gate,”
Daniel got back to the point. “We need to open it. It’s the only safeguard now that the City is lost. Wintyr’s magic is the only hope we have.”
“We do not have Lucas’s crystal,” Isaiah reminded, “or Blair’s. Only the Guardians who replace them will know where they are.”
“I know where Blair’s crystal is.” Quinn finally admitted. Stepping into their midst she held out her arm, exposing her tattoo. The white ink had been burned black.
Chapter 7
Time seemed to stand still as, one by one, the others laid eyes on the black ink that marked Quinn as a Hunter. She had replaced Blair, which meant that somewhere out there someone else had just been marked as her replacement. Drake, most affected by the sight of her wrist, kept his emotions strictly in check.
It was Daniel who broke the silence. “I wondered how you got so good,” he mused, recalling how intensely she had fought after Blair’s death. It had happened the moment Blair had died; the white-hot pain forcing Quinn to her knees, but, with the Hunter’s mark, came a Hunter’s instinct, as well as the superior strength Hunters were endowed with.
“You need to leave,” Quinn said, turning to Drake. She couldn’t be around him now, not after he had killed Blair. Surprisingly, she was not driven to harm him by her new and untamed Hunter’s instinct, but more out of rage for his actions. Drake didn’t move, reeling from the revelation that he had done this – he had taken the life of a Hunter and Eldon’s magic had dictated that a new Hunter would take her place.
“Not you,” he whispered. He would spend an eternity trying to earn her forgiveness for what he had done to Blair, but this was one obstacle they could never overcome. He had turned her into this, just as he had turned Charlotte into a monster. It was a curse; it had to be; that every time he cared for a woman he brought her nothing but pain and misery.
Oblivious to Drake’s despair, Daniel continued, “We need to save as many of the wards as we can and get them away from here until we can retrieve the stones.”
“Even if we find Blair’s crystal... Lucas’s too, for that matter... there’s no way we’ll get our hands on Tristan’s,” Liam pointed out.
“We’ll get it,” Quinn murmured, “even if I have to rip it from his dead fingertips. But you’re right – for now, our main priority is finding the wards that are still alive and getting them as far from here as we can. The sun will be up soon, if we can keep them safe just a little longer, we may have a chance to escape.”
“Don’t bother searching for wolves,” Channon interjected, speaking for the first time. Quinn hadn’t even noticed her approaching; but she stood right beside them, in human form, naked and bloodstained. “We are all that remains of the pack,” Channon hissed through gritted teeth and Liam quickly shrugged out of his black coat and draped it over her shivering body. Quinn clapped a hand over her mouth. Six. Only six wolves remained out of a pack that had numbered over thirty.
“The Fae?” Quinn turned to Piper.
“I... I don’t know.”
“We can’t stay here,” Liam pressed. “The City is overrun with vampires. It is only a matter of time before they find us. We should search for survivors and make a run for it.”
“I saw a large group of vampires heading toward the Unicorn Glade,” Garrett said.
“We saw them too,” Daniel said, “I don’t know if any of the herd survived.”
“We need to split up,” Quinn instructed, trying not to think of the squealing sounds she had heard earlier. They couldn’t leave without checking if any of the herd had survived. “Liam, you and Garrett take the others and go to Kellan’s house, he may still be there. We’ll go to the glade,” she nodded at Daniel. “There’s no point coming back here, so we’ll meet in the woods outside of Cliffdale’s borders, where the gypsies were camped,” she added, and Monique, who knew the way well, nodded.
“My dad…” Jonas managed, his voice breaking. “He went to try and help the unicorns…”
“If he’s out there, we’ll find him,” Quinn reassured him. It was evident that Jonas was in considerable pain, and she didn’t want to tell him that the chances that Balthazar and the others had survived this night were slim. “Channon,” she continued, “you can’t do any more here and we cannot risk losing any more members of your pack.”
Reluctantly, Channon agreed. “We’ll head straight for the clearing,” she promised, “we’ll wait for you there.” The werewolves’ heightened sense of smell would lead them to the gypsy clearing without a guide.
As the others began to move in the direction of Kellan’s house, Quinn turned back to Daniel and Braddon. “Let’s go.”
“I’m coming with you,” Isaiah said, and Lenora stepped in line beside him. The sight of her was too much for Quinn who had purposely omitted Drake and Lenora from her plan.
“I’m sorry, Lenora, you need to leave... with him,” she inclined her head at Drake, who had not spoken a word since his whispered denial. Lenora, however, was made of sterner stuff.
“You need all the help you can get. I’m not leaving!”
“Neither am I.” Drake finally broke his silence.
“I cannot be around you,” Quinn’s message was clear, but Lenora wouldn’t be swayed. “Well then we’ll stay out of your way,” she snapped, steering Drake toward Liam and Garrett’s group. Isaiah watched her go with a thoughtful expression on his face.
Drake didn’t argue, but he and Lenora kept to the back of the small group, keeping their distance from the Guardians. Jonas shuffled along beside them, clutching his arms to his chest. He had waved away Monique’s offer of help, knowing that he would only hinder her if they encountered any vampires. It turned out to be a good call, as, not five minutes from Kellan and Freya’s house, a group ambushed them. Between the three of them, Liam, Garrett and Monique took care of the threat, so that Piper barely needed to do anything. Drake joined the fray, single-handedly killing as many vampires as the Guardians combined, while Lenora stood guard over Jonas.
They found only two vampires outside Kellan and Freya’s house. Judging by the look of them they had been tasked with standing guard over the Fae who had taken refuge inside the dwelling. Obviously the vampires couldn’t get in, which was a relief. If the Fae had barricaded themselves inside their homes, as the Guardians had instructed, many might have survived after all.
“Stay here,” Liam instructed Drake and Lenora, once he had despatched the two vampire watchmen. “You, too,” he added, speaking far more kindly to Monique. She shrugged, but as the other Guardians entered the house, to a relieved cry from the Fae inside, Monique walked toward the side of the house.
“Where are you going?” Jonas whispered.
“The shed.” Without any further explanation she picked her way across the neat lawn and rounded the corner, disappearing from view. Drake couldn’t allow the young girl to go alone, so he stayed Jonas with a single stern look and then followed her around the back of the house to the shed, leaving Lenora to remain with the boy.
Drake heard the scratching before Monique opened the door and he listened intently, trying to figure out what was behind it.
“Wait here,” Monique cautioned, slipping through the crack. The tiny hisses and clicks could only be one thing, and, a moment later, Monique was back, clutching a large wooden crate. Drake peered through the planks in wonder at the eight baby dragons.
‘I can’t leave them,” Monique set her jaw stubbornly.
“I wasn’t going to suggest it.”
By the time they returned, Liam and Garrett were emerging from the house. The small group watched with mixed emotions as Kellan and Freya, carrying baby Sage, followed them. Monique heaved a sigh of relief at the sight of Velkan, who stepped out next, followed by his parents, Anaise and Harlan. Her relief was short-lived, as Isadora emerged, sobbing piteously, supported by her husband Micah, whose face was wet with his own tears. Knowing Mairin’s parents, Monique knew there was only one thing that would cause them such grief. Turning, wide-eyed, to
Velkan, he confirmed her fears.
“Mairin didn’t make it.”
“We can’t leave her here,” Isadora howled, clutching at her husband’s shirt. Micah steeled himself, trying to be strong, for her sake.
“We cannot take her with us,” he murmured gently. “How would we? She’s safe now; she’s gone where they can’t hurt her anymore. All that remains is an empty shell.”
“I will bury her, Micah!” Isadora gasped. “We cannot leave her here, with them.”
It was the first time Monique had ever heard a member of the Fae sound hateful. She hadn’t believed them possible of such a toxic emotion.
“I can take her,” she offered. It took a moment for Isadora to register who had spoken, but when she laid eyes on Monique the young Guardian nodded solemnly. Addressing Micah directly, she watched as his eyes crumpled, his façade so fragile she didn’t think he would hold out much longer. “If you can carry her as far as the fountain, I can take her from there.”
Their progress was much slower now that they had eight faeries travelling with them, and twice more they came across groups of wandering vampires. It was soon evident which of the homes in Summerfeld sheltered survivors – outside of each were two vampire guards, stationed to keep an eye on those who had become prisoners in their homes.
They found another eight survivors, including a very old Fae woman named Evangeline, who was calmly whittling arrowheads when they arrived. A remarkably well-crafted bow rested against the armchair where she sat.
“Evangeline?’ Kellan murmured softly as he approached. “It’s time to go.”
Without missing a beat, she slotted the arrow into her quiver and shouldered her bow.
“What was she doing?” Lenora gave Freya an arch look as they watched through the open doorway.
“Evangeline was once the greatest archer of us all,” Freya smiled. “She’s a fighter, too. I guess she figured she’d take out as many vampires as she could in the time she had left.”
Guardians of Summerfeld: Full Series: Books 1-4 Page 59