Burn the Night dd-6

by Jocelynn Drake

  With a laugh, I summoned up a blaze of flames that circled Nick and myself in the center of the yard. With a wave of my hand, the flames streaked across in a straight line and plowed into Jabari, enveloping him. He screamed once and then disappeared.

  “No!” I shouted in frustration. I reached out with my powers, scanning the immediate area for the Ancient, but I could sense nothing. Extinguishing the flames, I sent out even more energy in all directions, scanning any part of the globe still bathed in darkness, but I could not sense him.

  “Where is he?” I demanded, turning to face Nick.

  The old god shrugged his thin shoulders at me, a lopsided smile quirking one corner of his mouth. “Don’t know. I guess he got away.”

  “You guess? Aren’t you supposed to be some all-powerful god? Where the hell is he?” I snapped. If I didn’t succeed in killing Jabari now, the Ancient was going to come back at a more inopportune time and kill me when I didn’t have a fighting chance.

  Nick grabbed me by the neck and leaned in close so his nose was smashed against mine. “If I was some all-powerful god, then I wouldn’t need you, would I? Jabari is gone, but we’ll have another chance at him. Now go check your companion.” He released me then, giving me a little shove toward where Danaus lay on the ground, clutching the knife that was sticking out of his chest.

  Stumbling to my lover’s side, I placed my hand gently on his chest where the knife was sticking out. “Danaus?”

  “Took you long enough,” he grumbled, wincing as he tried to move. “It’s close to my heart.”

  “Then we need to remove it quickly so this little man can heal up,” Nick said, coming to stand over Danaus. Before either of us could react, Nick grabbed the handle of the knife and jerked it from Danaus’s body, causing us both to cry out in shock and pain. I quickly put both my hands over the wound and applied as much pressure as I thought would be safe in an effort to slow the bleeding while Danaus’s body went about the task of closing the wound.

  Nick knelt on the ground beside us and took a closer look at Danaus. The hunter frowned at the thin, red-haired creature with the lavender eyes but said nothing, which filled me with a deep sense of relief. I didn’t need Nick requesting that I execute Danaus as well. I had found an edge in a fight with Jabari, but I seriously doubted that the old god of chaos had also given me an edge over himself as well.

  “Silly bori scum,” Nick snickered. “If—”

  “Don’t, Nick,” I interrupted, drawing his eyes up to my face. “Please, don’t.” The old god paused as he stared at me. I could feel him rummaging through my thoughts and emotions like someone searching a library card catalog, and I let him. He needed to know how important Danaus was to me. He needed to know that I would not continue without Danaus at my side, no matter what threats he leveled in my direction. Where Jabari had always been my enemy, Danaus was my only ally in this world.

  Nick gave a soft snort as he pushed back to his feet and stretched his arms above his head. “For now,” he said, then disappeared from sight.

  I drew in a deep steadying breath and slowly released it, pushing out all the tension that had filled my shoulders during the past several minutes. It was only when I looked down that I realized the hands pressed to Danaus’s chest were trembling, while tears streaked down my cheeks. For a slender moment in time his life had hung by a thread, and he’d been granted a reprieve. For me, that reprieve was time, something I needed as much of as possible. I needed time to become stronger. I needed time to find a way to escape Nick’s grasp while preserving Danaus’s life.

  With a low groan, he pushed off the ground into a sitting position. I slowly removed my hands from his chest, but remained close should he need me. The hunter looked a little pale from the blood loss, but his gaze was as sharp as ever and it was now locked on me.

  “So that’s your father,” Danaus grumbled. “Not exactly what I was expecting.”

  I tried to shrug, but only one of my shoulders seemed willing to work. “He comes and goes as he pleases in whatever form suits him.” I had been relieved to see that he had not chosen to appear as the man I thought of as my real father throughout childhood. Of course, then Nick would have only succeeded in distracting me, which could have cost me my life, thus working against his master plan.

  “Your puppet master has changed from Jabari to him? Is that wise?”

  “When it comes to your life, it is,” I snapped, quickly shoving to my feet.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Jabari never saw any reason to keep you alive.”

  Grabbing my hand, Danaus slowly pulled himself to his feet as well. “And Nick?”

  “Sees things differently,” I murmured. If Nick was going to continue to use me and keep me cooperative, I needed Danaus at my side. Danaus kept the madness at bay.

  Reaching up with a trembling, blood-covered hand, I brushed some of his hair from this face so I could clearly look into his piercing blue eyes. It was his eyes that I fell in love with first. I loved their sparkle and intensity as he searched to see me for what I truly was, beyond the reputation and horror stories. I loved those eyes and didn’t want to imagine a night where I wouldn’t be able to stare into them.

  “I could have so easily lost you tonight to Jabari,” I said in a rough voice. “He came so close. He knows that you’re my weakness, and you have to run when I tell you to run.”

  “I will never leave your side, particularly in a battle,” Danaus vowed, cupping my cheek with one hand. “And I am only your weakness if you let me become such. Let me be your strength instead.”

  Sighing, I turned my head in his hand and kissed the palm. “You cannot leave me. The world would never survive my wrath.”

  Danaus pulled me close, kissing me deeply. I tasted his fear and his love in that moment as we stood in the darkness under the oak trees. I closed my eyes and let myself drift along his emotions, slipping away from the pain Jabari had caused. Pulling slightly away, he whispered with a slight shudder, “I know.”

  The world was a dark place for me, and after more than six centuries tucked under my belt and more power than I could begin to understand flowing through my fingertips, my grasp on my sanity was beginning to slip. But then there was Danaus. The chaos that occupied my brain seemed to melt and fall away as background noise when he was near me.

  After pressing a sweet kiss to my forehead, he stepped back so he could clearly look me in the eye. One hand was still pressed to his stomach where Jabari had initially injured him, while I refused to remove my hand from the wound near his heart. I was sure that both wounds had already closed, but I still could not bring myself to release him.

  “Nick is right,” Danaus began. “You have to kill Jabari.”

  “I know. He’s too much of a threat, not only to us but to everything that we value. He has to be stopped. And if I know my old mentor, he hasn’t traveled far and I will be seeing him soon.”

  “You have to destroy Nick as well.”

  “You make it sound so easy. Do you happen to know the best way to destroy a god?” I demanded, unable to halt the sarcasm that laced every word that tumbled from my lips.

  “No, but it seems as if we have two choices: we contact an even stronger nightwalker, as in your liege lord, or we find another god that might help us.”

  “Neither seems to be the wisest of choices, and both could potentially offer more trouble than we’ve already got. What about Ryan?”

  “I would rather not put the power of a god at the disposal of that warlock,” Danaus grumbled. “Can you think of any other solutions to our current problems with Jabari and your father?” He slowly turned and started walking back toward the house. I slipped one arm through his, both in an effort to steady his gait and to remain close to his side.

  “No,” I whispered. It seemed that after all these centuries, I was finally in need of meeting Our Liege. I could only hope that someone with extensive years of experience and power would know exactly how on
e took on a god and maybe survived to tell the tale.

  Eight

  Rowe was struggled to keep pace with me. Shifting my wings to the right, I lowered onto a branch, catching the tree trunk with my left hand. The branch groaned and creaked beneath my feet but held. I turned back and watched for Rowe to catch up. Summoning up my powers, I lifted my free hand palm open toward him. A fresh gust of wind not only pushed him in my direction, but also lifted him higher in the air.

  Part of our ability to fly came from magic and being able to control the wind. The iron collar around Rowe’s neck was inhibiting his ability to control the winds, leaving me to assist him at regular intervals. He wasn’t happy about the arrangement, his muttered curses carried to me on the same wind. I could only shake my head. There was no way I could trust him without the collar. I had little doubt he would slit my throat and then be on his way in a flash otherwise, though I wasn’t sure he would run in the opposite direction of Aurora, even after encountering Greenwood’s daughters.

  “Why are you in such a hurry?” Rowe demanded when he drew close to me.

  Pulling my wings in for a second, I bent my legs before pushing off the tree and launching myself into the air. The wind swarmed beneath me as I threw out my wings again so I lifted higher, well above the treetops. The full moon was fading slowly, but it still painted the earth below with a silvery light that glistened over small pockets of snow dotting the mountains we were headed through.

  “We have someone that we need to talk to before we reach Cynnia.” I stretched out my arms and spread my fingers, enjoying the feel of the cold wind threading between them. “You’re not my only assignment.”

  “Who?”

  I ignored his question as I scanned the ground for a break in the thick pine trees that covered the earth below us. “There.”

  I looked over to find Rowe glaring at me, and for a moment I wondered if he would argue with me.

  To my surprise, he shifted his wings and started to slowly circle so he could land in the clearing I’d indicated. I followed behind him, giving him a wide enough berth so I would not land on his heels.

  The ground was soft beneath my feet from the melting of the last of the snows and from the recent rain that had passed through the area. Folding in my wings, I knelt down and embedded my fingers deep into the earth. I cocked my head to one side and listened with all of my senses. There were other naturi in the area, a lot of them, from the animal clan. We were very close to where we needed to be. In fact, if we weren’t being watched and followed already, we would be very soon.

  “Where are we?” Rowe demanded. I looked up to find him standing with his hands on his hips, his wings now missing. It was still hours before sunrise, meaning we could still travel by air for quite a while before I called a halt. But he could already tell that I planned to travel on by foot. I didn’t pull us out of the air unless it was absolutely necessary. For us, it was both safer and quicker to travel by air. On land, we became the target of too many other creatures I was hoping to avoid until we reached our next destination.

  Standing, I brushed off my hands on the legs of my pants before hooking a lock of hair behind my ear. “We’re within the Smoky Mountains. We need to head in that direction.” I pointed off toward the southeast, deeper into the woods and away from any signs of human life. There were only dots of humanity within the mountains, and all spaced far enough apart that we could tread through the region without attracting their attention even if we weren’t cloaked.

  “We’re walking?”

  “For now.”

  “So we’re headed into animal clan territory,” he stated, frowning over at me as I started to walk past him.

  I continued to walk, leaving him to catch up. “We’re going to speak to Kane.”

  Rowe jogged up a couple steps and roughly grabbed my shoulder, pulling me to a halt. “You’re going to get us killed. Since the door was opened, Kane and the rest of the clan have become extremely territorial. They aren’t going to welcome you into what they see as their domain—they’re going to attack.”

  “Let them attack. We will defeat them, and then we shall have a personal escort to their leader,” I said, pulling free of his grasp so I could resume walking through the forest.

  “Confident with your whip at your side that you can take any of our kind down?” Rowe sneered, but I could hear his footsteps on the soft earth. He was at least following me.

  “I will not use the whip against the animal clan,” I growled. “They are simply defending their domain from trespassers. Jasmine and the others were attempting to steal you from me and were aiming to kill me. They would not see reason. Kane’s people will.”

  “They already surround us.”

  “I know.”

  “And yet you’re determined to continue on this suicidal quest because Cynnia asked you.”

  “She asked me to fetch you. This small side trip should not be nearly as treacherous.”

  “Ha. Ha,” Rowe mocked when he realized I was teasing him. I had little doubt that getting in to speak with Kane was going to be dangerous and tricky. Since the opening of the door and Mira’s attack on Aurora, the animal clan had largely separated itself from the other clans and gathered in the Smoky Mountains, using the rocky and heavily covered terrain as a refuge from the world. And right now Rowe and I were walking right into the heart of their domain.

  We continued on in silence, weaving among the trees as we slowly trekked uphill toward the heaviest concentration of naturi. I could hear animals moving closer to us with the click and scratch of claws moving over bark and through the dirt. A knot twisted tighter in my stomach, and I struggled to keep my heartbeat slow and even despite the fact the animal clan was tightening around us, closing in the circle until we would finally be faced with the voice of the squad that had been sent to defend their territory from interlopers.

  As we entered a small clearing, a low growl rumbled around us. Standing with Rowe, I picked out several large wolves, a few bobcats, and a pair of mountain lions. Smaller luminous eyes stared out from the darkness, making me think we were surrounded by a large selection of foxes and raccoons as well. Reaching out with my powers, I discovered that most of the larger animals surrounding us were actually naturi that had shape-shifted into animal form, while the smaller creatures were truly animals that may have been summoned to help with the coming fight.

  “We’re here to speak with Kane,” I announced, holding my hands out to my sides, open and empty. I wasn’t going to start a fight, and I preferred to avoid one at all costs considering that we were severely outnumbered.

  Above my head in front of me, a large owl hooted a couple times before it spread its beautiful white wings and glided down. The white feathers melted away to reveal a man with darkly tanned skin and a shaggy mane of blond hair. It looked as if he would have been more natural in the form of a lion, rather than the unassuming and easily overlooked form of an owl. The moonlight gilded his naked body as he took a couple steps toward us. The animals that surrounded us also took a couple steps closer, shrinking the circle. Rowe shifted his stance, bumping his shoulder against mine as I forced myself to remain as still as possible. They were trying to goad us into acting.

  Under most circumstances I would have trusted Rowe not to strike, but to calmly brush off their attempts to strike fear in him. However, the iron collar was inhibiting his powers, leaving him weaker and potentially at their mercy. I had put him at a distinct disadvantage; something I’m sure he was unaccustomed to. If he felt too threatened, I had no doubt he would strike first in an effort to save himself.

  Steady, I whispered to him in his mind while trying to send comforting waves of calm across his brain.

  They’re going to shred us before you get the chance to plead your case, Rowe snapped. Yet, at the same time, I felt him draw in a slow, deep breath.

  “We have come to speak with clan leader Kane,” I announced in a strong voice. “Will you let us pass?”

  “I k
now you, Nyx, and the power of the whip that dangles from your hip,” said the gold-haired man. “Great weapon of the queen.”

  “And I know you too, Locke,” I said with a slight bow of my head. “The protector of Kane and second-in-command of the great force that is the animal clan. But you have me wrong. I’m sure you already know that I am not Aurora’s weapon any longer. I’ve been branded a traitor and now willingly follow someone who seeks a life of peace on the Earth.”

  “And it seems that you keep good company,” Locke taunted. “A traitor traveling with yet another branded as a traitor. Starting a club?”

  “Yes, I am,” I admitted, causing his eyebrows to jump unexpectedly before his head fell back with laughter. I didn’t crack a smile because I wasn’t joking. It wasn’t in my nature.

  “And you wish to kneel before Kane and ask that his people protect you and this traitor when Aurora comes for your heads at long last?” Locke said when he saw I wasn’t joining him in the great joke that he thought I’d made.

  “Rowe is no traitor,” I bit out, taking a step closer to Locke so my body was between the two naturi. “He sacrificed everything that he ever was, sacrificed his place among our people so you could now stand on the fresh earth and be wrapped in the warm powers of the Great Mother. Rowe is no traitor,” I repeated. “He’s your savior and should be afforded the respect he has earned.”

  Locke stared at Rowe over my shoulder, his full lips pressed into a firm, unyielding line as he weighed my words. To my surprise, he gave a soft grunt and nodded to Rowe, giving what little approval that I could extract from the naturi. I had to win them all over one by one, pulling them away from Aurora’s twisted way of thinking. In the heat of battle, many had clung to her skirts, but now that the powers of the earth once again flowed through our starved bodies, our people were starting to think differently. They were a little more open. Cynnia may have set a series of tasks ahead of me, but since looking on Rowe for the first time since Aurora’s betrayal, it had become my own personal quest to win him back some of his former honor and glory, as he deserved.