The Red Lily (Vampire Blood)

by Juliette Cross

  Nikolai knew it wasn’t a fatal blow, that it would heal swiftly with the amount of human blood he’d gorged on. His intention wasn’t to kill. Not yet. He’d make good on his promise to his beloved. Volkov would know the meaning of pain before he drew his last breath. With less confidence in his step, Volkov sidled forward flanked by three vampires on either side.

  An eerie howl erupted. Volkov and his men swiveled to look behind them. Another howl shattered the silent wood. Then another to the east. And another to the west. Dozens of pairs of golden eyes gleamed from the shadows. Snarls and snaps of teeth came from every direction.

  “Did you forget why Silvane Forest is forbidden to vampires?” asked Nikolai, marching faster with determination.

  “Those beasts are no match for us.”

  “We shall see about that.” Nikolai blurred forward to capture his prey.

  …

  Sienna wrenched her hands together, gasping when she heard the chorus of hart wolves echoing in the forest. The hartstone’s beacon urged her to join the fray, but she had promised Nikolai. So she paced by the hearth, waiting for news. Praying.

  She’d cleaned Riker’s face and chest as best she could, soaking several towels with red. He’d not moved, but the gashes on his face and his chest seemed to be knitting together. She wasn’t sure about his legs. They’d been crushed brutally by heaven knew what. But he seemed to be in a very deep sleep while Nikolai’s blood healed from within.

  When the door clicked open, it hadn’t been long, but she sighed with relief, thinking Nikolai had returned already. But the sickening figure who stepped into the room rolled her stomach with nausea.

  “Hello there, milady,” said the ghastly Boris, grinning, canines extending long out of his mouth.

  At once, she backed up, gripping the fire-iron behind her back. He circled in. She stepped away, putting the sofa between them. His expression was a mixture of wonder and wickedness as he perused her body from top to toe.

  “Not sure how he fixed you.” He sniffed the air like a dog, wrinkling his nose. “You’re not a vampire. So that wasn’t the trick.”

  She brandished the iron in front of her. “Stay back.”

  He laughed. A guttural, frightening sound that raised gooseflesh on her skin. In a flash, the iron flew across the room and clattered to the floor and Sienna was pressed to the wall with Boris’s large hand wrapped around her throat. She gripped his wrist, digging her claws in, which had no effect. He dipped his head and leaned into her hair and inhaled.

  “Mmm. Very sweet. But how’d you do it, witch?” His hard, black eyes held hers. “I watched you burn.”

  Yes, he’d gloated in the carriage as he delivered her on the step of doom into the hands of more monsters who stripped her body and tied her to post, then set her on fire. A humming pulse swirled in her belly, blooming outward. She welcomed the fire-flower, willing it to open for her.

  “Get your hands off me, creature,” she spat.

  He grinned wider, his canines sharpening more. “Volkov has business with you first. But when he’s done, I’ll be happy to take the leftovers.”

  The bloom spun into a spiral of burning energy filling her chest, bosom, arms, legs, hands. Boris flinched as he watched an ethereal glow emanate from her skin.

  “I said, get your hands off me.”

  By instinct, she punched out with her inner force, a pulse of orange flame leaping off her skin and scorching her attacker. He bellowed and fell onto the floor, clamoring backward. Filled with conviction, righteousness, and the need for absolute vengeance, she slapped her hand in the air toward the monster. A sinewy rope of fire extended from her wrist and wrapped his throat, sizzling his skin.

  “You know what I am now, don’t you, vampire?” she said, knowing now what the hartstone had made her. “I am the Red Witch of the Wood.”

  With a snap of her wrist, the fire-rope sliced through his neck and severed his head in a clean, cauterized cut. His head rolled to the floor, eyes and mouth still moving as it thunked against the wall, smoking.

  …

  The wood was alive with cries of agony and death. The black oaks stood as sentinels and witnesses of the carnage spilling vampire and hart wolf blood on the new fallen snow. Bron streaked by, leapt in the air, and attacked a vampire scrambling up a tree, shaking it by the leg till it was a mangled, twisted mess. As it writhed and tried to crawl away in the snow, Bron crunched into his throat and snapped his neck.

  Dane grappled with two vampires at once, one clinging to his back and trying to sink his fangs into him. But the burly wolf was too ferocious for them, shaking them both off. He clamped his jaws on the face of one and shook till his head popped free. The other started to run, but Dane was on him, a paw between his shoulder blades as he ripped his head off, too. Dane swiveled and charged another leaping for his brother.

  The packs of hart wolves filled the night with fierce growls and crunching bone and snapping limbs. Nikolai had no idea there were so many hart wolves lurking in Silvane Forest. But now he was glad of it. These vampire fledglings were hardly a match for skilled warriors.

  Nikolai and Volkov had been in their own death dance for far too long, while the wolves fought several opponents around them, dispatching them quickly. Nikolai was ready to end it. They circled each other once more. Nikolai tore his ragged shirt from his chest and tossed the frayed garment to the ground, relishing the kiss of cold snow on his heated skin. They’d sliced each other several times, the wounds healing slower and slower.

  Nikolai hadn’t felt his own claws prick from his fingers in ages. The most primitive aspect of the vampire, claws extended only when more monster than man took hold. Nothing felt better than tearing through Volkov’s flesh and hearing him scream.

  No. That wasn’t true. The best was yet to come.

  With an evasive lunge, he leapt and somersaulted through the air over Volkov’s head. Landing directly behind him, he gripped him with his forearm across his throat, his other around his gut.

  Even now, Volkov laughed, a maniacal sound knowing his life was at an end. “Tell me, lieutenant,” he taunted, still using Nikolai’s lost title.

  “Dying words? Go on. Say them.”

  “Is this rage because I tasted your girl? Or is it because she liked me better?”

  “Enough.” Nikolai dug deep into the flesh of his belly and ripped, pulling out the sinewy muscle, hot blood streaming into the white snow with a hiss. Volkov screamed.

  A tumult on the main path snapped his attention. Wolves still snarled and yelped nearby in battle with their enemies, his own kind. But vampire cries lit up the falling night along the trail. Orange light emanated from the gloom. Volkov was limp in his death-clutch as his lifeblood drained away, but not quite dead.

  Nikolai dragged his body, an arm hooked around his throat, to the trail to see what new devilry had stumbled into the wood. There he found it was heavenly, not something from hell walking up the path. Frozen, rooted to the spot with Volkov still in his grasp, he watched in rapturous awe the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  Sienna was encased in gold, red, blue, and orange flames, her arms spread wide, palms up, the fire flickering from the tips of her fingers, sparking off of her crimson gown. The folds of her skirt billowed as she strode forward in long, confident strides, the downy snow melting as it hit her blazing aura. Her auburn hair floated around her head like a halo, burning bright with copper flames. The sight of her was stunning, but nothing compared to her face. Glowing with an inner light, her expression was one of a woman who knew her power, of a queen newly crowned, of a goddess wielding retribution upon her helpless enemies.

  The hart wolves stepped aside as she walked the path, falling snow melting upon her halo of golden fire. The vampires, bloated on blood and their own superiority in the throes of sanguine furorem, charged toward her. Nikolai opened his mouth to warn her, but there was no need.

  One by one, she felled them all. With a flick of her finger, blades of fire
flew from her palm and found their mark, piercing the heart of each vampire in her way, incinerating them into ash from the inside out. The first twenty fell at her feet with frozen looks of shock right before her fire filled them and they died in a pile of black ash.

  “Sienna,” he whispered, unable to say anything more. Her name was a prayer of worship on his lips, the fire goddess lighting up the cold night with swift punishment for their enemies.

  Volkov gurgled in his grasp. He’d almost forgotten. While vampires circled more cautiously, she drew closer to Nikolai.

  “Let him go, my love.”

  He stared in awe, this woman he loved with all his heart, burning in a halo of flame that didn’t touch her skin but rather kissed her with beauty and might. He dropped Volkov to the snow.

  With one hand, she reached out. A curtain of flame shot from her body and lifted Volkov till he was hanging in the air almost in the boughs of the trees. He screamed, kicking and swinging his arms to no avail as the flames licked around his body.

  “No mercy,” said Sienna. She pulled an arm back and launched a ball of blue flame from her palm. Hitting him like a cannonball, it spun him up into the night as he bellowed and burned far into the woods till they could hear him no more.

  With utmost calm, she sauntered forward to Nikolai, then faced the line of vampires encroaching on her right. “Fight with me, love.”

  Shaking off the awe, he put his back to her to face the vampires encroaching from the left. “As you wish, sweetheart.”

  Allora, Bron, Connell, and Dane circled in with them, readying to fight the vampire horde. They descended as one, falling in from the shadows and the trees, but they were no match for the hart wolves’ ferocity, for Nikolai’s skill, or for Sienna’s fire-magic. One by one, the vampires fell till the few dozen that were left alive limped and skulked away back to the Glass Tower.

  Allora in her white wolf form stood on the path and howled. She was met with a chorus of chilling howls, the crystalline night shaken with blood and death and the eerie baying of hart wolves in victory.

  Nikolai watched as dozens of wolves ghosted past him, a few casting him a wary glance before trotting one after another back into the darkness. Some of them had shifted into human form, helping one another to carry their injured. And a few of their dead.

  Striding forward to Sienna, Nikolai caught her gaze. Her blaze dimmed, the flames sucking back inside her body as he drew closer, leaving her with a slim ethereal glow.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, noting the blood staining his bare chest.

  He had no words, gathering her into his arms before he crushed his mouth to hers and kissed her deep. Her fire still simmered on her skin, warming him in the most complete way. With a groan, he pulled away and pressed his forehead to hers, cupping the back of her head and keeping her there as he rocked gently. She kept her hands wrapped around his waist, giving him the moment he needed to be sure all was right. He opened his eyes to find Sienna watched him with her sweet green eyes, sparks of gold still flickering. All was so very right in his world.

  A mournful wail broke them both apart. The howl was familiar.

  “Allora,” she said.

  Nikolai grabbed her hand, and they ran off the trail to find Dane, the man, kneeling over his fallen brother, Connell, whose lifeless eyes stared up into the sky where snow drifted down onto his bronzed face and body. A snap of piercing electricity marked Allora’s shift, then she knelt beside her brother weeping, cradling his head in her lap.

  “No, dear Connell,” she whispered, brushing his chestnut hair away from his brow. “No, dear one.”

  Bron stood silently watching, his black coat soaked in vampire blood, his head bowed.

  Dane knelt beside his sister and gently closed Connell’s eyes. “Good night, my brother,” he whispered, the jagged tattoos covering his back, arms and chest seeming more stark and savage against the snow. With no words of anger or fury, he lifted his brother in his arms and walked away toward the heart of the forest. Bron followed. Then Allora, stifling another sob before shifting into her white wolf form to escort her brothers, one living and one fallen, to their clan’s home somewhere in these woodlands.

  Sienna swiped a tear from her cheek and hiccoughed on a sob. “We should go with them.” She stepped forward.

  Nikolai stopped her with a gentle tug. “No, sweetheart. They need privacy now.” He swept her up into his arms. “Close your eyes.” He pressed her head into the crook of his neck to ground her as best he could before speeding her home. He needed to get her there. Safe.

  After depositing her on the sofa and dragging out into the woods the body and decapitated head of the vampire he recognized as Boris on her living room floor, he returned and bolted the door. After a quick check on Riker, who remained unconscious, he started a fire, then pulled her into his lap on the sofa.

  They said nothing at all for a long time, the night’s events sinking in with pain, regret, victory, and sorrow. He sifted his hand through her hair, watching the fire. She kept her head against his shoulder until finally, she lifted up and cupped his face with one hand, the world held in her sage-green eyes.

  “Tell me we will be all right.”

  “We will be more than all right.” He knew the despair breaking her expression into grief was not only about what they’d lost, about who they’d lost, but about who they might still lose in the future. “Listen to me.” Now he cupped her cheeks, sliding his fingers into her hair. “We will win this war. Despite losing Connell, and what they did to Riker”—he swallowed hard against his own pain—“we won this battle.” He swiped the tear rolling down her cheek with his thumb. “You won, sweetheart.”

  He couldn’t begin to explain to her what the sight of her full to the brim with the fire-power of the hartstone had done to him. The hartstone remade humans into beings with a power befitting their souls. Nikolai’s love was made of fire and light. He’d always known this, but now she did, too.

  She pressed her forehead to his as he’d done before. “I love you, Nikolai.”

  His heart tripped, recognizing the truth and good in her words, which settled the beast within him so that he could tuck it away until he needed the monster again.

  “As I love you, sweet Sienna.”

  He tucked her close, her face nuzzled against his neck, and washed away the pain with soothing strokes and gentle caresses, just as the falling snow outside thickened and covered the bloody carnage in the woods. Time and compassion and comforting words would soften the battle scars of this night. Nikolai needed this to be so, for he knew the war was not yet over.

  For now, he would hold this precious woman and her tender love close to his heart. He would let her heal his own long-suffering wounds, like jagged shards in his soul. He would cherish his beloved Sienna and strengthen for another day.

  Epilogue

  Sienna set the bucket of feed on the ground to latch the gate. Mildred baaed at her. “Oh hush. Go finish your breakfast.”

  She’d been wondering how much longer Nikolai would be gone to Hiddleston and barely finished notching the hook in the latch when she was swept off her feet and into his arms. She squealed and kicked her legs.

  “Put me down!” She laughed.

  “No.” He lowered her slowly, sliding her body against his, keeping her feet off the ground.

  Hooking her arms around his neck, she caught her breath. Or tried to. It was a difficult thing to manage, breathing in and out calm and steady, when your lover was Nikolai. When all he had to do was look at her a certain way with those blue-fire eyes, that heavy, dark gaze he’d give her which said everything he wanted and planned to do to her behind closed doors. And sometimes not behind closed doors as she’d learned last week while she was in the barn tending to Willow. That very look he was giving her now, his piercing blues fixed on her mouth.

  She licked her lips, and his eyes darkened further still.

  “Kiss me, Sienna.”

  She did, always ready to compl
y. She opened her mouth sweetly over his, giving him a gentle nip. He cupped the nape of her neck and slanted his mouth to go deeper, showing her the kind of kiss he wanted. She laughed. He growled. He didn’t pull away until she’d softened against him and moaned in his mouth.

  “I love that sound,” he said against her lips, sucking her bottom lip.

  “I love it when you make me make that sound.”

  That earned her a full smile from Nikolai. A rare and beautiful sight. He released her from his grip, setting her lightly on her feet, then looped the satchel he’d been holding over his shoulder and let it drop to the snow. He opened the drawstring and pulled out a square package wrapped in brown paper with a rope tie and held it out to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Open it.”

  Looking up at him from beneath her lashes, she held it close for it had some weight to it, then she pulled the bow and unwrapped the crinkly paper. She gasped when she saw the vibrant, scarlet material.

  “Oh, Nikolai.”

  He lifted it from her hands, the wrapping falling away, and let the material unfold open. A gorgeous red cloak, finely made with a white silk lining and small stitching.

  “I had her put in pockets for you as I know how your hands get cold.”

  Sienna stood and stared at him with adoration as he held it out for her to put on.

  “Let’s see how it looks.”

  She turned around and let him drape it warmly over her shoulders. He then fitted the silver clasp at the neck and lifted the hood up over her head. It felt luxuriously soft and cozy.

  “Now then,” he said, reaching a hand in to brush the apple of her cheek with his knuckles. “Almost perfect.”

  “Almost? I’d say that it is perfect, but Nikolai, you didn’t have to go to all that trouble and—”

  He lifted a red velvet box from his pocket and opened it. Sienna hitched in a breath, not quite grasping what she was looking at.

  “How did you know… Is this the one…?”

  “I know, because I made it my business to know what had caught your attention so thoroughly that day at the market. And yes, it is the very one you beheld…then put back.”