“We are needin’ to be there now,” Emerald said.
“No!” Erin cried, turning to Jared. “You are not going back there. Even if it is the safest place on the planet, I’m not taking the chance that you’ll be hurt. I can’t even believe you suggested it.”
“I would have returned to the Sacred Stones soon, Erin, love, for there my spirit can commune with all that I was for so many years as a spirit being. Don’t fear that I will be harmed again, only cleansed.”
“Cleansed! After what happened there, you might as well guzzle poison.”
“Don’t worry,” Sam interjected between clenched teeth. “We are not going to go up on a deserted mountain in the middle of the night in what has to be the freaking storm of the century.”
“We’ve no choice, Sam,” Emerald said.
“Yes, we do. I’m driving.” With that said, Sam made a beeline for the station house situated in the middle of Twilight’s nonexistent “downtown” area.
“Mommy?” Megan cried.
“Hush, my little angel. Doona worry. I’ll make it all right. I promise,” Emerald whispered, making Sam feel like hell.
Son of a bitch, what was he supposed to do? Take everyone to an isolated place in the forest where they’d be nothing but sitting ducks for anything after them because a little girl had a bad dream? Red monsters?
His gut clenched. He’d seen black ones.
“Nick, where would you go?” Sam asked.
“Station house.”
“Jared?”
“Sacred Stones.”
“Erin?”
“Station house.”
“Sam, you canna decide on what feels right. You have to bleedin’ choose what has the power to save us. What happened to Jared there is all the proof that I’ma needin’ to believe.”
Sam felt as if he were in a torture vise. Everything in him said that it was beyond stupid to go out into the woods in the middle of the night, unprepared and unprotected, with supposedly God knew what was coming after them. Those black creatures had been in the woods. They were in town, less than a mile from the station, and all looked well with the world. Not a creature was stirring. “We’ll go to the station house first and then decide. There’re weapons that I want a little closer at hand.” Hitting the gas, he turned the corner and zipped into his empty parking space.
His night deputy and Myra, the night dispatcher, were already in-house.
Before he could open his door, a heavy thud sounded on the roof of the car, and a man’s face appeared in the windshield amid the distorting rivulets of rain. Only it wasn’t a man, but a grotesque, red, glowing caricature of one. The creature tore the wipers from their sockets.
“What the hell is that?” Nick yelled.
“Red monsters!” Megan screamed.
“Oh, my God!” Erin shouted. “Jared!”
The back passenger window shattered into tiny cubes. Rain poured in with the creature, but Jared nailed the thing in the face, knocking it back hard. Sam shoved the car into reverse and stomped on the gas.
Two more were behind the car, and he didn’t hesitate to plow them down as his tires spun and squealed. The one that had been on the roof tumbled to the hood and managed to hang on as Sam threw the car into drive and floored the gas. It smiled with a cold and evil assurance.
The creature slid to the driver’s side as Sam careened onto the highway.
“Hold on!” Sam shouted a few blocks from the station. He jerked the car hard to the right, then left, before he slammed on the brakes. The maneuver sent the creature tumbling onto the highway. Sam punched the gas, hitting the creature before leaving it in their exhaust.
“What in the hell are they?” Sam demanded.
“Red demons,” Jared said.
“Can they fly?”
“No, but they can cross the spirit barrier and appear at any destination within moments. Good thing is that once the sun rises, they’ll retreat to their frozen domain in hell.”
“Frozen?” Nick asked.
“Later,” Sam said, promising an explanation he couldn’t really deliver.
“Sam?” Emerald said, and she didn’t have to say any more. He understood the plea in her voice, heard it as deeply as he heard Megan trying to bravely suppress her tears and terror.
“We’re going, Em,” he told her. “Right now.” He couldn’t believe he was really going to go hiking up to the freaking stones. They’d either be struck by lightning or catch pneumonia from exposure—if they were lucky. If the goons pegged their location, they were dead meat.
There was about a quarter-mile walk to reach the damn stones. And Sam still had no real idea what the stones could do to protect them from the creep show rearing its ugly head in Twilight. In his book, they were about to jump off a boat to swim through a shark frenzy for an island that might or might not be quicksand.
Thirty minutes later, his take on the situation wasn’t far from the truth. They’d reached the top of Spirit Wind Mountain and were halfway down the path to the Sacred Stones, drenched and running like drowned rats, when three red demons appeared like glow-in-the-dark Frankensteins. The air instantly turned subzero, turning the rain into sleet and the ground into a sheet of ice.
Sam pulled his gun, unloading two bullets into one of them, knocking it down. Nick did the same with the second. And Jared went after the third with his bare hands. They slid on the frozen ground.
He was about to order Nick to take the others and run for the Sacred Stones when the two demons he and Nick had shot rose back up with more menace than ever. Icy air blasted from their nostrils. The shit was deep, and they were in it to their eyeballs.
Emerald thrust herself in front of him, and Sam nearly buckled beneath the shard of fear stabbing through his chest. He couldn’t even yell or breathe. She held her fists up in the air, shaking them like New Age maracas, and started spinning around so fast he couldn’t get hold of her to jerk her back. Her bracelets more than tinkled now. The sound of silvery bells rang, growing louder the faster she turned.
The demons stopped and stared at her; even the demon fighting Jared turned to watch Emerald. The air about them became warmer and started to swirl, and the demons took another step back, their faces twisting with rage. Moments later, the demons started running in a circle around the perimeter of the wind Emerald was making, an area that enveloped the six of them. Then more and more of them began to appear out of nowhere. Three to sixty in two-point-five seconds.
Well, this was just fine and dandy, Sam thought. Emerald would last all of ten minutes before she expired from exhaustion.
“We must get her to the Sacred Stones,” Jared said, moving up beside him, his gaze on the speeding demons.
“What in the hell is she doing?” Sam demanded. “And how is she keeping back shit that my gun can’t take down?”
“I don’t know,” Jared said. “She has some sort of magic. If we get her closer to the Sacred Stones, it might help her.”
“How?”
“Maybe if we as a group slowly edged that way, she’d be able to inch forward as she spins.”
“Worth a try.”
Organized into a tight group, they moved toward the Sacred Stones at an agonizingly slow pace. But Emerald seemed to sense their plan and edged with them. Sam was sure that her power was growing. They had covered about ten feet when a sudden roaring came at them from the direction of the Sacred Stones, sounding like an oncoming train.
Chapter Nineteen
S VEN APPROACHED THE Guardian Council expecting to receive a strong reprimand for the altercation with the Pyrathians over Aragon. Sirius waited just outside the Guardians’ hallowed circle for his turn to confess the errors of his band of Fire Warriors, but by the time Sven finished saying what he had to say, he didn’t think the Guardians would need more. They stood at stiff attention in a semicircle at the end of a long glittering corridor known as the Judgment Hall. There were twelve across the vast hall, all aged warriors who helped carry the burden of L
ogos’s fight against evil with a zeal unmatched by any warrior within the realm. Though their countenances were simply garbed in misty white, their usual combined light of energy was almost blinding in its intensity, but this time Sven didn’t have to shield his gaze. It was as if something had dimmed the power of the council, and their grave expressions confirmed that. Sven knew without asking that the dissension among the Forces was responsible.
All warriors strove to be chosen to fill a seat upon the council. Only Logos determined who would serve and for how long. It had been Sven’s secret wish to one day be so great a warrior that he’d be chosen, but those hopes were gone, fallen beneath the trampling heels of his own cowardice.
He slid to his knees before them, his head bowed. He was a fool to think any part of him was worthy enough to serve their justice, but it was all he had to give.
“Rise, Blood Hunter, and speak what truth you may,” directed the leader of council, known only as First Council Servant. His tenure of service within the council was the longest. Then the others followed in order, Second Council Servant, Third Council Servant, and so on until the Twelfth, who had served the shortest term. Once united with the council, personal names lost their importance. The councillors lived and breathed their service with an unrelenting diligence.
“I come in hopes the council will see the truth of my guilt and accept me, Sven of the Blood Hunters, as worthy enough to pay for my sins.”
“And to what guilt do you refer?”
“My failure to do as pledged. The current schism within the Guardian Forces can be directly traced to the moment I not only stayed my hand from executing the poisoned Jared of the Blood Hunters, but also stayed the hand of Aragon of the Blood Hunters. My brother Aragon may have chosen unwisely, but I caused him to fall. He is now saving the lives of mortals from the claws of Pathos and will return to the council to honorably accept his execution, as the council has judged necessary.”
“The council is lightened to hear of Aragon’s honorable intentions.”
“Then I ask the council to consider my honorable intent as well. For the first time ever there has been fighting among the brethren. And I personally led my band of Blood Hunters to defend Aragon against a band of Pyrathians, who were only seeking to enforce the council’s decree.”
“If Aragon’s intent is to be honorable, why did he not come to the council himself?”
“Mortal lives, for which he took responsibility before learning that the council had amended Logos’s punishment, were in imminent danger. He will return once he has seen to their safety. When he arrives, I’m asking the council to place their punishment for his abandonment upon the guilty party, me, and submit a mercy plea for Aragon’s fate for Logos to decree. This act will unify the forces again. Justice will be served, and Aragon absolved.”
“While the council fully understands the burden that you see as yours to bear, the council’s perspective is one of law and order and cannot be subjected to emotions of the moment. As leader of the Blood Hunters, Aragon had both the responsibility of Jared of the Blood Hunters and the honor of his position within the Guardian Forces. His decision to forestall Jared of the Blood Hunters’ execution, and then to abandon his post, are his alone to bear. So while you are more than worthy, we cannot honor your request. Nor can we afford to needlessly lose a warrior during these troubled times. Aragon’s fate is already sealed. He is lost to us, but you are not.”
Sven’s throat tightened around a knot of frustration and disappointment. Did only law and order determine truth? Though he saw the logic of it in his mind, his heart cried out against it. Was not Logos more than law and order? Were not love and sacrifice and forgiveness greater truths than law and order?
“What of my defense of Aragon against the Pyrathians?”
“We will bring the matter to the table and summon you for our decision when ready.”
Sven bowed his head and slowly backed from the presence of the Guardian Council. That he had even questioned their wisdom only worsened the burden he felt. He sent his mind out in search of York and Navarre as he headed for the outer circles of the spirit realm, a place where the darkened shadows of twilight hid the boundaries separating the spirit realm from the mortal realm.
As he hurried, his concern grew. His attempts to reach York and Navarre kept failing, which meant Navarre had to be in a very bad state.
“Sven of the Blood Hunters, we must speak.”
Sven turned to see the Pyrathian Sirius bearing down upon him. He didn’t look happy, making Sven wonder if the Guardian Council had chosen to blame the Pyrathians for the altercation between his band and Sirius’s.
Sven nodded. “Speak quickly, then. My time is short, for I must locate my brethren, who are in need. I accepted full blame for the disturbance between our bands and petitioned the council to punish me.”
“A deed you should not have done, for I am to blame as well. The council wouldn’t even give me an audience to explain, but immediately adjourned to a private session after you left. You must come with me. Your band of Blood Hunters are within the Pyrathian camp, and it is not good.”
Had York lost his mind? Sven wondered as he grimly followed Sirius.
Dawn came, and with it the glaring fact that Aragon couldn’t keep the world or evil at bay any longer. Outside the cave, the storm’s rage had subsided to a drizzling mist. He’d already scoped out the area and determined they were well beyond the spell of dark magic that gave Underlings a pathway to the mortal realm. So all he had to concern himself with was in what direction Pathos would vent his rage. Pathos would attack with a vengeance, and Aragon had to be ready.
Kneeling beside Annette as she lay sleeping on the red sheet, he lifted a handful of her silky hair and ran his thumb over its softness, watching the curls twist around his fingers before he brought the ends to his lips. He hated to wake her, for their shared passion had both filled and drained her, but their idyll had ended.
Scooping her into his arms, he walked to the steamy pool, absorbing its clean, rich mineral scent as he immersed them both in the liquid warmth. Though his body continued to feel overwarm, the heat soothed the soreness of his shoulder where the Underling had attacked.
Annette’s eyes fluttered open, and the sultry light that filled them the moment she met his gaze made something inside him tighten so painfully that his eyes stung. A soft smile curved her lips, one that welcomed both him and the warmth of the water.
“What time is it?”
“Dawn. The worst of the storm has passed, but it’s still raining.”
“That means a wet, cold walk down the mountain without an ounce of coffee to fuel me.” Her horrified expression brought a smile to his spirit. “You’ve almost convinced me,” she said, sitting up in his arms.
“Of what do you speak?” he asked, liking her amused tone, for he knew her heart was heavy with a great sadness and pain that her sister had yet to be found.
“That making love is better than coffee.”
He frowned, lifting a doubting brow. “You can’t even begin to compare that vile brew to—”
“In fact, I’m sure you could completely win me over with”—she twisted to straddle him and slid her hand beneath the water to caress and palm his sex—“a cup of hot Aragon right now.”
His flesh leapt to her touch, and he groaned. “Annette, we need to—”
“Love once more,” she whispered, kissing him with a tenderness and a desperation that he couldn’t deny. “I love you,” she whispered.
He could feel the tears in her soul and the need in her heart, and he wrapped his arms tighter around her, freely giving himself over to her, giving all that he had to give.
Annette didn’t care if it was logical to love a man in so short a time. It didn’t matter if the entire world thought she’d gone insane. All that mattered to her was this man. The tenderness and passion he’d shown her surpassed what some women spent a lifetime praying for from their husbands. And she was willing to give thi
s moment her all. She felt him in her soul and in the trembling of his touch. His kiss told her that he gave his all.
She wanted to love him once more. When they left the cave, their time alone would end; a few minutes more before facing the cold rain and colder world weren’t going to make that much difference.
This time she led Aragon into the passion and made the magic happen. Sliding forward until she could take him inside her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and threaded her fingers through his midnight hair, pulling his full mouth to hers. Her breasts, with the warm amulet dangling between them, brushed his chest, and her knees hugged his hips. The sultry water caressed her skin, heightening her senses with whisper-soft, liquid fingers. She kissed him hard, then gently, then wildly, rocking her hips to drive his want and their need to a physical satiation that stripped them so completely of anything that there was nothing but total acceptance of one another left.
“And I love you,” he whispered as he pulled her against his pounding heart. “No matter what.”
She laid her head in the crook of his shoulder, wanting to think of nothing more than the pleasure, but the unbidden image of last night and the cliff kept replaying in her mind.
You can’t ever let Underlings surround you. You have to stay ahead. No matter what.
Last night it had been a cliff. She didn’t know whether to take comfort or fear in Aragon’s “no matter what” promise.
The magic was gone too soon, sweeping their pleasure away with a growing wave of reality. The time to leave had come, and she could no longer delay. As soon as they hit the outside world, both barefoot and draped in torn halves of the red satin sheet, she didn’t have time to worry about what would come. One hundred yards from the cave’s entrance, Aragon stopped and motioned her to stand still. The rain had ended, putting them both on alert.
He listened intently before his brow narrowed with concern. “They’re searching for us,” he said. “Though they’re too far away to be an immediate danger, I can hear them and smell them.” Taking her hand in his, he urged them down the mountain at a faster pace than they had been moving. Pine straw and the mush of wet fallen leaves softened the brunt of the dirt and rocks on her bare feet. “Humans and dogs are part of the search,” he added a moment later. “I didn’t expect Pathos to make his failure so public. I thought he’d either—”
The Lure of the Wolf Page 25