“If we get stopped, you’ll have to deal with the obstacle, Jack!” Kimberly had to shout louder now as the sounds of battle grew stronger. “You don’t know where the doctor lives.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t let you get stopped!” Jack shouted past the cacophony of screams and roars coming from Term. “You just get Aareth to the doctor!”
A moment later, the trio burst through the forest and into the outskirts of the city, and what met Jack’s eyes was something he had never seen in his life.
Chapter 20
Jack
With supernatural beings as fast as werewolves, and especially vampires, the fighting had quickly spread to every part of the small town. In front of Jack, a grey werewolf bent over a vampire dressed in a New Hope uniform, tearing out his throat. To the left, another vampire soldier and werewolf circled one another.
As much as Jack wanted to stop and help fight, he understood their mission was to get Aareth help. First and foremost, their friend needed medical attention.
Jack had been to Term numerous times while working with his father in the Outland. From what he was seeing now, the town hadn’t changed much. The wood buildings that made up the city’s infrastructure were lined one right next to the other, and the dirt roads cut through the town like they always had.
As the sky began to lighten, heralding another day, the main thing that stuck out to Jack was the lack of civilians and the amount of blood in the street.
It shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that people would be in their homes behind locked doors at the moment. But the chaos that ran through the city was anything but normal.
Jack pounded behind Kimberly as she rounded corners and sprinted past numerous confrontations. Werewolves and vampires were everywhere in various stages of battle.
Jack searched for his father as he ran, but there was no sign of the large white werewolf. Jack was so focused on looking for his father, as well as any potential threats to their sides or behind them, that he almost toppled over Aareth as Kimberly came to a halt.
In front of them, two vampire soldiers stood over the carcass of a werewolf. Blood fell from their mouths, canvasing their faces with brutal war paint. They spotted Jack and his friends at the same time Jack made eye contact with them.
Kimberly’s hesitation was short-lived. She turned a corner and began an all-out sprint.
“We’re almost there!” she shouted over the chaos. “Next block down, on the left!”
Jack told his legs to continue to run forward as he craned his neck behind them. Sure enough, the two vampire soldiers who had spotted them had given chase. By the second, they were gaining ground on their prey.
“You have to take him the rest of the way.” Jack was about to drop his end of the litter and reach for his wand. “I’ll hold them—”
Jack blinked, still trying to discern what he had just seen. One moment, the two vampire soldiers were chasing after him with blood red eyes; the next, they were gone in a flash of brown fur and teeth.
The female werewolf Jack had saved from certain death at the hands of his father had come out of a side alley. She’d stricken the two vampires with the force of a battering ram, breaking the back of the first one that took the brunt of her vicious blow. She was now on top of the other, tearing at him with knife-like claws and teeth.
“Here,” Kimberly stopped at a house on the corner of the street and pounded on the door. “Amber! Amber, open up! It’s Kimberly!”
Nothing.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Kimberly hit the door so hard this time, it shook like it would cave in at any moment. “Amber, if you’re in there, open up, or I’m going to break down this door.”
More movement, this time from the corner of Jack’s eye. A female vampire covered by shadows lifted a rifle and drew a bead on Kimberly’s head.
A dark figure leapt from the roof above her and crashed down on top of the vampire soldier, folding her in on herself. The werewolf wasn’t dark at all; it was Marcus.
The door to the house swung open. A tall, middle-aged woman with long hair and a leather jacket had opened the door. With wide eyes, she took in the scene in the streets as she stood holding a frying pan the size of Jack’s torso in her right hand.
“We need your help.” Kimberly pushed her way into the house, uninvited. “And for God’s sake, put down the frying pan. That’s not going to do you any good unless you plan to cook us to death.”
Jack followed Kimberly’s lead as they bullied their way into the house. An elegantly decorated sitting room connected to a kitchen area with a long table. Kimberly and Jack placed the stretcher onto the wooden table, pushing off dishes and utensils.
Amber locked the door behind them. “What’s happening out there?” She dropped her frying pan and ran to help. “Who is this?”
“A war this world has never seen is happening.” Kimberly lifted Aareth’s jacket off his body. “Can you help him?”
While Kimberly and Amber exchanged words, Jack realized that Aareth had been quiet for a long time. He looked down at his friend, and cold shock grabbed at his heart.
Aareth wasn’t breathing.
“No, no!” Jack ran to his still friend’s side. “Aareth, wake up! We’re here. Wake up!”
Amber stopped asking her questions. Instead, she checked the pulse on Aareth’s neck with two fingers. She didn’t say a word to Kimberly or Jack as she cupped her hands and began administering compressions to Aareth’s chest in a steady rhythm.
“You can save him, right?” Jack was trying to grab the Female doctor’s attention, but she was fixated on her work. “You can bring him back, right? Are you listening to me? You have to bring him back!”
Jack felt Kimberly’s strong grip on his shoulder. She pulled him away from the table.
“Let her work,” Kimberly said in a soft voice Jack had never heard the gargoyle use. “If it’s his time to go, there will be nothing anyone can do. If he is meant to live, he will.”
Jack hated Kimberly’s logic. It was one he actually believed in, but hearing it while his friend lay dead on the table was something he couldn’t accept at the moment.
Jack pushed away from Kimberly in a halfhearted attempt. His eyes never left Amber’s hands pumping up and down over Aareth’s chest. She was talking to him as she worked. “Come on, come on! This world is not done with you yet.”
Aareth’s face was pale, his lips already turning blue. Then, out of nowhere, Aareth let out a huge gasp.
“Aareth!” Jack wrestled himself from Kimberly’s grip and ran to the other side of the table opposite the doctor. “Aareth!”
“I feel horrible.” Aareth swallowed hard, looking up at Jack and Amber. “I died, didn’t I? That would explain the taste in the back of my throat.”
“You’re not out of the fight yet.” Amber winced as she lifted Aareth’s coat, examining his wound. “You two, let’s make yourselves useful. Kimberly, I’ll need hot water and towels.”
Amber looked at Jack with an even stare.
“The best way you can help your friend now is to do what I tell you.” She motioned with her chin to a door that led deeper into her home. “Down the hall, first door on your left is a closet. In the closet is a red medical bag. I need it—now.”
The screaming from the battle outside was beginning to fade as Jack ran to obey. Exhaustion had started to set in, now that Aareth was in the capable hands of the doctor.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Something hammered at the front door.
“Just can’t catch a break,” Aareth mumbled from the kitchen table. He looked over to the door, trying his best at a yell. “Hey, can you give us some peace and quiet for a second? I’m trying to die over here!”
Chapter 21
Sloan
“I’m not waiting any longer,” Sloan said, raising her voice at Croft and Theo. “She’s taken enough from me. It’s time I take something, everything, from her!”
“I understand y
ou’re upset at losing your friend,” Theo said from his seat in the amphitheater. “I would be upset as we—”
“Upset?” Sloan zeroed in on Theo with a scowl. “I get upset when we’re out of coffee. I get upset when the weather sucks. I get upset…”
Sloan took a moment to control herself. She understood she was acting out of character, but she was done sitting back and letting the enemy dictate the way things were. She was going to do something with or without Azra’s help.
“I just buried another friend,” Sloan said as calmly as her racing heart would allow. “I’m not going to sit here and wait to bury another. I’m not asking you for your help. I’m telling you, out of respect, what I’m going to do.”
The entire time Sloan spoke, it had only been Theo who dared to answer her wrath-laced words. Croft remained quiet. She stared at Sloan as if agreeing with her words at times.
Finally, Croft broke her silence. “I can see that we’re not going to stop you. Part of me even agrees with you, although I understand the folly in that plan. I’m sorry for what happened to Harrison, but leaving to attack Leah in the battlefield is suicide.”
“I’m done playing fair.” Sloan looked at Theo and Croft in turn. “She wants to ambush me and my squad, then we can do the same to her. I heard your gargoyles are yearning for a fight after being left out of the last one. Give me Cherub and her gargoyle unit. My squad and I can take care of the rest.”
“If I say no, you’re just going to go by yourself anyway, aren’t you?” Croft asked with a look on her face that said she already knew the answer.
“That’s right.” Sloan nodded along with Croft’s words. “This is a heads-up, not a request.”
“We only have a day before she arrives anyway.” Theo threw his hands up in the air. “Not like talking sense into you is going to help. You can’t just wait a day to take your vengeance?”
“Not another minute,” Sloan said.
A wrath she hadn’t known she was capable of had built up in her chest; an anger that was her own, but had somehow been intensified with her loss. Harrison was one of her own. A soldier, a friend, and then bonded to her after she’d bitten him. This was personal on a level Sloan didn’t fully understand yet.
“All right.” Croft stood, nodding toward Theo. “Cherub will be more than happy to help, I know.”
“You can’t be serious.” Theo rolled his eyes, then exhaled with exasperation. “But I know you are.”
“The city’s defenses are complete.” Croft passed Sloan on the stairs up to the exit. “Besides, I think I know what Sloan has planned.”
Sloan followed in Croft’s wake up the stairs and out through the meeting room doors. The plan she had been contriving was at the forefront of her mind. With Cherub and her gargoyles helping, they could be out and back before the sun rose.
“If anything happens to them because you made a decision in anger, it’s on you.” Croft stopped to look back at Sloan. “Anger can be a powerful tool, but channel and use it properly, or it will be your downfall.”
Sloan wasn’t interested in getting into a debate with the witch. She merely nodded toward Croft before leaving the capitol building.
* * *
“I’m fine.” Doyle looked at Sloan as he pleaded his case. “It was a concussion, that’s all. I can fight.”
“I’m sure you can.” Sloan stood at the city gates, waiting for Cherub to gather the rest of her unit. When the gargoyle was told of the plan, she had been ecstatic and rushed off to ready her men. “And you will fight them tomorrow when the bulk of the army gets here. Anything you say will be useless, so save us both some time.”
Doyle shook his head with a heavy breath.
“Harrison’s body was placed in a grave in Azra,” Pia chimed in. “When you’re ready, we can have the ceremony for him.”
“And we will have a ceremony for him.” Sloan refused to think on her dead friend a moment longer. Not until he was avenged. “First, we send a few hundred of the queen’s soldiers his way.”
A rushing sound filled the air, something like the wind during the beginning of a storm, as Cherub landed beside Sloan with a gust of breeze. All around the courtyard, Cherub’s gargoyles were landing. As requested, they wore black instead of the normal white uniforms usually sported by the city’s guards, and each held a lance twice as long as his body.
“This looks like fun. How come we weren’t invited?”
Sloan looked over to see Kade and Sasha walking down toward the main gate.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m in.” Kade looked over to Sloan. “I’m in this time. I’m healed and rested. Argue if you want, but I’m coming.”
“Slade is going to be so pissed we didn’t wake him up for this.” Sasha smiled through the dark. Torchlight reflected off her large teeth. “So, what are we doing?”
“I don’t have time to argue with anyone else.” Sloan gave Kade a look, one part pleading, one part stern.
“Good.” Kade walked up to Sloan and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Because all I want to do is listen. What’s the plan?”
“I’m only saying yes because we’re down two members in our squad.” Sloan had mixed feelings about being kissed in front of a war meeting, but in all honesty, she found herself liking it. “Listen up. Cherub and her gargoyles will drop us by the enemy’s supply wagons. We’ll kill the guards there and destroy any rations or equipment they’re carrying. In the meantime, Cherub’s gargoyle unit cause a distraction.”
“And to be clear, by ‘distraction,’ she means swooping down and impaling as many of those vampire soldiers we can on the ends of our spears.” Cherub looked at her gargoyles with a grin so sadistic, it even made Sloan uncomfortable. “This is what we’ve been training for. Let’s make them pay in blood.”
Chapter 22
Sloan
The air so high was freezing, though Sloan expected it would feel a lot worse if she were still one hundred percent human. Cherub held her under her armpits as the two took the lead of the convoy and sailed through the dark air.
The female gargoyle was stronger than she looked. She had to be to be able to support her own weight, plus Sloan’s and the heavy lance she carried on her back in a sling between her wings.
Sloan blinked at the heavy gusts of air that wreaked havoc on her hair. For the second time she reached down by her side to make sure her mage sword was still in its sheath. The cold steel of her weapon touched her fingers.
“There!” Cherub had to shout to be heard. “Eleven o’clock!”
Sloan looked down to see the long trail of lights. To the left of the army was the mage engine. Dark smoke billowed from its smokestack as it travelled at the same pace as the army, which was a black snake of soldiers, some carrying torches, most just jogging along.
Leah had pushed them like Sloan knew she would. The tyrant queen was in a hurry to reach Azra and defeat her enemies. The vampire soldiers from New Hope would be tired when they were finally asked to fight. Sloan carried no pity in her heart for them, only wrath.
To the right of the army and to Sloan’s left was what she was looking for: a long line of wagons being pulled by teams of horses trotting along. Sloan ran the plan over and over in her mind. She, along with the members of her vampire squad and the two shifters, would be dropped onto soldiers driving the wagons. They would kill them quickly, unhitch the horses, and light the wagons on fire.
In the interim, Cherub would lead the hundred or so gargoyles on two to three passes against the bulk of the army, then come and pick them up. If all went as planned, they would be in and out in under ten minutes, leaving bodies broken and bloodied in their wake.
Sloan wished she could see the sky behind her. What a sight it must have been to see a hundred gargoyles flying in sync. Thoughts of this were pushed out of her mind, though, as Cherub readied her for her drop.
“We’re going to have to go in fast!” Cherub shouted above the rush of her wings.
“Do it
!” Sloan shouted back. “Aim for the first wagon. I’m ready!”
Time sped up as Cherub took a dive. Everything grew in size as the wind rushed past Sloan at an exhilarating pace. Sloan couldn’t stop blinking past the wind, even the air was hard to breathe as vampire and gargoyle plummeted from the sky like a fallen angel.
When Cherub finally released Sloan, Sloan felt like a bomb being dropped from the heavens. The vampire soldier driving the first team of horses in the lead wagon didn’t even stand a chance. Sloan inverted her self in the air so she would land boots-first. She slammed into the driver, crushing his skull on impact.
Arching pain lanced up Sloan’s legs, but pain could be put in a mental box until her body healed itself. Sloan unsheathed her weapon and drove it into the heart of the broken vampire just to be sure.
In one movement, she flipped on the mage blade to ensure it would sear through any armor he might be wearing. The next moment, she unhitched the wagon from the straps holding prisoner the two confused horses.
Sloan withdrew her sword and placed the mage-heated blade against the wagon’s wood frame. The board beneath her sword turned a dull red first, then sparked and caught fire.
As she jumped off the first wagon and moved to the next, she knew they had already been found out. Screams permeated the air as the marching army came to a standstill amidst the sound of rushing wings. More than anything Sloan wanted to take a moment to look to her right and witness the gargoyles descending upon the New Hope army like Valkyries incarnate.
She couldn’t. Speed was their ally. Surprise would only send the New Hope army reeling for so long.
Instead of pausing to witness their plan in progress, Sloan ran to the next wagon in line. The driver of this transport was already standing up in his seat, hand resting on the butt of his rifle. He made eye contact with Sloan at the same time she hurled her mage-heated sword through the air.
House of Wrath: The Vampire Project Book 5 Page 9