Raising Hell_A Hellcat World Novel

by Sharon Hannaford

  “What the…” She heard the words come out of her mouth. What were the Vodun doing now? Had they come to finish what they started? Was this the end? She rubbed one eye against her shoulder, trying to clear the tears enough to see.

  “Get out of my way.” The words rumbled like boulders across the cave. Trish had never heard anything that chilled her more and prayed she never would again.

  Julius stood in front of Alexander, his expression bleak, every atom of his body tensed. Energy rolled off him, swamping everyone in his path. It was like he had become the conduit for a firestorm. And his eyes…

  Oh, lord, his eyes.

  Trish hadn’t thought it possible to feel a greater sense of fear than she had at the thought of losing one of her best friends, but the barely controlled madness blazing through Julius’s eyes froze the blood in her veins. Now she understood what the others had been talking around, not saying aloud, and instantly she was keenly aware of the weight of the thousands of tons of rock above them. Aware to the very centre of her core that the Vampire standing just a few feet from them could bring this entire cave system down around them. If he lost control, if he had no more reason to keep the leash on his power, this cave would become their tomb.

  Blindly she eased away from Gabi, grabbing Derek’s shoulder. Mac was already scooping up the unconscious Healer. Kyle looked torn, pulled between wanting to protect Gabi and knowing her only chance was the half-crazed man behind him.

  “Move,” Julius said again. He closed his eyes, his fists clenched at his sides, clearly fighting for some iota of control.

  Kyle leaned down to kiss Gabi’s forehead and whisper something to her before backing away, hands and clothing caked in drying blood, eyes warily trained on the living storm that was Julius, until only Gabi and Razor remained in the alcove. Trish knew Julius would have to physically remove the cat and prayed it didn’t come to that.

  Julius swept in, falling to the stony ground, scooping Gabi’s pitifully limp form into his arms and burying his face in her hair.

  “Lea, my Lea,” Trish could hear him croon. He lowered his head and ripped at his wrist with fangs that glistened in Athena’s bluish light.

  Kyle’s arms wrapped around Trish’s body, his naked skin pressed as close to her as he could get, their wolves instantly connecting at a level Trish hadn’t known was possible. The small crowd around the cavern were all deathly still, each one holding their breath, frozen in time.

  “We should get everyone else out,” Trish said in the merest whisper, knowing better than to suggest they leave. Kyle would not leave Gabi, and Trish would not leave Kyle, but the others…

  “Derek, Riley.” Kyle was in instant agreement. “Take the Healer; go with the Vampires.” He was being presumptuous ordering the Vampires away, but Trish hoped they would listen. Before anyone could move, Gabi coughed weakly and breathed out raggedly, and then her heart once again stop beating.

  Julius shoved his wrist to Gabi’s mouth as a faint orange light began to pulse through the air around the three of them. Raz had stopped purring and was hunched down as though withstanding a gale-force wind.

  “Out!” Kyle yelled at the others. “Get out now. Go.”

  Trish watched the indecision on her brother’s face, and she mouthed the word Breanna at him, begging him with her eyes, trying not to think of never holding the small child in her arms again. Derek’s jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together, and he gave her a look filled with everything they couldn’t say. Turning from her, he grabbed Riley’s arm and scooped up the Healer, throwing her over his shoulder and hurrying away. She turned her attention to the others. Reluctantly Tabari was turning to follow, with Charlie and Nathan at his shoulder. Alexander and Athena stood looking at each other, neither moving.

  “Don’t be stupid. You’re the only one who can keep the Clan together.” Fergus’s voice rumbled through the dark in the direction Derek had just disappeared into. “Go.” He didn’t look at Mac when he spoke; they all knew it would be wasted breath.

  The emotions warred across Alexander’s face, but Athena finally put a hand on his arm, and he let her lead him away. She motioned with a flick of her wrist, and the light stopped following her and instead hung motionless in the air.

  Fergus and Mac silently moved to flank Kyle and Trish, the four of them prepared for anything, united in their helplessness and their love for one woman. Julius continued to speak to her as he massaged her throat, forcing her to swallow.

  “If she survives this,” Julius’s words were louder, clearly meant for all of them, “she may not be…the same. If she were fully human, this would Turn her Vampire, but being Dhampir…I just don’t know.” His words were careful but heavily laden with heartache.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Trish’s voice was small and broken, but she spoke anyway. “Whatever the outcome, we’re here for both of you. Do what you have to.”

  With a small nod, Julius once again lifted his wrist to his mouth, reopened his vein and held it to her mouth. It felt like hours but could only have been minutes that they stood watching as Julius carefully coaxed the blood down Gabi’s throat. Trish didn’t know how much Vampire blood was required to Turn someone; she would have to trust Julius. Without a heartbeat to rely on, they would only know if she was saved when her wounds began to heal. And then what? Would Gabi have to be put into lockdown, like Sicarius, waiting for her heart to restart and her second life to begin? Trish shifted her head so that her ear was directly over Kyle’s heart, revelling in the strong, steady thump.

  Suddenly Kyle tensed, his body jerking. Trish spun to search the cave, instantly on alert; they were still on the trail of a horde of very dangerous people. It took her several moments to figure out that Kyle had responded to something else entirely.

  There it was again.

  No, she hadn’t been imagining it. Her mouth fell open in shock. Gabi’s heartbeat. It was Gabi’s heartbeat. Her eyes found Julius. He was staring down at the woman in his arms with a mixture of trepidation and wonder. Razor was standing up on his hind legs as though trying to see her for himself. Kyle gripped Trish’s arm hard enough to hurt, but she didn’t pull away as they listened to the heartbeat slowly grow in strength and speed. Trish couldn’t bear looking at Julius’s face any longer; the emotion was just too raw. She glanced at the other Vampires. Fergus had a single tear running down his right cheek; Mac had fallen to his knees, and his eyes were glued to the pair in the alcove.

  Gabi’s eyes fluttered open, and she looked confused. She took an unsteady breath and looked up at Julius, automatically putting a reassuring hand on Razor, who was nuzzling her ear.

  “Juls?” she asked with a frown. “You made it?”

  “Hello, beautiful,” Julius whispered. His relief was so strong it was almost palpable as he gathered her closer to his body. The biting electricity in the air abated, its absence an unexpected relief.

  “Ow,” Gabi protested lightly at the movement. Her wounds were no longer oozing blood, but they hadn’t yet healed. Trish felt Kyle sag beside her, his relief almost as fierce as Julius’s. The movement drew Gabi’s attention. “Wolf,” she said with a raised eyebrow, “why are you standing around naked?”

  “How do you feel?” Kyle released Trish, moving closer to Gabi and Julius. “Has anything changed?”

  “Well, I’d be lying if I said I felt fine,” she looked bemused by the question, “but I’m still in one piece, aren’t I?”

  Trish joined Kyle, somehow unable to fully enjoy her friend’s miraculous recovery. It seemed like too much to hope for that Gabi had come through this unscathed. But if she’d been Turned like a human, she would be unconscious with no heartbeat for hours, if not days, which meant she hadn’t become a Vampire. Had she been affected in other ways?

  It was then that Gabi’s body arched, and she moaned in pain, clutching at the wounds in her chest. Trish’s heart leapt into her mouth, but Julius stayed calm, holding onto Gabi in a gentle but unbreakable grasp.

&n
bsp; “It’s okay.” Kyle grabbed Trish’s hand and squeezed reassuringly. “It’s the injuries healing. It happens so quickly with the Vampire blood that it’s agonising, but she’s fine.”

  Trish released the breath she’d been holding. “We should get her topside so that we can make her more comfortable.”

  “I’m…okay,” Gabi gasped. “Just a few minutes.” She curled into herself, breathing like a woman in labour. As Trish watched, the wounds grew less red and angry and then began to shrink.

  Kyle moved away and found his discarded clothing and body armour. His shirt was mostly a write-off, but the rest was okay, and he pulled on his pants, socks and boots. Julius’s and Razor’s attention never left Gabi, and Trish began to feel like some kind of voyeur. She turned her attention to Kyle. And the rest of their problems.

  “What do we do now?” she asked him in a low voice. “We’ve taken so many hits. We should probably pull back and recover. Come up with a new strategy.”

  “No.” Gabi’s voice was flat and determined. “We strike now, while they think we’re down.” She’d shifted to sit upright on Julius’s lap, still clutching her arms around herself as she shook all over.

  “But they’ve hit us with so much,” Trish worried. “What else is waiting for us? How many more traps?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Julius said. “I can destroy anything else they have planned for us. I will send a wall of fire down ahead of us; anything magical will be destroyed.”

  “We should still be very wary,” Fergus muttered. “They’ve staged these traps well, nae all of them lethal. It’s as though they’ve been trying to slow pursuers down rather than annihilate us.”

  “But why would they do that? Why not kill us outright?” Trish couldn’t fathom their reasoning.

  “Maybe death spells require too much juice, juice they didn’t have,” Mac suggested. “We know they aren’t the strongest Vodun.”

  “Or they need us alive fer something else they have planned,” Fergus suggested.

  “There were certain traps that could easily have been deadly,” Trish pointed out. “The only reason Kyle, Tabari and Alexander are alive is because they’re stronger than anyone knows. And Gabi shouldn’t have survived her injuries either.”

  “You could both be right.” Kyle’s face was thoughtful. “Perhaps they only want to keep some of us alive, taking out the strongest, the biggest threats. And if that’s the case, we may finally have the upper hand. They won’t know that the Vampires survived the fire spell. They couldn’t have known that Trish would save me; hell, I didn’t even know she could do that. And I very much doubt they know that Julius has made it back to the City and would be able to save Gabi.”

  “They definitely don’t know I’m back,” Julius growled, anger edging his voice again. “I think the Decuria orchestrated that call-out. It was a wild-goose chase that would have seen me hopping all over the world. I had already begun to suspect it was a way to get me out of the City before I…decided to return, but now I’m convinced.” There was a strange pause in Julius’s words, and Trish got the impression he was keeping something from them. Even Gabi shot him a look, but she figured now wasn’t the time to pry.

  “Everything they’ve done has been designed to slow us down,” Kyle continued, not seeming to notice the anomaly. “The silver would take time to kill me; the injuries would take time to kill Gabi.”

  “And if they’re trying to slow us down,” Gabi began to rearrange the shreds of her clothing, “we need to hurry.”

  No one disagreed with her. She gave a grim smile and eased out of Julius’s lap, moving slowly, as though testing her strength and her level of discomfort.

  “Should we go and get the others?” Trish wondered.

  “I’m not sure there’s time—” Kyle began to say, but he was interrupted by the sound of footsteps.

  Alexander, Athena, Butch and Tabari appeared in the circle of Mage light. The two burned Vampires looked much healthier and had changed into fresh clothing and body armour.

  “So you decided to hang around and torment us a little longer,” Alexander deadpanned to Gabi.

  “Couldn’t let you off that lightly, could I?” she retorted with a faint grin, rubbing at a palm-sized red scar on her chest.

  “We brought a few provisions.” Butch stepped forward, and Trish saw that they all carried something. “We even dredged up some old-school walkie-talkies,” the Enforcer continued, “which should have enough range that we can contact those at the entrance.”

  Riley stepped forward with a small crate packed with bottled water and energy bars. Gabi and Kyle both made a beeline for her. Trish watched surreptitiously as Gabi twisted the lid off a water bottle and quickly downed the contents before starting on an energy bar. That had to be a good sign, right?

  Her eyes flicked around and caught Julius watching his Consort with a similar mixture of wariness and concern. He seemed to feel her gaze, and his eyes caught hers. He nodded and lifted one corner of his mouth in a token show of reassurance, but Trish knew he was as worried as she was.

  Gabi used another bottle of water to clean some of the blood from her torso. Athena held out an armful of clothing, which Gabi and Kyle quickly sorted through for replacements for their own damaged gear. Trish and Derek rinsed as much of Gabi’s blood off their hands as they could, trying not to glance her way while they did it. The emotional ties to the sight were still way too raw.

  “So what’s the game plan?” Butch asked, pulling a nasty-looking blade from a sheath. The look in his eyes proclaimed what he planned to do to those who had tried to kill them all.

  “Trish, you and Riley should head back,” Kyle told her, coming over to her and wrapping a warm hand around the back of her neck. He knew she hated being in the middle of violence, and she appreciated what he was trying to do.

  “No,” she said quietly, shaking her head.

  “No fucking way,” Riley snarled in agreement.

  “We’re seeing this through to the end.” Trish smiled at him, letting her wolf shine through her eyes. She might never get involved in something like this again, in fact she would pray for that, but she wasn’t walking away from this particular fight. She just wasn’t.

  After a long moment studying her face, Kyle nodded.

  “We find our way through this godforsaken maze of caves, Julius eliminates anything magic in our way, and we locate the Patrium. Then we rescue Flora, and we take out anyone standing in our way,” Kyle declared. “That’s the game plan.”

  “Sounds good te me,” Fergus rumbled, his eyes alight with anticipation. The Scotsman was clearly relishing the opportunity for a fight.

  CHAPTER 22

  Julius led the way, dark and dangerous, with rage-fuelled power once again radiating from him so strongly that it raised the hairs on Trish’s arms. False scent trails, minor magical illusions and one half-hearted magical trap didn’t even slow him. The moment Athena or Tabari so much as murmured, the Master Vampire sent forward a wall of blue-green flames, which sizzled when it touched anything magic, and disappeared as quickly as it manifested, leaving nothing but the scent of ozone.

  Gabi had notably not argued about being relegated to the centre of the team, with Tabari and Athena close behind Julius, followed by Kyle, Fergus and Butch. Gabi and Mac were next, while Alexander and Derek sandwiched Trish and Riley, who brought up the rear. The four in the rearguard had been told in no uncertain terms to hang back and keep out of danger. Trish was the only one of the four who didn’t rankle at the orders, but no one argued with Kyle or Julius on the matter.

  One thing had not changed, the threat was real, and while the Alpha and the Master Vampire were leading the charge, their seconds needed to stay safe. The continuation of the Pack and the Clan was dependent on strong leadership, and the stability of those groups was paramount to the safety of the City and all of its inhabitants.

  “We’re close,” Athena whispered, her words echoing softly around the stone corridor as th
ey paused briefly at a fork in the way. “Can you feel it? It’s…oppressive.” Trish couldn’t see the Magus’s face, but she could hear the revulsion in her voice.

  “I can feel it,” Gabi murmured, sounding surprised. “Like something is watching me, waiting for me.” She rubbed the back of her neck as though something had walked over her grave.

  Tabari too was nodding, and Julius turned slightly to look back at the rest of them. “She’s right,” he said in a low voice. He caught Alexander’s eye. “We are very close. Rearguard stays here. We’ll give the all clear as soon as it’s safe.”

  Riley snorted while Derek growled unhappily. Trish was torn, wanting to go with them, but also not wanting to be a distraction to Kyle, who would be worried about her. Her wolf was not so torn; she snarled, hating the restriction. Without waiting for their acquiescence, the others set off down the left fork, leaving them with Athena’s blue Mage light for company.

  Kyle was just behind Julius’s right shoulder when they found the opening to the main cavern. There was no doubt that this was the place that housed the Patrium. Kyle couldn’t feel what the others sensed, but the eerie, red-tinged light filtering into the passageway wasn’t being emitted by anything natural. The scent of the Vodun they were following had grown stronger in his nostrils. It was fresher here and layered thicker. The Vodun had laid down several false scent trails along the way, but there was no doubting this one. He was still baffled by the underlying scent of dogs and one that he thought could be Vampire, but no Vampire he knew personally.

  And he could scent Flora.

  They came to a quiet halt, gathering quietly near the opening, taking the time to listen and regroup. Voices drifted to their ears, faint and slightly distorted as though they were drifting upward from a lower level.

  “Deshane, we are running out of time.” A female voice, clipped and impatient, came to them. “She needs to be ready. It won’t be long before what’s left of them find their way here.”