by Laken Cane
He got into the back seat with Clayton. “You have enough people here. Bay Town is in less danger from rifters than these guys are from the crazy mayor.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Fucking whatever.”
“What is her problem?” I asked, as Shane drove us out of there.
“She’s having a bad night,” Al told me. “Still, she’s one of the good guys.”
“A good guy who doubles as an asshole,” I muttered.
“Not all the time,” he replied. “Sometimes she doubles as a bad guy.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant, because my phone rang. “Rhys,” I said, relieved. “Are you okay?”
His voice was quiet but brusque. “I had my phone off. I have to go, love. I’ll find you later.”
Then he was gone.
I put my phone away when we entered the city, both unsettled by his call and relieved. He was okay, but he’d sounded…different. Closed off.
Dark.
And I wondered again what task Himself had set Rhys Graver.
The city was lit up like a Christmas tree, but it was quiet. Fear hung in the air, though, because every human there knew something was coming.
The streets were empty except for slowly patrolling police cars—we passed four of them before we reached the station.
Crawford was waiting outside when we drove up, standing with a couple of other men, a cigarette in one hand and a coffee in the other.
“Trinity,” the captain greeted. He gave the men a nod. “It’s quiet for the moment. You have news?”
I nodded. “We fought the demon who was attacking the human women,” I told him. “He’s dead. There will be no more rapes.”
One of the men standing with the captain put his fist to his mouth, then whispered, “Thank God. I have to call Michele.” He hurried away. The other cop followed him, probably to make his own calls.
“Come with me,” Crawford said. “Reporters are waiting inside. They’ll get you on TV.”
“Good,” I said. “Because there’s something else you and the city need to know.”
He sighed. “Yeah. There usually is. What a mess. The mayor is fucking useless.”
“Where is Delaney?” I asked. “Inside with the reporters?”
He gave me a look. “He’s home. Surrounded by men, guns, and doors that not even a mad vampire can break down.” He’d barely finished speaking before a man hurried from the building, calling his name.
“What now?” Frank muttered.
Then the uniformed man began murmuring into his ear, and the captain’s eyes went a little cold.
“What happened?” I asked.
He hesitated. “The mayor is dead,” he said quietly. “He and his guards were just found. I have to get up there.”
“Oh my God.” I put a hand to my chest, not really sure how I felt. “What about his guns and unbreakable doors?”
“I guess they weren’t enough to stop whoever went after him.” Crawford glanced away, but just for a second. It was enough.
The captain was not surprised by the mayor’s death.
Three police cars sped by us, sirens wailing, lights flashing. On their way to the mayor. The dead mayor.
“Shit,” Shane muttered. “There’s a group of assholes heading this way, Captain.”
I turned to look and sure enough, a crowd of men with shotguns and silver blades were stomping toward us. Fear—masked as rage—lit their eyes.
“Son of a bitch,” Crawford said, and turned to the cop beside him. “Grab some backup.” Then he walked toward the group, his hand up. Al went with him, but Shane, Clayton, and I stayed put.
“You all know there’s a curfew,” Crawford said. “Go home. Protect your families.”
“You heard what the mayor said.” The men looked at me and my hunters. “It’s the nonhumans that are bringing those bastards here. It’s the nonhumans’ fault my fucking brother was turned and killed.” He pointed a blade at me. “Mayor says it’s her fault.”
“My wife was raped by a demon,” another man said.
“How is that her fucking fault?” Shane asked. He pulled his shotgun strap off his shoulder and began to walk toward them. “Your mayor is a little bitch.”
“Oh hell,” I murmured. But I was thankful Shane hadn’t let it slip that Delaney was dead.
Clayton stepped a little in front of me, his fingers resting near his holstered gun.
“Bad shit is coming,” Shane continued, joining Crawford and Alejandro. “You don’t want to get fucked up and miss it, do you?”
“Who’s going to fuck me up, pretty boy? You?” The big man laughed and spat in Shane’s general direction. “All you fuckers need to get out of our city. We’re here to see that you do.”
Half a dozen cops hurried out of the building and stood behind the captain.
“Okay,” Crawford said. “Let’s calm down. You need to get back home before I throw you all in jail.”
“We’re taking back the city,” the chatty leader said. “We’re done taking orders. Red Valley is now off limits to the supernaturals.” He cocked his gun.
Shane laughed. “You be sure to tell the rifters that when they get here. Might hurt their feelings a tad, but it’ll be worth it to get them to leave us alone.” He pointed his shotgun at the man’s face. “My fucking hero.”
“Put the shotguns down,” Crawford said. He looked at the ringleader, and slid his gun from its holster. “You have ten seconds to turn around and get your ass back down the street.”
“Why are you siding with them?” the man asked. “You should be thanking us. I know you don’t have the manpower to deal with the vampires. We’re here to help, Captain. All you have to do is let us.”
His friends murmured in agreement.
“You can’t do anything,” Crawford said, his voice tight. “You saw what happened last night. Go home, all of you. We’ll do everything we can to protect you, but we can’t do it if you’re out here offering yourselves up to the monsters.”
I stepped around Clayton and went to stand between Shane and the captain. “Your guns won’t stop them,” I said. Reporters had left the building and stood quietly filming the encounter. It was as good a time as any to let everyone know what was coming.
“Sinclair,” Crawford snapped. “Not right now.”
“They need to know what’s coming.” I hesitated. “You all do.”
“Let her speak, Captain,” one of the reporters called. “What’s coming, Trinity?”
A sudden movement behind the group of humans caught my attention, and I stiffened as I saw Angus and Leo edging toward us. The group was primed and ready to explode, and catching sight of two supernats sneaking up on them wasn’t going to help.
“The vampires who attacked the city weren’t our vampires,” I began. “They weren’t even vampires, really. They’re cousins of the vampires, and until recently, they’ve been imprisoned somewhere secure. But they’re breaking free, and they’re coming for us.”
I paused, but no one said a word. “They’re not sensitive to silver,” I continued. “They won’t be stopped by your guns. There’s only one thing that can defeat them.”
“What’s that?” the human asked me, hatred in his eyes. “Your sword, I suppose?”
“Vampires,” I answered calmly. “Only vampires can fight and defeat the rifters. They’re mortal enemies. The vampires—our vampires—sent them to their prison the last time they fought for Red Valley, and they can do it again.”
I told them. With my hunters and Al standing behind me, the captain at my side, I told the people what they needed to know.
Rifters were coming, and they couldn’t keep them out. They could only do the best they could to prepare.
“We expect them to break free tomorrow night.” I looked into the cameras, and I made every human watching a promise. “We won’t give them the city. The rifters will die, and I will be one of the people to kill them. My hunters, the supernaturals, the vampires—we will pr
otect you. I swear it.”
“The mayor said you were refusing to help,” one of the reporters called. “That you were not allowing the supernaturals to aid us.”
The captain caught my eye and shook his head, just slightly.
He needn’t have worried. I wasn’t about to tell them the mayor was dead. There was too much panic as it was.
I hesitated. “I wanted the mayor to be kinder to the ones he expects to save him,” I said, finally.
“Maybe after this,” another reporter said, “he will be.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see him changing his mind.”
“Then we’ll have to change it for him,” he replied. “We can be persuasive when we want to be.”
I returned his smile, happy with his answer. After all, another mayor would soon be appointed. “I like the way you think, sir.”
Then just as quickly, I sobered. The city might not survive the night.
I turned back to the small mob. They’d gone quiet and grim as they’d listened. “It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be…” I swallowed, sudden tears springing to my eyes at the realization of what would come. “It’s going to be so bad. But remember that nothing can stop the sun. And when the sun arrives, the rifters will sleep, or they will burn. Hang on to that thought. The sun will come.”
The leader of the group shook his head. “That’s bullshit, and you’re a traitorous cunt.” He slammed the stock of his shotgun into my face.
I reeled backward, too shocked to cry out, my face going numb after its initial shriek of pain. I heard Angus roar, and I heard his darkness.
It was terrifying.
He scattered the group when he barreled through them, Leo at his back. Everyone seemed to move in slow motion—the cops, my men, the crowd—and I couldn’t take my stare from Angus.
Clayton grabbed the man who’d attacked me, but Angus bellowed “Drop him!” and Clayton barely had time to open his hand and back away before Angus had the man by the throat.
Angus’s voice was like gravel. “You hit a woman,” he said. “You hit my woman.”
Clayton and Shane lifted me from the ground and when my legs wouldn’t at first hold me, they kept me upright. My head was swimming, but I couldn’t pass out. I refused to pass out.
Cops were battling the group of men, who’d apparently taken their leaders sucker punch as a signal. The reporters screamed and scattered at the first wild shots, and Leo and Alejandro helped the cops handle the crazed group of men.
I could only hang in my hunters’ grips and watch Angus.
He turned his stare, his dark, dark stare to me, and as I watched him and he watched me, he broke the man’s neck. He tossed him away, and the last I saw of that man was his body being trampled by his friends as they decided they were outmatched and should run the fuck away.
“Angus,” I whispered.
He strode to me and pulled me into his arms, and all around us was chaos but there in his arms was only…
Everything.
Then the master vampire was there, his fangs flashing, his eyes wide, his fear like a living thing.
“The wall has shattered,” he said. “They’re here.”
The rifters had broken through.
The rifters had come.
And we were without our army of vampires.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Army of Blood
And then, as though they’d chased him into the city, I saw them.
Running like clouds of blackness through the city came the rifters. Many, many rifters.
In a few short minutes, the streets were running with blood.
Angus jerked away from me and shifted, but even before his shift was complete, Amias buried his fingers at the base of my skull, forced my head to the side, and plunged his fangs into my neck.
“Wait,” I thought I whispered.
But he could not wait. In seconds, he was done.
He bit open a vein on his wrist and shoved it against my mouth, urging me to “drink, drink,” and maybe I did pass out then, if only for a second.
I called Silverlight, only realizing when she came that she hadn’t come until I called her to come. By then, Amias was gone.
But his words echoed through my mind.
Get to Willow-Wisp.
I had to feed the earth. I had to bring the army of vampires.
Because if I didn’t, we were dead.
I ran screaming into the fight, and even as I cut and slashed and screamed, I couldn’t shut down my fear.
“Shane,” I screamed.
Shane didn’t even have a fucking sword. He had blades, sure, and he had his Betty, but those things would not be enough, not even for a hunter. Not against the rifters. There were simply too many of them.
The city had already prepared as best as it could—there were safe places set up for the humans who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—leave their homes; safe rooms, tornado shelters, windowless buildings with reinforced doors, storm cellars…
It didn’t matter. The rifters found the humans. They dragged them out of hiding and ate them.
And the streets ran with their blood.
Their new freedom overwhelmed the rifters. They screamed with frenzied, starving joy, some of them sobbing bloody tears as they embraced a world they’d been denied for so very long.
A world they could see but not touch.
Now they could touch.
Now they could touch everything.
They were free.
And I was supposed to run, to leave my men, to fight my way to Willow-Wisp. I was supposed to bring back an army.
I would, of course I would.
But I would see Shane protected first.
Amias appeared once again, covered in gore and blood that glittered wet and black upon his body.
“Come. I will get you there.”
His eyes held a bright spark of savagery that I hadn’t seen before. No matter what he was, or what he’d done, only the rifters would ever bring out that particular spark.
And then the visitors came. As though everything wasn’t quite bad enough, wasn’t quite chaotic enough, the visitors came.
Not just one.
I felt them pounding on the walls of the way station, urgent, terrible, and I knew who they were.
The elders had followed the rifters. They, however, couldn’t just come. They couldn’t force their way through invisible walls of Willow-Wisp.
They had to come through the way station. Through me.
I screamed with the pain of it, the pressure, but I shoved it away as best I could. “I can’t go yet,” I cried, my voice hoarse. “Find Shane.”
“Trinity—”
“Find Shane!”
And I wielded Silverlight with renewed energy, with desperation, with speed. Still, the rifters came. Not dozens of them.
Hundreds.
It was too much, very nearly, to comprehend.
Then Amias flung Shane at my feet, his face a mask of rage. Shane had fought him.
But Shane was injured, bloody and pale, and I didn’t care about his anger.
I forced Silverlight into his hand. “You stay alive,” I told him. “I can’t lose you.”
“You cannot give her away,” Amias yelled, then turned to tear apart a rifter at his back. “She may not come to you again.”
That was a chance I was willing to take.
Fight for Shane. Protect him. Kill for him. That’s what I told her. She was the only hope my hunter had of surviving the night.
A rifter, in a blur of speed, reached for me. Almost before I could react, a blade shot through his body and he fell, and Clayton stood behind him. “Go, Trinity. We can’t hold them.”
I glanced back once before Amias took me out of there. Clayton and Shane fought back to back, one with a black blade and one with silver, my silver, as they cut through the horror and tried to stay alive.
And then I left them there.
I wrapped my arms and legs around Amias an
d he carried me to my car. I hid my face and listened to his grunts as he killed, to the screams of the humans, the roars of the rifters, and the savage growls, howls, and death screams of supernaturals pouring into the city.
They were few, though, compared with the rifters, and I wondered how many would remain when the night was over.
I felt sudden warmth, strange and wet, at my back. “What—?”
“Jade Noel,” Amias said, his voice low and harsh. “She lent us a temporary circle of protection. Hold on to me. I will run.”
And despite the fact that my back was to the wind, I lost my breath when he ran. The pressure was excruciating—I was underwater, unable to breathe or hear as someone rammed a car against my body. That was what it felt like.
The seconds he ran felt like an eternity but then I was at my car, on the ground, drawing air into my aching lungs.
“No time,” Amias said, and yanked me to my feet. He shoved me into the car. “I will meet you at the graveyard. Hurry.”
I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled, but I started the car, tried to block out the images of the slaughter going on around me, and rammed my foot down on the gas.
My car shuddered and jerked as I ran over whatever—whoever—stood in my way. I ground my teeth and drove on. I had my place in the battle, but it wasn’t in the city. Not yet.
The elders were hurting me.
“I’m coming,” I screamed, as the pressure, red and bursting, became nearly unbearable. My head pounded sickeningly and my stomach tossed with the pain of it, threatening to spew its contents all over my lap.
I passed wolves sprinting toward the city; huge, shaggy wolves that would likely not survive the encounter. If they did, and if I did, I would get to know the Bay Town pack. I would get to know all the supernaturals. I would thank them.
It couldn’t be too late for that.
I drove on.
I needed to raise the vampires, but I also needed to open the way station to the elders. I tried to let them in as I drove. It wasn’t possible. I was too far from the house. I needed to be inside.
“Elders first,” I muttered, my knuckles white as I squeezed the steering wheel. “Then vampires.”
I’d never felt so alone.
When I finally reached the way station and jumped from the car, Jin was waiting on the porch, holding open the door.