What the hell was I doing, I was boxing us in. A couple of feet from the wall the thing in front of us stops dead in its tracks and I can hear a loud clink. I look around it and can see that it has a metal collar around its neck and is chained to the opposite wall. The room is circular and doesn’t have a door of any kind. It looks like the hole we fell through was the only way in or out and it was dead centre of the ceiling above us.
“Scarlet, are you okay?” Bastian frantically shouts through the hole.
“Yeah, but we’re not alone down here.”
“What’s down there, Red?” Aylesbury shouts.
“Not entirely sure, but it clearly wants to eat us. Less talking and more action would be excellent right now,” I shout back.
I pull Silas in close to the wall and call Neria to my hand. At least I could defend myself if it managed to break free and attack.
I can see, now I’m standing still, that it has a leathery face devoid of hair, and its skin is a weird mottled greyish yellow. It has scraps of fabric hanging from its body which is skin and bone. It must be well over six feet tall and has pointy ears. I find myself drawn to its skin that oozes thick liquid like its body has been decomposing for a very long time.
I take a step closer to it, unsure why I was doing so. I can hear the voices above, but I don’t listen as I suddenly find myself fascinated by the creature in front of me. I take another step closer and drop my sword. The creature isn’t snarling any more instead it looks gentle and harmless, I can hear it humming a faint tune. I smile and step forward, bringing me just outside its reach.
As I step forward again the creature’s head falls from its shoulders and its body crumples to the floor. I blink like I’ve just woken from a deep sleep and it suddenly dawns on me what I was about to do.
Jared is behind the creature, breathing heavy, his sword dripping with blood.
“What just happened?” I say, frowning.
“I’m pretty sure you just went up against your first Vampyre and almost lost,” Jackson says from behind me, picking up a still unconscious Silas and cradling her against his chest.
I open my mouth a few times about to say something, but nothing comes out as I look at the creature at my feet. I meet Jared’s gaze and he says, “So that’s what would have happened to Da. Is it bad that I’m glad Vex got to him first?”
I start to shrug, and I’m hit with a wave of pain that makes me stagger against the dizziness that accompanies it.
Jackson loads Silas into a sling of material which is instantly hoisted up through the hole in the roof.
The sling comes back down, and I arch an eyebrow as Jackson beckons me over to it.
“You can climb back up yourself if you think you can manage it,” Jared says from behind me, nudging me closer to the sling.
I sigh and accept the fact that I can’t get back up on my own. I climb into the sling and wince when the jerking of the upward motion jars my shoulder. Within seconds I’m being pulled through into the open. Bastian grabs the rope from the tripod system they have erected above the hole and lowers me gently to the ground. As soon as I’m free from the material he moves in to envelop me in his arms, I don’t think to stop him and the minute he connects with my shoulder I black out.
Chapter Seventeen
I come to, bouncing around in Bastian’s arms. I’m pain-free but feeling a little sick from being jostled about. I look up at him and he just smiles down at me but carries on walking.
I squirm in his arms, but he just holds me tighter, his smile stretching. The manipulating bastard was enjoying this.
“Put me down, Bastian,” I say to him, my voice a little croaky.
“No,” he says without looking at me.
“Put me down right now!”
This time he ignores me. I huff out a breath and try to see where we are, but all I can see from this vantage point is Aylesbury and Jared walking behind us, deep in conversation. I mouth the word ‘help’ at them, Jared smiles at me and Aylesbury shrugs.
“I’m disowning you both if you don’t help me,” I say, scowling at them.
I get nothing, no facial expressions of any kind. I turn my attention back to Bastian and smile. He looks down at me, his white hair hanging forward, his silver eyes so different from the deep blue I would normally expect to see. I give him my evil smile and he scowls down at me. I know of one way to get him to put me down. So, I look at him and think about kissing and all the other things we have recently done together. I know he can smell my desire and I figure if I was going to be uncomfortable then he was too. He narrows his eyes at me, then lowers me to the floor.
“You win this time,” he says to me, his voice low and gravelly.
My feet are on the ground, but his arms are still firmly around me, and he doesn’t let me go until he brushes a kiss against my lips. Just a small touch of the lips that’s so unlike any other kiss we’ve ever shared. He steps back and finally lets me stand on my own two feet.
I can now see that the others have stopped around us and that Silas is still unconscious and in Adam’s arms. I look at Bastian and raise my brow at that. Bastian grins at me in return and I know he’s happier that Adam’s attentions are finally away from me.
“What did I miss?” I ask no one in particular.
“Only a few hours of trekking across the weird remains of a Fae city,” Trenton pipes up from behind me.
“You’re just jealous that you haven’t slept through half the journey,” Jackson replies.
“Yeah, I am,” he says back.
I look away from them to Bastian, hoping for a more serious answer.
“You dislocated your shoulder. Let’s put it this way, it’s a good job you were already unconscious because we had to dislocate it again to reset it properly. An unfortunate side effect of healing quickly. We gave you one of the shots and you’ve been sleeping it off while we carried on with the journey,” Bastian tells me.
“What about Silas?” I ask.
Aylesbury answers me. “Unfortunately, the little Pixie isn’t immortal yet and the knock on her head is pretty bad, we’ve glued the wound together and given her one of the special shots Gerry gave us in case she was injured. We think she has a concussion, but with head injuries it’s hard to tell. The only thing we can do for now is to keep waking her up to check her vitals and hope that she’s lucid. Hopefully, she’s just sleeping off the effect of the injury and the drugs.”
I turn to look at her in Adam’s arms, Aylesbury’s right when he calls her Pixie because, in his arms, she looks even smaller.
“So how far have we come?” I ask.
“Our best guess is we only have around an hour or so until we reach camp,” Jared replies.
“Let’s get going then, I have a feeling we don’t want to be out in the open when night falls,” I say.
Phoenix takes point and heads off through the forest that has grown a lot denser while I’ve been unconscious. I move to grab my pack from Bastian, but he just growls at me and hoists it to his shoulder carrying his own pack on the other.
“You do realise I’m completely capable of carrying my own things, don’t you?” I say to him.
He walks off, blatantly ignoring me as Lykos reaches my side and says, “As your mate, his instinct is to protect you and care for you. Unfortunately, you're prone to accident and trouble so he will constantly feel like he’s failing you. If I was you, I’d let him have these little victories.” Then he stalks off, leaving me to trail behind him.
During the next portion of our journey, I feel like I’m surrounded by guards. Trenton and Jackson both walk either side of me, with Aylesbury and Jared bringing up the rear. Eventually, I drop back to talk with Jared. When I do, Aylesbury drops further back which makes me think my suspicion that they are guarding me is correct.
“You okay?” I ask Jared. We’d both been through a lot lately, but at least I’d managed to get away from Vex for a short while. Jared hadn’t.
“I’m still process
ing everything, I still don’t understand why Vex gave me up. It’s more logical to keep me as a bargaining chip,” he says with a weary sigh.
Except I know that he now had nine bargaining chips along with Silas’s sisters, but I wasn’t going to get everyone killed by mentioning it.
“He still has Silas’s sisters. I still worry that, until they are safe, Silas is a wildcard,” I tell him.
Jared stares ahead pensively while I study him. He looks a lot better than the last few times I have seen him, the colour is back in his face, but you can still tell he’s lost weight. I was thankful that he’d already become fully immortal otherwise I may very well have lost my only living blood relative. I’m not including the cousins Jared says we have, I haven’t met them yet.
He suddenly stares at me then says, “Do you think that would have happened to Da?” I assume he’s talking about the Vampyre.
“I think it would have. I can only assume he was lucky that Vex killed him when he did, but then if it wasn’t for Vex, he may have never turned into a Vampyre in the first place,” I reply.
Jared sucks in a breath, I forgot that he’d thought Vex to be our father and that he’d missed a lot of what happened when Vex kidnapped us. I explain to him everything that happened from the minute he disappeared in the cells to when he came back to us.
He’s quiet through the entire exchange, and I can tell he’s angry when he balls his hands into fists, his knuckles going white from the strain.
“A part of me knew he wasn’t Da, but I’ve hoped for so long that he’d come back, I just wanted it to be him so badly I was willing to believe the vile things he told me. I will kill him for what he’s done to you, to us, to our family,” Jared says, his Irish lilt becoming stronger as his anger rises.
It was easier for me in some respects because I never knew my parents. What happened to them was horrible but, in some way, I feel slightly detached from the reality of it, whereas Jared had lived with and knew his father. Somehow, no matter what I said, I knew it would never be enough.
I grab a hold of his hand, offering the only comfort I can give him right now. Then I say, “Out of curiosity, how do you think that Vamp survived down there without a food source?”
“He had bite marks all over his arms and legs, my guess is he was drinking his own blood.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that was possible.” I turn and look at Aylesbury then chuckle out loud, remembering all the stories I used to read.
“What are you laughing at, Red?” Aylesbury asks, coming closer a few steps.
“Just remembering the days when you used to tease me for believing the things The Paranormal Journal used to write. Now we’re playing with Gods, Vampyres are real, and I’m trying to figure out how to use the magic that’s locked inside a little stone,” I say to him with a smile still on my face.
“Red, at this point I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that unicorns exist,” he says, deadpan.
That makes both Jared and I laugh and completely lightens the mood.
Chapter Eighteen
An hour later, I start to really tire of the walking. It’s monotonous, and the muscles in my legs are protesting at all the uphill climbs we’ve had to endure. I realise just how unfit I’ve become since I left The Guild. I really needed to start a new training regime.
“Are we nearly there yet?” I whine to anyone willing to listen.
Bastian’s now walking beside me, but he doesn’t answer when I look at him with pleading eyes. Instead, he stops and holds his arm up which stops the others who trail behind us. I stop, instantly going on alert and slowly withdraw my sword from my hip sheath.
Phoenix and Bastian exchange glances then spread out around us slowly circling our group. Phoenix then shares a look with his brothers and they instantly transform into their white wolves and trot over to sit either side of me, one looking forward the other looking behind. I was right, they are my guard detail. I’d kill Bastian later if we didn’t die now.
Bastian moves over to Adam and takes Silas from his arms, then he walks over to me and deposits her at the base of a tree. I catch his eye as he straightens up and try to silently ask him what’s happening.
He leans in and whispers in my ear, “We’re surrounded, protect Silence and don’t leave this spot.”
My eyes blaze with anger as he kisses my cheek then moves away. Did he think, now we are mated, that I’d simply stick to the sidelines?
Everyone spreads out into a semi-circle like they’d practised this formation prior. What had I been missing while I’d been having my training sessions with Lykos?
I didn’t get to question their motives any longer because there was a sudden battle cry and we were immediately surrounded by both the Seelie and Unseelie teams. I quickly scan the Fae but can’t seem to locate either Bryn, Bronwyn, or Vex. The fighting begins quickly and brutally. A part of me panics; if one of ours dies we were even more screwed.
One of the twins begins to growl at my side, so I turn to look behind me where a female is leaning against the tree, smiling, and playing with a dagger. She has very short baby-pink hair that stands up in all directions. With her delicate features and willowy figure, the short hair makes her look even more feminine.
“What do we have here then?” she says to me but looks at Silas’s unconscious form nestled against the tree roots.
Another female appears and leans against the other side of the tree. “Easy pickings by the looks of it, Jewls.”
The new female doesn’t hold any weapons, her face is more severe and angular than Jewls, her body stockier, but they both sport the same hairstyle except the newcomer’s is a burnt orange colour.
Trenton and Jackson, still in wolf form, take a step towards them both, growling. Jewls laughs and throws her knife, I look down as it buries itself in the ground at Silas’s side. Thankfully, she’d missed. I look up at her to see her frowning like she’d never missed before and is confused that it had happened this time.
I block out the sounds of fighting behind me, even though I want to turn around and make sure everyone on my team is okay. Not wanting to risk Silas’s life, I charge at Jewls and arc my sword down, so it slashes against her stomach. I draw blood, but she jumps away hissing at me.
“You bitch!” she shouts, clutching her stomach.
I take another step towards her while she’s checking her wounds and smash the hilt of my sword into her head, she instantly crumples to the ground. I turn around to face the other female and see she’s already on the ground, unconscious. Her temple is wet with blood, the wound no longer visible having already healed. One of the wolves has his paws on her stomach.
The wolf standing on her stomach backs away and transforms, Jackson looks at me with his piercing blue eyes and says, “What? She fell.”
Trenton, still in wolf form, begins to whine, I turn around to find Silas stirring at the base of the tree. Jackson and I rush to her while Trenton stands guard at her feet. Jackson steadies her as she begins to sit up, grabbing her head with her hands.
“Silas?” I say as she flinches then tries to scramble back into the tree.
“What the devil is happening?” she says, looking on at the fighting spread out in front of us. “How long have I been out of it?”
“We’ve been ambushed, and you’ve been unconscious for several hours, in fact, you’ve missed the majority of today’s trek because we're nearly at camp.”
She frowns at me then grabs her head again, wincing. “What happened in the hole, I’m pretty sure there was some kind of monster?”
I quickly gave her a rundown of what she has missed. I finish up quickly and start to scramble to my feet as a Fae male hurtles towards us swinging an axe. A white wolf flies at him from behind and pushes him to the ground. His head bounces on a stone as he skids towards us with the momentum of his fall.
Trenton quickly transforms back to his human form and says to Jackson with a huge smile, “That’s one each, brother.”
I�
��m about to reach down and help Silas stand when a loud crack silences the fighting followed by a bellow of, “Enough.”
I look around for the source of the bellow and see that everyone has frozen in place and Zeke is walking through the skirmish, his long white coat open and flaring out as he strides with purpose through the frozen fighters.
“I will release you all in three seconds and if anyone continues to strike, they will be disqualified from the games.”
He waves his hand, and everyone has control of their bodies again. Our entire team immediately backs away from their opponents and begins to group together. Zeke continues walking and stops in front of us.
“You were the only one not fighting,” he says to Silas. “Why?”
She looks at him a little confused and replies, “Because I was unconscious until about two minutes ago.”
He swings his gaze to me and asks, “Who started fighting first?”
“Not sure, we were walking to camp and were ambushed. But I can’t say for certain who attacked first once we were ambushed,” I tell him truthfully. Something told me not to piss him off by lying.
He turns around, dismissing me, and says to everyone, “While anything goes between camps, I will not tolerate ambushing other teams on the border of camp. I can assure you that you won’t need to resort to these pathetic displays to kill each other’s teams off, the city you’re in will do that for you. Now, camp is two minutes that way.” He points north-west. “I suggest you get there quickly because I’m bringing forward tonight’s round of fights. As punishment, you won’t be allowed time to prepare, the minute you enter camp the fighter names will be displayed, and they will have one minute to arrive in the arena.”
Zeke stalks off in the direction of camp. Each of the Fae teams stand, watching him in shock. Ours is the only team to follow on his heels.
Rage (Scarlet Dawson Book 3) Page 10