Sever the Crown: Vampire Reverse Harem Complete Series

by Mysti Parker

  Before she reached it, a loud pop sounded from the tunnel near Wren that Hawk had tripwired.

  Marlowe shouted from overhead, his wings soaring wide. I followed where he pointed.

  Shit. Ravana’s Knights were crushing through the tunnel and blurring throughout the room. Why hadn’t the Devil’s Breath knocked them on their asses? I’d heard the canisters pop as the tripwire was triggered. Then I realized…they were covered in glitter.

  “Fucking Doreen!” That witch bitch needed to die yesterday.

  I ducked low behind part of a long shelf flipped on its side and started to reload my gun. Then I groaned before my mind caught up with the reason why.

  A bullet had streaked into my back. Right where my heart was. And all I could think was no. No, my heart belonged to Wren. I couldn’t die because she needed me, and I needed her.

  I pitched forward. I hoped she killed Ravana with the strength of all five mates fast, before five became four.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Wren

  I’d almost made it to the portal when I saw Zac fall from the corner of my eye. Skidding to a stop, I started back for him.

  “No!” Ashe said, holding me back as Hawk blurred over and picked Zac up, tossing him easily over his shoulder. I couldn’t tell how badly Zac had been shot, but it couldn’t be good. He was completely limp, his eyes closed.

  An enemy Knight zoomed straight for me. I pushed Ashe out of the way and ducked as he swung his sword over my head. Still in a crouch, I struck out with my scepter blade right where I knew the joint in his leather armor would be and sliced plumb through flesh and armor. Dark blood spurted from the wound, along with his entrails. He dropped his sword as Diesel put a bullet through his heart.

  I stared at my blade for a moment. This thing was sharper than any weapon I’d ever had. It had cut through that leather armor like butter.

  The guys pushed me to the portal.

  “We can’t leave Marlowe!” I yelled as I watched him fly overhead with a fireball in each hand.

  “Go, Wren! I’ll hold them off,” Marlowe called down to me.

  Just before mates one, two, and five pushed me into the portal, the rest of my Knights stormed in through a tunnel while Marlowe doused the enemy Knights with a blast of fire. Screams and the clang of metal against metal followed us through the portal until we tumbled out and onto a…

  Ballroom floor? No, a throne room. And not just any throne room. It was the one my mother had once occupied. In the mansion where I’d first witnessed a glimpse of her former life. The same ruined painting hung above the damaged throne. Leaves and flyers for the cult party that had happened here skittered across the floor.

  “Talia?” I got to my feet, as did my mates, with Hawk still carrying Zac. We turned back to see the portal had vanished into a slim plume of green smoke.

  Someone cackled.

  “Are you fucking serious?” I said, spinning around to see Ravana on my mother’s throne, calmly fiddling with a string of pearls around her neck.

  To her left stood Doreen. To her right, and to my horror, stood Margaret, my mother’s longtime secretary who I thought had been one of her most loyal subjects.

  “I honestly thought I couldn’t fool them this time,” Doreen said.

  Without hesitation, I flew at Ravana and swiped out with my sword, only to slice the blade through thin air until it scraped the back of the throne and ripped the faded velvet padding. Her image rippled and then settled back to what looked like a solid form.

  Ashe and Charles pulled me away from the throne.

  “She’s slow like her mother was,” Ravana said, her red lips pursed in a smug grin. “Isn’t she Margaret?”

  “Very,” Margaret said. “Bronwen didn’t know what hit her when you stormed this place.”

  “You betrayed her,” I said, resisting the urge to slash out at Margaret’s holographic image.

  “Now you’re catching on. Yes, I betrayed her. Because she betrayed my son.”

  “Your son?”

  “Explain it to her slowly, Margaret,” Ravana said. “Use small words.”

  “Yes, Devin was my son.”

  The missing pieces of my mother’s demise were falling into place. Marlowe had worried that an insider had been working for the enemy. Did he know that Margaret was Devin’s mother? How could he not? But then again, he hadn’t known about my mother’s previous pregnancy and the deal she had made with the demon. He wouldn’t have had any reason to distrust Margaret before now.

  Ashe glared at her, his fingers curling into fists. “Devin was a piece of shit who beat on my sister for kicks.”

  “Don’t talk about him like that!” Margaret spat. “You didn’t know him like I did. Before Bronwen murdered their baby, he adored her. He would have done anything for her. And then she had to traipse off to Scotland, brought back that human she dared to turn into a mate, and then had his bastard mixed breed.”

  “That human was my father, and he was a hell of a better man than Devin ever was!” I shouted.

  Margaret shot forward, but Ravana blocked her with a raised hand. “Don’t waste your breath. Remember when I told you to take her out as soon as she surfaced? Now two of my mates are dead because of her.”

  My aunt sure didn’t seem upset about her mates’ demise. She seemed more annoyed than devastated.

  “I’m sorry,” Margaret said. “I never thought she’d last that long.”

  “Never assume anything when it comes to the Delacroix women. If anything, we’re too stubborn to die easily.” Ravana sat up in her holographic throne and nodded toward Hawk, who still carried Zac. “Now, it would seem the bastard child has some quick decisions to make. Her little human experiment is fading fast. Meanwhile, Margaret gave some of my Knights access to the bunker, where they’ll wipe out every last soul in the place.”

  “Grandpa!” Hawk whispered.

  Doreen cast a spell, and a new portal opened, showing the lobby in the bunker.

  “You have five seconds to decide what to do. Choose wisely,” Ravana said. “Oh, and I left a little consolation prize for you on the throne.” The holographic image of the three women faded away.

  Hawk turned his panicked eyes toward me. I had to choose carefully, but Ravana’s motive was obvious. She wanted to split us up. If only I knew where Talia and her brothers had gone. Had Doreen killed them or trapped them again? And was this portal a trap too? There was no way to be sure.

  “Lay Zac down,” Charles said. “Ashe, Hawk, go. I’ll help Wren here.”

  Hawk hesitated, then lay Zac at my feet and gave me a quick embrace. “I’m sorry. I have to.”

  “It’s okay. Go.” I kissed him and urged him and Ashe toward the portal. They leapt through, and it closed right behind them in a puff of green smoke.

  I dropped to my knees by Zac, as did Charles. Zac’s eyes were staring vacantly at the ceiling. White foam bubbled from his mouth. Charles ripped Zac’s shirt open. He had two gunshot wounds, but neither bullet had exited. We flipped him over. Just like the silver shot that had lodged in my side, dark purple veins webbed out from the nasty holes -- one in the muscle at the top of his shoulder, and another near his right shoulder blade, mere centimeters from his heart.

  “We have to get the bullets out, especially that one,” I said, on the verge of panic as I pointed at the ugly wound near his shoulder blade. And it had to be quick. We could have a horde of Ravana’s Knights storming us at any moment. Or a demon or any number of other things.

  “If we go digging for it, we may end up pushing it into his heart.” Charles met my gaze, but I didn’t like the finality I saw there.

  “We will save him. What tools do you have?”

  “Wren, he needs a surgeon.”

  “I said, what tools do you have?” It couldn’t be much since he only wore a T-shirt and the athletic pants he’d been wearing when we were in my suite. But I’d never known Charles to go without some kind of gadget.

  Charles dug around i
n his pocket and pulled out a multitool. Before he could argue, I took it and unfolded the knife blade. I could not lose Zac now, even if it meant putting him through the worst pain of his undead life.

  “I’m so sorry, Zac.” I sliced into the muscle while Charles held him down.

  Zac screamed and thrashed, but I had to keep going. I had to have enough room to get hold of the bullet to pull it out, and there wasn’t much room to be had since I had to go between his ribs. I sliced through the layers until I could see the end of the bullet. The silver had nearly liquified his flesh, turning it black and necrotic as if he were a decaying corpse.

  With his right cheek pressed against the stone floor, Zac’s eyes were shut tight, his mouth open in a silent scream. A tear ran down his cheek. He must have been in agony. His pain cut through my tattoo and burned a hole in my confidence. I wasn’t a doctor. I might have been making things ten times worse. His blood made my hands slick. I almost dropped the tool.

  “Stay calm, Wren,” Charles said with a quiet, steady tone. “The bullet is right there. Wipe your hands and the tool, then use the pliers to remove the bullet.”

  “Okay.” I took a moment to do as he said and to still my shaking hands.

  “You’re going to be all right, Zac-man,” Charles soothed, but still pinned him down while he nodded toward the wound.

  I opened the pliers and reached into the gaping hole. Carefully, I took hold of the bullet and gently pulled. The pliers slipped off.

  “Shit!” Tears rolled down my cheeks.

  “You can do this,” Charles said. “I know you can.”

  Wiping the wetness from my cheeks, I steeled myself for the hardest game of Operation ever. Slowly, carefully, I took hold of the bullet again and got a firm grip of it with the pliers. With a steady hand, I pulled it until it suddenly released from the muscle. Carefully, I pulled the bubbling silver bullet from the wound and tossed it across the floor. I easily removed the other bullet in his shoulder muscle as well, which wasn’t embedded too deeply

  His wounds weren’t closing. He needed blood, and lots of it. I bit my wrist and held it over the worst one in Zac’s back. While my blood flowed into him, I let my arm rest over the wound while I lay facedown beside him, stroking his hair with my other hand. Charles eased himself off Zac and stood.

  His footsteps echoed on the floor as he walked away, probably to give me a little privacy.

  Zac’s expression gradually relaxed. He opened his beautiful eyes and focused on my face.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  “Hey.” He smiled and reached out to touch my face. “Did you cut the bitch’s head off?”

  “Not yet, but you helped us kill two of her mates.”

  He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. We’ll get you healed up.”

  “Thank you. I love you.”

  “I love you, too. So much.”

  “Is it true? Are you pregnant?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You’ll be a good mom, and Marlowe will be a good dad.”

  “All of you will be.”

  Zac smiled sadly. I knew he was thinking about Sasha as he eased himself off the floor to all fours. “I’d like that.”

  Charles cursed under his breath. I shot up to my knees to see him standing near the throne holding an old sheet.

  “What is it?”

  He spun around, his eyes wide as he ran toward me, blocking my view of the throne. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I got to my feet. “Why? Ravana said she left a gift. What’s over th—” When I peered around him, my words dissolved into a strangled sound.

  On the seat of the throne sat a severed head. One with hollow eyes and mostly skull with decaying leathery skin partially covering it.

  And platinum blonde hair just like mine.

  I covered my mouth with both hands and collapsed into Charles’s waiting arms.

  “It’s her head,” I sobbed. “My mom’s head.”

  Zac pushed himself to his feet and embraced me from behind. If it weren’t for these two giving me strength, I would have probably lost it and went on a killing spree.

  A portal appeared beside us, causing us all to jump back. Talia—or at least she looked like Talia—stepped out.

  “Oh, thank the goddess you’re still here. We were so scared. Doreen led us on a wild goose chase through dimensions I’d rather not see again.” Talia’s eyes cut to the throne, and she gasped. “She’s a monster. I’m so sorry, Wren.”

  “How do we know it’s not another trap?” Zac asked.

  “This.” Talia turned the other side of her face to us—the one burned by her own mom. “Doreen’s too vain to allow her face to be seen like that. We’ve secured the bunker. No one else can teleport into it, not even my bitch of a mother.”

  “It’s okay, Wren!” Ashe called from within the portal. “All’s clear.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Charles said as he and Zac turned me around.

  But I looked back to see my mother’s head sitting on the throne from where she once was happy and had a family. I pulled myself up and remembered that I was born to be a queen. And queens did not shy away from doing what needed to be done. The guys started to turn me back, but I shook them off and walked over to the throne.

  “Wren, don’t. Let me,” Charles offered.

  “No, I need to do this. She deserves to be laid to rest properly.”

  I picked up the sheet that Charles had dropped and draped it over Mama’s head, half hoping it was an illusion. But when I bent to pick it up, I knew it wasn’t. Resisting the tight knot in my throat and the tears that burned my eyes, I wrapped her head up securely in the sheet and held it close to my chest.

  “Now we can go.” I led the way into the portal.

  ****

  When we arrived, it looked like a tornado had wrecked the lobby. Chairs were knocked over, bookshelves toppled, tables smashed. Hawk was on a sofa tending to his grandpa, who’d suffered a blow to the head. Thankfully, the old man was still conscious.

  Hawk stood as soon as he saw me, limped over, and engulfed me in his arms. “God, Wren, I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “What happened here? Why are you limping?”

  He glanced at the wrapped object in my arms. “She wasn’t lying about the Knights. I think she thought they could kill us once we were separated. One of them managed to slice my calf with a poisoned blade.”

  Ashe came over from where he was picking up some strewn weapons. “Speaking of, we need to get you to the infirmary and clean the wound. It’s a poison I’ve never seen before. It seems to slow regular vampire healing.”

  Zac righted a fallen chair and lowered himself to sit. I checked his wounds. They still weren’t healing as fast as they should be.

  “Shit. The bullets that hit Zac must have been poisoned too.” I didn’t want to dash their hopes, but this meant two of my mates wouldn’t be at full power. It was still better odds than Ravana’s three surviving mates, but they had a few centuries of experience over us.

  Looking around, I noticed the lack of body parts or vampire goo on the floor, though pieces of leather armor and Knights’ weapons lay everywhere.

  “So, you killed the Knights?” I asked. “Or did they run away?”

  “Yeah, about that…” Hawk looked warily at Archie, who sat on the underside of an upturned table washing his face with slow, deliberate swipes of his paw. “Archie, he—how do I put this?—well, he ate them.”

  I blinked hard at the sweet furball. “Ate them? That’s not possible.”

  “I didn’t think so either,” Marlowe said as he exited the elevator and blurred over to me. “Yet here we are. He’s clearly not an ordinary cat. Just opened his mouth like a gigantic black hole and sucked them in like that video game character.”

  “Kirby?” Charles asked.

  “Yeah, that one.” Marlowe turned back to me and rubbed my upper arms with his gentle hands. “Is it tru
e, Wren? Are you—?”

  “Let’s go talk.” I glanced down at the bundle I held.

  He nodded.

  “We’ll be back,” I said, then escorted Marlowe down to my suite.

  When we exited the elevator, I smelled smoke and burning metal. Marlowe grinned and led me to the room that housed the tunnel. Or rather, once housed. The edges of the metal panel that had covered it were now fused to the rest of the wall like a messy welding job.

  “Thanks to your Knights, we defeated the ones in the tunnel, and I sealed up the wall to keep them from getting in that way. Of course, I didn’t expect Margaret to let them in from the upper entrance either. There was no record of her connection with Devin. She must have been able to erase all traces of it long before I joined the SFBI."

  "Any idea where she might be now?"

  "No clue. I’m so sorry, Wren.”

  “It’s not your fault. My mom’s mistakes… They just caught up with her.” Slowly, I uncovered her head and watched as Marlowe’s eyes opened wide.

  “My god, Wren, is that—?”

  I nodded.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “The ultimate psychological blow. We can take some time, bury your mom, regroup…”

  “No. Eleanor said attempting an ambush would be suicide. She was right. The only way we can beat Ravana is to challenge her to a public fight. If she refuses, she’ll lose the respect of her followers. Now that she’s down two mates, we have the upper hand, except that Zac and Hawk are both injured. But we have to move now.”

  My aunt had gambled on my mother’s head being my kryptonite. She was wrong. It stirred my need for vengeance into a frenzy. One of us would walk away from this fight. And it wouldn’t be my dear old auntie.

  I wrapped Mama’s head up, while Marlowe escorted me to my suite, his hand resting on the small of my back. That little gesture gave me courage. He and my other mates loved me unconditionally. No matter how young and inexperienced we might be, it was that love that we could count on to win this war.

  Once inside the suite, I placed my mom’s head in a pretty little chest I’d found in her closet, along with the box that held my sister’s tiny body. I shut the lid and let my hand rest on it with my eyes closed and entertained thoughts of what might have been had they lived. Maybe we would have had a wonderful life. Or maybe things would have been worse. Maybe I would have never been born at all. There was no way to know for sure. All I could do was make the most of the cards life had dealt me.