I see a few Phoenixes out here, their Fireskin glowing orange in the early morning light. I don’t understand that either. How could someone who was destined for sending souls to a better place, hurt and kill so many? Wouldn’t they want to go to the same place they sent so many souls to? Wouldn’t they fear hell that much more because they knew what they’d be missing?
I’m between the house and Evangeline, but that doesn’t mean a fucking thing right now. We’re surrounded by men and bullets are whizzing by our heads from the open second-floor windows. Evangeline drops to the bracken of the forest floor to return fire, taking out two of the three before she concentrates on the Wraith in front of her. Aidan and Cam are on her like white on rice, guarding her back as they eliminate threat after threat trying to take out my Angel while I’m stuck separated from her.
Good men.
They can’t stop them all, though, and I’ve never been more glad that she’d spent so much time training to fight. She’s fluid and beautiful as she spins, and if she weren’t beheading a man with a rapier in the middle of a dicey as fuck fight, I’d want to kiss her. But for now, I’m stuck in a well-matched battle with a man just as big as I am. Every strike has a parry, every slice has a block, and I can’t seem to get the upper hand on him.
When the slice to my back comes, it’s a shock. I was so engrossed in my Angel and the man in front of me who I just can’t seem to kill, I missed the man behind me. The blow takes me to my knees, and then I have two Wraiths bearing down on me.
Fuck.
RHYS
I have never been more glad that I never leave the house without at least one weapon than I am right now. Five Wraiths smoke into the penthouse, and I could kick myself for not taking Aurelia seriously before. When has she ever been wrong about her fears? That’s right, fucking never.
I pull my H&K from my spine holster and fire a round as I yank Aurelia behind me. The first one goes down easy, but when I have my whole world behind me, any threat at all is too much. Then, she isn’t behind me anymore. Aurelia’s hand rips from mine, and she's dragged away by a Witch I didn’t see before. The Witch looks so much like Tessa, if I hadn’t watched her die with my own eyes, I would have believed it was her. Aurelia jerks from the woman’s hold, but she is unbalanced and falls to all fours just missing the coffee table by mere inches. She seems unhurt at the moment, but all I want to do is kill the Witch who took her from me.
I’m torn, but I shouldn’t have been. Aurelia isn’t helpless despite her delicate condition. She reaches underneath the skirt of her dress to a thigh bandolier filled with throwing knives. She makes short work of the Witch’s Achilles tendon, and then to add insult to injury, Aurelia embeds the knife in the Witch’s thigh. In the melee of her screams of agony I take out another Wraith, but my good luck soon runs out.
In the next instant, my left shoulder is struck by a bullet. I don’t feel it, but Aurelia’s shriek of pain sends the worst sort of fear through me.
If I bleed, she bleeds. If I die, she dies. The babies. The babies. Oh, God.
MENA
I didn't know when I started feeling when Aurelia was in trouble – birth maybe – but it was never this acute. Never this visceral. It was more than just knowing. I felt her fear, her pain. I felt it more than my own and I knew – I knew it was her. It had to be. My left shoulder was on fire, and I could barely keep hold of the Glock in my hand, but I hadn’t been struck. Ash was right next to me, and since I’d learned how to shield him as well as myself, I knew he wasn’t injured.
My gut said it was her, and I knew I couldn’t wait. I knew she had no time. So I met Evan’s eyes with apology in mine. Because I couldn’t do what I said I would do. I couldn’t fulfill my promise to Nicola. I had to leave them. I had to go to Aurelia. Because if I didn’t she would die.
“Aurelia is in trouble. I have to go. I have to go,” I whisper as I grab Asher’s hand.
“We have to go back. Now,” I tell him. He doesn’t question why, he doesn’t do anything but grab my waist and travel from the battlefield back to the penthouse, trading one hell for another. I reinforce the shield around myself and Ash, and when we reform in the middle of the kitchen, I am supremely glad I had the forethought. Otherwise, Ash would have a bullet in his brain right about now.
Splashes of blood and gore litter the kitchen. A body of a Wraith lay just in front of the sink and another in the dining room. A Witch is screaming of revenge and agony in the living room, and Rhys is trying to protect Aurelia with his body as three Wraiths advance on him. I blink, and Ash has taken out one of the men, but the other prove much harder to kill.
These men are not the untrained peons Walter offered up for slaughter, these men are killers.
I catch movement in the living room just as the two Wraiths make their move. The Witch is crawling for Aurelia, her fingertips glowing red with unspent magic. I do the only thing I can think of, I throw a bolt of my Aegis at her, knocking her into the thick floor to ceiling glass window so hard the three-inch pane cracks. The light in her eyes goes out as blood pours from her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. Her death was too quick for someone who would hurt a pregnant woman, and I wish I’d killed her slower. Bloodthirsty, perhaps, but I don’t give a fuck.
Ash eliminates one of the two Wraiths still left standing, but we have a bigger problem. The last one has drug Aurelia away from Rhys and has positioned her in front of him like a shield. The worst part isn’t that he’s using my sister’s pregnant body for his own cowardice. No, the worst part is the loaded gun he has against her temple.
EVAN
I feel it before I see it – the imminent danger West is in. It is a niggle in the back of my mind and swoop to my gut. I turn in time to see a giant of a man slash a thick sword upward, and the way West’s back arches, the blade hit its target.
Oh, God. He’s down on all fours. He’s breathing, but he’s not moving. He’s not getting to his feet. Oh, God. He’s hurt. Oh, shit. My brain blanks for a split second and then regroups. I embed my rapier in the gut of the closest enemy and slash outward, spilling his innards all over the forest floor. The Wraith’s eyes turn from smug to shocked, and I watch his expression go slack with a fucking smile on my face. His death will be slow and painful, and it is a slight comfort to me that I make sure the killers of children leave this world screaming.
I smoke out from my spot of relative safety between Cam and Aidan and go to West. I feel my power rise in my chest as I move, and when I travel to the place just before them, the men fly back as if pulled by a puppeteer’s string. I move to them and take their heads with my rapier before they even knew what hit them. I move to the next and the next and the next until there are no more lives for me to take outside.
When Nicola steps out on the wide wrap-around porch, I have to remind myself that it isn’t her. I have to remind myself that she has Iva’s dark soul squatting inside her like a toad. It is easier than I’d thought to separate the two, especially when she drags a bleeding Kyle across the porch planks from behind her like a rag doll.
Nicola wouldn’t do that to him. I saw her with Kyle months ago – before all this mess. I saw her expressions. I saw how she felt even before he did. Nicola was taken with the giant man from the start.
She flings Kyle’s broken but still breathing body from her fingertips as if he were a piece of errant trash. Kyle lands at my feet and I feel more than see the rest of my family file in around me. Her expression flickers for a moment, but when this woman talks, Iva’s thick, Irish brogue slips from her lips.
“Evangeline, dearie. I’ve been expecting you.”
22
Not Today
MENA
I don’t know what to do.
I’m stuck here watching my larger than life sister shiver in fear. No, not shiver – she’s vibrating, she’s so scared. Scared because anything he does to her, he does to her entire family. Her husband, her babies. Aurelia’s eyes pale, pupilless eyes are wide and rivulets of tears are fall
ing from them. Her left shoulder is bloody and limp at her side, and her chest is heaving with panicked breaths.
I have to figure out what to do. If I shock him, his muscles could tense, and he could pull the trigger by accident.
Then, out of the corner of my eye I see Aurelia’s fingers tiptoe down her right leg as she pulls up the fabric of her dress to reveal her thigh bandolier filled with throwing knives. I make no movement, nothing to give away her actions because the Wraith holding her looks skittish at best. His eyes dart at the three of us – three fully phased predators ready to skin him alive at the first available opportunity.
I glance at Rhys and Ash out of the corner of my eye. It is amazing to me that these two men who couldn’t be more different, have matching expressions of wrath on their faces. Rhys’ Fireskin paints him in an orange glow, his black and blood-red wings spread wide, his face a promise of retribution. Ash’s phase has turned his ice-blue eyes black, talons longer than Aurelia’s throwing knife curl from his fingertips, two-inch-long upper and lower fangs give him a macabre smile, and his power sweeps around him in swaths of black smoke.
It’s good we look so deadly. It’s keeping the Wraith’s fearful eyes on us instead of on the woman in his arms. The woman who at this very moment decides it is high time he feels what Fireskin does to people who fuck with us. Bright orange flames skate over Aurelia’s skin, burning the Wraith’s arms, face and torso. He flinches back, howling in agony and Aurelia shoves her knife into the soft spot just under the man’s chin. The blade isn’t long enough to kill him, but that doesn’t matter. She takes her burning hand and grabs his jaw as she rips out the knife.
She gives him a look that would strike the fear of God into anyone, but at this point, the man shouldn’t fear God – he should fear her. With a hideous snarl, she flips the blade to an overhand grip and drives home into his eye. She holds him up until he quits twitching and then drops him like a sack of potatoes at her feet.
We’re all ready to go to her – ready to check her over until she doubles over in pain as she clutches her belly.
Oh, no. Oh, God, oh, shit.
The babies.
EVAN
It is the worst trick in the book to take away someone’s will – to take away everything that they are and make them a puppet. Iva has been doing it for centuries under the radar, but never this overt, never killing so indiscriminately, never.
Nicola’s body is merely a suit that Iva is wearing. Her voice is different, her mannerisms are different, but the most startling, is her eyes. Nicola’s eyes are an unseeing cornflower blue, but Aurelia told me that Iva used brown glass eyes in the place of her missing ones. And though Nicola’s eyes were never taken from her because she was born blind, the woman before me possesses an odd honey-brown set of peepers.
Her hair is down, flowing around her shoulders and down her back and she’s weirdly wearing makeup – something Nicola neither wears nor has to wear. What is she getting ready for, a fucking party?
She’s been expecting me.
Sure. I’ll bet she has. I look at Kyle who is struggling to his feet, and realize she has beaten him almost senseless. Well, check one item off my list. West reaches out a hand to help him up, and he shakily makes it to his feet.
“Please, Nic. Please make it back to us. Please,” Kyle rasps.
Iva’s girlish giggle in response turns my stomach.
“And why would she do that when I am here now? Nicola Miller was a poor blind girl who never did anything but try and scheme her way around me. Now that I’m here, there is no need for her to wonder. She is powerless. There is only me now,” she says as she smiles.
Her pronouncement sends a chill down my spine. I held out hope that Nicola was still in there. Still fighting. But I don’t know if she is. I don’t know if there is anything left of Nicola to fight.
It makes me want to break my promise to Kyle. It makes me want to make her suffer like Nicola has, like we all have. I want to, but I won’t. I may have taken lives, but I am nothing like this woman. I don’t have this level of evil in me. I don’t need power or subjugation. I need love and support and friends – and these are things I have already. These are things Iva will never have because as much power as she scrabbles to possess, she will never have it all.
That thought brings a smile to my face, making the smug one on her face droop a bit. I adjust my hold on my rapier and pull my tri-dagger from its sheath.
“Where’s your minion, Iva? Doesn’t he want to play?” I taunt.
“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head about him, darling. He’s doing exactly what he’s supposed to do,” she counters and then her Fireskin explodes over her flesh and Nicola’s brilliant orange wings burst from her back.
As she takes her first step off the porch stair, fire catches in her wake – jumping from plank to plank, setting the house ablaze.
RHYS
The pain on her face.
Oh, God, please. Please don’t do this to us. It’s too early, too early for them. There’s something wrong.
I’m proved right when a small puddle of blood starts forming at her feet. It happens in slivers of seconds. The agony on her face morphs into shock. Then her Fireskin dies, and Aurelia’s face turns white. Then her eyes roll back in her head as she collapses. Asher moves the quickest of us all and catches her before she hits the ground. He is gentle, but there isn’t much that can stop the hurt to her poor body.
Mena places a hand on her belly, and already I can tell Aurelia is drawing on her. Drawing so much of her, her fire goes out as well. Then, Mena’s face drains of color, and blood runs from her nose.
Oh, God, please.
“T-the hos-hospital in Knoxville. With the W-witches. Go, Ash. Now,” Mena orders haltingly.
He meets my eyes, and I can see the fear in them. Fear for his wife, fear for mine, and fear for our lives. He gives me a nod and gathers Aurelia in his arms as he smokes out of the room – carrying my whole world in his arms as he goes.
WEST
The large sprawling porch blazes bright as the flames jump from the steps to the external walls and filter down to the dry forest bracken beneath our feet. We have to move. We have to hurry before we burn. But Evangeline doesn’t pay any mind to the flames that will surely burn her or the woman in front of her. My Angel’s shoulders set, her jaw clenches and the phase she was holding back flows over her like water.
She moves slightly as if she is about to make her away across the flames to Iva, but before she can make it an inch, black smoke of a traveling Wraith comes in behind her. Time moves like molasses. I won’t make it in time to stop them, but I go to her anyway.
Please, no. Please, not my Angel.
I may not be in time, but someone else is. Kyle shoves Evangeline out of the way as he takes the blade meant for her back in his gut. Devereux Emerson looks slightly put out by this turn of events and uses his boot to shove him off his blade.
By the time Kyle’s body meets the earth, Devereux is stuck like a hog on a spit by the blades of Cam, Aidan, Carver, Ian, and myself. Ian wrenches out his blade first as he drops to help Kyle, and the rest of us follow suit, but it is only I who raise my blade again. Devereux’s body is pouring blood, but he’s still breathing, his eyes rolling like a spooked mare.
He is a threat we have to eliminate, and I’m not waiting for this fucker to figure out a way to resurrect himself a second time. No. Fuck that. I take my kukri and remove his head with one quick strike. I don’t wait to take his soul, I open my jaws and inhale his soul as quickly as I can, shutting my mind off to the haunting images that filter through my brain of every horrendous sin he’s committed.
The scream coming from Nicola’s body sends a chill of fear down my spine. My eyes shoot up from the man who almost took my life to the woman trying to take my Angel’s.
ASHER
I shouldn’t be the one to do this. I shouldn’t be the one holding this much responsibility. The only thing in my life that hasn’t
gone to shit is Mena. The only family I have is the one I made for myself, and I can’t be the one to ruin it. I shouldn’t be the one holding something so precious.
But I am, and there is no one else who could do it. Mena looked like the life was draining out of her, and if she’s that bad, I cannot begin to wrap my mind around what Aurelia’s body is going through. She is dead weight in my arms, her jacket and dress soaked in blood as I hold her tight to me and travel to the one hospital I know where we would be accepted.
When I make it to the emergency room entrance, a Shifter I recognize from months ago is waiting for me right outside along with three Witches. The Shifter looks to be the leader of this group and asks me questions rapid fire as I set Aurelia’s limp body on a gurney, and the three Witches move as if their hair is on fire, booking it to the operating room elevators. All I can focus on are Aurelia’s feet, which are shod in thin-soled sandals that used to be tan leather but are now stained black with blood. My eyes well with tears and as the elevator door close on those feet, the first tears of worry and fear fall.
I feel a pull on my elbow, and I glance back to the Shifter female. I notice right away the color of her hair. It is an odd color that danced back and forth between brown and red.
“What’s your name, sir?” the Shifter’s voice is calm, and that scares me worse than anything.
“Asher. My name is Asher.”
“Okay, Asher, I’m Willa. I need you to tell me what’s going on,” she orders, her no-nonsense voice waking me up a bit.
“They were attacked. She’s – Aurelia – is seven and a half months pregnant with twin Phoenixes. She started bleeding from between her legs… There was a Witch, I don’t know if she did a spell. Her fingers were glowing red, and then Aurelia was bleeding. I don’t know. I don’t know,” I say, and I notice she’s had my arm in hers as she’s leading me to the same elevator Aurelia just went to. I yank my arm from hers and take a step back.
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