Amber slowly lifted her head. Her sadness was only overpowered by the determination in her eyes.
“All right.” Amber cleared her thoughts and rolled her tired shoulders. “Stand back, this is going to take some doing. I haven’t opened a portal in years, much less one that will be large enough and stay open long enough to accommodate an entire pack of wolves.”
Amber reached into her right pocket and produced a curved wand that looked more like a knife. Etched in the wood were runes Jack could only guess at. She lifted the wand in a large circle. A dark purple light grew at the wand’s tip and penetrated the night’s darkness.
With long movements, she drew a circle in the air in front of her, and the doorway she created began to take form—a circular space of air as tall as Kimberly and as wide as a werewolf. A shimmer began, then turned into a different scene all together.
One moment, Jack was standing across from Amber, watching her create the doorway; the next moment, she had disappeared behind the portal she had opened. In front of Jack was a doorway to a long patch of waving grass and a dark sky beyond.
“Let’s get this done,” Kimberly growled as she strode through the doorway and to the death that waited on the other side.
Chapter 32
Sloan
The bullets hit Sloan’s shield like a peppering of rocks. Her strength as a vampire kept the shield in place over Kade. Two bullets ricocheted off Sloan’s helmet. It felt like someone punching her in the head, but the steel helmet stood solid.
Sloan looked up at the last second before impact. She aimed her lance at a pair of soldiers, one kneeling and the other standing behind him. At the moment of impact, she took the kneeling vampire through his right eye. Kade’s forward moment pushed the lance completely through his skull, and into and out of the back end of the stomach of the vampire who knelt behind him.
After that, there was no time to plan, no time to process what was happening, only time to react. Kade plowed through the first line of vampire soldiers, finally launching himself into the air and coming to a stop atop a mound of soldiers.
Sloan felt a shudder through her shoulder as her lance snapped in two. She leapt off Kade, hurling her broken lance at a vampire solider like a spear. It punctured the vampire’s light armor in the area over his chest.
Sloan drew her mage sword with her right hand and flipped the switch. Her left hand still holding the large square shield, Sloan went to work. She was a maelstrom of wrath as she cut down her enemies left and right, and adrenaline pumped through Sloan’s veins so quickly, it threatened to overwhelm her senses.
As if her vampire part understood what was going on, her vision reddened and her canines elongated. Out of the corner of her eye, she tried as much as she could to be aware of what was happening around her. The white colors the Azra guards used, compared to the black the New Hope soldiers wore helped in cutting down on the confusion of who was fighting whom.
Sloan severed the head of a vampire soldier in front of her, while taking a bullet to the front of her right shoulder from another vampire soldier to her right. The bullet lodged in her scale armor, making the skin underneath sizzle with the heat of the round.
Hurling her shield at the vampire who had fired on her, Sloan severed his body in two with the force of her throw.
All around her, shifters grappled with vampires, and vampires bit into Azra guards in return. Sloan’s vampire unit was fighting as bravely as she could ask for. To her right, Pia and Babs were back to back. Doyle had made his way near Kade and the two were fighting a large group of vampire soldiers who were trying to reload their weapons.
For the moment it seemed like their plan was working, but for how long their much smaller force would manage to keep the New Hope soldiers at bay was anyone’s guess.
A blow struck Sloan from her left, so hard, it made her head ring. Her helmet flew through the air as she struggled to see past the bright stars that exploded across her vision.
Without warning, a white mage sword came down toward her neck, hoping to relieve her from her head. Sloan managed to get her own sword up just in time to block the blow, and sparks erupted with an angry sizzling as the weapons met.
Sloan went down on one knee under the immense pressure applied to her blade. Her eyes searched past the bright light of the two weapons to find Commander Steel on the other side. His black eyes were alive with bloodlust. Not only his canines, but also his entire mouth had filled with jagged teeth.
Sloan rolled out from under his blade, coming up to find her feet. For the moment, those fighting around the two military leaders decided to mind their own business and find others to engage with in battle. A small circle opened up for the two warriors.
“You’ve already lost and you don’t even know it,” mocked Commander Steel, who Sloan also knew as the mercenary The Scar. “It’s over.”
“Nothing’s over!” Sloan yelled back over the raging war.
Horns sounded from the Azra walls, signaling that the gargoyle had swooped in and rescued the slaves working on laying the track.
“You hear that sound?” Sloan bared her teeth at her enemy. “That’s your slaves making it to the safety of the Azra walls.”
Commander Steel lifted his head high and barked laughter into the sky. “You think we didn’t anticipate your sense of morality leading you to this point? We wanted you to open your gates, you idiot.”
A pit of doubt filled Sloan’s stomach. Fear raced down her spine in a way the promise of battle never could. For some reason, Sloan understood Commander Steel wasn’t bluffing; he meant every word he said.
Shouts of panic began to fill the battlefield. Before Sloan could look around to gauge what was happening, Commander Steel came at her again.
He was just as fast and as strong as Sloan. With previous opponents, Sloan would rely on her years of fighting experience to best them. This wasn’t the case with her enemy now. He matched her, stroke for stroke. The combatants circled each other, weaving in and out of one another’s strikes. When their blades did hit, they sent showers of sparks over the battlefield.
Deep groaning so loud Sloan thought the earth itself was tearing open interrupted the battle and the ground shook with tremors akin to an earthquake. Sloan wiped the sweat from her face, and her hand came back red with her own blood, blood she hadn’t even felt in the heat of battle from a wound that had opened on the side of her head and had already healed.
The groan came again, like a hundred metal rods being twisted against their will.
The retreat horn sounded somewhere from the Azra gates. Yells from Azra guards warned their brothers and sisters to make it back to the gates with all haste.
Out of the corner of her eye, Sloan witnessed the impossible. The giant mage engine was alive.
Chapter 33
Sloan
Sloan couldn’t believe her eyes. She understood the information her brain was relating to her, but somehow she was refusing to believe it. The mage engine that had only been a steel cart infused with mage power to pull the rest of the cars behind it along the track, was somehow now alive.
The groaning came from the weapon standing on two metal legs that opened from its underbelly and two arms unhinging from its sides. The snarling wolf head once in front of the mage engine had transitioned to the top of its body. A massive metal monster with a purple wolf eyes now stood, marching its way to the Azra walls.
“Hahaha!” Commander Steel motioned with an open hand for Sloan to travel with the rest of her fleeing soldiers. “Go, run, back to the safety of your walls. They won’t be standing much longer.”
More than anything, Sloan wanted to end the commander there and then, but if she stayed to fight, she knew her vampire unit and Kade would do the same. Against an entire army, they had no hope.
Sloan buried her anger deep and began to run back to the open gates of Azra. Kade fell in line beside her. His silver armor was bloody, but he moved as though he wasn’t injured. To her right, Pia, Babs
, and Doyle had joined her run for the gates. Just like Kade, they were bloody but able to run as fast as Sloan.
“What is that?” Pia yelled as they ran back to the supposed safety of Azra.
“I don’t know,” Sloan shouted back.
As they ran, two things became obvious: first, the main group of Azra guards who were not shifters nor equipped with the speed of Sloan’s vampire unit wouldn’t make it to the gates before the mechanical monster.
Second, if Azra was breached, they wouldn’t stand a chance. Containing the horde of New Hope vampires had to be part of their strategy. Sloan and the Azra guards were strongest if they attacked the larger unit together. A battle that spread to every part of Azra’s interior would be a battle they would not be able to win.
The ground shuddered with every step of the mechanical mage monster. Its long strides meant within seconds it would reach the Azra walls. Already those guards in the walls tasked with covering the escape of the main group were firing arrows and lead rounds at the approaching behemoth. Every projectile that struck the iron beast’s hide fell off like water droplets from a steel breastplate.
Sloan and her group skidded to a halt at the open Azra gates. Cherub stood ready with the gargoyle unit.
“We need to close the gates!” a scream from an Azra guard reached their ears. “We need to close the gates!”
“Not until everyone’s inside!” Cherub roared over the sounds of battle.
Sloan had seconds to make a decision. The metal monster that stood just as tall as the Azra wall would arrive in seconds, followed by the fleeing Azra guards that included Croft, Slade, and Sasha, and finally the bulk of the New Hope army would come seconds after that.
“We have to—” But Sloan didn’t get her thought out before she was interrupted.
“Look!” Babs shouted, pointing to a blue blur that raced toward the iron machine. “Who is that?”
Sloan squinted, trying to figure out what she was seeing. A solitary rider came from the south as if she had risen from the ocean itself. A great blue sword stretched out to one side. She rode a black unicorn.
“Kimberly,” Sloan said, more to herself than to anyone at the gates. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Kimberly raced with abandon straight at the iron giant. “We need to help her! Let’s go!”
Sloan didn’t wait for an answer or a consensus from Cherub. She was about to take her first step forward, when the gargoyle commander reached out and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders.
“Wait. She knows what she’s doing.” Cherub struggled to hold Sloan. “She’s already bought us the time we need.”
Cherub was right. The monster only a few hundred yards away now hesitated as Kimberly made first contact. She dragged her blue made sword across the beast’s right metal leg as she passed. It reached down to swat her, but missed. Seemed speed was one of the monster’s weaknesses.
Kimberly’s act had already bought Azra the time it needed. Croft and the remaining fleeing Azra unit were reaching the gates, with the New Hope vampire army now only seconds behind.
“Inside! Inside!” Croft screamed to the soldiers around her. She bled from a wound on her right eyebrow. Dark crimson red pooled from yet another wound on her left leg. “Close the gates!”
BOOM!
Lightning split the sky. A dozen Azra soldiers’ just feet from the safety of the walls light up in a ball of fire.
“Let’s leave the gates open a moment longer, shall we?” Leah descended from the sky, levitating overhead. The few Azra soldiers fast enough to shoot at her with arrows or bullets were skewered with purple lightning coming from Leah’s wand before they could fire. “Croft, sister, it’s so good to see you.”
“Sloan, Cherub, the mage engine must be stopped.” Croft lifted into the air, ignoring her wounds. “I’ll deal with Leah. She’s beyond any of you now.”
“Deal with me?” Leah gave everyone in the area a wicked look. “How are you going to deal with me, when you can’t even protect your own shifters?”
Sloan’s heart broke into a million pieces as the witch took aim at Kade. Time stopped then sped up so fast Sloan didn’t have time to react. Luckily for her, Saber didn’t have the same problem.
The one-eyed shifter understood what was about to happen. With no regard for his own life, he tackled his little brother, shielding him with his own body. Leah’s lightning strike caught Saber in his back, frying skin and hair alike.
Kade let out a scream that sounded half human from his sabertooth throat. The two brothers fell to the ground in a heap.
The events unfolding in front of Sloan had torn her attention from the advancing New Hope army. They were yards away and sprinting quickly. They were so close now Sloan could see their black eyes thirsting with blood lust.
Leah and Croft battled overhead in the sky with a shower of purple-and-yellow magic.
Sloan allowed herself the space of a heartbeat to be overwhelmed. That was all she got; that was all she could be given. Leaders didn’t have the option to be weak.
“Get them inside!” Sloan screamed to Sasha who hovered over her brothers protectively. Kade shifted back to his human form, his large sabertooth armor falling around him in pieces. “Get them inside!”
“Guards of Azra!” Cherub’s voice somehow boomed above the cracking magic taking place over head. “Shield wall! Defend your home! For your families, for your lives, for your future!”
ARRROO!
Immediately, a line of white-cloaked Azra guards lined up in front of Sloan. It was too late to close the slow moving gates. The New Hope vampire soldiers were upon them.
The sick sound of bodies slamming into bodies, shields striking flesh, and weapons cutting into one another permeated the battle. The vampires with their superior speed were only matched by the gargoyles’ strength. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean, the two forces fought in the space of the open gates. The Azra gates themselves afforded a dozen soldiers to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Sloan stood just behind the line, looking to Kade and Sasha who cried over Saber’s smoking body.
She had lost another friend. Although she had just met Saber, he’d already meant something to her being Kade’s brother. A brother he had only just been reunited with.
Somewhere past the confrontation at the gates, past the sizzling magical fight taking place in the sky overhead, the thumb of the steel mage engine hummed.
“With me!” Sloan yelled to Pia, Babs, and Doyle. “To the wall!”
Sloan sprinted up the steps. When she reached the top of the battlements and looked out to the scene in front of her, her heart dropped in her chest.
Chapter 34
Sloan
The New Hope vampire army swirled at the gates like a ocean of ebony. The Azra guards on the wall were doing their best to repel them, firing everything they had, even hurling rocks and black pitch followed by fire.
For all of the vampires they struck, in seconds, they were back on their feet, their healing factor mending them in minutes. It seemed the only way they stayed down was with the fire or extreme trauma to their heads.
Past the army, still confronting the mage engine by herself, Kimberly weaved in and out from between its steel legs. Her blue sword cut through the metal beast like butter, but had no apparent effect on the monster.
“We’re not going to do anyone any good from here!” Sloan yelled to her vampire squad. “Kimberly needs the most help now. If that monster makes it to the Azra walls, it’s all over for us!”
“Yeah, but how are we going to get through the army between us and them?” Doyle shouted back.
“Hold on!”
Sloan recognized the voice, but didn’t believe who she was hearing. She turned to see Elizabeth and Abigail standing at the gates. Abigail reached over and tore a metal bracelet off her sister.
“Elizabeth! Abigail!” Sloan looked to each, grateful to have them enter the fight. “Are you two sure about this?”
Before they c
ould answer, there was a boom in the sky and a massive wave of purple magic tore over Croft’s body. The witch was hurled to the ground under the torrent of Leah’s attack.
“I’ve got to stop them.” Elizabeth rose into the air. “The rest of you, hold on.”
“Hold on?” Pia looked to the other members of the squad on the wall. “What does she mean ‘ho—’”
Sloan, her vampire squad, and Abigail were lifted into the air one moment, and hurled off the wall and toward the mage engine the next.
The sensation of flying enveloped Sloan once more. Unlike being lifted into the air by Cherub, this time it felt oddly horrifying. One moment, a sense of elation enveloped her, only to be replaced by the thought of having to land. In seconds, the group traveled over the New Hope army. To Sloan and everyone else’s relief, instead of plummeting to the ground, they were lowered.
“Aareth?” Ashley reigned in the unicorn she rode. The beast foamed at the mouth. “Is he all right?”
“It’s good to see you, too.” Sloan drew her sword and flicked on her heated blade. “As far as I know, he’s fine. He left with Jack to go look for his father a few days ago.”
Ashley’s tired, sweaty face somehow seemed to brighten with the knowledge. Despite their dire situation, the thought of her loved one safe and far away from the events unfolding around them now gave her a sense of peace.
BOOM! BOOM!
The mage engine with the glowing wolf head looked down at them. If its metal face was capable of expression, Sloan imagined it would be angry right about now.
“Its legs are too thick!” Kimberly prepared herself for another assault. “We need to bring it down and sever its limbs somehow.”
The ground shuddered under its heavy footfalls as it got closer to Sloan and her group.
“One leg at a time, then.” Sloan looked over to Abigail, who had taken her pair of mage katanas from their sheaths on her back. Her blades shown with bright white light. “We have four mage swords instead of one.”
The Complete Vampire Project Series: (Books 1 - 5) Page 79