by Talyn Scott
“You must leave by plane,” Cyna ground out, her dagger sliding deeper into Jenny’s throat. “No misting or the others will think they can get away with it.”
So Maxim’s shields weren’t quite as operable in his death. This would greatly aid the factions in their fight. “Just try and stop me.” Starting to mist, Andreev lashed out with his be-clawed hand and knocked her away from Jen. “Run,” he told her. To the other females, he yelled, “Get out of there! Run to the airfield!”
Andreev only hoped the bit of head start he gave the females would help in the end. But currently, he held a priority in his arms that out trumped any obligation he had to help the others. He bit down and misted his newfound Bride, swirling them high above Maxim’s island until they straightened and headed for his homeland.
Chapter 21
Free of the blade, Jenny kicked heels over head and just missed Cyna’s blow. Something had changed in the female, a tapped strength Jenny couldn’t figure out, but the Undead’s eyes were blazing black, almost as though she were a Gryph on a rampage. Hissing, Searlas jumped in front of Jenny right as a crushing blow meant for Jenny’s head, struck Searlas’ shoulder. His hands flew wide, his fingers curling with his protracting claws as he hit the stone wall with a crack.
Jenny knew he’d at least broken his neck, the way his head bent to the side as he slid down the wall in a wide smear of blood. She lost her breath, the overwhelming pain of grief knocking her to her knees. Jenny somehow reminded herself that Searlas would live due to his Undead status.
Cyna rounded on her, screaming at the last of the females who pounded up the curving steps, as she walked to Jenny slowly, casually, with the gait of someone who knew she would win. “So you’ve taken lovers on the island?” She bit her wrist, producing another flow of blood before slinging it on the bars. “That’s fine, you didn’t deserve the life Master Andreev would have given you anyway.”
The immortal fire began to glow, burning bright blue the same way as it had on Sanibel Island. Jenny gripped her arms, rocking herself, a self-soothing gesture she’d thought had been broken. But no, she was doing it right here in front of the woman who’d snapped her male’s neck.
“But I still have use for you.” Her smile was odd, as if another person looked out from her face. “In my sex dungeons, vampires would pay their weight in gold for a night with the likes of you, especially if they could beat and feed.” Cyna was over her now, her fist slamming across Jenny’s face, shattering her nose and cheek. Jenny screamed, the pain snapping her out of her flashback and throwing her into the current nightmare before her.
Cyna lifted her with an arm, wrapping the crook of her elbow around Jenny’s neck, and effectively placing her in a headlock. Then she took her knuckles, and rubbed them into Jenny’s broken cheek, deepening the wound until Jenny’s bones splintered through her skin.
“Stop!” she screamed before Cyna delivered another blow to her face, then threw her inside the barred prison blazing with immortal fire. “Don’t do this!”
“This should hold you… for a while,” Cyna said, her voice dropping deeper.
“Maxim?” Jenny asked in disbelief, only able to see out of one eye. And the irony wasn’t lost on her, for the way Maxim had crushed Cyna’s eye right in front of Jenny.
“No, but I might as well be for all the power his body gave mine,” she smiled in that weird way, her face a mask for another. “I even drank his heart,” she said without feeling, without any remorse whatsoever. “And it was as cold and as black as his eyes.”
“If you loved him so much, why did you kill him?” Jenny grew dizzy, the warm wetness dripping from her face and neck, soaking her sweater.
“You’re so stupid!” Cyna hissed, running up the stairs. “Your Commander Syon did!”
“She’s right, you know,” Syon said from behind her. “I killed Maxim.”
“Good, he deserved to die.” Jenny spun on her feet, her hand shooting out to brace her injury-stemmed dizziness, yet just catching her hand before it went straight into immortal fire. “Now,” she said, gesturing to her neck, “mist me from here.” The flames were too close. “Hurry!”
He stayed right where he was. “Of all the people who would have turned on me, I didn’t expect it to be you.”
“Turned on you?” Then she recalled the lie she’d told about Niall and his brother. “There’s a mole, a double agent working among your operatives. The Vojaks will scent him or her out after they see how far the intel rises,” she said reasonably, though she felt anything but. Searlas had warned her not to disclose the lie. Searlas, however, would understand Jenny needed to regain Syon’s trust.
“Look at me, Jenny.”
She hated that he’d used Searlas’ words to gain her attention, wanted to reach between his fangs and yank them right out. “I’m looking.”
“Your lovers were right to suspect me.”
“You’re the double agent?” She gasped. “Why did you bring me here?”
“I wanted Maxim to fall for you, to claim you for his own.” He shrugged as if they were talking about the weather. “He was so ridiculously enamored of purebloods that when I showed him your picture, he basically shot off in his pants. Wanted to drink you, too, but told me he only took a crimson kiss.”
Syon started circling her, looking Jenny up and down as if he were deciding what to do with his living, breathing specimen.
She had to keep him talking before he made a decision to attack. “What about my scars?”
“Maxim is into hard core playtime.” He shrugged again. “Your current scars wouldn’t have been noticeable for all the new ones he would have given you.”
She bit back what she really wanted to say, continuing to face him as he kept circling. “And why would you think I would accept such a deplorable male and an equally deplorable life?”
“That’s easy enough,” Syon said, black flames leaping in his eyes. “I would have cut off body parts from Searlas for every time you disobeyed.” He reached out, pointing to her eye. “Starting right there, I would have sent his eyes to you.”
“Nice visual.” If the taste of her own blood running down her throat wasn’t nauseating enough, the image of Syon carving Searlas made Jenny want to throw up.
“Keeps people motivated.” He tilted his head, his face contorting into a smokey shadow before reforming. If she’d blinked she would have missed it. But there was something beneath Syon that wasn’t all vampire, the same something she sensed beneath Cyna, though Cyna’s change had happened recently.
“So what would you have accomplished by my submitting to Maxim.”
“As his, you ultimately would have held the power,” he said as if Jenny should have known this. “And I needed someone to control him better than I could.”
“Most crooked immortals kill those who get in their way,” she reminded, watching the flames lick near the ceiling, her burns echoing the fire.
“Like most Gryphs, Maxim came from a powerful family, with too many connections to dismiss. I needed his name, and his political pull to front our organization.” Syon reached out and curled a lock of hair behind Jenny’s ear. “All you had to do, sweetheart,” he said softly, “was listen to me.”
“I did everything you told me to.”
“Liar!” He backhanded her, landing the blow exactly where Cyna had crushed her bones. She skidded across the floor, her claws digging into the concrete. Jenny managed to stop a few inches away from the immortal fire.
Jenny opened her mouth, but her scream was silent, the pain too blinding. Syon grabbed her ankles, yanking her to climb atop her. He moved his tongue to her wound, licking her eye like an animal.
“Get us out of here, please, the flames…” She could barely see, at this point, just a sliver of movement a shadow here and there. And she wondered at the shadow looming on the wall, thinking she had seen it before.
“Maybe the flames don’t hurt me the way they hurt you,” he said, pressing his thigh between her l
egs and scooting her forward on the floor, her head coming nearer and nearer to the fire.
Would this be her death? she thought. Syon watching her burn? “Don’t you want to help Cyna?”
“My wraiths will,” he said in a voice that was not his own. Syon made a strange sound in the back of his throat, and then the shadow jumped forth and twisted above them. Whirling, whirling, and whirling as it went straight into Syon.
When his body pressed against hers, Jenny could feel a significant temperature drop. “I’m suddenly thirsty,” he declared, his fangs dripping as his eyes dropped to her sliced throat. With the first prick of his fangs, Jenny suddenly sensed a presence that felt like home.
Three breaths in, one slow exhale.
Three breaths in, one slow exhale.
Three breaths in, one slow exhale.
Syon’s head lifted, his face a mask of astonishment, as Jayce Jordan neared the flaming bars on a deliberate prowl. “Step away from my female,” he roared so loudly Jenny’s ears started ringing.
At the distraction, Jenny took the opportunity to land her elbow on Syon’s windpipe, forcing him away from her throat. He took another look at Jayce and started dissolving into air, wrapped in that black cloud Jenny was suspicious was a wraith.
Jayce reached out with his power, spreading the flames left and right to form a walkway, but they closed in the second he tried to step foot inside the cell walls.
“Alpha!” she cried out, but her voice was raspy and weak from coughing. “Syon’s misted!”
Jayce tried again, his eyes so blindingly blue they echoed the great blue fire all around, his hands were up, his canines digging into his chin.
“It’s no use!” She dropped to her knees, the smoke searing her lungs. When Niall had warned her this night might be like the last time, he couldn’t have been more accurate, with immortal fire to boot. “Take Searlas and go.” She swiped at her good eye, barely seeing anything but…
Suddenly, ebony wings flared out behind Jayce. “Nevesta!”
Jayce kept his stance, wrenching his hands forward in the air, simulating tearing apart the bars. They fell in on themselves, one after the other, but the flames were too tall to leap even for Jenny’s superior leg strength.
“If she’s really your Nevesta,” Jayce grated in the Alpha’s voice, “get in there while I hold the fire apart.”
Niall, already bloodied and battle-worn, lifted his wings slightly and leaped before Jenny could stop him.
“That’s suicide!” she screamed at him as he swooped in, flicked out his right wing and tossed her over the flames for Jayce to catch. In the Alpha’s arms, Jenny kissed Jayce’s cheek before he put her on the ground. “Get Searlas!”
But Jayce’s attention was on the fire centering Niall. Oh, her vampire husband had literally taken her place!
“Please,” she begged, “do something!”
With another twist of Jayce’s hand, the fire spun out in the middle creating a window. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough room. But Niall folded in his great wings, jumped a horizontal trajectory and landed on the other side.
Not safely.
“You’re on fire!” She ran to him, pushing Niall down on the ground to extinguish his right wing. Jayce managed to bring the flames down with his Druid abilities, much the way he’d lowered the cell walls. But by the time the immortal fire was out, the wing was nearly gone.
“Is the fire in you?” she asked sobbing.
“I will live,” he answered, rising to stand. He and Jayce shared a look.
Jayce nodded in understanding. “Get Jenny and Searlas airborne, and I’ll kill Syon.”
Chapter 22
Without breaking stride, Niall had Jenny over one shoulder, and Searlas over the other. He made his way through the catacombs of the warehouse before they came again to the side entrance.
“Put me down,” Jenny insisted. “I know what that burn feels like.”
“I can fly with one wing tied behind my back, or in this case, one singed.”
“That’s way more than singed.” He shot up in the air so fast, Jenny’s hair flew back from her face. “Whoa! You can fly one-winged.”
“Yes.” They ascended higher and higher, gaining measures of altitude by the second.
Jenny couldn’t look behind them, and contemplate how he was carrying them so efficiently in his shape. A testimony to his power, she supposed. So she looked down at the ground battle by the airfield. “The plane’s taking off!”
“Those imprisoned females are on board safely, Nevesta, just as I’d planned.”
Except for the one Master Andreev took, she noted silently. She’d have to tell Jayce later. Maybe he could contact Terje or Rune’s father, the Norwegian Alpha, for assistance in finding the female.
Down below, she could see Sage and Maestru fighting an Undead and Species vampire army back to back, next to Bane and Eagan. But above, where the miasma opened to reveal the real moon, a battle of Hell raged on.
“Wraiths, thousands of them,” Jenny said on a gasp. All around the Gryphs were taking them down with the swift lethalness of a blessed blade. “There are so many for each Gryph to kill. How…”
“Not how,” Niall said as he spun between manse towers, avoiding a particularly nasty wraith headed their way. “We will handle them. It’s part of what we do.”
It never occurred to Jenny that Gryphs, not the rogue Gryphs, had a specific function in immortal society. “There must be a million airborne creatures that never touch our cities because of you guys,” Jenny whispered. “And you don’t even have to protect us, do you?”
“Yes to the first question,” he paused, his head moving back and forth, searching.
“And to the second?” Jenny guessed Prince Volos wouldn’t use his resources to protect the humans as ardently as Jayce, so underground mercenaries must also be present in the Gryph society.
“It’s hard concentrating while you’re bleeding like that, Nevesta,” he said gruffly, situating her off his shoulder. She wrapped her legs around his waist, wishing they were airborne on any other night. “Your bones are protruding from the side of your face.”
“I’m alive thanks to you and my Alpha.”
“That doesn’t mean Cyna’s getting away with this, any of this.”
Jenny fought not to touch her face, to feel the bones there. If she didn’t get surgery soon, she would scar this way. “How did you know it was Cyna?”
“I smell her scent on you,” he said with a hiss. “And somewhere close, I smell your blood on another creature.”
“This could be Syon or Cyna,” she said as they swooped towards a rocky cliff near the opening, where at least a hundred Gryphs stood guarding the only entrance and exit as the plane shot through.
“No, Jayce Jordan has Syon below.”
Jenny looked down to the right of the cottage where she had spent a beautiful night with her males, to find Jayce Jordan piercing Syon’s chest with his claws and pulling out his heart. Syon dropped to his knees but managed to mist.
“How did he mist with Jayce on him like that?”
“Syon’s possessed by wraiths, just like Cyna. It took me a while to figure it out, and this whole mess before us confirms it.”
“How exactly do they work?” she asked as she watched Sage mist off in pursuit of Syon; they made it all the way to the miasma exit without stopping. She only hoped Sage could catch Syon and finish the final death that Jayce nearly completed.
“Wraiths get inside creatures or humans and do whatever dirty work those who be-spelled them called or paid for in sacrifices.”
Kalen had refused to talk about them after her attack. All Jenny knew was that the wraiths had tried to possess her cousin, too. “So we don’t know who’s be-spelling these wraiths, do we?”
“No, that’ll take some time.”
“How do we kill them, otherwise, since they’ll keep coming back?”
“Such a smart female,” Niall praised her as he landed on the cli
ff near the opening. “Intelligence turns me on.” He lowered Searlas to the ground and motioned for a fellow Gryph to feed Searlas to heal and reawaken him.
“Glad to still turn you on when part of your body is missing,” Jenny replied sadly, looking over his brutally charred wing.
He winked at her as he examined her wounds tenderly. “I still have that part, though.”
She knew he wasn’t horny, but still enraged for what Cyna had done to his co-mates, and he was trying to distract her. “Don’t blame yourself. You helped get those females out of here,” Jenny reminded, her eyesight nearly clear, her body healing well.
“I thought you were safe for the time being,” he whispered in shame. “I almost lost you because of my stupidity.”
“No, you almost lost me because of evil,” she corrected, her gaze drifting to a strange fog rising over the Gryphs. “Something’s wrong.”
“At the moment, just about everything is wrong,” Niall said dryly.
Without thinking, Jenny reached for his weapons belt, yanking out a familiar weapon. She’d seen one similar to this during the murder spree that had recently surrounded her cousin Kalen. Except the one in her hand wasn’t a stake, but a Druid blessed dagger made entirely of be-spelled wood.
“Jenny,” Niall warned. “That’s the only thing that kills — ”
“Cyna!” Jenny charged forward before Cyna landed in front of Niall, stabbing the bitch right in the throat.
Cyna hissed, jerking back, but a thick chain wrapped around her neck protected Cyna from most of the impact. Niall spun around to grab her just as Jenny reared back and drove the dagger under Cyna’s ribs, trying for her heart.
Blood spurting from her mouth, Cyna shouted, “You should be dead!”
Niall’s arms were weaving the air behind Cyna, his good wing stretched to one side. In that moment, Jenny realized he was redirecting the wraiths from Cyna’s body and sending them out into the air for the Gryphs to kill one by one. That he trusted Jenny to take Cyna down, gave her new determination to finish the job.