Two things became swiftly clear: they were much faster than we’d expected, and they weren’t going to go down easy. Flying around the island, they attacked with fire and ice, swiped people with their spiked tails, smacked them aside with their punctured wings, or grabbed them with their claws and then tossed them at other vampires. They also breathed clouds of smoke to impair our vision, making it harder for us to defend ourselves.
Basically, they were total bastards.
Beside me, David sent out a series of fatal psionic blasts. He bared his teeth in a feral smile when his aim rang true and one of the creatures fell mere feet in front of us, shifting into his human shape as death took him.
Hearing a roar of hatred and, if I wasn’t mistaken, grief, I looked up to see another dragon doing an actual nose-dive as it headed right for David.
“David, above you!” I warned.
His head snapped back, but the creature didn’t get any closer as Harvey swept out his arm and telekinetically sent it careening hard into a tree. The impact snapped the thick tree, which almost crushed me and Paige as it collapsed with a thud.
Harvey winced. “My bad.”
Growling, the dragon quickly righted itself. But instead of taking to the air, it stumbled and shifted to his human form. Eyes flaming with hatred, he lunged for David. But I’d already leaped toward the shifter. Intercepting the move, I jammed my elbow into his throat and thrust a psychic hand into his mind.
And there it was. A blood-bond.
I pulled it hard, almost sending him to his knees with a cry of utter agony. But it didn’t break; probably because it was different from vampiric bonds—perhaps a link that had formed as a result of a blood oath. I settled for tugging on it as I went at him with a series of dirty moves that should be illegal even in the world of vampires.
Weak though he was, he held his own—even got a few real good shots in, causing my lip to split and nearly cracking one of my ribs. Gritting my teeth against the pain that pulsed through my abdomen, I whipped out my leg, kicking his knee hard enough to knock his balance and make him fall to his knees. Then I was on him, hands gripping his head while my psychic hand stretched his bond. In a move that was one of Ava’s favourites, I snapped his neck.
I might have perversely smiled in victory if a stream of fire hadn’t blown in my direction. I jumped back, watching as it scorched the ground mere feet away from me. Although I’d evaded the fire, the boiling heat still caught my skin. Blisters formed on my face as it burned and prickled.
“Shit, Imani, come here.” Paige gently placed her hand over my seared flesh. As she took away my wound, it looked as though something was rippling under her skin, moving from the hand on my face all the way up to her elbow. The process didn’t weaken her because injuries were weapons for her to use.
Touching my healed cheek, I said, “I really wish I had your gift.” Or maybe a water-based gift since, at this point, fire was spreading like…well, wildfire. The rain coming from the spooky dark cloud hovering above helped, but it wasn’t enough. I sure hoped Keeley’s storm picked up fast.
As the fight went on, more and more dragons fell—many of whom had been heading right for Sam. Not only were dragon shifters seriously strong in their human form, injured or not, but they would fight to the bitter end. It would have been admirable if they weren’t trying to kill us.
The more mercenaries that died, the more the remaining ones tried to escape by charging at Sam’s shield or trying to damage it with fire. Of course, the intelligent creatures swiftly realised that the only way to fight the shield was to kill Sam.
That was when they came at her even harder than before. But Sam and Jared had known that would happen. And since coming at Sam meant facing our squads, the creatures were basically just flying to their deaths.
When one came much too close, I sent a telepathic warning to Jared. He lifted his hand, and currents of electricity streamed from his fingers and crashed into the creature’s skull. The shifter was dead and back in his human form before he even hit the ground.
“Can I just say thank God for Keeley!” shouted Paige, but I barely heard her over the hissing of fire, the snarls of a jaguar, the screams of pain, the pounding of heavy rain on the ground, and the cries of fury that rang throughout the air.
Keeley’s rain was coming harder and faster, incredibly managing to calm the flames. Wiping rain out of my eyes, I cast a quick look over my shoulder, wanting to get a brief glimpse of Butch. His hand was gripping Sam’s upper arm, supporting her weight. It seemed that keeping the massive shield intact was taking its toll on her.
Ava’s infuriated cry made me whip around. A dragon had snatched her from the ground, its claws digging into her shoulders. “Salem!” I shouted, but his psychic energy was already rippling in the air toward the dragon; it hit the creature right in the skull—like that, it was dead and shifting mid-air. Which was great and all, but it meant that Ava was falling too.
Yellowy-green ooze shot out of Denny’s fingers and formed a net that thankfully caught Ava. I didn’t have time to enjoy my relief as dragons rushed at us from several directions. The mass attack took me by surprise, thanks to all the smoke billowing around us and messing with my vision. But I was ready when the charging shifters fell to the ground, either dead or too weak to shift.
With a snarl, a short blond lunged my way. I was just about to attack when something barrelled into my side and rolled me onto my back. Now I had a heavy motherfucking asshole straddling me, fingers digging into my throat. I shoved my psychic hand into his mind, found his blood-bond, and played it like it was a banjo string.
Crying out, he released me and cradled his head. I knifed up and punched him in the jaw. He rocked backwards, almost falling off me. Almost. The bastard was too freaking big and heavy. Eyes glittering at me, he struck me right in the temple. Motherfucker.
Glaring at him through the spots filling my vision, I blocked the next punch and tried to shove him back. No success. Then Paige was there, slapping her palm on his head. There was a rippling from her elbow to her hand as she transferred an injury to him—an injury that would be three times worse for him.
His skin began to blister, peel, and smoke, making him scream in total agony. I took advantage of the moment and punched him in the dick. His breath exploded out of him, and he slumped to the side.
“Bastard!” I wheezed as I got to my feet, rubbing at my throat. A blast of psychic energy whizzed past my ear and crashed into his head. Like that, he was dead.
Twisting, I gave David a nod of thanks and looked around, unable to see much through all the smoke. Keeley’s rainstorm was fighting the fire—the heavy raindrops would probably leave bruises on me, now that I was partly human—but the dragons just kept creating more damage and breathing more smoke.
“You’re tiring!”
Paige’s accusing words made me snap my gaze to hers. Yes, I was tiring. Hell, even my psychic hand was tiring. Like Butch had predicted, I still wasn’t yet accustomed to not having my old level of strength and speed. I’d overexerted myself, forgetting my new limits. And her protective instincts no doubt told her to get me out of the way.
Suspecting she might try to follow those instincts, I lifted my chin. “I’ll be—” A blast of cold rushed our way and a dragon literally rocketed out of the thick smoke. Butch blurred to my side and slammed up his shield, blocking the blast and making the creature do a sharp turn to avoid the shield.
“Sam agrees that I need to be with you right now!” Butch told me, which meant they’d also noticed I was tiring.
Paige scrubbed at her eyes. “The smoke needs to go!”
But it couldn’t. It was trapped inside Sam’s shield, just like everything and everyone else. Thankfully, the smoke did our internal organs no harm, though it was uncomfortable to inhale. My eyes, on the other hand, didn’t do so well against it; they stung and itched like crazy.
“I just spoke to Jared!” shouted Butch. “He said—”
A large w
ing snapped out and sent Butch, Paige, and I zooming backwards, soaring what felt like miles through the air. The breath whooshed out of me as I crashed into something hard—most likely a tree. Groaning and coughing, I got to my feet, utterly pissed. These winged bastards needed to die. I blinked rapidly as I glanced around, searching for Butch and Paige. I couldn’t see them through the smoke.
But I could smell Butch.
More specifically, I could smell his blood. A lot of it. The scent wafted over me, reached something inside me. I didn’t let myself think of how good it would taste; didn’t give in to the pull of the scent. Instead, I blocked it, just as I’d practiced with him in training.
“Butch! Paige!” I shouted as I followed the scent of his blood. But there was little chance that they’d hear me over all the roaring, snarling, screeching, and screaming.
Not allowing myself to panic, I called out their names over and over. Just as Butch’s scent became stronger, something long and spiked shot out of the smoke and swung at me—a fucking barbed tail! Cursing, I ducked. But one of the spikes grazed my scalp and it hurt like a bitch. Quick as I could, I rolled toward Butch’s scent, pushed to my feet and—
Motherfucker! The spiked tail darted out of the smoke and struck my chest, stabbing me hard just as it sent me flying several feet away. My head hit the ground with a crack that reverberated around my skull, and I almost blacked out.
Ears ringing, I blinked to clear the stars from my vision. I was gonna kill that bastard when I could see it. God, my chest hurt. I grit my teeth against the streaks of burning pain as, for the third freaking time, I awkwardly got to my feet. I needed to get to Butch, needed to ignore the pain and just hope I didn’t heal too slowly or—
A strong arm looped around me and began dragging me backwards. I would have struggled like crazy, except the unexpected scent made me freeze in surprise. “Marco, what the fuck are you doing here?” He kept dragging me away. I twisted in his grip. “Let me go!”
“No, we need to get you out of here!” he growled into my ear.
“Let go of me, you bastard! I need to—”
Everyone brace yourfuckingselves!
Before I could wonder at the panic in Jared’s warning, I felt the buzz of Sam’s energy leave the air. Her shield winked out. Oh, shit.
As the smoke began to clear, I watched as three dragons shot high into the air. Or, at least, they tried. One screeched as it was hit by a telekinetic blast that sent it crashing somewhere. The second shook as sparks of high-voltage electricity assailed every inch of its huge body. The third halted as a silvery-blue energy whip lashed out of the smoke and wrapped tight around its throat, yanking it back down.
They weren’t the only ones that tried to flee. They might have succeeded, but the problem for them was that since Sam no longer had to concentrate on keeping her shield in place, she could use her gift in other ways—ways that were causing the dragons to hit the ground.
“Hurry before he comes for her!” Marco shouted to a vampire on his right. That was when I saw a large, swirling portal. I’d be damned if I let Marco take me anywhere.
I kicked and punched at him, but all the struggling in the world didn’t make him release me. “Put me down, you fucking bastard!” I thrust my psychic hand into his mind, but it was tired and half-numb; flicking his blood-bond to his Sire did nothing more than make him wince.
“Imani, enough! We’re leaving now!”
“I’m not going anywhere!” I was about to telepathically call out to Jared when Marco sharply turned me in his arms, making my head spin. I’d sustained too many head injuries tonight.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I told him to keep you safe, and he didn’t!”
I realised he was talking about Butch. “He’s hurt, I need to—”
“What we need is to get you to safety!” Ignoring my struggles, Marco carried me toward the portal—a portal that abruptly closed as the vampire controlling it hit the ground with a thud.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Stilling in surprise at the familiar male voice, I looked over Marco’s shoulder. It wasn’t so hard to see now that the rain was putting out the fire and Sam had taken down her shield, allowing a lot of the smoke to clear. And there was Lazarus with a small group gathered behind him. I blinked. “What are you doing here?”
“We teleported to you so we could partake in the battle,” he replied. “My vampires are joining it as we speak. Marco, release her.”
Marco’s arms slowly slipped from around me and he turned to face Lazarus. No, he positioned himself between me and Lazarus. Like a protective barrier. Marco’s vampires flanked me, glaring at those that stood with Lazarus.
The Master Vampire held out his hand, a sense of urgency in his manner. “Now come along, Imani. You should not be part of this. Not when you are half-human.”
I would have pointed out that I actually wasn’t half-human, but this whole scenario felt distinctly wrong. “Marco, what’s going on?”
He didn’t take his eyes from Lazarus as he responded. “I told you, Imani. Good people do bad things sometimes.”
Realisation quickly dawned. And it hurt almost as bad as the burning pain in my chest. “Lazarus is one of the people you suspect injected me with the serum?”
“No, sweetheart, it wasn’t Lazarus. But he ordered it done.”
No way. “I don’t have time for games, Marco.” Butch was lying somewhere, wounded. Jared, find Butch and Paige. I think he’s hurt bad but I can’t get to him—I’m watching Marco and Lazarus have some kind of standoff.
“I knew it had to be one of two people,” Marco went on. “Him or Eleanor.”
I frowned. “Eleanor?” And then I saw her, standing slightly behind Lazarus. There was a seriousness in her expression that took me by surprise. She was usually always so animated and jolly.
“They both want the same thing so badly that they’ll do absolutely anything to get it. It was Eleanor’s mate who told me the truth…though he took some persuading.”
Eleanor gasped, eyes widening in horror.
I might have told Marco to just shut the fuck up because I wasn’t in the mood for games, but something occurred to me as I looked at Lazarus, whose expression was carefully blank. “You should be denying this. He’s accusing you of trying to kill me.” Yet, Lazarus hadn’t said a word.
“Lazarus didn’t want to kill you,” Marco said. “Oh, he’d known you could die, which is exactly why he’s going to suffer for what he did to you. But he didn’t want you dead.”
Confused, I shook my head. I didn’t get what was happening. I didn’t get why the air pulsed with some kind of strange energy, or why I thought I could hear bullets being fired. I thought I could but wasn’t sure, because distant sounds seemed weirdly muted, distorted, and crackly.
Marco cocked his head at Lazarus. “You theorised that a vampire was more likely to get through the transition if they could feed on powerful vampires during that time, didn’t you? You knew that if Imani was injected, she’d be taken straight to The Hollow where the Grand High Pair and other powerful vampires would give her blood.”
Lazarus hissed. “You’re suggesting I was using Imani as a guinea pig?” The outrage in his voice sounded very genuine…but the emotion was absent from his eyes.
“It worked, didn’t it? She got through it because she had access to very potent blood. Congratulations. You were right. But I won’t let you take her.”
Take me?
Lazarus looked at me, a fanatical gleam in his eyes that made my stomach churn. “Imani, you have the power to save all those who suffered the same fate as you.”
“What?” Was he high? Maybe I was high, because this was all fucking weird.
“Within you lies the answer to the cure for vampirism. Your blood has the answer.”
“I’m not cured,” I clipped, anger building inside me as it began to penetrate that, hey, he’d totally betrayed me. And I wanted to smash his face in. “There is no cure.”
&nb
sp; “Wrong, Imani. You are partly transformed. With your blood, we can find a true cure. Then all of us who had this life forced upon us can once again be human.”
He said it with so much yearning and desperation that I almost felt bad for him. I had been in his position. I’d had everything ripped away from me, and for a long time I’d thought of nothing but getting back what I’d lost. I knew what it was to despise what you were, knew what it was like to long for all the things you once had and took for granted in—
I gaped as the truth slapped me hard across the face. “You’re Beau Irons.” I wanted him to deny it. He didn’t. He smiled.
“Well done, sweetheart,” said Marco. “It took me a while to figure that out. By the time I knew, he was already planning to take you while everyone was distracted in battle.”
And if Lazarus was Beau Irons… “All these vampires you’ve brought with you…They’re part of The Order, aren’t they?” Which meant they were fighting against The Hollow’s vampires, not alongside them. Shit.
Lazarus’ smile turned a little creepy. “Yes. And you will join us, Imani. You will leave with us.”
Marco slowly shook his head. “I can’t have that.”
“This is not about what you want,” Lazarus told him.
Staring at the vampire who’d once taken care of me, who I’d trusted with my life, I swallowed. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me. To anyone.”
“It’s really nothing personal,” Marco told me, his eyes still locked on the Master vampire. “He’s so intent on being human again, so focused on the end goal, that he can’t see anything or anyone else.”
Lazarus again held out his hand. “Come with me, Imani. You were brought into a life you did not want. You deserve to have back what was so callously taken from you. I can give you that.”
“There is no cure, Lazarus.” Marco shook his head. “You’ll never find one, because vampirism isn’t an illness. It’s just another state of being.”