I stood right behind her while the rest of the group waiting in the shadows of the building behind us.
Footsteps echoed through the empty street. I didn’t have super hearing, but even I could make out the frantic pace of the group heading our direction. They appeared one or two at a time. Several were running ahead of the others, probably checking each block for soldiers before doubling back to stick close to the group. When the last of them passed through the open cross-streets we were stalking, I noticed two people limping with their arms slung over two others to help them move faster.
A growl rumbled in Eira’s throat, and she took a half step forward until I laid my hand on her arm. She whirled toward me with a snarl, her eyes rimmed with red and an anger I recognized all too well. “Manda is with them. The lying Djinn bitch who betrayed us to begin with.”
“Yeah, there’s no way those Lycans didn’t just hear that,” Travis muttered. “Did you see Charlie?”
“She had her arm over Manda’s shoulder. She was one of the injured.”
“We should follow them,” Mikjáll said. “Why are we just standing here?”
“It could be a trap. The whole thing could be another sabotage by Manda,” Eira replied.
“Well, they just made that choice for you. They’re doubling back. No doubt they overheard our conversation,” Mikjáll replied.
“Be prepared,” Eira snarled. “Hold someone’s hand in case Djinn start popping in and out.”
Eira grabbed my arm with her left hand and drew her sword with her right.
I withdrew my blade as well, using my left hand. It wasn’t my dominant, but I’d practiced for so many years, I could fight without favor to either arm.
The others didn’t look pleased about holding hands. But Travis and Garrett moved as a pair, and Alek and Mikjáll also moved forward together. Jared was the only one without a partner.
He grinned over at me when I shot him a questioning glance. “If they try to teleport with me, I’ll just burn them to a crisp.”
Couldn’t argue with that. I snorted through a chuckle. Thank the gods Calliope had created special fireproof clothes for the Phoenix so none of us were subjected to an eyeful every time he used his incendiary powers.
Eira and I crossed the street and turned onto the one the fleeing group of Lycans had run down.
We were face-to-face with the group. They were standing in the middle of the street, waiting.
Two women stood in front of the group. The one on the right, favoring her left leg, used the second woman to balance herself. The second woman had purple eyes.
The Djinn.
It’d been a long time since I’d been face to face with any Djinn. Mostly I just heard about them and how vicious and cruel they were.
Travis and Garrett moved to flank the group, their guns raised distrustfully. Mikjáll and Alek moved to the opposite side. The Drakonae was pissed. I knew he’d been hoping to come face to face with Xerxes and was disappointed he wasn’t here.
Movement to my right drew my attention, and Jared moved closer to the Djinn. His skin glowed orange as if the fire of his beast was just below the surface. He turned to glance at Eira and I for a moment, his irises flaming like a bonfire. It was beautiful and scary at the same time, reminding me of what a fire breather Drakonae’s eyes looked like before they shifted.
Eira’s hand squeezed mine. “What is he doing?” she hissed under her breath.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Give him a minute.”
Strength rippled from every muscle inside Eira. I could feel the tension ready to snap as we all watched the glowing Jared move step by step closer and closer to the Djinn supporting Charlie.
Everyone stood still. Not a person spoke again, all watching the Phoenix as if mesmerized. Even the Djinn female couldn’t take her eyes off of Jared.
“You helped them escape?” Jared finally spoke, his voice dark and rolling from deep in his chest. Flames licked along his hands as if they were part of his shirtsleeve. His hair caught fire next, giving him a few extra inches. Not that he needed any. He was already at least six-foot-ten as a human.
“Please take me with you.”
I didn’t know much about the dynamics between this group, but I did know that Eira believed the Djinn woman, Manda, had betrayed them all. The seething bloodthirsty vampire next to me wasn’t going to grant quarter to the… beaten down, frail, wasp of a female doing her best to hold up the tall, athletic, muscular body of her once-upon-a-time Lycan friend.
Something was wrong. The air crackled with power, and I heard footsteps behind us.
Chapter 23
EIRA
“Ambush!” I screamed out, the scent of more Djinn and Xerxes’ powerful magick filled my lungs. “Hold hands! Now!”
The Lycans scrambled, following my orders without a second thought. Charlie and I had led them together for years. They followed my words just as they would follow the orders of one of their own.
I lunged forward, pulling Killían along with me. I sheathed my sword and snatched Charlie from Manda’s arms. “Jared, let’s go.”
I caught Manda’s lavender gaze for a moment. In that split second, I saw guilt, pain, regret…terror. For that brief moment, I wondered what had driven her to give us up, though in the recesses of my mind, I’d known it would eventually happen. I’d known from the start she couldn’t keep Xerxes off our trail forever. Now it had cost her everything. Breaking this group out of prison would probably cost her life, and she knew it.
Killían dropped my hand and scooped Charlie up into his arms. I grabbed another Lycan’s arm from the group, preventing either of us from being snatched up by the Djinn soldiers blinking in and out around the street.
“Manda, you dare to betray me again!” A huge voice boomed out from across the street. Xerxes himself stood surrounded by guards, but there in the open.
We had to move fast. His magick could freeze us all in our tracks. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Come on! Jared!” I yelled and hauled the stumbling Lycan after me toward Killían, who had stopped at the edge of the nearest building, unwilling to leave without me.
The street was chaos. Travis and Garrett were giving us cover with their automatic rifles, firing at every Djinn that stood still longer than two seconds. They tried to fire, but their inherent instinct was to blink away when threatened. They never stayed in one place long enough to even take aim at one of our group.
I glanced over my shoulder. The stupid Phoenix hadn’t moved yet. In fact his entire body was covered in flame now. He hadn’t shifted yet, instead staring at Manda.
“Please take me with you. If you won’t, just kill me now,” she begged, taking a step closer to the flaming man.
Xerxes hand rose.
“Jared!”
Then another familiar roar cut through the cold night air, and the ground shook around us. I turned to my left and gasped. Not much startled or scared me these days. Diana had been a frightening dragon to behold, but Mikjáll was the most terrifying picture of incensed rage I’d ever witnessed. Smoke trailed from his flaring nostrils, and his bright orange eyes burned with living flame.
The onyx black body, covered in glistening scales, rivaled the size of the building behind him. His wings spread over the group, blocking out the light on the street from floodlights on the surrounding warehouses. Beautiful glowing red and white markings swirled and streaked across the spread out sections of his leathery wings, reminding me of the patterns I’d seen on Diana’s.
The claws on his four massive legs crunched through the concrete of the street as he launched himself at Xerxes.
“Holy. Shit.” The words slipped from my lips in a gasp.
The Lycan I’d grabbed by the arm tugged at my hand, trying to pull me away from the fight. “Come on,” he growled.
I couldn’t tear my gaze from Mikjáll. He landed where Xerxes and his guards had been.
“Please,” Manda’s voice tore through the din of shouting
and growls.
Whirling, I turned in time to see her fling herself at Jared. What the hell? Why didn’t she blink away like the rest of them?
“No!” Jared shouted, trying to dodge her leap. But she grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself into the inferno surrounding him. The flames on his body swirled around her, but she didn’t cry out in pain.
Jared’s stance slowly changed from trying to push her off to wrapping his arms tightly around her body, pulling her even closer. His fire flamed higher and hotter.
“She’s mine, you fucking torch!” Xerxes’ voice called out from the opposite side of the street.
Mikjáll roared and lunged again.
Xerxes couldn’t use his magick to block the dragon, but it didn’t stop him from picking up Jared with an invisible hold and wrenching Manda from his arms.
She screamed.
The genuine terror in her voice tugged at my soul. I remembered everything she’d done to help us. I remembered laughing with her in the lodge in Ada when she’d visited. She hadn’t been family. We’d always known trusting her was a risk, but she’d been a friend, whether we’d originally intended to let it go that far or not.
Everything happened so fast, but I could see it in slow motion. Jared leapt to his feet and shifted into his animal form with an angry roar. His fiery wings stretched out fifteen feet on either side of his eagle-shaped body. His phoenix’s scream echoed down the street, shattering every window for a half-mile radius.
I winced as the high decibel made my ears ring. The Lycans around me moaned in pain.
Xerxes was blinked away a second later. Followed quickly by Manda, held in a chokehold by another Djinn. The rest of the Djinn soldiers teleported away as well, and the street fell quiet except for the hot heavy breath of the pissed off dragon.
Jared had already returned to human form, the phoenix he’d been only moments ago a whisper of a memory. His booted footsteps pounded the asphalt.
“Let’s go!” he shouted, running past me.
The human soldiers would be here soon. The alarms downtown had already sounded. Their haunting wails echoed through the empty streets. Soon trucks and men would fill these roads. If we were still here, we’d all be dead.
Magick shimmered around the huge black dragon as he transformed. It only took a few moments for Mikjáll to emerge, his human irises still fiery orange and angry.
“The bastard just ran!” he shouted, racing toward the rest of us.
I nodded, pointing to a mother hobbling toward us with a small baby in her arms. “You’ll get your chance another day. Help them!”
He glanced at the pair and growled, but shifted his path in mid-stride, scooping up the woman and baby without missing a step.
The Lycan holding my hand was doing his best to wrench his arm from my grasp. Wasn’t going to happen. I was a hell of a lot stronger. My fingers tightened around his wrist a little more as I glanced across the street again to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anyone.
I turned to the struggling Lycan male and snarled, “If I let you go, the Djinn can grab both of us! Quit fighting. I won’t leave anyone behind.”
Mikjáll reached my side and paused.
“Take a breath,” I ordered. “You’ll need it.”
I put an arm around Mikjáll’s waist and another around the Lycan. Then blurred them down the street toward the rest of our group. The buildings flew past us, and I pushed through the pain of carrying so many at once.
I would need to feed soon. But first, we needed to hightail it out of Savannah.
“Thanks for the lift, vampire.” Mikjáll rolled his neck and took another deep breath as I let him go.
“Eira,” I answered. “And thank you for sticking with us.”
“Like you said,” Mikjáll sighed, “I’ll get another chance. But they might not.” He flicked his gaze to the woman and baby cradled in his arms. They were both quiet, the mother wide-eyed and trembling.
“I’m sorry I was panicking, Eira,” the Lycan said, his wrist still firmly held in my grasp.
I nodded and tugged him into a quick jog. Then turned again to Mikjáll and the human parcel in his large arms. She was so tiny in comparison and looked to be of Asian descent, perhaps Japanese. It was hard to tell. Her face was gaunt, like she’d barely eaten in a month. The baby was young enough to still be nursing, but even its cheeks were thinner than they should’ve been. Her scraggly black hair had streaks of bright orange, but her eyes truly held my attention.
She wasn’t Lycan.
The irises swirled with multiple colors like mother-of-pearl inside an abalone shell.
She met my gaze, and I heard her heart speed up inside her chest.
What had she been doing with the Mason wolves? Had Manda not realized there were other prisoners when she freed them? Or had that woman and her baby somehow been mixed up in the group on the way out?
I jogged faster, pulling along the Lycan next to me. Killían was up just a little farther, also holding hands with one of the Lycans from the street.
“Eira,” Killían spoke. “I was worried.”
I released the male I was holding onto and Killían did the same with the female, allowing them to partner up so that he and I could do the same.
His touch sent a calming sensation through my body. Peaceful thoughts replaced the anxious ones that had been building inside me. We had survived an encounter with Xerxes and his Djinn. It was no small feat.
“We’re not out of the storm, yet, my beloved.”
I turned, meeting his soft blue gaze. “I know. But at least I am at your side once more.”
He nodded.
Mikjáll’s light footsteps sounded behind us just before he spoke. “The SUVs have been found. We can’t use them.”
“Everyone stop,” I yelled, whirling to face the Drakonae. “What do you see?”
He stared into the distance. “A regimented group advancing in formation toward the area where we parked the vehicles.”
A growl rumbled in my throat. Fuck. There were no safe houses this close to Savannah. I couldn’t think of anyone the pack trusted to take all of us in without drawing dangerous attention to themselves.
I continued to rack my brain. We couldn’t just stand here off the side of the highway. We had to keep moving.
“We can steal cars,” Mikjáll offered.
“No,” Jared said, stepping up next to us. “They are all GPS tracked.”
The Drakonae male shrugged.
Charlie stepped forward, leaning most of her weight on Garrett’s shoulder. “There’s one place we can hide near here. There’s an abandoned gold mine a few miles off. We used to stay there in emergencies, but they welded it shut a few years ago. Since we have Mikjáll, we should be able to get inside.”
“Which way?” I asked.
“Up the highway. There’s a turnoff for a farm to market road. 1632. We take that west,” she answered. “We should be able to hole up there and let everyone get some rest before moving out tomorrow night.”
With Mikjáll and his heat vision leading the way, the rest of the group followed silently behind him. Jared and Alek brought up the rear, erasing as many traces of our trail as possible.
“How are you feeling?” Killian’s hand tightened around mine.
I squeeze back and flashed him a quick smile. “I’ll be fine. We need to get to the mine.”
“You need to feed.”
“I know,” I whispered. The thirst ached throughout my body, burning like a wildfire on dry brush. Blurring with them had eaten up the last bits of energy I had stored. I could only pray that nothing happened between here and the mine, because I truly would be absolutely useless.
Chapter 24
EIRA
A half hour later, we were following Charlie off the farm road and along a gravel drive. There had been no sign that any of the soldiers from Savannah had picked up our trail yet.
Everyone needed a rest, myself notwithstanding. More importantly, I needed to
feed. I was just worried about how much.
Mikjáll melted through the steel grate barring our entrance to the dark mine, then pulled it out, and bent it backward so that we could slip between it and the rock wall.
Inside, Jared lit up both his hands, illuminating the tunnel enough for all of us to find a spot to sit without tripping over the tracks in the center of the shaft.
“How long can you keep those night lights on?” Garrett called out, leaning his shoulder against the wall and sliding down to the ground with a thud.
Jared chuckled. “A while. But I’d like some rest, too. So everyone get comfy, and maybe we can catch some shut-eye before we start out of here.”
The roar of a chopper overhead made all of us wince and Jared lowered his flaming hands a second later, plunging us all into semi-dark. But it was better than being spotted.
Mikjáll moved to the mouth of the tunnel and crouched low. If anything came near, he’d be able to see it through the darkness before any of the rest of us. Rumbling growls resonated through the tunnel.
No one was going to sleep.
“We can’t stay here, Eira.” Charlie groaned as she settled on the ground next to Travis. “Not if they already have the soldiers searching out this far.”
I stretched my neck and sighed. I didn’t need to sigh or breathe, but psychologically, it felt good to release tension that way.
“The farthest I could move everyone is the old house on Blackshear Lake. But I’ll need to feed several times to carry so many.” I surveyed the group. Seven of us had come to Savannah. Only seven Lycans were returning with us. Then the mystery woman and her baby. I didn’t know what she was, but for now, it didn’t matter. She needed help just like the rest.
Fifteen people and a baby to carry two hundred miles. The trips would be easier if I took them one at a time. Especially when taking the men. They were more than double my weight. But that meant I would have to blur… I counted it up in my head and frowned.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 59
