Fate had given me one perfect night and then punished me for taking it. It was my fault she’d run. If I hadn’t entertained the notion of sending her back to the castle, she wouldn’t have left. She’d trusted me, and I’d failed her. In the end, I’d told Jared I was leaving with her anyway, but by then, it was too late. When I’d gone to get her from my bedroom, all I’d found was the memory of her scent and an open bathroom window.
Jared and I had tracked her trail until it’d faded into nothing. I’d wanted to kill myself right there on the spot, but moments later, the entire town had gone on alert. The sirens had gone off in a dozen different areas. The town was screaming in pain around me and I couldn’t ignore them. They were my friends, my family, and they were dying.
Screams had torn through the normally quiet streets. Everyone had run for the bunkers or the castle, mostly for the castle. It was the safest place in the town.
“Alek.” Jared’s voice was a faint call in the distance. “Alek.”
I opened my massive beak and screamed at my friend. The sound blasted out the windows in the back of the house, but he barely blinked, flames burning brightly in his eyes.
“He’s dead. So is their mother.”
I snapped my beak, anger ripping at my soul, and tore my talons through the dead wolf one more time for good measure. Jared had the two Lycan children in his hands. “You take them to the castle courtyard and then get your ass back. I’m going to keep working my way down Avenue B.”
I threw my massive head toward the ceiling above us, and he nodded.
I wrapped my wings around the children he’d placed on my back and moved away, waiting for him to open the ceiling so I could fly.
He lifted his arms. Flames soared from his hands, and his entire body was quickly engulfed. The fire was hot enough to singe the feathers on my chest, but the children were safe beneath my wings. A few moments later, the ceiling and roof had disintegrated and the fire had been extinguished.
“You’re clear.” He turned and disappeared out the front door.
I rotated my neck and peered down at the children on my back. They curled their little fingers into my feathers, instinctively realizing what I was about to do. With a leap, I cleared the charred remains of the house, and two powerful strokes of my wings later we were sailing over the burning town toward the castle.
Two black dragons sat in front of the castle, each of their solid bodies were close to a third of the building’s size. Their wings spanned the entire length of the fortress. One of them looked up at me from the ground and then focused back on the figures they were escorting inside. Miles and Eli Blackmoor knew every being in the town. They’d been with Rose for thousands of years. No one was getting inside that castle door unless they personally recognized him or her.
I braced myself for the bite of magick as I cross the threshold of the special barrier that guarded the castle. The children on my back cried out, but to their credit, neither one released their death grip on my feathered neck. I landed softly in the courtyard and was immediately surrounded by several pixies and one of the more recent additions to town—Killían North, an escaped Elf from the Veil.
“Come here, sweet darlings,” the Pixies cooed at the children, removing them from my back. “We’ll get you somewhere safe. Thank you, Alek, for getting them here.” One of the pixies rubbed her hand along my quivering neck, leaving a thin layer of shimmering dust on my feathers.
I pushed the beast back and shifted back to my human form. A white hot pain seared through my body. The runes on my upper arms lit up like someone had set off a nuclear bomb inside my chest.
“Alek, what’s wrong?”
I fell to my knees and roared. “Gretchen.” I could feel the connection calling to me, surging with life like the dam on a river had been broken. I breathed through the agony of her shared terror. I could find her. The pain shifted to a pulse deep in my chest, and it tugged at the beast inside.
“Rose.” The pixies scattered in multiple directions. “Rose.”
No. You can’t tell her. I opened my mouth to call after them, but another stroke of Gretchen’s fear silenced me. Whatever she was going through, we needed the Lamassu and I could weather the Sentinel’s wrath, especially if it meant finding Gretchen.
Moments later, the pissed-off Lamassu was stalking toward me.
I tried to stand, but her magick wrapped itself around my body, paralyzing me on the grassy lawn of the castle courtyard.
“Alek Melos, you have betrayed my trust. You have cost the House of Lamidae and every supernatural being waiting to go home. It will take decades and several new children to replace the power of a young Sister in the House. Was I not clear to you when we spoke?” Her voice doubled in size, and her dark brown eyes changed to a bright white. She brought her hand down on my chest, and I felt my heart slow under the burn of her palm.
The burning of the Runes surged again, and between that and the burn of her skin on my chest, I’d just about had enough. My Gryphon cried out from inside me, shaking the ground where we stood and the walls surrounding the courtyard. The marks on my arms burned like hot coals, and the light shined bright enough from them to make me squint my eyes.
“Mate marks.” Rose’s voice dropped back into the normal human decibel, and her eyes switched back to brown. Her magick receded from my body, and I sucked in a deep breath before rising to face her. My human form was double her size or more, but I knew better than to think I had any advantage over one of the most powerful beings on the planet, no matter how small she appeared as a human.
“You know what they are?” I panted for air, struggling to breathe through the overwhelming desire to shift and take flight. She’d yank me down even if I tried. “I can feel her. I have to go to her.”
Her face darkened, and an ache occupied Rose’s eyes. She looked at me with sympathy and regret, like she knew something I didn’t, but wasn’t going to share. “You’ll die, Alek. He’s called you with her runes. It’s a trap.”
“If you found Naram was alive, would you go to him, whatever the cost?” Sweat poured from my body, and my Gryphon swelled inside me, building toward another scream that might take down one the castle walls. “I have to go. This is not something I can ignore because you say he’ll kill me. If I have to die to save her, I will. It’s better than living without her.” The last part of the sentence was cruel, but I needed to go. I needed her to let me go.
“If we’re going to get her back, we need help.” She turned and shouted Eli’s name. The black dragon swung his head over the wall and gazed down at us, steam billowing from his nostrils, his pupils orange with flame.
“Gretchen is alive. She is Alek’s mate.” Rose’s amped-up voice carried through the courtyard above the din of the cries inside and outside the castle.
The dragon’s head tipped, and his massive black wings unfurled and pumped, propelling him into the sky.
Rose turned back to me. “Shift and follow the call of your Runes, Alek. They will lead you to her. We will follow you.”
I released the magick writhing inside me, and my Gryphon took over, shifting my body into a beast the size of a Clydesdale stallion. My wings unfurled, and I screeched in surprise when Rose took hold of my mane of feathers and leapt to sit on my back just in front of my wing base. I screamed an angry call to the sky above. There would be blood for their actions against my mate. Death would be their only reward.
Leaping into the air, I joined Eli in the sky and turned toward the low pulse tugging my body south. The link to Gretchen got stronger with each pump of my wings in her direction. Desperation spurred me forward, and guilt.
Some of the homes below us were burning. People scrambled left and right. They were being moved to the protected underground bunkers, and some were fleeing all the way to the castle.
If I’d known about what the runes could do earlier, maybe I would’ve been able to find her immediately. If I’d told Rose what happened, instead of hiding it from her…would Gr
etchen already be safe? Perhaps not in my arms, perhaps Rose would’ve killed me or banished me for my betrayal, but Gretchen might be safe. That was all that mattered. What had my ignorance cost her? What had my desire cost her? I could’ve sent her back the very moment she stumbled onto my porch.
Instead, I’d taken her and loved her, and then everything had changed.
We flew past the edge of town and lines of charred houses. A few people darted through the streets—patrols looking for stragglers. The barrier had been destroyed. Harrison and both his daughters were likely lost. Patrols had been slaughtered. The town was burning beneath us, and all we could do was save as many as we could and hunker down and wait it out.
There were too many. Xerxes had finally come for us, and we were woefully unprepared.
“Most of the town had been secured, Alek. We can’t leave Gretchen out there. We have to get her back or she… has to die.” The hesitation in her voice reminded me how much she did care for the women. How much had been sacrificed through the years to keep them safe. It didn’t make it any easier. “We cannot allow Xerxes to bring forth a race of Lamassu with the ability of Seeing. The world will crumble at his feet if he succeeds.” Her voice was quiet, but firm. She spoke the truth, and as much as it hurt, I knew she was right, but I still didn’t think I could end Gretchen’s life.
In a way, it was my fault. I had been the one who succumbed to temptation. Gretchen was my mate—whatever that really meant in a magick sense, I wasn’t sure—but I could’ve chosen to leave Sanctuary. I could’ve chosen not to interfere in the destiny intricately wrapped around her life and the lives of every supernatural on the planet.
Rolling hills and grass sped along below us, no roads in sight. Only the pull of the runes called me onward through the clear blue skies. We passed a few groves of wild oaks skirting a streambed. Then the buildings of what looked like a military compound rose on the horizon. Sandbags ringed the parameter of the outpost. Large brown steel bunkers without windows were clumped together.
“He’s there,” Rose whispered, tightening her grip on my feathered mane. “I can feel him.” Her body trembled—the only sign of fear I ever remember her showing in all the time I’d known her.
Rose’s terror ripped a hole in my heart the size of the Texas sky. She’d kill Gretchen if it came down to it. I had to get to her first.
Gun shots rang through the empty Texas sky. A growl from the dragon behind me was the only warning I got to bank left and get the hell out of his way. Fire streamed from his mouth like it’d been shot from a science-fiction-style laser gun—men on the ground below us disintegrated into ash. Rose raised her hands, locking the armies into place. Paralyzing their ability to strike. To move. To escape. Eli burned them all, and I continued straight toward the largest building in the center of the compound, two stories of solid tan-colored steel.
She was there. I could feel her heartbeat pulsing with mine.
My claws struck the ground with a soft thud outside the main door.
Rose leapt from my back, keeping her hands raised and taut, channeling her magick to control as much of the camp as she could. “Find her. I can only control what I can see. Be careful.”
I rushed the front door, shouldering it in with one lunge. Men—Lycans—came straight at me. Bullets flew and I felt the burn as they struck, digging deep into my body. Djinn blinked in and out, upping the bullet spray, but never staying in one place long enough for me to get a good swipe of my talons into them.
The ground shook. Eli had landed. The Drakonae’s scream pierced the silence with a sound that even made my Gryphon shudder with dread. Death and fire would blanket this army. No Djinn or Lycan or witch would survive his fiery judgement.
I slashed my way through several more of Xerxes’ Lycan soldiers before bursting into a dimly lit room and shifting into my human form. There were no more guards. Only three hearts beat in this room. Mine, Gretchen’s, and the man’s I was about to end.
Lights flickered on and off. Eli must’ve hit one of the compound’s generators, but all I could see were Gretchen’s glowing marks. The white light illuminated her bruised and bound body. A large man, easily my size, stood over her with a long knife.
“You must be Alek, so good of you to join us.” His gaze fell to the matching white glow emanating from the rune marks on my arms.
“Get away from her.” Something about him was familiar, but the rage inside me was all I could feel. All I could smell was Gretchen’s scent. All I could taste was her fear permeating the air in the room. Pure terror. Pain. Anguish. Hatred.
I lunged, but something invisible stopped me, grabbed my neck, and slammed me into the far wall. Lamassu magick, this was Xerxes. I couldn’t beat a Lamassu, neither in human form nor beast. His magick, like Rose’s, was too powerful.
Two familiar figures barreled into the room after me. I tried to yell a warning, but my vision was waning. His magick choked me harder and harder. Air ceased to pass through my throat. I couldn’t fight. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t help…Gretchen.
I could only hear my mate’s cries, each one ripping a piece from my dying soul. See her tears. Watch this psychopath destroy everything I cared about.
“Xerxes.” Rose’s voice took on that special god-like quality and the room shook.
A flash of steel and the sound of metal slicing through the air caught my attention. The lights in the room returned. The dagger was frozen, inches from Rose’s chest.
“I’m not that easy to kill.”
“No, perhaps not.” The tall man narrowed his dark eyes then smiled. Actually fucking smiled. “But your dragon was.”
A surprised gasp slipped from Rose’s mouth, and I glanced across the room. An identical dagger had pierced Eli’s heart. Nothing could pierce a dragon hide—in human or beast form—nothing except dragon steel. There were so few blades on Earth, he probably hadn’t thought the blade flying at his chest was a threat. That it would bounce off like a toy made of wood.
Bullets hurt dragons. Artillery pierced their skin because of the speed and the heat behind it, but a simple blade was like hitting them with a loaf of bread. It did nothing. It should’ve been nothing.
The Drakonae prince met my gaze, and I saw the flame leave his eyes before he crumpled to the concrete floor. The man I’d known for a thousand years. A brave and strong and powerful friend was gone, and there was nothing either of us could do about it. A man who served and fought at my side as a brother in arms. A man who’d considered me his equal in this world.
“Eli.” His name slipped from Rose’s lips—a small whisper of the overwhelming grief she felt at his loss. She made no attempt to hide her emotions. Her pheromones spoke to the truth. Her eyes widened with surprise then narrowed with determination.
Eli’s blood seeped from his fatal wound and stained the gray floor. My soul wept for a good man, cried for the son and mate and brother he left behind and the babies who would never know him.
I was still captive against the wall, straining to see through the black spots in my vision, watching my friend die to save the woman I loved. The woman fated to be mine. The woman I couldn’t have. I wouldn’t be conscious more than a few seconds longer.
“Get her now, Alek.”
Rose’s command tore me from my sorrow, reminded me the fight wasn’t over until we’d all breathed our last.
Rose lunged at Xerxes. A white glow surrounded her. Large wings unfurled around her body as it shifted…growing and glowing with her white essence. She’d take the building down with her once she reached her full size. The room couldn’t hold her. Hell, the entire building wasn’t big enough to hold a shifted Lamassu.
Xerxes magick released me suddenly, his attention completely on Rose now. She was making him choose to fight on her terms or die under her claws. She was giving me a chance.
I leapt across the room, ducking one of Rose’s wings before it took out the wall behind me. Xerxes was shifting now, too. So much light filled the room, it wa
s blinding. I couldn’t see, but I could smell Gretchen. Her blood. Her sweat. Her tears.
Her heart was beating slower than it should, and her breathing was shallow. I dodged another wing, this time Xerxes’s. Rolling over the table, I wrapped an arm around Gretchen’s body in the process. My forward momentum carried us both off the table and out from under a stomping foot. The ceiling crumbled above me, and I let my beast come out again. My eagle talons closed carefully around Gretchen, and my lion-clawed hind legs shoved me up the wall, through the falling concrete and steel and other shattering materials. The ceiling above me disintegrated, showing spots of clear blue sky. I pumped my wings, trying to ignore the snarls and the smell of blood behind and below me.
I rose farther and farther until something caught my wing and sent me hurtling toward the floor. Pumping harder, I avoided what would’ve been a fatal impact for Gretchen and screamed through the burning pain. Rage propelled my Gryphon’s cry through the wall of the building, disintegrating it in front of me. I dove through, but not before something took a slice out of my left flank.
The roaring and bellowing and cries of pain continued behind me. I pushed harder and lifted us into the sky again, reaching for the clouds. A bullet struck my side. Then another hit my already injured wing. Pain seared through every nerve. A cry of pain from the small body clutched ever so carefully in my talons tore another piece from my heart. She’d been hit. The scent of her blood burned in my nostrils.
There was nowhere to hide. Speed was our only salvation, and my Gryphon’s utter refusal to give up. I wouldn’t stop. I pushed for the clouds and struggled to keep a straight path toward Sanctuary.
A painful scream echoed behind me, the unmistakable sound of Death calling another to its door.
Then nothing.
Silence.
No more gunfire.
No more crashing buildings.
I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t stop.
Sanctuary, Texas Complete Series Box Set Page 110
