by Rae Foxx
'Agreed,' Howl spoke into my mind as his massive wolf stepped beside me, head low and fangs bared. 'But we can't give up yet. We can hold them off. You have to get the book.'
I gave him one look, we had an army ahead of us and he wanted me to breeze through them...
'You ran headlong into a tree, little wolf,’ Howl interrupted my thoughts, 'You can make it there and back before this battle even begins. You have to try.'
My head still rattled from the impact of the tree against my skull, the throbbing pain mixing with excitement. He was right. I knew how to control it. But I sure as hell was going to try.
"Stay alive, will you," I said to all of them as I dug my toe in, not knowing what would happen if I tried to run at solid bodies. Carnage probably. "I'll try to be quick."
Everyone looked at me like I had lost it. Tommy yelled something inaudible as I took off at a run, and collided with fucking Anatoly, the gorilla had just pushed himself to the front lines.
Well, now I knew what happened when I collided headfirst with a body. I fell on my ass.
"Shit!" I screeched, looking up at Anatoly as the rest of the army took our impact like the shot of a gun and the battle broke out with a scream and a growl.
"Well, well, if it isn't my half-chewed food," Anatoly said, and promptly shredded his uniform as he shifted into the Gorilla that was twice as big as I remembered him. Probably because I was lying on my bare ass on the ground.
He was a towering mass with boulders for fists that were ready to beat me into the ground. The silly cocky gorilla had clearly forgotten who he was fighting.
"Guess you should have chewed better," I taunted, not even moving as I blinked and twitched my finger, sending Anatoly straight into the air, soaring like a rocket as my magic flared and pushed him up and away.
I guess it wasn't just my shifter that was affected by this ancient vampire blood. I had practically sent Anatoly into outer space.
Well, if Nicky didn't know we were here before, she’d know now.
Roars echoed in my ears as a lion shifter leapt in the air over me, fangs protruding, mane blowing in the breeze and proud as he aimed right for Howl. I wasn't about to let him get there. His roar turned to a whimper as I dropped him to the ground. I had intended to break his legs on impact, but he landed lithely, the iridescence in his eyes making it clear that it wasn't his cat-like reflexes that had done that. He was half-witch.
He blinked, and I felt like I was punched in the stomach, the magic impact sending me back a few feet before I recovered and shoved my hands out, tossing him aside. His body twisted in the air and took down another half dozen others as he landed like a game of fucked up shifter bowling.
"Nice one!" Finn yelled as he flicked hybrids aside like the lifeless things that happened to be in his way. Bodies flew over Tommy who was choking people with his smoke like he was an octopus on a murder streak. I couldn't see Scarlet or the twins. With how people were shrieking and jumping around I was sure they were doing their fair share of incapacitating the enemy.
Still, it wasn't enough.
'They’re fucking strong…' Howl yelled at me in the rage of battle.
'Don't give up yet,' I answered lifting a Fae/Vampire mix in one hand while cold-cocking a different shifter in his wolf face. My knuckles bled, seeped some red-tinted ooze. Almost like my blood had dried in my veins. Even as they bled, I could feel the thick sludge loosen, the vampire blood losing some of its strength.
"Not yet," I hissed at my blood as if it was betraying me, the cut closing up on its own in seconds. Don't defy me vampire blood!
As though I had put my ancient power in place, everything sped up. My movements were fucking fast--faster than I’d ever been in my life. Making my way through the crowds like a blur of energy, I took out as many as I could. Every time I took a hybrid down, another one showed up. They came in waves as though I were a rock in the center of a river.
A pale-faced woman zinged through the others at a furious pace, fangs thicker and shorter than Saxon’s protruding from her top gums as she opened her mouth to hiss at me. Her smell, both like dirt and blood at the same time tipped me off. Her fangs were shifter/vamp hybrid.
I threw her through the air, letting my powers surge as I used her like a dart toward the bullseye that was on that blue tent. She hit hard, the high point of the tent shifting.
That'll show you! I wasn't going to give this up yet. Not until Nicky was flat on her back.
'Dead, I hope?' Howl asked with a chuckle as some poor vampire screamed as his arm was removed.
'Ew.' I answered, not sure if it was for the arm-ripping or the idea of Nicky being undead and on her back. 'Double ew.'
Definitely the second one.
I did some arm ripping of my own, although by accident. I went to pull a witch vampire away from Finn when instead of throwing her over my head like I intended I ripped her arms out of their sockets and sent her soaring.
"Nice!" Tommy yelled to me, as a rain of blood sprinkled over my face, covering my skin, my shoulders, little drops covering my tongue.
I wanted to be disgusted, but with the warmth against my skin, with the flood of a smell that was built on the most perfect cupcake cake that the Nevada desert could produce, a rush of energy surged within me and bubbled beneath my sternum.
Thirst.
Not thirst that would be quenched with a glass of water thirst, but the thirst of someone who’d walked through the desert for ninety years.
Thirst that made saliva collect in the back of my mouth, causing me to swallow.
Thirst that consumed.
Thirst that could be solved with one bite. One feast. One beautiful flood of blood against my tongue.
Which would make sense why my gums were burning as they were stretched and spread by two sharp bone shards.
Fucking fangs. Hells to the yes.
"Surprise!" In a flash of movement, I leaned forward and ripped the side of her throat out, I spat the flesh out to the side and buried my mouth against the fountain of delight that was pouring from her. Lapping it up, I shook. My body energized as every drop of that beautiful blood filled me.
I sucked her dry in mere seconds.
Dropping the now empty body to the ground, I came face to face with Scarlet who was giving me a look that was half shock, half fear, and mostly utter delight.
"I knew it!"
"Well, gloat later or I'll bite you," I said with a weird accent thanks to the massive fangs that were pulling at my top lip.
"Point taken," she said, both of us grabbing the snarling vampire-fae that was heading right for us and throwing them to the ground.
"Although at this point the better option is to cut and run..." Scarlet heaved, jumping and clawing at a witch's face before shifting back to human. "You know, while most of us are still alive."
"Most?" I shrieked, my heart falling to my toes.
"Exactly. This is death, Ivy." Scarlet said before chasing after a wolf who was trying to take down the twins.
She wasn't wrong, even with my new powers and strength, it wasn’t enough. There were too many of them. My people were getting their asses kicked left and right and everything in between.
Little by little they’d somehow backed us into a huddle. We stood back to back; our tiny circle trapped in the middle of their massive one. They surrounded us and moved in so that there was no room to breathe--and nowhere to fucking go.
"Well, well, look who couldn't stay away," an eerily familiar voice cried out as the army broke in two, stepping to the side to let Nicky, Danvers, and my father, strutting like the pimps that liked to hang around the high school. The crowd continued growling and hissing, each of them ready to tear our hearts out.
All it would take was Nicky pounding her pimp stick on the ground and we were done for.
If there was a time to get to the tent, it was now. Nicky was here, the book was alone and as long as I didn't run into anybody...
“I’m thinking this wasn’t the
way it was supposed to go down,” Evan said from behind me, still growling at the army around us.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Owen replied and Scarlet snarled, both guys wincing and apologizing. If I had to guess they both received little more than a gut check.
"I wanted to check up on my dad," I said, the word burning on the way out. "See how he is adjusting to his new life as the whore's lackey."
I aimed high, waiting for my words to slap against Nicky, but she laughed.
"Whore? Is that really the best you can do?"
"Naw, you're an idiot too." When going for the ultimate distraction don't hesitate to throw out the grade-school insults. "Especially if you think he's going to fight for you."
I was a shitty liar and now was no exception. My voice even caught as I gestured toward where my father stood slightly behind her, his large black eyes stagnant and emotionless.
"Is that what you were expecting? The man who tried to kill you to switch sides." She laughed with the fake sound that I always heard from Mama when she was strung out. "No wonder you came without an army. And to think you actually thought you could stand a chance."
“Well, we like to crash parties, what can I say?” I spat back as she took a few steps closer, slowly closing the gap between us. Long gone was her tight-ass pencil skirts; they had been replaced by camo pants with the pockets on the side. Probably for her collection of hearts or whatever weird shit she needed. She had the book now, and I didn't want to think about the spells that were in it.
Nicky walked toward me; her palm flat against the air like she was visibly holding my father back. They barely had control of him back in the cave, like he was still little more than a puppet on a string.
“You always make it so easy to win,” Nicky said as she walked around the group of us, assessing us for weak links.
Tommy was fine, having smoked his way through most of that. But he was the only one who had come through unscathed. Howl's snow-white fur was blood-stained, Finn sported a black eye and a cut lip, and Evan was clinging to a gash in his arm that looked to be bleeding more than it should. No one was dying just yet, but even she could see we didn't have much left.
“I’d rather show up for the fight than to be the one to run like a pussy before the fight is over," I snickered, taunting her as Danvers pulled my father back. The guy almost looked like he was going to wander off and find a game of bingo. Nicky pretended to laugh, unaware of her own weak link, but the sound was forced and fake. Just like her manicure.
“Give up, Ivy. You can’t win this one.”
I rolled my eyes dramatically, making sure she saw the gesture. “Okay, yeah sure. Are you gonna sick your pet on me? Or have you not figured out how to use him yet?"
“Oberion?" She asked as my father turned before stepping forward, the sandy ground beneath him scraping as he dragged his feet. "He is dangerous, yes. But he is not who I would have ended you." Nicky’s head canted to the side as her smile spread, a wind picking up around us.
A wind that smelled like shit and death.
The scent seared the membranes of my throat, making me cough and choke.
“Goddammit,” Evan said as he began to gag. “Who shit their pants? Is this desert on top of a sewage containment plant?”
“I can taste that shit on my tongue,” Owen added. I could hear him smacking his mouth open and closed like the funk was so thick he could chew on it.
I would have laughed if I wasn't gagging, if I hadn't caught sight of Tommy who, for the first time in our entire lives, looked terrified.
"Tommy?" I asked, my voice catching as the aroma swelled and a tornado of black smoke descended over all of us. We were standing on the edge of the desert, but the air was like ice, the sand like icicles against our skin as it kicked up in the gust of black smoke. Swirls of black smoke that slowly took the shape of a man.
A big man. A man that made the gorillas seem like lemurs.
The man towered over us in a black-leather loin-cloth type getup. His eyes were black but the irises were ringed with an almost fiery tinge that lit up the whites. Skin the color of ash was scarred up and down his body, some looked to be the damage of battles and others seemed to be purposeful, lining up down his arms like badges of honor.
“What do we have here?” The god-awful aroma of spoiled milk left out on a summer’s day fanned out over the crowd as he breathed. Like someone’s athlete’s foot had a case of swamp ass and they decided to treat both diseases with vomit and burnt flesh which so happened to reside in this guy’s mouth. Yummy.
I was sick. We were all coughing. One look at the man and I knew who he was. I knew what he was. Black smoke and eyes that sheened with greed.
I had seen those eyes a million times before.
“Hello, son.” The massive smoke demon turned to Tommy and sneered. I shuddered, not only from the smell but from the hatred lacing his voice. It might’ve been more powerful than Nicky’s acidic spite, which was saying a lot.
Tommy didn’t answer, he had frozen in place, his fear consuming him.
Tommy, the bastard who was scared of nothing except maybe a pack of wolves in the desert, was scared shitless of his father. He met my gaze and widened his eyes, the cigarette he’d once been smoking fell from his mouth.
I opened my mouth to tell my rotten father-in-law that he could take his funk and Danvers and go straight to hell but before I could, my breath caught in my lungs as Tommy whisked us all up in a swirl of moving smoke. He had done this multiple times before, but this time was different. All of that pain and agony that came with his weird transportation thing was doubled, it was mixed with the taste of fear and blood that I had never experienced before.
I wasn't so much being ripped in two as I was being ripped cell by cell. In his haste, Tommy had clearly done something wrong.
The tunnels of the vampire's keep solidified as we all fell to the ground as Tommy screamed and slammed his fists into the wall, before turning to make sure that we were all in one piece. Something felt different, but I didn't have any time to think about what.
Tommy had taken us out of there, Tommy had ripped us away from the one thing we needed.
“Fuck, Tommy! I didn’t get the goddamned book!”
Chapter 11
“We have to go back and get the book," I yelled, peeling myself off the floor, everything felt sticky and heavy like I had been plastered to the floor. It was only then that I saw what was wrong.
I was covered in blood. Heavy, sticky, nearly dried blood. I wasn't the only one either. We all looked like we had been sucked through a people blender in order to get here.
“You want to go back?" Scarlet shrieked, picking herself up and trying to wipe the dried blood off herself with her palms, it flaked and spread which only made matters worse. "I never want to do that again."
"Relax," Tommy said, waving a hand to Scarlet and the twins who were all one step away from having a breakdown. "We aren't going back there, not with my fucking father right there."
"That is not a reason to run away. The book was right there, Tommy!" I jumped to my feet, pushing myself toward him, even though the whole world felt heavy. "What can he do to us anyway? Transport us through more blood?"
"This is my blood, that I had to shed in order to get us away from him. He tried to pull us back..." Tommy snarled as his eyes bulged, his jaw tightening with a twitch.
"Your blood?" Howl asked, his voice echoed off the emptiness of the tunnels, no guard to greet us this time. Probably better seeing as we had all bathed in Tommy's blood and Scarlet was going all Lady Macbeth in an effort to get it off.
"Well, maybe you should have let him. That way I could have gotten the damn book and we wouldn't have to show up here empty-handed." Yes, I knew that I was being completely irrational, but I couldn't help it. This was Saxon's life on the line. I hadn't failed yet, but the reality of plan B - i.e. taking on the vampire queen - was giving me heart palpitations.
The vampire blood must be closer to weari
ng off.
“Babe, that was my fucking dad--the king of the demons," Tommy said as he black smoked over to me, his hands out. "You can’t magic him away or let your wolf bite him. He will swarm you in his smoke and take you to the fucking underworld where none of us can save you.”
My wolf growled, guess I wasn't the only one hating that Tommy robbed me of getting what I needed to end this garbage once and for all. “Bullshit. I could’ve taken him.”
Tommy zapped himself forward, the tip of his nose touching mine as his putrid breath washed over me. I turned, ready to grab him, but he moved before I could twitch, moving from one side of me to another, proving his point and sending me growling.
"You’re kidding yourself if you think you could’ve done anything to the Demon King except maybe piss him off a little more. You’ve forgotten that he made a deal with Nicky in exchange for me. He won’t give up the chance to gain more power, no matter what it costs him.”
I was ready to slap him, take him by surprise and throw him to the ground, but I froze that same phantom heart beating in my chest.
"Made a deal with Nicky," I mumbled to myself, turning toward the darkened tunnel behind me and the unforgettable smell of the Vampire Queen. "Like someone else we know."
"Excuse me?" Finn asked, using his magic to help Scarlet and the twins out of their blood suits before they had a complete breakdown.
"We have to go back," I mumbled, turning back to Tommy. "Just you and me. Quick in and out and we’re gone.”
“Again. The book is gone. We can get Saxon back another way.” Tommy was already sticking a cigarette in his mouth, leaning against the wall and blocking the other side of the tunnel.
"I don't need the book. It's something--"
"Don't care," Tommy interrupted me. "It's not going to happen.”
"Then we have to take on the Queen." My stomach gave a lurch, wolf growling as my fangs pulled back into my gums as if the mother fuckers were scared. They needed to grow a backbone if teeth can do that. I was going to need them.
