“The others—”
“They’re fine,” he shouted back as we dashed for the radiant glow of the chandelier, the only bright light in the place.
Only … that glow was gone. The lights had been turned out and the remaining illumination in the foyer came only from a simple electric lamp on a hall table. The sort of light one might use as a book light in bed. No brighter. Meaning the foyer was nearly as dark as the corridor when we reached it. Just bright enough to see there were a dozen waiting vampires between us and the front door.
Chapter 17
Andrew skidded to a stop, jerking me with him. Zar almost crashed into us. Andrew didn’t hesitate but dived for an open door before the foyer that led into a front sitting room or office of some sort.
He let me go to throw himself at the tall front window, only feet above the ground in the outside courtyard. A perfect escape hatch.
Except—bang. As he hit it, and the glass shattered, Andrew also hit the iron security bars that had presumably been installed on ground level against burglars.
He crashed to the wood floor in a shower of glass, swearing and clutching his shoulder. Zar and I spun around. Jed was right there with us in the doorway, looking for any alternative escape from the room. The other three were running up in the corridor, seeing the crowd blocking our exit from the front door.
Crowd? Spawning, difficult, have to be their type: a whole process to make a vampire. Zar had told me. Not just a random neck bite—which could kill a human, but not transform on its own.
“Help him,” I snapped at Zar as I ran past Jed to face the foyer with the others.
The dozen vampires moved toward us, slow, staring like cats watching birds.
“They’re not there,” I said.
Isaac gave me a quick look. But Jason and Kage, who’d been there for everything below Versteckterstein Schloss, understood. What was more, somehow, they had stakes. Kage, Jason, and Isaac each had two rather thick and strangely shaped, but probably usable, wooden stakes in their hands.
“How did—?” But we had bigger concerns. I wasn’t sure how to break the illusion with magic, other than actually scrying, the way I’d found the door under the gatehouse. The only thing I did know to try as a group would require an act of will.
Running feet behind us. Zar had Andrew, but he was dazed, holding his head.
“Just … don’t believe them,” I said, and started forward with the others close around me, Isaac and Kage slightly ahead. “They’re not there. It’s a hall of mirrors.”
Clutching the book against my chest with one hand, I held up the other in a fresh blaze of the white light, as sharp and hot as I could make it. No more blue, but a yellow blast like the sun. The mass of vampires hesitated. But only two of them actually recoiled, hissing and shutting their eyes.
As we ran for the door, the illusion broke, the crowd vanishing the moment we could all see only those two were not fakes.
The magic was taking its toll, however, my energy already draining. I had to struggle to unlock the front doors as a battle burst around me. The vampires from behind fell upon us at the same time the two front guards fought back—one biting into Kage’s hand, the other wrestling Isaac into the stairwell.
Cursing, snapping, hissing motion all around and against me. I tried the old-fashioned way, simply unlocking a deadbolt. Naturally, that didn’t do anything. There were other things barring this door. I scried into the door, feeling for the lock. There: turning, just hit upon it when someone smashed into me.
It was Gavin, throwing me to my side on the marble floor with a sharp pain in my hip and elbow, hands on the Blood Tome, white fangs flashing in my face. I barely had time to kick out before Kage, the back of his hand streaming blood, tackled Gavin’s head, dragging him off. Kage’s stakes were gone, used up or else taken from him, and Gavin’s strength, without them, was a match for him. While the rest were all trapped in the churning, crashing mêlée of the foyer—like a very overpowered barroom brawl.
I tried to smash the book into his face, yet his hands, strong as steel, kept control of the thing, gradually twisting it out of my fingers even as Kage dragged him back. I turned against his thumb, kicked out, nothing helping. Then Gavin twisted his own head at an impossible angle, beating Kage’s hold on him, and sank his fangs into Kage’s arm.
Kage yelled and threw his weight back, looking like he would tear Gavin’s head right off. Still Gavin held on. How could something dead be that damn strong?
A massive, dark figure sprang against Gavin and me. The bear-like head wedged between us as Kage dragged the vampire back. The huge teeth sank into the spidery, pale hands clutching the blue and gold binding, nearly snapping into my fingers as well. Gavin shrieked, releasing his bite on Kage and his grip on the book at once. With Jed’s force combined, they pushed and dragged Gavin back enough to free me.
But they were all trying to get to me: all trying to fight through the others for me. If I couldn’t get that door open, they might as well have their tome. And us for dinner.
“Jed!” I shouted.
The great, chocolate wolf released Gavin and spun around.
“Fetch!” I threw the book as hard as I could, sending a blast of magic behind it for the distance, up the stairway.
It was a slow motion moment: the heavy book spinning through the air like a flying disc, pages fanning open halfway through its arc; every head, shifter and vampire, even Gavin and Kage, turning to follow the progress of the life or death object; and the dark wolf leaping over the pair of them, reaching the stairs in a single stunning bound.
Every vampire either followed or tried: twisting away from the shifters, leaping past them, or still biting and fighting to get away. Yes, they were fast and strong. But they weren’t as fast as a wolf.
Jed hit the middle of the stairs in a flash, clamped the book in his teeth, and bounded the rest of the way up to the dark corridor beyond. Hissing, screaming, shrieking about the vile animal with their Blood Tome, the vampires charged after him, four or five breaking away from the rest below.
As I scrambled again for the door, Gavin somehow managed to twist around in Kage’s arms and smash his head into Kage’s nose. While bright blood fountained down Kage’s face, Jason jumped in with a stake, bashing Gavin’s head into the doorframe. Gavin dropped on his back on the marble floor as Jason lunged with the stake, but only to bunch his legs. He kicked out with both feet and, apparently, the power of a horse. Struck in the chest, Jason was thrown clear across the foyer—twenty feet at least—into the hall table, smashing two legs of it, toppling the lamp, and the room went dark.
Only outside lights filtered in through the windows, and one distant glow from the corridor we’d just been down.
The swearing, struggling, lashing out, and crashing boiled around me as I again seized the door.
A light, if I could get a light in their faces, set them back, give my pack the edge.
No, just get the damn door open. That was what mattered.
What about Jed? He would be all right until we could get out. It would take more than a house full of vampires to stop Jed.
Crunching, yells of pain. Wood furniture break? Or bones?
Something hit me again as I struggled mentally with the lock. Only in passing, one of the wolves crashing to the floor with the undead. They weren’t going for me so much now. They were all trying to get up the stairs, or to kill the five still down here fighting them. Or four? Was Andrew all right? I was sure he’d hit his head on those bars.
Had any of the things even been staked? And where—?
Oh—the picture frames. That’s what those were. Fragments of a thin, wooden picture frame that they’d smashed off the wall in the gallery.
Goddess, that was smart. The sort of thing I’d have thought Andrew would do. Only Andrew and Zar had been in the lead with me.
Dammit, the lock wouldn’t go.
A combination of a clever and complex mechanism and my own fear and fatigue.<
br />
Help me.
Click—a soft sound in the din. It wasn’t the lock.
The chandelier blazed to life above us. Fresh screams from the startled vampires.
Andrew stood beside me against the wall, leaning into it, his own eyes shut, a streak of blood matting his hair to his temple. Dazed as he was, he’d had the sense to find the light switch inside the door while I’d been floundering around wishing I had a magic light. Speaking of brains.
There he was, in the bright light with me because this wasn’t a rerun of the castle in Germany. I wasn’t that tired. I had all of them here. We had light. And the only part we were repeating was that we were all getting out.
I reached to grab Andrew’s hand and squeeze, pressed the other flat into the wood of the door, called up the magic and elements and my mother’s love and Nana’s teaching, and unlocked it.
I ripped the door open, yanked Andrew’s hand as I dashed through, again shouting, “Run!” and jumped the steps to the crushed shell courtyard.
They didn’t even follow us. The minute my pack let them go, the rest of the vampires still on their feet sprinted up the stairs.
Zar burst out after us, looking unscathed, followed by Jason, who stumbled and panted like Andrew. Isaac had a hand over his side, blood soaking his shirt. Kage was fairly covered in blood. Still streaming from his nose, down his shirt, also soaking right arm and hand from two bites.
“The bikes!” I called. “Get the bikes out!”
“What about Jed?” Zar ran forward.
“I’ve got him. It’s okay. Get the bikes.”
“What—?”
“Bikes!”
I ran through the shell courtyard and light rain, away from the coach house, heading for the right side of the house that was closely met by mushy emerald lawns.
Isaac ran after me. Kage, who had started for the coach house and seen I wasn’t coming, followed.
“Cassia, what are you doing?” Isaac called.
“Getting Jed.”
It had seemed like a soft landing, yet, looking up from the ground, much higher than I’d expected. Too high.
Still, I focused as I ran up, the power, the blazing force of fire and air, the magic tingling through my own life essence, chose a central window with a clear path on the second floor, and blasted the glass out in a volatile explosion as loud as a car crash. Just in case it wasn’t enough noise, I threw light into it as well, a flash of blue, a puff like mist, and looked through, carrying my scry into the room and beyond to see the open door. Yes. Perfect.
Then I stepped back. But was it too much?
“Can he jumped that?” I gasped, knees shaking under me after the power used for the spells. I clutched Isaac’s arm that wasn’t holding his own wound.
“Who?”
“Jed. He’s not going to break his legs?”
“He can jump it.” It wasn’t Isaac, but Kage, following us, gazing up at the cleared window as he panted.
“You’re sure?”
Kage spat blood and nodded. “He’ll make it.”
“How will he even know? They could have him trapped anywhere—” Isaac started.
“He’ll know. I taught him.”
We could hear them then, shouts, running, a thump as if someone had been tripped, then pounding claws on hardwood, changing to muffled over the bedroom rug, a slight crunch of glass, and a great shadow burst out the window.
Jed’s momentum carried him over the area of shell, over the flower beds, and straight into the soft grass. He hit with his forepaws and tumbled, spinning into the hedge, the thick book knocked from his jaws.
As I hurried forward, shaking, but keeping my feet, Jed was already scrambling up. Ribs heaving, he snatched up the Blood Tome again and came to meet me, holding it up.
I sank to my knees on the wet grass and hugged his neck. “I knew you’d bring it back.”
I grabbed the book from him and we were just heading for the front of the house when I heard the others running toward us from that way on the crunchy courtyard.
“Cassia?” It was Zar. “We can’t get in. The bikes are locked in.”
Then Kage, Isaac, and Jed whipped around. I heard it too and turned as another vampire thumped to the ground. They were jumping out the upstairs window, dropping and walking toward us, black eyes fixed on me and the book.
Chapter 18
We ran.
Vampires, including Gavin, swarmed out of the front doors or jumped from upstairs. More of them following than there were of us.
It was so dark out now, with the rain misting sulkily in lavender air, it was hard to see where to go or what to do as we followed a dark path between tall hedges through the front gardens with forking trails turning left and right. Not so high we couldn’t see over them. But high enough, maybe, to confuse.
“Zar!” I called. “The book!”
I fainted a throw. He fainted a catch and ran off. Andrew, who seemed to be moving better, ran with him.
“Go,” I gasped to Kage. “Keep them distracted so I can get us into the coach house.” It had taken us over half an hour to drive here. There was no way out on foot.
Kage and Jason darted off another way. Isaac, who’s arm I held for support, Jed, and myself turned right, ducking down as we went.
Hissing, shouting, the vampires were tearing through the perfectly clipped hedges after us, splitting up, this way and that, probably able to see much better in the dark than we could. Mostly heading to the left—after Zar.
“The bikes,” I whispered. “Is this the right way? Circle back.”
“They’ll be watching them.”
Damn, he was right. They probably would.
“We have to try.” I pushed him that way—I hoped. It was so hard to tell hunched among hedges in the dark with rain and wet hair in my eyes.
So much for the motorcycle jackets. And what about Jed? Though his being able to drive didn’t seem to matter as long as he had nothing to drive.
We went right again, came out to an outbuilding with no one following, but it wasn’t the right one.
Jed trotted ahead like a shadow and we followed.
“What happened to you?” I asked Isaac just as softly.
“Shhh.” He paused against the corner of the building to look around.
Jed also sniffed, hesitated, then slunk along the perimeter of this one, heading for the next: the coach house. We followed. I held onto Isaac’s elbow with my right hand, book held into my chest with the left—still wondering if there was some way we could use it to negotiate—while Isaac had his right hand clamped over the bleeding wound just above his waist.
Yelling, crash, breaking branches, and a savage, explosive snarling and growling behind us. Someone else had changed.
We froze. Help him? Or try to get the bikes?
I looked around. Just in time to see someone racing from the garden into the shell courtyard. He had his arms clutched to his chest and, for a second, I thought he was also injured. No: two vampires racing after him. He was pretending he had the book—keeping them from me. Either Jason or Andrew—I couldn’t tell in the dark, but no long hair and messenger bag of Zar, and he didn’t look as bulky as Kage.
“Jed, help him,” I said as I tugged Isaac’s arm and we took the chance of motion and confusion to run for the coach house.
I went for the plain door at the side, not the garage style one. Surely this would be a simple lock. The fight burst behind us while I held onto Isaac, book, and door, searching for the energy to open it.
With two naked shifters in fur, how were we going to drive out of here? We should have brought Kage’s Jeep to Yorkshire after all. Though … there was that car. I doubted Gavin left the keys in it. Could I start a car with magic? I’d never tried. But, if I could open intricate locks…
It didn’t matter. We never got to the Ferrari because I’d hardly started trying to coax the door lock open when Isaac spun around just in time to meet the rush of a vampire bursting past
the corner. It sank its fangs into his shoulder as Isaac tried to wrestle it off and I fell backward—right into the arms of another.
Cold hands clasped my arms and the face dropped to mine, teeth seeking my throat.
“No!” I bashed the book into its face and the vampire, startled that I even had the book, snatched this instead. I held on, jerking backward, still yelling. The fangs came for my hand. Terrified, knowing a bite could either kill or start me on the way to spawning, I let go.
The vampire, a female with a wild mass of hair jutting in all directions, fell back with the force of her own strength yanking against me. She laughed as she held up the book, finding her feet while I scrambled back to the wall and Isaac could not fight off the one that still had its teeth in him.
“Did you think it would save you to give it up?” Grinning down at me. “Or your puppies? You made a mistake visiting our hall of records. But not as big a mistake as being here tonight. Maybe you’ll practice more discretion in your next incarnation.”
As she bent over me, fangs bared, Isaac crashed into her with the vampire he struggled against. She kicked the feet out from under both of them and leapt aside as lightly as a cat. In her moment of distraction, however, I’d found a fistful of the crushed shell. When she leaned down again for a bite, I hurled it into her eyes, jumped up, and ran, leaving the book with her. Her yelling and discomfort did not, it turned out, hamper her nearly as much as I’d have thought. Nor was I capable of my best unaided running just then.
Going as well as I could, I tore past the fight between three vampires and two shifters, one in skin, one the dark bulk of Jed, along the last building heading for the gardens, but hadn’t reached it when she tackled my ankles.
Smashing into the shell scraped my hands and drove the breath from my lungs in a great gasp. She sprang to my back, biting into a mouthful of my hair as she tried again to reach my neck.
I couldn’t even yell, could hardly thrash against her, dazed and breathless. I looked up just in time to see a huge Eurasian wolf, mottled in classic markings, leap straight over my head and into hers.
Moonlight Betrayal: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 5) Page 10
