Kage landed on top of her as she shrieked and pummeled him. His teeth drove in for her face but she was so strong she actually clamped her hands around his muzzle, screaming about what disgusting, mangy, stupid brutes they were.
He thrashed his head like an eel, broke free, snapped again, and this time caught her hand instead of her face. She screamed a horrible, ear-bleeding cry of anguish as he crushed bones in her hand. At the same time, she lunged upward from where he pinned her on her back and sank her own fangs into the top of his muzzle.
Kage let go with an equally horrible yelp and snarl. She punched him in the throat, kicked his stomach, and Kage retched even as he tried again to bite her face.
This was supposed to be power: teeth and muscle, fast, dangerous predator. But I’d never seen anyone fight a canine like that vampire did. It was horrible. Not for one, but for both, what each were capable of and what vicious punishment each could inflict. For the first time, I felt some small glimmer of understanding of how appalling shifter/vampire wars before the old truce might have been.
On my hands and knees to recover the book off the shell that she had dropped when she tackled me, I grabbed it in both scraped hands, still fighting for every breath.
Kage had his teeth in her arm while she blocked her face and punched him in the eyes again and again, screaming and cursing at him, beating his eyes as if to bash through a brick wall. He’d thrown his body on top of hers, flattening himself to keep her from the repeated kicks into his stomach and groin. Now, though, he was trapped there. Like a dog with a bull by the nose, the trouble was letting go.
I drew up the force, the light, the power I needed in my own arms and whole body, and staggered for them.
Kage took a chance, snapping for her good, free hand that was hammering his eyes. The instant he lunged for her left, she punched the crippled right straight into his mouth. Kage let out a gagging yelp as she struck his soft palate and knocked him back. As she followed up, reaching again to grab his muzzle and use her own fangs, her head was raised from the shell and face exposed.
“Hey, Medusa?”
For an instant, she stared up at me, wide-eyed.
“That’s one of my puppies you’re abusing.”
The book made contact with her face with a sound like a clap of thunder, the magic behind it sending a spray of fire into her eyes and a concussive force driven through her skull.
While she screamed and screamed, covering her eyes and writhing on the ground, I grabbed a fistful of Kage’s fur to get him going with me, then started for the hedges. One more chance: one more idea since I hadn’t broken into the bikes. Or we were all going to die.
Crazy. It wasn’t as if they were aiming machine guns at us. But, it turned out, it wasn’t as if they needed to…
We didn’t even have a stake left. Without one, or decapitation—also needing a weapon that we didn’t have—we couldn’t destroy them. And they were already dead. They could fight all night. We couldn’t.
At the hedge, though, I looked left and right, aware of what seemed like a dozen loud and bloody battles going on around us. Kage had only moved a few feet beyond the writhing vampire, stumbling uncertainly, head low, blood running down his beautiful face, his ears pricked toward me.
“Kage?”
He took a few faster steps, almost to me, but a bit off; a bit to the left. Because he was blind.
Chapter 19
Burst blood vessels? Bruising? Just stunned? It would heal, surely. Let it heal. They could heal incredible wounds with the change—Isaac’s arm was proof of that. But if there was something torn? Something disconnected from blunt force trauma?
Right now. What mattered was right now. And now he couldn’t see. Later he would. He would change. He would heal. Now, though… Just right now…
Heart hammering, voice shaking as much as my legs, I stepped back to kneel against him.
Kage jumped when I touched the regal mane of fur around his neck.
“Okay… You have to stay with me.” As I spoke, I scrambled for my belt buckle. “You’ll be all right. Keep your eyes shut. They’ll be fine in a little bit. Or when you change, worst case.” In a second I had the purple and white, hand-patterned belt Jed had made for me in my fist. “Hold onto this.”
I looped the belt through the buckle, pulling it snug around my left hand, then stroking down Kage’s bloody face, along his muzzle, guiding his mouth to the end of the strap.
My own eyes burning, voice cracked, I said, “Okay?” again. “Hold on. We’re going through the garden to the river.” I kissed his hot nose, stood on shaking legs, and hurried back into the garden maze, hardly able to stay on my feet.
With tension in the belt, Kage padded at my heels.
Fights ahead as well as behind. Zar and either Andrew or Jason were out here scuffling with vampires who were still searching for the book. Gavin’s voice, and others, asking, muttering, rushing through the hedges.
I ducked, moving as fast as I could, took a right, a slight down hill, away from the gardens toward the private road we’d driven in on.
Another turn. The way cleared: this was it.
I ran for the river. Sort of. I couldn’t manage my best run, even as Kage did a good job staying with me. But I jogged for the river, shaking and panting, book clasped in my right arm like my first born.
“Going somewhere?” Just beyond the hedges, Gavin stepped in front of me. “And we so wanted you to stay for dinner.”
I stopped. Kage blundered into my legs, making me stagger.
I could have sworn I’d just heard Gavin’s voice behind me.
Now I heard something else behind me. Running, pounding feet.
Kage stepped forward, between me and Gavin, snarling, belt gone from his mouth. They probably couldn’t tell there was anything wrong with him like that.
It was hard to see, real night settled around us, rain just about stopped—a faint dew—but I thought Gavin’s gaze flicked to Kage and back to me. He didn’t want his hand crushed or face bitten.
“It’s stolen property, Cassia. What do you want with it anyway? Surely it’s not worth all your lives?”
“Yet you seem to think it’s worth a great deal,” I panted and looked around. Just as Andrew burst from the hedges behind us with two vampires right after him. He appeared to have gotten over his daze.
They can’t catch me.
All right, gingerbread man.
I held out the book at arm’s length just as he swept past.
“Throw it in the river unless they leave you alone!”
Andrew grabbed and kept running. The only one of us on two feet who was actually faster than a young vampire.
“No!” Gavin screamed, diving for him as Andrew shot past, but no chance. Then, “Stop! Let him go!” He rounded on me. “Give us that book or you will all die!”
“Let us go or your book will die!” I shouted back. I moved on around them, slow, sideways, facing Gavin all the time, reaching to flick the end of the belt across Kage’s shoulders so he would feel where I moved and stay close against my legs without the obvious handicap of holding a guide.
“You don’t need that book! It is one of our tomes and our sacred property!” His voice dropped, eyes fixed on mine in the dark. “Give it back. And you may go.”
I knew better, glancing at Kage, then off after Andrew, then the other two vampires now flanking Gavin so as not to look at him directly for too long.
“Prove we don’t need it,” I panted. “Tell me what it says.”
“How should I know what it says? It is a record kept for our future generations.”
“Very sentimental of you. But I bet you have some idea.” We’d almost moved past them, cutting a wide, slow semi-circle around the three who turned to follow our progress.
“All right?” Andrew yelled.
“So far,” I called back, not sure if he could hear over the rush of water.
“You?”
“On the bridge. Dangling our dear
lovey out to sea.”
“Tell your people to back off and let mine go.” I kept edging toward the road.
Gavin started to move, then changed his mind, bunching his fists and relaxing them.
“You’re right that I don’t want to keep the book,” I said quietly, meeting his eyes for the moment. “All we want to know is what it says about recent events. You could tell us that much, surely. Probably without even opening it. Tell us what you know, let us have our motorcycles, you get the book, we all go our separate ways.”
“Recent events?” he snarled. “Have you tried a newspaper?”
“Why are you killing wolves?” As I moved, Kage kept his head at my thigh, face turned toward Gavin.
“I have done no such thing.”
“Then why are your people in the south killing wolves?”
“Is that what you think? When wolves hunt and destroy us and you, the casters, join forces with them? Yet you have the nerve to come here making accusations?”
“I’m sure the Blood Tome would tell us what’s really happening if you don’t know. But, in another thirty seconds it’s going to be destroyed unless you call your people off.”
He cast a sharp look to the bridge. Back to me. “We are the victims here, not the perpetrators.”
“Then prove it!”
“You have broken in, barged in, and otherwise imposed yourself into matters—”
“Andrew!” I shouted.
Gavin hissed, making another involuntary move that way, then stopping himself.
“I don’t mind giving you your book! What I mind is my friends being hurt! Let them go!”
Gavin looked away, back up toward the manor and the fighting still happening in the garden and courtyard.
Then … everything stopped. Telepathic message received, the vampires freed themselves from the wolves and in another few seconds many feet were hurrying down to us.
I had just reached the road with Kage when Zar met us there. His bag was gone, his face scratched and bloody, but I couldn’t tell any more than that.
“Now,” I said quietly as several vampires appeared through the hedges, moving at what seemed to be a glide to bunch around Gavin. “I’m not here because casters have decided to ally themselves with shifters. I’m here because these people are my friends and I am one individual witch who is trying to help them. We’ll be honest with you. You be honest with us.”
I backed across the road toward the bridge, Zar and Kage moving with me. Now, beyond the clustering vampires forming faint silhouettes from the distant outside lights at the manor, I saw two more upright forms and a wolf in fur emerging from the garden. They went very slowly and seemed to be having to help one another.
“Why are vampires in the south murdering shifters?” I continued, watching Gavin across the road as I backed up.
“We are doing no such thing,” he spat. “Why are shifters destroying vampires after hundreds of years of truce?”
“We’re not,” Zar said, startled. “We haven’t done a thing against you. Vampires live in the city. We’re in the country. Wolves still respect the truce. You’re the ones who have estates like this that we didn’t know about. This is wolf territory.”
“This estate has been in Mother’s family for six hundred years. We are not bound by truces to abandon our heritage. We simply stay away from you and you from us. Until you decided to break that and started destroying my people!”
“They’re not!” I raised my voice to match his. “They’ve done nothing to you! I’m an outsider and I can testify to that. We know nothing at all about vampires being hunted recently.”
“And we know nothing about shifter deaths!” Gavin shouted back. “Yet you will not believe us!”
The three of us had come to the bridge and Andrew said quietly behind us, “It seems we have reached an impasse.”
“All right.” I opened my hands to Gavin, facing us with his fellows across the road. “Let’s try again. Without the accusations. For many months, wolf shifters in the South of England have been being murdered.”
“How dreadful for you,” Gavin said coldly.
“Last month, a few of the pack, and myself, started investigating these murders more intensively than anything they had tried previously. So far, signs have pointed us toward vampires as being the most likely suspect.”
“And what do you want me to say to that? ‘You’re not very good at your job? I’m sorry you’re too stupid to solve the crime? Better luck next time?’ What?”
“Now,” I went on. “You’re saying vampires have also been under attack. We didn’t know that. All we knew was that you’ve been spawning recently, which seemed another worrying sign.”
“Of course we’ve been spawning, you morons. We’re being wiped out. What do you want?”
“So, that’s why you’re spawning? To replace your numbers? Not to hatch newborns that are powerful enough to hunt and kill shifters and cover your tracks?”
They just stared at me for a long moment. Only the rushing sound of the river filled the gap.
At last, he said, “And they say I was spawned yesterday.” He crossed his arms. “Pray tell, girl, where did you learn that we were spawning? Because if you knew that much, and did not bother to ask why, I’ll be forced to the conclusion that the only thing more asinine than the words dropping from your lips are the thoughts stagnating in the brain above them.”
“We couldn’t ask,” I said. “Our informant was … a bit…”
“Old?”
“Well…”
“You interrogated an ancient one? Then expected it to contain reliable information? Did you see Mother just now? Have any idea how insane they are?” His voice was rising again. “You come here to accuse us of murdering you, stealing, fighting, smashing Mother’s windows, wrecking the place, on the word of an ancient one?”
“Not entirely. We had other reason to suspect—”
“Your reasons were mistaken, weren’t they? I thought even spellcasters knew the ancient ones were mad. Did you not tell her?” Looking in disgust to the others, Zar and Andrew beside and behind me. “Did you think it was amusing to let her listen to the senile ramblings of a thing that has been dead for one or two or eight hundred years? Your people are disgusting. You deserve to be shot and skinned for bounties like the old days. Hoards of savages. But do disagreements of habit and lifestyle and race and species mean we murder you in your beds and spawn a new generation special in order to do it?” He threw open his hands. “Yes, very crafty of us, I’m sure. If we wanted the whole shifter race down our throats like the infestation they are. But we don’t. So we didn’t. So, my girl, your trail has run cold.” He took a step forward, holding out his hand. “Give me that book.”
“First I want to know you’re letting us go. We need our bikes. And our clothes. Then we’ll leave you in peace. But … there’s something else. The vampire losses, someone hunting you down as well, what … do they look like?”
“Look like?”
“What’s the pattern? How are they destroyed?”
“Staked in the heart of course.”
“That’s all?”
He scowled at me. “No, in fact. After staking, we decompose to various degrees, so it can be difficult to tell. But, it seems, the victims all have their eyes removed and their throats cut, then are often hung upside down like game. As if to bleed out, though, of course, our blood stopped flowing a long time ago.”
Chapter 20
A truce, old and new. A pause in battle. Forever? Or only for now?
They let us go. We gave them back the Blood Tome. But it was a slow and, literally, painful process.
Their damages were greater than ours, three of their number having been destroyed by the stakes—though Gavin seemed much more upset by this for the prospect of having to tell Mother she needed two more than for any personal feelings for them. Then there was the crushed hand, a broken jaw, and so on.
Our damages, however, as Andrew said, were plen
ty bad to be getting on with.
We did not set foot back inside: Gavin throwing Jed’s clothes, then our jackets, out the broken window, then supervising us with a couple of his unharmed fellows while the rest retreated, many hissing, and we did the best we could for each other in the coach house around the bikes.
Zar found his own and Kage’s things and brought them. Worried as I was for the states that Isaac, Jason, and Jed were in—Isaac’s shirt was soaked in blood, Jed was limping badly, and both Jason and Isaac were sick from the venom—I was most scared for Kage. I also couldn’t stay with them as they tried to sort themselves into good enough shape to drive. I had to talk with Gavin. And return the book I carried as they watched us.
First, I took a few minutes to sit with Kage, holding his clothes out for him to smell, telling him where he was. Jason was outside, vomiting in the hedges, but Andrew came over and crouched beside me.
“All right, mate? Belle says you did a number on one.” Andrew rested a hand on my arm. “And I saw you staked one inside. Not bad for a night’s work for ‘acting core,’ is it? I’d pat your head but it’s all bloody and sticky. Want to fix that? You’ll be able to see right enough with a change. Ready to have a go? Want to beat Jed at it? He’s not worked up the balls to try yet. Not even torn up as much as you, though.”
On my knees on the cobblestone floor, I turned and moved a little away from them for Kage to change while Andrew sat with him.
After the painful crunching noises, I still waited, listening to Andrew murmur to him about his clothes and his eyes.
Kage shifted about, panting, not saying much.
“Get your trousers on, Sparky. What’s that one?”
“Can’t tell,” Kage mumbled.
“How about this?”
“It’s … nothing. Just your hand.”
“There you go.” Andrew sounded cheerful. “You’ll be fine. Maybe let the rest of us do the driving tonight. Jay’s sick and probably in trouble with his balance. Come with me.”
Moonlight Betrayal: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 5) Page 11
