by Tate James
“Already?” I squeaked. “Shit balls.”
“Jackson said that keeping him under magical sedation was just about killing him, so the second you said the bond was broken, he started lifting it.” Austin led us back through to the living room, where a man who was unmistakably Finn’s older brother sat on the table looking confused.
“Bride?” he exclaimed, staring at me in horror. “What—?”
“Not her,” I said firmly, shaking my head. “Kit, her biological daughter. As you can tell by the family resemblance.”
The panic visibly faded from his features, and his gaze roamed over me. “Ah, now I see it. Plenty of this old fuck in your looks too,” he commented, jerking his thumb at Vic. “Angel balls, how fucking long have I been under? You look ageless already, and the last time I saw you, you were three.”
“Angel balls?” Caleb snickered beside me, and Austin whacked him in the gut.
“Around eighteen years or so,” Jackson responded, sounding like he was half dead on his feet. He looked even worse.
Lachlan’s face split into a grin when he saw the former Blood Mage, and he reached over to jerk him into a tight man-hug.
Clearing my throat, I raised my eyebrows at my guys and jerked my head to the entrance. Silently, the message I was sending was along the lines of, “give them some space to get reacquainted.”
Really, I was still feeling a bit awkward around such displays of intense friendship and affection. I’d let my walls down with the guys, and Lucy would always be the sister of my heart. But outside of them, no. I was still one seriously damaged little fox.
“Are you doing okay, Kitten?” River asked as we stepped back out into the glaring whiteness of the salt flats.
I nodded, squinting against the reflection of the sun. “Totally fine,” I assured him. “But we officially only have two days until this all comes to a head. We need to get our army down here immediately. I want the element of surprise, not to be caught with our pants down.”
Walking a little way away from the cave entrance, I perched my butt on a salt boulder and stared out into the distance, running my plan over in my head. It would be a stretch and all totally theoretical. Hopefully I wasn’t overestimating my own talents.
“I agree entirely,” River continued, coming to sit beside me on the salt rock. “But are you doing okay? With all of this? It’s a lot—the battle with Bridget and possibly seeing her killed by Vic or Lachlan. It would be totally understandable if you weren’t doing okay.”
His words made me pause and look over at him. “Seriously, River,” I assured him. “I’m fine. She’s not my mother; she never has been. Her death or... whatever ends up happening”—I shrugged, feeling nothing but resignation— “it’s just what needs to happen for the greater good. She’s shown her true colors, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that she needs to be stopped by whatever means necessary.”
“That is very altruistic of you, regina mea,” Vali commented, joining us. “But she is your flesh and blood. Does that not give you pause when deciding her fate?”
I met his granite gaze and found no judgement there. No accusations. Only curiosity. “Did it make a difference to you when you had your father committed?”
“You what?” Cole exclaimed, and Vali shrugged.
“No, it did not.” Vali answered my question honestly and ignored his brother’s. “It was for the greater good.”
I nodded. “Well, then you understand. So, let’s give Lachlan a few more minutes to catch up with his friends, and then we can go back in and start calling for the troops. I want them all here by tomorrow at the latest to give us an extra day in case of fuck-ups.”
“That seems sensible,” River agreed. “Now will you tell us what you have planned for when they arrive?”
I gave my guys—my bonded guardians and my soulmates—a mischievous grin. “I was wondering when you might ask. All right, here is what I was thinking...”
28
The silence sent a shiver down my spine, and my fingers crept up to my amulet almost unconsciously. It wasn’t until the warmth of it had been heating my fingers for a few moments that I realized... this was it. This was the image Lorna had drawn for me.
Which meant...
“Hello darling.” A woman’s voice broke the silence, and I whipped around to face her.
Bridget. My biological mother. The woman who had given me life, given me magic, and tossed me aside like yesterday’s coffee when she thought I could be of no use to her. She seemed to be alone and the runes of her portal were already fading into the salt at her feet.
“I don’t see it,” I commented, inspecting her straight haircut just above her shoulders, dark blue eyes, and slight build. “We don’t look that much alike. Now that Lachlan has pointed it out, I really do resemble my father more than you.”
Bridget’s eyes widened at the mention of her former dianoch. “So, you do have him. I wondered if all the rumors I was hearing might have been part of a pathetic trap you were laying, but then I felt the bond break.” Her eyes tightened with pain, but I felt no sympathy for her. This was the woman who’d drained my best friend of blood just to power a spell and to get back at Finn for past grievances. She was heartless, through and through.
“Where is he?” she demanded, looking around and coming up blank. All there was to see was salt. Miles and miles of salt.
I sighed, giving her a pitying look. “Bridget, I understand. You had a rough go of things as a kid, what with your mother trying to strip your magic and all. But this won’t fix that. All of that hatred you’ve held against Tasha has led to the exact events which scared her in the first place, don’t you see that?” Despite all I had said to the guys, I needed to try. I needed to at least give her a chance to change her mind. “Maybe this is what living for four hundred years does to a person? But I’m giving you a chance now to stop. Just stop. You’ll never succeed; there will always be someone around the next corner waiting to stop you.”
“Oh, you think so, little girl? You think you will be the one to stop me? I made you! And look at your arrogance, waiting here to try a peace talk without any backup. Guess you inherited your father’s brains if you thought this was a smart idea.”
“Did I?” I tilted my head, not giving her the satisfaction of whatever emotion she’d been trying to stir up. “Looks like you came alone too. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.”
A sickly grin peeled her lips apart, and she snapped her fingers. Behind her, creatures began appearing one at a time, each in a rune portal of their own. Looked like Bridget had some mages working on her side after all. Caleb owed my sexy, cynical Austin fifty bucks.
I waited in silence as her army amassed around her, creatures so varied and unusual that I couldn’t put a name to them all if I’d even tried. My work would definitely be cut out for me after this was all done. How could we really expect to forge a peace with the non-magicals if I didn’t even know how many of these species existed?
“Oops, did I miss the memo that friends weren’t invited to the party?” My melodramatic bio-mom giggled, covering her mouth with her fingers. “Guess you gambled and lost on this one, sweetheart. Now, be a good girl and let mommy cut your head off, hmm?”
Heaving a sigh, I chewed at the inside of my lip. Secretly, deep down, I’d really hoped it wouldn’t end like this. I’d really, truly hoped she wasn’t as predictable as we had thought she was. That she would use her goddamn brain and see that without my magic and without her two strongest dianoch, she had already lost.
“Where is Nicholai?” I asked as Bridget pulled a deadly-looking sword from the scabbard on her back. I could tell by the tightening of her jaw and the downturn to her mouth something had gone bad between them. How curious.
“Shut up and stand still while I kill you, stupid girl,” Bridget snarled, raising her sword like she seriously thought I was just going to stand there and let her decapitate me. She really was more fucked in the head than I’d given her credit
for.
Her blade had barely reached the top of her upswing when my bullet pierced her forehead. Blood and chunks of brain matter splattered the crisp white salt behind her as the back of her skull exploded. Her body dropped hard, like she’d just been punched in the face by someone much stronger than her.
Technically, that was exactly what had happened.
The shot I’d just fired from my M1911 packed a heavy-ass punch. One that would keep her down for a decent amount of time while she healed, and with no guardians present, that time was only extended.
My shot was the agreed upon signal, and before Bridget’s body had even bounced once, the illusion cloaking my army was dropped. Within milliseconds of my shot ringing out across the salt flats, a bloody battle roared.
Bridget was out of commission, for now. It was the perfect opportunity to end her, once and for all.
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Vic asked, appearing at my shoulder and peering down on his ex-lover. “Killing an immortal, it’s not a thing to be taken lightly.”
“Like killing a human is?” I snapped back at him, Lucy’s lifeless face dancing across my memory. “No, I gave her every opportunity to back down, and she didn’t take them. This is the only way.” Glancing over my other shoulder, I found Lachlan waiting in a mirror position to Vic. “I trust the two of you to finish it. You’re her weakness, after all.”
Lachlan didn’t speak a word as he pulled out a long, curved knife from within his jacket. It was embedded with words of power in his native tongue, which he had informed me would inflict suffering on Bridget’s soul, not just her body.
Such was the way with demons.
For all my bravado, I turned away before he drove the knife into her heart. Some small, weak part of me was sobbing for her mommy, and I couldn’t bear it any longer. We had much more to deal with here than just Bridget.
My superhuman speed was the only thing that saved me from getting my head taken off as one of Bridget’s soldiers came hurtling at me, fangs extended inside a jaw wider than my body. I danced backwards, conjuring dragon fire and throwing it straight down the creature’s throat.
Fortunately for me, I hadn’t totally failed in my school subjects, so I was prepared when an identical head came seemingly from nowhere. Ducking and rolling, I scooped up an abandoned blade from the ground and sliced it across the Hydra’s scaled neck, watching as the snake-like head dropped to the salted ground with a thud.
A few more swings of the blade and two more fireballs saw the end of one mythical creature I’d never thought I’d see in person, let alone battle.
I scanned the raging fight around us, noticing more than one creature that could be placed in ancient myth and legend. Then again, my side had dragons. All in all, things were looking evenly matched... which wasn’t good enough.
Bridget’s soldiers kept coming at me, and I fought them all using a combination of my newly acquired magic and my own combat skills. After the fourth or fifth creature, my body slipped into a little bit of a trance-like state. The motions of fighting, of killing, they were coming naturally to me. Like this was what I’d been created to do.
“Kit! Watch out!” The shouted warning came not a second too soon, and I ducked just in time to avoid the swing of a blade that I had not seen coming.
“How?” I exclaimed, spinning to face my blood-soaked birth mother, who came at me in a flurry of blows like a woman possessed.
I fought back frantically, defending myself and preventing her from landing any blows, but internally I was fraught with confusion. Lachlan and Vic should have killed her! They were her dianoch, they were the only ones who she was vulnerable to... so how—
Ice formed in my spine as I saw my mistake. A mistake that could well lead to our defeat here for nothing more than my own blind stupidity.
They had been her dianoch. They had been her only vulnerability. Until I broke those bonds.
Without taking my attention off Bridget for too long, I scanned the bloodied salt flats, hunting for my newly rediscovered father and his best friend.
It took me a while. Too damn long, really. But when I spotted them, my heart lurched.
“You foolish, incompetent child,” Bridget screeched at me as her blows rained down on me, and I did all I could to keep up my defenses. I was holding my blade with two hands now, meaning I had none spare to throw dragon fire at her. “How dare you think those two could kill me? No one can kill me! I am a goddess, and you are about to learn the hard way what becomes of impertinent children who try to kill their goddess.”
She was insane. Totally, undeniably, fucking insane.
Which made her all that much more dangerous.
A sane person could be reasoned with, could be talked down or persuaded. Not so with someone like Bridget.
Briefly, our fight was interrupted as an eight-foot-tall, glowing blue creature, who had just been tossed by someone much larger, slammed into the two of us. Gasping to regain air into my lungs, I shook my head to clear the fuzzies and searched for my weapon.
Just as I spotted it, some six feet away, a half-man-bear creature scooped it up and used it to cleave his red-skinned opponent from crotch to nose.
Holy shit. To both his impressive strength and the fact that I was now without a weapon.
Or a physical weapon, that was. I still had a crap-ton of magic at my disposal, but I was hesitant to use it just yet. Not only was Bridget vastly more experienced than I was in that department, but I also couldn’t risk my energy depleting so soon. What if this battle went on for another eight hours? I couldn’t very well take a nap in the middle of it all, and my guys were all fully engaged in fights of their own, all spread out down the length of the two-mile battlefront.
I could sense each one of them through our bonds, so I knew they were okay. But we had decided it was best for all of us to distance ourselves during the battle. People in love did some stupid shit when they saw their loved ones in danger, and there was no place for amateur mistakes. Not here. Not now.
After being knocked apart by the falling and rolling frost giant, Bridget had ended up some fifty paces away, but I heard her coming the second she regained her senses. What exactly she was bellowing, I had no idea. It was all just a blur of screaming and red-faced anger as she came flying across the salt at me.
“Careful,” I muttered under my breath, seeing the hazard that she had completely missed thanks to her blind rage. A double-sized grizzly bear barreled into her, rolling and shredding with claws as it went.
I only got a few seconds to admire my young friend Ursoc—or maybe it was Ursol—before becoming engaged in another fight of my own.
This went on and on, as our armies were startlingly well-matched. All the while, I kept my psychotic egg-donor within the corner of my eye, always tracking where she was and steadily making my way closer to her. I knew if Lachlan and Vic had failed, then I was the only one who stood a chance of beating her. Until that happened, everyone else on this salt flat was going to get caught in the cross fire.
Bridget screamed something in another tongue, snatching a glass vial from a cord around her throat and smashing it on the blood-stained salt.
For half a second, nothing happened, then it did.
A horrific, tearing sound ripped through the air, echoing off the distant mountains and shaking the ground beneath or feet. When it died off, four new combatants had joined Team Bridget. Each of them wore head-to-toe armor, like the knights of a fairytale, and rode upon huge, fire-breathing mounts.
“Shit,” Finn swore, skidding to a halt near me and staring wide-eyed at the four horsemen.
Ah crap. Don’t tell me...
“How the fuck did she win the Four Horsemen?” Finn breathed in awe as he started. “They are loyal to no one but the highest of higher powers, which she is not.”
As we gaped, the four armored beings drove their mounts into the fray, slashing, slicing, killing as they went. They were utterly untouchable, and before our eyes our
people started falling in droves.
“We’re going to lose,” I gasped, my stomach flipping painfully as I watched my Omega warriors being cut down. “How is this possible? I was so sure...”
“If we go down,” Finn grunted, hurling a ball of burning flame at a wolf in mid-pounce, “then we take as many of her damn best fighters with us as we can, understood?”
“Understood,” I agreed, feeling a little of my resolve return to me as I swiped a pair of mismatched daggers from the ground and sent my magic down the blades to ignite them. “Take out her best.”
“Atta girl,” Finn chortled, then led me into the fray once more.
29
RIVER
The metallic flavor of blood coated my mouth as I tore through the young mage’s windpipe, suffocating me on its heady scent for a moment before I spat the flesh and sinew out on the stained salt ground.
I’d given over to the hellhound for this battle. As terrified as I had been of losing myself within his rage and bloodlust, I was a hundred times more afraid that we might lose this fight. If that happened, I couldn’t live with myself knowing that I could have done more but held back out of fear.
The first few moments of my shift had been rough—a straight up battle of wills, one which I had won. So now here I was, in this form which was both as familiar as an old sock, yet as foreign as a ballerina tutu. And we were kicking some serious bloody ass.
Brother, a voice hissed through my mind, and I spun to search for who it had come from. Across the bloody battle, a creature sat atop an enormous demon horse. His entire form was encased in dark gray armor, and his horse’s eyes burned with the same flames my own eyes did.
Brother, at last, the voice hissed, and I had no doubts it came from this creature. We have journeyed these many realms in search of you for thousands of years, and here you are. At last.
I had no way to know if I could communicate with this thing, but nonetheless...
