by J. L. Myers
Then I saw something that distracted my attack of the female damned I was about to stake. A blunt force connected with my chest and I fell to my knees. My lungs ached and my breath came hard and fast.
Kendrick and Dorian covered my fallen body, but they couldn’t stop me from seeing my nightmare unfolding before my very eyes.
Ty snarled across the room, still a towering menace in his magnificent wolf form. His muzzle creased up into bunching lines. His bared canines glistened with black blood that pooled from his mouth.
Before him was Caius. In his hand was his silver sword, and it was trained at Ty. The blade sliced through the pungent air, thickened with the scent of both fresh and damned blood.
Tacky red oozed from new, wide gashes across Ty’s shoulders, legs, and back. He grunted and snarled as he ducked and weaved out of Caius’s blade’s path, while lunging and snapping bites.
He was tired, I realized, his movements less precise and more desperate than earlier.
The disadvantage left Caius’s sword affording closer calls with Ty’s flesh with every arching swing.
A surge of fear, stronger and more compelling than any I had ever experienced, had my pulse pounding through my ears. The ice in my veins melted with a sudden spike of electric adrenaline.
I sprung up, pushing Dorian and Kendrick away as my whip struck out. It slashed through the damned before me, a relentless and unforgiving weapon that didn’t fail as I forged a path through the fallen bodies and still-encroaching damned. All the while my focus remained lasered ahead.
Ty dodged a fresh strike from Caius. In the leap back his paws caught on a crumpled body that had fallen at his feet. He tripped, losing his footing for a split second.
That second lapse was all Caius needed. He lanced forward, sword slicing into Ty’s shoulder.
A high-pitched howl erupted as Ty fell, the deep gash pulsing fiery sweet blood. Ty struggled to stand, legs giving way on the slick marble.
Caius closed in and raised his scarlet-painted sword. The point trained at Ty’s skull. “Time to die, mongrel.”
A shrill cry pulsated through the air. The hairs along the back of my neck rose. And it took me a second to realize that I had been the one to scream. In the same instant my hands lifted, reaching and stretching, palms flexed forward. Two blue bolts broke free, connecting to become one. They crackled through the air and around everything in their path, like a missile locked on its target.
But it was too late.
Caius’s sword came down with the force of a guillotine. Ty rolled back, the deadly point missing his skull and piercing straight through his heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Ty’s wolf body slid from the sword, crumpling to the ground in a vibration that returned him to human form.
Then the lightning bolt found its target.
It connected with Caius’s chest and sent him flying backwards, skidding across the slick ground until he hit a mountain of bodies. Shock crippled his menacing expression and he dropped the sword, which skittered away with a clank.
Most of the remaining damned scattered, seeing their leader fall under the force of my power. The battle was over, and they knew it. The still living royals and their guards moved to take on any stragglers.
The cries of the remaining damned and resulting ash explosions meant nothing to me. I had a score to settle.
With uncontainable rage bursting inside me, I strode to Caius. One hand pressed over the other, pointing my palms forward. Tiny threads of blue electricity danced down my arms, collecting at my desperate call. I needed to make this monster pay for what he’d taken from me. Pay for Ty’s life with his own. But the sparks were residual, not strong enough to stream the same powerful voltage from me and into him. I strained harder and the sparks retracted, running back up my arms and disappearing.
I roared and swiped Caius’s sword from the ground. It was so wet with Ty’s blood that it dripped from the end. I sniffed back tears and pointed the tip straight at Caius’s heart. “You’ll pay for what you did.”
“You will not do it.” Caius stared up at me, almost daring me to disobey. “You cannot kill your own flesh and blood.”
“You’re not my fucking blood! You’re nothing to me.”
I pressed the tip to his flesh. Crimson bloomed from the slice, staining his white shirt. It made me smile and fed my need for revenge. My need for owed justice. “You ordered the deaths of Marcus’s family and unleashed genocide on this council. You killed…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t believe that Ty was gone while this monster was still alive and breathing. Clutching the hilt harder, my hands rose, ready to deliver divine justice by driving the sword straight through his black heart. “Go to hell!”
Before the sword could claim my revenge, a crack of metal and wood rang out. A shrill cry pierced my ears. Racing from where she’d been locked beneath the dais, my mom leaped in front of me, blocking my kill shot. “Amelia, stop!”
“Move!” Blinded by fury I could barely see her. My mom or not, no one would stop this. “Or meet his fate!”
“Amelia, no.” She clung to my arms, splitting my hands apart and forcing the sword to clatter to the ground. “Stop. Amelia, please. You can’t kill him.”
Behind her Caius got to his feet, a bemused smile animating his old face. “And why might that be, Lamayli?”
Mom’s teary eyes rose to meet mine. An expression that was as painful as it was unreadable scored her face. “Because he is your flesh and blood.”
“Liar!” I pushed her away and kicked the sword up, catching it in my shaking hand. I aimed at Caius again, glaring at him. If looks could kill, his heart would already have stopped. “Tell her it’s not true. You compelled my mom. You even marked her flesh so your lies would stick. Tell her the truth!”
Caius smiled, his expression self-important. “You know the truth, my dear.”
A gentle hand cupped over mine holding the sword. “I was compelled, and marked,” my mom spoke softly. “At my own request. So I could lie. To you and your brother. Before I knew of your power, I saw you change. You both became curious. And I couldn’t have that.”
I held my grip on the sword, ready to plunge it in deep. My whole body shook. “It’s not true.”
Mom stepped in front of me, pushing the weapon aside. “Sweetheart, it is. Caius is your father.”
It felt like the world around me had just imploded. The reality of this hall and everything I ever thought I knew smashed to smithereens. The world was like a haze that couldn’t quite reach me. Guards continued to restrain any damned that hadn’t fled with my electric outburst. There was shouting, instructions, and debate. But I couldn’t hear it, any of it. Blood pounded through my heart that felt like it wanted to explode. My legs turned to jello and gave out. Something broke my fall, but I didn’t know what. Corpse or survivor, it didn’t matter. I didn’t care. All I could see was a band of black-clad guards dragging Caius away. My mom scurried after, her flapping mouth directing questions I couldn’t hear at…my father.
Splitting pain struck through my body. Knowing what that monster had stolen from me tore never-ending strips off my ragged heart, as if the organ were an orange being peeled. I had failed, and it had cost me the one thing I didn’t think I could live without. I clutched the amulet to my heart as morbid reality dawned. Ty is dead.
The thing that had broken my fall shifted, lifting my weight and pulling us up from the slippery mess of spilled blood. Kendrick’s voice began to lift the fog from my mind. Amelia. He spun me on the spot, until all that encompassed my entire line of sight was Ty. He’s not dead.
I sucked in a sharp breath, sending a blowout of pins through my lungs.
Ty lay a few unmoving bodies away. Having morphed back into human form, he was naked, his body hunched in on itself. Black and crimson covered every inch of his battered, slashed, and bleeding flesh. An ugly opening scored his back.
The place where Caius’s sword had
struck through.
It was cleanly sliced, a mouth spitting scarlet pulses. But Kendrick was right. He was still alive. An uncontrollable shiver had his entire body quaking. In the surrounding noise, I could hear the repetitive, harsh sound of air being sucked into wet lungs. In, in, in, out. In, in, in, out.
“Ty!”
Without direction my body responded, legs moving and arms outstretched. I stumbled and crashed to the floor. The expulsion of my electric bolt, the strongest I had ever created, had left me weak. Still I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, stop. With every muscle and every last ounce of strength in me, I dragged my body through a mound of ash until I had Ty within reach.
“Ty,” I croaked. I clung to his arms, pulling with all my might to draw him to me. Another two sets of hands appeared, pale and stained—I wasn’t sure whose. They lifted Ty so that he was draped across my lap.
Ty coughed, spluttering on blood that swelled from his mouth. His eyelids cracked, but couldn’t open all the way. “Amelia?”
“Yes.” I sniffed back tears and wiped a shaking hand over his forehead, clearing his claggy hair from his face. “I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay.”
The wounds that covered his exposed body were countless. Each oozed a mixture of red and black tacky blood. The black was the ingested damned blood. He must have swallowed a bucket-load while taking them down. The tar-thick stuff was like poison, preventing his countless wounds from healing. Among the gashes were uglier patches of skin that had been punctured and serrated…by teeth. Ty had been bitten, over and over, flesh torn from his limbs and damned venom injected with every puncture. But the wound killing him was the gaping hole through his chest.
I pressed my hands over the entry, feeling the dying beat of his sliced heart. It was impossible for Ty to heal; we’d learned that when rescuing him. But there was an antidote, a way to reverse the effects of damned blood. A way to begin healing his broken body. My blood.
“Amelia.” Kneeling behind me, Kendrick placed a broad hand across my shoulder. “He’s too badly injured. You can’t cure him. And even if you could, after all his injuries, you could…” The words damn him floated on the air through our bond.
“So I should let him die?” I threw a venomous look behind my back, then to every other face that surrounded us. There was Dorian, Marcus, and Troy who held up a worse-for-wear but alive Marika at his side.
“He’s better dead than one of them,” Troy said, kicking at a pile of ash. Somehow he was in human form, wearing a shredded pair of jeans.
“Troy’s right.” Marika coughed, expression sympathetic as if she were imagining Troy in that position. “The damned are so much worse than rogues. Ty’s life has been devoted to hunting the lesser of the two.”
Dorian spoke up but looked like he hated what he had to say. “It would destroy him to become everything he was raised to hate.”
Marcus stepped forward and knelt before us. “There’s no guarantee that he’ll turn damned. He’s a lycan. He’d likely die first.” The look on his face spoke volumes. Part vampire or not, a lycan had never been turned damned. He touched my hand and a glint of encouraging hope passed between us. “Though Amelia is different. No one can deny that. She could cure him.”
“And if he turns?” Troy glared at Marcus, canines peeking through parted lips. “Then what?”
I gulped. If I did nothing, Ty would die. Acting could kill him too, or worse. Either way it might already be too late. Still, I needed to believe that this wasn’t the end. I could save him, somehow. “If he turns, we find a way to reverse it.” That had been Caius’s plan all along. Restore his damned mother and sisters to living vampires. And I was the key. “There’s a way. I know there is. I can’t lose him.”
Ty shifted with a groan, growing heavier across my lap. His eyelids fluttered open and a weak smile curved his split lips. “Do—” he croaked around a rising mouthful of blood, “—it.” He coughed and crimson sprayed from his mouth, speckling my face and chest. “I know you can save me.”
Debate escalated from the others, but I didn’t care. What they thought didn’t matter. Right here and now there was only Ty and me, lost in each other’s eyes. Without breaking our gaze I lifted my wrist and bit down, then I pressed the bleeding punctures to Ty’s lips. My blood pooled, mixing with his own until his mouth was so full that it spilled out the corners of his lips. Vibrant torrents ran down either side of his face. I fought back the tears that clouded my vision. “Ty, please. You have to swallow.”
Ty’s expression pinched. His eyes rolled back and his body began convulsing. All the blood that had filled his mouth came streaming out in a river, not a single drop taken in. My free arm held tighter to him, willing his body to become still. And then it did. Every muscle that had been so taut and rapt with uncontrollable spasms released. I began to extend my wrist, to make him drink again, but stopped.
Ty’s head twitched, shaking almost indiscernibly left to tight. “No.” His voice was so quiet, a voided echo of the power I knew his tone could carry. “It’s t-too late.”
“What?” It suddenly seemed like Ty was so far away from me. Like he was fading into a tunnel before my very eyes. “No. You can’t mean that. You’re not dead. There’s still time.”
I looked up, pleading with everyone that had stopped bickering to stare at me with morbid pity. Each of their expressions said, you can’t save him, he’s as good as dead.
The feel of a warm and shaking hand pressing against my cheek stole my gaze. Ty’s face was a mirror of agony as breath rasped from his throat. It became even shallower and rattly with the tremors that rushed like a flood back through his entire body. Yet even in this state, his hand somehow remained against my jaw, thumb grazing my bottom lip. His mouth parted with the shadow of a smile. “I-I…l-love you, Amelia. I w-will always…l-love you.”
“Ty, no!” I screamed, clutching his shoulder and shaking. “Don’t say that. Don’t say goodbye.”
In my violently shaking hands Ty’s entire body turned limp. I watched his eyes roll back to the whites. Then I heard the breath release from his throat and lungs. Suddenly his body felt as if it weighed more than a freight train. He slipped from my grasp and his skull hit the marble with a crack.
I leaped onto his chest. “Don’t leave me!”
With the heel of my palm I began compressions. An innate sense washed over me as even more black-stained red blood streamed from Ty’s wounds. I needed voltage. I needed the electricity that sparked from my body and hands. Like a defibrillator to jump-start his heart. But there was nothing. All of its force had been used to blast Caius from Ty.
A rib cracked under my palms as my compressions became desperate. “Wake up!”
“Amelia. Sweetheart.” My mom had come up behind, resurfacing since she took after Caius and the guards. Her fingers curled around my arms, pulling me back. “He’s gone. It’s time to let go.”
I tore my arms free and beat my fists against Ty’s chest. “No! I can bring him back. I can save him. It’s not too late!”
Pressure squeezed around both my arms and hauled me off Ty. Even though I was aware that one of the two was Kendrick, I lashed out with nails and feet. Thrashing to get free, thrashing to get back to Ty. “Let me fucking go!”
“Amelia.” Dorian’s grip on my arm tightened. “It’s too late. There’s nothing you can do.”
The tunnel grew longer and Ty’s lifeless body became smaller. “You’re not dead. Move. Speak. Do something, Ty!”
In my relentless thrashing I managed to release one of my arms. My freed hand curled around the dagger’s hilt at my thigh and struck out, connecting with flesh and bone.
Dorian’s resistance failed and my mom cried out, rushing to his side.
Kendrick caught my armed hand and squeezed, cracking bone until I released the dagger. As it clattered to the floor someone appeared before me. A flash of light reflected off the gun rising in Troy’s hands. A whistle sounded and something sharp sunk into my throat.
/>
Legs and arms failed. Eyes rolled.
Then there was nothing but cold darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“We can’t tell her.” I heard my mom’s voice as though she were speaking under water. She sounded impossibly far away. “She’s been through enough already.”
Arms supported my weight, cradling me against a firm chest. Light sent flickering pins of shinning beams through my closed lids. But I couldn’t open them. Invisible weights pinned them shut, preventing sight. The same drowning weight had hold of my body, bones, and muscles. I couldn’t move. Then there was darkness again.
In the darkness, a cone of light opened up before me. What I focused on was the last event I ever wanted to relive.
“Time to die, mongrel.” Caius’s sword had struck its target, a knife through butter slicing straight through Ty’s heart. Ty’s head dropped, wolf eyes almost wide at the hilt of a thick silver sword protruding from his chest. A noise of surprise escaped his muzzle, almost sounding human. The gruesome and wide gaping hole pulsed hiccups of rich blood as Ty’s body slid from the sword. He crumpled, a wolf-shaped ragdoll falling to the ground. Bones turned to liquid. Then his body vibrated with a convulsing shudder. His human and naked form lay bleeding out between the fallen.
Agony scored my own heart, as if I’d been the one run through. As if my heart was a gaping hole of pulsing blood. So I was dead, and this was hell. It had to be. Nothing else could be so cruel.
The shattering reenactment faded and fresh voices danced on a wave around me. Ty! I fought against the fading memory. The blood, the scene…Ty’s death. Hell or not, letting go wasn’t an option. I wanted to stay here, in this never-ending torture. So long as I could see him. But it was no use. Ty was gone, and the fresh voices kept growing louder.
