by Emma Dawn
The second vampire sidestepped his horse next to mine. He held out a hand to me across the space between us. Liam, the one Torq warned me about. “Rosie,” he said.
“I am not a child.” I shot back, irritated before he could so much as look at me. I didn’t know why he might be a danger to me, but I was no fool child. If someone warned me off a man, I took them at their word.
“Nah, it be a term of endearment.” His Irish brogue soothed away the edges of his words. I looked at him, taking in his face and build. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, younger than me when he died. But he exuded confidence that came with age. One eye was green and the other was blue, and his hair was that dark red that was almost brown and thick . . .God my last boyfriend had been balding and the urge to run my hands through this one’s hair was a veritable temptation. Thick, lush locks perfect for grabbing hold of and keeping him just where I wanted him. Nope, nope. A whole lot of nope.
Yeah, I had to stop this line of thought if we were going to make it through this journey without me throwing myself at one of them. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take more than a day or two.
Until then, I would just have to suffer through staring at these beautiful, unworldly men knowing I couldn’t have them. I could do it.
Right.
“You’re a vampire?” I asked the question while trying not to feel dumb, but also to stop the tightening in my nipples every time I looked at him. Because he was bad news, and I was supposed to stay far away from them all. Liam should be the easiest one to avoid.
He flashed me a grin and two fangs peaked out. Well, shit, that didn’t help with the tension as a dimple popped out on one cheek.
“I am,” Liam said, “or I was. I’m not quite sure exactly how this works here. I suspect we’re in some sort of limbo, if I be honest. There be a lot of weirdness in this world that even after years, I still be figuring out.”
He moved his horse a little closer so our legs brushed up against one another. “Here’s the thing, Rosie. We have been trapped here a long time. Told that going deeper into death will destroy us, but that makes no sense. Wouldn’t it be a kind of peace to no longer fear death?”
I frowned. “You fear death?”
He nodded. “We all do. We’ve been threatened with it enough here. And we’ve lost a number of our group to Chalice seekers.”
I blinked a few times, thinking about what he was saying. “You’ve lost friends?”
“Yes.”
Despite what Torq said, I felt bad for Liam. He looked genuinely sad. Maybe he was a good actor, but I wasn’t going to be an asshole. I reached out and put a hand on his forearm, the closest thing to a hug I could give him. “I’m sorry. I’ll do my best not to fuck this up.”
He laughed. “Ah, Rosie, I love how you speak your mind. There is no hiding behind pretty words with you.”
I shrugged. “Hiding gets you nowhere, right?”
I looked away from him and took in just where we were riding. The sky around us was still dark, but I could see ahead of us even so. A flat plain spread out in every direction with only a few trees dotting here and there, and in the far distance was a mountain that stretched into the sky. I lost the tip of it in the darkness of the night.
“It’s always dark here,” Liam said. “There is no sunrise.”
I frowned, not sure why that bothered me so much. “No sunrise?”
“No.” Mars fell back to my other side, his cloak not muffling the sound of his voice at all. “There is no sunrise in death, only darkness.”
Their words bothered me, but I couldn’t say why. It seemed wrong. Like there should be more beauty here. A place of rest or something. “So, what about all our ideas of heaven and hell then?”
“Those are human niceties. We aren’t human, so things here are different.” Mars’s voice tugged me toward him and I let it pull at me. “As supernaturals, we are held to higher laws, but we don’t realize that until we’re dead. Unfair, if you ask me.”
My lips quirked. “I suppose. But let’s be honest. It’s not like the humans know what the hell, or heaven, they are getting into either. It’s speculation.”
Mars shrugged. “Perhaps. But there is more hope in that. Here, in this place,” he swept his hand out around him, “there is little hope. And finding the sunrise is impossible.”
“Wait, Liam said there is no sunrise.”
Mars nodded. “That is correct in some ways, but woefully ignorant in others.”
From my right, Liam gave a low grumble, something that sounded like warlocks are dicks. I made myself pinch my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh.
“Tell me, this has the sounds of a story,” I said.
My horse danced under me and Mars reached out and put a hand on her neck, then his hand slid to my knee before he drew it back. And in that one touch, a tingle of electricity flowed through me. I gasped and struggled to breath around the curling sensation in my belly that told me an orgasm was not far off.
Impossible.
I shook my head, gritted my teeth and breathed it away. “That’s cheating.”
“I agree,” Liam grumbled.
Without thinking, I held a hand out to him and he took it. I glanced at him almost expecting him to stick his tongue out at Mars. And then I remembered Torq’s words.
“Look.” I let his hand go and put it back on the horn of the saddle. Frustration rolled through me and my good voice, the one that was logical, took hold. “Tell me about this world then, this place of limbo because Vincent was not exactly forthcoming.”
“No, he wouldn’t be,” Mars said. “He’s like the manager here. I don’t know who he answers to, if there’s a devil or a god like there is for the humans. But the basic premise is this. This place is like a ladder. There are rungs up, and rungs down. Rungs up take you closer to the living, and rungs down take you closer to—”
“Don’t scare her,” Liam said. “That not be fair.”
I snorted. “You don’t know me all that well. Spit it out.”
“The dead that walk and lust after the living,” Mars said softly. “Humans call them zombies, I believe.”
My eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“Zombies. We call them grawks because of the noise they make,” Liam said.
Mars’s horse danced sideways and he brought it back under control with a firm but gentle touch. Yeah, those hands of his could wreak havoc in my life if I wasn’t careful.
“They come up from the lower rungs of this world, climbing through to grab the living. I think . . .if they get enough of those here, they can return to a semblance of life. That’s my best guess. That or they think they can anyway,” Mars said.
I wanted to laugh. I really did. “Zombies, you expect me to believe zombies are our biggest fears out here?”
Liam shook his head. “There are other things that be bad but we can tackle them. Grawks are . . .they are fast and they work as a hive, led by their queen. I suppose if one could get to her and kill her, you’d be able to end all of them.”
I shook my head. It all sounded so weird, like a B-rated movie come to life. I opened my mouth, another question on the tip of my tongue. In the silence before words, something caught at my ears. I strained to hear what it was. There in the distance. Something that sounded very much like a guttural creature saying. . .
“Graaaaaawk.”
Chapter Four
Fucking Zombies? You’ve Got to Be Kidding
The noise of the zombie—pardon me, grawk—passed by me, Liam, and Mars and to the men at the front as if it were a sound wave rushing toward us from the direction we’d come. The two werewolves swept back, their hackles up and the snarls ripping from them like a cascade of thunder that made my heart race.
“Wait, where are they going?” I yelled.
Mars reached over and slapped my horse on the rump. She needed very little push to get going, leaping forward so hard and fast that I came out of my seat, bouncing around before I got my balance and my feet in t
he stirrups again.
“They’re slowing them down,” Liam yelled across to me as we galloped across the plain. “Grawks don’t normally come through here, which makes me think someone tipped them off to us. Someone who wants you dead.”
Vincent was my first thought, seeing as he was the only one who knew we were here. But that wasn’t quite true either. My biological father, Gavin, was here too, hunting for me. It wasn’t any less plausible that he set the zombie grawk things on us than Vincent. Vincent seemed to want to help as weird as he was.
I leaned over the neck of my horse, her mane slapping me in the face as the wind whipped around us. Slowly, she edged in front of the other horses—of course, I was smaller than the men so she had less to carry. I tugged on her reins to slow her down seeing as I didn’t know where we were going.
Jessop caught up to my side first. He pointed at the base of the mountain that suddenly reared in front of us. “Up.”
Up, we were riding up the mountain? My heart gave a funny bump like it knew we were in for a real ride if we followed this path. But what choice did I have?
The horses seemed to know the route so I let my girl have her head, and as we reached the first ledge, she leapt into the air. I leaned forward, buried my hands in her mane and held my breath, that moment of space where there was no ground between us and we were flying seemed to last a long time. We landed with a clatter, the stones under our feet slipping here and there but otherwise holding.
A howl pierced the air and I didn’t even think. I yanked on the reins, spinning my horse around.
A half mile from the base of the mountain was a seething mass of . . .creatures. Grawks. And the two wolves that had been sworn to protect me, to get me to the Chalice so I could live again were slowly being surrounded by them.
Ivan was the only one on his feet four feet, Kessler was down, flat on his belly.
“We can’t leave them!” I yelled.
“We must. This is what they are trained for!” Mars yelled back. He did lift his hand and throw a fireball into the midst of the grawks. They scattered back, giving space, and Ivan tugged on the limp body of Kessler. Mars kept it up, but the fireballs were only able to hold the grawks back a little, and there were more coming.
“Screw this.” I put my heels to the mare’s side and urged her back down the mountain. A hand—Torq’s, I think—shot out to grab at the reins and I booted the mare harder. She grunted and bolted down the loose rock, sliding on her butt we were going so fast.
The logical part of my brain said this was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever done. That I was a fool, that I was going to get killed. The other part of my brain said I was already dead, and that those two men were going to end up becoming like dead-dead if I didn’t do something.
My horse hit solid flat ground and I yelled “Yaw!” mimicking every cowboy movie I’d ever seen, hoping it would send her into a mad gallop.
She launched forward, her feet hammering across the dusky plain under the dim light of a moon that had just risen. I counted the grawks as best I could because they were milling about, moving so fast. Fifteen. That didn’t seem so bad.
There was the sound of hoof beats behind me and fear clutched at my heart. They would try to stop me and I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t slow down. Kessler was hurt. Those green eyes of his, that connection I’d found with him would close forever and I would never forgive myself for letting it happen.
The grawks lifted their heads as I drew closer. Their eyes were black, hollowed out holes, and yet, I had no doubt they could see me. They moved as a unit, like a flock of birds, and like a flock of birds, they were freaking fast.
I yelped as they shot toward me and my horse. Thank God she was smarter than me. She twisted to the side and bolted away from them, leading them on a merry chase across the plains, but even I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew she would tire out and then what?
Then I was in damn deep hot water with a bunch of stinky dead things that were trying to eat me.
Well, time to put all my movie watching to good use. Killing zombies meant taking their heads. I was on a horse, maybe I could do like the knights of old and rush them.
“You’re an idiot,” I yelled at myself as I pulled the only weapon I had on me out. The long whip with the different coils at the end. And then I remembered that this was a dream world in a sense, a world where I could make a dress of satin into leather pants. What if I could make my whip into something that would protect me?
Something big.
I made myself tug on the reins of my horse, forcing her to turn and face the oncoming horde of creatures that seemed to have launched themselves out of every single horror movie I’d ever seen. I held the whip in one hand, imagining it becoming something alive, something with a mouth and a body covered in scales, a body that would take the heads off the grawks and be done with them.
They were closing fast as the whip writhed in my hand, enlarging at a pace that my eyes had trouble keeping up with. Over and over, it grew until it swept upward of twenty feet above my head.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
The snake that had only moments before been a whip rose above us, its mouth hissing and tongue flicking out. The tongue was split and tipped in a variety of metals.
“Get the grawks!” I yelled at it.
The grawks were oblivious, and the snake shot forward, its tongue whipping out and around six heads at a time, yanking, removing the offending heads and then doing the same with the next group until they were all dead. Or dead-dead? I wasn’t sure how that worked.
The snake slithered toward me and I held out my hand. It shrunk until I could grasp it and then it made itself smaller yet and I latched it back to my belt.
“I might as well be Wonder Woman.” I grinned to myself.
“Graaaaawk.”
I spun around.
Behind me was a horde of grawks, and I mean, a big ass horde. Like as in hundreds. I booted my horse and sent her back the way we’d come. There wouldn’t be a lot of time. I knew that much based on the experience only moments before.
The men just stared at me as I approached them like I’d sprouted an extra head or two. They weren’t moving from where I’d left them. “What are you waiting for?”
“Kessler is hurt. He can’t shift,” Ivan said. “You were a fool to come back. We are—”
“In this together, I agree.” I nodded and slid off my horse’s back, my mind already working around this problem and putting together a solution. “Put him on my horse.”
“Even riding double with Jessop or Torq will be too much weight for the horse,” Liam said. I pointed at Ivan.
“He’s a big ass werewolf. He can carry me.” Maybe that was a little Lord of the Rings of a solution, but I knew it would work. It had to.
The grawks were drawing closer, the sound of them echoing across the open plain, and in the dark, it felt like they were right on top of us. There was no time to waste.
Ivan didn’t argue, which surprised me. He shifted and I ran to his side, grabbing a handful of thick gray pelt and launching myself onto his back like I’d been doing it my whole life. I wrapped my legs around him and lay low on his back with my belly pressed tightly to him. His muscles tensed and pulled as he leapt into a run. The horses were above us now, but not by much. He really was a big ass werewolf. His body hummed under mine, the heat pouring off him as his muscles worked and flexed to carry us both to safety.
Once more, we scaled the first part of the mountain, leaping and launching over the edges here and there, climbing until the air began to thin. Which happened far sooner than I thought it should have. I dared a look back to see the grawks trying to climb the first few ledges, but failing and falling backward into their peers where they were beaten and clubbed by . . . bigger grawks. By grawks that didn’t look like they’d started out even remotely human.
I shot another look to where Kessler was slumped in the saddle. He was there, but barely, his body swaying with each ste
p of the horse under him. I bit my lower lip and hung on to Ivan, letting his body take us higher and higher.
Ahead was a vertical ledge, one that went straight up. Surely the horses couldn’t take that.
Ivan’s muscles bunched.
“Oh shit,” I whispered and tightened my hold on him but the strength and power in his body unseated me—that and the straight up and down fighting with gravity business.
I dangled from his back, my hands slipping through his fur. He reached the ledge with his front paws and dug in.
“I’ll let go,” I said, thinking without my weight he could make it.
He growled in response and pulled us both up with what seemed like very little effort. I rolled off his back and stared down at the men below. They had Kessler and had lifted him up a less vertical path that would lead them to the spot where we were.
Ivan shifted into his human form and stared at me like he had a lot on his mind. A lot that I wouldn’t like.
“Spit it out then. I don’t like waiting on people who want to yell at me.” I put my hands on my hips and lifted an eyebrow.
He shook his head and turned away from me, which hurt more than I cared to admit. I knew he was angry about me going back to help him and Kessler, but I would do it again. I looked out for my friends, plain and simple. And while I might find all six of these men lovely to behold, they could only be friends. Friends I could do, but that meant I had to follow my own rules when it came to how we did this journey. I wasn’t going to leave any of them behind if I could do anything about it.
Liam and Jessop carried Kessler in between them. “You did good, Rosie. We would have lost him there,” Liam said.
I smiled at him, grateful. “Well, we’re a team. I couldn’t leave him behind.”
“We are not a team,” Ivan growled. “We are your guardians, not the other way around.”
I spun around and pointed at him but he was much closer than I thought he was, which meant my finger ended up jammed into his chest and I fought back a wince. “It’s my journey, which means I get to decide what and how I do things. Not you.”
