Emerald Fire (A Blushing Death Novel Book 6)

by Suzanne M. Sabol

  “What are they doing?” Konstantin asked.

  “Get Aoife here. NOW!” I didn’t care who did it. This was going to take more than Derek to cover up. I heard shuffling behind me but I didn’t look. I couldn’t take my eyes off the group of dead men and women trudging about with murder in their green gazes.

  “Ev, looks like you’re gonna get to cover my back after all,” I said, turning and grabbing Gladi in her sheath from the desk top in the den. I drew her from the tight grip of the leather, listening to the sound of the sharp edges gliding against the soft squeeze of the sheath. My heart fluttered at the sound and my skin tingled as magic hummed from her hilt, up my arm, and into me. I couldn’t keep the pure glee I gained from the weapon off my face.

  I strode to the foyer, Dean and Patrick behind me. At one time, our powers were separate. An icy wind. A scorching heat. And whatever the hell I was. Now, together, we were so much more powerful than each of us alone and I wanted nothing more than to climb those stairs and disappear in them, in the smell and feel of them. I couldn’t. Instead, we were off to face death. Literally.

  “You ready?” Dean asked in a soft rumble of a growl next to me.

  “I’m tired of these fuckers attacking our home.”

  “She’s ready,” Patrick said with a smirk.

  “Ev! You’re with me,” I called and he fell in step behind me. “Dean and Patrick! You take the left flank. Milagra and Konstantin, you’re with Nova on the right.”

  “I,” Milagra began and then glanced up at Konstantin, “we will not disappoint you.”

  “Good. Alex,” I said, grinning at her, “do what you do best.”

  “And that is?” she asked.

  “Kill anything that moves,” I answered.

  She grinned and winked.

  “Here we go.”

  Chapter 30

  Rain stung my eyes as I ran from the house, sprinting across the street and dodging oncoming headlights. The scent of the building storm washed out the reek of death’s acrid stench that still stung my nostrils. Patrick and Dean ran alongside me, keeping pace when I knew they both ached to sprint ahead. Thunder cracked and I could swear I heard a high-pitched cackle through the storm. I shuddered at the familiar sound skimming through the darkness.

  In the blink of an eye, a pale-blue dome arched over the entire park with a wild-edged magic I knew had to be Aoife. Only the magic of Faerie felt like the slightest breeze in the wrong direction could destroy the world as we knew it. As I glanced through the rain falling through the glamour, a sprinkle of glitter against the night’s sky, I almost whistled. That was one hell of a piece of magic.

  Beneath my feet, the ground began to squish as my boots sank into the saturating ground. I swung Gladi as we crested the hill and plunged her blade into the chest of the first zombie I came across. Like a battlefield centuries ago, our numbers collided in a crash of soft moans, growls, the occasional swear word, and cries of pain and death. One after another, I carved a path through the throng of walking death as I searched for the spark of dark magic I knew was out there somewhere driving each and every one of these dead fuckers.

  Slice. Jab. Thrust. Again and again, I severed heads from bodies that should have been resting peacefully in the ground. Glancing over at Patrick only feet from me, his dark hair glistened in the rain and his fangs were visible in a snarl as he ripped the head from a zombie and then another. His long, lean limbs flew through the air with a speed I rarely saw.

  Patrick didn’t need to fight, he had people for that. But now he moved, lithe and agile through the rain and bodies alongside me as if we’d been fighting together for years. My heart thundered in my chest and I couldn’t keep the smile from my lips as I watched him. Patrick was beautiful, deadly, and mine.

  On my other side, Dean lifted a zombie over his head and brought the moving corpse down hard over his knee. The crack of bone rang in my ear as the zombie’s back broke under the enormous pressure. Dean’s muscles bulged with the effort but he never slowed. With his bare hands, he tore body parts from zombies, tossing them aside like so much trash. Rain sluiced over his tanned skin, soaking his clothes against the definition hidden beneath. He moved deliberately, keeping me in his line of sight and always just to my left. The three of us fought in tandem, cutting, punching, ripping, slaughtering corpse after corpse but the dead around us never seemed to lessen.

  Glancing around, I had a sudden realization. If all of our numbers had been in Schiller Park we might have stood a chance but with each passing minute, the zombies corralled and circled us. There were too many of them and too few of us.

  I slashed at the zombie in front of me, listening to my heart thunder in my ears as I searched for a way to stop this. We were too close for fighting now, and the dead were getting the upper hand. My mind raced with what I could do to win or everyone I loved would be dead long before dawn.

  Off in the distance, a spark of magic prickled across my wet skin and grew closer and thicker with each beat of my heart. Dark, death magic—Necromancer magic—crept through the night and crawled through my being, a snake slithering through the grass. I shivered, knowing he was close.

  “He’s coming,” I shouted over the roar of noise, knowing both Patrick and Dean would hear me.

  I thought about how I’d been able to use magic in the mountain of Faerie. Pulling Dean’s power to heat the water had been a surprise to me as well as him. But with the rain, maybe I could find a way to give my people an advantage. For the first time in a long while, I prayed.

  As I swung Gladi, slicing across dead flesh, I concentrated on Patrick’s magic. The icy cold feel of his power froze every cell in my body as it buried deep into my bones until I was sure my skin was blue. I heard him groan beside me and I shivered as his magic coiled and explored inside me, searching for a way out. Slowing my heart, the cold chill of death overwhelmed me and I fell to my knees. My teeth chattering and my body quaking with ice, I reached down and slammed my hand into the water-soaked ground. Icy tendrils shot from my fingertips and rippled across the grass in the direction of my choosing.

  How I managed to direct each icy finger, I have no idea. All I knew was that I sought out the dead in my mind and felt the ice encase their feet in a solid, frozen boot of my making clear up to the knee. When I knew I had each and every one of them, I released the power and the rain above our heads turned to hail.

  “What the fuck?” Alex snarled as she helped Niyati up from the now icy ground where she’d slipped.

  “What’s the plan?” Dean growled as he ripped the head off of the zombie in front of him.

  Patrick stared around at the zombies shackled in ice where they stood, an expression of delight I’d never seen in his dark eyes. “Don’t kill them,” Patrick whispered. “Not yet.”

  “We’re just supposed to stand here and pretend to fight?” Ev asked from behind me.

  “For the moment,” Patrick answered as his dark eyes met mine. “I assume you have a plan.”

  Standing from the wet ground, my jeans soaked through, I clutched the silver plated bowie knife from the sheath inside my boot. I reached out for Dean’s wrist and jerked him to me. I sliced across his forearm and then turned to Patrick. He held out his hand without question and I drew his blood. Rolling up my sleeve, I cut across my forearm with the blade as the dark liquid pooled on my skin.

  “Circle back around,” I said with a devious smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. “We need to box him in.”

  Patrick brushed a wet strand of hair from my cheek and pressed a soft kiss against my mouth. “You are an insidious woman.” He couldn’t keep the smile from his full kissable lips.

  “Give us a minute or two,” Dean said, sinking his nose into my hair behind my ear. “We’ll make a wide circle.” His warm lips pressed against my skin and his scent filled my nostrils. Pa
trick and Dean met each other’s eyes and nodded. I felt the two men I loved leave as if part of me went with them.

  Turning to Alex, I said, “Keep up the pretense. I’m going to break through the line to confront that asshole.”

  “We’ll make it look and sound good,” she answered. She and Niyati turned and spread the word to keep up the yelling and fighting.

  “I’m coming with you,” Ev said, his voice strong and sure.

  “Ev—” I started to order him to stay behind but I’d never seen such determination in his sea-foam green eyes as his wolf peeked out. I nodded once and he filed in behind me.

  Above me, lightning flashed across the pale blue dome, illuminating the sky with a white light I’d never seen at night before. The glitter from Aoife’s glamor sparkled in the flash of electricity, making the sky twinkle as if the stars were close enough to reach out and touch. I shoved all that away and began to move. Trudging forward, I sliced and carved my way through the line of zombies five deep until I tumbled into the open grass of the park with Ev hot on my heels.

  I dropped to my knees as I cleared the dead, relishing the fresh air I drew into my lungs, free of the stench of rot. I couldn’t see Patrick and Dean but I could feel them out there in the dark.

  Before me, a man sauntered in confident strides across the grass. Tall with blond hair down to his shoulder, which was now stringy and drenched with the rain, his eyes bore into me. One gray and one green, both glowed with malice as he met my glower. He clutched a handful of blond hair as he dragged a limp body at his side, a lump of flesh that I recognized.

  “If she’s alive, Brittany is your priority,” I whispered to Ev. “Get her to safety.”

  “You got it,” he said, crouching beside me and ready to pounce.

  “I knew I’d force you to your knees but not so soon,” he cooed. His thin lips pursed and his sharp features lit up by the lightning still flashing overhead, his face cast in an eerie glow.

  “Cute,” I said, getting to my feet. I twisted Gladi in my hand, firming my grip on her slick, water drenched handle. She hummed in my hand, almost drunk from the flesh she’d eaten in the battle and still hungry for more.

  “You can’t stop me,” he hissed. His lips curled up in an angry and determined snarl. Glancing down to the woman limp on the ground beside him, he dropped his hold on her head and she collapsed. “Your people are dying.”

  “Ev?”

  “I got her. Don’t worry.” Ev took off, circling around wide enough to be out of sight and on the other side of the dome in a few heartbeats.

  “They’ll belong to me as the rest belong to me.” A malicious smile curved his thin lips. “This girl is power. With her death, I can raise the entire city and no one could stop me. I can feel them, you know. Beneath the ground, they are restless. They wait for me to call them to life.”

  “A little overconfident, aren’t we?” I snapped. Power radiated off this bastard, a strong blistery wind with me in the center of a freezing hurricane.

  Weary, covered in blood, and pissed beyond belief, I stiffened and thrust my shoulders back. The necromancer’s dark magic encircled me, speaking to the darkness inside me as if they were old friends. My entire being lit on fire, burning with the contamination of Baba Yaga’s magic. A shiver crept up my spine as fear churned in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t afford for Baba Yaga to have any kind of hold over me. She was too unpredictable and the dark magic swirling in my blood, burning every cell in my body was too dangerous.

  He laughed. The low chuckle made my heart flutter as his darkness seemed to seep into me. “Overconfident? I think not.”

  “I’ve seen your circles, the bodies. You need a sacrifice to raise your armies,” I almost snarled.

  “Thousands of dead will be at my disposal to destroy this city and serve you up as an example. Just as Konyam wished. This one”—he glanced down at Brittany still unconscious on the ground—“she will be enough power to raise as many as my magic can touch.”

  It was then I saw the light of pleased satisfaction in his eyes as lighting flashed above. I snorted. He already thought he’d won.

  Ev inched up behind the necromancer, silent on shifter feet. He wrapped his hand around Brittany’s ankle, rain pelting his face. Jerking her leg quick before the vampire realized his precious sacrifice was on the move, Ev got Brittany out of the line of fire.

  “Stop!” the vampire cried, turning toward Ev as he reached for Brittany’s limp, flopping arms.

  In my chest, my heart beat, pumping blood through my body, and magic along with it. Out in the darkness, Dean’s scorching power beat with the steady rhythm of his heart. And faint, through the lightning, I felt the slow, soft thump of Patrick’s heart. Their blood called to me as their magic and mine radiated out. With each breath, I felt stronger. I shoved everything I had into the power mingling between the three of us and visualized it becoming solid in my mind.

  I’d never thought before how I’d constructed those protection circles, the ones that pulsed with the beat of my heart. I’d just done it, mostly through adrenaline. Now, I had to do it on command. I reached out to Dean and Patrick, entangling us together in magic, lust, and love.

  Between one beat of our hearts and the next, the circle burst to life, separating Ev and Brittany from the necromancer and myself. In the low dome of pulsing, glittering red power, I shut the vampire and myself away from the world. Gifting him with a biting grin as he slammed into my wall, I knew everyone was safe on the outside, especially Patrick and Dean. Their hands on the wall tickled and soothed as they caressed my magic, searching for a way in. Ev streaked across the park, carrying Brittany’s limp form in his arms.

  “I’ve seen this before,” he said, rolling his eyes at me.

  “Oh?” I asked simply, not really caring when or where.

  “It’s impressive but not enough to stop my armies.” He scoffed, as if talking to a small child.

  “Really? Did you happen to notice your army?” I asked, tilting my head back toward the zombies behind me. Through the wall, I knew they were falling lifeless, as dead as they’d been in the ground. I couldn’t keep the smile from my lips as his death magic was severed by my circle like a guillotine.

  “You can’t do that!” he cried, taking a step forward and then catching himself.

  “And yet, I did. Now, you’ll have to deal with me.”

  Gripping Gladi, I twirled my wrist. She’d have her taste of blood and flesh but I knew she wouldn’t deliver the killing blow. Caroline had said I had to kill the vampire and the necromancer. There was only one way I could think of to do both.

  “Come on,” I enticed with a sneer. I waved him on, turning my shoulder in for the fight. “Let’s have a go.”

  He charged me. Quicker than the lightning blazing like white fire overhead, his hands were around my neck and we were sailing through the air before I could scream. I slammed into the hard surface of my protective wall and his fingers dug into the flesh as he squeezed. Air rushed from my lungs in a hot rush of agony and my throat constricted to the point of collapse with the pressure. Gasping for any air I could get, my insides burned for oxygen and my grip loosened on Gladi. She slid down the palm of my hand until my fingers were the only things to clutch around her handle.

  His blond hair stuck to his face. His one gray eye and one green glimmered with anger and what I thought was the icy bite of fear.

  “You can’t stop me,” he growled, exposing long glistening fangs. He tilted my head to the side and exposed the long line of my neck. I dropped Gladi as the soft caress on my wall from Dean and Patrick became two pairs of fists pounding against it. I knew they wanted in, but I wanted them safe on the other side in case this whole thing became a shit show. Caroline hadn’t been very specific after all. This may not work.

  My assailant’s fangs pier
ced my flesh, and I reached out for Dean’s power, the Pack’s magic, and wrapped it around my hand. The bastard slurped at my neck, drawing my blood out and sucking it down in one greedy gulp after another. The prickling of magic engulfed my hand and silver claws burst from my fingertips. The chill of blood loss crept across my skin and I knew it was now or never. I plunged my fingers into his chest and my silver claws sliced through flesh and bone as if they were paper.

  The slurping stopped and his fangs withdrew from my throat with a parting shot of pain as my skin tore. My claws cut through tissue and broke bone inside a cold body as my fingers wrapped around his heart. The hard muscle filled my palm and I tightened my grip. He stumbled back as I yanked and his heart came free of his chest as if I’d plucked an apple from the tree. Falling to his knees, he gaped at me. His hand covered the hole in his chest and he glanced down at the wound.

  His soft chuckle sounded indignant. As he turned his gaze up to me, I saw hatred in his eyes. “You think that will kill me?” he barked with a snarl.

  “No,” I whispered. “But hopefully, this will.” I drew on the same pack magic that had changed my hand to wolf and focused in on the musky scent of Dean and the scorching heat of his power. I focused all that magic into my hand, willing the dead organ to take it. Heating in my hand, the necromancer’s heart burst into bright emerald flames. The acrid stench of burning flesh filled my nose and the pained sounds of my enemy’s screams echoed off the walls of my protection circle as his magic burned away in the palm of my hand. I reached down and clasped Gladi in my left hand then closed the distance between the necromancer and me.

  “You shouldn’t be able to do that,” he croaked through pain-filled screams.