by Lucy Lyons
“Do you think it can be done?”
“I think if it’s going to happen, it will be you and your audacious clan who will do it,” she smiled and held out her arms. I leaned in, and she hugged me and whispered in my ear. “Forgive an old Fae for being stupid. Sometimes, your magic sings so strong in my blood, I forget you aren’t the people I left behind but the ones I’m trying to change the future for.”
“I’ve got to go get your son back to the mountaintop, Maria. Will you do the thing I asked?”
She pulled away and nodded. “I’ll call Portia and have her open the door, and we’ll slip him through. But that means you won’t have us for the fight, and I fear you won’t win without our magic.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Simi said from the doorway as she held the tent flap aside to show us the dust blowing into camp. “Apparently, help is already on the way.”
I raced outside just as the first black SUV pulled into the clearing, and Venatores hunters poured out every door. Simi shrugged and jogged down to the first vehicle to speak with the hunter I assumed was in charge, a giant of a man with flaming red hair and a pock-marked face from an illness in his youth.
“Agnarrson, you bastard, what are you doing here?” I bellowed as I strode toward the vehicles and the hunters who had all pulled their weapons. “You have no quarter here. Move on if you’re hunting or go home if you’re looking for trouble among my people.”
“Your people, you say?” he replied when I reached him. “I thought we were your people.”
“Sure you were, right up until you experimented on me and turned me into a werewolf, remember? You forced me into this life. You don’t get to take the moral high ground because I embraced it and them.” I stood toe-to-toe with him, leaning back so I could look up into his face. “Now get out before your people get hurt. You are out of your depth here.”
Vladikk Agnarrson laughed and held his gun to my head. “I don’t think I’m the one out of my depth, creature. I have a warrant for the animals you call friends and the witness report of a local priest that you forced a hunter to become one of you against his will. Do you deny it?”
Rage poured off me like water, and behind me my pack started to grow restless as they awaited my direction.
“You couldn’t have come from Seattle that fast, Vladikk. You were here, and you’re looking for the wrong fight. We saved the life of a hunter. Father O’Connell has no place making the judgement of right or wrong, and I don’t believe the Vatican would give you a warrant without an investigation. Unless you work for someone else now?”
“He works for me, wolf, and if I want you dead, you will die,” said a female voice from behind him. I heard Simi gasp aloud at the sight of the dreaded assassin and would be head of the Venatores, Lady Sophia de Borgia.
“God, no,” I hissed, and Vladikk barked out a laugh. “Afraid now?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“Afraid? No. We simply have more pressing matters to attend to than the new Venatores order of the inhumane.” I silently signaled my wolves, readying them to disable the hunters however necessary and fell into an easy judo stance, ready to lash out before Vladikk could get a shot off.
“Alpha?” Maria called from near the tree line, “your priest seems to have undone a section of my protective circle. You must repair it before I can complete your request.” I cursed under my breath and looked at the dozen or so hunters standing around the three shiny black Escalades.
“I have a real monster for you to hunt, if you’re Venatores enough,” I offered to the scarred man in front of me. That’s what we’re after—a real, live dragon that likes to kill men with white skin and blue eyes.” I grinned at him. “Unless you’re too scared to face something that powerful.”
“I will kill the dragon and eradicate your kind then hang your pelt next to its skin on my wall,” he snarled.
The vampires are above you, and Nick awaits my signal, Caroline assured me silently, and once again I was grateful for the magic that had accompanied my exodus from the Venatores fold.
We must get them out of the circle and close it for Portia to take Jasiri to Fairy to heal him, I explained, and I felt her affirmation a split second before I heard Nick’s unearthly cackle just outside the clearing at the base of camp in the darkness of the jungle.
“Well, my companions have arrived, so I’ll be on my way to stop the creature. You feel free to sit by our fire, and we can finish this conversation when we return with a skin for your wall, since it seems so important to you.” I feigned a step away, and Vladikk cocked his gun. One hand had the gun, and the other was around his throat before I formulated the thought, and every hunter had a shifter on them, except Sophia, who was staring down the barrel of Caroline’s Glock.
“Get out of my camp, Sophia. You aren’t welcome on any continent I’m on, let alone breathing the same air.” I felt Caroline’s desire to pull the trigger and rid herself of one of her greatest enemies, and part of me wanted to let her. Sophia was one of the greatest assassins of all time, a centuries-old sorceress who had plotted and murdered her way into a throne during the renaissance and longed for her glory days of power and mayhem.
“I promised Jasiri no more people would die, Caroline,” I said aloud. “But if you have to rid the world of one more human, she’s the one I’d pick.”
“Well said, young alpha,” crowed another familiar voice from behind the Venatores. Dominique de Borgia was Sophia’s cousin and her better in every way except for malice. She’d racked up a higher body count in the service of her Church than Sophia could ever dream, and she’d left the Venatores to become the human servant of the Night Mother. With Onyxis nearby, I was happy to know we had another sorceress available to protect our people from the Venatores, but Dominique was not the most predictable of allies, and like her mistress, her motives were for her own gain, not always the greater good.
I turned back to Vladikk, who’d started sidling away from me an inch at a time as soon as I took my claws off his throat. I stepped back and held his TEC-9 above my head so everyone could see it then bent the barrel and rendered the gun useless.
“We have a real threat to humankind en route to the ruins at the top of Mount Roraima. Are you here to be Venatores or have you descended so far into the thrall of your witch that you’ve forgotten you were once protectors of the innocent?” Vladikk and several of the hunters balked at the suggestion that a witch had control of their minds, just as I’d wanted.
“We’re hunters of all evil creatures, and the priest told us about the monster on top of the sacred mountain,” one hunter blurted from the group my wolves had started herding toward the edge of the circle.
“If that were true, Sophia would be headless and burned to a crisp,” Caroline quipped, and I heard murmurs of agreement from my pack and, I thought, a few hunters.
“I want to beat you down as badly as you want me dead, Vladikk,” I added. “But the safety of humanity must come first. Hunt with us, and we’ll give you the fight you’ve been looking for once the creature is safely imprisoned.”
“Or dead,” he corrected, and I scoffed in his face.
“You can’t kill one murderous sorceress, and you think you’re going to kill a creature that’s been alive for a thousand years?” I backed away and let him see the shine of the moonlight on my wolfish eyes. “I can’t wait to see this.”
I silently reminded my people of their directive, and the wolves and rats melted into the jungle as the hunters gasped and put their backs together, grouping up as they searched the shadows for their enemy. The vampires stayed in the higher branches of the trees, hidden from view but ready to come to their mistress’ aid, and soon I was the only shifter left to face the hunters.
“Get out of my camp, Vladikk. When you see me coming again, know that the creature you seek will not be far behind.” I turned my back on the hunters, trusting the vampires to cover my ass if any of them tried anything, but all I heard were car doors opening and closin
g as the hunters made their escape.
Now close the circle and save our friend, I silently begged the Fae who had stayed hidden through the confrontation. The stakes had just become higher than they’d ever been, and I needed Maria to ensure that at least one shifter survived the night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
With the Venatores presence, I suddenly felt grossly under-armed for the mission. I’d been cautiously hopeful for a positive outcome before they arrived, but having to look for the hunters and Vash made our task seem impossible.
I warned my people and made Bernie and Ashlynn repeat my warning that the hunters would kill anyone they could and to lay low and stay out of sight as much as possible. I left Jasiri in Maria’s care and stepped out of the protective circle, dropping my shielding so I could “feel” the jungle around me.
The power that I’d received while bringing Fairy back to the surface of our world was like a hand in my mind. I reached out with fingers of power, searching for the heat and blind fury that Vash wore like an aura. When I found him, he was far from where I’d hoped to find him, near Father O’Connell’s rectory.
“Shit. He followed our scent straight to the priest, who delayed us by sending in the Church,” I muttered aloud. I ran back to the clearing where we’d parked and jumped into the last remaining Jeep and thanked the universe when I found the keys dangling from the ignition.
I raced back toward Father O’Connell, half hoping the Venatores had already gone to check on him but certain they hadn’t bothered to think of anything but getting another kill to take home, another creature murdered because they didn’t understand it and they didn’t want to. The road seemed an endless tunnel of trees that led nowhere until I smelled the fire. Not new living flames but the cold, dead aroma of char and ash.
“Small miracles,” I sighed as I shut off the Jeep and crept into the trees, headed toward the rectory while still trying to sense Vash’s exact location. There was live, human scent on the night air, and I heard a child’s mewling cry in the distance. I held my breath, but Vash didn’t appear, and I slowly advanced more until his power seemed so near I could touch him.
Realization dawned on me and I slowly raised my eyes to the trees in horror. Hanging down from a limb, ten feet above me and not a hundred feet from where I crouched, was a scaled tail lined down the top with feathers. I widened my stance and quietly drew my 9mm, my finger on the trigger.
Vash, in his Quetzalcoatl form, seemed intent on the humans getting ready for bed, and I wondered if the priest had really thought the Venatores could keep him safe from Vash after what he’d seen at the camp. If we were terrifying enough that watching us work spooked a seasoned veteran of the society of hunters, he was in for one hell of a surprise when he walked out his front door to the dragon-like creature.
“Well, old man, one of us needs to make a move,” I whispered to the Quetzalcoatl, and immediately his head was on a swivel, small ears pointed straight up and twitching as he waited for another sound from me. I held my position as long as I could, but after a few minutes of silence, my gun hand started to cramp, and I was forced to lower the gun. The moment I did, he lunged off the branch, his sinewy form wrapping around the trunk as he slithered down and disappeared into the tall undergrowth of ferns and broad-leafed saplings.
Shit, I had time to think before a claw grabbed my ankle and dragged me through the brush and over roots, rapping my head against the rocks and trees as we flew through the jungle faster than I’d ever moved before without a vehicle. I had time to be glad that the humans at the rectory would be safe, and we were at the clearing of the dead, where Vash had brought his previous victims to lay them to rest. I closed my eyes and waited for him to roast me alive or gut me with those four-inch talons of his, but the pain never came, and when I opened them, he hovered over me, his scaly silver head tilted to one side.
Cautious, I sat up and crouched on the balls of my feet, using the opportunity to examine him as well. His eyes were as wide as my palm, with reptilian pupils and silver irises that matched the scales that covered his muzzle and ran down his limbs and his sinuous body. The feathers that he wore as a crown when in human form ran the length of his spine, and when I shifted to appease a cramp in my leg, they stood on end and shook, whispering against each other like razor blades.
While his face was scaled, his nostrils were not, and the soft pink flesh seemed out of place against all that metallic sheen of his scaly parts, until he turned his hand to gesture me ahead of him, and his palms were flesh as well. I stood slowly, easing out of immediate reach as I stood and got my land legs under me, my head still ringing from bouncing along the ground.
“What do you want from me?” I asked the creature, but it merely held one clawed hand out toward the path to the top of the mountain. Grateful that he hadn’t dragged me up the winding path, I obediently started up the hill ahead of him, glancing behind me to avoid being taken by surprise again, but the creature hadn’t followed me. I took a moment to reach out toward the plateau at the end of the path, hoping to find my people still well and some distance between them and the Venatores hunters who had joined us. Instead of positioning themselves near the city walls where the foliage and the vampire glamour of a dozen or so vampires could hide them, they’d chosen to stake out the top of the path, hiding behind boulders and waiting to kill whatever climbed it . . . which at that point put me in a sticky place.
Smart dragon, I thought, reaching for both Caroline and Ashlynn to warn them of my predicament. I slowed my pace and began looking for other ways to climb to the top, circumventing the ambush waiting for me, but the cliff walls were smooth and high enough that I couldn’t jump up to grab a ledge and pull myself to the top.
Ashlynn immediately responded with reassurance that she’d find a way to draw them off while Caroline cursed the stupidity and arrogance of the Venatores for announcing their whereabouts to the Quetzalcoatl instead of following sound wisdom simply because it came from the opposition.
He may not be entirely sane, but he isn’t stupid. You’re right, Ashlynn sent back to me. Can you go back down instead of coming up? I’m afraid Caroline’s going to do something risky to help you, and we need to get her home to little Ro.
Caroline’s baby girl was back in Seattle with Henny, our pack witch, and her husband, another former Venatore who had joined us on what I’d come to call the “sane” side. I glanced back down the path, nerve-wracked about what would happen to me if I tried to back down the path, more angry than afraid of the hunters, despite knowing that outnumbered that badly, I’d likely be dead before the Quetzalcoatl had a chance to kill them all. For the briefest moment, it seemed worth it, and before I had a chance to let my wiser side intervene, I was almost to the top of the path. I slowed and quieted my breathing, scenting the air as I moved.
True to form, Sophia was nowhere to be found, but Vladikk had made himself an easy target at the front of the ambush. I could almost see his outline as he leaned against the boulder I was coming up on, the smell of his leather conditioner and gun oil filled my nostrils as I pulled a TEC-9 from my hip, amazed that the leather holster had held up to being dragged across the jungle floor.
The Quetzalcoatl still hadn’t followed me up, and I was forced to stick with my earlier estimation, that we’d vastly underestimated the intelligence of the man because of the damage to his sanity. I took a slow, deep breath, holstered the gun, and drew a silver blade from my boot instead.
Sweat beaded on my brow as I gathered the courage to attack and prayed that my aim would be true and swung around the rock face, lunging for the spot I knew would be Vladikk Agnarrson’s throat. He gasped and managed to move the few inches it took to keep him alive, and instead of slicing his throat, my blade slid into his chest just above his heart and glanced off his collarbone as he dove out of reach.
I rolled after him as bullets sprayed the rocks behind me and slashed out at him again, coming up short and barely fileting a thin swathe of skin off the back of
his thigh and leaving his khaki army surplus pants gaping almost to his knee. He cursed and screamed at the hunters to put me down, but the shooting slowed and then stopped, and I realized I’d miscalculated one important factor in my suicide attack. I rolled over onto my back and stared up at the long silver line of scales that covered the Quetzalcoatl’s abdomen and made one last lunge for the safety of the rocks that lined the path only to have a large, impossibly strong hand grasp me by the ankle and throw me up onto the plateau past the hunters who were scrambling over one another to get away from their attacker.
Stunned, my head still ringing from another rough landing without bracing myself, I couldn’t get my feet under me to get out of harm’s way until hands grabbed my upper arms, and Caroline and Ashlynn pulled me to safety yet again. I watched in horror as a hunter went flying over the cliff and disappeared from view and another was tossed behind him, only to grab the ledge and walk himself sideways before climbing up farther down the ledge.
I struggled to my feet and whistled as loudly as I could, jumping up and down and wind milling my arms to get the creature’s attention. I pushed as far away from Caroline and my mate as I could get without being pinned to the wall and continued to shout and wave my arms like a madman until in desperation I picked up a large stone and lobbed it at him, hitting him square on the end of his feathered tail.
With a shriek that I thought had burst my eardrums, he whipped around and came for me, hands extended as he slithered across the rocky ground as smooth and fast as a viper. I saw a stone the size of my head bounce off his arm, and he spun to face Ashlynn, who had another rock in her hand. Before I could say anything, she threw back her head and howled, and my pack responded, their throaty baying drawing closer by the second.
