by K. A. Poe
Cassius guided me through the mansion, away from the mass of vampires and into an unoccupied room. He settled me down on a comfortable bench surrounded on both sides by pots of blossoming orange flowers. How did he expect me to relax at a time like this? My husband was preparing to infiltrate the hold of a deadly vampire, alongside my friends, unaware of the fact that I undoubtedly was bringing them to their death. I repeatedly contemplated the idea of transforming into the raven and killing Malik right on the spot before the hunters even had a chance to show up, but I was warned not to. It would have been suicide. Even if I had somehow made it through the army of vampires and slain Malik, there would be no way to make it back out through the hoard alive. The only thing that had protected me this far had been Malik’s command and the protective shield that Petru placed over me every time I visited Varias. I had to wonder if he was doing it purely due to Malik’s orders or if some part of him desired to keep me safe…more than likely he didn’t care even minutely for my life.
It was impossible to mute out the sound of Malik’s voice as he rounded up his men, directing groups of them to every area of the mansion. He wasn’t taking any chances. Salem’s idea of torching the entire place was becoming more and more tempting as time passed, yet that was no longer an option with me inside. Did they even know that I was here? I assumed the Vanatori must have sent a group out to the restaurant as well as the mansion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was soon to be up in flames once it was discovered to be empty.
Screams of agony and surprise soon filled my ears and I was positive that the attack had begun. The Vanatori had sent one large group straight to the front of the mansion as a distraction while the rest had undoubtedly snuck around to the secret entrance I had discovered. I could distinctly make out the screams of mortal men as they met an enemy that was well prepared for their arrival, and it was all my fault.
28. DELIVERY
The front door was breached faster than I had anticipated as the force from the side flanked the regiment of monsters who were focused on the front. Tiffany’s secret entrance had at least evened the odds that my forced deceit had skewed. A horde of vampires now lay dead in the entrance as dozens of men donning crossbows and daggers walked over their corpses. It was an overwhelming sight. No one paused to speak; they were all focused solely on their goal, to kill as many vampires as they could in order to get to Malik. It was going so well that I wondered if I was even needed.
Cassius tried to hold me back as I peered through the open doorway, trying to catch sight of Salem or any other familiar faces. Mikael was at the lead, slashing through a new wave of undead with a machete. Blood streaked his face, none of which was his own. There were already several bodies collapsed on the brilliant red carpet—some undead, others hunters that I did not recognize. What surprised me the most was the familiar pudgy hunter with the rosary around his neck stumbling in behind Nicolai. Hannah, Ezra and Salem were nowhere to be seen.
Bolts flew through the air, some hitting vampires while others fell to the ground only to be smashed underfoot. Fangs were bared and embedded into the throats of innocent hunters. I ached to help them, my blood boiled as each body hit the floor and my throat grew hoarse with screams of warning. Cassius continued to hold me back despite my best efforts. Was it his intention to make me suffer, unable to assist, or was he trying to protect me from harm?
The hunter inside me yearned to be among the fighters, striking down my opponents with my crossbow—the crossbow that I unfortunately did not have on me, otherwise I would be shooting from my current location.
Salem climbed over the fallen door, a long gash across his cheek and his hair tousled and face distraught. I watched as he aimed the crossbow steadily at the nearest opponent. The arrow fired and struck its target. He made an exquisite hunter, but I knew he’d never be comfortable with the idea of hunting after this day, and I was okay with that. I would come to terms with the desire to hunt; it was something that I would need to put behind me despite it being a part of who I was, literally and figuratively. That is if we made it out of here alive.
Salem glanced around the area, smashing his elbow into the jaw of an oncoming vampire before unsheathing a dagger from his side and thrusting it into the woman’s chest. His eyes soon fell on mine, and then settled on Cassius. From his point of view, it probably seemed as if the trench-coat clad vampire was holding me captive in that small room and I couldn’t entirely blame Salem for his next action.
He zipped through the surrounding horde of undead that were engaged in combat with fellow hunters, spun away from a vampire that sprung at him, and sent an arrow toward Cassius. To his dismay and my surprise, the arrow was caught between his fingers and he grinned slyly toward my husband. For the first time ever I saw Cassius’ eyes momentarily flash red.
“Salem, have you still not figured it out?” he called from where he stood, snapping the wood in half and shaking his head. “I am the only one that has been there for your dear Alexis. I am not your enemy. I am only protecting her from herself, the boiling desire to be out there with you and the rest of the hunters, fighting her enemy. Is her safety not what you want?”
Salem lowered his crossbow, spacing out momentarily that he was still surrounded by Malik’s brood. My mouth fell agape in a silent scream when he was pushed to the ground by a blue-haired male vampire with a knife clasped between his pale fingers. The blade was mere inches from Salem’s throat when I found myself shoving the vampire away, barely aware that I had somehow broken free of Cassius’s protective hold. I grasped the blue-haired fiend by the throat and slammed him into the ground, knocking the knife out of his grip.
The sudden grin on Cassius’s light lips startled me. He knew this was going to happen. There was something he wasn’t telling me, but I was sure I would know soon enough. I quickly looked away from him and grabbed onto Salem’s dagger, jamming it into the chest of the vampire that had seconds ago threatened to take away Salem’s life. I ignored the blood that was seeping into the fabric of my pants and scanned the room. Mikael was pinned against a wall fighting off a group of three vampires at once; they must have known he had led the hunters into the mansion. Remus was easily spotted in the midst of battle with a short, agile female vampire that was a little too much for him to handle. She zoomed behind him and flipped his heavy set body over her head, slamming him into the ground and knocking the air out of him. Salem followed my gaze, prepared his crossbow and sent an arrow into the stomach of Remus’s adversary. She faltered then twisted her head toward Salem and snarled, exposing her fangs and lunging across the room. Salem was quick on his feet, sliding a foot to the right and narrowly missing the vampire’s advance. She skid across the floor and crashed into a group of other undead, triggering a brief fight between them all.
“At least now they’re focused on each other,” Salem said with a lighthearted laugh and pulled me close to him. “I wish you weren’t so dedicated to being here…and we could just leave.”
“I’m not abandoning the other hunters. And it’s still me who has to kill Malik.”
“You don’t know that. Of course I expected nothing less,” he said with a smile and kissed me lightly and offered me his crossbow. “Shall we?”
I equipped the weapon, feeling at ease with it in my hands. “What about you? Don’t you need it?”
He whipped out another crossbow and grinned. “We came prepared.”
He offered over a bundle of arrows and I was ready to join the fight. To my relief, Remus was back up on his feet and seemed to be recuperating from his fall. More and more bodies littered the blood-soaked floor.
Everything felt like it was in slow motion as Malik came into view and began descending the staircase. He absentmindedly stabbed an oncoming hunter with an ornamental dagger that had previously been concealed behind him. With each step he took, another life was claimed by the dagger. His movements were smooth and calculated, unlike the rest of the horde. He didn’t stop until he approached Salem and me. A
trail of bodies littered behind.
“Your choice is obvious, Alexis,” he stated, sheathing the dagger at his side. “Which is most unfortunate, I had hoped that we could continue to be together…perhaps even throughout eternity, if you would ever have considered it.”
“I would never agree to be yours,” I spat in disgust. “You forced me to be your Queen. No one would make that decision by choice!”
“Destiny did.”
I shook my head and laughed. “My mother used her position as Queen to her advantage. She only grew to love you over time…out of loneliness.”
Malik growled and advanced toward me. “You speak only lies!”
“She shared her memories with me, Malik. The only reason she agreed to marry you was to avoid slavery and to make her escape easier.”
This had been the chance I was waiting for—everyone else was focused on their own adversaries while Malik had his eyes on me. I muted out his voice, focusing as hard as I could on the transformation from human to raven, but then I was distracted by the sound of Hannah’s voice.
“Don’t you lay a single damned finger on her!” she shrieked and my eyes flew open. Malik was wielding the ornamental weapon again, sliding his finger across the blade’s edge enough to draw blood—clearly a threat, showing me just how deadly the dagger was. A blast of arrows—at least a dozen of them—shot through the air and pierced the Vampire Lord’s skin. He barely faltered, reacting as if he had merely been poked by a gentle child’s finger.
“Your pathetic excuse for weapons won’t work on me,” he scoffed as he immediately started to heal from the wounds and the bolts fell to the floor. “While the rest of these weaklings fall at the mere touch of your arrows, I don’t feel a thing!”
“Ready your arrows!” Mikael shouted from across the room, despite Malik’s remark and the fact that he was being surrounded by a group of vampires. Each hunter switched the arrows out of their bows and equipped new ones—ones that I recognized as being poison-tipped Waldron arrows. My family had crafted these arrows with the venom of the Waldron raven, which although in appearance was identical to an ordinary black fowl, carried a deadly poison in its beak that was one of the few ways to seriously injure a vampire. “Fire!”
I watched in amazement and fear as hundreds of poisonous arrows swarmed through the air, each of them targeted at Malik. His face displayed a look of amusement as the arrows rushed forward, then slowly his grin evolved into a surprised scowl. The poison was searing through his veins as the arrow tips embedded deeply into his flesh. They pinned his legs, arms, abdomen, some even met his throat…but it still wasn’t enough to stop him completely. He was visibly weakened, and I knew that it was time.
My body contorted painfully into the familiar shape and I spread my wingspan as far as it could reach, relishing in the feeling of hovering over the ground. There were hundreds of eyes on me, vampire and hunter alike, marveling at the magnificent ebony bird before them. Malik stared at me in fear and stumbled backward up the stairs as the effect of the poison grew stronger.
“You-you’re the creature that Cassius foresaw?” he mumbled in awe.
“Did no one ever tell you the story of the Waldron lineage?” Hannah asked with a grin. “Let’s get this over with, shall we, Alex?’
I nodded my small bird head and dove toward Malik. He stepped aside, wobbling as the poison pulsed through his veins. Diving again, I managed to barely graze the side of his shoulder. He swung his arm out, slashing at me with the dagger. The blade swept across my left wing and I struggled to maintain my flight.
Two hunters took the opportunity to rush towards Malik while his focus was on me, hoping to dispatch him. Despite his ever weakening state he managed to parry the first hunter’s axe, then duck below the second’s side-swing, causing the hunter to inadvertently kill his partner. Malik took advantage of the man’s shock and stabbed the dagger deep into his chest, leaving it there as the man fell aside.
The rest of the room broke into battle again and the deafening roar of metal and bone filled my ears.
“Ignore the pain, Alex, you can do it,” I could barely make out Hannah’s encouraging voice as I turned to find her killing another foe with a dagger of her own. Knowing she was there helped me gain the strength to spring head-on into my enemy. My beak sliced through Malik’s thick skin and he was finally on his back, fallen against the top of the stairs. I pecked repeatedly at the cavity forming in his swollen chest but he was healing faster than I could keep up with. With each plunge of my beak, he laughed despite the blood that spilled down his chin.
“Cassius was an imbecile to think that even you had the capability of killing me,” he guffawed and flung me away with the back of his hand.
I felt my body shaking violently as I slid across the floor and my back rammed into the edge of a table. My body splayed out in the form of a broken, battered human girl. I didn’t have to attempt to move my arm to know that the bones had shattered. I opened my eyes and squinted. I saw Salem obviously fighting with himself over where he should go—his eyes burned with fury as they settled on Malik, but Cassius was on the Vampire Lord before Salem even had a chance to move. He ignored Malik and instead ran to me, pulling my convulsing body up onto his lap.
“Alex…your arm…” he uttered and ran his fingers gently across the bloodied excuse for a limb. “Is anything else broken or injured?”
“No…I don’t…” I gasped and clung onto my abdomen. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t place just what it was. Sudden jolts of pain swam through my stomach and I gripped onto Salem’s hand as tightly as I could without breaking it.
“What is going on?” his eyes were fearful and he looked longingly toward his sister who came to us at once. “Hannah?”
She placed a cold hand across my stomach and frowned and my thoughts immediately went from bad to worst—there was no doubt in my mind that it was something to do with the baby.
Momentarily, the sound of blood-curdling screams distracted us from my discomfort. Cassius had Malik pinned onto the stairs, and for a moment nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary, until I noticed something small rolling down the steps.
I gasped as I realized it was Malik’s decapitated head and watched as it crashed into one of the many piles of corpses.
Cassius wiped his bloodied hands along his trench coat and walked down the stairs as though nothing had ever happened. His focus was on me—perhaps he truly did care about me…
“I think,” I uttered after a sudden pain crept through my body, “the baby…the baby is coming.”
29. EXPOSURE
“It’s far too soon,” Salem objected, staring at me pleadingly, as if hoping I would tell him I was only kidding. “Are you sure?”
I nodded my head slowly. “I think so…”
“We need to get her out of here,” Hannah said, scanning the room which was still filled with ongoing fights between hunter and vampire alike.
“There’s no time!” I yelled, grasping Salem’s hand even tighter. I was in no way prepared for this; then again, I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready. Up until now, the child growing in my womb seemed like just the topic of a story. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be. I was only nineteen, recently married, and hunting vampires for crying out loud! There was no possible way that I was about to give birth to another human being…yet, the painful contractions in my uterus were telling me otherwise. “Please, don’t let Hannah have been right…” the words came out before I had a chance to even consider that I was even thinking them.
“Oh, Alex,” Hannah frowned and placed a calming hand on my shoulder. “Even if I am right…we’ll do what we can to make this work, we can change the future. Cassius predicted that you would kill Malik, and yet he was the one to do it…”
I smiled through the pain. Hannah was right, and I was glad that she finally admitted that there was a chance that her vision was incorrect. I looked around momentarily to see if anyone I knew had fallen, but the battle had finally passe
d us as the hunters pushed deeper into the compound. I lost all thought of my friends as my back arched uncontrollably and the pain skyrocketed from dull to unbearable.
“How is she?” Cassius asked as he approached calmly.
“You knew this would happen…” Salem stated. “Why did you not prevent it?”
“There was nothing that I could do to prevent it. The future is already written,” he answered and knelt beside the three of us. As the pain died down slightly I wondered where Ezra was. Before I could glance around the room in search of him however, my eyes shut tightly in another burst of pain. “Let us get her to safety.”
“No!” I objected.
“Alexis, you must trust me. This is not a safe place for you or the child; we must get you away from here.”
“How are we going to escape without getting attacked?”
“While you have been focused on what is clearly more important, you have missed out on what has been occurring around you,” Cassius pointed out and gestured toward the rest of the room.
Aside from the deceased and a few remaining fighters far in the distance, the room was nearly empty. Malik’s body lay untouched on the stairs. I noticed in shock that a few of the slave vampires had broken away and ran by us and out the door.
