Blood Harvest (Blood Curse Series Book 12)

by Tessa Dawn

  “As if we needed the reminder,” Kristina murmured absently, construing the gold and red cloaks as good versus evil—the difference between the two twin brothers was already obvious as hell.

  They each drew their swords, and she waited, half expecting to hear a trumpet’s blast or the call of a bugle. Anything but this excruciating silence. And then she jerked back and gasped, as just like that, Prince Jaegar shifted his sword, over and back, in alignment with his shoulder, and charged forward with dizzying speed.

  He launched into a sudden, flying lunge, aimed his broadsword at Prince Jadon’s chest, and thrust at his heart, his red cloak flapping behind him.

  Prince Jadon moved just as swiftly…

  Just as supernaturally.

  He dropped to the ground beneath Jaegar’s weapon, placed one palm in the dirt for stability and balance, and waited for the perfect moment, when Prince Jaegar was flying directly above him. While doing what Kristina could only describe as a one-handed push-up, he stabbed upward with his sword hand and rotated the tip of his blade in an apparent attempt to disembowel Prince Jaegar—who literally shifted position in midair.

  Kristina’s jaw dropped open in astonishment as Prince Jaegar sucked in his gut, arched his back like a wild tom cat, and vaulted upward in midflight. He summersaulted forward—over and above Prince Jadon’s head—and landed lithely behind him.

  Prince Jadon spun around and took several strides backward.

  Oh gods, she could hardly bear to watch this…

  Her entire life was riding on this battle, to say nothing of the princesses, the house of Jadon, and possibly…Braden’s survival. She wanted to bury her head in her hands and start praying, but she didn’t dare turn away.

  Prince Jaegar spat something vile—Kristina couldn’t hear it clearly—but Prince Jadon’s eyes glowed red in response, and his fangs descended from his gums. He charged forward in a short series of rapid attacks, lunging at Prince Jaegar, again and again, their swords clattering in a deafening clamor, and then he brought his blade-arm up and around, as if drawing a half-circle around Prince Jaegar’s head and shoulders, before slicing it down, crosswise, in an attempt to slit Prince Jaegar’s throat.

  Prince Jaegar’s corporeal body faded in and out as he swiftly dissolved his molecules, allowed the sword to pass through his flesh like air, but not before the tip of Prince Jadon’s blade caught the cinch of his crimson cloak and sent it fluttering to the ground.

  Prince Jaegar answered the insult with a guttural snarl, and while Kristina didn’t know that much about sword-fighting, she had learned a few of the basics from Braden when he had talked about his early training at the Academy or his rounds with Marquis and Julien, and the shit was flying fast and furious now, almost too swift and ferocious to track or process…

  Lunge after lunge met with a parry and a counterattack.

  A remise—then a riposte—followed by a series of feints.

  Drop kicks, aerials, windmills, and summersaults…iron striking iron.

  The earth beneath the princes shook, and not from the violent energy of emotion—but from their sheer vampiric strength, and all the while, both males grew angrier. Both vampires grew more feral and determined.

  More focused.

  More aggressive.

  More bloodthirsty and brutal.

  And then Prince Jadon raised his sword high above his head and held it in front of his glowing red eyes: The blade caught fire, began to sizzle with electricity, then came back down in a blue, purplish haze.

  Kristina’s eyes grew wide with wonder. She gazed across the canyon, scanned the ledge for the Master Wizards, and gulped as her mind began to process what her eyes were seeing:

  Yep, it was subtle, but it was there.

  They were lending their power to Prince Jadon.

  And holy shit, Napolean Mondragon—all ten of his fingers were glowing with barely leashed, deadly radiation—the king was prepared to nuke half the valley if he had to, but he couldn’t…

  Right?

  Not without incinerating the princesses and Kristina in the process, not without killing both Prince Jaegar and his better half, Prince Jadon. Not without destroying the host for Braden’s body…

  Kristina’s bit her bottom lip to keep her teeth from chattering, even as Prince Jadon slashed his glowing sword downward and finally drew blood, striking Prince Jaegar’s dominant wrist and opening his radial artery.

  The evil prince responded with a surge of dark energy originating from the western clifftop near Salvatore Nistor, in the form of thick black smoke. He directed the tendrils like a second set of fingers, wrapping them tightly around the hilt of Prince Jadon’s sword.

  He ignored his pain.

  He ignored the rapid blood loss.

  He let go of his broadsword, drew both palms back, and lassoed Prince Jadon’s weapon out of his hand, catching the grips of both blades in clenched fingers before either sword could hit the ground. And then he flew forward like a savage animal, fangs gnashing, biceps bulging, and drew both blades across one another in an aerial configuration of an X, determined to dislodge Prince Jadon’s head in the crossing.

  Kristina screamed in terror as Prince Jadon caught both blades with his naked hands, stopping each just short of piercing his neck. His arms began to tremble as he strained to wrest the heavy blades outward, Prince Jaegar strained to urge them inward, and blood began to drip in bright red rivulets from Prince Jadon’s lacerated palms.

  The clifftops grew silent.

  The air around the princes sizzled…

  Prince Jaegar began to weaken from blood loss, and Prince Jadon’s grip began to slip.

  And then…

  Prince Jadon vanished.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Knees still drawn to his chest, Braden sobbed until his tear ducts were empty.

  Trust Lord Monoceros.

  Trust the celestial deities.

  Trust himself, and above all else, trust in his love for Kristina…

  How could he?

  He wasn’t ready.

  Yet Lord Monoceros believed in him…

  No sooner had the latter thought crossed his mind than his satchel began to glow, and the weight of the bag intensified.

  Trust had been added to his earlier badges…

  “But…but—”

  His body rocked backward, and he was suddenly enveloped in darkness.

  “Wait!”

  He clutched the satchel at his hip and clenched his eyes shut. He was falling…falling…tumbling backward at great speed and velocity, merging into an ocean of dark clouds and dense vapor, crossing eons of space and time as the cocoon surrounding him grew lighter and lighter. As bits and pieces, snippets, and impressions streamed into his consciousness, even as they zoomed rapidly past him.

  The soldiers in the house of Jaegar perched atop a high, eastern rocky crevasse.

  The house of Jadon warriors gathered in the west.

  The princesses surrounded by brutal, would-be executioners…

  Kristina Riley—Red!—kneeling before a savage, dark henchman, just feet from the edge of a cliff, her bare feet tucked beneath her, her eyes wide with terror and dread.

  Pain seared the palms of his hands, and he released his grip on the pouch. Great lords of the celestial sphere, he felt as if his fists were being sliced in half. Then just like that, he was standing on a canyon floor, still clothed in a simple, crude tie of cotton cloth, his feet still wrapped in leather sandals, his arms, legs, and chest still bare. Only, his hands were wrapped around twin blades—two separate, mighty swords of iron—and he was struggling to wrench them away from his neck.

  His satchel began to glow again, only this time with banked, radiant heat, and the badges he had collected in the Enchanted Forest exploded into eight points of brilliant light.

  The light infused his hands, healed his wounds, and streamed into the length of one blade, wrapping around the steel like luminous, ghostly fingers, and Braden, with his c
orporeal eyes still closed, tuned everything out, except the energy around him.

  What had the stick-warrior taught him?

  The energy before him was dark and ancient. It flowed from a collective, empty void that had been filled with bloodthirsty hatred, but it ebbed when shown the true empty nature of its soul’s reflection. The enemy was flexing the strength in his arms, even as he grew weaker and weaker from blood loss. Yet and still, this Dark One’s power was gathered, solely, in the Triple Warmer Meridian, the fight, flight, and freeze response anchored behind his eyes.

  And his next move…

  His next move would be to drop the hilts of both swords, heal his radial artery with venom, then strike at Braden’s heart with an agile clawed hand.

  Braden slowed his breathing and opened his entire consciousness to the elements around him, synthesizing the information in under a millisecond: The atomic weight of his own sword—the Sword of Andromeda!—was 55.845, with 2.1 percent carbon added. It achieved a physical state at twenty-degrees Celsius, and contained twenty-six protons, thirty neutrons, and another twenty-six electrons. He shifted the atomic structure of his right hand and his sword-arm to match the composition, and the blade became an extension of his body, folding into his flesh and bone.

  He slowly opened his eyes and took in the visage of the dark, onyx, hate-filled eyes before him—so it was Prince Jaegar.

  But wait—

  No...

  Coal-black orbs gave way to citrine irises, and a six-foot-tall, broad, muscular frame towered upward into a brawny, malevolent, seven-foot giant.

  Achilles Zahora.

  So be it.

  Just as expected, Achilles dropped the remaining sword, leaped backward, and swathed his wrist in venom, and that’s when Braden bent his knees, flattened both heels against the ground, and drew a mighty surge of power up through his feet, borrowing the anima from the earth’s molten core. The Sword of Andromeda still merged with his flesh, he raised both arms, lunged forward, and struck inward with the heels of both hands, slamming the atomic strength of steel into each of Achilles’ temples in a swift, harsh whack! The goal was not to crush his skull but to sear two electrical currents into the Triple Warmer Meridian, stunning the brutish colony guard and freezing the giant in place.

  If only for an instant, Achilles froze, and that’s when Braden lunged forward and downward. He extended his arm, released the blade, and skewered the giant through the foot—for all intents and purposes, he may as well have been driving a tent-stake made of steel through flesh, blood, and bone, then deep into the ground.

  Braden opened both palms, directed the tips of his fingers toward the stake, then sent extreme heat and pressure into the soil all around Achilles’ foot and the elaborate spike, crystallizing the carbon into diamond and tethering Achilles to the ground.

  He filled his lungs with breath and came up swinging.

  A brutal uppercut to the throat chakra, turning the associated aura from blue to brown; a rapid-fire series of six jabs to the heart and seven to the solar plexus, striking the Anahat chakra and wounding the Manipura; a left hook to the brow, the Agya chakra, and a right hook to the crown of the head. And then one last sledgehammer punch for good measure, right between the eyes, the back of Braden’s fist laced with the mirror image of an empty, carnal soul.

  Prince Jaegar’s reflection.

  Achilles’ spiritual composition.

  The giant vampire listed to the side and staggered against the iron tether.

  Braden drew the sword from the ground, all eight colors of the badges now glowing like a columnar prism of fire, and brought it upward, above his shoulder, while spinning around in a full 360-degree circle. In five swift slashes, moving faster than both light and sound, he sliced the brachial, carotid, and femoral arteries, and then he braced the pommel of the sword in both fists, one hand locked over the other, and impaled the ferocious colony guard straight through the pulmonary artery. The heart.

  A collective gasp echoed in the canyon as Achilles Zahora listed forward and fell on top of Braden, both lethal vampires prone on the ground.

  Citrine eyes gave way to onyx, and a blood-drenched mouth turned up in a smile.

  Braden stared into the hate-filled orbs, watching—praying—for the pupils to dim like a fallen, fading star, waiting to crawl from beneath the giant, to take his head, extract his wounded heart, and set all the unholy pieces on fire. But what shone back at him was not Prince Jaegar or Achilles’ death but someone else’s…

  Napolean’s courtyard, decorated in the full array of autumn colors: chairs interlaced with leafy vines; candlelit lanterns hanging from trees; arched, slatted walkways leading to twelve elegant white pavilions; and his mother, Lily, standing back and to the side, with Conrad, Colette Nastase, Zayda Patrone, and Natalia Olaru, while Kristos, Dario, and Aric Zander spoke with Keitaro Silivasi and Arielle Nightsong.

  Then just like that, faster than an eye could blink or a crow could caw, Lily jerked backward, her shoulders bound by a strong, brawny arm. She arched her back in an unnatural contortion, gasped her last breath of air, and fell to the ground, even as Prince Jaegar Demir appeared once again in the center of the courtyard, holding her blood-drenched heart in his hand like a prized garish trophy before setting the organ on fire.

  Braden retched in his mouth.

  His heart constricted and he lost all awareness of the battle…of the body lying like a heavy stone weight on top of him.

  He lost all desire to finish what he had started.

  Emboldened by the sudden shift in energy, onyx eyes flashed back to citrine, and Achilles Zahora crawled off Braden like a wounded, half-dead animal—he bent over into an embryonic position and slowly but steadily began to heal his critical, gushing arteries.

  As if it no longer existed, time seemed to stand still.

  Seconds passed…

  Maybe minutes…

  Could’ve been hours.

  Braden had no sense of anything, other than the pain in his heart and a strange, dull impression of being more and more disconnected from his body. It was as if he were living in a dreamscape, hiding in a dark, hazy corner, and waiting to see if the dream would have a good and peaceful ending or quickly devolve into a hideous nightmare.

  Achilles Zahora—at least it seemed like Achilles Zahora, felt like Achilles Zahora—crawled back over Braden’s prone body, grasped him by the shoulders in two powerful, brawny hands, and jerked him upright before slamming him into the hard, unforgiving ground.

  Braden’s breath whooshed out of his lungs, but he didn’t fight back.

  He wanted to stay in the corner.

  A solid punch to his rib cage, and several bones broke. Then another. And another. He heard a distant, wretched cough…perhaps his own…and then a voice in his head, foreign yet familiar: “Braden, get up.”

  He didn’t know this vampire—

  Or did he?

  His brain was too fuzzy, but his spirit crackled like an old transistor radio, dialing in the sound and a faint awareness: Prince Jadon Demir? Inside his head? Or somewhere, far away, out in the ether?

  Either way, it didn’t matter.

  “Braden, get up!” The prince sounded desperate this time. “I can no longer fully inhabit your body! Your soul is too powerful. Your essence is too strong. Vampire, I need you to come back and fight!”

  Come back and fight…

  Come back and fight?

  Ah yes, Prince Jadon was there—of course—and the prince could definitely fight.

  In fact, linked as they were, however obscurely, Braden finally understood what needed to happen: The moment he passed away, Marquis, Saber, Saxson, Keitaro, and a dozen other warriors would surround the princesses in a warded circle, place them inside a protective holding cell, and fight to the death if necessary. Jankiel and Niko would continue to call upon the gods for favor—the entire Council of Wizards would wage war with spells and magick—and Ramsey would most certainly rescue Kristina. Julien and S
antos would help him. And the king—if it became necessary—would destroy them all with his solar power.

  He would…

  He could…

  He had to.

  The brutal beating stopped.

  Either that, or Achilles had already turned Braden’s body into hamburger—but no more blows to the chest and ribs. Rather, the sound of dust being disturbed, the fearsome colony guard crawling around in the dirt, scooping up handfuls of soil while sweeping his hand from side to side.

  “He’s got your sword!” Prince Jadon again. “Napolean’s Sword of Andromeda.”

  Braden’s head lolled to the side as he tried to listen.

  “He’s pitching it atop the eastern cliffs! Shit—he tossed the sword to the Dark Ones. Braden, get up! He is going to kill you.”

  Braden blinked several times.

  His eyelids were so heavy, and his heart, even heavier.

  Fuck, that wasn’t good.

  The Sword of Andromeda was gone, which meant so were the badges…

  Braden’s power.

  His celestial assistance…

  All he had gained in the Enchanted Forest.

  He could not defeat Achilles with his bare hands alone, going toe to toe with the vicious executioner. “Take my body,” he tried to murmur to Prince Jadon, but he wasn’t sure if the words were audible.

  It didn’t matter.

  He was traveling now…

  Ascending out of the safe, hidden corner, speeding across the vale, until at once, he descended, his ethereal feet still attired in rudimentary sandals, inside the familiar circular Hall of Justice, with its ancient walls and copious ceremonial history.

  Lily…

  Mamica…

  She was lying in repose on an exquisitely adorned platform, just like Lord Monoceros had shown him—she was bathed and dressed in an elegant robe of lavender and ivory, her hands folded peacefully across her midriff, resting atop a fine antique pillow—awaiting final rest, to be delivered back to earth…and buried within the same.