The Transformed Box Set: Books 1, 2, 3, 3.5

by Stacy Claflin

  Lips trembling, I nodded and then bit into his soft neck. His cool blood spilled into my mouth, immediately dissolving the taste of the werewolf blood. I didn't feel the euphoria that I had the last time I'd drank his blood. The werewolf venom must have neutralized that too. That was probably for the best, since I didn't need to be on a high while battling Francine's army.

  When I pulled away from his neck, the wound healed instantly. He felt the spot. "See? You didn't hurt me."

  I nodded, feeling stronger by the second. By the time that Alrekur said we should mount the unicorns again, I felt as good as new. It was as if I hadn't even battled yet.

  "Do we have to leave her here?" I asked, looking at Brooke.

  "We don't have time to do anything with her body," Alrekur said. "We definitely can't take her with us."

  Mattie snapped her fingers and then clapped several times, saying something in a foreign language.

  From all directions, faeries of every color flew to our side. Mattie continued to speak in the foreign language until the faeries had all fluttered to Brooke and lifted her up, carrying her out of sight.

  "They'll make sure that she's taken care of. You can say your goodbyes later, after we've won."

  I nodded, looking in the direction that they'd taken Brooke.

  TWENTY TWO

  As I rode with Alrekur, Mattie, Hailey, and Karlie through the forest on our unicorns, I shot every werewolf in sight with my silver-tipped arrows. I was dangerously close to running out, after which I would have my unicorn ram into them with his toxic horn. Now that their venom had killed Brooke, this fight was personal.

  Sure, it had been personal with Francine too. That's why I had made sure to kill her. With her out of the way, my new focus was to make sure that not a single werewolf from her side was left standing. It was for Brooke now.

  A wolf jumped out towards Mattie. I reached in for another arrow and discovered that I only had wood-tipped ones left. I tugged at the mane of my unicorn and it went in that direction, stabbing the wolf straight through and flinging him away.

  Before the werewolf had even landed, several others and a couple of vampires ran out from some bushes and attacked us. They avoided those of us on unicorns. Mattie easily defended herself, but Hailey was overcome when a wolf jumped up and bit into her neck and two vampires threw themselves on her, one staking her in the heart.

  I moved to jump off my unicorn, but Alrekur reached out and grabbed my arm, shaking his head. It was too late for Hailey and he didn't want me to get hurt. I glared at the remaining werewolves and kicked at my unicorn. He ran for them, killing them all instantly with his horn.

  "Good boy," I whispered, patting him between the ears. Our thoughts were in sync, making us even stronger. He'd known that I wanted him to kill the wolf and that was exactly what he'd done.

  Once the attacking werewolves and vampires were dead, we moved on to find more that we could kill. I did my best to focus on the upcoming battles rather than the losses. Even though Hailey and I had been enemies for most of our lives, it now hurt to have her gone. I only wished that we could have spent more time together. She had been such a good friend to me when there were no other vampires in Delphic Cove.

  The unicorns slowed their pace.

  "What's going on?" I asked, looking around.

  "I don't know," Alrekur said, "but I have a feeling we're about to walk into something significant."

  We went through some thick shrubbery and entered a wide clearing. There were four vampires at the far end of the field and they appeared to be arguing. As we neared, I could see both my mother and my father, a beautiful vampire…and my father.

  "Am I seeing double?" I asked, looking at two of my fathers. "Oh, wait. One of them is Clara and Samantha's father."

  "That it is," Mattie said. "That's Heath Westerfield and his common wife, Trina."

  "He looks ready to rip out someone's heart," Alrekur noted, as if he were commenting on the weather.

  "Yeah, my parents' hearts," I said, ready to jump to the ground to intervene. As angry as I had been for everything they'd done, I was ready to fight for them.

  Alrekur looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Don't jump in until we've had the chance to assess the situation."

  I glared at him. "Fine. But they're my parents and I'm going to defend them."

  "And I'm going to defend you. Don't rush into anything."

  "Let's go find out what's going on," Mattie said, spurring her unicorn to pick up speed.

  Alrekur and I sped ours up too and we all stopped several feet away from my parents and Clara's.

  "Did you kill my brother so that you could become king?" Heath demanded, inches from my father's face.

  "I honestly had no intention of becoming king. You were supposed to be king, remember?"

  "Were you going to kill me, too?"

  "Never."

  Heath grabbed my father's neck. "So it was just my true brother that you wanted dead."

  "We got into a scuffle and they ended up dying. My wife and I merely took advantage of the opportunity in front of us. We hid their bodies and took their shapes so that we could hide among the vampires. Nobody even knew that we were still alive, and we needed a way to search for the Fyrsturae. Your brother and his wife had a lot of resources at their disposal."

  He tightened his grip and my father gagged. "It may be eight hundred years late, but I will make you suffer for killing my brother!"

  I jumped off my unicorn and ran to my father, knocking him out of Heath's grip.

  Heath glared at me. "We finally meet the Sonnast."

  "Yes. I'm a Fyrsturae. Don't harm my father."

  "I don't intend to. But he will pay." He pulled out a decorated stake and held it up over his head. He aimed it at my father, but just as he was about to strike him, he turned away and plummeted the stake deep into my mother's heart.

  "What?" I screamed.

  "No! Stop!" my father hollered as my mother's eyes glazed over.

  She transformed into her water faerie shape and then fell to the ground, melting into a puddle of water that seeped into the ground before our eyes.

  My mouth dropped open as I tried to process what had just happened.

  "I told you that I was going to make you suffer," Heath said. "Killing you wouldn't cause that."

  Looking back and forth between Heath and the now-dry earth where my mother had disappeared, my father let out a blood-curdling scream that echoed around us. Suddenly, Mattie was at my father's side, crying.

  Getting my bearings, I stared Heath down. "How dare you?"

  "How dare I? How dare your parents? They killed my brother and his wife and have spent the last eight hundred years parading around as if they were them! Leading vampires everywhere—and they're not even vampires themselves!"

  "They helped to create the species! Who else would be better able to lead?"

  "Vampires!" he screamed.

  My father let out a loud wail and I turned to see him holding out a sword. I moved out of the way so that he could have a clear shot at Heath. Instead, he turned it around towards his own heart.

  "What are you doing?" I shrieked and moved toward him, too late. As I reached for his hands, he thrust the sword through his heart so hard that it went through the other side. "No!"

  As he fell to the ground, he took on his ogre shape and landed with an echoing thud, shaking the ground around us.

  I turned around and looked at Heath for a split second before I lunged at him, tearing into his flesh with my teeth and nails. He tried pushing me away, but I wouldn't be deterred. There was no way that I was going to let go of him until he was dead.

  Trina, his wife, grabbed my hair and yanked on it. "Let go of him!"

  Alrekur appeared and threw her into a tree that was about fifty feet away.

  She ran back and grabbed my arms, trying to pull me away from Heath. Suddenly, she stopped and stared at one of his wounds. "Why isn't that healing?"

  I removed my tee
th from his neck, shrugged, and said, "Maybe there's still some werewolf venom in my system."

  "Werewolf venom?"

  "Yeah, I was bitten not too long ago. I used up all of the cure."

  "What's the cure?" Trina demanded.

  "Blood of a royal and werewolf," I said. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Heath was reaching for a stake.

  Moving at lightning speed, I grabbed it from him and jammed it into his heart. He slumped down and I released him, letting him fall to the ground.

  I narrowed my eyes at Trina. "Run. Go far, far away and never show your face to me again. Continue to live in hiding as you have all of these centuries."

  She showed her fangs. "Why should I do that?"

  "Because I'll let Samantha live if you do. Otherwise, I'm heading straight to the dungeon to kill her next."

  "You'll let her go?"

  "I'll let her live. She tried to kill me, just as you're trying to. Maybe I should throw you in there with her."

  "You wouldn't!"

  "My parents are now dead. You're freaking lucky that I'm even giving you the option to run and keep living in hiding. Clara's my friend. That's your only saving grace."

  "I'm going to have to have a talk with Clara," she muttered.

  "Ah, see here. You're heading back into the territory of me going directly to Samantha. I don't want you contacting Clara. You live a life in hiding or your daughter dies."

  She glared at me for a few moments before running into the woods, hopefully never to be seen again.

  "What now?" I asked

  "We should head back to the castle," Mattie said. "Francine is dead and you've suffered enough loss for one night."

  "I don't want to think about that now. We need to find out if George has been killed yet. With Francine dead, her husband is probably going to step up as leader of their army."

  "He's more of a sidekick than a second in command," Alrekur said, not sounding worried.

  "Still, I don't want to take any chances," I said.

  "She's right. We should at least find out what's happened with him," Karlie said. "If Alexis feels that she can keep going, then she should."

  Everyone nodded and we all mounted our unicorns.

  "It looks like the sun is starting to rise," I said. "That means we'll have an even bigger advantage over the common vampires."

  "Unless Francine gave them blessed jewelry," Karlie said.

  "I doubt that," I said. "There are a lot of them—and thankfully she didn't turn them using her blood. We've been able to kill them with plain wooden stakes. If she didn't bother to turn them, then I can't see her arming them with sunlight necklaces."

  "True," Karlie agreed. "She probably only used them as a distraction for us."

  "Morning also means that the werewolves will return to their human form," Mattie said. "That'll be to our advantage too. They can only hurt you guys as wolves."

  "Do you guys have any more silver?" I asked. "I ran out of silver arrows."

  Alrekur held up his boomerang weapon. "This is pure silver, crafted by a blacksmith over two thousand years ago."

  "We can always use the unicorn horns as well," Mattie said. "Perhaps we should eat some more flakes from their horns to make sure that we're in tune with them as long as we need to be."

  "That probably won't hurt," Alrekur said. "Although, the flakes should last at least a couple of days."

  "They're under extreme duress," Karlie said. "I think Mattie's right. We should take more flakes because the stress could weaken our connection."

  "Sure," Alrekur agreed. "Like I said, it can't hurt." He tossed me the little metal piece that I'd used earlier to glean some flakes from my unicorn's horn. "Ladies first."

  I caught it, scraped some more sparkling flakes onto my hand and tossed the tool back to him. I swallowed the flakes, realizing that I had unicorn flakes, werewolf blood, and vampire blood all flowing through me. All I needed was a little fairy dust.

  Soon we were running through the forest again, watching the sky light up little by little as we passed through various clearings. After a while, screams of battle could be heard in the distance. Without stopping to consult anyone, I pulled on my unicorn's mane and he started running to the left. I heard the others follow.

  Alrekur went ahead to lead the pack. He must have pushed his unicorn to run faster than he should have, because one of its hooves hit a rock and a shower of sparks shot out from the bottom of it. "What was that?" I exclaimed.

  "You should see them run on a rocky path," Alrekur said, winking. "One day, we should take them on concrete. I would love to see that."

  I nodded, not committing to anything. "Look. There's Svana and Soren. Maybe they know something about George." It looked like they were nearing the end of a rough battle. Svana had blood dripping down her face and most of Soren's shirt was ripped. I urged my unicorn on and he picked up speed, charging toward a werewolf. After he'd struck it with his horn, another werewolf jumped up at me, knocking me off my ride and biting me.

  "Not again!"

  Making eye contact with my unicorn, I told it with my mind to pierce the wolf. It did just that, throwing the creature meters away. I rolled over, clutching my arm. What was I going to do now? I'd already used the cure!

  Svana appeared by my side. "Are you okay? Does Alre still have the cure?"

  "No. I've already used it."

  She breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good news."

  "How exactly?"

  "The cure is already in you! You're good for a few hours. You can get bit all you want by those dogs and it won't damage you at al."

  I sat up and looked at my arm, noticing that it was beginning to heal. "What do you know? I had no idea. Well if it lasts a while, why didn't we all just take it before we left for battle?"

  "It only lasts about three hours. The battle will surely last longer than that."

  "That's true. We wouldn't want it wearing off early."

  "Exactly. Also, from what I understood, there wasn't enough for everyone and it's anyone's guess who's going to be bitten." She stood up and grabbed my hands, pulling me up. "Looks like our work here is done."

  Looking around, I had to agree. Only the vampires from our side were left standing, although I did see a few on the ground. "Have you heard anything about George?"

  "We ran into Halldor and Dagur about an hour ago and they said that they took him down along with several of the key werewolf leaders. Apparently, they wanted to battle separately because then if something happened to one of them, the other one would survive," she said, laughing. "Have you heard anything about Francine?"

  "I killed her."

  "Oh good. I think that the major players have all been eradicated then."

  "Including my parents," I muttered.

  "What?"

  I nodded, not daring to speak more about it. "Let's just get to the castle. It sounds as if their numbers are low enough that they are no longer any kind of threat anymore."

  Svana and I got back on our unicorns and joined the others. "I'd like to take Alexis back to the castle, unless anyone thinks that we're still needed out here."

  Alrekur spoke up. "Soren and I will scout the woods to make sure that no one is left injured or needing help. You ladies can head back to the castle and freshen up. You alright, dear?" he asked Svana.

  "Oh, I'm great," she said, wiping the blood from her face. "I beheaded a couple of common vampires and their blood spattered on me. All in a day's work."

  TWENTY THREE

  When we walked up to the castle entrance, the servant at the door informed us that those who had already returned were eating in the main dining hall. We all wanted to get to our own rooms to clean up and rest, but we also wanted to know who was safe and sound. One thing that we all knew was that there were severe losses on both sides.

  I scanned the hall from the doorway. The room was filled with exhausted looking vampires, some slumped over their food and others covered in blood spatter as Svana was. Th
e first ones I noticed were Hella, Baldur, and Asdis.

  Next, I saw Tanner sitting with his group of common vampires. He looked up at me, giving me a curious expression, and I looked away. I was relieved to see him alive, but it added to my repressed heartbreak that he didn't remember me. It was yet another loss, but this one at my choosing—not that it made it any easier, really. He was doing well and happy leading vampires in Canada. I didn't want to disrupt that and give him the heartache of losing me all over again. I couldn't do that to him.

  Anxious, I looked for Cliff. Was he still out battling? He was okay, I told myself. He had to be. Oh, why hadn't I gone into battle with him? I'd probably done nothing short of leading Alrekur on in thinking that one day I would be his by going with him instead.

  Walking around the room, I looked at every single person, hoping to see Cliff. I couldn't deal with losing him. I just couldn't. I'd already lost one of my best friends and my birth parents, whom I'd barely had any time to get to know. Why had I spent so much time being mad at them? I should have just let the past stay in the past and focused on getting to know them better. If I would've taken the time to get to know them, I probably would have discovered that they had good reasons for everything that they had done.

  Shoving those thoughts aside, I focused on looking for Cliff. I was beginning to get desperate. Svana walked up to me, put her arm around my shoulder, and said, "Why don't we sit down and get a bite to eat? It'll help you feel better."

  Sighing, I nodded my head. I sat down in the nearest seat, looking down in my lap. Svana sat next to me. I didn't even bother to look up when a plate was set before me, nor when someone sat on the other side of me.

  "Aren't you going to eat?"

  I looked up to see Cliff sitting next me. His clothes were torn to rags and he was covered in dirt. But he was alive! I threw myself into his arms and began bawling, letting out my relief at seeing him alive and also my heartache for all of the loss. He wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me tight, and then rubbed my back for a while, letting me cry against him.