by Aileen Erin
“You need to think this through more. What are you going to do when you get there? What’s your plan?”
“There’s no time. I’ll figure it out when I get there.” I hugged him quickly and stepped back. “Plus, from what I understand, if my mate dies, so do I. Can’t live with half a soul, right?” I laughed, but it wasn’t because it was funny. I left him sputtering. “Bye, Mom. Love you guys.”
“I’m coming with you,” Axel said.
I gave him a hug. “No, you’re not. You’re human. Love you. And don’t stay here. Get your butts on the road ASAP.”
We raced out the door and jumped in the car. Meredith’s door was still open when I took off down the drive.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I floored it down the road, trying to go in vaguely the same direction I remembered traveling in my vision.
“Do some navigating,” I said to Meredith, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. “We need to go that way.” I pointed straight and slightly to the left of where we were headed. “There has to be a better road. A turn off. Hell, a trail would do.”
Beeps rang through the car as she tapped on the map looking for roads. “There’s nothing!” Meredith frantically pushed more buttons. “Absolutely nothing. Do you have like a coordinate or something that I could punch in?”
I snorted. “Unfortunately, my visions don’t come loaded with GPS.” This wasn’t going well. I swerved onto the shoulder. “We don’t have long before sunset. We need to run from here.”
Everyone in the backseat started taking off their clothes.
“What the fuck are you doing! This isn’t orgy time. It’s fucking kick ass time.”
“We’re going to shift, you idjit,” Shannon said.
Harsh but she was right. I was being dense. They were probably faster on four legs. “Fine.” I got out of the car with my witchy backpack and slammed the door. “Catch up with me when you’re done.”
I took off running. Wind whipped through my long hair as I sprinted. Meredith kept pace with me. She moved soundlessly but the heat her body gave off meant she wasn’t more than a step behind me.
I gave out a girly cry when the wolves crashed through the bushes next to me before I realized it was just Chris, Adrian and Shannon.
I pushed harder. Raced around trees. Branches scraped my arms hard enough to draw blood, but I had to keep moving. I couldn’t lose the feeling, the connection to Dastien. And if I didn’t get there fast enough, he was going to be seriously hurt. Or worse.
I stumbled to a stop.
“What is it?” Meredith said.
“I don’t know. I think we’re here, but I don’t see anything.”
I scanned the forest. Oak trees towered above me, but there was a strange silence. I closed my eyes and focused in on Dastien—that bond that we had. It had gotten stronger since that first vision I’d had in Los Angeles, but it still took focus for me to find it.
We were close. Really close. I climbed up a massive fallen tree. The cave’s entrance gaped behind the dead branches.
The three wolves were sniffing next to the entrance. The red wolf—Shannon—let out a quiet growl. I wondered what their wolf-y noses could smell that I couldn’t.
Meredith moved closer to the wolves and inhaled deeply. “Do you smell that?”
I closed the distance to the wolves and a foul stench hit me. I pulled my T-shirt over my nose.
“Vampires,” Meredith said.
“Why do they have to smell so bad?”
Meredith stared at me for a second. “They’re undead. Piles of rotting flesh that live by drinking blood.”
“When you put it that way, yuck. I guess when I think of vampire, I picture Brad Pitt or Robert Pattinson. More sexy, less stinky.”
The black wolf—Adrian let out a quiet howl, and nudged the fallen tree with his nose. Shannon went under the tree and Adrian quickly followed.
I started to move the trunk over, but Meredith stopped me.
“Don’t touch anything. It might be a booby trap.”
I wondered how she knew, but didn’t ask. We’d already wasted enough time. She slid herself under the branches. I followed her into the mouth of the cave. It stunk something fierce—worse than rotting fish on the beach—inside. I gagged and tried to focus on breathing through my mouth, but then I could taste the smell. My pulse hammered and I wondered if vampires could hear it like they did in the movies.
It was pitch black in the cave. “I can’t see anything. Can you?”
The blond wolf—Chris huffed, and started walking into the darkness.
I pulled my backpack off and started digging around. If my cousins stuck a flashlight in there, I was going to owe them big time.
My hand touched a familiar shape, and I flipped the button. “Nice.”
There were three tunnels ahead of us. Christ. We didn’t have time to get lost.
“I’ll go down this one,” Meredith said. “Adrian, you go down that way—”
Chris turned back to human. Fully naked human.
I spun around. “Jesus. Give me some warning next time.”
He chuckled. “Didn’t mean to offend. But I wanted to tell Meredith that splitting up was a terrible idea. Have you never watched a scary movie?”
They started arguing, but I ignored them and focused on Dastien again.
He was down the left tunnel. I was sure of it. “This way.”
“Wait. What?” Meredith said.
“Chris, go wolf again. I don’t need to see your junk.”
“He’s furry,” Meredith said after a few seconds.
“Good.” I flashed my light down the left tunnel. “Let’s go.”
Every time we reached another fork, I did the same thing.
The stench became stronger with each passing step, until finally it got so bad that I gagged.
“Don’t,” Meredith said. “If you throw up, then I’m going to throw up.”
“No promises.”
We turned a corner, and Chris—in wolf form—jumped in front of me.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” Meredith said. “I hope your cousins packed us some fucking good weapons.”
I swallowed. The next cave room was huge—at least a city block wide and long. The ceiling was super far up, a good fifty-sixty feet. There was a hole in it revealing the dark oranges of sunset. Night was only minutes away, and I realized that getting here had taken much, much longer than I thought it would.
Under the hole was a giant rock formation surrounded by stalagmites. Four bound figures sat atop it.
“You might be wanting to hurry up. They’ll be waking up soon.” Donovan’s voice echoed in the cave.
Between their rock island and our perch on the wall, a sea of vampires lay dead on the recessed cave floor. We would have to hop down from our ledge, not impossible for us supes, and then hopscotch over each body. They’d left no clear path.
My heart pounded at the thought of walking over hundreds of sleeping vampires. But the thought of walking over hundreds of almost awake vampires was infinitely worse. I was the last to jump down from the ledge. I missed my mark and crunched awkwardly on a vampire hand. I couldn’t move. More noxious fumes rose from the corpse, but otherwise he didn’t stir. I tried to breathe as little as possible and not step on them, but they were so densely packed in the room, it didn’t last for long.
The cavern was getting darker by the second.
Meredith and my three wolfy friends weren’t as easily spooked as me. They ran off, leaving me to trail behind.
A vampire near my leg reached out, brushing my ankle. “Holy shit. They’re waking up.” Suddenly, I didn’t care so much about stepping on them. I ran forward, glancing up only to keep track of the direction I needed to go, and desperately trying to keep my balance as I stepped on the barely moving vampires.
I let out a breath as I finally caught up. The three wolves faced outward at the seethe. Meredith was in just her bra, the remains of her shirt falling apart in her hand
s as she tried to remove the silver from Donovan.
Meredith cried out. “It burned through my T-shirt. I can’t get them off. I can’t get them off.”
“Calm yourself, love,” Donovan said. He looked like he was perfectly fine relaxing on this rock, but his skin was smoking where the chains touched him. There was no way that didn’t hurt like a bitch.
She turned to me franticly. “I can’t get them off. What are we going to do now?”
“How the hell did they get them on in the first place?”
“Special gloves made of inorganic material,” Sebastian said. “But they didn’t leave those behind after the cowards tied us up and left us here.”
Perfect.
I didn’t need to see the sheen of sweat covering Dastien’s skin to know he was in pain. I could feel it nagging at the end of our bond.
“You’re going to get out of this cave. Now.” Dastien put a bit of power behind his demand, and I let it fly by me.
“Shut up.” I couldn’t let myself panic like Meredith was. There was no other option but to get Dastien out. I’d burn off my own hands before I’d leave him chained here.
I crouched by him. “I didn’t walk through a room full of half-asleep vampires for nothing.” The chain holding him was long, thin, and silver. It wrapped around his hands until it was an inch thick, and then the chain ran down his back to snake around his ankles. The chain had burned through his jeans. I swear I could hear a little sizzle coming from the silver against his skin. “I guess the silver thing isn’t just in the movies.”
Dastien’s face was white with pain but he wasn’t crying out. “No.”
“Great. Well, good thing I’m new.”
“You can’t—”
Before he could stop me, I ripped the chains that were holding his wrists and ankles together. It didn’t burn me at all.
“You’re lucky your mate has bruja blood,” Donovan said. “Me next, if you will, lass.”
“Sure.” I started to unwind the chain from around Dastien’s wrists. Chunks of his skin peeled off when I moved the last bit of chain. I hesitated, not wanting to hurt him more.
“Do it.”
I swallowed, and did it. Dastien muffled his cry. I knew it wasn’t me who had put the chains there, but causing him pain still sucked. “You okay?”
“I’ll be fine now. Hurry. We have to go.” Dastien glanced up at the hole in the ceiling and then out to the sleeping vampires. “They should be up already.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I quickly unchained Mr. Dawson, Donovan, and Sebastian.
Adrian started growling. Chris and Shannon quickly followed.
“Well, it was a fine attempt, but we will fight our way out after all,” Sebastian said. The three alphas shifted into their wolf form quickly.
The cavern was silent, except for the soft growls of the wolves who now stood in a circle around Meredith, Dastien, and I. Movement rippled through the cavern as the vampires slipped soundlessly from dead to undead.
“Aren’t you going to shift?” I asked Dastien.
“Not yet. What’s in your bags?”
I couldn’t look away from the vampires. There were so many.
“Tessa,” Dastien said.
Shit. I was panicking.
“Her bruja cousin made them for us. Weapons,” Meredith said. “Holy water.”
Dastien took my pack from me and un-zipped it.
I had a second to think before I was soaked. “What the hell!” I wiped the water from my eyes.
“And she’s back,” Meredith said. She held up a bottle with a black cross on it over her head and dumped the contents. “Makes it harder for them to grab onto you if you burn the shit out of them.”
“Here.” Dastien handed me a large water gun, and then stuck two small ones in my back pockets. He pulled out some little glass vials filled with red and yellow grains and some green flakes. “I love your family.”
“You’ve never really met my family. Hell, I just met my family.” I grabbed one of them. “What is that?”
“They’re spells. But from the color, they may as well be grenades.”
Meredith pulled out some vials filled with blue liquid. “I didn’t get any like yours, but I did get these!”
“I don’t know what those are,” Dastien said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. How many do you have?”
“Your cousin was right,” Meredith said. “I know exactly what to do with them. I’ve got three and that’s plenty. These fuckers pack a punch.”
Dastien muttered something and threw one of the red and yellow ones into the cave. An explosion reverberated against the walls. I put away my flashlight as the burning vampires lit up the cavern.
“Enough with the pow-wow. We’re out of time,” Meredith said.
“Right before you throw the vial, say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I purify you.’”
“Seriously.”
“Yes. It doesn’t have to be exactly that, but the intention in your head and heart when you throw it needs to be that. And you need to really feel it and believe it for it to work. That’s the thing with brujos. They’ve got a bit of Catholicism mixed in with everything they do.” Dastien kissed me. His lips were firm for a second, and then softened. “Stay beside me.”
His clothes ripped and fell to the floor as he shifted forms.
“The wolves brought us some of their own for breakfast,” one vampire’s voice rang through the cavern. “And a witchblood.”
A vampire floated above the rest. I left my backpack unzipped and put it on backwards. I stood, palming one of the vials in one hand and my holy water gun in the other. As the vampire gained speed, moving toward me, I threw the vial and said the words.
The explosion was easily three times as big as the one Dastien’s gave off. The vampire screamed as decayed flesh melted from its bones. Flames rained down on the vampires below, burning them to a crisp.
All movement in the cavern stopped for a moment.
And then hell broke loose as the vampires in front swept toward us. The wolves ripped into the closest vampires.
“Your blood makes them stronger. You throw the vials. I’ll back you up with water,” Meredith said.
I tossed at anything that moved. Once they learned what our plan was, they stopped their freaky floating tricks. Any that Meredith got with her gun burned down to dust. It only took a squirt per vampire, but we didn’t have an endless supply. And we were still grossly outnumbered.
“We need to get out of here,” I said. “We can’t hold them off here until morning.”
“So what now?”
“We burn a path.”
Donovan barked twice.
“I’m taking that as confirmation that my plan is good.” As soon as I said that, the vampires converged to block the way out. “You assholes are just making this easier.” I hoped I was right.
I threw the vials in quick succession. “I’ll grab left and center. You take care of right. Wolves, don’t let anything get us from the back.” I took a deep breath.
How the hell did I end up in charge here?
Jesus.
I counted to ten and slid down the rock formation, throwing vials ahead of me. The heat from the fire burning the vampires licked along my skin, but didn’t last long enough to burn. Not looking at what I was hitting, I shot my water gun as quickly as I could with my left hand, and kept pushing forward as I threw the vials. When they hit the vamps, they burst into flames. It spread to the surrounding vampires within two seconds and then burnt out.
Throw. One. Two. Step.
Throw. One. Two. Step.
Throw. One. Two. Step.
The sounds of the battle grew behind me, making my stomach knot. I wanted to look back and see if Dastien was okay, but there wasn’t time. He’d do his job, and I’d do mine. Our only shot of surviving was to keep moving forward.
It seemed like forever before we reached the mouth of the cavern, but we did.
I didn’t
know how many vampires were in the tunnels. If there were hundreds more, we were going to be totally screwed. I could see a good thirty up ahead. I reached for another vial and felt only a handful left.
Sweat rolled down my hairline. I threw another vial into them and used the sudden vampire torches to peek behind us. The light didn’t reach far back into the cavern. It looked more like a stormy sea threatening to swallow us whole than individual monsters.
Shannon backed into me before throwing herself at the horde that still gathered behind us. There was no way to separate them from the cave walls until they moved.
This was bad. Really bad.
I threw my last vial and grabbed the other water gun from my back pocket. “Run!” I charged into the vampires blocking our way through the tunnels, dousing them with holy water as I ran. The blessed water wasn’t as effective as whatever was in the vials. They took longer to spark, but burned for longer.
Flames licked my skin as I pushed forward, but I would heal. Teeth sank into my arm and I screamed.
Dastien leapt. His teeth sunk into its neck, and the head severed—spurting black goo all over me.
Holy shit. That was gross.
Another clawed down my side, and then I couldn’t think anymore.
I moved in a flurry of action.
Run. Fight. Get out. Those were my only thoughts.
I don’t know how I made it, but finally we hit the outside. I was bleeding from vampire scratches and the bite on my forearm burned wickedly.
“Wait!” Meredith screamed.
I spun to her. Were we not all out? I thought we were all out!
She pulled out the three blue vials from her back pocket, and tossed them into the entrance. She said something in French that I didn’t understand.
The fire roared, knocking me back.
“What the hell was that?”
Meredith squatted a little and rested her arms on her thighs. “Just a little spell. You needed it. To activate the blue ones,” she said between gasps. “I was saving it. In case we got out.”
“In case we got out? In case we got OUT! Why the hell didn’t you use it in there? We could’ve fucking DIED!” She was nuts. I was going to kill her for that.
“Calm yourself,” Donovan said from behind me.
