by Laken Cane
I raced by him and into the kitchen, and almost before I shot through the doorway, I crumbled the metaphysical walls, and I let the elders in.
Not only elders poured into the kitchen, but I couldn’t worry about that.
“Feed the earth,” one ancient vampire screamed. “Raise the army!” His long, white hair was wrapped around his bony body like coarse mummy bandages and his eyes were tiny dry raisins. His bloodless skin looked like nearly translucent leather, and I felt him, for a few seconds.
I felt the vast horror that lived inside him, and I felt what it’d been like for him to live for so long trapped in the ether, and I clawed at my head, trying to get him out, because I could not bear it. Not even for those few seconds.
His sacrifice had been great, and he was as full of joy as the rifters that it was over.
He was free.
They all were.
If the rifters were contained again, it would not be by the elders.
Then Jin shoved me through the open kitchen doorway and into the backyard, and Amias was there.
“Oh God. Amias.” I threw myself against him, desperate for something—someone—familiar.
“There’s no time, my love.” But his voice was gentle.
We rushed into Willow-Wisp and I turned to him, unsure. “What do I do?”
“You remember that Himself told you to trust me.”
There was a look in his eyes that made me want to run screaming from the graveyard. A look that told me I was going to die, maybe, or worse.
“I remember.”
“That’s what you need to do.”
“I’m ready,” I whispered.
But I wasn’t ready.
He struck, a blur of movement, and ripped open my throat. Artery, or vein, or both, I didn’t know. I just knew that the world tilted, I began to gush blood.
Amias had just killed me. Himself had ordered my death to raise the vampires and save the world from rifters.
That’s what I believed.
That was my sacrifice.
I fell.
As my blood sank into the earth I felt it go. The dry ground soaked it up, gobbled it up, carried it down into darkness so thick there was no such thing as light.
Or life.
And it touched the dead. All over the city, it touched the dead.
Suddenly, there was light, and there was life.
Himself was there, in that blood.
He hadn’t just masked it from the rifters, he’d added something to it. A spark. A spark of his magic, of his essence. Of Himself.
My pure blood alone couldn’t have resurrected the vampires.
I let the knowledge go, because I was dying and it would no longer matter to me, not really, would it?
But then, I felt the vampires reaching for me. I grabbed their hands, and I yanked them out of their black despair. I pulled them to the surface, to the moon, to life.
I pulled them to their master.
Even the ones I’d killed.
Especially the ones I’d killed.
I felt the absence of Silverlight, but was glad I’d released her. With her light spilling from me, with her inside me, the vampires might not have risen.
They came, hundreds of them, an army of vampires, and in the blood was their knowledge. There was no ignorance, no adjusting, no confusion.
They knew.
They burst through the earth, and they came to me. They swarmed over me like ants on a chunk of dry bread, repairing, feeding, saving me as I’d saved them.
When I came back, gasping, hurting, terrified, and stronger—so much stronger—Amias was on top of me, his voice in my ear, his blood in my body.
“I’m not dead,” I murmured.
“No, my love,” he said. “My life. My queen. No.”
I burst into tears as I sat up and watched the many, many vampires break through the crust of earth and spill from the graveyard, and it was like watching children being born. My children.
I wasn’t a vampire.
I had not died.
And my heart squeezed with joy and relief.
I was me. I was still me.
Himself hadn’t killed me. Amias hadn’t allowed me to die.
But I knew, deep down, that it was too early to celebrate. The real battle was waiting, and the only thing I could do was run as fast as I could to meet it.
Chapter Thirty
Fucking Liar
And run I did.
I flew over the ground beside the master, bursting with energy and strength and life, and it was like learning to fly.
Amias had told me the effects would wear off quickly, but for that moment, I was full of power. Full of vampire power.
I left my car behind, unwilling to waste the energy inside me, the magic, and I ran. I could not wait to tear into a rifter.
I wanted to feed. Along with the vampires’ abilities came the vampires’ urges. I wanted to feed. I wanted to kill, but that was nothing new. The desire for hot blood was. But I had a new knowledge, and I understood what it would feel like to drink. I understood what it would give me. I craved it more than I’d ever craved sex or killing.
It was a different kind of bloodlust.
How the vampires controlled themselves was incomprehensible to me. Had I been a vampire, I would surely have eaten any human put before me.
I reached the city, my heart hammering hard and fast, my lungs pulling in endless oceans of air, my blood thundering through my body. I’d never felt so alive.
The city was hell.
It was not a place for humans.
I hoped Crawford had the sense to hide. To try to stay alive.
Mostly, I worried for Shane. He would not hide, not ever. Still, he had Silverlight, and if there was any hope for him at all, it was with her.
I always carried backup blades, small and innocuous when compared with Silverlight, but they would do. I yanked them from their sheaths and with both hands full of silver and vampires surrounding me, I went after the rifters.
The army of vampires screamed with the new life they’d been given, the rifters roared with rage and hunger, and it was like wading into bedlam.
When the vampires arrived, the rifters’ attention was wrenched from the humans, and from that act alone, the humans became safer.
I was tall, but the rifters—male and female alike—towered over me. It didn’t matter. I leaped and whirled and plunged my blades into brains and throats and hearts, propelled by the vampire power raging through my body.
But it was as though the rifters had to be killed twice.
They would fall, dead, only to rise again minutes later and throw themselves back into the battle. I believed it was sheer hatred driving them on. They collided with the vampires with a savagery I’d never before witnessed, their viciousness exceeded only by their rage.
And the vampires gave it back tenfold.
There was a hatred inside them—rifter and vampire alike—that no human could ever comprehend. It wasn’t something a human had the ability to feel.
I felt it, though. Dimly, but I felt it. I felt it because they did. I was too connected with them to avoid the spillover.
And it began to drive me mad.
It was simply too much for my human brain. It was too real. Too primitive. It did not belong in a human or a human’s world, and I couldn’t contain it. I also could not force it away—it was simply there.
I’d lifted a blade with the mindless intention of driving it into my tortured brain when it was twisted from my hand and Rhys stood in front of me, his eyes red, the skin of his face peeling.
“Now,” he said, his voice rough, his words thick and garbled, “you are ready.”
He was shifting, and trying with all the strength he had to maintain his form. He cried out with the effort, and all around us vampires and rifters clashed. Neither side considered running. They wanted one thing and one thing only.
To kill each other.
Still, Rhys and I were pinne
d, encircled, surrounded by battling monsters, sharp fangs, slashing claws, feral rage.
I fought with my one remaining blade, my blood and my hunter status lending me the ability to kick rifter ass. They might not die from my attack, but I only needed them to get the hell out of my way.
It was time to be with Rhys. He would end the rifters once his curse was broken and he came into his power. I knew it, and I could not wait to see it.
Rhys transformed his hands into black blades and together, we frantically fought our way toward an alley between two multistoried businesses. Still, our vicious desperation was not enough to get us out of the horde—not without injury or, more likely, death.
Then Amias was there, scattering vampires and rifters alike, and before I could catch my breath he caught both of us with an arm across our backs, and he propelled us out of the thick of the battle.
He shoved us not into the alley toward which we’d been heading, but into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. “If you kill her,” he told Rhys, “I will come. Protect her body until I can get here.” And then he was gone.
He seemed to think my dying was a distinct possibility.
I shuddered, and then I let it go. What happened would happen.
I let it all go.
But…
“The mayor is dead,” I whispered, watching him.
He stared back at me, and his eyes didn’t change. “Yes.”
Nothing more.
So I nodded, and I let that go, too.
Had he killed Delaney? Was that one of his tasks? Probably. But it could just as easily have been someone else.
Crawford, for instance. Or even Shane. Or Alejandro.
I did not care.
I closed my ears to the battle, to the slaughter, and looked away from the newly turned vampires and the pavement littered with corpses.
I pushed away thoughts of my men, the terror I felt for them, and I turned to Rhys. “You will end this? You will end the rifters?”
He hesitated. “We will, love.”
I nodded. “And you’ll need the rifters away from the humans.”
“And away from the vampires.” He took my hand. “We need to hurry.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, as he pulled me to the restaurant doors. “Your eyes. Your skin. Are you in pain?”
Yes, I was jabbering. But I had to fixate on something other than the reality of the world around me. I had to feel something besides the awful shit inside the vampires’ and rifters’ minds. I had to force out images of my men lying broken and dying and alone. “Why doesn’t Himself help us?” I cried, finally.
“Himself and Nadine are hanging in the dark sky.” He kicked a side door and it crumbled, and then he shoved me through the doorway. “They’re keeping the rifters from spilling out of the city. But they won’t be able to hold the walls for long.”
His fingers were hot on my arm, and I finally had to pull away. I was worried about him. I was afraid his fever would kill him.
And I was afraid he was a demon.
What type of demon I had no idea, but he was just so blistering hot. Who but a demon would burn from the inside out?
My borrowed power from the vampires was waning. Whatever Rhys did to me needed to happen before the power was gone completely. I just had a feeling.
He went from area to area, looking for something, saying nothing. Finally, he shook his head and rushed me through another door and into a somewhat protected courtyard. It was surrounded by a short fence and held three picnic tables.
“We’re not safe here,” he said, “but I won’t need much time.” He wiped his hands on his shirt, then pulled me to him. “The first time will be the hardest, but it will also be the shortest. I’m sorry, Trinity. I can’t take time to ready your body. Or your mind.”
He waited then, for me to acknowledge his words. The skin of his face cracked a little more and he tightened his fingers on my shoulders, but he gave me a few precious seconds.
“I’m ready,” I said, for the second time that night. “I’m ready, Rhys.”
But he knew the truth, just as I knew the truth.
I was a fucking liar.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Reveal
Rhys was no longer Rhys…not really.
“Don’t look at my body,” he said. “Not yet.”
He took off his clothes, and even as I stood, pitiful and shaking, my fingers too numb to take off my own clothes, he pulled them off me.
“The clothes will burn you,” he said, as I kept my gaze averted from his form.
The tall pole lights competed with the moon to shine the brightest upon his body, to tempt me to catch a glimpse of him, but I wouldn’t risk it.
“Trinity,” he whispered. “It will be beyond anything you’ve ever felt. Don’t be afraid.”
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a weak sob. Don’t be afraid? “Fuck you,” I said. “I’m going to be terrified.”
He threw his head back, and no matter what else was going on, he had his joy. It was time. His time.
After an eternity of restraint, it was time.
It was a night of change. For everyone.
He slammed his body against mine, and his hands at my back kept me from falling. He slanted his head and took my lips, and I wrapped my arms around his body, even as I began to burn from the extreme heat of him.
Then, everything changed.
His heat became ice. His breath became smoke. His muscles bunched, his voice rumbled deep inside his chest, and even as his fingers tightened painfully on my arms, the pain became something more.
The night lit up with an ancient magic, a primal power, an unspeakable knowledge. I felt pavement beneath my bare back, and then he was on top of me.
He had no time to ready me, but it didn’t matter. He was right.
I was ready.
So ready.
And in that instant of acceptance, he became everything to me.
I slid my hand down his body and wrapped my fingers around the stiff, iron-hard heat of him, and as I squeezed, he released something that wasn’t a cry, wasn’t a scream, but was something in between.
Release.
Freedom was so close.
He was no longer burning me.
He was just turning me on.
It didn’t come slowly, either. Lust roared over me and suddenly I was engulfed in it, like fire, like an unimaginable fire.
Maybe I’d be ashamed later, but right then there was no battle. There were no dying humans or supernaturals.
There was only Rhys Graver.
And whatever he was becoming.
He buried his mouth against my breast and plunged into me, and at first, it was like being impaled by something large, hot, and alien. Something not meant to be inside a person. But the sensation of it changed almost instantly into pleasure so extreme I wasn’t sure if it was better than the pain or not.
Rhys pumped his hips, and each thrust was deeper, harder, and hotter than the last. He moaned, once, and the sound slid into my ear, somehow vulnerable, just as he was.
The hulking, dark figure of a rifter loomed suddenly over his back but I couldn’t care. I was drowning in delight, floating in thick, sweet ecstasy, and there was no fear. Only sex.
I heard a roar, I thought, and caught a glimpse of the half-giant as he slammed his fist into the side of the rifter’s head.
They were gone as suddenly as they’d appeared, and it was like they’d never been there at all. The encounter was just a blip on my radar, there and gone, a sort of realization that couldn’t quite break through the walls of power Rhys was building.
I felt his curse begin to shatter.
He didn’t ease me toward an orgasm. The orgasm had begun the moment he’d plunged into me—I was climaxing, but there was no ending to it.
I planted my heels on the ground and met his thrusts, slamming into him, reaching for something even more, though more might kill me.
And
then, something shifted. Something changed—not in me, but in him. I screamed as I felt his hot power, and then, I found the more I’d been reaching for.
As his curse shattered, so did I. There was a pause, a hesitation, as everything was suspended for one brief heartbeat, and then it, whatever it was, crashed over me like an enormous wave, carrying me into oblivion.
I would have screamed if I could have.
Not even with Amias had I felt so much power. Not ever had I felt so much power. It shouldn’t have existed. And perhaps it should never have touched me. But it did.
It spilled out of me, out of Rhys, and it overflowed into the streets like lava from a volcano, sweeping humans, rifters, and vampires along with it. For a moment, there was no fighting.
Rhys began to pull himself out of me, and the extraction seemed endless, the pleasure of the withdrawing as exquisite as the insertion had been.
I lay sprawled on the ground, unable to move, unable to think, very nearly, as wave after wave of pleasure raced through me.
I stared up at him, my fingers between my legs as the pleasure became more earthly, more comprehensible with his withdrawal. Extreme, oh yes, but it was more of a human’s lust and less of a mystical power’s influence.
Just…sex. Sex like he would give me, eventually.
As I watched, he morphed further into something huge and looming and dangerous, something that would surely crush me, kill me, burn me.
I didn’t try to run or hide or even close my legs. I continued to shudder with the effects of his body on mine. In mine. And not even his coming into his power could stop them.
He blotted out the moon as he continued to grow. To lengthen, broaden, expand. I still could not comprehend what I was seeing. What he was doing.
What he was becoming.
“God,” I screamed, and finally, I got my wits back. I tried to get up, slipped, tried again, and ended up just rolling my way across the ground because I had to get away from whatever it was Rhys had shifted into.
I couldn’t see. He was a huge, dark shape, growing larger by the second, his voice screeching like…like a fucking dinosaur. Rhys was no longer there.
And now I knew what Amias had meant. He hadn’t thought Rhys might kill me breaking his curse. He’d thought Rhys might kill me afterward, when he became his animal.
