by Am Hudson
“Look up ahead.” Drake squatted down and pointed to the long bridge connecting Loslilian to the mainland. “There are two guards on this side of the bridge. And on the other side, there are two more guards, and men on border patrol at fifteen minute intervals. We need to get across that bridge and lay in wait until they pass. Once they’re gone, there is one more set near the village, and then we can cut through there relatively quick and run across the field to the forest.”
I squatted beside him. “Quaid said not to use vampire speed in this weather. Do you think we should go slow, or—”
“Across the field it should be fine. There is plenty of room to slow from a skid.” He stood up, reaching back for my hand. “Now, hold tight, daughter of mine. And don’t make a sound.”
“Wait.” I pulled back on his hand, feeling a giant and very sudden surge of guilt. “I need to tell you something before we go.”
He turned to face me, his eyes a vibrant blue even in the dark, as if they held their own source of light. I looked away from them, trying to find a reason why I shouldn’t tell him what I wanted to say. But it was the way he said “daughter”—the meaning and value he placed behind that one word with just the tone of his voice. It made me think about Morgana—about the heartbreak I saw in his eyes when he lost her.
“David didn’t burn Morg,” I said quickly, before I could change my mind.
“Pardon?”
“David lied about burning Morg’s body. She’s dead, but still mostly intact.”
If I thought he was already standing close enough, I was wrong. He took another small step in and lifted my face. “Say that again, and this time, do not look away.”
“He didn’t burn her,” I repeated, holding his gaze. His eyes searched mine, probably for the truth within my words. “Her body is in the kill suites—”
He sighed long and turned away, bringing his hand up to his head.
“We might be able to put her back together.” I took a brave step closer. “Drake?”
“Why are you telling me this now?” He grabbed both my arms. “Why now—before we go in there, possibly to fight, and—”
“Because of the way you said ‘daughter’,” I said, and then stopped for a moment as I watched him absorb that. “You deserve to know. And I don’t know what will happen in there, Drake. I’m… what if one of us doesn’t make it? I just thought you should know.”
He closed his eyes, placing a hand against his heart. “You care for me.”
“I…” Crap. I kind of did.
When his eyes opened, the warm smile remained. “Thank you, Amara—for telling me.” He bowed his head. “This gives me more cause to fight Safia—to see that both my daughters remain safe and, perhaps, one day reunite as sisters.”
I smiled, but in my head I was thinking “not likely”. I really could not see Morg and I sharing secrets or doing each other’s hair.
“Come then.” He closed the gap between us and took my hand. “Enough time has been wasted.”
***
Walking right up to a guard, in plain sight but unseen, made my senses sharper, made the air colder and the sound of my breath more obvious to me. I could hear my own heart in my throat, and with my ears so finely tuned, I could hear Drake’s heartbeat too. And from the moment I first heard it as we walked up the gravel path toward the bridge, all I could think about was that the rumours were true—all Originals did have heartbeats. And that heartbeat, that heart, gave me life.
My palm felt clammy against his, but the firm grip of his larger hand around mine made me feel safe. I knew that even if these men picked up our scent and sniffed us out, even if they heard my heartbeat and pinpointed our exact location, Drake, my father, would protect me above all else. I felt like he had my back—something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.
The cold wind and the moving trees helped conceal the crunch of gravel under our boots. We walked like a father and a bride marching down the aisle—one step, then the other, our heads held high, my hand in his, our backs dead straight. My eyes moved from one side to the other as we slipped between the guards, and I held my breath, knowing the man just an inch to my right could smell me—probably hear my heart.
He looked sideways quickly, his eyes going right through me, and sniffed the air. “Finch?”
“Hm,” the other guy grunted.
“D’you fart?”
And that was it; I folded forward, my stomach and chest so tight to hold in the laughter that I nearly farted myself.
Drake pulled me into his arms, my spine to his chest, and covered my mouth and nose with his large, kind of rough palm.
“I do smell it, though,” Finch said. “And I can hear something too.”
Drake picked me up then and carried me quickly across the bridge. I could still hear the two guards contemplating the strange smell and the odd sound, but by the time we reached the centre of the long bridge—a good distance out of earshot, and shadowed enough not to be seen—I’m pretty sure they’d decided it was the strangest fart they’d ever smelled. And both were blaming the other.
“You could have got them killed,” Drake whispered gruffly. “If they’d caught on, I’d have been forced to take their lives.”
“I’m sorry.” I folded down, my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. “But…”
“Shh.” He put his finger to his mouth. “All this effort put in to planning this mission and you nearly blow it wide open because of a damned fart.”
My throat made a funny grumbling noise as I tried to hold in another laugh, but it burst out in a whispery breath and I covered my mouth to hide it.
Drake just groaned, looking up to the heavens.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Farts are funny.”
The very corners of his eyes narrowed then and the smallest hint of a smile moved one side of his mouth—just a little. “Pull yourself together, we’ve another two sets of guards to get through.”
I rolled myself to stand and took a deep breath, letting it out as I pinned my serious face back on. “Okay. I’m okay now.”
“Good.” He took my hand and started walking. “And for the record…”
“For the record?” I prompted when he paused.
“I might have laughed too.” He wouldn’t look at me as he spoke. “I’m just more practiced at composure.”
***
All the way across the other half of the bridge and as we walked briskly toward the village, my biggest concern was my knee. As I’d been play-fighting with Quaid, I’d knelt on the ground for a second and the mud had soaked the knee of my black cargo pants. Now, as the wild wind beat against my clothes, that one wet spot had become a very cold spot. The cuffs of my pants were soaked too, the moisture seeping up toward my ankles. I could almost feel the grains of wet sand weighing them down. I was also pretty sure my toes were peeling inside my damp socks. But none of that really mattered when we finally reached the village and the heavens opened up, as if my life was some cosmic joke, saturating us both through to the bone.
“We should run.” I projected my voice over the howling wind, turning so it blew my hair away from my eyes.
Drake spat the ice-cold water from his mouth as it rushed down from his hair and over the side of his face. “We can’t run in this. It’s too dangerous for you.”
“For me? Why for me and not you?”
“If you hit a tree or something.” He cupped my belly to make a point. “The spell I put on your flesh is weak now. You’ve no more protection around her than an average vampire.”
“But my skin still can’t be cut,” I said. “I bumped into a shelf the other day and a nail snagged my shirt, but it didn’t cut my skin.”
He shook his head, his eyes nearly completely covered by the black blanket of hair laying flat over his head. “It will get weaker every day. I’ll replenish the spell once it’s faded entirely, but I can’t do it until then.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just not how magic
works. A spell must lift before you can do another—you cannot layer them.” He looked away then to our destination, lifting his arm to point ahead through the houses on either side of the street to the great fountain at the end, marking the centre of the village square. “See that tree on the other side of those houses?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m going to run to it at vampire speed, hopefully without knocking it down. Then, you can run to me and I’ll catch you.”
“Okay.” I nodded, kneeling down like a marathon runner about to start. “Go then!”
He vanished, appearing a second later through the slanted sheets of rain, his arms around the tree. I could barely see him, aside from the slight flicker of his glossy raincoat waving in the gust, but it looked like he made it safely enough.
“Okay, Ara,” I said to myself. “One. Two. Three!” I took off at a run, leaping over the fence just past the fountain, two feet landing gracefully on the other side, but as my heel came down hard after my toes, my foot slipped. I put my arms out, grasping at the air as I skidded forward, and a pair of tight, strong hands wrapped my waist before I hit the tree and spun my body so I smacked into the fleshy surface of his chest instead. My stomach went through my ribs and the baby practically came out my belly button. I coughed hard, folding over as the force shot back and left my limbs through the ground.
“Are you okay?” Drake leaned around to look at me.
I coughed again, nodding. “Just winded.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t make you do that again.”
“I’m okay,” I assured him, using his shoulder to stand myself straight. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“That’s my girl.” A beaming smile stretched his lips. “You always did have a fighting spirit.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be much easier to fight if this damn rain would stop!” I said, aiming the last words at the sky, or maybe the known Universe. And almost as if my words had commanded it, the rain stopped. Ceased completely. Not so much as a drizzle came down from the sky as its final word. It was just gone.
I looked at Drake.
He laughed breathily. “That’s quite a skill you have there.”
“Uh, no,” I said, and started walking. “That was not me.”
“I won’t bother trying to convince you.” He walked ahead of me. “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
“Wait.” I caught up, shaking my head at him and his ridiculous statement. “Are you trying to tell me I can control the rain?”
“I’ve always suspected it—even when you were a little girl. It would rain when your heart was broken; it would be sunny if you were gay; it would storm when you were mad.”
I raised a brow at him. “Drake, no one says gay anymore.”
“My mistake.” He bowed, rolling his raincoat outward like a cloak. “Happy then.”
“Better.”
We both stopped on the cusp of a grassy field—the only thing now that stood between us and our destination. In the distance, swallowed by darkness, I knew there would be a forest. I knew it bordered this entire field, but the place I needed to be—where the Stone and its ethereal presence lived—was in a straight line directly ahead. A straight line at least ten minutes’ walk. A straight line in plain sight.
I said a quiet prayer inside my heart to the Goddess Lilith—for safe passage.
“So we made it,” I said cheerily.
“Do not be so sure.” He scanned the darkness with the eye of a hunter. “There are six guards in the area. Two there.” He pointed to the left. “Two there—” he pointed to the right, just near the manor, “—and there is one in the dead centre of the field. Two more walking a gridline over it.”
“Do you think we can get across without being seen? Or should we enter the forest here—” I pointed to the manor side of the field, “—and walk around?”
“If we cross through here, we’ll be exposed outside the throne room when we need to cross the clearing into the other part of the forest. It’s safer to go across.”
“Right.” I nodded. He had a point.
A few lights came on in the manor, but it looked mostly peaceful and quiet over there—like any other night. I wanted to be up there in my chambers, with David, laying and talking about baby names. My light was on—clearly someone was in there—and that just made me want to kill the bastard that started this whole thing even more than I did before. Whoever told Walter that my child was Anandene needed to be sniffed out and then snuffed out. I would make them pay for this, and then I would make Walter pay for kidnapping my brother-in-law and trying to kill my baby.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, tearing my eyes painfully away from my home.
“I’ll cloak us for the first part of this walk, but I’m getting weak,” Drake said, taking my hand. “I’m not sure how much more I can take.”
I looked down at his hand; it was shaking. “Are you cold?” I asked, cupping my other hand over his.
“My blood is thinning,” he said in a weak voice. “I need to feed.”
“Can you feed on me? I’m—”
“Unfortunately, Lilithians do not sustain me. I need human blood.”
“Okay, let’s just get this over with then.” I turned to face him, keeping hold of his hand with the two of mine, and led him over the grassy threshold into the open field. I knew we were cloaked by his magic, but I felt exposed and vulnerable—maybe because I could see my goal so close to me, or maybe because I could also smell several guards—but whatever it was, this feeling was worse than walking right between those two guards at the bridge. I forced myself to think about the fart in order to keep my heart steady and my breath quiet.
“Stop.” Drake put his hand against my chest, breaking the spell.
“What?”
“Did you hear that?”
My ears pricked. My face screwed up as if to aid my straining ears. I shook my head slowly. “No.”
“That!” he said, and a loud crack rang through the air, followed by a shrill scream. Our heads whipped up toward the manor as lights came on one by one all up and down the length of the building, and from what seemed like all over the open grounds guards appeared, shouting commands out in deep echoes.
“Faster,” Drake demanded. “We must move faster.”
“Hey!”
Drake and I stopped walking, moving our attention to the man about a hundred paces to our right. He shoved a hand to his mouth and whistled loudly, pointing right at us as he looked at something over his shoulder.
“He can see us.”
Drake’s legs buckled then, and he fell to his knees. “I’m too weak, Amara. I can’t go on.”
I squatted down in the long grass, taking in the smell of mud and rain and letting it calm me. “Lie down, you’re trembling.”
“No. We must fight now.”
“But you’re weak—”
“Never. Too weak—” he pushed his hands into the ground and stood up, “—to fight for my life.”
I stood beside him, angling my back to his as we circled on the spot, counting guards as they formed a ring around us. “We’re in a bit of trouble,” I noted. “Four to two.”
“Nothing we can’t handle.”
“Well, just remember,” I reminded him, drawing my sword and holding it up like a baseball bat. “The knights are immune to venom. You need to bleed them out for it to take effect and put them down permanently.”
He brought both bare hands up and pushed one forward in a ninja-like pose. “Or, I could just rip out their hearts.”
“Just as good,” I said with a nod.
The pale glow of the manor’s lights gave shape to things the night wouldn’t. I could see each face of each guard clearly, and I didn’t recognise even one of them.
A battle cry charged them forward then, and as they slid toward us in the muddy grass, we rooted our heels firmly into the ground.
Drake’s arm shot out, and I swung my sword right with the force of a hurricane. It cut
deep through the flesh at the knight’s shoulder, snagging on the bone.
He screamed, stumbling forward and falling to the floor, gripping his arm as my blade slid the length of it and cut his flesh wide open. I felt the next knight before I saw him, and swung around, my blade meeting his, as Drake slammed a detached heart to the floor beside me, turning at the shoulder to impale another runner as it landed against his fist.
I smiled, ducking down under the swing of a heavy weapon, dropping and rolling as the knight brought it down hard into the mud where I’d been. As I lifted my feet up to shove him back, a bloody fist appeared through his chest. His eyes went wide. His mouth hung open, liquid death seeping through his teeth. His body quivered as he clutched the hand, looking down as it all sunk in. And the fist vanished, taking the meaty clump in its palm with it.
The knight dropped to his knees, his eyes still focused, and flopped forward like a heavy sack beside me.
“I can smell them,” Drake said, offering his hand. “There are more coming.”
I took his hand and he rolled me to my feet, steadying me by the elbow before letting go. “Seven,” I said, glancing back toward the manor. “I can hear them too—smell them.”
“Think you can handle seven by yourself?” he asked. “I need to signal the Warriors, or all this could be for nothing.”
“Of course.” I squatted down and planted my hands into a puddle, flashing him an impish grin. “I got this.”
He smiled back in exactly the same way. “Good girl.”
“Go!” I waved him off. “Stop playing Proud Father and go signal your men.”
His clothes dropped suddenly into a heavy pile, squashing the long grass flat, and a shiny black crow emerged, shooting into the sky, cawing crassly above my head before lifting off and blending with the night.
“That’s the signal!” a deep voice yelled. “Shoot it down before it gets to the Warriors!”
A swift, sharp gust brushed through the air with a dull whistle, having no effect on the sky as the black crow turned its wing and disappeared. The sturdy metal arrow landed in the grass a few feet away, and the knights gathered there on the cusp of the wet field like a wall, clearly planning their next move. Nothing they did would save them, though; no plan would alter the course of their fate. They couldn’t have known the danger that awaited them just a few feet out from the safety of drier ground. All I had to do was wait.
