Challenged by Darkness (An Urban Fantasy Novel) (Befallen Tides series Book 2)

by Anna Sanders

  No answer. She tried the knob, but, unlike Genevieve’s room, this one was locked.

  “Iragall! We have a big fucking problem!” she shouted at the frame. But no sound came from within. She couldn’t even feel the presence of someone on the other side ignoring her. London was gone as well.

  A savage crashed toward her, mounting the stairs in an instant. He was little more than meat hanging onto bone. His eyes were white with blindness.

  “Stop!” she demanded, utilizing her compulsion over the beast.

  It kept right on coming.

  Winx threw herself at him. She grabbed him by his ratty clothing and slammed him into the wall. His nails dug into her upper shoulders, and his mouth snapped, but Winx already had a good grip on his head. She shoved it repeatedly against the structure until she heard a gross cracking sound. The already decomposing body didn’t have much left protecting its brain, and soon, blood seeped down the wallpaper as he went immobile.

  Winx let the body fall to the carpet and listened. That had stopped nothing. The rest of the horde was still coming, not too far behind the first, and anyone who could help her was gone. Keaton. Genevieve. Now London. She didn’t even hold out hope that Roy would still be around here.

  How could they all have left her?

  Winx ran up the spiraling staircases, and while the savages’ shuffling gait increased in speed, she was still faster. The higher she climbed, the more she realized with terror that absolutely nobody else was in the B&B. She was all alone. No humans, no cryptids, just her and the fifty savages.

  Had this been planned all along? Had she been purposely abandoned to be savage bait?

  There weren’t many rooms, but she kept going until she came to a dead end. Winx tried each door on either side of the hall. All were locked. Her face twisted in rage and tears.

  “No,” she growled in her throat.

  It was over.

  The sound of her feet pounding on the stairs had attracted the beasts. They were making awful panting sounds in their haste to get to her flesh. Winx kept sending mental commands to the savages to turn back, but it was for nothing—they were already being controlled. And whoever was controlling them was strong.

  Sobs began to sputter out of her, refusing to be held back. She was going to die here. The lixyns were gone. Keaton was gone. She was completely alone.

  Winx tilted her head to the ceiling and raged.

  Her yell ended before it truly began. A pulley hung from the ceiling, and Winx’s eyes widened when she spotted it. An attic?

  She jumped. Her hand was batted the rope, so she jumped again. When the first couple savages cleared the stairway, Winx jumped higher. Finally getting a grip on the handle, she clung to it with all of her weight and closed her eyes. If it was locked, she was dead.

  It took some force, but the latch gave way, and a ladder dropped. Winx gasped with shock as she fell to the ground with the opening.

  She was on her feet again in the span of a second, but the savages barreled toward her. Winx kicked out and caught one in the chest. He went soaring back into his partner. They were back up immediately, arms outstretched in preparation of grabbing her.

  Wasting no more time, she raced up the ladder as more of the killers piled atop themselves.

  A savage grabbed her ankle and tugged, and Winx slid down about three steps. She cried out as scratches and bites pierced her lower body. With a twist, she freed herself. Ascending was difficult, but Winx was strong and in no mood to be killed now that she had an escape route. She pulled herself over the threshold and crawled back along the floorboards once she cleared it.

  Looking down from her haven, she saw that the savages were an unorganized mess. It was hard for savages to climb anything vertical, but if they could climb stairs, it wouldn’t take them long to figure out a ladder, especially if they were being manipulated by something intelligent. But for now, she had breathing room.

  Winx scooted back until she met a wall and leaned against it. New wounds coated her skin with fresh, warm blood. The bottoms of her feet felt like she’d walked across a yard of glass. But she was alive.

  She looked around the attic for anything that could aid her. Mostly there were boxes of toiletries and old Christmas decorations, and she frantically threw aside useless boxes and crates in an effort to find something to protect herself. When a box made it down the grate opening, it merely bounced off of the savages without hindering a single one of them.

  Then she saw it.

  In a dusty corner, behind a well-used volleyball set, was a large set of gardening shears.

  Winx twisted them in her hands with a primitive, gleeful stare. Thank whatever God or Gods that were merciful enough to have the groundskeeper put them with the holiday decorations. They were heavy, very old, and had perfectly sharp blades.

  The savages were climbing again, making themselves available for culling, and Winx was ready to answer. She walked to the mouth of the attic and positioned the tool over the neck of an ascending savage.

  With as much strength as she could muster, she closed the shears over the savage’s neck.

  There was a crunch, and blood sprayed across her bare feet. She closed them again, and again, and it took six thrusts to completely sever the dead thing’s head from its shoulders.

  Another savage crawled past the falling body of the first one. Winx placed the shears over his neck as well, but he was much stronger. She cut into his skin only once before he grabbed one of her legs and tugged her to the ground.

  Winx yelped in shock as she hit the floor. Then that yelp turned into a screech when the savage bit deeply into the bone of her ankle. Mother fucker!

  Sitting up with a firm hold on the shears, Winx brought the tool down by its point into the savage’s head, making him shake and then go limp.

  How long could she keep this up? Two savages, and she was already tired. Winx gingerly touched her new wound, so close to others that had just healed, and fury began to bubble within her. She was supposed to kill all of these stupid things by herself? With no help? While bits of her were being eaten? Renewed fury welled into her, forcing her breath out in tiny hyperventilating spurts.

  She had never wanted any of this. Even when avenging Deja, she never saw herself as a killer. The only fuel that had charged her to kill her sister’s murderers had been her indignation on not only losing a family member, but on seeing the gang walk away free.

  Now, all she had was her militant training and her survival instincts. Death was coming for her, and it wasn’t quiet about it.

  Fuck that. No more wounds. No more of her blood being wasted.

  Winx stood over the opening of the attic with her weapon dangling at her side. The savages were still ravenously dragging themselves closer. Their hands lifted toward her in a wanton display of endless hunger.

  Swinging the shears over her shoulder, Winx took a step closer to the mouth of hell.

  Then she jumped in.

  CHAPTER 4

  Winx swung her makeshift weapon in a large arc. The blades flew through the air and connected with every fiend lunging at her.

  More bodies flew to the ground. She did not waste time with her gained advantage, but instead, she walked to the nearest one on the floor and stabbed through his head. Using her foot to dislocate the shears, she went to the next and silenced that one as well.

  The others were already lurching her way again.

  She didn’t waste time severing limbs. Every swing was aimed at killing a savage. Winx cut a path through them, narrowing her eyes against the spray of blood that flew into her face and against the bites and scratches the savages inflicted.

  But Winx didn’t feel any new bruise or wound. She only felt the need to survive.

  As the savages dwindled, they became hell-bent on eating her rather than dodging her well-delivered blows. Winx was overexerting herself to keep up. She was winning, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to control the things. If her powers hadn’t so often failed her re
cently, she might have faltered. But her resolve remained unfaltering, and she pressed on. Five left. Then two.

  Then none.

  Winx stood in the glory of victory, drenched with blood. Wiping her brow only spread it across her skin like war paint.

  Better their blood than hers.

  She returned to her room, picked up her still-packed duffel bag, and slipped on her shoes. It didn’t matter where Keaton was, or the princess and her cronies. They weren’t at the bed and breakfast. That meant she was on her own again.

  The shears were heavy in her hands as she stomped toward the exit, but she kept a tight grip on them anyway.

  She was only stopped by cackling laughter from down the hallway.

  “I should have known it would not be that easy to beat you. You’re the trickster of our Queendom, after all. Your disappearing act after training with the eradication forces is spoken of throughout the clans. A most cunning fable are you, Winx Rowan.”

  Winx didn’t recognize the man’s voice, but something told her he was exactly who she was supposed to be dealing with. An accented voice in the void, one which knew her name…

  Her hand squeezed around the handle of her weapon, and she turned slowly in his direction.

  “You’re nothing special,” he said, voice growing distant as she walked toward him. “The only reason you’ve lived for this long is because Iragall wanted to keep you around as a pet project. Were you in the jurisdiction of another, you’d be as dead as anyone else stupid enough to cross the order. But no. The vapid stripper is allowed a reprieve.”

  Winx trotted down the stairs, seeking her tormenter with the gardening shears in hand. But he was too fast, staying just far enough ahead enough to be nothing more than a voice within a passing shadow.

  “Was Deja Rowan really so important? Did it never occur to you that she may have done something to deserve her fate? Don’t you know why she was killed in the first place?”

  “Who the hell are you?” Winx shouted.

  “Someone who knew Deja far better than you ever could!”

  Winx ran harder. It was enough to bring her to the very first floor of the building, but she was still out of reach of the interloper. She hurried to the still open front door and searched the grounds with a quick eye.

  The only thing to see in the still darkness was his retreating back, his white wings spread as he took off into the night sky.

  Winx could only jump into her car to follow.

  Keaton hadn't meant to spend so much time away from his designated safe point. In truth, he'd only thought to hear out Sabrina's story and then get back to the Yertz B&B. But something about the green-eyed girl had drawn him in.

  She hadn’t taken him too far from town, but the cabin was still away from the hustle and bustle. Instead of parking her car at a campground left mostly empty for seasonal reasons, Sabrina stopped off road alongside an overgrown trail.

  They hoofed it through the thicket of branches, and Keaton kept himself on alert. At the first sign of trouble, he was going to utilize all of his power to get away. He wasn’t in the mood for surprises.

  Sabrina was quite perceptive. “I have no intention of hurting you, Keaton.”

  “I'm not so concerned with you. I've been through a lot lately.”

  “There's no denying that. Your trials are hanging around your aura like a dead weight.” He gave her a puzzled look. She shrugged. “The evil endangering the packs has left a lot of bandits unsteady. You aren't the first I've ran into on the side of the road looking lost.”

  “And you're what? Pulling them off of that road and taking them to your house?”

  Sabrina smirked. “I’m trying to introduce them to a solution better than suicide.”

  “What makes you think I'm suicidal?”

  “Oh, please. Flaunting your fangs around town willy-nilly? You wanted to find a hoard and show them who’s boss. ”

  “I was just...disoriented.” He still was.

  “I was the same way. And so were the others who are here. It’s a hard thing to accept.”

  As they approached the porch of the large wooden house, Keaton saw that there definitely were others. Men and women walked along the outline of the trees, some dozed on hammocks, and others hunkered down against the cold in lawn chairs. Voices and delicious smells wafted from what had to be a well-stocked kitchen.

  “Is this your pack?” he asked.

  “In a sense. My familial pack was killed months ago. This is a pack that we've sort of straggled into. Like refugees.”

  “That's something,” Keaton said.

  Sabrina shook her head. “Not when you didn't choose it.”

  It didn’t take long to get her meaning. Nobody there looked truly at peace. The conversation seemed forced when they were happening at all. Nobody played music or had a story to tell. They all sat precariously, like him, waiting to run at the first sign of trouble. No smiles, no warmth, no security.

  Sabrina led him into the house without saying anything to anyone. Sleeping bags and backpacks were strewn across the floor, and with the exception of those flanking a long dining table, there were few chairs. Nothing here looked permanent.

  A myriad of smells clouded Keaton as they entered the kitchen. If nothing else, the dwellers were eating well. Two men and a woman walked around the counters, stirring large pots and cutting portions on boards. They looked up at Keaton when Sabrina sat him at the nearby table, but they didn’t welcome him with any expression.

  “So, what do you think?” Sabrina asked.

  “Think?” Keaton snorted. “What is there to think? This is depressing.”

  “But it adds truth to what I've told you,” she reiterated with an expectant look.

  Keaton nodded. There was no denying that. “Where are the elderly?” he asked reluctantly. “Or the children?”

  Sabrina shook her head. “Always the first to go.”

  Was that true? Keaton and his pack had been able to protect those who could not defend themselves. Not every time, of course, and sometimes at the expense of the fit warriors, but there were still survivors. To look around and see only faces as young as him or just slightly older was a heartbreaking call to reality. Had children in his pack not survived this last scourge? Would he find his pack again, only to learn that his leaving has caused their demise?

  “We are the survivors.” Sabrina waved her hand around. “All that's left is forced together by necessity. Ordinarily, our packs would not mingle. As I'm sure you know.”

  Bandits may have been known to take in a straggler here or there, but as far as entire packs went? They kept to their territories. It was less of a risk to speak to a pack on your own than it was to bring friends. Perhaps if they had not kept to the old ways, if they had mingled and adopted more modern technology, they would have been able to help one another. But pack masters felt obligated to uphold the old culture. Even to their destruction, apparently.

  “We've let this happen,” Keaton muttered. “This could have been prevented.”

  “We didn't create this problem,” Sabrina said.

  “No, we didn't, but why do we have to lose everything before we intermingle?” Keaton sighed. “Even the lixyns have been reaching out since they lost their kingdom.”

  Sabrina scowled. “I didn't know.”

  “It’s true. They've been building armies against the savages for a good amount of time. Meanwhile, bandits all across the states are the first line of defense, and we're letting ourselves lose.”

  “How do you know about the lixyns’ downfall?” Sabrina asked.

  “I'm currently under their watch,” Keaton answered derisively. “I was tracking the one responsible for all of this.”

  “And that one would be?” Sabrina's eyes went wide, and she growled eagerly.

  Keaton could only say, “Someone quite powerful.”

  “How is one man responsible for all of this?”

  “He was in charge of processing cryptids who were under arrest by t
he Queendom. He’s intensified the savage problem for his benefit.”

  “What are the authorities planning on doing about this?

  “Honestly? Beat him when they find him.”

  “That doesn’t sound very well thought out.”

  “It’s better than what they were doing, which was ignoring his rise to power.”

  “Curse them,” Sabrina spat. “Of course this is all on their heads.”

  Keaton was inclined to agree. “Like I've said. They’re building an army against the tyrant.”

  “And you’re part of it?”

  “For now. But as soon as I find what I'm looking for, I won’t be anymore.”

  The corners of Sabrina's lips twitched. “It seems we have a lot to tell one another. Please, stay a while and tell us your stories.””

  The other cryptids had been victims of the recent happenings, just as much as Keaton’s pack. They should have known what he knew from the beginning. How could Keaton refuse to let them in on it? Still, the thought of sharing made him feel as if he were betraying someone's confidences.

  “Very well,” he finally agreed. “But I’m only telling you what you have to know in order to better prepare yourselves.”

  “I wouldn't ask for anything more.” Sabrina reached across the table to hold his hand. “It’s lucky I found you again. You always were quite useful to have about.”

  Keaton was unfamiliar with such raw expressions of affection, but there had always been a sincerity to Sabrina. Now that she knew of his horrors, for she had lived them herself, and she was helping her fellow kind, it seemed to shine through all the brighter. He squeezed her hand back.

  He ended up spending hours in the company of the ragtag pack. It was long enough that it was dark and dangerous by the time he headed back to the hotel. Sabrina insisted on accompanying him regardless of his protests, and since he couldn’t shake her off, he followed her back to her car.

  Keaton and Sabrina had talked for so long that they had nothing resembling conversation left in them, but as Sabrina drove through the streets with casual familiarity, the silence was peaceful. Keaton didn’t fight it. Instead, he lowered the window to place his arm along the frame and let the cool air clear his senses. It had been a very long day. When he got back to the hotel, he fully planned on kicking Winx out of the bed so that he could commandeer it for himself.