“Do you want my gun?” I offered the weapon from a holster at my lower back. “I can make a run for the other gun in the glove compartment.”
“Keep it,” Mira said, shaking her head. “You’re a better aim than me. I’ve got a couple of tricks.” Taking the lead, the nightwalker stepped into the middle of the large yard under the limbs of a massive oak tree with her hands planted on her narrow hips. I hung back, ready to fire off a round of shots if they so much as flinched in our direction.
“You weren’t invited into my domain,” Mira called to the naturi.
“You aren’t welcome in our world,” one female naturi replied smugly, leaving my fingers itching to pull the trigger and bury a bullet in the middle of her forehead.
“Leave now, or we’ll be forced to slaughter you all,” Mira shouted. At the same time, she held her left hand out to her side and summoned up a fireball. While I was standing several feet away, I could feel the cool touch of her powers brushing against my face.
In response to Mira’s obvious threat, three naturi also reached out their hands only to have them instantly engulfed in flames, matching Mira’s stance. A ripple of laughter spread among the naturi. Not only did they outnumber us, but there were also light clan naturi among their numbers. That took away Mira’s edge since they could counter any fire attacks that she could possibly summon.
“You’re the one that started this fight,” called one of the light clan naturi. “Those in the conservatory were no threat to you.”
“Any naturi within my domain are a threat to my people,” Mira shouted back.
The naturi gave a soft sniff, lifting her chin. “She warned us you may be unwilling to share.” For a moment, I wondered whether she was referring to Cynnia or Aurora, but such thoughts were quickly shoved aside.
Danaus, shoot them now! Mira cried in my head.
In a single, smooth motion, I raised the gun with both hands and fired off three quick shots, landing two in the heads of the light clan naturi. Unfortunately, the third light clan member was already moving by the time and the bullet went slightly wide of its target, hitting her in the shoulder. Two naturi hit the ground with a hard thud.
A roll of thunder rumbled through the silence and the naturi charged. I squeezed off a couple rounds at the three that were headed toward me, but all the shots missed their marks as I was forced to dive for cover. Fireballs were flung at me in quick succession, backing me toward the house and away from Mira.
Instincts rose up to take control of my brain and I found myself reaching for my powers to boil their blood in their lithe bodies, but I fought the urge. I knew if Mira and I combined our powers, the souls of the dead would go directly to Gaizka, but I wasn’t sure if the bori would benefit if I killed the naturi using my own powers alone. The bori had been the one to give me this ability, why should it not benefit?
With a growl, I rolled back to my feet, gun trained on the naturi as they closed in on me. Above, thunder exploded in the sky as the storm steadily grew in intensity. I turned my sights on the one naturi who was hanging back, controlling the growing storm. I tried to fire off a round of shots, but at that moment, he threw out a pair of white wings, catching the wind so that it carried him into the sky. I fired off two rounds, but only managed to clip some feathers before more fireballs came speeding at me.
I wasn’t quick enough this time. One knot of flames slammed into my right hand, burning flesh and causing me to drop the gun in the grass. Tucking my right hand against my stomach as I tried to ignore the pain that beat at me, I picked up the gun with my left hand only to immediately drop it again. The metal burned my hand from when it had been heated by the fireball.
Running a few feet away from my predators, I grabbed the knife I had attached to my belt. I turned, ready to take on my opponents. My heart pounded in my chest and a cold sweat was trickling down the back of my neck. For the first time in a very long time, I had begun to doubt my ability to get out of this fight alive. For too long I had relied on my powers to escape any situation against a dark creature without contemplating the potential consequences. Now that my powers had been removed from me by the threat of something darker, I was simply a human against creatures far more powerful than me.
“Boil them, Danaus!” Mira screamed. I caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, trapped in a firefight with three naturi encircling her. Soon, they would succeed in wearing her down.
“I can’t! Gaizka!” I shouted back. “It’ll gain strength!”
“Shit,” Mira swore softly, following this with a grunt as she threw another fireball at a waiting naturi.
We were trapped. And then the lightning came. The naturi facing me backed off a couple steps just before a bolt of lightning slammed the ground a few feet away from where I had been standing. I jumped farther away from the spot. A cry of pain escaped me as I landed on my burned right hand, which was healing far too slowly for my liking. I rolled and quickly regained my feet. Another bolt of lightning smashed into a large oak tree, splitting it down the center. I threw my shoulder into the back of one naturi, knocking him to the ground. Wincing in excruciating pain, I wrapped my right arm around Mira’s waist and carried her several feet before we both crashed to the ground. Behind us, the tree she had been standing under splintered and collapsed to the ground in a loud bang. Thin branches blanketed us as we failed to move out of the reach of the massive tree.
I groaned as I rolled onto my back, my body protesting every movement. “We need to get out of here,” I said in a low voice, praying the naturi couldn’t hear me utter the horrible words over the pounding rain that had begun to fall.
“Use your powers!” Mira snapped, sliding out from under my arm as she sat up. Her eyes glowed a vibrant lavender as energy pulsed around her in chilling waves like a cold arctic wind. “They are matching me fire for fire. I can’t even get close enough to use my blade.”
“Gaizka will get stronger,” I said, sitting up as well while I kept my hand tucked against my stomach.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’ll heal,” I muttered, struggling to get back to my feet. The naturi were coming and it would be only a matter of seconds before the next bolt of lightning slammed into the exact spot where we were sitting.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Mira snarled. Shoving herself to her feet, the nightwalker grabbed the knife from my left hand so that she now held a blade in each hand. Her shoulders were painfully rigid as she stalked the five naturi that remained on the ground. “Stay behind me,” she called. The Fire Starter briefly glanced over her shoulder at me and I noted that her eyes now glowed an ominous red, something I had never seen her do before. Not even when she was lost in the heat of battle or wracked with pain from my pushing my powers through her body.
The naturi pummeled Mira with fireballs, but the flames seemed to wash harmlessly down her body. Her movements were a blur, yet each slice of the blade was precise in its execution. The naturi couldn’t move fast enough to defend themselves. Within a couple seconds, the female naturi collapsed to the ground, her head rolling across the lawn while her insides spilled out of her body. Two rushed Mira, but just as quickly ended up in the same condition. A second later, she jerked to her left, dodging a lightning bolt that struck the spot she had been standing in. She hadn’t even glanced up at the sky.
Something twisted in my gut as I watched her. I knew Mira’s fighting style. I had fought her and spent nights watching her fight nightwalkers, lycanthropes, and naturi. I had never seen her move like this. She was faster, more precise, more ruthless in her motions.
The nightwalker twisted around as she blocked one slash aimed at her heart, and threw out her left arm toward me. At the same time, a massive force slammed into my chest. It threw me backward several feet, sending me crashing back into the ground. Yet, before I hit the soggy earth, I saw a bolt of lightning slam into the spot I had been standing in.
The pounding of my heart returned and a knot grew in my throat. M
ira couldn’t move things with her mind. Between the red glow of her eyes and the increase speed and dexterity, something was controlling the nightwalker.
“Gaizka!” I shouted in the air, but received no answer. I could feel it now that I knew what I was looking for. There was a new power circling around us, filling the darkness that flickered and danced in the firelight. The bori had taken control of Mira.
As I regained my feet, the wind naturi who’d sprouted wings earlier lightly touched back down to the ground behind Mira as she battled the last two light clan naturi.
“No!” I bellowed, but I knew that Mira would not have enough time to react. She was surrounded. There was no second thought, no doubt in my mind. I summoned my powers and reached out for the wind naturi. He screamed in pain as he raised his blade, preparing to plunge it into Mira’s back. He dropped the sword as he started to claw at his arms and chest. But it was too late. His blood blackened his flesh before finally bubbling through with an ominous pop and hiss.
A second later, Mira finished off the second of the two naturi. She blasted the creature with a massive wave of fire, lighting the night to the point where it seemed as if the sun had settled on the Earth between us. When she doused the flames, the naturi was reduced to a pile of ash.
With the threat destroyed, Mira collapsed to her knees, her body seeming to convulse. I ran over to her. My feet slid out from underneath me on the wet grass as I stopped beside her. I grabbed her shoulders, holding her upright so that I could look her in the face. The glow was completely gone from her eyes, but her irises had now expanded to the point of blotting out what purple there had been in her eyes. Terror had taken over.
“It—it was inside of me,” she stammered, horror filling her tone. “I couldn’t fight it. I could feel it in my head, in my body. Controlling everything. I tried to scream. I tried t-to reach for you. Couldn’t do anything.”
“It’s gone now,” I said, only to be instantly contradicted.
“Not quite, my boy,” announced a scratchy, hollow voice that had become too familiar for my liking. I twisted around to find a ghostly figure standing just a few feet away. A teenager with spiked hair and baggy clothes that were crisscrossed with chains, it looked completely human other than the fact that we could see through it.
“Your hesitance to use your gifts is going to get you killed,” Gaizka sneered. “If the nightwalker had not been here, I would not have been able to save you. I am disappointed that you didn’t dispatch this riffraff properly. But then you’ll get another chance to find some tomorrow night.”
“We won’t help you break free,” I barked, my grip tightening on Mira’s shaking shoulders. The rain was slowing, but the trembling wasn’t from the bitter cold that bit into both of us. I could feel the fear that flooded her senses. She was looking at her creator, one of the creators of all nightwalkers. She was staring in the face of yet another creature that could control her. She couldn’t even fight this one, like she could Jabari or me.
The bori laughed, sending a cold, bitter noise winging through the air. “I don’t recall giving you a choice. Tomorrow night, I will finally be free of my cage, and you, my boy, are going to be my key.”
“We w-won’t help you,” Mira bit out, struggling to stop her chattering teeth.
Gaizka laughed at us as we were suddenly torn apart, our bodies flying through the air in separate directions. My back slammed into the side panel of Mira’s car, while the vampire hit the trunk of an oak tree standing near the middle of the yard. I inwardly cringed, my heart nearly coming to a stop when I saw her slump there for a moment. One misplaced tree branch could have staked her in a second, sucking her life away before she could draw a breath to scream. Kneeling on my hands and knees in the mud, I watched Mira, waiting to see her move, anything to prove that she was still alive. The bori might need her alive, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t make an impulsive error.
After a couple seconds, Mira pushed to her hands and knees as well, allowing me to expel my pent-up breath. The vampire summoned up a ball of fire and attempted to throw it at the bori, but her arm stopped in mid-swing as if it had struck an invisible wall. Gaizka raised one hand and closed its fingers, causing Mira to extinguish the flame. For a moment, her eyes glowed red, but a terrified scream was still ripped from her chest as she fought it.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, pushing to my feet. I summoned up my own powers and attempted to focus on the center of the energy that danced in the air. But all attempts to beat the creature back were useless. It had no body for me to attack. I had no way of fighting pure energy. I had no effective attack against a creature that was little more than a ghost.
“Listen to her screaming, Danaus,” Gaizka said over the endless cries that escaped Mira, shattering the silence of the countryside. “The naturi are nothing in comparison to what I can do to her. Save her by doing as I wish. Set me free and you both will be protected.”
The bori finally released Mira, and she flopped limply to the ground. Gaizka slowly faded from sight, leaving Mira sitting in the mud in LaVina’s front yard. I ran over to her side and gathered her trembling body up in my arms. A large, broken tree smoldered beside us, while bodies of dead naturi lay scattered around the yard like broken ornaments. We had to find a way to stop the bori, but I had a growing fear that I wasn’t going to survive this encounter if we were to succeed. What if, during the past thousand years, Gaizka had been simply preparing me to become his next permanent host?
THIRTY-ONE
I leaned my shoulder against the stone wall outside of Abigail Bradford’s apartment building, hidden in the shadows that blanketed Factors Walk. I was standing in almost the exact spot where Lily had first spotted Gaizka so many nights ago. The place where it had all started, and where the bori would finally appear. The sun had set nearly an hour ago, and above me, streetlamps popped on around Bay Street, creating a fresh cast of shadows in the narrow alley.
LaVina had reluctantly agreed to come when I stopped by her house that afternoon. Workers were still tooling around her front yard, cleaning up the debris from the felled tree. The old witch hadn’t been particularly happy about the mess we made of her property, but relented as we focused on getting Mira out of her nearly catatonic state. The nightwalker had been faced with the naturi and the bori in less than six months—nightmares that had been banished from the Earth for centuries. And I had brought both into her life.
Mira had promised to meet me outside of Abigail Bradford’s apartment, but a part of me wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t show. She had been through enough. And in truth, this was my fight. I was beginning to fear that she would only be a target for Gaizka.
LaVina’s steady, critical voice drifted down to me from where she sat on a bench near the railing above Factors Walk. I had left her there weaving Savannah roses with dried palm leaves. “You’re late,” she grumbled.
“Sorry,” Mira snidely replied. “I stopped for a shower.”
I looked up the stairs behind my left shoulder to see the nightwalker coming down wearing her typical garb of black leather. Strapped to her waist and legs were an assortment of blades. Her black leather duster danced slightly as she moved, while her leather boots were nearly silent on the concrete-and-stone sidewalk. She was ready for battle.
“Did you hear from Lily?” she asked in softer tones when she reached the bottom step.
“Tristan called me just about an hour ago to say that she was safe and that they were at the Compound,” I replied, a half smile tugging at one corner of my mouth.
Mira nodded. “Tristan called before I left the house. Said he was going to stay on for a few days to make sure that she’s settled properly.”
“It’ll give us time to get things settled here,” I said.
Mira nodded, her lips pressed into a hard, thin line as she clenched her jaw. On the exterior, she was all cold rage and immoveable hatred, but I could sense the undercurrent of fear rippling through her. I reached up and moved a
strand of hair that had blown in front of her eyes. I let my fingers stray across her cool cheek, cupping her face. For a moment, I regretted every chance I’d had to kiss her but didn’t. I wanted to tell her to walk away. I wanted to tell her to get on a plane and fly as far from me as possible, but my throat closed up and I couldn’t utter a sound.
To my surprise, Mira smiled at me before turning her face to press a kiss to the palm of my hand. “I want to be here. It’s where I belong,” she said. I shouldn’t have been surprised. When we were close, we were constant ghosts in each other’s minds.
I tightened my grip on her face and started to pull her close when the sound of approaching footsteps echoed off the high stone walls of the surrounding buildings. I hesitated then slowly released her, letting my hands fall back to my sides. Mira placed her hands on either side of my face and pulled me close, pressing her cool lips against mine in a kiss that left me drowning. But the touch was over almost as quickly as it had begun, as she stepped away from me, turning her attention to our newest companion.
Mira’s shoulders slumped with relief, but a frown still marred her lips as she looked at the newcomer. I turned to find Emma Rose, the young lady who worked the trolley tours counter, coming up the hill to enter the wide alley.
“Emmy, you need to get out of here,” Mira stated. The nightwalker tried to step around me, but I grabbed her left elbow, jerking her to a sharp stop. Something was wrong here. Emma Rose couldn’t have known that Mira was up here and there was no way that the nightwalker would have told her friend where she was going to be when she was coming to meet a dangerous bori.
“What are you doing?” Mira demanded, trying to free her arm, but I refused to release her.
Sending my powers out from my body, I sensed the same energy I had felt at LaVina’s last night lingering in the air.
As Emma Rose turned the corner, stepping into the shadow cast by a building, a red glow faintly lit her narrow eyes while a dark smile grew on her attractive face. Gaizka had taken possession of Emma Rose’s body.
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