"I'm just saying, what's the point of being a vampire queen if you don't get some cool costumes out of it?" Reina says, continuing a conversation she's having with Aura.
"I don't know," Aura says, unsure. "I'm just not a fan of the Ren Faire costumes. And corsets suck."
"Only if you're not doing it right! Lyra, back me up here. You used to wear that stuff, right?"
"Yeah," I admit with a small sigh. "I do miss it sometimes. The fabrics were so much nicer before the Industrial Revolution. I swear to god, a corset and a bustle in a dress made of good, handwoven muslin is worlds more comfortable than fucking nylon Spanx. Plus, in those big-ass skirts you could sit with your legs spread as much as you wanted and no one cared. I hate crossing my legs, my thighs are too damn big. And no one cared if you had your tits out."
"Were you there for Queen Elizabeth I?" Emmett asks, and I nod.
"Before I was turned," I tell him. "But I was there for that thing with the French Ambassador."
He laughs and Aura gives me a curious glance.
"Well don't leave me hanging," she says. "What thing?"
"Queen Elizabeth started, or at least followed, this fashion at the time," I explain. "Where your tits just kind of sat on top of the bodice of your dress, and you covered the nipples with your ruff or some lace trim or whatever. Supposedly she flashed a French Ambassador adjusting her ruff once."
"She was a cheeky one," Emmett says with a chuckle. "Didn't she start that thing with not wearing anything behind those V-shaped bodices as well?"
"Yeah! God, covered wrist to ankle in brocade with a four-foot-wide starched collar like you just got back from the vet and bare as brass from neck to navel. What a look. You don't get that shit anymore."
"It's pure lack of imagination, I think."
"You should definitely help Aura find a royal wardrobe," Reina chimes in, amused.
"I'm not wearing a corset, Reina," Aura sighs.
"You've never tried one! If you measure yourself properly and get a good quality one—"
"Honestly, a properly fitted corset that's broken in right is barely noticeable," I assure her. "And it's great for your posture."
"I think I'd rather slouch," Aura says, shaking her head. "I just don't like the idea of being constricted like that!"
"Bitch, you're wearing shapewear right now," I say, to Reina's intense amusement and the bafflement of all the men in the car.
Aura blushes, covering her stomach like it will hide it somehow.
"That's different! It just smooths things out!"
"And what do you think corsets do?"
"Lyra."
Damon's voice cuts off a rant I'm preparing about the original purpose and fashion behind corsets. The concern in his tone sends an instant shock of sobriety through me. He inclines his head toward the window and I lean closer to peep out. We're pulling up to an old farmhouse, presumably the location for the meeting. But something strikes me as off almost at once.
The gravel drive crunches under the tires as we park. I open the door, taking in the eerie silence, not even insects crying in the grass, and my suspicion solidifies to anxious certainty.
Something is wrong.
Chapter 8
It's clear something is wrong before we even get out of the car, and I wave for Reina and the other Kresova representative to stay in the car. I'd tell Emmett to stay too, but he's already halfway up the porch.
The meeting location the elders chose is old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The "For Sale" sign in the yard might be older than I am. The narrow dirt road we followed here had wound through nothing but empty, fallow farm land for miles, and ended in front of this house. Around it, waist high golden grass bends in the breeze.
But there's no lookout on the porch. The two black cars out front are empty. The door of one is standing open. There is an eerie silence, the kind that only follows great violence.
I can smell blood on the air before we even step through the door, which barely swings open an inch before it's stopped by a corpse. I recoil at the sight. The vampire's head has been nearly ripped from his body. Someone wanted to be certain he was dead. I hear Emmett inhale sharply and I think he recognizes the guy.
Before any of us can say anything, we hear a shout and a crash from farther inside. Without a word we vault the body in the doorway and rush toward the sound, passing over more dead vampires. Appears to be the full entourage of both elders. Whoever killed them was fast and utterly brutal, and I have a terrible feeling I know exactly who it was.
There's a large room near the back—the narrow hallway leading to it would have made it easily defensible, an ideal choice for this meeting—and the vampires that must have once been guarding it now lie in pieces on the floor.
The door is open, and I see a flash of familiar red hair and another shout.
"No," Emmett whispers, running past me. "Sioban!"
The meeting room is something out of a nightmare. More dead vampires are everyone. A male vampire with long, unkempt, dark hair is tearing the head off of a downed vamp on the long meeting table. Another, a female with blond hair shaved close to her scalp, throws the limp body of another vampire over her shoulder in a casual fireman's carry.
Morana, in a blood-stained champagne evening gown of all things, stands over an unconscious woman who, judging by Emmett's horrified expression, must be Sioban, the leader of his clan. Morana surveys up as we enter, smiling with dark scarlet lips.
"Aura, Carver!" she says fondly, and they both tense behind me. "So nice to see you again. And Lyra, too! What an unexpected family reunion."
"What are you doing here?" I demand, my heart racing. The only other vampires in the room are the one still dismembering people on the table and the blonde, who stares vacantly at Morana. Neither notice we're here. Are they the only backup she brought? There's no way the three of them killed all these vampires and overpowered two elders by themselves!
Morana smiles, a lunatic edge to the curve of her perfect lips.
"Grocery shopping," she replies. "And I owe you a thank you, Lyra, for luring these two out of hiding for me! It would have been so much more tedious if I'd had to hunt them down on my own."
Guilt washes over me like a rogue wave. Jesus, all this death is my fault.
"There's no way in hell you're leaving here with either of them," Damon snarls, stepping forward. I reach for my weapons, and Seamus, Emmett, Aura and Carver follow suit. If we have to have the showdown with Morana right now, that's all the better in my opinion.
"Let's end this now," I say, spinning a hawthorn-handled knife in each hand. Morana just sighs, rolling her eyes.
"This is what I meant," she says. "Tedious. James, darling, would you clean up this mess for me?"
The long-haired vampire on the table drops the body he's mutilating instantly, staring at us with a weird, animal intensity. The rest of us stare back at him, not sure what to expect. Does she really think this one vampire can take all of us? He climbs over the table on all fours, slow, not taking his eyes off of us, his breathing heavy.
Morana bends to pick up Sioban and Emmett moves first, darting at Morana to attack while she's off balance.
The strange vampire, James, launches himself from the table with a speed that's unbelievable even for one of us, his heavy breathing building to an animal shriek as he hits Emmett broadside, teeth first. My heart seizes in my chest at the sound of Emmett's shout of pain and surprise, the sight of his blood as James tears into his shoulder. He slams into the wall under James's momentum, scrambling to defend himself from the stranger's impossible speed and wildly snapping teeth.
I grab James by his greasy hair to drag him away from Emmett, swinging a knife at his throat, but the vampire moves faster than I can even process to grab the arm coming at him, sinking his teeth into my wrist, making me drop the dagger. I scream and slam the handle of my other knife into his head, trying to beat or shake him off, but he hangs on like a bulldog until Damon, half transformed and ro
aring loud enough to shake the walls, lunges at him with his claws. He releases me and leaps over Damon onto the wall, clinging there for less than a second before he drops onto Damon's back, biting down on Damon's trapezius. I pull Emmett to his feet as Aura, Carver, and Seamus attempt to get the freak off of Damon's back.
In the meantime, Morana has opened a window and is casually leaving, carrying Sioban. The other vampire with her waits, carrying the other elder.
I dart after her, wanting to take advantage while James is preoccupied with the others, only to feel two feet slam into my back right between my shoulder blades. I hit the ground, the wind knocked out of me. James had jumped from Damon's shoulders directly into me. Before I have a chance to do more than wheeze, Emmett tries the same thing I did and James rushes him, slamming him into the wall again. He's impossibly fast. I've never seen any vampire, not even the elders, move that quickly. And he moves like an animal. Not irrationally. There's a predator's logic behind his flailing claws and bloody teeth. But there's a savage efficiency to the way he scrambles and leaps, throws himself at us with no sense of self-preservation. A cornered animal's certainty that victory or death are the only options.
I stagger to my feet but he's on me again before I can go after Morana.
All six of us are engaging the savage vampire and we can barely keep him on the defensive. The room is too small. None of us can use our full strength without hitting each other. Damon can't even fully transform, and there are too many surfaces for our freakishly agile opponent to leap and scurry and cling to, keeping a height advantage on us.
I snarl in frustration as Morana slips out the window, followed by the blonde. I eye James clinging to Damon again, out of range of the werewolf's claws and watching me with his too-intense stare. He will absolutely jump me again if I go for the window.
"Carver!" I snap, reaching for a bolo on my belt. "Gladiator!"
Carver and I had spent enough time working together in Le Tireur to know a few tricks, including how to stop an opponent who was moving around too much. He doesn't even respond, just immediately switches tactics to the one I'd called. He had been using a knife same as me, but at my shout he sheaths it and pulls out an extending baton, whipping it open to a good two-foot length.
"Out of the way!" he shouts, and the others do their best to clear a path between him and Damon, with James on his back.
But it's me that jumps at James, slashing with my knife, which he deflects easily, only for me to drop out of the way, following the deflected curve of my weapon, and reveal Carver coming up behind me, using me as cover. He has a two-handed grip on the staff, and slams it into James hard enough that for a moment I think he's snapped the thing's neck.
James drops from Damon's back and I shout for Damon to stay back while all three of us put as much space as the small room will allow between us and the savage vamp. The vampire, if he even was a vampire, crouches on the ground for a moment, batting at his own head and making strange, sharp, animal noises. Carver looks at James with a strange expression on his face, a narrow-eyed frown. But whatever he's trying to figure out, he doesn't have time. James snaps out of his fit and jumps at Carver with a furious shriek. Carver jabs the staff at him, forcing him back to keep from slamming his sternum into the staff. The moment I have a clear shot at his legs, I whip the bolo at him—a tricky fucking shot in quarters this close with five other people and a dining table in the way, but luckily, I'm the best. James eats floor as the bolo wraps around his ankles.
I don't stop to celebrate or to try and finish the freak off. He's a distraction. Now that there's a clear path between me and the window, I run for it, closely followed by Emmett, still bleeding from his shoulder and arm where James had bitten him. Outside, I scan for any sign of Morana, seeing only the golden grass and a distant copse of trees. After a heartbeat, I hear the sound of a helicopter. I exchange a glance with Emmett and we run toward the trees.
Morana is already seated in a sleek black copter, Sioban unconscious at her feet. The blond vampire is throwing her prisoner in beside Sioban. She dusts off her hands and turns as we break through the tree line to the clearing where the copter sits and takes a step toward us.
"Stop the copter!" I shout at Emmett and leap at the female vampire, planning to keep her busy while Emmett rescues the elders. But I spoke too soon. The blond woman has the same impossible speed and savage grace of James. She knocks the knife out of my hand and plants her fist in my face, sucker punching me with the momentum of my own attack. It feels like being hit by a fucking truck. Before I even hit the ground, she gets Emmett by the back of his shirt and the seat of his pants, deadlifting him into the air above her. She screams, animal victory noises, and shakes him violently while he flails, trying to figure out some way to attack from this position. Instead, she throws him into the dirt so hard he leaves a crater.
I am only just staggering back to my feet, blood pouring from my broken nose, and the woman turns to me with her teeth bared. It's not a smile, it's a threat display. I am, for the first time in a while, afraid of another vampire. I don't understand the level of her strength and speed, the animal unpredictability of her motions, her savage grace.
The helicopter is beginning to lift off and I make a panicked noise, but I can't go after it with the woman standing between it and me. She steps toward me again.
"Not now, Jesse," Morana calls, shouting over the roar of the helicopter. "Playtime is later."
Jesse slams her fists into her own thighs with a bestial roar of anger.
"Now, Jesse." There is no room for argument in Morana's voice. Jesse turns and leaps onto the helicopter as it rises.
As soon as her back is turned I run toward the copter, planning to grab on, not sure what I'll do if I can get on. I don't get the chance to find out. I hear a shriek behind me and then feel a very familiar pair of feet hit me in the back again. I get a mouthful of grass as James vaults over me and toward the helicopter, already six feet at least off the ground. He leaps, and if I hadn't already known the little son of a bitch had a powerful fucking vertical leap, I sure do now as he clears it, snagging the landing skids and pulling himself up, scrambling into the bay as the helicopter rises higher into the sky, out of my reach.
I sit up slowly, spitting out grass. Emmett groans, rolling onto his side and curling up fetal.
I hear the crashing in the underbrush as Carver, Seamus, Aura, and Damon catch up.
"Did we get her?" Seamus asks hopefully. I throw a fistful of dirt at him and he doesn't ask again.
We limp back to the car, all of us injured and in need of a feed and rest. Reina and the Kresova representative get out when they see us, shock at our state clear on their faces.
"What happened?" the Kresova asks.
"Are you, all right?" Reina holds my face in her hands, expression horrified. I must look pretty damn bad. My nose is still bleeding and very broken.
"I'm fine," I say, my voice weirdly rounded by the broken nose. "It was Morana."
"What?" The rep looks like he would very much like to blame what he just heard on my voice being wrecked by the broken nose.
"Morana," Aura answers for me. "She took both the elders, killed everyone else. We tried to catch her, but she got away."
"Could you set this for me?" I ask Reina, pointing at my nose. She grimaces but reaches for it and I brace myself.
"Anyone else wondering what the hell those things she had with her were?" Emmett asks. If anyone was planning to answer, they're interrupted by my screaming bloody murder and cursing up a storm as Reina pulls my nose back into the right shape.
"Thank you," I whisper as soon as I can control myself, tears of pain streaming down my face, cutting through the mask of blood.
"Can't have you resembling a boxing champ when you're queen," Reina says with an awkward smile.
"Do you think Morana took the missing elder as well?" the Kresova rep asks, his voice high pitched in panic.
"Almost definitely," I say through gritted t
eeth, waiting impatiently for my healing to kick in and make this hurt less. "She was going to come after the elders anyway. I just made it easier for her like an idiot."
"You couldn't have known," Seamus reassures me. "To have found out we were meeting here, she must have someone on the inside—"
Damon puts a hand on Seamus's shoulder and shakes his head. Seamus gives up.
The Kresova rep pales, bracing himself on the hood of the car.
"I need to get home immediately," he says, scrambling for his cell phone. "We can't fall into chaos. If she comes for us as she did the others—"
"We'll do everything we can to get you home as quickly as possible," I assure him, then turn to Emmett. "You too."
He hesitates, peers back at the house, and licks his lips nervously. In his conflicted expression, I can almost see his fear for his leader and grief over the vampires of his clan that had been murdered.
"I can call and tell them what happened without going back," he said. "You need everyone you can get here, fighting."
I shake my head, thinking about my own duty to my people.
"They're going to need you," I tell him. "They need leadership right now, not just a phone call."
He doesn't seem completely convinced, but he doesn't fight me as we speed back to the airport, getting both of them on express flights back to their people.
As he's about to board, Emmett stops, turns back, and grabs my hand. He stares into my eyes, and I feel that rush of heat again, a pull like a hook in my guts.
"I'm coming back," he promises, his gaze intense. "As soon as I can. I'm with you until this is over. Until Morana is dead, you have me."
I'm so surprised by the vow that I can only nod. I watch his plane take off, still feeling that pull in my stomach.
Oh no, I think, my heart beating too hard in my chest. He really might be the one.
Chapter 9
Fury : The Kresova Vampire Harems: Lyra Page 6
