Chapter Twenty-Nine

Army of Blood

 

And then, as though they’d chased him into the city, I saw them.

Running like clouds of blackness through the city came the rifters. Many, many rifters.

In a few short minutes, the streets were running with blood.

Angus jerked away from me and shifted, but even before his shift was complete, Amias buried his fingers at the base of my skull, forced my head to the side, and plunged his fangs into my neck.

“Wait,” I thought I whispered.

But he could not wait. In seconds, he was done.

He bit open a vein on his wrist and shoved it against my mouth, urging me to “drink, drink,” and maybe I did pass out then, if only for a second.

I called Silverlight, only realizing when she came that she hadn’t come until I called her to come. By then, Amias was gone.

But his words echoed through my mind.

Get to Willow-Wisp.

I had to feed the earth. I had to bring the army of vampires.

Because if I didn’t, we were dead.

I ran screaming into the fight, and even as I cut and slashed and screamed, I couldn’t shut down my fear.

“Shane,” I screamed.

Shane didn’t even have a fucking sword. He had blades, sure, and he had his Betty, but those things would not be enough, not even for a hunter. Not against the rifters. There were simply too many of them.

The city had already prepared as best as it could—there were safe places set up for the humans who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—leave their homes; safe rooms, tornado shelters, windowless buildings with reinforced doors, storm cellars…

It didn’t matter. The rifters found the humans. They dragged them out of hiding and ate them.

And the streets ran with their blood.

Their new freedom overwhelmed the rifters. They screamed with frenzied, starving joy, some of them sobbing bloody tears as they embraced a world they’d been denied for so very long.

A world they could see but not touch.

Now they could touch.

Now they could touch everything.

They were free.

And I was supposed to run, to leave my men, to fight my way to Willow-Wisp. I was supposed to bring back an army.

I would, of course I would.

But I would see Shane protected first.

Amias appeared once again, covered in gore and blood that glittered wet and black upon his body.

“Come. I will get you there.”

His eyes held a bright spark of savagery that I hadn’t seen before. No matter what he was, or what he’d done, only the rifters would ever bring out that particular spark.

And then the visitors came. As though everything wasn’t quite bad enough, wasn’t quite chaotic enough, the visitors came.

Not just one.

I felt them pounding on the walls of the way station, urgent, terrible, and I knew who they were.

The elders had followed the rifters. They, however, couldn’t just come. They couldn’t force their way through invisible walls of Willow-Wisp.

They had to come through the way station. Through me.

I screamed with the pain of it, the pressure, but I shoved it away as best I could. “I can’t go yet,” I cried, my voice hoarse. “Find Shane.”

“Trinity—”

“Find Shane!”

And I wielded Silverlight with renewed energy, with desperation, with speed. Still, the rifters came. Not dozens of them.

Hundreds.

It was too much, very nearly, to comprehend.

Then Amias flung Shane at my feet, his face a mask of rage. Shane had fought him.

But Shane was injured, bloody and pale, and I didn’t care about his anger.

I forced Silverlight into his hand. “You stay alive,” I told him. “I can’t lose you.”

“You cannot give her away,” Amias yelled, then turned to tear apart a rifter at his back. “She may not come to you again.”

That was a chance I was willing to take.

Fight for Shane. Protect him. Kill for him. That’s what I told her. She was the only hope my hunter had of surviving the night.

A rifter, in a blur of speed, reached for me. Almost before I could react, a blade shot through his body and he fell, and Clayton stood behind him. “Go, Trinity. We can’t hold them.”

I glanced back once before Amias took me out of there. Clayton and Shane fought back to back, one with a black blade and one with silver, my silver, as they cut through the horror and tried to stay alive.

And then I left them there.

I wrapped my arms and legs around Amias and he carried me to my car. I hid my face and listened to his grunts as he killed, to the screams of the humans, the roars of the rifters, and the savage growls, howls, and death screams of supernaturals pouring into the city.

They were few, though, compared with the rifters, and I wondered how many would remain when the night was over.

I felt sudden warmth, strange and wet, at my back. “What—?”

“Jade Noel,” Amias said, his voice low and harsh. “She lent us a temporary circle of protection. Hold on to me. I will run.”

And despite the fact that my back was to the wind, I lost my breath when he ran. The pressure was excruciating—I was underwater, unable to breathe or hear as someone rammed a car against my body. That was what it felt like.

The seconds he ran felt like an eternity but then I was at my car, on the ground, drawing air into my aching lungs.

“No time,” Amias said, and yanked me to my feet. He shoved me into the car. “I will meet you at the graveyard. Hurry.”

I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled, but I started the car, tried to block out the images of the slaughter going on around me, and rammed my foot down on the gas.

My car shuddered and jerked as I ran over whatever—whoever—stood in my way. I ground my teeth and drove on. I had my place in the battle, but it wasn’t in the city. Not yet.

The elders were hurting me.

“I’m coming,” I screamed, as the pressure, red and bursting, became nearly unbearable. My head pounded sickeningly and my stomach tossed with the pain of it, threatening to spew its contents all over my lap.

I passed wolves sprinting toward the city; huge, shaggy wolves that would likely not survive the encounter. If they did, and if I did, I would get to know the Bay Town pack. I would get to know all the supernaturals. I would thank them.

It couldn’t be too late for that.

I drove on.

I needed to raise the vampires, but I also needed to open the way station to the elders. I tried to let them in as I drove. It wasn’t possible. I was too far from the house. I needed to be inside.

“Elders first,” I muttered, my knuckles white as I squeezed the steering wheel. “Then vampires.”

I’d never felt so alone.

When I finally reached the way station and jumped from the car, Jin was waiting on the porch, holding open the door.

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.