Chapter Thirty-Three

My Sacrifice

 

I cut through rifter after rifter, searching for Shane. Amias stayed close to me—maybe he knew I’d need him.

My werebull had glanced at Silverlight, then at Amias, and then went back to running his powerful horns through the rifters.

I caught a glimpse of Jade Noel, once, and Alejandro.

Like a whirling ninja, fast, slick, and lethal, Alejandro fought, doing two things no human should have been able to do. Putting down rifters, and staying alive.

Minutes into the fight I was covered with blood—some of it mine—but I barely felt the wounds. I screamed Shane’s name whenever I could.

He never answered.

But then…

Minutes later—or hours, I couldn’t be sure—I found him.

I found my hunter. My heart.

He lay in a dark heap against the brick wall of a real estate building, and Clayton, feverishly wielding his black-hearted sword, stood in front of him, doing his best to protect his fallen friend.

And he was being overwhelmed.

When Clayton saw me, the look in his eyes went from despair to relief and back to despair. The rifters were trying to get to the fallen hunter’s blood, and Clayton wasn’t going to let them touch him. But as soon as I looked at Shane, I knew.

“No,” I shrieked, and then the bloody, battered half-giant was beside me.

He dropped to a knee and lifted his fist. “Go on,” he said. “I’ll keep them from you for as long as I can.”

Clayton got out of his way, running with me to my motionless hunter. I slid Silverlight away and fell to my knees. “Shane,” I cried. “Oh, God, please no. Shane.”

But Shane was gone.

I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye.

I’d known it was coming, hadn’t I? I’d known. I’d felt his looming death the way I felt my heartbeat.

I held his head to my breast, unable to accept that he was dead even as I stared down at his bloodless face, his half-closed, empty eyes, his broken body.

They’d killed him. Not even Silverlight had been able to stop them.

She hadn’t belonged to him, and she hadn’t been able to save him.

Angus dropped down beside me and Clayton, his face pale, eyes filled with grief. He said nothing.

I heard Leo’s power crack the pavement, and I heard rifters scream, but it was all distant and dim and did not really matter.

My hunter was gone, and my heart went with him.

Then, Himself fell from nowhere, or the sky, or wherever he’d been, his landing so violently abrupt that I heard his bones shatter.

He groaned, that ancient man, then gestured, surrounding our little group with a shimmering, hazy circle that felt like electricity dancing across my skin.

“I can no longer isolate the city,” he said. “When the sun comes, so will the humans. They will move the surviving humans out, and then they will destroy Red Valley while the rifters sleep, hoping to contain the monsters. They will not succeed.”

I said nothing, but I couldn’t take my stare from his face. I held Shane a little tighter and listened. There were no other choices.

“The dragon can kill them,” Himself continued, his voice low, fast, and underlined with fear. “But they must be separated from the humans, the vampires, the supernaturals. You will draw them to Byrd Island, Trinity. I will drop the mask from your blood and the rifters will swarm the island to get to you. The elders will help me surround the island to keep the rifters inside until they have been destroyed. The dragon will burn them all. Do you understand?”

I nodded. “My sacrifice,” I whispered.

“You will die. And you will save the world.”

“No,” Angus said, standing. “She will not.” He reached down and ripped me away from Shane and into his arms. His grip was punishingly hard. I didn’t care. I understood. “She is not the sacrifice. Find another way.”

But the King of Everything shook his head. “There is no other way, Angus Stark. We are not winning this battle. You will let her go. You knew from the beginning she would sacrifice herself.”

“I didn’t know I would love her,” Angus whispered.

“You must let her go.”

“I won’t.” Angus stared down at me as he held me, tears standing in his eyes because he knew he would. He would let me go. “I can’t.”

“It is her purpose,” Himself said gently. “And there is no time. My strength is dwindling and there are still things I must do. I am sorry.”

Everything that had happened since Amias had bitten me years ago had been either orchestrated or known by the King of Everything. Maybe from the moment of my birth. He’d seen my beginning, then. And he’d seen my end.

I heard the dragon’s scream, and my grief-stricken mind rebelled even as my body shuddered at the primal sound.

Clayton was numb, dark, closed off. But when I looked at him, I saw his heart. And it was shattered.

“I love you,” I told him.

He gave a raw, agonized moan, and I put my stare back on my werebull. “I love you,” I told him.

“Trin,” Angus cried. “No.”

But not even his powerful arms could keep me from Himself.

“Stay alive,” I murmured. “Fight. I will never leave you. Not really.”

And then I was flung through the air, rising with a broken but powerful old man, and once, I felt something attach to my leg and try to pull me back to earth.

But Himself would not let me go. He bore me through the sky and dropped me atop the dragon.

Oh, the dragon.

I slid my palms over cold scales—blood red, coal black, and emerald green scales that glittered like jewels beneath the moon. The ones I touched became softer, warmer, and curled around my hands, independent of the others.

The feel of him vibrated through my body, sailed through my blood, slid into my brain. He was magical, that beast.

And I was not afraid.

Himself sat behind me, his arms around me, holding me steady as the dragon cut through the dark sky, his wings slapping the air like giant sails, and I did not feel Rhys in him at all.

Shane would be like a deprived kid in a candy store—he was going to want to ride that dragon.

Baby hunter…

“Oh,” I whispered. Then, “He’s gone, Rhys. Shane’s gone.” My voice was loud but broken, as I begged Rhys to hear, to understand, to not leave me alone in the vast sea of my grief. My loss.

My sobs were snatched from my mouth by the cruel, cold wind, and I cried for us all.

I mourned my sweet hunter.

I mourned the girl I’d been, and I grieved for my men.

For a while, they would know only pain, and I could do nothing to ease it.

I would be the cause of it.

Himself kissed my temple. “Find peace, warrior. When you walk it, may your path be kind.”

Then I was falling from the dragon, borne down by a strong, swirling wind. Still, when I hit the ground of Byrd Island, the landing was hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.

I felt it when Himself lifted the mask from my blood. It was like he ripped a sticky bandage from a large wound. And I was once again vulnerable, naked, raw.

Alone.

High, high above, the dragon circled, his shrieking voice loud and bizarre and spectacular. It did not belong in that world. Not really.

I grieved for Rhys, because he was not the same. Maybe the dragon had devoured him. Maybe Rhys would never return as the man he’d been.

I rejoiced for him, as well, but my joy was tempered by my sorrow.

“Silverlight,” I whispered, and she hummed gently inside me.

So I was not alone. I had my sword. I had my men in my heart.

Good men, all. Heroes, warriors.

I smiled at the thought of them.

I climbed to my feet, slowly, and looked around the ruined place. I remembered the escape. I remembered watching my werebull kill another supernat. I remembered blood.

Seemed like a million years ago.

It also seemed like I’d just been born. I hadn’t done half the things I wanted to do. I hadn’t spent nearly enough time with my loves.

I bent forward and rested my hands on my knees as pain punched me in the gut. “Shane,” I called, as though he’d appear and tell me he hadn’t died.

But he had.

He’d died without me there. He’d died alone.

I straightened, then dug one of my blades from its sheath and without hesitation, sliced open my arm. “Come on, you bastards. Come get me.”

Even when the first rifters began to swarm the island, I lifted my gaze to the slowly circling dragon, clutched my sword, and smiled.

I thought I heard Angus’s agonized roar in the distance. Impossible, really. It’d take him a lot longer than a freaky fast rifter or a mystical flying dragon to get to the cursed Byrd Island.

And then I dropped the knife and called Silverlight to my hand when the rifters, black blurs of terror, raced over the broken ground toward me. “Shane,” I called again.

I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I just needed to say his name.

Death was coming for me.

I’d go. I had no choice.

But I sure as hell wasn’t going to give myself to them. They’d have to work to kill me.

“Shane,” I whispered.

Then I fought.

Silverlight and I, we fought.

We fought hard.

But in the end, it was just me and a sword. The rifters had been created to want my blood. To crave it. My blood was their survival. They were vicious in their need.

So I fought, but in the end, they took me down.

Hundreds of them, but really sort of…structured. The first ones who bit me reeled away, cried out, and passed blood to the second wave. They fed from me, and then they fed each other.

Then Rhys—the dragon—gave a battle scream that made me forget the pain of my dying, and he began to paint the land with fire.

He purged the island of rifters with his cleansing flames, and maybe I felt the heat for one second before I fell into bloodless, gaping darkness, and—