Chapter Sixteen
Screams and cries filled the night. Mina huddled behind the bed gripping her dagger, sensing the fear and turmoil taking place in Brennalyn’s cottage, and even farther off. In the distance, she sensed rage filling the air. The furious bellows of men at arms, engaged in a battle for blood. The howl of a hart wolf broke through the din of death, a haunting call to their pack. The weight of dark, sinister emotions threatened to cripple her.
Then someone rattled the doorknob. She didn’t call out. Mikhail would’ve let himself be known.
“Yasha! Bring your ax,” barked a commanding voice. “She’s in there. I can smell her.”
Then the fear was her own, spiking adrenaline through her body, igniting her she-beast to the forefront.
Crack. Crack.
The wood around the door splintered. The frame disintegrated under the vicious blows of the vampire named Yasha on the other side.
Crack.
Mina refused to be dragged out like some defenseless lamb. They knew she was here.
Crack.
Someone’s boot kicked the fractured door in. But before anyone stepped in, the thumping sounds of combat echoed into the chamber. Grunts and metal on metal and bones crunching and blood spilling. There were more than two or three men fighting outside the cottage. Mina could make out the thrumming of ten heartbeats. Then nine…then six…five…and finally two.
The panting of the victors drew closer. Mina held her ground, her vampire claws sliding out of her fingertips for the very first time. She recalled Mikhail’s teachings, where to thrust the dagger in easiest, as they sidled through the doorway.
The officer wearing Queen Morgrid’s Legionnaire colors strode confidently into the room, a scarlet-stained short sword in one hand. Then a burly beast of a man in commoner’s clothes entered, eyes as black as the devil’s heart, his ax in hand.
“There now, Your Highness,” crooned the officer, holding up his hands in a calming manner. “Best come easy, sweetling.”
As they crossed the fireplace, now only a few feet separating them, the officer stopped and inhaled deep.
“Oh, my.” His blue eyes dilated, his fangs elongated more, thickening his speech. “Seems our little princess has been naughty.” He shook a finger at her like she was a child. “Tsk, tsk. I don’t believe King Dominik will like that at all.”
The beast called Yasha grunted, his nostrils flaring. Mina knew sanguine furorem made men feral. Not just like animals, but like crazed monsters. Craving blood above all, but their primal instincts to dominate rode parallel to the bloodlust. At this moment, Mina’s empathic senses felt the air changing around the ax-wielding creature.
His black gaze shifted down her body in a caress of menace. His emotions were a blistering concoction of malice, hunger, hatred, and sinister lust.
“Yasha!” The officer put his hand to the creature’s chest. “Wait outside. I’ll handle her.”
Yasha didn’t move as the officer advanced. Mina readied herself. No way would she be taken without a fight. She hissed a warning at them both.
The officer smiled one second before he was on her.
…
Mikhail smelled the pungent blood before her small cabin came into view. Bodies lay in the snow outside her shattered door. The two closest to the entry caused Mikhail’s heart to stutter, his stomach clenching in grief. Not now.
Someone struggled inside. He flashed over the bodies and into the dark room. A Legionnaire lay dead on the floor, Mina’s emerald-studded hilt jutting out beneath his chin.
Then Mikhail’s entire body lit into scorching rage. A giant vampire pinned Mina down, one hand on her throat, the other ripping at her skirt, trying to subdue her struggling body. In swift succession, Mikhail lifted the ax on the floor, gripped the bastard by the hair, lofted him off Mina and onto his back, then started chopping.
The head rolled off in four hacks, tongue lolling, but it wasn’t enough. Mikhail aimed where the beast’s heart lay. It might still be beating. He wanted it stopped. He wanted this foul fucking beast to be nothing but an unrecognizable mass of mutilated flesh and bone.
On what must have been the twentieth upward swing, he heard her call his name.
Heaving, he turned. She stood straight and tall, her dress bloody and torn, starlike eyes filled with pain but bright and burning. He dropped the ax and swept her into his arms, fearing she might still be swept away from him.
“Are you hurt?” he rasped. “Did he hurt you?”
“No.” She shook her head and wrapped her arms tight around his neck, squeezing him as hard as he was.
A mournful wail echoed on a sob from Brenna’s cottage. Mina gasped and pushed back.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Come on.” Taking her hand, he guided her out the door.
At the doorway, Mikhail stopped, the fury cooling, replaced with hollow-souled grief. Kneeling beside his blood brother, he looked into the lifeless eyes of Aleksei one last time before closing them for good. His body was already cold. The bitterness of it, of a man who’d made him laugh so many nights around the fire, who’d fought beside him and shed blood with him time and again, his last act to give his life for the princess. Then he stepped over him to the Black Lily soldier, Ivan.
Aleksei and Ivan had always gotten along so well, with their mutual love of good ale, fine women, and warm laughter. The sight of his vampire guard and the human soldier side by side in death reminded him what this war was all about, what they were fighting for. And how much they had to lose.
“Oh, God.” Mina knelt beside Aleksei. “They’d come to protect me.”
“Aye,” he agreed, glancing at the six bodies they’d felled before they breathed their last. “They did their duty,” he said gently, not meaning for it to sting, though it did. “Not out of obligation, but because it is who they are.” He glanced down, a lump swelling in his throat. “Who they were.”
Mina’s eyes pooled with tears but didn’t drop until she leaned over Aleksei and placed a kiss on his forehead. Then she moved to Ivan and did the same.
“Come,” he murmured, anxiety riding him to find his brother. But first, he must see to it that Mina was in safe hands.
They ran through the brush, off the trail, the shortest route to the front door. They quickly passed the dead bodies and followed the mournful sound of Brennalyn coming from the children’s room.
Brenna sat on the floor next to Beatrice, the limp body of little Denny in her lap, his dark head against her chest as she combed her fingers though his hair. Gregoravich stood over her, guarding. The two dead Legionnaires were piled against the far wall near the door.
Mikhail knelt onto one knee next to Beatrice, checking her pulse, when two pairs of light footsteps and a set of heavy boots sounded up the hall. Helena, Sienna, and Nikolai rushed into the room, all three battle-worn. Helena’s pale face bore a purpling bruise on her cheek, her black hair falling in wild disarray. Sienna’s eyes glinted gold with her fire magic, the residual scent of it like charred honey lingering in the air. Nikolai carried his sword, bloodied from his kills, his face a mask of tamped rage.
“Oh, Mimi!” Helena fell down onto her knees, cradling Denny’s face.
Brenna swallowed the grief she’d been pouring out through tears and sobs as Helena wept instead.
“Not Denny, Mimi,” she cried, shaking her head. “Not sweet Denny.”
“Oh, my darling.” Brenna brushed her hand over her head and pulled her close. They clung to each other with the boy’s lifeless body between them. “He’s with the angels now, my love.”
Brenna’s voice cracked as she tried to comfort her daughter with words that could never alleviate the pain of this innocent’s untimely death.
“Where’s Friedrich?” Mikhail asked Gregory.
The somber giant nodded toward the crashed-open window. “Went after you and Grant after he gave Denny his elixir.”
Mikhail knelt beside Brenna, noting Friedrich’s elixir wasn’t strong enough. Without even thinking, he gently pried Helena back and eased his arms around Denny.
“Let me have him, Brennalyn.”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I need another moment with him.”
“I may still be able to save him. Let me have him.”
Brenna’s night-dark eyes, glassy with tears, fixed on him. Shaking her head softly, she whispered, “You can’t. Friedrich tried. His heart has already stopped.”
Mikhail slipped his hand beneath the boy’s slim nape, then firmed his voice. “His blood is still warm. Give him to me, Brennalyn.”
She let go at once. With the frail child across his lap, the lifeblood staining his chest, Mikhail ignored the tense silence as everyone watched him. Tearing open Denny’s shirt, he bent and sank sharpened fangs into his jugular, releasing the potent elixir that poured through his veins. A powerful potion he carried from his family’s secreted lineage—more powerful than Friedrich’s, a grandson of the original Varis vampire.
After a breathless moment, he heard and felt against his lips the soft murmur of a birdlike pulse, then another. He pulled out his fangs, sealing the wound with a swift lick, then pressed his fingers to his throat. There again, the soft flutter of a heartbeat. Raising his head, heaving from the intensity of the moment, his gaze swept the room, everyone watching in awe.
Mikhail avoided Mina’s questioning gaze and landed on Brenna. “He is alive.”
She gasped and cried, pulling Denny into her arms gently. “Oh, Captain. How? How did you—?”
“Best get him to another room, keep him warm. I’ll see to Beatrice.”
Brenna was on her feet, carrying the boy to her own bedroom with Helena on her heels.
“Let me help,” said Mina, hurrying with them.
Mikhail scooped Beatrice into his arms to take her into her bedchamber next door.
“Oh, Helena. What about the boys?” Brenna asked from the next bedchamber, panic gripping her again.
“They’re fine. They’re all okay. They were with me and Dmitri. And Marius and Arabelle, too.”
“Marius, Arabelle, and some of the Black Lily are with the boys at our cabin,” added Nikolai, now standing in their doorway.
“Where’s Dmitri now?” asked Mikhail, stopping beside Nikolai and peering into the room.
“He went looking for you,” Helena answered, sitting on the edge of the bed where Brenna brushed Denny’s hair away from his face and Mina pulled the quilt up tight.
Gregoravich cleared his throat behind him. “Captain, he came here with Yuri and Gavril. I told him you and Grant, then Friedrich went after Radomir. And…the girl.”
Mikhail noted that his bear-size friend couldn’t even say her name. He was fond of Izzy. Everyone was. The girl had wrapped every member of the Bloodguard around her sweet, pudgy finger. Why in heaven’s name did the queen kidnap her?
Helena gasped. “Girl? Where’s Izzy?”
Brenna just shook her head, unable to speak it aloud for a moment. “They took her.”
“No. No. No.” Helena shook her head, as if she could change reality if she denied it enough. Brenna pulled her back into her arms.
Everyone knew what Helena had suffered at the hands of King Dominik’s men when she was imprisoned at Dragon’s Eye. The constant abuse as their bleeder, the neglect, the terror. But a little girl couldn’t be used as a bleeder for long before she died. They would’ve taken Beatrice if that were their goal. She’d last longer as their blood slave. No, it was some other reason.
Mina had remained silent all this time, until now when she sucked in a sharp breath. The pain emanating in this room was palpable, a raw scraping against the skin. Mina stood beside Helena and Brenna, placing her hands on their shoulders. He couldn’t see or smell anything different, but the air changed all the same. A wave of numbing peace radiated from her, spreading like morning mist. He’d heard of some empaths with the gift to impart a healing kind of serenity. Brenna and Helena continued to weep, but the grief seemed to subside to a bearable pain as Mina wrapped them both in her arms. She murmured low, soft words of compassion to ease this ungodly weight.
Mikhail had to get out of there and find Dmitri. He glanced at Gregory. “You’ll stay here.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“I will, too,” added Nikolai.
“I’ll help you,” said Sienna, following Mikhail to the next room.
Sienna pulled back the rose quilt so Mikhail could lay Beatrice down.
“Are Marius and Arabelle all right?”
“Yes.” Sienna’s brow furrowed as she felt the lump on the side of Beatrice’s head. “Arabelle was badly injured. They’d broken her arm, the bones sticking out and cracked her rib cage. She couldn’t breathe, one of the bones must’ve punctured her lung. Marius gave her his elixir, but it wasn’t enough. Blood was coming out of her mouth, and we knew”—she choked up, glancing at him—“we knew she’d die if he didn’t take action quickly.”
Mikhail didn’t need to hear the rest to know what happened next. “He made her a vampire.”
Sienna nodded, brushing Beatrice’s hair away from her face.
“Then she will be fine.”
“Will Beatrice truly recover?”
“Yes.” He sat on the edge of the bed beside Sienna and lifted the girl’s arm, rolling up the sleeve of her blue dress. “After I give her my elixir.”
“How, Captain? How is your elixir more powerful than Friedrich’s? He is a Varis.”
The most potent elixir of healing pumped through the veins of a pure-blood Varis. The closer one was to the original source, Queen Morgrid, the more potent the power of healing.
He caught Sienna’s curious expression. “I saw what you did for Denny. You brought him back from the dead.”
“His blood was warm and his spirit still close. It would’ve been too late had we waited another second.”
“But it wasn’t too late. How, Captain?”
“A tale for another time.”
He leaned his head and bit into the girl’s thin forearm. He didn’t suction her blood but allowed his potent serum to be released from the needle-thin glands in his fangs. He counted to ten, then pulled away, hearing her faint pulse thrum faster into a healthy, strong beat. She turned her head to the other side of the pillow, the first sign of consciousness.
Sienna stared at Mikhail questioningly. But he wouldn’t tell her what she longed to know. How and why his elixir was as powerful as that of a Varis prince.
“I must find my brother and Friedrich.”
He blurred from the room and away into the woods in the direction he’d gone after Radomir. The night was lit with the orange glow of an inferno beyond Silvane Forest to the west. Anxiety rode him when he smelled the familiar scent of his brother, Friedrich, and hart wolves. He sped past the body of Denny’s would-be killer toward the sights and sounds of those he knew.
Dane—naked in human form from a recent shift—had Friedrich’s arm wrapped around his shoulder as he helped him walk. Allora and her mate, Bron, in wolf form, flanked them, as well as Dmitri, Yuri, and Gavril. Allora’s white coat glistened by moonlight. Bron’s sleek black fur helped him meld with the trees. Their gold wolf eyes glinting in the dark.
Dmitri’s eyes widened in relief when they landed on Mikhail. The two jogged to each other. Dmitri gripped his shoulder, squeezing hard.
“I didn’t know where you were.” Which was the closest he could come to saying, I thought you might’ve died.
Mikhail grabbed his brother’s nape and tightened his hold, thankful to the heavens for sparing him. For he was sure there would be a high count of the dead from this night.
“I’m hard to kill, Brother. You know that.”
“You mean you’re too damn stubborn to die.”
“Aye. There’s that.”
They shared a knowing but brief smile. No need to say what was surely on both their hearts—sheer relief. The others caught up to them.
Mikhail broke away to walk on Friedrich’s opposite side. “Are you badly injured?”
“Hell no. The bloody bastards nearly cut my leg off, but it’s healing.” He gripped his thigh, the blood-soaked trousers sliced open from a blade where a deep gash slowly mended. “But I couldn’t follow them,” he added bitterly. “I’m worried for Grant. He went after them alone.”
“Gavril, Yuri,” snapped Mikhail. “Follow Grant’s trail. If I’m right, they were prepared to be followed. He will need help.”
Gavril and Yuri chorused together, “Aye, Captain.”
They blurred away. Bron and Allora sped after them, a streak of black and white disappearing in the gloom of the wintry forest.
“Get home, Your Grace,” said Mikhail. There was time to plan strategy to get Izzy back later. But for now, they must end this unhallowed night and mourn their dead and pray for the dying. “Denny is alive.”
“What!” Friedrich’s eyes snapped wide. “Alive?”
Mikhail nodded, not ready to explain that it was he who’d brought him back. “Brenna needs you now.”
Friedrich’s gaze peered in the direction of his cottage as if he could see his wife and children in pain, in need of him. “Faster, Dane.” He quickened his pace with Dane’s help.
“Dmitri,” said Mikhail. “The encampment.”
“Aye. Let’s go.”
They spirited away, the icy wind turning colder by the second, as if winter deepened with the loss of so many souls to keep the forest warm. The forest full of magic that had sheltered humans and vampires alike, brothers in arms, against a dark evil. Their loss slowed her pulse, as if she wept with them.
The stench of burning flesh grew stronger when they wound out of the forest’s edge to Harrison’s farm—the center for the soldier’s tents and weapons armory. They stood on the hillside near the archery training site.
The farmhouse was ablaze as well as the barn and every tent along the forest’s border. The field was littered with bodies, both their own and Legionnaires’, their uniforms setting them apart. The soldiers still standing had a chain of buckets from the well to the barn. Some of the Bloodguard flashed in vampire speed to and from, dousing the flames as fast as they could.
The brawny form of Harrison was at the helm. His wife and children stood to one side near the boy Nate, holding the reins of Friedrich’s Arkadian horses. Nate stared at the burning barn, where his father worked and they both slept each night. Mikhail didn’t see the silhouette of Nate’s father, the blacksmith who’d forged many weapons for their army. As horrific as the sight was, it wasn’t their dead men burning that wafted that unholy smell up into the night.
“Dear God,” muttered Dmitri at his side.
In the distance, a hellish haze glowed up into the wintry sky as if the netherworld had opened up right where the town of Hiddleston stood. Amid the roar of flames came the quieter sounds of stifled cries and screams of women and children.
“They burned the whole fucking village.”
Hiddleston had been a friend to the Black Lily. And so was an enemy to Queen Morgrid.
Dmitri sped off toward the cries for help. Mikhail was right behind him. He stared up, watching his hope that they’d ever escape the queen’s evil rising with the smoke and ashes of Hiddleston.