Reaper Uninvited

Another one bites the dust because that’s literally what they did when killed. They fucking dusted.

No time to gloat.

I dove back into the fray. My blade snagged on flesh, drawing blood. It spattered on my face, and then something scraped at the back of my neck. I spun and stabbed the vampire in the face. The woman. The fucking woman.

I advanced as she stumbled back, clutching her cheek. Her eyes were pits of hatred that glowed crimson in her deathly pale face.

“Reaper,” she hissed.

“Dominus to you, bitch.” I switched my dagger from right to left hand in time for my scythe to appear and then swung the glowing blade at her neck. Her head rolled across the floor, and the room was silent.

We’d killed them. All six vamps. Gone.

Grayson.

The scythe winked out as I fell to my knees beside the alpha. Nox cut Grayson’s bindings, and he slumped forward with a groan.

His shirt was dark with blood. I cupped his face and forced him to look at me. “Grayson. Hey, Grayson.”

How much blood had he lost? The wound at his neck glinted silver. He wasn’t healing.

“They’ve coated the bites with silver,” Sariah said. “He won’t heal. It’s in his bloodstream.”

“Fuck.” Dean and his Loups joined us. “Grayson.” He dropped to his knees beside me.

Part of my brain said I needed to back off and let them have their alpha, but the other part refused to release him.

His chest was moving on shallow breaths.

“Poison.” Bobby choked on a sob. “They poisoned him.”

I didn’t need to ask or look at their faces to know what that meant. I could feel it. Grayson was dying.

“Get it out.” My voice was a rasp. “You need to get the poison out.”

“There’s no time to get him to a healer,” Dean said. “If he hadn’t lost so much blood, he’d be able to burn some of the silver, metabolize it to give us time, but he’s too weak to do it.”

He was too weak. He needed strength. He needed power. The clawing in my stomach intensified, and heat flooded my body. I had to do something. My palm tingled, and the scythe appeared in my hand. I hadn’t called it. It vanished, but the glow in my palm remained.

“No, Fee. You could kill him,” Sariah said. “He’s not a demon.”

Wait … This was how the scythe healed? My gut screamed at me to do it. To touch him.

“He’s dead anyway,” another voice said.

I blocked them all out, every iota of my being focused on Grayson and the conviction that I could save him. I pressed my palm to his cheek. It tingled and grew warmer, and then the clawing in the pit of my belly surged upward. It filled my chest then spiraled outward down my arm and into my palm. The white glow turned golden, and then Grayson’s veins lit up amber through his skin. The glow spread like a spider’s web.

The tugging inside me was a pulse pumping power into him—taking from a reserve deep inside me and giving it to him.

“What the fuck?” a male voice said.

“Fee, stop. You have to stop,” Sariah urged.

But Sariah’s voice was far away, and I was floating. Rising above the scene. Ooh, look, there I was, holding Grayson. Why was I so gray? He looked good, though. A little color in his cheeks, even if it was gold.

Sariah grabbed my wrist and pulled it off Grayson’s cheek, and then I was yanked down from the ceiling and slammed back into my body. My vision blazed white, and energy fizzed through me as the scythe’s power replaced what I’d lost.

What the fuck did I just do?

“What the fuck did you do?” Dean echoed my thoughts.

I blinked and stared at the faces looking down at me.

“He’s healing!” Bobby said excitedly. “The wound is knitting.”

Grayson opened his eyes. His foggy gaze sharpened and focused on me. “Seraphina …” He said my name like a prayer.

He was alive. I choked back a sob of relief. “You’re okay. We got the vamps, and you’re okay.”

His eyes popped open, and he sat up. “The vault.” He glanced around. “There are more in the vault.”

Shadows zipped around us, filling the room.

Vampires.

Too many vampires.

We were surrounded.

Chapter Seventeen

Blood coated my hands and stained my face. I stood with my back against a pillar for cover. We’d been forced to the lower chamber by the vamps. Forced to fight, and we were sorely outnumbered.

“Call it in,” Sariah shouted to me.

“What?”

“You need to call the other Dominus. You’re the only one with a direct line to them.”

I stared at my busted comm. “I can’t.”

Sariah pressed her mouth into a thin line. “I’ve sent an alert to Dayna.”

Too many vamps and two wolves wounded. At least Grayson was back on his feet. Or all fours to be exact—a massive golden wolf that was tearing into the vamps when he was able to catch them. But they were fast. We were outnumbered three to one. So much for the nests being small.

We needed backup, and we needed it now.

Uri …

I closed my eyes and channeled every ounce of earnestness I had into my words. “Uri, I need you. I need you right now.”

Sariah rushed toward me, dagger out.

What the—

A vamp froze in front of my face and then slumped to the ground and turned to ash.

Sariah glared at me. “Focus!”

“I was calling for backup.”

“I thought your comm was broken?”

“It is.”

Something hissed, and then two vamps rounded the pillar. So much for a safe spot. I swiped with my scythe, but the vamp blurred out of the way. Damn it. The scythe had too much reach. I needed my dagger, but my brain short-circuited while making the switch, and the vamp was almost on me.

Fuck.

The vampire exploded into ash, and Uri stepped through.

“You called?” he said with a wry smile.

“Fuck, I could kiss you.”

His brows shot up.

“I need backup. I need you to get the other Dominus. Tell them where we are. Please.”

He scanned the room.

“Uri, please.”

“No humans on this level. I can intervene.” He winked out.

I hope that meant he was getting help. If not, I’d wring his neck the next time I saw him. If I made it out of here alive.

Taking a deep breath, I dove back into the fray, scythe in hand, ready to take off some vampire heads. It was the most efficient method to stop them. Turn them to ash and stop them in their tracks. It had a ring to it. Look at me, multi-tasking. I was getting the hang of this reaper business. I was more useful than just for healing.

Grayson bounded past me and straight into the vamp who was headed toward me. The throng was thinning. Maybe we had this under control, after all. If this were one of my RPG games, I’d be doing a healing spell on my comrades and downing a potion to put my mana up. Ignoring the ache in my limbs, I kicked out at a vamp to my left, knocking him back so I could use my scythe on him.

“Not fair,” Nox said. “We should all get one of those.”

“Right?” I grinned at him. “It’s a total fail on the administration’s part.”

My humor was back. I was back. The weird Fee that had emerged around Grayson was gone. No. Not gone, just sleeping.

Where had that thought come from?

“Fee, watch your six!” Sariah’s yell cut through the chaos.

I spun and swung my blade in an arc parallel to the ground. It lodged and swept the vamp off his feet. A blur of golden fur leaped past my head, and then the vamp was no longer on my scythe. He was on the ground being torn to bits until there was nothing but ash.

Grayson raised his silver eyes to mine, and I swear he grinned, a wolfy grin, and then jerked his head up as if to say, look. Look around.

Wolves, reapers, and a handful of vamps.

Euphoria bloomed inside me because we were winning. We were actually— wait a second. Were the vamps stupid? They were severely outnumbered now. Why not run? Something was off.

My instincts were confirmed a second later as shadows whizzed into the room from every arch.

Mother of toasted bagels. A fresh wave. How? Where from? We were so screwed. We gathered back to back, wolves and reapers in the center of the room, weapons at the ready as the fanged fuckers surrounded us.

These vamps were bigger. Their faces inhuman with ridged foreheads and heavy brows. Their fangs were longer.

This was gonna hurt.

I took a deep breath and braced myself.

The vampires descended on us in a single wave. But there was movement behind them. Huge beasts, similar to wolves but not wolves, skulked into the room and surrounded the vamps.

The Rising Pack? It had to be. They had spikes on their backs and tusks, and shit, did that one have a horn in the middle of its head?

The vamps hadn’t registered the new threat. They were still focused on us. They were almost on us. Crap. The closest one leaped at me with his fingers hooked into claws and his eyes burning with bloodlust.

Fuck you, bloodsucker. Taste my scy—

Arms wrapped around me and the world fractured. It reassembled on the balcony above the action.

“Are you all right?” Conah asked.

He was here, which meant the cavalry had arrived. I shrugged out of his grip. “We have to get back down there.”

“No,” Conah said. “We can’t. We need to leave now.”

“What?”

“We don’t have authority to be here. The Rising Pack is here. They’ll deal with this. Azazel got us a dispensation on the basis that you’re new. But we need to go. Now.”

Sariah, Nox, and Nix joined us on the upper level.

I looked down at the chaos, at the wolves fighting the vamps, and caught sight of Grayson.

“We can’t leave. What about the Regency Pack?”

“Not our problem,” Conah said.

“What will happen to Grayson and his wolves?”