Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
A tingling of awareness hit Gemma. A familiar scent carried on the air.
Cade.
She sprinted to the forest’s edge a hundred yards from the church’s steps and slipped behind a wide tree.
Why was he here? Skarde had said he’d headed back to the Directorate to deal with his failure to bring her in and stop Skarde from turning her. Her heart soared at the thought Cade might be here to support his brother.
She’d made that possible, and she was damned proud of it.
Cade paused at the base of the stairs and slowly pivoted to face her. His eyes widened when he saw her.
“Skarde needs your help,” she mouthed. The other vampire’s acute hearing should pick up her whisper. “He doesn’t want me here. Go.”
For several long moments, he watched her. His gaze dropped to her shoulder. Then he spun to jog up the church steps.
Now what?
Skarde had annihilated her. Even if their short-lived relationship had been intense, they remained relative strangers. The creature on the steps hadn’t been the person she knew. Hell, loved. Yep.
Shit.
She didn’t deserve to be stuck with a head case so fixated on something a crazy witch had foretold, claiming he was bound to make it a reality.
Now would be a fantastic moment for a portal back to her apartment to appear. She muttered, “Needing a doorway right now, Val. Or Val’s aunt.”
Of course, nothing happened.
You’re not helpless. Nor will you sit here and wait for a man to save you. Screw him for treating you like shit when he got stressed.
As an independent woman who’d lived on her own since she’d been eighteen, Gemma could handle being in a strange world with magical creatures and humans trying to murder her for being a vampire. I’ve totally got this.
Time to follow Serina’s advice and head to Fontaine. It seemed an ominous recommendation, but no better time than the present to figure out what the dwarves had to do with her being in this world.
She could steal Cade’s horse. Great plan, if she could ride.
Maybe she could super speed run? Why not try?
She tried it. One. Two. Three. Run!
Whack!
She sat on her butt, massaging her head, giving the evil eye to the tree she’d smacked into a few hundred yards—or maybe a quarter mile—into her dash.
Stars spun across her vision in triplicate before her vision righted.
She might be able to run fast, but she clearly needed radar to avoid collisions.
* * *
The church door clicked shut behind Skarde. Smothered in dimness, the air was thick with the smell of blood and sulfur.
Gemma’s touch had helped cleared some of the fog from his mind.
He didn’t remember what he’d said to her out there.
Something awful. Something he’d regret when she repeated it to him, but he couldn’t fix it right now.
The witch had tossed a potion at his face, some of which seeped into his mouth.
The foul concoction filled him with a consuming anger he couldn’t shake.
He’d escaped outside, to the freshness of the night and the smell of impending rain.
Where were the Hunters? He scanned the inside of the church. Last he’d seen them, they were fighting zombies. He detected two human heartbeats, not three. That meant either one of the Hunters had died or the witch wasn’t in here anymore.
Heartbeats… Up.
Well, that was new.
Two of the hunters had been frozen and affixed high on the wall near the ceiling with some sort of black, sticky substance that reminded him of a spider web. Never seen that before. Getting them down wouldn’t be easy.
“Hello?” he called out. Silence. A muttered spell and a toss of dust, an enchantment designed to show evil, illuminated an empty space. The witch was gone.
Damn it.
The fight between the remaining hunter and the zombies had moved outside, likely to the cemetery out back. There’d be a legion of zombies and possibly bystanders. One stupid human always tried to see. And the rain would be on them in minutes.
To his right, beneath a pile of disarticulated body parts, something moved. One zombie hadn’t been killed. It still wore the remnants of its human clothing, an old uniform it must’ve been buried in, although the zombie was missing one arm from the elbow down.
It turned to see Skarde coming, but the zombie was in no way ready for his attack.
Skarde’s blade almost cleaved it in half, but that didn’t stop him from pounding it into the floor.
He didn’t care that the zombie had already lost whatever reanimated life it’d been granted.
All that mattered to him in that moment was that the fight with the witch wasn’t over, and he’d fucked up with Gemma.
“She’s on the run,” announced Craig from the back of the church.
The front of the church opened.
Skarde spun, sword ready.
Cade stood in a ready stance, sword out. He had a great don’t-fuck-with-me stare fixed in place.
“Is it over?” Disappointment tinged Cade’s tone.
“She’s on the run.” Skarde ordered Craig, “Cut down the others and try to find her. Don’t try to fight her. Find me tomorrow and we’ll come up with a new plan.”
Cade motioned for Skarde to follow him outside. “Did you intend to leave Gemma out front?”
He shook his head. “I intended for her to stay at the inn. Safe and out of the way until I was done.”
“Something attacked her. She was bleeding and had a bruise on her face. She told me to help you and then she ran somewhere. I figured you and she had some sort of plan.”
“Damn it!” Skarde yelled. He ran a hand down his face. “I don’t know what I said to her. I was under the influence of some foul shit the witch threw at me. Whatever I said was probably bad. Why are you here?”
Cade glanced around. “Stinks in here.”
“This business always stinks. I thought you’d return to the Directorate and give them news of your resignation.”
“I took off in that direction, but then I started thinking about the prophecy,” Cade said.
“I figured maybe I failed to stop you from turning her—not saying you were wrong to do it, because if you hadn’t I would’ve.
But it is my duty to keep you from messing up the next part.
Fail to protect the one you turn, the world will burn. ”
Skarde covered his face again and sat hard on the front steps.
“Too late on that one too, apparently.” He slammed his fists into the wood.
“Someone attacked her. Fuck. Must’ve been at the inn.
” He glanced up to find judgment all over his brother’s face.
“What choice did I have? Bring her into this?”
Cade shrugged. “How about not dealing with this business for these ungrateful humans until you sort your own shit? The people of this town obviously don’t want your help if they attacked her.”
“They likely meant for both of us to die.” He fisted his hands and stared at the Hunters as they stumbled out of the church. “I’ve never left a mess like this without finishing the job.”
“I’m afraid there’s far more at stake if you don’t go after her. Did you hear me when I said she’s not here anymore?”
“What?” Skarde stood. He saw no sign of Gemma around the church. He closed his eyes, blocking out everything else as he focused on finding her. He didn’t sense any trace of her. No heartbeat. No scent of her.
Where the hell would she go?
Cade told the Hunters, “We have other things to deal with than this witch. Do what Skarde says and go find her.”
Skarde stalked to the middle of the street and slowly turned. “She’s headed to the Vorche.”
“We should get to her before VanFliet finds her.”