Chapter 46 #2
I sucked in a shaky breath at his hollowed-out, echoing tone. At his almost catatonic state.
Heat poured off him now, hot enough to warm my cheek. Hot enough, I knew better than to touch him again.
“I don’t give a fuck what they are called. How do we kill them?” Gabriel hissed, palming his gun.
They were close enough to see that their white hair grew in uneven patches and to smell the putrid smoke they dragged behind them in a dark, reeking trail, and those scars… every single mark was outlined by the same fiery light.
My gaze drifted over my husband, the slight glow emanating from under his shirt.
“Drown them, unbind them, break them apart,” Dante intoned, shoulders shaking. “Burn them in the fire that birthed them. But kill the spirit, or they always will return.”
My heart was bleeding, watching him fight some internal battle in a place where I couldn’t reach him. Where I couldn’t help him.
“We’re too far from the water for drowning,” Nico grunted, with a shake of his head, “And I don’t happen to know an unbinding spell, do you?” Nobody bothered answering. “So, I guess we break them apart. And figure out some way to kill the spirits, whatever the fuck that means. And, here we go.”
The closest one lunged, and Nico met it head-on, blade flashing. The thing shrieked as steel carved through its throat, dark blood spraying—but it didn’t drop. It kept coming, clawing at Nico with talon-like fingers, broken teeth snapping mindlessly—
Nico drove his blade up through its skull.
The creature went still. He yanked the blade out, and the body dropped to the ground with the thud… then it pushed slowly back up, cracked skin glowing brighter, eyes burning like twin flames, ichor—blacker than night—flowing down the smooth chest.
“Okay,” he panted, retreating. “This is definitely a problem.” He raised his gun as it attacked again, emptied a full clip into the place where a heart should be, and the thing didn’t so much as twitch.
“What the…” Gabriel elbowed me aside, flying past me as the other three descended and chaos erupted.
The air heated up as I ducked under deadly swiping, sharp claws, slamming my hand into a rock-hard chest. “Fuck.” Agony burst through my palm with a sizzle of heat, blisters rising, the reek of burned skin filling the air.
“Don’t touch them,” I gasped, “or you’ll get burned.”
Now that I saw them clearly, I noticed what I hadn’t before. Two had familiar bulky builds, and their faces bore not only those strange cracks, but familiar marks seared into their cheeks. The brand of intertwined chains.
The mark of the Fossa.
“Two of them were Fossa guards,” I shouted, spinning out of reach of the biggest one. If they touched me, if they wrapped me in those long arms… would they burn me to death?
Yeah, that seemed on brand and a totally shit way to go out.
I dodged away, stumbling straight into the path of another, and the transformed Fossa guard hit me like a tank, slamming me to the ground.
Air exploded from my lungs as a heavy foot landed between my shoulders.
Pressed down until I couldn’t breathe at all.
I thrashed and kicked, but there was no leverage, no way to escape.
Nothing but a wall of heat above me. The back of my coat ignited.
I smelled fabric and hair burning, and my skin would be next, and…
“Emberline.”
The ground bounced up and down beneath me, vibrations rocking me to the bones. “Get the fuck off her.” Dante’s panicked shout was all I heard before the pressure on my spine disappeared and the world turned to fire.
I covered my head as flames exploded, scorching the ground around me, rending the air apart with a shrieking scream. One second, the creatures were there—the next, they were gone, ripped away by a force that burned bright enough to sear my retinas.
I pressed my face into the dirt and held my breath, an inferno crackling all around me. This was like being baked in an oven, cooked on all sides, and just when I thought I was a goner… everything stopped.
I was… alive?
The ground was still on fire when I lifted my head, then rolled over on my side, hacking up a lungful of smoke, blinking away spots as I surveyed the absolute carnage my husband inflicted.
Chunks of ash and glowing firebrands fell from the sky, and the ruins were bare, not a hint of vegetation left, not even a blade of grass.
Twenty feet away, Nico and Gabriel were sprawled on their backs, faces red, clothing still smoking, and… ice trickled down my spine.
Dante was the only one left standing in the center of a circle of destruction, legs braced apart, clothes gone.
Except this wasn’t Dante.
I didn’t know what I was looking at, but he wasn’t vampire.
Flames curled over his skin in a mesmerizing display, not burning him but becoming him.
His eyes blazed the same molten gold as our attackers, his physical form flickering, shifting—becoming larger, broader, as if he was transforming into something else.
“What the actual fuck?” Nico’s frantic gaze met mine across the clearing, both of us realizing the same thing at the same time.
Dante stood between me… and him and Gabriel.
And my husband’s fiery eyes—if he was still my husband—were wholly focused on me with an unnatural hunger, as though he meant to consume me alive.
“Ember, listen to me.” Gabriel’s voice was the calm in a storm, and I latched onto it with both hands.
“Scoot backward. Move slowly, keep eye contact, don’t speak or make a sound.
When you get some distance, Nico and I will draw his attention.
I need you to get to the shoreline and dematerialize back to the safehouse. ”
“No!” The word boomed out of Dante’s mouth, something ancient echoing behind it. Power, the kind that shouldn’t exist on this plane.
“I would never hurt you, tesoro. Never. I have this under control.”
I swallowed down a sobbing laugh. “It doesn’t look like you have it under control. What the hell, Dante? You’re on fire, for fuck’s sake.”
“Just… give… me… a minute.”
I couldn’t stop staring. At the fire. At the way it leaked out through every scar, as if it was trying to escape. At how those flames licked over his body in slow, sensual waves and turned him into a fucking work of art.
Gods, he was like something out of an ancient legend, a blend of immortal vampire and Vulcan, the god of fire.
“I’m… almost… there.”
He gave a mighty shudder and wrested back control, as only Dante could, stubbornly, teeth gritted against some terrible, invisible pain, muscles bunching in his shoulders until the last of the fire was gone, and only he remained.
Naked as the day he was born.
I shivered. Magnificent. Mine.
“We came here to find the Basin,” he panted, blue eyes shining with determination. “And we’re not failing because of me.”
Nobody spoke after that.
Because what was there to say? We all had a million questions, but right now was not the time to ask them, and besides, if there were more of those things, my husband was the only one capable of killing them.
With the bones of the abbey laid bare and Nico’s ability to track the relic’s magic, we found the Basin at the bottom of a set of worn stone steps.
Hidden in an ancient crypt where the wet, seeping walls pulsed with the same wrongness as the island itself.
The air down here was layered with old, cruel magic, the walls etched with more of those symbols.
While the rest of us stared at the Basin, Dante studied the symbols with an unnatural stillness that sent a fresh tremor of fear through me.
“This was almost too easy,” Gabriel muttered darkly.
I bit my tongue to keep from agreeing, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in my stomach.
“If you call almost getting torn apart by monsters, then nearly incinerated, easy,” Nico shook his head. “You people, always wanting to do things the hard way.”
“How will we get out of here?” I asked, looking at seven hundred pounds of carved stone, the shallow bowl dark and slick, as if it had never truly dried. One moment, I was staring at the Basin, the next… it was gone.
“Up here,” A grinning Nico called, outlined by the opening to the crypt. “Like I said… always doing things the hard way.”
Dante, Gabriel, and I took the steps two at a time. I scrubbed my arms at the top, trying to get rid of the creeping sensation of being trapped underground, even just for a few minutes.
“A transporting spell,” Nico explained with a hint of smugness. “We use them whenever we transport something large for the Brotherhood. Simple, but effective. I know exactly where I’ll stash this thing.”
“Uncle Gio’s shit out of luck without this,” I noted with a shiver of delight. “He can plot world domination, he can scheme with Rocco, but he’ll never control us the way he wants to.”
“Well done, niece,” Giovanni drawled. “But then again, you always were my favorite student.”
My uncle stood between two pillars of stone, flanked by three of Rocco’s personal guards—including Bruno—with at least seven Ashbound slipping in and out of the mists around us, their lean, pale forms blending so seamlessly with the fog, only their glowing eyes were visible.
The three soldiers brandished guns and looks of intense anticipation.
“So, you did survive, after all.” Giovanni’s plump lips pinched together. “You cannot imagine the worry you cost me, disappearing like that.”
“Good. I hope you haven’t slept a wink since that night.”
“You’ll be dead soon enough. Dante, you cost me an absolute fortune when you destroyed the Fossa.
That prison bankrolled my enterprise for centuries.
Now I’ll have to find a new source of income.
And Gabriel,” he continued with a smile.
“My condolences on Marcello’s impending demise.
Shame you’ll be following in his footsteps. ”