Chapter 13 Rosemary
Rosemary
They had the house surrounded.
We hadn’t realized it until we’d made it to the trees, and by then it was too late to turn back. The men in the SUVs had swarmed the yard, and going back that way would’ve been a death sentence.
Erik and Beau led the way, taking down anything that moved. Ambrose watched our backs.
Aunt Halle and I protected the boys, sometimes with our own bodies.
We were immortal. Someone would have to take our heads to end us for good.
The boys were not.
The bullet wound on my hip throbbed. The one in my shoulder sent shooting pain all the way down my arm.
I was pretty sure there was a hole in my cheek, but I refused to touch it with my tongue, afraid of what I would find.
None of us would leave those woods unscathed. I just hoped that we’d survive it.
As we slowly and quietly made our way toward where Reese and Lucy were hidden, I sent every desperate plea I could think of into the universe. We just had to get outside the perimeter that the humans had made. If we did that, we could find a defensive position and hole up until someone found us.
Pop had made calls to old teammates. Daniel and Uncle Dalton had to be finished soon, and they’d get the message Pop had sent. Someone was coming.
I had to believe someone was coming.
Holding back a scream, I watched as Ambrose fell.
I raised my rifle and fired.
Ambrose rose again. The human didn’t.
Daniel’s oldest brother nodded at me to keep going.
Setting my hand on top of Seamus’s at my waist, I walked forward.
The humans were like fleas, popping up when I least expected them. It wasn’t a coordinated attack. Instead, they seemed to be lying in wait until we were nearly on top of them.
My nerves were fried.
Seamus’s hot breath shuddered against the back of my neck. He was crying.
The boys had been trained the same way that Ian and I had been. They were proficient in every type of weapon imaginable, and we’d armed them.
But we still forced them to use me and their mother as cover.
Aunt Halle had taken a bullet in her chest near her collarbone while shoving Grant to the forest floor.
I’d been hit in the face while backing Seamus around the trunk of a tree.
And the boys, my poor baby cousins, had to watch.
It was the most heinous thing I’d ever done—making them use us as human shields—and in the few quiet moments, when I had the ability to think, I wondered if Daniel had felt this way when he left me behind. We were protecting them, but I wasn’t sure that they’d ever recover from it.
At first, when the humans swarmed us, I didn’t realize what was happening. We’d been facing one or two of them at a time for the last ten minutes, and it took me a few moments to realize that the game had changed.
They rose like specters from the bushes around us, and there were so many of them I was struck dumb that the Vampires with me hadn’t heard them breathing. These humans were highly trained. They moved like liquid, rising and attacking in one smooth movement.
“Descendre,” I hissed to Seamus as I turned to meet a human who hadn’t even unholstered his weapon.
I felt Seamus drop to his knees and the kick of his rifle as he shot the human.
My guts clenched in fear. By shooting his rifle, he’d become a target to eliminate instead of collateral damage.
“Don’t—”
“You won’t make it without us,” he replied grimly, cutting me off.
There was so much movement around us that I struggled to aim and fire. There were too many of us in the melee, and I was terrified that I’d hit one of the Bouchers or Aunt Halle or Grant. Pulling my knife from my belt, I met the next human that came at us.
I felt feral as I stabbed at his neck and shoulders, struggling to stay on my feet as we grappled.
It took longer than it should have. I was losing too much blood, and between that and the mating heat, my body was slowing down. My arms and legs didn’t move the way they should have. My instincts weren’t as sharp as normal.
Seamus cried out behind me as the man finally slumped to the ground, and I spun to find him scrambling backward, his pistol in the dirt. A large man was taunting him, the rifle in his hands pointed straight at my baby cousin.
Then out of nowhere, fur that was as familiar to me as my face—even covered in blood like it was—sailed through the air. Thunder’s paws hit the man’s chest.
“Fass,” I croaked as the man fell.
He screamed for less than a second before Thunder ripped out his throat.
I stumbled toward Seamus and was yanked to a stop, my head snapping backward as someone wrenched at my braid.
Then I was falling. Panic filled me as I landed flat on my back.
There were people all around, their legs filling my vision. I tried to roll, but was stopped as the human kneeled on my chest.
Get the pistol, Seamus. Get the rifle that human dropped.
“Fass,” I wheezed, using up what breath was left in my lungs, hoping Thunder would hear me. I searched my empty sheaths. I’d used and lost my knives and given Seamus my pistol.
The man leaned down, his smile glaringly white in his darkly painted face.
Then, he was gone.
Coughing, I tried to see who had pulled him off me.
“Flower,” Seamus groaned, his voice barely a whisper.
I turned my head and found my cousin, half propped against a tree, his eyes wide and terrified.
His hands were pressing against his lower belly where the vest I’d given him ended.
“No,” I choked, scrambling toward him on my hands and knees, my arm buckling beneath me.
“It hurts,” he whispered, his voice shaking.
“You’re okay,” I assured him, tearing off my hoodie. Everything around me disappeared as I pressed it against his wound. “You’ll be fine.”
“I wasn’t fast enough,” he groaned. “I got him, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
“You did well,” I replied, pressing harder as blood seeped through the sweatshirt.
He was so goddamn pale.
The noise around us died in increments. First, the yelling stopped. Then the shooting. Then the grunts and thumps of hand-to-hand violence.
I didn’t even realize when the forest around us was quiet again.
“Seamus,” Uncle Dalton called frantically.
“Over here,” I called back. “See, your dad’s here. Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Stop,” Erik’s voice seemed to come from everywhere. “Rosemary, I need you to back away from the boy.”
“What?” I looked over my shoulder. “No, I—”
“Move, Rosemary,” Uncle Dalton ordered angrily.
I looked back at my hands, the only thing staunching the bleeding. I couldn’t let go. If I let go—
“Please,” Uncle Dalton whispered.
That broken word was the only thing that had me scrambling backward. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on or why they’d want me to leave Seamus. Had I done something wrong? What the hell was happening?
As soon as I was about twenty feet away, Uncle Dalton rushed forward.
“Oh, fuck,” Uncle Dalton said as he dropped to his knees. “How bad?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but the words were stuck in my throat.
I’d failed. I’d had one job, and I failed.
“It’s bad,” Seamus rasped.
“Ian,” Uncle Dalton called over his shoulder. He looked back at Seamus as he pressed on the wound with one hand and pulled something out of his utility pocket with the other. “It’s not so bad, bud.”
He was a convincing liar.
Seamus nodded, letting out a small breath of relief.
“It’s going to hurt like hell when I lift you, though.”
“Hurts like hell already,” Seamus replied, his lips pulling up a little on one side.
Ian looked me over briefly to make sure I was okay, his eyes widening, then watched as Uncle Dalton lifted his little brother into his arms like a baby. Seamus lost consciousness.
“Take him to Alice,” Erik ordered. “She’s at our place.”
I staggered to my feet as the Cavendish family took off through the woods, Ian leading the way and Grant following at the rear, their rifles at the ready.
The world seemed to be swaying around me.
“Rosemary,” Chance called from somewhere behind me. “I need you to stay right where you are.”
I spun toward the voice, but before I’d made an entire turn, I saw my mate. He was less than three feet from me, his feet planted, completely motionless.
“Danny,” I gasped, stumbling toward him.
Everything would be okay now. He would make everything okay.
“Don’t—”
“Stop!”
“Rosemary!”
The voices came from everywhere, all around us, but I ignored them.
It wasn’t until I’d wrapped my good arm around his waist and looked up into his face that I realized why they’d tried to stop me.
Daniel’s eyes were different. Wrong somehow. The pupils were huge, and the ring around them was light, not the usual dark brown that I’d fallen in love with. His expression was completely blank.
Breath left me in a whoosh as his arms wrapped around me, holding me so tight that I could barely move.
A growl left his throat.
“Danny?” I called softly.
“You’re okay,” Erik called quietly.
Daniel’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl.
“What’s going on?” I asked, pushing on his chest.
His arms tightened.
It was as if he couldn’t even hear me. His eyes jerked from side to side as he watched the woods around us. His face and beard were covered in blood.
In the distance, the whir of a helicopter’s blades broke the silence.
“Ambrose?” Lucy called from somewhere.
“Stay where you are,” Ambrose called back. “Don’t move.”
Then there was silence again.
My eyes were growing a little hazy. I didn’t understand what was happening, and I was losing patience and blood. I pinched Daniel’s side. He didn’t even flinch.
“She’s hurt, Arne,” Erik said soothingly from somewhere behind me. “She needs help.”
Daniel took a step back, dragging me with him.
“I know,” Erik said, his voice choked. “But you need to push through it. Look at your mate. She’s hurt. Look at her.”
“Daniel,” I whispered, clutching at his shirt as my head grew heavy. “What’s wrong?”
I slumped against him, letting him take the full weight of my body. I was so tired, and the heat symptoms that had been riding me since the moment he’d left were finally easing.