Chapter 33
Chapter
Thirty-Three
My Floromancy hadn’t been much help in this fight. Barrett was too quick for me to catch. I bled from a dozen wounds. Sweat obscured my vision, and I still couldn’t get a good lock on the Chimera’s location. Whatever this ability he was using, I needed it.
I racked my brain, trying to figure out how to catch him, when something occurred to me. No one could ever be completely silent. Such was impossible. When Barrett moved, he would make vibrations in the ground.
I grimaced and shucked off my shoes, fishing in my pocket for a few seeds I dropped onto the ground. I sent a tendril of magic through the earth.
The slightest of sounds. There.
I ducked just as a clawed tipped hand swiped through the air. Thorns shot up where the sound came from. Barrett let out a yelp of pain and materialized. I shifted into a leopard and leaped for him.
He swore and moved like quicksilver. I flew past him but not before getting in a good swipe with my claws. Blood sprayed over my fur.
Vines sprang from the earth at my command, tangling Barrett’s feet under him.
Chaos rang all around us, the shouts and screams of pain a cacophony of sound in my head. Rowan was still out there, the bond a beating heart between us.
Dark crawled over the horizon, the full moon cresting above the trees. Mom and Dad had not come back. Whatever had distracted them must have been important.
I spotted Moira coming back onto the property, a bundle in her arms, followed by a tall, lean man with glowing eyes.
Ethan. Relief filled me. He’d be a huge help right now.
There was no way to tell who was winning or losing, though the number of swans who’d come onto the property had been substantially diminished.
Barrett sliced through the vines faster than I could make them. Three lines of bloody claw marks marred his handsome face.
“You’re learning,” he said with a dark chuckle. “But your vines won’t hold me.”
“I know.” I tilted my head and smiled. “Those aren’t normal vines.”
The first trickle of uncertainty flashed over his face.
I’d been busy in Rowan’s greenhouse when I first arrived. At first, I planted normal things—herbs, petunias, some cold weather vegetables, but I also had Dad bring over my plants, the ones I’d made when I was in Scotland, and I managed to coax them into producing seed pods.
I’d planted one of those seeds in the greenhouse and saved the rest. The plants had bred true, and soon enough, I had another wickedly poisonous plant in my possession, one I warned Rowan to stay away from. He wasn’t my mate then, but even now, I wasn’t sure he’d be immune to the poison.
I made them as a safeguard, never thinking I’d use them, but I kept the seeds with me at all times.
Barrett swayed. A trickle of blood seeped from one of his eyes. “What did you do?”
“I used to try to solve things by being easygoing, peaceable. I made myself small to avoid conflict. But my enemies kept bringing war to my doorstep. They kept poking and prodding like a rotten tooth you can only fix through extraction.” I smiled with too many teeth.
Barrett licked his lips. Blood dripped down his teeth. A fine tremor began in his left hand. He squeezed his fist shut.
I came a few steps closer. “Those enemies tried to befriend me under the guise of helping me be the best I could be while waiting for me to reveal my secrets. But I stopped relaxing, stopped trusting as much as I used to. Instead I prepared, ever so slowly.”
Barrett swayed. Blood began to pour from all his orifices. He gagged and choked, his hand clutching against his throat as his airway closed.
“Evie,” he begged, his voice a hoarse rasp. “I’m one of the last of us left.”
“I do not care,” I hissed. “I don’t care about you or the swans or the rest of our people because not once have you given a shit about me. All you’ve done is take from me, and I am tired. I will no longer try to be peaceable. If you bring war to me, I will respond with the fury of the gods.”
I lifted my hands. Wicked, spiked roots dripping with poison shot from the earth and wrapped around Barrett’s neck.
“No! Please!”
I didn’t care about his begging, either. I crossed my arms and swiped them apart. Barrett’s head separated from his body with a moist thwicking sound, falling to the ground in a heap of blood and viscera.
When his body stopped twitching, I kicked his head away and glided toward the other shifters still fighting, pulling my poisonous thorns with me.
The fight went easier after that. Rowan’s people decimated the swans, and I killed with impunity.
Maybe later I would feel guilt over this, but right now, magic thumped through my blood in a steady drumbeat.
Every swan I saw, I touched with poison.
Rowan’s people saw what I was doing and disengaged.
When I had cornered the last swan on the property, I surrounded her with poisonous thorns. The shifter took an unsteady step back.
“I wouldn’t,” I said mildly. “If you touch any of my vines, you will die.”
“You have the cure,” the shifter said.
I smiled. “I do. But I won’t give it to you.”
The shifter blinked. “They’re right about you,” she whispered.
I tilted my head. “Who?”
“The other Chimeras. They said you would kill us when we faced you.”
“Then why are you here?”
Her face crumpled. “We just want our curse broken.” The swan’s lips trembled. “I—I just want to be a mother. Our people will die. Surely you can understand that!”
“Of course, I can. But your people have taken from me. You’ve taken my people. You’ve hurt people I cared about, and you’ve made it difficult for me to move freely within my territory. You would have taken me, chained me, and bred me like an animal. Do you honestly think you are in the right?”
The swan did not respond, but her eyes kept darting back and forth.
“No one is coming to save you,” I said quietly.
She began to sob.
I was tired, so tired. I’d come so far only to have to fight again.
Discussions hadn’t worked. Mercy hadn’t either.
The only thing that worked was becoming death incarnate, and that was so far away from what I was meant to be.
I was meant to bring life to the world. I knew it as sure as I was standing there.
“Return to your people,” I said quietly.
“Let them know what transpired here today. Tell them if they ever trespass on my property again or try to harm any of my people or anyone I care about, I will destroy every single swan in the world. No one will escape my wrath. I will erase your names from our history. Your curse will be a small problem compared to the problem of me. Do you understand?”
The swan blinked and nodded like a bobble head. “Then go.” I made an opening through the path of poisoned thorns, wide enough to allow the swan to run away. When she was off the property, I called those thorns back and turned.
The Keep was quiet. Hundreds of dead lay around us. My shoulders slumped, and I sought out Rowan.
Moira stood next to Ethan, both covered in blood and gore, but they were okay. I shot her a soft smile.
She returned it and touched her heart.
Following the bond, I turned to see Rowan walking toward me, maybe a quarter of a mile away. A deep scratch marred his cheek. His hands were covered in blood, and his clothing was torn, but he was upright.
Mine.
I smiled and started walking toward him, too tired to run. From his pace, I expected he was too.
My smile widened, but a warning tingle brushed against my skin. I stilled, my eyes sweeping across the land trying to pinpoint where the potential threat was coming from. Frustration rose in my stomach when I couldn’t see anything.
I kept walking, picking up my pace. Rowan frowned and did the same.
A man came into view behind Rowan, tall and muscled, with familiar storm-colored eyes. He leapt through the air, his right hand tipped with wicked claws, sailing right toward my mate’s exposed back.