Chapter 19 Lazriel #4
“Sister,” he spoke in a creepy way. His gaze dropped to her palms flaming with her purple Dark Fae power.
“So eager to be killed by me again. Third time lucky, you think? Seeing as though your necromancer is powerless and the Immortal can’t tether you again, I’d say yeah. Fucking yeah, it’ll stick this time.”
Cassius went to intervene, but Velra reacted first, her shadows sweeping around Sorin.
She’d conjured them so quickly. Usually, they had more of a seeping-out effect.
But this time they swirled wildly like a tornado of black and gray, trapping him within.
“It’s your turn now,” Velra rumbled.
She was threatening to kill him.
She wouldn’t.
No, she wouldn’t.
Velra didn’t have it in her to take a life.
But I’d been away. I hadn’t been with her in the aftermath of her… of her dying… again.
What if—no. No. Velra wasn’t capable of that.
But as I started toward Victor, intending to knock the bastard out, Sorin screamed as frost traveled up his legs, moving rapidly, all the way to his waist, then up his torso too.
His power snuffed out, and then he was there from the pecs down encased in shimmering frost, Velra holding him there at her mercy as he screamed from the freezing temperature, his skin even turning blue.
Her left hand remained steady, somehow controlling both her shadows and frost at once.
And then she raised her right and purple lightning shot forth, tearing into him, striking all over his face, his upper body, his shoulders, making him writhe and scream out into the night.
“Stop! Stop!” He panted wildly. “Please! Please, sister!”
“Sister?” she spat, standing right in front of him now, as her lightning continued to ravage him.
“Now you say it like a prayer. When you need something from me. When you’re afraid.
Trying to make me see reason. Similar to me trying to do the same, to break through your fanatism and hatred.
But you paid it no mind. In fact, you murdered me.
Without hesitation. Without blinking.” Her lightning ceased and she grasped his jaw.
“So, should I grant you mercy now? In light of that? To my former family who’s made it a mission to torment me, to hurt me, all because of what I am?
Not even who I am? Who you are, not what you are is why I’m doing this to you. ”
The rush of power I’d felt, which I now realized had been me sensing it miles out, finally descended.
A lightshow of magic came through the trees, twenty magic wielders hidden in the darkness appearing in a semi-circle, fanning out.
Cassius reacted, thrusting out streams of his white power that shocked the shit out of me as it tore into them all like a tidal wave, snuffing out their power as he ripped them all off their feet in one go.
They scrambled, trying to get back up.
And then blurs of movement shot through the area.
Vampires.
Not young ones either.
Shit.
“Our friends,” Victor croaked.
Puritas.
This was one of their contingents.
As more movement caught my eye, bursts of teleportation to my left over near Victor, I felt Light Fae magic.
Growls and howls sounded in the distance.
Wolves.
I strained to make out the identities of any of them, but unlike that recruitment meeting that my dad had decimated, all the faces were blurred with magic, making every single one of them unrecognizable.
These weren’t new recruits then. They were long-time, established members.
And they’d come for two of their most valued.
“Leave the wolf hybrid,” Victor uttered.
“Your obsession is done,” somebody rumbled. “He dies along with the Wraith. We’ll take the Immortal for our own purposes. Only the necromancer need be left unharmed.”
“You don’t—”
“Fail to fall in line and you are done,” that same rumbling voice uttered. I tracked it to one of the Light Fae. A lean, toned guy wearing a silver cape and carrying one of those magician-like staffs with a glowing peach orb at the head of it.
“There is more to him than you know,” Victor persisted, trying to roll onto his side, and barely even managing it.
Hold up.
He hadn’t told them.
During that battle with the Puritas shithead, Lucas, he hadn’t known which Ancient had fathered me, a born hybrid with Ancient vampire blood running through his veins. Victor was a high-ranking member like Lucas. So… he’d kept it a secret? He’d kept my dad out of it?
Why?
Our gazes clashed and he winked at me. Urgh.
Then he finally pushed to his feet and seethed at that Light Fae boss man voice, “Then I’m done with you. Mark this as your biggest mistake. Losing an ally like me is one thing, but to make an enemy out of me is quite another.”
“You are one. We are many.”
Victor sneered. And then he staggered into a position that blocked the Light Fae contingent from me. “The born hybrid is mine. You try to eliminate him and I will rain down hell.”
What the—
“Retreat. Now, my son.”
I jolted at that voice in my head.
How was he doing this?
How did I respond?
“Lazriel. This battle before you is worthless. There will be no positive outcome. Their Dark Fae contingent is near. They will aim to take control of Cassius. You will all fall. Live to fight another day. Trust in me, my son.”
The voice faded away and I scanned the area with my senses as well as my sight.
He was nowhere near.
How was he—
In the next second, half the vampire contingent blurred behind the magic-wielders who’d arrived first and snapped their necks, rapid-fire, murdering them all in moments.
Holy fuck. Had my dad… planted them within Puritas ranks?
Fuck, of course he had.
The wolves arrived.
The Light Fae reacted.
And then I felt the Dark Fae that my dad had just mind-linked me to warn me about just moments from bursting onto the scene too.
“Cassius! Now!” I called out.
He swung his head to me, getting the message.
He thrust his hands at what was left of Sylas’ house, protecting it with an insane ward even mightier than the one before. So mighty that I choked at the power and a few of the Light Fae staggered back.
With the stunned distraction it had functioned as, Cassius shot a stream of his white magic at me, tethering Sylas too.
In the next moment, he snagged Velra and Sorin, then teleported us from the fucked-up scene, his magic swirling violently all around us.