Chapter 40
Combattre
CLAIRE
Deciding to stay and fight was the easy part. Living long enough to escape this graveyard was going to be much harder.
I swallowed hard as sweat broke out across my feverish skin. I didn’t know how to use my power. Earlier, when I’d pushed Bastien away, it shot out of my hand, but I thought Dark Witches needed a wand to focus their magick.
Through the pain throbbing in my head and my blurry vision, I watched as Bastien continued to battle the murderous witches surrounding him. Opening my hand, I willed the dark thing inside me to crawl out once again.
I wanted to hurt them. I wanted to make them pay.
I chanted those words over and over again. Curling my fingers in anger, I begged the magick to come, but nothing happened. Frustrated and beyond disappointed with myself, I let my weary head fall against the big wolf’s neck. Why couldn’t I do it again?
The pack tightened around me, each warm body pressing against some part of me—legs, arms, shoulders—adding their strength. The white wolf pushed closer to me, resting her muzzle against my hand. Even though my wolves couldn’t speak, one word filled my head. Fight.
“You condemn your family with each passing moment, Hera!” Bastien roared.
His cloak was gone, and his shirt was in shreds.
His blond hair hung in wild streaks around his face.
One of his hands was around a woman’s throat.
“Stand down, or the Wicked Kemp Witches will be nothing more than an inkblot in the history books. A once powerful and sensibly led coven wiped out over a misunderstanding.”
Hera didn’t respond, and Bastien seemed to take her silence as a dare. With a sidelong glance in my direction, he lifted his hand to her chin, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Screams filled the graveyard, along with the unmistakable crunch of bone. Whoever he’d been holding was dead. He’d told me he’d kill for me, and he’d made good on that promise. Maybe not Shreesa and her kitchen witches, but anyone who would threaten me. Even if they had been allies moments ago.
A shrill laugh broke the silence, and it caused the fine hairs on my arms to rise. “From now on, the Kemp Coven disavows your kind as our protectors.”
A breath of sweet-smelling wind shook the bare trees, and the gravestones around us seemed to shiver.
Words held magick. I’d always known as much.
And hers felt like an incantation. I could feel them in my chest, burning and snapping some long-held magick that bound this family to the vampires.
Around the graveyard, the others seemed to feel it too.
They stopped where they stood, hands raised to chests.
I closed my eyes and reached out to Bastien through our connection, and when I did, I could feel his fear and his betrayal. More than anything… he felt… betrayed. Like whatever great sacrifice he’d made by becoming a vampire had been for naught. Whatever Hera had done was undoable.
“Stop! Please!” a strangled voice said. I opened my eyes and saw the witch with the white raven sitting on her shoulder.
She was standing in the space between my wolves and her kin.
Her wand held aloft and trained on her family.
“This is wrong!” she said, pointing at me.
“She was chosen! And His Grace has always been good to us.”
I couldn’t believe that this witch was standing up for me. And Bastien. Against her family.
It seemed unthinkable that she would speak against the coven leader. No one ever spoke against Mama. What she said was law.
“You’ve always been a stupid girl, Cora!
” Hera screamed. “But now I see you’re a treacherous one, too!
” A spell flew at the girl like a whip. She deflected it, but the force of the casting knocked her off her feet, and she landed on the ground hard and didn’t get up.
As soon as she was down, the other witches refocused their attention on Bastien.
Hundreds of red eyes peering in the dark like a horde of murderous insects.
No. No, please. Leave him alone.
“The girl!” Hera shouted, pointing one of her long fingernails in my direction. “Get the girl! I’ll take care of the vampire.”
My wolf growled as the red-eyed witches turned in my direction.
“Over my dead body,” Bastien said in an ominous voice.
Then he was running toward me. Shoving witches aside.
His face was the only thing I could focus on.
The only thing that wasn’t blurry. Just him.
As he ran, he reopened our connection. This time, instead of screaming at me to run, he showed me a memory.
The night in the feeding tent when he touched me for the first time.
When he’d awakened something dark in me that I hadn’t known was there.
“There is a fire burning inside you. I can see it behind your eyes, burning hot and bright. I’m sure they saw it, too, and it scared them.
You scared them because they knew you were made for more than the life they could give you.
So they wanted to stomp that fire out. But what they didn’t anticipate when they were trying to douse your flame was that they could never stop you from burning. You are fire.”
He’d been able to see the darkness hiding inside me the entire time. Waiting to be unleashed. On him. On them. On everyone. And this time, I didn’t hold back because I didn’t have experience with battle or a name for the spells I wanted to cast.
I didn’t doubt myself.
I let go of everything inside me. All the anger and sadness and feelings of inadequacy that had been festering for years. The pain I’d held at not being blessed with Diana light. None of it mattered. I could fight back with the fire inside me.
The bloodstone around my neck throbbed, wanting to be reunited with its mate, needing to protect him.
I reached out my hand like I was waiting to take his, and a great wall of red and orange fire formed around us, bathing the graveyard in a deathly glow.
It locked out the witches and encased us in flames, like we were safe inside the eye of a storm.
I’d done that. I’d called the flames. My hands and my chest and my lips warmed from the inside out as I marveled at the magick.
For a stolen moment, Bastien and I smiled at each other. He was a beautiful nightmare of a man. Dangerous and dark. Brutal when necessary. But… there was a softness to him. I saw it in the curve of his lips and the way he was looking at me.
“You are finally starting to believe in your fire,” he said over the roar of the blaze around us.
I nodded, tears prickling in my eyes. Too terrified and relieved to speak. There was blood all over him. It dripped from his brow like sweat. I forced myself to look into his eyes, those endlessly pale blue eyes that reminded me of a bright, clear dawn that followed a burning sunrise.
Lowering onto his knees in front of me, Bastien took my trembling face in his hands and tipped my head to the side, gently inspecting the cut on my brow. His own drew together in concern.
“I’ll kill every single one of them for doing this to you. I swear it.” His thumb swiped across my cheekbone, and my cheek fell into his palm. “I’ll never forgive myself for allowing them to hurt you.”
The wall of fire popped and hissed. Witches shouted around us.
But it all felt far away and scary. And right now, my magick was protecting us.
I touched the side of his face. His skin was cool, which felt nice against my hot skin.
He was trembling—because of rage or one of the other emotions stirring inside him, I wasn’t sure.
“You should’ve left,” he said in his firm, direct way.
“Not without you.”
He gave me an exasperated look that melted into something more tender. “Does this mean you’re starting to like me?”
My cheeks warmed, and it wasn’t because of the fire I’d conjured. “I suppose I’ve gotten used to your face.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but I had gotten used to his face. To him. But for the first time, I was starting to understand him. Bastien wasn’t just an evil vampire who loved Dark Witches. He was… complicated. No. He was mine. My mate.
“I’ve grown very fond of your face too,” he admitted, then drew our mouths together. The kiss was soft and slow and greedy.
The white wolf whined, which made me chuckle against his lips.
“You might be warming up to me, but she isn’t,” Bastien said, eyeing the beast warily.
He was probably right, but I didn’t say as much. Not now. Not when everything was starting to make sense. It had gotten eerily quiet, and the sound of their frustration outside the circle of fire had stopped. “Do you think they’re gone?” I asked.
Bastien pressed his lips into a hard line. “Hera is not going to leave you alone. I need to kill her. And then I am going to get you as far away from here as possible.” His thumb stroked against my cheek again. “Don’t worry. I have a plan. All we need to do is—”
He froze mid-sentence, and at first, I thought he was being silly. But after a few moments, I realized Bastien wasn’t playing around.
“Bastien! Bastien!” I shouted, tapping the side of his face. “Come back to me. Come back!”
My wall of flames parted, revealing Hera. In all her wicked glory. Her wand pointed at his back. He was under a wicked spell. Hera whirled her wand in the air and pulled him backward, closer to her.
“The vampire said I could take you over his dead body. I plan to make good on that.”