Chapter Eleven #4
“Yes, but you’re our nephew,” the druid answered. “Which isn’t going to matter to the hardcore group. They’ll be back for your blood. Just warning you to keep an eye out. Béibinn doesn’t take well to being beaten, and will want vengeance on you all.”
“He can try, but it’ll just lead to more regrets on his part,” Owain snapped, and started drawing in power.
The ravens flew off just as the intruders charged into the now druid-free area.
“Are they friends or foes?” Mabel asked Hunter as Owain turned to face the thief Lattsa.
“Perhaps both, although I have some words to say to the thief,” he said in a near snarl, limping forward. He remained in dragon form to help the healing process, and pulled hard on his fire to send it forward toward the women.
They leaped over it, but paused, clearly waiting for their leader.
“This is completely useless,” Lattsa yelled as she strode forward, his élan vital in her hand. “If you didn’t hide the blood moon in the sword, where is it? Where have you hidden it? I demand that it be brought forth immediately!”
“Is that ... Lattsa?” he heard Aisling ask as he was about to snatch the sword. “What on earth is she doing ... oh, merde! She can’t be here! Drake?”
Before one second passed to the next, the impossible happened. Lattsa, with a furious oath at him, threw his élan vital to the ground and slammed both hands downward, releasing a wave of root magic at it, effectively turning the metal of the sword to dust.
He stumbled backward, the magic that slammed through him shifting him back into human form, leaving him breathless and disoriented.
“Archer? What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
Distantly, he heard Thaisa’s panicked voice, but it was Mabel who cut through the cloud of confusion that seemed to swathe him.
“Hunter! What happened? Did that thief punch you or something? Are you OK?” Heat blossomed on his arm as her breath brushed his ear, her body pressed against his drawing him back to reality. His dragon fire, which had been riding high, faded away to nothing as his vision cleared.
“You will not cheat me!” Lattsa’s voice scraped across the sky as she stalked toward him.
There was a squawk from behind him, and two of his guards shouted a warning, but he simply moved to stand between Lattsa and Mabel, bent on protecting her from whatever magic the hedge witch was splashing around.
The darkness inside him swelled, panic filling him when he realized he couldn’t feel his dragon essence any longer, the one he’d found when Thaisa broke the curse keeping Archer and him imbalanced.
Instead, there was only dark power, insidious, sticky dark power, creeping along his veins until he knew it would consume him just as it had done so many hundreds of years before.
“Noooo!” he screamed, reaching for Archer’s élan vital, but it, too, was gone.
“What’s wrong?” Mabel asked as the other dragons swarmed forward, Yrian swinging his mace, when Lattsa and her army attacked. “Why do you feel like Bael did when he revealed himself in the Hour? What happened—Derry?”
Lattsa screamed when Yrian reached her, her corona a halo of red spikes as she blasted him backward a good dozen yards, right past the former owl as he raced toward them.
Just as he reached Hunter, Derry turned into a glowing ball of golden light, and slammed into his chest with the force of a wrecking ball. Hunter staggered backward a second time, his mind dazzled with light even as he heard Thaisa gasp and demand to know what Derry was doing.
“Baltic, stop her! That’s a spell that will render all organic matter into dust!” Ysolde yelled as she cast arcany at the women.
Rage blasted through him, and he leaped forward, past where Baltic and Owain were fighting their way to Lattsa, his peripheral vision catching sight of a stunned-looking Archer getting to his feet.
He pulled on his dragon fire, but it refused to answer, lying banked deep in his soul.
Instead, he wove a quick spell to blast Lattsa.
“You think you can use the blood moon and no one would notice?” Lattsa screamed at him, making him check for a moment.
“That’s so like a dragon, always thinking the world revolves around them.
It doesn’t, do you hear me? You’re just a bunch of uncontrolled elemental beings riding a medieval high.
You offer no threat to the Jabmead Sisterhood. ”
“Try me,” Hunter snarled in return, flinging the spell on her. She parried part of it with another blast of root magic, but enough of it landed that she jerked back, her right arm hanging limply.
“There’s nothing dragons can’t do if we work together,” Archer said as he limped to Hunter’s side, lifting a borrowed sword.
“Kin support kin,” Yrian added as he moved to Hunter’s other side.
“As do friends.” Owain moved alongside Archer.
Lattsa smiled, her eyes lighting up with a look of joy that Hunter felt wasn’t at all right. She lifted her fist in the air, and let loose with a battle cry. Instantly, the dozen women shouted in response.
“The sisterhood demands the return of the blood moon!” Lattsa yelled as she began weaving what Hunter feared would be another devastating blast of root magic. “We demand—”
“Derry! Stop! You can’t fight in human form. You know you can’t.”
Hunter swore at the sound of Dawn’s voice as she hurried down the stairs of the lodge in pursuit of the esprit owl. And then, to his horror, Lattsa turned her head to see who was calling. He saw the exact moment when she saw through Dawn’s mortal form and recognized her for what she was.
He could hear calls and shouts from where the mates gathered, as well as the twang of a bow, but it was Lattsa who kept his attention as he started casting a spell to banish her to the Akasha.
Dawn froze on the bottom step, her eyes wide as she stared at Lattsa. Her mouth opened as if she was going to say something, but a fraction of a second before he could banish Lattsa, the woman shimmered and poofed into nothing.
Hunter swung around, watching with gut-wrenching horror as Dawn blinked out, as well.
“What—where did—oh, goddess, don’t tell me what happened just happened,” Mabel said, rushing up to him as he stared at the empty spot on the steps, feeling utterly defeated and hopeless. “Lattsa has Dawn, doesn’t she?”
“Yes,” he said, his heart sick, but oddly comforted when Mabel wrapped her arms around him. “She has the blood moon.”
He was vaguely aware that Lattsa’s sisterhood had blipped out after she escaped with Dawn, leaving the wyverns all asking what had happened, weapons in hand, and confusion shared amongst them all.
“It’s not so bad, though, is it?” Mabel asked, searching his face.
He wanted nothing more than to take her to his bedroom, lock the door, and spend the next several months in bed exploring everything that made up her fascinating self.
“We can track her, right? I know this isn’t great, but it’s not the end of the world, either.
I mean, it could be worse. It could have been Desi who turned up to get Dawn. ”
“Sadly, that’s not true,” Yrian said as he headed for his mate, his expression that of a man who’d taken a heavy blow.
Hunter felt that a hundredfold.
“It’s not?” Mabel’s worried expression was almost painful to witness. “Why?”
“Lattsa is Desi’s daughter,” Aisling said from where she was standing with Drake, who was on his phone.
Most of the wyverns were. Hunter glanced at Archer. The latter looked as stunned as he felt. “She destroyed our élan vitals,” he told his twin. “How is that possible? It shouldn’t be possible.”
Archer looked sick. “She did more than that. I’m not balanced anymore.”
“What do you mean?” Yrian asked, looking over to them while Becket mopped up a few slashes on his arm that he’d taken fighting off the sisterhood.
“We were balanced when Thaisa broke the curse,” Hunter explained. “I was no longer all dark power, and Archer wasn’t all dragon. But now ...” He shook his head.
The dragons gathered around them. “You’re no longer a dragon hunter,” Yrian said at last, studying him before turning his attention to Archer. “Neither of you is.”
“How can that be?” Mabel asked, both of her arms around Hunter now, obviously trying to provide comfort. “How can you simply not be something you were a minute ago? That’s impossible. Isn’t it?”
Archer bent and scooped up a handful of dirt. Only it wasn’t dirt. It glittered dully in the light with faint blue glints. “I’m not sure. This appears to be what remains of my élan vital. But where Bree is—”
“Right here,” a female voice said behind them. The dragons parted to reveal the young woman who had devoted herself to Archer and his élan vital. “I popped out as soon as that wicked woman destroyed Hunter’s sword. I’m sorry, Archer. I’m really so very sorry.”
“We’re just glad you weren’t hurt,” Thaisa said, giving the woman a hug. “And hopefully, you can stay with us until we get the swords fixed.”
Bree met Hunter’s gaze with one of such profound sadness, he felt it in his belly.
“Unfortunately, there’s no coming back from what she did to them.
They’re not broken, Thaisa. They’re destroyed.
Utterly destroyed. And you know what they say about élan vitals.
... They define dragon hunters. If you don’t have an élan vital, then you aren’t a dragon hunter. ”
Silence filled the area for a few seconds.
“Are you saying that Hunter and Archer aren’t dragon hunters anymore just because their swords were turned to dust?” Mabel asked, her voice reflecting the horror in his soul.
Pain pierced him at that, pain so deep it seared to his bones. The blackness inside him swelled in response, and he struggled to push it down, to leash it as he had all those centuries before he was balanced.
But then he had an élan vital.
Now he had nothing.