Chapter 12
Talon
“Well, we had a good run.”
My three team members pay me no mind, each staring out at the fucking pit of despair we’re looking at. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so annoying. More than anything, I’m tired of these little challenges.
I long for the days when we could just fight to the death and that would be enough entertainment for the gods. Now, we have to perform like fucking ponies.
“The lightning is a nice touch,” I go on, circling the group and tilting my head, as though appraising a painting, rather than looking out at the place where my head is about to smash into the rocks. “Truly means we’ll go out in a blaze of glory, huh?”
“Talon,” Nyx says, rolling her eyes at me, though the corner of her lip does quirk. “Maybe you should spend less time joking and more time helping us figure this out.”
I like that I have her attention.
There's a pull toward Nyx I didn't expect and haven't been able to shake since the moment I met her.
I feel drawn to her in a way that's difficult to articulate, as though being near her is a privilege, as though I'm a better version of myself when I'm in her orbit.
I like who I am around her. I like how she makes me feel.
At first, I convinced myself it was her blood.
It's unlike anything I've ever sensed, something rare and deep and layered, and the mere thought of it does things to my concentration that I'd rather not examine too closely.
But that explanation falls apart the moment I spend time with her.
Her blood isn't what makes me want to sit beside her and listen as she talks about her sister.
It isn't why I look for ways to make her laugh or why I feel absurdly fortunate when she chooses to stand beside me.
It isn't the blood. Or it isn't only the blood. It's her.
Even though I know it’s dangerous to indulge this, I still do.
It’s why, the moment Behanta died, I set out to find their group. The fact that the demi-god allowed for the berserker’s addition told me he would surely allow for another. Especially considering the fact that I don’t need someone to punch me to become a capable fighter.
“I’m sure our godly one over here will think of something,” I say, and when Fenric looks at me, I laugh, gesturing to the demi-god. “I’m obviously talking about Rian here—”
He swings out at me, and I’m just fast enough to dodge it. Laughing, I turn on my heel, only to notice a few figures lining up, appearing down the side of the canyon, clearly having been herded in this direction as well.
“Oh great,” Nyx mutters. Those figures are our competitors, the shifters and warlocks, emerging from the brush. I remember Magnus and his trapping spell and pause, my hand hovering over the hilt of my sword.
Killing him would be fun, but I’m not stupid enough to walk into a gaggle of warlocks. Vampires have always relied on speed and stealth, not on direct attacks. When I take off his head, he won’t even know it’s coming.
Nyx sighs again, and when I glance back at her, she’s pinching the bridge of her nose.
I can think of a few ways to alleviate that tension.
And none of them involve a plan for getting over that death trap of a bridge. If the wind tossing it back and forth didn’t make the message of danger clear, then the constant flashing of lightning strikes hitting the bridge sure as hell does.
“Think you can make it across?” Thorian asks, crossing his arms and glancing over at me, and I let out a quick laugh.
“By running? Ha—I have many talents,” I glance at Nyx, and can practically feel the blood rushing to her cheeks, “but outrunning lightning is not one of them.”
“So, we need to think of something else.”
“Those warlocks are just going to use their magic to get over,” I say, gesturing at the group of them in their ugly robes, halfway down the ledge.
The bridge is equidistant between us and them, and I don’t relish the moment one of the groups will have to approach, putting themselves in danger of an attack.
“Do you think their magic can get them across without being injured?” Nyx asks, crossing her arms.
It’s still drizzling, and I realize she’s shaking from our little bout in the middle of monsoon season. Without thinking, I step closer to her, opening my coat and wrapping her inside.
I expect her to pull away, to be wary of the vampire trying to get his mouth close to her neck, but instead she leans in. Thorian seems to take stock of the movement, then returns his attention to the matter at hand.
“I like having you close,” I mutter, pleased by the way she shivers at the sound of my voice. Inside my coat, she quickly warms, even though I don't have much body heat to offer, and my clothes are soaked through, too.
Maybe I’m a masochist, and like having her this close for the scent of her blood alone.
I haven’t stopped thinking about it since that day in the garden.
Yesterday, when she kissed me, apparently thinking me on the brink of death, I’d gotten my first real taste of that scent.
The berserker and demi-god have been taking pains to keep space between me and the lady, at least up until that point.
But now, I try to subtly bury my face in her hair, to breathe in the smell of her.
Of course, I don’t scent the same way an animal does, like one of those shifters. A vampire’s sense of smell is far more refined. But scent is still important to me, and I can’t get enough of hers.
When I smell her, I’m getting the very essence of her, not something from the skin.
It’s the blood rushing through her veins, that crushed velvet sweetness that makes me salivate.
She’s like the kettle-cooked caramel at human fairs, dripping from a molten hot pan and yet still looking good enough that you would happily burn your tongue.
Fenric and Thorian step away, and I pull her in closer, nestling her hips against mine. Again, she doesn’t pull away, but I feel the sharp intake of her breath against me, her torso expanding.
For being a lady, Nyx seems perfectly content being in such a compromising position with me. Which, hell, I don’t mind one bit. It speaks well of what it’ll be like if we ever lay together.
“So, after we get to the spire,” I say, surprising myself with the question, “what do you plan to do? Marry a boy back home and have a brood of kids?”
She hesitates for a moment. “Beyond saving my sister and restoring my lands, I haven’t really thought about my life going forward,” she says, and from the way her heart skips, I’d wager that’s a lie.
Nyx has thought about it, but she’s not thinking of a boy back home. Her head turns slightly, and I realize she’s keeping Thorian and Fenric in her line of sight.
So the three of them are close, something I’d assumed based on the way the other men look at her, and the way her heart was skipping when she returned from the woods last night with the demi-god, and the scent of her arousal.
Trying to sleep in that cave was torture.
I could practically hear the berserker’s wet dreams playing out loud.
“I just want to get my sister back,” Nyx adds, and though this one has a beat of truth, I push against it. I want to know the truth.
“Sure,” I say, leaning down and nuzzling my mouth closer to her ear.
Although I wasn’t with the group when she went back to free the Ashen, I was standing by the graveyard. I felt the energy of the moment and realized what she had done. The absolute impossible. Because… she’s special.
With a heart like hers, I’m sure the only thing she’s thought about has been her sister. Vampires aren’t known for their generosity, but I’ve seen this before. A person so intent on helping others that they forget to help themselves.
Nyx shivers when I whisper, “But what do you want, Nyx? Surely you can spare a moment from only considering others to think about your own desires.”
Her body tenses on the word desire, and it sends a thrill of satisfaction through me. I’ve known since that day in the garden that she held some interest in me. Despite what most men think, there are plenty of human women who are excited at the prospect of spending a night with a vampire.
We’re stronger and faster, and that’s just as helpful in the bedroom as it is on the battlefield.
Her desire feels like a part of herself she refuses to embrace, and I hate the idea that she'd just ignore it.
We could die at any moment. It matters what she wants.
“I…” She pauses, clears her throat. “I want to give to my people. Bring life back to the lands around our manor. Help the farmers, and provide a life of comfort and retirement to our current servants. Hire more help to restore the building. Live a life…like what my parents had, before they fell ill.”
The words seem to tumble out of her, coming fast and unedited, and I drink it in. This life of comfort and family that she describes sounds nice. In a way, it reminds me of a certain opulence I’ve enjoyed before, but much warmer.
“So it sounds like a good future is about more than just retrieving your sister,” I murmur, and Nyx nods, starting to twist around in my arms like she wants to face me and say something.
But before she can, Fenric lets out a noise of triumph, startling her away from me.
“What is it?” she asks, but Fenric doesn’t have time to answer. There’s a commotion at the start of the bridge.
One of the Ashen Hounds, in his disgusting mongrel form, attempts to cross.
My vision is pretty good, even through the rain, and if my memory serves me, the coppery-colored mutt is Hugh.
Yes, that’s it. His fur is slick from the rain, and I can practically smell the disgusting wet-dog scent from here.
“Oh, this should be good,” I mutter, but Nyx pulls away from me, taking her warmth with her, and steps forward, shaking her head in horror. Despite the fact that any of those shifters would rip her limb from limb, given the chance, she still seems to harbor concern for them.
“He’s never going to make it,” she whispers, sliding her hands up like she might want to cover her eyes, might want to keep herself from having to watch.
And she’s right.
The wolf is too big, and scrabbles over the surface of the bridge. At first, his speed carries him a considerable distance, but then the wind rockets in, whistling against the rocks and tossing the bridge like nothing more than a strand of hair.
Letting out a yelp like a scared puppy, the shifter jolts to the side, nails scratching over the wood to gain some sort of purchase, then pitches back the other way, somehow managing to stay on the bridge.
We all watch intently as the wind tosses him about.
Through it all, he manages to keep hold of the thing.
Lightning splits the sky above us in great white forks, illuminating the canyon in flashes, and with each strike the thunder rolls through the air so hard I feel it in my chest. The lightning comes down again and again on the bridge itself, cracking against the stone and sending chunks of it skittering into the void below.
A bolt catches a tree at the canyon's edge and it goes up fast, bright and sudden, before the rain sweeps in and smothers it to smoke.
“It’s actually fascinating,” I mumble, “how this is even possible without opposable thumbs.”
The others don’t answer me. Hugh manages to right himself when the wind calms, pausing atop the bridge, which is relatively stable.
Time suspends. For the slightest, briefest fraction of a moment, I can almost feel myself rooting for the fucker. Even though sympathy for a were is a serious vampire faux pas.
Then he lifts a single paw to step forward and the sky tears open.
The lightning that comes down is not like the bolts that have been striking around us.
It is total. Blinding. A white so complete it erases everything—the canyon, the bridge, the others beside me—and for one suspended, breathless moment there is nothing in the world but light and the crack of it, a sound so absolute it doesn't register as sound at all but as pressure, as wrongness, as the feeling that something fundamental has just been broken.
When my senses return, I find the bridge, and what remains of him is already falling.
His body turns slowly as it drops, charred and small against the vast dark of the canyon, nothing left of the massive creature he'd been a moment ago.
I watch him fall past the jutting rock faces, past the ledges and the crumbling stone, until he hits the bottom far below with a sound I feel more than hear.
He comes to rest among all the others. The bones, the rusted weapons, the remnants of every life this place has already taken. Just another body in a canyon full of them, another contestant who had a family somewhere, a reason for being here, and now has nothing at all.
I look away.
The other shifters begin to howl with their loss, and I try not to feel those howls down to my soul.
I’ve lost my entire team, and you don’t see me crying about it. I… moved on. Like I had to do. Shifters like to pretend they’re these hunky, hardened beasts, but the truth is that each of them is no more than a lap dog, panting for a chance at your dinner scraps.
“We can’t do this,” Nyx says, turning to look at us, those big hazel eyes of hers filled with worry. “We’ll all die.”
A wrinkle appears between her brows, and I realize she’s afraid not just for herself but for us. She’s worried about us. I can’t remember the last time someone worried about me, and the thought makes my chest ache.
“I have an idea,” the berserker says, his burgundy curls hanging limp over his forehead. I hate that I’m charmed by his go-getter attitude. “I’ve mapped out the pattern of the wind, and I have an inkling of how we can handle the lightning.”
Thorian laughs. “What, have you got an in with my father?”
It’s a joke I’m not expecting, especially from the scorned demi-god. Perhaps I’m influencing them to lighten up.
“No,” Fenric says, letting out his own surprised laugh before glancing over his shoulder. “It’s more…scientific. A hunch of what might redirect the energy from the storm. But I have to warn you…”
“What?” Nyx asks, clearly anxious as she shifts from foot to foot, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.
Fenric pushes his sopping hair back from his face, blinking under the sting of the still-falling rain. “My solution will help the other teams, too. Which means we need to get across the bridge as quickly as possible.”
It’s weird. I’m starting to like this kid. He might be slow, weak, and dynamite waiting to explode, but he’s clever. And I like clever.
“What are you thinking?”