Chapter Twenty-Six
Alexandra
“It has been said, ”time heals all wounds.” I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
- Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
The sight of my mate going down initially paralyzed me with fear for him. And the sharp, excruciating agony of my mate’s pain tunneled through me. It took everything in me to not buckle under the onslaught, but the thought of losing him had the taste of bile filling my mouth and churning in my stomach making any physical pain secondary. I loved him so damn much.
I watched Xander stumble to his feet. The hole in his stomach was bloody and gruesome. Organs that should never be visible other than on my operating table were threatening to spill from their intended position in his body.
I was so afraid for us. So done in by our overwhelming odds. I felt trapped and consumed with fear, but Xander’s life was on the line. And Sophia had raised her palm to hit him again.
I felt a surge of immense power, power I had never felt before. It seemed to permeate every cell in my body. The baby, extremely active throughout our fight, and clearly agitated, was now still and quiet within me, as though exhausted from the continuous tension.
But then, I suddenly felt as though I had an extra five pairs of eyes, hands, and legs. I blinked hard. Why the hell was I seeing all around us?
“No! Back the hell up!” Words burst from me, raw and angry, and filled with a need to decimate that bitch.
“You hit my mate!” Wait, what? I’d said that, but I had no forethought to even say it. And then I lifted my hand, or at least one of the numerous hands that I had inexplicably acquired lifted.
The telekinetic power my independent hand emitted lifted Sophia higher in the air and threw her around like a ragdoll for several rage-satisfying seconds. She looked as if her neck and spine would snap.
Sophia screamed like a banshee.
I would have laughed if the various me’s weren’t still so pissed. My independent hand whipped her around for a bit longer before throwing her to the ground. Yeah, clearly Sophia didn’t get the memo to not piss off a hormonal dhampir/witch/demon.
Sophia sprang to her feet and threw a plasma orb infused with toxic fumes toward me and Xander.
My astral projections and I levitated and sucked the fumes from the air and dispersed them toward Adam’s army. Yeah, I was used to the toxic particles of my father and Malachi, so those fumes were hardly going to faze me.
Sophia and I started trading orbs, each one more vicious and deadly than the last.
I wished that I could say that I had control of my astral selves, but they just seemed to be operating on my unconscious instinct.
Sophia suddenly sent an enormous cement object, which looked very much like the side of a building, hurling toward me.
I ducked, or at least that was what I meant to do, but my astral selves laughed, grabbed the wall out of the air, and threw it back at Sophia, smashing her body into the ground and burying quite a few zombie soldiers with her.
“Daymmmmn!”
“Wicked!”
“Holy shit!”
Zora, Drago, and Apollo all exclaimed at the same time.
“Okay, astral selves, that was super cool, but I’m pretty sure that was not me. So, my little demi-goddess, we need to work together here. That wall won’t keep that witch down for long. I need my astral selves to be in my control.” I felt the baby kick a few times, clearly not liking my demand. This kid had to be a girl. Her capacity for vengeance was too closely aligned with mine.
“Little demi-goddess, Mommy needs you to listen. Take a nap or something. Mommy has this.”
I watched the chaos around me as our teams continued to fight, but still the zombie soldiers continued to resurrect. Yup, Sophia was so not dead.
My heart ached as I looked at my mate, still not healed but still swinging his sword.
And then the wall was suddenly thrown almost a mile into the air and exploded under Sophia’s angry force. She and the soldiers sprung to their feet, as menacing and angry as ever. The soldiers returned to fighting, and Sophia returned to levitating and glaring bloody-murder at me. Her first magick orb came wicked fast, but instead of attacking me, she blasted through Zora’s shield and put a massive hole in Alexi’s chest and stomach.
“Nooooo!” Zora screamed, or was that me?
“Papa!” Luka, Drako, and Xander roared.
“Alexi!” Tristan’s wounded cry made me shiver at the pain in that one word.
Luka, Drako, Xander, Tristan, and every vampire Alexi had turned would be feeling the bone-deep excruciating pain of a lost sire. His grandchildren would feel some pain from the severed link, but it wouldn’t be as debilitating as the direct bloodlines. After Alexi’s near-death months ago, Alexi had made his sons and Tristan train to fight through the pain. They knew better than to let grief and rage blind them now.
“Oh God, no,” I whispered. I felt such a sick, dizzying emptiness as Alexi dusted and vaporized in front of us. Raw anguish consumed me. I had no idea how Alexi’s direct bloodlines could fight through their grief and the physically debilitating pain. I didn’t even try to contain my rage or my demon, even though I knew how dangerous out-of-control emotions were at this point.
I felt my numerous eyes and the eyes of my astral selves bleed to black. It was only then that I felt the ability to tap into the senses of my numerous astral selves. Now I had sight, smell, hearing, and touch from varying vantage points. I felt immense, furious power coursing through every pore of my bodies. It was addictive, dark, and filled with pure vengeance. I welcomed it. I embraced the darkness as my astral selves continued to levitate over the battlefield.
With every bit of that power, my astral selves and I, in unison, lobbed magick orbs at Sophia. Magick orbs, whose size and potency I had never had in my repertoire, pummelled Sophia. She screamed long and loud, the most horrific sound, as the orbs violently tore her apart. Her body started to vaporize for agonizing seconds until she was totally obliterated.
I was still vibrating with so much anger that I wanted to resurrect the bitch and do it again.
Suddenly, a roar like a wounded animal split the air as Adam came barreling toward us.
Xander, his wound almost completely healed, moved at vampiric speed and intercepted him. While I was probably more equipped to handle a zombie Adam, I knew that Xander was intent on protecting me and needing to seek his own revenge, so I let him get his macho on.
Adam threw plasma orbs at Xander, one after another, in manic, crazed succession.
Xander deflected each orb with lightning-fast slashes and swipes of his sword. He was relentless and fought with a berserker-like rage. I loved watching him fight. He was pure poetry in motion. And then Xander advanced on Adam with a precision and skill that was breathtaking as he sliced and diced his ass into eight grotesque chunks.
Tristan hit Adam’s butchered pieces with a torch of fire. This time the pieces dusted and vaporized. There was nothing left for zombie Adam to come back from.
“Fuck yeah!” Xander growled, his voice filled with both anguish and fury. “Now we know how to kill these fuckers,” Xander telepathically said to our teams. “Luka, Zora, and Apollo liquify. I will cut. Alexandra, do your acid-blood thing. Tristan, Drako, and Drago, torch the fuck out the pieces or liquid messes.”
After that, we systematically and meticulously took out Cedric, Nicholai, and Malachi, and then we destroyed the rest of Adam’s army. Malachi had tried to run, morphing into his mist form, but Zora wrapped her shield around him in a tight ball, making the ball smaller and smaller until there was nothing left of the mist or Malachi.
As my astral projections dissipated, I descended from levitating, and I settled next to Xander. Even as tears from the loss of Alexi filled my eyes and my heart still ached painfully in my chest, I was suddenly so relieved that my mate was safe. I wanted nothing more than to hold him close. I came so close to losing him today. Too damn close.
If it wasn’t for this baby, my little demi-goddess, we wouldn’t have had a chance against those bastards. I couldn’t wait to meet this baby. She was going to be a total badass. I was so sad that Alexi wouldn’t be here to meet his amazing grandchild.
***
Two days after the big battle, the weight of the sadness from Alexi’s death still lingered over all of us. Luna, Danika, Meredith, and the rest of the family returned to the castle almost immediately after the battle and their safety was assured.
Despite what we had been feeling, our team of Xander, Apollo, Tristan, and I had left for New York minutes after our fight to clean up the mess that Malachi and Sophia had made there. Unfortunately, more people died than should have because we took too long in getting there. Still, we cleaned up the virus that they had created, and we were confident that this illness would go down as one of those unsolved world viruses.
Tonight was the first time we’d had a full family meal since Alexi’s death. The children, Tristan, Meredith, Owen, and his brothers were still at the castle. While there is no such thing as a funeral service for an immortal, tonight was the closest we came to one.
It started at the dinner table. We all told stories of our favorite encounter with Alexi. And most of us had several stories to tell. After all, Alexi had shaped and molded all of our lives in some way.
We ate, we joked, we reminisced, we laughed, and some of us even cried. We spent almost six hours between the dining room and later drifting into the drawing room, each of us remembering and celebrating Alexi.
At one point, Zora went to the piano and played Alexi’s favorite Beethoven piece. Xander sang Whitney Houston’s “You were Loved.” And somehow, we all came away smiling, hugging, and just happy to have known such a great man.
I had no doubt that Luka would insist we all maintain Alexi’s moral code for our family.
“No longer will we live under the violent, lethal weight of the Petrov legacy,” Luka announced. “Papa wanted better for us, and after his sacrifice, we owe him our lives and have an obligation to live that better life he fought so hard to give us.”
We nodded and drank a final toast to Alexi…Papa…Pop-pop…and mentor to all of us.