36. CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 36
Noa
The great hall was worse than I’d imagined, echoing with the loneliness of a crypt, long forgotten. I shuddered at what felt like boney fingers crawling up my spine. Around the raised dais, thick shadows hovered, allowing only a glint of bronze—a slice of reflected light, warning me of the sacrificial fire bowl where Amal burned the alpha skins. Where she tried to destroy the wolves.
A stench like rotting meat bothered my nose, bare whiffs that had my head turning in different directions, tracking down the source. The reek bounced from every corner, followed by the sweet scent of candles—a sickening white lily scent, the symbol of purity, innocence, and beauty.
A tall candle sconce tipped, clattering to the stone floor, and as if to deny the scent, a broken candle rolled drunkenly.
Angel stared, not at the movement, but through the surrounding murkiness.
Slowly, I reached over my shoulder, readied an arrow. “What do you see?” My lips barely moved.
“What do you sense?” she answered back.
I sensed…
“Illusion.” Raising the bow, I sighted down the arrow shaft, searching for a wavering light. This hall disoriented, the way the witch cave had, with the Gemini Witches sitting on golden thrones and the torchiers guttering with shifting light.
Something was here.
An energy coiled beneath the floor like the penultimate predator, mesmerizing with a dread that had me glancing at Angel. She was placing one foot in front of the other, turning as she stared through the dulling light.
The energy shifted, moving from beneath the floor to the walls, a shadow seeking an outlet. I thought of the hybrids that had chased Njal through the tunnel beneath High Citadel. The shadows… a chill wind touched my face, ancient and dry. A scouring rasp that sent a tremor through me.
“Show yourself,” I ordered.
A brittle laugh echoed from the surrounding dark.
“Hybrid,” Angel warned.
Anger tingled against my palms, mixing with the sweat that slicked the bow. I resettled my grip. “What do you want?”
Not that I was interested. An answer would give his location away. And I still wasn’t sure how much of this was real, and what was an illusion cast by Amal. A lure to draw my attention away from the actual threat.
The laugh again, guttural as if the hybrid was no longer a man but entirely wolf.
Angel said, “To the left.”
I turned my head. The bow moved with me; the bowstring was tight against my cheek. My fingers curled with the delicate hold I’d learned decades ago. Let the bowstring sing to you, an instructor had advised.
But that advice fled as the hybrid emerged from the shadows, the way the moon emerges from behind thick clouds. There and not there until the very real wreck of black, wiry fur came into focus. The wolf was six feet tall, with long legs and a sunken stomach beneath the boney rib cage. Foul breath wrinkled my nose. Chipped, yellowed canines curved like scythes. The eyes were red—not bloodshot, not weary from lack of sleep. A vampire’s eyes. Glowing coals in a soulless dark.
He circled, maintaining a distance between us—a taunt? A strategy—because I could syphon? Drain the life from him if he got too close?
Angel stood at my back. “He draws your attention,” she whispered.
“While the attack comes from behind,” I said. “How many?”
“Enough to get the job done. They’re not here, yet.”
“Buying time?”
“Clock’s ticking,” she said. “Don’t hesitate.”
The bow creaked as I drew back. The bowstring cut into my fingertips. I aimed for the left eye—my tribute to Angel—although I doubted that she’d see it my way. But from where I stood, with the hybrid turning his head toward me, I had a clean shot. If I missed the eye, I’d hit close to the left ear. His throat. The mass of his body. A shot to any or all would slow the creature down long enough for Angel to strike.
Black lips curled upward, exposing pink gums. Slather pooled and dribbled from the matted black hair, spiking from the massive jaws.
He growled, a low threat, and something primal in me jerked with the urgent need to run, to throw aside the bow and find a door to slam, a hiding place where I’d be safe.
I wouldn’t run, though. What I felt was nothing more than Amal’s magic, bleeding through. Playing with her enemies before she tired of the game.
And the creature she sent was horrendous beyond any expectation, not wolf, not human, but something in between. The product of a tormented mind, rotting through centuries filled with vengeance and the desire to step back into the light.
Demanding obedience… or destruction.
“Ready?” I asked Angel, my voice level.
She nodded. I released the bowstring. The arrow thwacked wetly, sinking into the soft eye socket.
The creature howled. Angel exploded into movement. I drew and shot a second time, blotting out the unnerving human scream as the wolf reared back, flinging his head from side-to-side, trying to dislodge the arrows. But he still had one good eye, and his gigantic claws gouged solid stone, leaving white marks as he charged. I couldn’t take the risk in getting close to him. He would crush me with those jaws, those massive claws. I dashed to the side, spun and nocked another arrow, silver-tipped but having little effect beyond slicing through that heavy pelt.
But from the side, the Blackfish alpha charged. Angel vaulted to his back, gripped with her knees and plunged the sword into the shaggy head. She needed all of her weight to force it through while blood first seeped, then gushed.
When the animal fell, she jumped to the side. Braced her foot to pull the sword free as a new rumbling vibrated through the hall.
Arrows pelted down like bloody rain.
“Run,” she ordered as men dressed in the dull uniforms of Amal’s conscripted army barreled down the center of the hall. Not an aisle, since no benches or pews blocked the way. They were from Cariboo, cold-eyed and hunting for captives and not victims. Amal wanted us alive. Or she wanted me alive. Angel held little importance.
But Brin had escaped Levi and warned the hunters, judging by the group charging toward us.
Angel was bent low and running, skirting the edge of the shadows. I scooped an arrow from the floor and shot wildly. Scooped again and again. Saw the enemy for what it truly was. Not men but corruptions with one thought. Wolves who once were normal, and now charged like mindless beasts, driven by beating hearts that would not stop.
Until I stopped them.
Unholy screams echoed from the stone walls, reverberating with the eerie synchronicity of the Gemini Witches and their twitching lips. The tumbling words. How much of this was Amal’s illusion? Her wet dream of horror and destruction?
One man went down. As Angel raced by, she yanked her knife from his chest and threw it toward a second man. She’d had two wicked knives in sheaths at her thighs. Easy to imagine she had more hidden, this dark angel seeking vengeance. Not only for the sins of Amal. The sins of the kings and queens. But the sin that had killed her brother in front of her when she’d been eight years old, muffling her cries, letting the blood pour from her eye.
My arrows thudded with sickening regularity. Conscripts fell. The clamor of scuffing feet and keening lessened enough to hear the moaning from the shadows, more accidental than deliberate, but enough to set the murky darkness churning. Through the gloom, I recognized a shape against a wall, arms outstretched. Gods—I’d seen men in that position before, hanging in the great hall at High Citadel. Men pinned like Julien before I freed him.
Antoine… Barend’s sire? The vampire Cariboo talked about? The vampire emissary who’d disappeared months ago?
Or Grayson, my love? My mate?
In my haste to get to him, I didn’t see the broken candle sconce and stumbled. Still off balance, I heard the feathered whistle of an arrow and failed to avoid it. My knees buckled beneath the impact. Something wet ran down my back, but… no pain?
Shock, most likely. I pushed to my feet. Drew the bow and searched for the wavering glint of magic. A way to destroy the cloaking illusion. Behind me, Angel grunted, her boots scuffling, scraping leather against stone.
“Where is it?” Was I screaming? Did it matter? I glimpsed the shimmer of magic, a flashing taunt, and let the arrow fly.
Shadows dropped like shards of broken gray glass, scattering across the floor, revealing the wall and the vampire—or what was left of him. The depravity twisted my stomach. The cruelty beyond human imagination. Immortal vampires withstood the loss of limbs because the limbs would regenerate. The loss of fingers… eyes… sanity was the most at risk.
The vampire struggled to lift his head. Black, clotted blood obscured the features of his face, other than his mouth. The faint, ruby light in one eye. Of course, she’d leave one eye whole, want him to see his torment. See those who came to gawk and vomit on the floor. A warning to others not to cross a centuries-old queen.
She was the monstrosity the vampires created once the wolf kings and Pelonie were done. I saw nothing redeeming here. Nothing worth my compassion for an ancient queen turned against her will, and the ice in my spine turned to stone.
“Shit, Noa!” Angel stood behind me, whipping the quiver from my shoulder and tugging up the shirt beneath. The heavy wool. Her fingers prodded my back, searching more worriedly with the passing seconds. “Where…”
She jerked me around. “Where are you wounded?”
I shook my head and said, “I don’t think I am.”
“Blood runs down your back.”
“Not mine.” Kneeling down, I dumped arrows from the quiver and reached inside. “They killed the blood bag.”
I pulled it out, Barend’s blood dripping between my fingers, and held it toward Antoine, where he hung on the wall.
The red eye flickered. Consciousness remained. His torn lips twitched as he drew them back.
“Maybe there’s enough left.”
It was possible. I studied the bulge at the bottom, the remaining blood. Angel held Antoine’s head while I held the bag to the vampire’s lips. He was too weak to do more than open his mouth. I rubbed blood on his lips, his broken fangs, the way I’d helped Julien when he’d been wounded.
The vampire struggled to swallow.
“Do we take him down from the wall?” I asked Angel.
“The restraints hold him upright. If he collapses…”
Dribbling more blood into the gaping mouth was like feeding a baby bird. His mouth kept opening, begging for more.
“I’m sorry,” I told the vampire. “But those assholes shot it, and the rest leaked out.” And now I was babbling, discussing the blood supply with an ancient monster as if every Monday ended like this one. “Get strong enough, please. Strong enough to call them, reach them however you guys talk to each other, because I’m sure they’ll come and help you more than I can.”
“Noa,” Angel cautioned. “You want more bastards like Barend to come?”
“Call for Set, too,” I said, and studied the wreck on the wall. His pallor had… lessened? “She’s an ally. And a sire.”
The vampire—Antoine—opened his mouth. I dribbled the last of the blood onto his tongue. My hands were sticky against the bag that crinkled beneath my grip, as if I was wringing it dry. “Do you know where she took the Alpha of Sentinel Falls?” I asked. “Was he ever here, in this hall?”
A guttural sigh croaked from Antoine’s throat.
When a similar sound echoed from the wounded conscript who hadn’t yet died, Angel straightened, returning a minute later, dragging a man by the arm and letting him flop.
“Help me,” she said, working on the iron manacles. I supported Antoine’s head while she lowered the vampire until he was sitting upright. But when she kicked the conscript to rouse him, I watched and did not comment.
“Feed him,” she ordered, a knife not at the conscript’s throat but flipping over and under her fingers like a magician’s trick. He got her message enough to cringe back.
Angel dropped to one knee. Sliced through the zip tie around the prisoner’s wrists as she said, “Put your wrist in his fucking mouth and don’t take it out until I tell you.”
“B-b-but…”
Her grin was feral. “I won’t let him kill you. I give my word.”
Antoine’s ruined hands clawed as he held the offered wrist and I needed to look away, searching the wall for any lingering sign of Grayson. Had he been here?
I closed my eyes, centered my mind in the faille void, and found the tether that would always remain between us. Visualized a glowing white thread between his heart and mine. Grayson… please… hear me. Answer me. Tell me how to find you.
I rocked back and forth, holding out, clawing at the answering silence.
Please, please, please…
And I heard Amal laugh.