Chapter Eleven #2
He lifts one hand and gestures. From behind one of the cars, a tall, lanky redhead steps out, carrying a laptop like it's a weapon. Ruaidhrí 'Ru' Tiernan. Púca shifter. Hacker. Trickster in every sense of the word, online and offline.
He grins wide when he spots me and throws a wink. Then his gaze flicks to Maeve.
"Chose the wrong side, druid. Wouldn't wanna be you right now," he says, his accent thick and teasing, every word laced with bite.
Maeve spits something in Gaelic under her breath. Ru laughs and keeps walking.
He leans in beside Darius, opens the laptop, and shows him something while whispering in a language I don't recognize. Not English nor Gaelic. Something older.
Darius nods a few times, then looks at Maeve.
Before he can speak, Kayden groans loudly. "Oh no. Are we doing PowerPoint now? This might be the most boring standoff I've been through. Can we skip to the fighting part?"
Astrid folds her arms, voice flat. "Seconded."
Darius doesn't acknowledge either of them. His gaze is on Maeve.
"Maeve O'Cairn. You've helped them. You've bound a nymph to two vampires in marriage under the laws of nature."
He says it like a judge passing sentence.
Maeve lifts her chin. "It's not against the laws. And you can't hurt me, Satyr. You know that."
"I do," Darius says, calm as frost. "Hurting someone physically is crude. There are far better ways to… destroy a life."
The cold in his voice makes my skin prickle.
"As of now," he continues, "you are dismissed from the research team you've been working with. Your contributions will be removed. Your grants frozen."
I blink. That doesn't sound like much, but Maeve recoils like she's been struck.
"You can't," she says, suppressed outrage in her voice. "I work for nature. What you're doing goes against everything you stand for. Against your oath."
"I do care about the marine project you've been nurturing for the last eight years. It is… promising," Darius responds with the same frosty calm. "That's why my foundation is donating four million dollars to accelerate it."
Maeve's mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
"However," Darius adds, voice edged, "you won't be part of it. You'll be erased completely." And then, colder still: "If you continue helping them, I'll make sure you're erased from everything you touch."
Maeve turns to us, then back to him, her face pale, hands shaking. No weapons, no blood, just precision cruelty cutting out the one thing she's built her life around.
Darius turns to my husbands. "Ewan Asher Darrow. Alasdair Darrow."
"What? You're going to steal our lunch money too?" Kayden snaps, grin sharp and empty of humor.
"You have no idea what kind of enemy you've made," Darius says, almost bored.
Then his eyes come back to me, and something softer breaks through.
"We made a promise, you and I. I gave you the ring.
You said yes." His gaze drops to the band on my hand.
"This is a blip in our story that's meant to last centuries, my nymph.
I wish you'd come with me and spared the bloodshed. But now… their fates are sealed."
I step closer to the barrier. "Darius, please. For whatever we had—don't. Let me go."
His eyes hold mine, deep and aching. "That is the one thing I can't do."
Then he reaches through.
His skin withers the instant it meets the ward, gray and cracking, but he pushes anyway until his fingertips brush mine. His eyes never leave my face.
The urge to answer that touch is unbearable, but I don't take his hand. I don't pull away either.
"That's it." Kayden charges.
The world detonates.
A crossbow bolt shrieks from behind the cars—thunk—straight into Kayden's shoulder. He staggers, snarling, still driving forward.
Astrid moves like she was waiting for him to be reckless. She whips a glass bottle from her coat and lobs it high over the ward, arcing above Darius's line.
Crack. Tomas clips it midair. The bottle explodes, and wildbane powders down like toxic snow.
Coughs. Shouts. A body drops. Wheezing everywhere.
Darlene clamps a hand over her mouth, sways, and still manages to bark, "Hold back—"
Thunk. Astrid's throwing axe buries into her side.
Darius's people open fire even as the wildbane folds some of them to their knees.
Asher yanks me behind him. "No," I snap, tearing free and sprinting to Kayden. He's clutching his shoulder, feral with pain, still angling for Darius.
Darius steps sideways, braced to meet him. Crack. He jolts back, hit in the arm.
Johnny lunges, trying to shield Darius, loyal to the last.
A hunting rifle cracks—bam—and Johnny goes down hard, rolling with a raw scream as half his shin explodes into blood and bone. It's too deliberate to be stray fire. It must have been Jace's revenge shot.
Ru doesn't waste a second. The laptop clatters to the dirt as his form ripples, stretches, then collapses into something monstrous. A black hound bursts forward, massive, eyes like coals, a snarl tearing from its throat as it prowls toward the barrier.
Thud. Astrid's axe embeds in the ground where the beast had been a heartbeat ago. The hound veers off, fast, circling.
I drop over Kayden, shielding him. The skin around the bolt is darkening. Damn it. They used black hawthorn, an herb poisonous to vampires. It burns them from the inside out.
Shots hiss past. Glass bursts. Car alarms wail. The hound howls. I cover Kayden with my body and taste dust, metal, and wildbane that makes me weak.
I try not to breathe.
"Nobody harms her!" Darius bellows, planting himself in front of me as I shelter Kayden. It's madness.
"Up," I grit, hauling Kayden to his feet. "Move!"
Asher is there, firing clean and controlled from a revolver as we fall back toward the house.
"Line up ahead of me!" I shout.
We run. Slam through the door. It bangs shut. A bolt punches into the wood a heartbeat later.
Outside there's more shouting. Darius's order. The gunfire dies. Engines rev. Tires peel away.
Asher lowers his gun, breathing hard. "They're pulling back," he says.
The silence rings. This isn't the end. This was just the opening shot.