Chapter 32 Saskia
The hearts are spongy in my hand, like old pieces of meat that have long begun to rot.
Lucan beams up at me with such a breathtaking look of adoration all over his face that I almost drop the hearts just to jump into his arms. While the Eleventh Guardian stands there, staring at the vampire corpses in shock, Lucan strides toward me and brushes a finger beneath my chin.
“Such a good girl. Thank you.”
I swallow the dryness in my throat at what I just did—how I snuck up behind the Fourth and Tenth Guardians and punched my hands into their backs until my fingernails found the right organ. “Do you know how hard that was?”
He frowns. “Ripping out their hearts? I know it’s not in your nature.”
The whole time he was fighting the three vampires, we were communicating mind-to-mind, forming a plan of attack where he was the distraction and I was the element of surprise. But loitering in the shadows of the Healing Center, watching them creep closer to him three on one…
“No.” I shake my head and step closer to him, inhaling his woodsy scent that permeates all this too-sweet blood surrounding me. “It was hard to wait until their backs were turned before I helped you.” My eyes flick to his neck, where a gash wraps around the back of his throat. “They hurt you.”
It’s the only reason I was able to do what I did. Part of me still can’t fathom that I actually destroyed a living—no, two living bodies—like that.
But we’re not done. The Eleventh Guardian stands motionless, staring at the lifeless body of the Fourth Guardian in disbelief.
At the weight of our attention, he drags his head up, blinking at us while the rest of his body remains frozen in shock.
Just like the vampire in the catacombs, his eyes trace me, putting the pieces of Arad’s claims together.
“How dare you?” he exhales finally, stepping closer. Lucan throws an arm in front of me, but the Eleventh Guardian doesn’t even seem to notice him anymore. “You think you can turn on us and win? We made you!”
“No,” I hiss, clutching the vampire hearts even tighter. I’m afraid that if the Eleventh Guardian gets ahold of them before we can burn them, he’ll stuff the organs back into the marble corpses at our feet to revive them. “You do not make anything. You hurt and take and destroy.”
The apple in his throat tightens with anger before he puffs out a humorless laugh. “You know nothing about pain and selfishness and destruction. We’ve shielded you from the true horrors of the world. You should be thanking us. You owe us.”
“She owes you nothing but death,” Lucan scoffs.
The Eleventh Guardian cuts his eyes to Lucan as if suddenly remembering he’s there. Then he changes tactics, his arms stretch widely out to the sides as he spins in place to address the horrified crowd.
“Citizens of Xantera. This is what we have shielded you from. This Monster who piles bodies at his feet. And once again, my fellow Guardians and I will slay him—and anyone who aligns with him—to teach you all a valuable lesson: we cannot be defeated.”
Some citizens, however, eye the two vampire bodies with doubt reflecting back in their eyes. The Eleventh Guardian’s confidence slips. Despite Lucan’s protective stance in front of me, he drops into a crouch, eyes trained on my chest, right where my heart is.
“No! Don’t hurt my healer.”
The voice is high-pitched, young, and completely disorienting. I swing my head toward the source, where a small girl scurries out from the shadows of an alleyway.
Before her face even hits the light from the flickering flames licking across the rooftops nearby, I know who she is.
“Odette, stay back!”
I’ve never seen such a stubborn clenched jaw on someone so young. Odette ignores my command, hurries out in front of me, and throws her skinny arm out just like Lucan.
That’s when the Eleventh Guardian’s gaze flicks hungrily down, and my vision goes red when I remember what he did to her.
He was the vampire who snuck out through the catacombs and took her blood in the dead of night. He sent her to the Healing Center with lethargy and dizziness that no one could explain and everyone wanted to ignore.
He’s set her on a track toward a shorter life. So now I have to end his.
But once again, the Eleventh Guardian turns to address the crowd that has begun to form around us, his arms spread wide as if to comfort them. If I attack him now, who knows how many bystanders would get hurt in the fight bound to ensue?
“Do you see how the Monster works?” He jabs a finger in Lucan’s direction.
“Stealing our Chosen Ones from us.” He nods at me.
“Murdering our sentries and Guardians.” He nods at all the bodies around us.
“Manipulating frightened, young girls into joining his cause.” He nods at Odette.
“Burning our city down?” He doesn’t even have to nod at the fire, swelling in size and sending plumes of smoke toward the moon.
“We told you to beware his eyes and resist his howl for a reason!”
Nobody says a single word, but I can taste the fear and uncertainty slicing through the air. Just in the last few weeks, these people saw televised evidence that their Guardians were turning Chosen Ones to stone, yet the evidence is stacked against Lucan, too.
The Eleventh Guardian turns back to us with a sneer, but only for a moment.
“You think you’ve won,” he hisses in a voice low enough that only we can detect. “But I can assure you, this battle is far from over.” His next smile rips across his face. “You might have our humans… but we have your pack.”
Then he’s a blur of motion as he zips back up main street toward the Blood Moon Palace, leaving his fellow Guardians in heaps at our feet.
We all stand stark still, watching his figure get smaller and smaller until the door booms shut again in the distance as he closes himself in, no doubt barricading it so we can’t follow.
Lucan and I stare at each other with eyes full of fear.
The pack.
He doesn’t waste time shifting, much to the further shock of the people around us.
Some scream or shout, but we ignore them.
Tethered to Lucan’s mind once again, I try to spear toward the pack, but we both slam into a barrier so thick and wide that it’s only silence on the other side.
No sign of Vivian, Merrick, or Soren. No hint of what might have happened to them in the catacombs, or of how the Guardians found out about them down there.
No indication of whether they’re alive or dead.
“How is this possible?” I ask, struggling to maintain my hold on the vampire hearts when my body begins to tremble. “How could a vampire block their minds?”
As Odette stares upward in awe, Lucan collapses back into his human form with an unmistakable ripple of grief crossing his eyes.
Grief? Oh no, who…
“It wasn’t a vampire who blocked them,” he says, his tone low enough to split the earth itself. “Only werewolves can do that.”
“But… why would one of the pack block us out?”
The truth whips me in the face, stinging my eyes. Someone in the pack has betrayed us… and I think I know who.
Lucan’s lip curls. “Every mind has its own style, its own signature. I’d recognize that mental block anywhere.”
He doesn’t have to say the name out loud. It clangs from his mind to mine, so loud and crippling that I want to beat it away.
Gabriel.
Hurt and anger punch through me in waves, but I know it’s only an infinitesimal fraction compared to how Lucan feels. Gabriel may have hated me from the very beginning, but he never respected Lucan as alpha, either. And now the rest of the pack is suffering for his treachery.
But how did he defy Lucan’s orders? What does he even have to gain from this? Where’s the pack now?
With a shriek of frustration, I lob both vampire hearts toward the fire spreading from rooftop to rooftop. They sizzle on contact, crumbling to ash, but the satisfaction of successfully eliminating two more vampires never comes.
Not when our friends, our family, our people, are still in danger.
“Odette!” a panicked, fatherly voice calls from the throng of people surrounding us, and snaps Lucan and me back to the present moment as the girl’s parents push to the front. “Come back here right now.” His eyes stay trained on Lucan, untrusting, wary, and scared.
When Odette shakes her head defiantly, her mother shrieks, “He’s the Monster, Odette! Get away from him!”
Murmurs travel across the crowd, and Lucan swivels his head, trying to pick out voices from the sea of faces.
“He’s not the Monster. He’s just a man.”
A few women sigh. “A gorgeous man.”
“No, didn’t you just see him change? He’s a Monster with claws and teeth and fur!”
“I don’t see claws or teeth or fur.”
“Because he’s tricking us, somehow. It’s an illusion!”
“No, he’s just a human. But she helped him!”
“Yeah, she’s definitely not human. She clawed out both of their hearts!”
“Good. The Guardians deserve to die after what they’ve done to our Chosen Ones.”
Some people are shuffling backward, trying to get away from us. Others are pushing their way forward to try to see the Monster with their own eyes.
I lace my fingers through Lucan’s, both of us unsure how to start—how to explain. The chaos around us intensifies like a wave of uncertainty, all of their varying voices like an explosion of flames crackling at the sky.
“Can they be trusted?”
“They might just kill us, too!”
“Or they might save us.”
“We have to save ourselves.”
“No, remember what happened when we tried to do that last time?”
This is nothing like the polite greetings carefully echoed back and forth each morning and night like we’ve always been taught. These are personal opinions. Unsolicited questions. Disagreements. Thinking. Engaging. Trying to change.
Despite the fact that Lucan and I are getting the brunt of it, my heart swells with painful pride to see how far Xantera has come.
And then a voice I’d recognize anywhere speaks up.