Chapter 34 Saskia
By the time Lucan bounds back out of the alleyway, every willing citizen has a weapon of their own.
The rest of the children have been ushered back into the safety of some housing complexes on the other side of the city, far away from the fire, by teachers and caregivers.
The only one who remains is Odette, currently arguing with her mother and father.
“But I want to help!”
“No, Odette.” Her father stands over her with his arms crossed. “You’re too young. Too small. And you’ve been weaker, ever since…”
He doesn’t have to finish that sentence. Ever since the Eleventh Guardian drank her blood and sent her to the Healing Center. My chest burns at the injustice, but Odette tilts her chin up.
“Which is why I want to kill him.” She balls her little hands into two tight fists, and I can’t help but feel like if we’re lucky, she’ll get to meet a young werewolf with her same temperament. Despite being different species, I’m sure Odette and Milo would be fast friends.
“Hey.” With Lucan watching me, I bend down until I’m at the same level as her and gently hand her one of my knives from my belt, watching her fingers wrap around the hilt. “I need you to go protect all the other children. Don’t let a Guardian get into those housing complexes. Okay?”
Odette stares at the knife with gleaming eyes that reflect the firelight. “This is for me?”
“For you,” I confirm with a nod, shooting a glance up at her parents, who sigh. “Because you’re a warrior. Brave and fearless. And they are going to need you.”
I don’t tell her that if we win this, I’ll do everything in my power to make more antivenom and give her a second chance at a full lifetime.
With a tightened jaw, Odette nods, finally turning to follow her mother and father back into the safety of the alleyways. But she casts one last look back at me and says, “The Wall might suffocate you in your dreams, but it looks like you’re bringing it down now.”
I follow her pointed finger to where smoke is swelling around the borders of the city, knowing she’s right. Then she disappears into the shadows after her parents.
Finally, Lucan and I face the line of people waiting for our say-so, Malcolm and Walter in the front. Part of me wants to scream at them to run, hide, take cover… but I know I’d be here, too, even if I’d never turned into a vampire. Defending my city. Defending the innocent and weak and young.
And there’s nothing else to say to them. They’ve decided this for themselves.
Unlike the Guardians, I will never take away their choice.
With a final nod at each other that fills my heart to the brim, stretching it beyond its perimeters, Lucan and I break into a run.
The housing complexes, Childcare Center, Educational Institution, and Sentries Station blur past us. Within seconds, we’re bounding and leaping over the courtyard where the Choosing takes place, whizzing beneath the shadows of all the empty balconies.
As we near the front double doors where two sentries usually stand guard, I can see the first signs of vampire venom stealing over the wood, like frost overtaking a leaf. Cowards. Trying to block us out by fossilizing the Blood Moon Palace itself.
But they’re too late.
With a final leap, Lucan shifts in midair, his form growing until he’s the Monster through and through, smashing through the parts of the door that are still wooden.
We both land in that long, glamourous hallway on the other side…
But it’s not empty like it was when Arad walked me in after the Choosing. Now, it’s crammed with hundreds and hundreds of sentries, all pointing their rapiers at us with shaking hands.
In the very front, Rosalyn has abandoned her mask of doe-eyed innocence, raising her blade with a heavily wrapped shoulder.
Oops. I almost forgot I threw a knife at her the last time we met, but I’m unlikely to forget again any time soon.
Two slits for eyes glare at me from within her helmet, sizzling with hatred.
Well, right back at her.
“Charge!” she screams.
They all storm toward us, a dozen swords slashing in my face, and not even my new shiny eyesight can keep track of all of them at once.
I duck. Whirl. Try to kick the sentries down or push them to the side without actually killing any of them. A slash of pain erupts against my arm, and I cry out, glancing down to find a blade against it, tiny fissures in my skin sprouting from the line of impact.
I send my foot through the sentry’s stomach, but two more blades crack against my back—not slicing all the way through me but landing against me like heavy blows that knock the wind from my lungs, splitting my skin just enough to send vicious stings zinging up my body.
Saskia! Lucan’s vicious snarl fills both my mind and the hallway. My peripheral vision catches him ripping a sword out of a sentry’s grip with his canines, clamping down on his neck, then swinging his body until three or four fall over at once, his fury exploding outward like a physical force.
I’m okay, I pant. They’re not strong enough to get to my heart.
Because that’s the only thing that really matters.
The rest of me can crack and bleed all it wants as long as my heart is okay, but I can’t ignore the fact that these sentries are slowing us down significantly.
Where the hell are the Guardians? The way they’re hiding behind an army of humans instead of coming out to meet us face to face…
it fuels the rage pounding through each of my movements.
Again and again, I twirl and kick and jump and dance, trying to make any kind of headway against the horde of bodies and weapons that just keep coming and coming, until—
CRACK.
My vision stumbles. As if from the end of a long tunnel, Lucan roars my name.
I sway on my feet, my fingers drifting upward to touch the blade lodged halfway through my neck…
and then my gaze slides upward to find Rosalyn panting in my face, a triumphant glimmer shining through the slit in her helmet as her hands grip the pommel of her sword that she used to kill Claudia.
“Got you,” she says sweetly.
My vision begins to grow dark frost around the edges, and I teeter backward, trying to mouth Lucan’s name.
He’s barreling toward me from the other end of the hallway, but several blades are sticking from his shoulders and hide, slowing him down.
At the same time, a new sound rolls into the hallway from behind us, rattling into my eardrums like a distant storm: stomping and shouting and the clanging of new metal as the citizens catch up to us and join the fray.
A safe, familiar face charges into view.
Malcolm.
His eyes widen as he takes in Rosalyn and me, and then he’s roaring just as viciously as Lucan, sweat already gleaming on his face as he swings his own sword toward her.
“Get your hands off my partner, you bitch!”
Rosalyn sucks in a breath, wrenches her blade from my neck, and tries to turn it against him. Through the last of my narrowing vision, I watch the tip of her rapier slice against his leg—
But Malcolm’s already sending his straight into her chest.
I don’t watch Rosalyn fall, but I feel her body thump to my feet, and the soft fingers that belong to Malcolm gripping my face moments before warm, rough hands replace them.
“Saskia.” Lucan shakes my shoulders, human again. “Stay with me, baby.”
“Okay.” It’s all I can think to say as I blink away the fog. Strangely, his face is coming back into focus as my tissue stitches back together like jagged pieces of tile.
Lucan gingerly runs his thumb over the wound when it closes.
“Amazing,” he breathes.
I blink at him, rallying a deep breath and noting the wounds peppering his own body with clinical awareness. “Good thing yours heal just as quickly.” I nod at how each of them is already clotting over. “None of those blades hit anything vital?”
Lucan shakes his head. “Nope. Tough werewolf skin.” He turns to Malcolm with a fond, “Thank you.”
Malcolm nods, panting through clenched teeth. His leg, I notice, is dripping with trails of blood that smell a lot sweeter than Lucan’s, but he just says, “Go. Find the Guardians. We’ll handle the sentries from here.”
With a last glance back as the citizens fight the remaining sentries in a cacophony around us, Lucan shifts back into a werewolf, and we hurry onward.
Where the hell are they? he asks into my mind.
We skid to a halt in the domed antechamber, where two spiral staircases swoop up and around the door to the dining hall. Those paintings of the Twelve Guardians stare down at us from the ceiling, as if watching us get closer and closer.
In answer, I march forward and kick down the door to the dining hall.
Lucan and I step inside, but the place screams of emptiness. Platters of half-eaten food still sit on the table, chairs pushed out haphazardly. No sign of any servants or Chosen Ones. Or Guardians.
This way, I say on a whim, and lead Lucan back out into the antechamber, where the din of the battle between sentries and civilians swells with screams and clangs of metal that make my stomach writhe.
The faster we can get rid of the Guardians, the quicker we can stop the fighting behind us, too.
Left, then right, I tell Lucan, already sprinting away.
This hallway should curl around the dining hall and lead straight to the entrance of—
The north wing. I’d bet anything the Guardians have the pack somewhere in there.
Just like the last time I was here, the massive double doors rise high above my head, made of black and white marble etched in elaborate swirls of gold. In the middle of each door hangs one of those circular, golden knockers.
We don’t waste time knocking or offering our blood, though.
Once again, Lucan uses his brute werewolf strength to slam himself against the doors. Since they’re not wood, they don’t come down immediately, but they do crack right down the middle.
He slams himself into them again. More fractures spiderweb up and down the marble. Again and again, he throws his whole force into it, until the walls themselves are shaking, and the marble comes crumbling down like chunks of black and white snow.
When the dust clears, we have a clear view of the grand hall lined with all those Guardian statues. Immediately, we veer left through the open doors of the throne room—
And stop dead.
Every member of our pack—in human form—is standing rigidly in front of a throne, with a Guardian pressing a blade against each of their throats and several sentries holding rapiers against their backs…
preventing them from shifting. They’d be impaled on the spot if they tried.
Gabriel’s the only one who stands free, wringing his hands off to the side.
In the center of them all, the Third presses his own knife a little deeper into Vivian’s neck, earning a whimper from her that makes me want to slice off the smirk on his face.
“Saskia,” Arad purrs, his eyes roving over me, ignoring Lucan completely. “How lovely of you to finally join us.”