Crimson Dawn (39 page)

"You won’t have long to gloat, Tristan. My wife is going to kick your ass."

Tristan snarled, and his face shifted when Irulan called me her wife. Irulan took the opportunity to goad him even farther.

"What, does it bother you to hear me call her my wife?" She smiled and drew her lips back, so Tristan could see her fangs. "My mate. Does it pain you to know you lost her to a woman? What kind of man are you?"

Tristan hissed and gripped the sides of the throne he was sitting in. "Shut your mouth, dyke, before I shut it for you."

Fazion turned to face him. "You may be important to the Djin for the moment, but he has a contingency plan. I don't care what she says. Be assured, if you lay a finger on my cousin the vow is null. Every Sidhe in the room will attack you as one."

Irulan laughed and kept throwing barbs. "How does it make you feel to know that it's my bed she'll sleep in every night…my waist her legs will be wrapped around as we make love?"

Irulan leaned back in her throne as Tristan jumped up and began pacing back and forth between us, cussing bloody murder.

"You bitch!" He yelled as he closed the spaced between us. "You'd choose a god-damned dyke over me? You actually mated with her?!! She's not even a Vampire. Do you know what my father is going to say? What my grandfather will think about me?"

He pointed a shaky finger at me as he talked. "You don't mean it. You can't. She’s just got you confused with her Faerie glamour."

I laughed. "I'm part Sidhe. She can’t glamour me, Tristan. I-LOVE-HER," I said slowly putting emphasis on each word. "God, you're pathetic. Face it, you aren't good enough for me. You never were."

Tristan dropped his head. "No," he countered. "You were never good enough for me.” He flashed forward and pulled me free of the Manticores that were holding me. With no more than a flick of his wrist, he sent me sailing across the room to land in a heavy suit of armor.

The metal caved as the force of my body slammed into it. It hurt like hell, but at least I was away from the guards. I was working on freeing myself from the twisted sheets of metal, when Tristan was there hauling me onto my feet.

"Your family thinks it's so much better than the Meriwethers. My father was so happy when Hadrian agreed to our dating. If only he could see you now, he'd see how wrong he was."

Another flick of his wrist sent me sailing back in the direction I came from. This time I barreled into the floor, sliding across it, until the lowest step of the dais stopped me. Irulan hurried to help me up. "Please tell me this is part of your strategy," she said.

"Actually no, the fucker is that strong." Obviously, I wasn't going to win this fight on sheer strength alone. I didn’t need to throw a single punch to know that. I had to draw him into a power struggle and just pray that I stronger than he was.

When he charged me this time, I was ready. I reached out with my mind and grabbed him right out of the air, freezing him in place. "You didn't honestly think I would come after you without a few tricks of my own, did you?"

I powered up, and laughed at the shocked expression on Tristan's face when he realized how much I'd changed.

"Yeah, I know, right. You did me favor by almost killing me, Tristan. I might have never known all I was capable of if Irulan had never given me her blood."

Tristan growled and let his body complete the shift to feral. "You're not the only one that's changed, Valeria. I told you in Charleston, be careful. Don't hurt my feelings." He released his power. The sheer magnitude of it not only knocked the wind out of me, but also had every onlooker and spectator in the hall scrambling for cover.

His magic felt like cold fingers reaching out for me, not at all like the feel of the Fae magic that was so new to me. Tristan laughed and began feeding power into my hold bombarding my mind with wave after wave of his twisted energy. Tainted and colored with hurt, pain, and death, his powers were wrong on every level. I knew why they called him an Abomination. This went against everything that nature planned for us.

I let go of him and wiped my hands on my pants as if I could get rid of his taint that way. "What's the matter, Val? Am I too much for you to handle?"

As I settled into a defensive crouch and cleared my mind, I prepared myself for the fight of my life. "Abomination," I hissed, as he came closer. "I don't know what you've done to yourself, but I will stop you."

"One last chance, Valeria. Are you going to stop this silliness and come back to me?"

"Go fuck yourself!"

I caught the first ball of fire in the palm of my hand and held it there for a few seconds. "Is this the best you've got?” I tossed the flaming orb back at him and watched as it dissipated before it even made contact.

"No, it's not.” His hand shot forward and a crackling bolt of power arched through the air towards me. I yelped and dodged out of the way just in time, but that's what he wanted. As I moved, he moved with me, and we both ended up in the same place.

While I had been paying attention to the energy bolt, he was watching me. He caught me completely off guard with a booming fist to my midriff. I doubled over in pain. Then his elbow to the back of my head drove me to my knees.

As I went down, I reached out and pulled his leg out from under him. We both ended up on the ground, tangled together as each of us fought to come out on top.

I somehow managed to straddle him and draw my arm back for a blow. He reached up and pressed his palm into the center of my chest.

I screamed as a burning sensation crawled over my skin. Behind me, I heard Irulan gasp as she realized what he was trying to do. He was using his warped Soul Fire spell on me.

I fell back and stumbled away from him, clutching my hands to my chest as if I could hold the burning still and will it not to travel any farther through my body.

I heard Irulan scream and Fazion grunt as he fought to hold onto her. In my mind, I saw Amanda burning to death on her bed. I saw Priest rolling on the ground as his face puckered and blistered and I decided I wasn't going to die like that.

I reached inside, and latching on to the part of me that had acquired the ability to form invisible barriers, I tried to make one of my own. The burning got hotter as the invisible lava spread over me. I wanted to scream, but I wasn’t about to give Tristan the satisfaction. I tried again to form a shield in front of me, but I wasn’t grasping the mechanics. Tristan laughed as I struggled with myself. The sound irritated me more than the burning did and I tried one more time to push the burn away from me.

The third time was the charm. I felt the magic cover me for the briefest of moments, but it was more than enough to block Tristan’s spell. The burning disappeared. When I pulled my hands away, you could clearly see the scorch mark his hand had burned into the fabric of my shirt, but my skin was unmarred, tingling with the magic residue that saved me.

Tristan didn't know what to think. Before he had a chance to regroup, I hurled a massive bolt of black lightning at him. The onyx lighting was easy to manipulate. Fed by the whirlwind of emotions around me, I welcomed every one of them. I knew they’d help keep my ass out of a grave. The bolt caught him in the center of his chest and blew him through the air and into one of thrones.

Tristan and the chair fell backwards off the dais, but he recovered and was on his feet before they hit the ground. "I don't know how you managed to shake off my fire, but it won’t do you any good."

Tristan clenched his teeth, and I felt the surge of power building inside of him. I yelled, "Get out, Irulan!" He was willing to risk everyone in the building just to kill me. I flashed forward and plowed into him with my elbow but it was like hitting a titanium wall. He tossed me aside as if it were nothing.

"Even without the missing piece I need to become the Vessel, you'll never beat me.” He drew his knee up and snapped his foot forward lifting me off my feet and throwing me to the ground. His foot connected with my side shattering bones and sinew with the force.

I rolled over, clutching my side and pulled myself upright. I looked past Tristan and saw Irulan struggling to break free of Fazion and the two Manticores that had her. I pointed at Fazion and yelled, "Whatever you do, don't let her go!"

Dragging the back of a hand across his mouth, Tristan laughed, "Well isn't that sweet. Too bad she'll become a widow so soon after becoming a wife.” He balled his fist up, and blue flames engulfed them. His arm snapped forward aimed directly at my head. It took everything I had to stay still and let his blow land.

Hand-to-hand combat was good. As long as he wasn't powering up, everyone else was safe. The biting flames tore into the side my face, searing my flesh to the bone. I could feel the flow of cool air on the inside of my jaw and knew there was nothing but bone left on that side of my face.

I drowned out Irulan’s desperate yells and focused on Tristan’s cocky swagger as he walked over to me and grabbed me by the throat. "You have got to be the biggest glutton for punishment I have ever seen."

He lifted me straight up into the air and slammed me down into the cool tiles covering the floor. The marble tiles splintered and broke as my body tore through them. It felt like every bone in my body was broken, but I didn't feel a thing. Either I was in shock or another ability was rearing its head inside me, and it wanted desperately to come out and play.

I lay there in the crater and started laughing. The laugh was a gurgling, choking sound, but it was a laugh nonetheless. As my body shook from the chuckles, I thought, "This is so cool!” Even without the fresh blood I would normally need to jumpstart my body’s healing process, I could feel the bones beginning to knit themselves back together. Tristan looked down at me as if I'd lost my sanity. The entire room got quiet as they wondered what in the hell was wrong with me.

As I lay there looking up at the ceiling, it dawned on me. I needed Tristan to blow his cool. I wanted an explosion. As long as Irulan and her people could contain the blast, I was sure of what I had to do.

I lowered my shields long enough to tell Irulan what I wanted, then climbed out of the hole I was in. When I got up, Tristan actually looked scared.

"What the hell is going on…?” he mumbled, taking a small step away from me.

"I'll tell you what's going on.” I visualized myself standing behind him and there I was. I grabbed him in a full nelson and leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "You're about to die, Tristan."

Whipping my head forward, I head-butted him to the ground. Tristan rolled over onto his back and looked up at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. "That's not possible," he muttered as he watched the muscles and skin of my face knit together.

"Anything's possible, Tris, you should know that.” I hurled a glowing orb of black energy at him. This time he couldn't brush it away. It hit him dead on, knocking the wind out of him.

I smiled as he struggled to climb to his feet. "No, see it's not going down like this," he blustered with a hand pressed to his burned chest. "I refuse to let you win!" I felt it when Tristan began powering up again. His energy was growing by leaps and bounds at an impossibly fast rate. I should have been running for cover, but I was completely at ease with the situation, confident that what I was doing was the right thing. I glanced at Irulan and Fazion. Both of them nodded their heads and I braced myself.

Tristan was so enthralled in stockpiling his energy that he didn't even notice the exchange. "You can’t win, Tristan," I said, needling him farther. "Power down and give it up. If I talk with my C.O., I might be able to get them to spare your lifeblood."

Tristan scoffed at me and spat a mouthful of blood on the ground. "Fuck you, Val. If I can't have you, no one can."

"Oh my god, I know you just didn't go there," I said in a fit of laughter. "Dude, that was so cliché. I mean, come on."

If a scientist was there and could have measured the blast, they would have found out it was ten times stronger than the blast that leveled Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.

As the white-hot power rolled over me, I looked around the room. Over three hundred Sidhe had their arms held out using everything they had to contain the massive amounts of energy that he was generating. Some had blood running from their noses from the sheer pressure of fighting to maintain the barrier they had cocooned around us.

But me, I stood there getting hammered by Tristan's energy as if it were nothing. Even if I stood there all day, it wouldn't have made so much as a scratch on me. The Tuathas didn't have all day. If I didn't do something, their barrier was going to buckle. I don't know how it happened, but my body began absorbing the massive amounts of power. Just like that day in my garage with Marcus, my body was channeling the excess energy, funneling it inside of me to my own internal storeroom. Looks like I was a Vampire in more than one-way now.