Wait for Dusk (24 page)

“Don’t worry,” Rowe purred. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not worried about you. I’m just making sure this stays a private party.”

Rowe lunged at me again with his knife, hoping to get inside my reach so he could bury it deep in my stomach. I caught his hand while I tried to stab him. Unfortunately, the naturi captured my wrist as well, locking us in a deadly stalemate. My arms trembled under the exertion and I gritted my teeth. We were fairly matched in strength, but the ground beneath our feet was wet and frozen, making our footing unsteady. A wrong step and someone could far too easily slip.

“Give it up, Mira,” Rowe snarled between clenched teeth. “Come back to Aurora with me. I promise to do what I can to get you a quick death.”

“The only way I am willing to die is with Aurora’s heart in my hand.”

I tightened my grip on his wrist, hoping to shatter the bone, but it wouldn’t give under my grasp.

“I will kill her. Someday, I will finally kill her.”

“Never!”

A sudden crash of thunder echoed through the forest and the wind picked up. Fat flakes of snow plummeted from the sky, obscuring the woods so that we were trapped in a swirling vortex of frigid white. I could barely make out the wildly dancing flames only a few feet away. I could hear them snapping and crackling as they ate through any nearby brush, but their light was muted by the sudden snowstorm.

Lightning crashed to the ground just a few feet behind me, followed by the ominous sound of cracking wood. A tree had been struck and was breaking apart. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder to see if the tree was about to crash about my shoulders, reconciling myself to the thought that a falling tree would hit Rowe too.

A second roll of thunder was accompanied by a pair of sharp fangs embedding in my left calf muscle. A werewolf had jumped easily over the flames and was now gnawing on my leg like a chew toy. I screamed but didn’t release the naturi. My hands were trapped and there was no way I could easily rid myself of the lycanthrope that wouldn’t take my full concentration.

“Danaus!” I screamed, not caring who thought me suddenly weak. I needed help. I was surrounded and vastly outnumbered.

Coming!
He was close, maybe only a few dozen yards away, but now I could also hear the growling of other lycanthropes. They were blocking his path, keeping him from saving me as I was trapped between a shifter and a naturi with a serious attitude problem.

“Doesn’t look good for you,” Rowe taunted as he twisted his wrist. I was weakening under the pain of the lycan that was tearing through vital muscles.

“Kill them, Mira,” called a familiar voice in musical tones. “Use the bori and kill them all.”

Rowe stilled suddenly at the mention of the bori. He jerked his head around so he could look over his shoulder for his mortal enemy. Nightwalkers were always good fun to destroy, but bori were a totally different matter.

I didn’t hesitate. I couldn’t lose this opening. I reached out for the powers that swarmed around Danaus. With only the barest of nudges, I activated the energy that seemed to lie sleeping around his soul. Something inside of me screamed in pain, blocking out the strain from Rowe and the pain in my leg caused by the lycanthrope. The flames that surrounded us were immediately extinguished and my hold on Danaus’s powers grew stronger. I didn’t question it. I opened my senses as I tightened my hold on Rowe’s arm. The souls of the werewolves in the immediate area glowed like beacons in the darkness. With a loud growl, I directed the powers out from Danaus, enveloping the werewolves around us.

No!
the hunter cried in my brain, but I didn’t stop. We were trapped and Nick was watching me. He expected me to use Danaus’s power. If I didn’t, I feared he would make a bad situation significantly worse. I was locked in a battle of strength with Rowe, and I couldn’t come to Danaus’s rescue if the monster decided to strike. Danaus would hate me, but in the end I figured I was probably saving his life.

The werewolves howled in pain as they writhed on the ground. Rowe stopped fighting me, staring at the werewolf behind me. It thrashed wildly on the ground, whimpering in pain. The naturi released me and jerked his one arm free of my grasp as he backpedaled away. His wide eyes jumped between the wolves that surrounded us. As death grasped them, they shifted back into human form in time for their flesh to split open. Boiling blood came spewing forth, hissing as it touched the snow.

When the last werewolf took its final shuddering breath, I released Danaus from my power. The hunter fell to his knees, his breathing ragged and labored. Using that power was exhausting and a heavy strain on his body after all the fighting he had already done. My own limbs were trembling in pain and fatigue, but I still had to deal with Rowe. It had been tempting to try to boil his blood as well, but more of a struggle to focus on his energy as well as the lycanthropes.

And in truth, I didn’t want to kill him that way. Rowe and I had a history. He had been there at Machu Picchu when I was first captured. He knew me when I had been human. If I was going to kill Rowe, I would do it with my bare hands. It was something we both deserved. Not a death by these seemingly godlike powers that left us detached and feeling somewhat irresponsible.

“You missed your chance,” Rowe said as he struggled to catch his breath.

I shook my head as I shifted my stance to take more of my weight off my wounded left leg. Blood poured down into my boot and pain radiated throughout my leg. “Never.”

Rowe smirked at me. He lurched toward me with his knife slashing at my chest. I raised my own blade as I awkwardly stumbled backward a step. I was unstable on my feet, favoring my left leg still. The blade missed my throat by inches as he turned and threw it through the air. The knife cut through the air with amazing speed until it finally buried itself in Danaus. I screamed as I watched Danaus collapse backward into the bloody snow just a dozen yards away.

At the same time, Rowe ran into a small clearing and threw out his black wings. They immediately caught the rising wind and carried him from the vicinity. With a pain-filled grunt, I limped across the small clearing to where Danaus was slowly pushing up onto his right elbow. The handle of the knife protruded from just below his collarbone. It hadn’t dug deep, as the blade had been caught up in several layers of thick clothing and a heavy leather coat. Kneeling beside the hunter, I pressed one hand against the wound as I yanked the blade from his shoulder. Danaus grunted once but said nothing for several seconds.

“You could have asked,” he said in a low voice after a lengthy silence.

I frowned, biting my lower lip. The scent of his blood filled the night air, awakening the monster than inhabited my own chest, leaving it demanding a fresh meal. I could feel his warm blood against the palm of my hand, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to lick my fingers clean. I wouldn’t feed from Danaus, not even indirectly. I wanted him to remain untouched by my kind. He was above them. He was above it all.

“I couldn’t take that chance,” I replied when I could finally focus on our conversation. Pain started to rise above the need to feed. My body was slowly mending the jagged bite that had been taken out of my leg. “There were too many of them and I was trapped with Rowe. I needed the lycans dead.”

“So you used me?”

“Directing you—”

“Controlling me!” Danaus corrected.

“You could already see all the lycans surrounding us. I wasn’t sure where they all were, and I couldn’t risk searching for them.”

“And Rowe? Why did you spare him?”

“We need him alive.” I lifted my hands from his shoulder and immediately rubbed them in the snow, washing off the blood so I wouldn’t be tempted to take a taste. I had succumbed to enough temptations tonight. “He’s going to help us get closer to the naturi that are in the region. And if it becomes necessary, he can get me closer to Aurora.”

“As her prisoner!”

“Possibly, but it’s better than nothing. The queen needs to be destroyed, but we don’t know how to find her. Even exiled, I have little doubt that Rowe can find his wife-queen in his sleep.”

“That’s insane,” Danaus said, slowly pushing to his feet. Instead of rising with him, I turned and sat down in the bloody snow and mud. My leg throbbed but was mostly healed. The only lycanthropes in the woods were a good distance off, but we weren’t alone. I could feel his energy permeating the air, filling the night like a heavy, perfumed fog. Only Danaus was blissfully unaware of it, and I wanted to keep it that way.

“Head back to the main clearing where we first met,” I said. “Stefan and Valerio should be dragging Ferko back there.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be right behind you. I just need to rest and clean up this mess.”

“Grab a bite?” Danaus said in a nasty voice.

“Not from the dead. Besides, we ruined their blood for anyone else. I’ll burn the bodies and then be right behind you.”

Danaus started to walk back in the direction he had come from and then paused after a few feet. “And Rowe?”

“He won’t be back tonight. We’ll track him down soon, I promise.”

“He needs to be taken care of. He’s too dangerous to leave alive,” Danaus said as he resumed his walk through the woods, the darkness immediately swallowing him up so that he was little more than a disembodied voice.

“I know,” I whispered. Rowe
was
too dangerous to leave alive. I might have once hoped to use him, but that wasn’t going to work. His only goal was to buy his way back into Aurora’s good graces, and his only way of achieving that was through me. I couldn’t take the chance.

Unfortunately. I had bigger concerns waiting for me in the darkness. I was on a deadline to learn to control Danaus’s powers, and I was getting better at it. I could still feel the hunter fighting me, but in each situation he decided not to pull away. We had been desperate, surrounded. There had been no choice if we had any hope of surviving to see the next night.

Bending my right knee in front of me, I rested my right elbow on it and threaded my fingers through my disheveled hair. “What the hell do you want now? I did as you asked. I used his powers instead of my own.”

“And I am so proud of you,” Nick crooned, suddenly appearing before me in the form of my father. The snow crunched beneath his feet as he approached me with a slow, steady gait. It was like he had all the time in the world. We were in a dark, snowy forest surrounded by nightwalkers and lycanthropes. Now wasn’t the time for a little family reunion, but then my life didn’t matter to him.

“What do you want?”

“Just to tell you that you’re close. You just need to try a little harder,” Nick said.

“Try harder?” With my right hand, I tried to push to my feet, but with a slight wave of his hand Nick knocked me back down on my butt. I sat, balling my fists in the snow, barely suppressing the urge to hurl a fireball at him. I was getting over the fact that he looked exactly like my father. There were small differences now that my brain was beginning to pick out. He didn’t walk the same. His gait was too confident and relaxed, as if he were lord and master of all that he saw. There was a twist to his thin lips that made him look like he was just about to flash a smug smile in my direction. And his eyes. They weren’t the soft, loving brown that I remembered. Nick’s eyes were the same shade of purple as mine. Maybe we were father and daughter, but that wasn’t going to stop me from trying to fry his ass the first chance I got.

“You’re struggling to maintain your hold over the would-be bori,” he said. “If he were to really fight you, you’d lose your grip on his powers. That’s not going to do you any good. And what if he comes at you with an attempt to control you? Do you even know how to fight him off?”

“He hasn’t tried to control me. We’ve come to an understanding, which I am continuously breaking just to keep you happy,” I snapped.

“My dear, you aren’t trying to keep me happy. You’re trying to save your own skin.”

“Whatever. At this point it’s the same thing.”

“True.” Nick shrugged, shoving his hands into the pockets of his dark pants. “But I’m not happy yet. Get a firm control on the hunter and then you need to go after the nightwalker.”

“Jabari?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“He’s the only one left that can directly control you. That nonsense needs to be stopped now before one of them discovers what you are truly capable of,” Nick commanded, his expression growing grim for the first time. “I will not have you running rampant through the streets when you should be at my beck and call.”

“Like an obedient dog,” I growled as I struggled back to my feet. Reaching out with my mind, I tapped into all the blood magic that I could sense swirling in the air from the nearby nightwalkers and lycanthropes. I reached farther for the souls of the humans that lay slumbering in the nearby villages. I stretched for any creature with a soul and tapped that energy.

Holding my hands out to my sides, I summoned up two balls of fire that snapped and crackled with all the raw energy I could handle. I hurled them at Nick, willing them to not only hit his body but stick like tree sap to a leaf. I encased the creature in flames that grew to the point where it licked at the tops of trees and sent down a rain of melted snow. Clenching my eyes closed, I focused the energy on burning through flesh and eating through bone. I aimed for what I could sense of the creature’s soul, trying to use the soul energy of others to destroy his.

I held the energy focused on him until my body trembled from exhaustion and I grew light-headed. With great reluctance, I released him, hoping to find that I had reduced him to mere ash. I didn’t want to sense him in the area. I wanted to wipe him from existence. But he was a god and I wasn’t strong enough.

A white skeleton stood before me with its morbidly grim smile mocking me. It seemed to shiver once, and in a matter of seconds, muscles, organs, tissue, and skin all grew back over him. Clothes came next, so that in less than a minute he stood before me again exactly as he had been before my fit of temper. Behind him the earth was scorched with trees reduced to thin black timbers.