Clann 03 - Consume (9 page)

CHAPTER 10

“What the...” Dylan muttered as he ran into the room then skidded to a stop on the hardwood floor. He stared down at Mrs. Coleman, then looked at me, his eyes going wide with shock. “You...you
killed
her?”

“What? No! I just got here. What are
you
doing here?”

Now his mouth snapped shut as he darted over to Mrs. Coleman’s body and squatted down to check her pulse. But he didn’t have to say anything. I could easily pick out the answer in his thoughts.

I gasped. “Your father did this? But why?”

He stared down at Mrs. Coleman. “Because it’s time for new leadership.” Silently he thought,
But this—killing Mrs. Coleman—this wasn’t part of the plan. Was it?

A rumble of footsteps warned us that we were about to be joined by several others just before Mr. Williams and three other descendants ran into the room.

“Vampire!” Mr. Williams roared and pointed.

I had just enough time to throw up a shield of energy around myself before the blue energy orbs hurtled my way, hitting my shield hard enough to force my calves and thighs to strain to keep me from falling backward.

“Savannah!” Tristan yelled, but it took a few seconds before he vamp blurred between Mr. Williams and Co. over to me while holding his sister tight against his side. As soon as he let her go, she wobbled then fell to her knees and threw up.

I increased my shield so it wrapped around both Tristan and Emily, as well. But the descendants had stopped throwing orbs at me as if waiting for something.

“You okay?” Tristan asked me, watching the descendants.

“Yeah. But your mom...”

“Why, Tristan, you fiend,” Mr. Williams said with a slow smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You killed your mother!” He made a tsking sound and wagged an index finger. “You have been a very naughty boy this evening.”

“What? I didn’t...” Tristan glanced down at me with a frown. Then his gaze slid over to the body at my feet.

His eyes rounded, all color draining from his face. “No...”

Then he noticed Dylan still crouched over his mother’s body with one hand at her neck, checking for a pulse.

“No!” Tristan roared, and the purely animalistic sound sent chills crashing through my body.

Then everything went really crazy, and even with the adrenaline-increased speed of my thoughts and reactions, I still had trouble following what happened next. To our left, more blue orbs exploded, forcing me to focus on holding the shield and returning fire against Mr. Williams and his crew.

“Emily, help!” I shouted. But when I glanced at her, she seemed too deep in shock over her mother’s death. Emily had draped herself over her mother’s body and was sobbing so hard her entire body rocked, though the sound was lost beneath the shouting and sizzling of flying orbs filling the room.

Then Tristan burst free of our shield and vamp blurred straight at Dylan.

“No, Tristan!” I yelled. “He didn’t—”

But I couldn’t speak fast enough to beat Tristan’s speed as he tackled Dylan at a run, driving his former childhood friend backward.

“You killed my mother!” Tristan screamed into his face as he grabbed two handfuls of Dylan’s shirt.

Then he picked up Dylan and threw him across the room with another animal-like roar.

Dylan hit the stone fireplace with a loud crack so hard the thick wooden mantle broke along its length and half of it clattered along with him onto the hearth. Air whooshed out of Dylan’s lungs, and his eyes closed as he went limp.

Oh, my God.

Sirens wailed outside. I couldn’t get a read on Mr. Williams’s thoughts, so I searched one of his crew member’s instead.

Police. And not only were they Clann, they were also very much on Mr. Williams’s side and in on tonight’s attack.

This whole thing was a setup to either kill the entire Coleman family or at least frame Tristan for his mother’s death, leaving Mr. Williams as the clear choice to succeed Nancy Coleman as the next Clann leader.

“We have to go!” I grabbed Emily, dragging her with me over to Tristan even as Emily screamed and tried to reach for her mother again. She fought me so hard I was afraid I’d bruise or break her arms trying to hold her. “Tristan! We’ve got to go! The Clann police are coming for
you.
”

He looked past me at his mother’s body, taking a lurching step forward.

“She’s gone,” I said, risking letting go of Emily with one hand so I could grab his shoulder and shake him even as my heart ached for him. “We can’t stay!”

His jaw clenched, his eyes turning white and narrowing as he looked at Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams smiled back.

Tristan scooped up Emily in his arms. She didn’t even have time to gasp before we took off with her out the patio doors and across the backyard west toward the woods and downtown Jacksonville.

I had run with Tristan before since turning him, but never as fast as this. Tonight the Tristan I had once known as a small boy was gone, replaced with a furious animal. Fangs extended and lips peeled back in a snarl, he ran on pure instinct with his sister, never looked down at her or around us as he vamp blurred through town toward my house. It was all I could do to keep up with him, and when we burst into the house through the front door, stopping only once we reached the living room, I had to bend over and catch my breath.

He set Emily on the leather couch then darted away to the front window to pace back and forth, his fists clenching and unclenching over and over. A quick peek at his thoughts actually made me flinch and stare in horror.

He wanted Mr. Williams and the rest of the Clann to follow him here. He wanted revenge. He wanted their deaths...and their blood.

“Tristan...” I whispered.

Dad vamp blurred into the room. “What has happened?”

Swallowing hard, I spoke as fast as I could, telling him what had happened at the Coleman house. With every word I spoke, his face grew darker and darker.

I looked down at Emily, expecting her to fill in the details of the fighting that had occurred upstairs. That’s when I realized she wasn’t breathing.

Oh, God. If Tristan lost her, too, he’d never survive it.

“Emily!” I whispered, checking her throat for a pulse. Nothing.

Tristan disappeared from the window, reappearing in a crouch at Emily’s head. “Emily? Emily!” he shouted.

Dad grabbed Tristan’s wrists before he could tap his sister’s cheeks.

“Do not touch her,” Dad said. “In your present state, you will kill her.”

Tristan growled at him, chest heaving. “Let go of me. She is my
sister.
”

“Tristan, please let him help,” I said.

Tristan glared at Dad for several long seconds. Finally he nodded and took a step back.

“Was she awake before you picked her up?” Dad asked Tristan.

Tristan nodded, his eyes wild as his hands buried themselves in his hair and gripped the curls as if to tear them out.

“You ran too fast with her. The pressure of the movement prevented her from drawing a breath.” Dad pinched her nose and opened her mouth as if to give her CPR, then hesitated and looked up at me. “I cannot. She is Clann. I...”

He was afraid he might give in to the temptation to bite her.

I took over, carefully giving Emily a deep breath, then another, and another.

Finally she started coughing.

Tristan dropped into a crouch beside her and took her hand, staring at his sister as if to make sure she really was okay.

Dad blurred out of the room then back with a glass of water, which he silently offered Emily. She took it with a grateful nod. After a few sips, she slapped Tristan’s shoulder with a loud thwack.

“Don’t you
ever
run that fast with me again, you idiot! You could have killed us both.” Her free hand rested protectively over her tummy, which I now noticed was a huge round hill from chest to hips. She closed her eyes, her lips moving soundlessly. Finally her shoulders sagged and her eyes flew open. “It’s still kicking. If you had hurt it—”

A screech of tires outside alerted us all to the arrival of guests. Great.

Tristan darted over to the window and snarled. “They’re here. Good. We can finish this.”

“No, Tristan,” Dad said, and there was no room for argument in his tone. “We must get free and warn the council. If Mr. Williams has staged a coup, then war against the vampires is sure to follow.”

A second war between the Clann and vamps. How many times had both my parents and Nanna expressed their fear of this very thing happening?

Our worst nightmares were about to come true.

For the second time that night, my skin broke out in goose bumps as the descendants both inside and outside the house ramped up their power in preparation. Obviously we’d have no time to pack.

Something pounded against the roof.

“What are they, navy SEALs?” I muttered in disbelief. They couldn’t seriously be attempting to break into the house from the roof, could they?

Then we heard the crackling.

“They are setting the house on fire,” Dad said, his face emotionless though his eyes were dark. “We must get out.”

“That’s exactly what they want,” Tristan growled. “They’re trying to smoke us out so they can take us.”

I shook my head. “They don’t have to smoke us out, Tristan. We can all die by fire right here inside. Remember?”

Dad disappeared then reappeared with a handful of papers, which he stuffed down inside his shirt, using the tucked-in top like a giant pocket for passports, cash and cards.

The crackling turned into a faint roar as tendrils of smoke began to form overhead, then quickly thickened into a cloud that drifted ever lower.

Great. More smoke.

“We must leave now,” Dad said. “Through the side parlor windows, I think. We will stay within the cover of the woods and head west on foot. Emily, perhaps I should carry you this time to ensure you can still breathe?”

She hesitated then nodded. “Good idea.”

Dad led us out the living room and across the foyer into the parlor. Suddenly the stained-glass window on the front door exploded inward, showering the foyer with a spray of colored glass. Tristan and I both dropped into a defensive crouch, our hands raised and ready to hit whoever came through with a spell.

Instead, fire burst through the foyer like a huge, fast-moving snake, twisting side to side almost as if it had a mind of its own and was searching for us.

Spell fire. It was the only explanation. But I’d never seen it used like this before.

“I will be right back!” Dad shouted then disappeared before I could argue that we shouldn’t split up.

He reappeared three seconds later holding two plastic shopping bags full of something. Without explaining, he thrust the bags at me, then scooped up Emily.

“Tristan, the window,” he said. “On three?”

Tristan nodded and we all got ready.

Tristan raised his hands, Dad counted, and on three the window exploded outward with Dad leaping out right behind the flying glass.

I took a deep breath then jumped after him and ran as fast as I could toward the surrounding woods that wound through Jacksonville, following as close to Dad as I could.

I glanced back to make sure Tristan was with us, just in time to see him leaping out of the house with a huge wall of flames at his back. At first I feared he was on fire, but once he was free of the house, I could see he was also clear of the fire, though the flames did their best to reach out through the window after us.

And then I saw the entire roof, covered in flames, collapse on my home.

Tristan grabbed my wrist and pulled me with him, jolting me out of my shock and horror. And then we were all running together too fast for me to think about anything but ducking and dodging low-hanging tree limbs thick with pine needles.

None of us slowed until we were deep in the woods that separated Jacksonville from the surrounding towns in an evergreen cocoon.

Finally, Dad stopped, easing Emily onto a nearby fallen tree so she could catch her breath. Tristan insisted on checking both of us for injuries. Seeing we weren’t hurt, he moved away from all of us, turning his back to stare through the woods while Dad called my mother to ask her to come pick us up.

Tristan was too still, standing there with his fists clenched, his feet braced wide, his head unmoving. I tried to search his thoughts for some clue as to what was going on inside his head, but it was a raging roil of emotions way too mixed up and volatile for me to make out.

Emily walked over to him. He turned with a snarl. “What is
wrong
with you, Emily?”

“What?” she gasped.

“Why didn’t you stop them before they killed her? They killed our mother, and you just hid in your room like a scared little kid. You let them kill her!”

Emily took a step back and gasped. Her hands clenched into fists at her side. “I tried—”

“Spare me. You and I both know you’re capable of way more than that pathetic little display you put on back there. She wasn’t perfect, but she was our mother. She deserved a real fight from you.”

“I did the best I could!” Emily shouted. “I was upstairs dressing when they showed up. I fought them for forever all by myself. By the time you showed up, I didn’t have anything left!”

His face contorted. “Since when have you run out of energy so—”

“Since this.” She jabbed a finger in the direction of her rounded tummy. “This...thing is sucking up all my energy! I almost didn’t have enough to even keep them off me tonight till you showed up. If you hadn’t come when you did...” Her voice choked.

Tristan stared at her stomach as if seeing it for the first time, his eyes widening. We’d learned Emily was pregnant during the fight at the Circle where I’d turned Tristan, but with all that had happened, without seeing her, the reality hadn’t hit until now.

Emily buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

Tristan took a halting step in her direction then another. And then he was there beside his sister, wrapping his arms around her and resting his cheek on the top of her head. “I’m sorry, sis. I shouldn’t have said that stuff. I didn’t know.”