Blood at Stake (Warriors of the Krieger Book 2) (17 page)

“Are you okay?” I asked, leaning back to
check her over. “Oh! Charity, you have a gash on your chest.” In
fact, her shirt was ripped from the collar at the neck, down across
the front and thankfully it stopped just above her breasts. The
gash was deep.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she sighed, closing her
eyes. I ran my hand over her beautiful, long blonde hair.

“Feed,” I ordered, holding my wrist up to
her mouth.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, leaning back on
the seat. “You are bleeding, too. Let our mates get here, and they
can feed us. I’m not taking blood from you.”

“It’s all gone,” I cried, looking at the
destruction of our club when the fire department arrived. Several
men hurried out of the huge red vehicle and started hooking up
hoses to run water to the building.

Adam and Brock were outside the vehicle,
standing guard while William and Harlow were off accessing the
customers and employees. I pushed the door open, but Charity’s
guard Brock blocked my exit. “No,” he growled. “Let us take care of
them.”

“Where’s Meadow?” I demanded. “She was on
break, and I didn’t see her. Please find her.”

“Do not worry, Lydia,” Adam said, placing a
calming hand on my forearm. “She’s fine. Harlow is with her.”

“Thank the gods,” I sighed.

I was about to say something else when
another gunshot rang out over the crowd. Vampires hissed out a
warning, but whoever had the gun didn’t give up that easily.

“Stay down!” Adam ordered, pushing Charity
and me to the floor of the Hummer. He hit the locks on the door and
slammed it shut, locking us in the vehicle. He quickly pulled a gun
out of the holster at his side and motioned to Brock, who mimicked
his pose.

I looked to my left as Charity went still
beside me. Her eyes were closed, and I knew then that she was using
her ability to speak to her mate through their minds. She shivered
and looked into my eyes with a smug grin on her face, “They’re
coming.”

When I looked over my shoulder, I saw seven
humans, dressed in older military style uniforms, wearing gas masks
and holding several weapons. They were advancing into the crowd of
vampires, but what
they
didn’t see was the fifteen
Krieger
and
Krieger
recruits coming behind them.

Chapter 24

Ashby

My skin crawled with the need to destroy
every living thing that stood between my mate and myself. My
Vatakas
paced in my mind, wanting to be set free.

When we had gotten the call that
Nights
had been ambushed and set on fire, Dragus and I
rushed to the scene, calling for all
Krieger
in the area to
help. Recruits in the training program hurried to our side, along
with their instructors.

These humans had finally taken things too
far.

As we converged on the humans, no sound was
made. We moved in a straight line, quietly as if we were ghosts.
Our uniforms were as dark as the inky night around us. They did not
know what was coming for them.

There were seven men in the group. One man
stood in the middle of the group, directing them as to where to go.
We had them outnumbered two-to-one. So, when the human on the left
of their group raised his weapon, a modified AK-47, to shoot an
injured vampire, Zin used his speed to rush up behind the human,
snapping his neck in one swift twist.

The humans gasped, spinning around to see
where the
Krieger
had come from, only to find us waiting for
them to make their next move.

“Surrender now,” Dragus growled, his fangs
punched out in anger. His mate was being blocked from him by these
men and, like myself, he’d stop at nothing to get to the woman he
loved. “And we won’t kill you.”

“Good luck with that,
Krieger
,” the
one in charge laughed.

The leader stepped forward, and his eyes
seemed to glow green from within his mask. A scent drifted across
my senses, reminding me of a witch, but not quite as sweet. This
man’s musky odor blended, making his smell almost unbearable. It
was then that I realized that this man was the same as the man that
held my Lydia in that cabin. He wasn’t quite human.

“Careful, Dragus,” I whispered, only where
he could hear. “He’s
Other
.”

“What the hell does a demon want with
Lydia?” he growled, low and menacing.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is…be very
careful,” I warned. Dragus reached into his trench coat and removed
two short swords, handing one over to me.

With a flick of the demon’s wrist, two
humans rushed forward, raising their guns in the air. Before they
could pull the trigger, Bastian and Powle disarmed them, breaking
their necks and letting their dead bodies fall to the ground.

“You are outnumbered,
Other
,” I
sneered. “What is it you want with the female?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he laughed,
sending one human to stand in front of him as a shield. Did he
really think we would kill a human in cold blood? We had other ways
to get to this creature, but if the human tried to harm us, then he
would die like his comrades.

“Did you enchant those bullets and chains?”
I demanded, blood seeping into the whites of my eyes.

“No,” he laughed. “We held that stupid
witch, Master Suran, and had him do it before we killed him.”

“Who sent you to cause trouble for us?”
Dragus pressed. We needed answers, but I didn’t think this man
would be giving them up that easily.

I cursed when the man lifted his gas mask,
slowly revealing his face. “I came on my own, because I want
Alydian. She holds my blood in her body, and I want it back. It’s
time to grow a race of
Born Bloods
again. This time, they
will have my demon DNA, and they will be indestructible.”

The
Other
was Lydia’s maker, Leonardo
Chaplin. Although, he wasn’t the Leonardo I’d met all those years
ago. No, this man had been brought back from the dead. He’d been
changed into something more evil…deadlier.

I glanced at the Hummer, where she was held
safe and sound. Brock was standing, legs spread wide and his hands
clasped at his front…a short sword in his right hand. He wasn’t
going to let anyone get into that vehicle.

“What happened to you?” I asked, still in
shock at seeing a dead man. Lydia had told me that she’d seen him
staked by priests in France. “How are you alive?”

“Oh, my old friend,” he laughed, his green
eyes glowing bright. “I’m not alive. I have been given a second
chance.”

“You will not touch her,” I growled,
spinning the sword in my hand. I tested the weight before gripping
it tightly. I would remove this man’s head. I just hoped Lydia
could forgive me for killing the man that she’d loved as a brother
so long ago. I also hoped she would understand that Leonardo was
not
her maker. This man was no longer the man she knew. He
had been turned and tainted by demons. He would kill her without a
remorseful thought.

“She. Is. Mine,” he growled, throwing his
hand out to the side. Shouts rang out when the SUV started rocking
from side to side. Brock was thrown away from the vehicle by an
unknown force. The back door was ripped from the hinges, and I
snarled when Lydia’s body was pulled from the vehicle.

She screamed as she held on to her throat as
if something, or someone, was pulling her by her neck. I couldn’t
let him get to her. The vehicle was about thirty yards from
Leonardo, and I used all of my power to run in their direction.

As I ran, I let the
Vatakas
free.
It’d been prowling behind my skin wanting loose. Unlike last time,
I knew exactly what happened when I rushed forward and drove my
sword through Leonardo’s back so fast that he didn’t even see me
coming, but that did not kill him.

My beast wanted to play.

When the sword pulled free from his flesh,
he stumbled, causing Lydia to scream when her body fell to the
pavement. Harlow rushed forward and scooped her up off the ground,
cradling her close to his chest.

Leonardo spun around, glaring at me with his
glowing eyes. Black blood poured from the wound on his back and
stomach, where the sword hand gone through his body. “She is
mine
!” I spat on the ground, my beast taking over as he
walked up to the demon.

I felt my body grow, the bones in my face
reforming and changing into my beast. Claws erupted from my
fingertips and strength boiled behind my skin, causing my muscles
to triple in size. My transformed voice roared in warning as my
Vatakas
set its sight on the demon.

“You are very protective of her,” he said,
limping to the left as I circled him. My claws tingled with the
need to rip him to shreds. I wanted to tear those lips from his
mouth. He didn’t deserve to speak her name. “I wanted the two of
you together. My pathetic human side thought you’d make perfect
mates. Now, she will be the queen of my army. Her blood…
my
blood will create a superior race.”

“You will never have her,” I replied.

“My blood flows through her veins. Every
time you drink from her, you will taste my essence on your tongue,
Krieger
.” He lunged for me, but I was faster. “I may just
keep you around so you can watch her suffer.”

With a deafening growl, I spun on my heel
bringing the sword across the top of his shoulder. The metal
resisted slightly as it met flesh and bone. I didn’t even look away
when his head landed with a sickening thud on the asphalt, black
blood mixing in with the hard ground. I fell to my knees, driving
the sword into his heart, just to make sure he was dead.

I sat there, breathing heavily as I tried to
calm my beast. He relaxed in my mind and slinked away. My claws
shrunk back into my fingers, my face reformed to its normal state
and I felt the blood drain from my vision.

“
Ashby
,” Lydia screamed, seeing me on
my knees next to his body. I stood up and turned in the direction
of her voice. She’d broken away from Harlow and was running toward
me. I grabbed her as soon as she jumped into my arms.

“I’ve got you,” I said, burying my face in
her auburn locks. She smelled like home and everything I loved.
“You’re safe.”

“Why?” she cried. “Why did he do this?”

“It wasn’t him, Lydia,” I said, walking away
from her maker laying in pieces on the ground. I took her over to
my vehicle and sat her in the front seat so that I could check her
over from when she’d fallen to the ground. Her hands and knees were
scraped, but healing quickly. “A demon did this to him after he
died. Who killed him in France?”

“Human priests,” she said, frowning at my
question. “They staked him…I saw them.”

“Are you sure they staked him in the heart?”
I asked, pushing a stray lock of hair away from her face.

“I…I don’t know,” she frowned. “He told me
run, and I ran, but I looked back and saw a man drive a stake into
his chest. He slumped forward, and I kept running.”

“They didn’t kill him,” Kale, our new
instructor said. “They were posing as priests and were finding
vampires to change against their will. I’d heard of this, but I
thought all of the
Others
were found at that time and
destroyed.”

“I can’t believe he did this to me,” she
cried. “He was my best friend.”

“Oh, doll,” I said, pulling her face against
my chest. I rubbed my hand over her hair until she relaxed next to
me. “They have no feelings once the demons turn them into
Others
. They have memories, but they do not feel love,
remorse, or shame. That man was a shell of your maker, but not the
man who loved you. Please do not let Leonardo’s memory be tainted
by what you just experienced. His soul was gone when they turned
him into what you saw today, Lydia.”

“Can we just go home?” she whispered, crying
softly into my shirt.

“Yes, doll,” I said, kissing the top of her
head. “I’ll take you home.”

Chapter 25

Lydia

It’d been a month since the explosion at
Nights
and I’d finally stopped thinking of that demon as my
maker. It took many nights of talking with the instructor, Kale,
before I finally understood that these demons killed the soul of
the person, only using their body for their destructive plans.

The fact that they wanted to breed a new
race scared me. If they succeeded with their plans, then we’d have
to tell the humans and all hell would’ve broken loose. The human
officers that arrived on scene with the fire trucks were told that
the whole incident was caused by a human hate group and after many
days of questioning, we were finally cleared, and the files were
handed over to the
Krieger
to deal with since it was a crime
against vampires.

Walter survived the blast and sent flowers
to the
Krieger
estate the week after, congratulating me on
my mating. In the card, he apologized for the nasty things he’d
said to me that night at the club. Ashby had almost blown a vessel
in his possessive brain when he’d read the card, since I’d
forgotten to mention seeing Walter right before the attack. I
assured him that I was not in love with Walter. I had to show Ashby
that he was the only male to own my heart in some very special
ways.

A knock on the door had me moving quickly to
answer it. I laughed when my best friend, Charity held up several
wedding books and said, “Are you ready to be mated properly?”

“I guess,” I shrugged, showing little
interest. She wasn’t fooled though and pushed passed me to enter
the living room.

“Come on,” she laughed. “The queen is coming
in three weeks to do your
Joining
ceremony. I know you two
want a private ceremony, but you can’t get married in your
jeans.”

“Why not?” I asked. I loved to dress up, but
I wanted to officially be Ashby’s mate as soon as possible. I’d
waited too long to find the man I’d love for eternity.