Night Vision (36 page)

I called up the winds, trying to keep control of them, not letting them entrance me like they usually did. And then, as they began gusting lightly around my fingers and through my hair, I closed my eyes, sinking into their siren song. Ulean was not here to help pull me out of it this time if I got lost, and neither was Lainule, so I’d have to manage on my own.

I lowered my chin to my chest and then, as the power settled within, raised my head, staring ahead at the vampires, and under my breath, in the lightest of tones, I whispered, “
Gale Force
,” and a stiff breeze sprung to hand, quickly gusting into a howling wind that raced past me, carrying my spirit with it. I spun up and around, growing tall. Like Myst, I towered over the room, looming larger than life in my spirit. My body was still below, but I was rising out of it, trembling in the storm that raged around me.

The howl of the winds ripping past me tore anything light not rooted down off whatever surface it had been on and sent it flying through the air, spinning topsy-turvy into the maelstrom. Within moments, the room was in chaos, with both my guards and the vampires struggling to stay on their feet.

I moved forward, growing still stronger, my spirit rising still taller, laughing as the power began to take hold. I leaned back, letting loose my laughter, and it echoed, a shattering of crystal, over the roar of the storm.

But somewhere inside, I could feel the caution—the
warning signs as my delight in controlling the forces grew—and I struggled to compose myself, standing on the edge of the insanity that the power brought with it. As I wavered, holding back just enough so that I didn’t destroy the building as well as the town, my guards launched themselves at the vampires.

Geoffrey had moved back, as had Leo, and their grunts were fighting the battle for them, trying to wear down my forces. The slash of the blades glinted in the light, though the sound had been lost in the face of my storm, and I watched in horror as the vampires attacked my men.

This is war; this is what it means. This may be in your future yet again, so you’d better get used to it.
The thought ran through my head and I tried to shake it away, but the conviction grew. After we took care of Geoffrey and Leo, we still had Myst to battle, and she would not make it easy on us.

I gathered my breath and went back to holding the storm steady, preventing myself from sinking deep into thrall. I couldn’t see what was going on. If I tried to focus on the fighting, then I lost track of the winds and they would either fall away or catch me up, neither of which would help. As it was, even though they also hindered my men, they were throwing the vampires off track. My guards knew what to expect from them, but the vamps—Geoffrey and Leo included—had no clue of how to handle the whirlwind raging around them.

But then, a shriek raced through the room, and I lost my concentration. It was Peyton, and she was screaming in pain. As I let go of the storm, the energy suddenly wrested away from me and spiraled out to fill the room. A great groaning and creaking shattered the air as the sudden twister—the remnants of my gale—spun out of control and crashed through a nearby wall, the brick spraying pebbles on anyone near the area. The building shook, moaning as it took the direct hit, but all I could think of was that Peyton was being hurt.

Geoffrey had caught her in his arms, and he was biting
into her neck. I raced forward, but Check caught me before I could travel more than a few paces, motioning for his men to go in my stead. As I watched, helpless and terrified, they pushed through the fighting, but before they could get there, Anadey began to scream and beat on Geoffrey’s back.

“My daughter—don’t you hurt her! Let her go!” Mother Bear was out, it appeared. She clawed at him, and in that moment, Geoffrey dropped Peyton, who fell to the ground and immediately scrambled away. He turned to backhand Anadey against the wall so hard the room shook again.

She snapped against the brick, her head jerking forward, then back again in a whiplash motion. Then, slowly, she opened her mouth to speak, but slid down the wall to puddle the bottom, and her eyes closed as her head lolled to the side. A bloody streak covered the wall where she’d landed. As far as I could tell, Anadey was dead.

Peyton began to sob, but she had the presence of mind to get out of Geoffrey’s reach. My men advanced on him, blades cautious and glittering, but then—in one of those moments where the ground shifts and the world changes—everything stopped as someone yanked me away from Check, out of his arms.

Gasping, I turned to gaze upward at my captor. And there, staring down, leering with uncontrolled desire and hunger, stood Crawl.

As my stomach flipped and I realized he was launching his fangs toward my throat, I began to scream, and scream, and I couldn’t stop.

Crawl stared at me, holding me tight by the neck, preventing me from moving without cutting off the breath flowing through my windpipe. His lurid face was a mask and mockery of what once had passed for human. But his birth had been so many thousands of years ago that there was no telling what race the Blood Oracle had been, or what he’d looked like, or even if he’d been old or young when turned.

With blackened skin that looked like it had been long ago burnt to a polished hue, he was limber and thin, like sticks held together by a taut, wired force. And he was hungry—ever hungry. I could see it in his eyes. I could feel it in his aura. I could hear it in the energy crackling around him. When he leaned down to sniff me, brushing his tongue over his fangs, I knew I was simply a snack to him, a plaything until I broke and couldn’t be fixed.

Grieve moved to run forward, but I struggled, holding up my hand. Chances were, if anybody interfered, Crawl would squeeze and that would be it. He liked his blood fresh, but freshly dead was nearly as good, and chances were he wasn’t going be too particular.

I struggled to breathe, trying to slow down my heart so I didn’t go into a panic attack.

Crawl leaned in, looming over me, sniffing at me. His lidless eyes were black as night. “We have missed this one, we have. She is known to us, we remember the scent, we remember the taste. We remember how sweet the blood rolled onto our tongue, and how loud her screams were.”

“L-let…m-me go.” I managed to stammer out a few words. Begging would do no good. While I wanted to tell him,
I’m the Queen of Winter and you endanger your people by threatening me
, I couldn’t get it out, and it would have been a waste of breath. The room started to spin, and all I could see was his hideous face staring down at me.

Grieve’s voice rang out. “If you hurt her, you’re staked. Put her down and we’ll come to a calm end.”

My wolf growled, shifting, and I knew that Grieve was one step away from attacking Crawl. I prayed he wouldn’t. Crawl would break my neck, then mow down the entire party, and Regina had warned me that he had powers we knew nothing of.

“Her blood is sweet and hard to forget. Yes, it is.” He pressed the remnants of blackened lips against my throat, and once again the scent of mothballs and decay filled my nose. I let out a cry, shifting slightly as he opened his mouth to strike.

“Put her down, Old Master.” Regina’s voice echoed from behind us.

Crawl snapped his head around, fire filling those glimmering black orbs that passed for eyes. He snarled. “This one is mine. She is my drink of life.”

“Put her down, or I will summon the Crimson Queen. You are not to be out walking, ancient one. You know the rules—you must return to your lair. The Crimson Queen herself has decreed this. You
must
bow to the Mother.” The sound of her heels on the floor clipped with precision, and I could tell she was making her way over to us.

“Cicely, hold still. Do nothing.” Lannan must be trailing Regina, judging from the direction from which his voice came.

Crawl growled like a dog protecting his bone. He turned back to me, and the next thing I knew, we were being body-slammed.

Sprawling, taking me with him, Crawl lost his grasp. I tried to roll out of the way, but he landed on my legs and held me fast.

Lannan was shouting.

The weight of the Blood Oracle—far heavier than I would have imagined—kept me pinned. I turned, trying to claw my way out as he struggled with Lannan, who was attempting to pull him off me. The sounds of the two vampires fighting was like a horrible battle between two lions, kings of the hill waging war over the queen.

My hands on the floor, my fingertips pressed hard against the tile, I struggled to drag myself free. Check and Grieve were running toward me, and I held up one hand to them. Grieve reached down, his fingers clutching mine. He began a steady tug, trying to ease me out, as Check slid his arms beneath mine.

I groaned as something snapped in one of my legs. Not a loud snap, but enough for me to know that a muscle or a tendon or something had ripped. A few seconds later, the pain hit in my ankle.

I gritted my teeth, trying not to scream, but at that moment, Check managed to dislodge me and I pushed away the numbing ache.

As he pulled me from beneath Crawl’s body, there was a momentary lull in the fight, and then something long and sharp with several blades ripped through my leg, tearing into the flesh.

I screamed as the blood began to fountain, the gashes burning their way into my leg. There were screams—I think from Luna—and a lot of shouting, and the next thing I knew, Crawl’s hand was off my leg.

“She’s bleeding out—look at those wounds!”

“Get her jeans off her.”

I wanted to ask where Geoffrey and Leo were. I wanted
to see what was going on with Crawl. But all I could do was stare unfocused at the ceiling while someone tugged on my jeans. The pain of the material sliding over the wounds was exquisite agony, and I moaned, biting my tongue to keep from screaming again. I was fading in and out now and slowly began to feel myself sliding out of my body. I shifted. And then, as everything began to go black, I heard Lannan.

“You have no choice. She needs my blood—it will bring her back from the brink because,
Princeling
, if you don’t let me do this, your fiancée will die and take the queenship down the drain with her. When Crawl wounds, be it his fangs or his talons, there must be a transfusion of vampire blood. Any magic-born or yummanii bitten by the Old Master is doomed to bleed out. She’s not so far gone that it will turn her, but there’s very little time. Do you want her to live, or will you let her die?”

As his words began to sink in, so did the realization that I was dying, and that once again, Crawl was responsible.

Grieve let out an anguished cry. “Go then, do it…I know what will happen, and I accept.
Just save her.
”

The next moment, somebody was forcing my lips open, and then a few drops of blood began to trickle into my mouth, and it was the sweetest ambrosia I’d ever tasted. Rich and thick and familiar. I licked my lips to catch the stray beads, sucking them in. Suddenly so thirsty I wanted to scream, I opened my mouth willingly as Lannan pressed his wrist to my lips, an open cut bleeding slowly, and I suckled, taking his force into my body, feeling it cascade down my throat.

As I eagerly drew his blood into me, the pain in my leg began to subside as a warm, sinuous energy unwound from the base of my tailbone, snaking its way up my body, flushing me deep like a blush to the core.

I let out a slow moan, this time from pleasure rather than pain, as the blood raced down my throat, freeing me from the ache of my torn flesh. But then it started—the heat racing around my cunt, waking me up as it traveled up through my breasts, through the road map of veins running
through my body. I sucked deeper still, the crimson river flowing through me, infusing me with health and strength and desire.

And then my eyes opened, and I was staring up into Lannan’s face, that glorious mane of golden hair falling around his shoulders as the jet black eyes watched me. No breath, no rise and fall of the chest, and I tried to remind myself that he was dead, that he was a vampire, but all I could think about was having his hands on me, having him hold me down and drive himself into me again and again until I forgot everything except those ancient, glazed-over eyes.

The very air acted like an aphrodisiac on my skin, ruffling past like a ribbon of silk, and I let out another moan as every faint whisper of wind became a tease, as every sound became amplified. My body was a live wire, sizzling like hot oil, and I reached up, grabbed hold of Lannan, and pulled him down to me, locking my lips with his.

A faint sound caught my notice, and my wolf howled, but I pushed it away. The only thing that existed at the moment was the Blood Fever, the drive to spread my legs and beckon my dark angel inside. I kissed him, deep, probing his mouth with my tongue, running it over his fangs.

Lannan stared down at me, a triumphant smirk on his face, but then he held me down, pausing, and looked up. “I’m taking her out of here. The Blood Fever is so high that she’ll die if I don’t quench it. Regina, you know what to do with Crawl. The rest of you—my men will escort you to safety. Geoffrey and Leo are still at large.”