rylee adamson 10 - blood of the lost (13 page)

Her eyes were wide and she stepped back, her hands clutching her belly. “You wouldn’t dare.”

I didn’t even look at her. “Pamela, we’re losing Blaz!”

I clung to his threads even as they faded, the last of his life gone from him as Pamela laid her hands on his side. “Please, please try,” I whispered to her.

Her hands shook as the sobs rippled from her tiny body. “Rylee, he’s gone.”

I grabbed her hands and put them back on his side. “Try, you have to try. He’s not gone.”

Letting her go, I backed away. My own Immunity would affect Pamela’s ability to use her magic. I clenched my teeth. “Pamela. Please try.”

She looked at me over her shoulder, tears streaking down her face. “Rylee,” she sobbed my name, “he’s gone. I can’t . . . I can’t bring him back.”

I dropped to my knees and tipped my head back to the sky as I screamed, the wail slipping into a sob that shook my entire body. Blaz . . . damn him for leaving me, for leaving me now when I needed him more than ever.

Arms circled around me as my body shook with uncontrollable spasms. The bond between Blaz and me that severed in death left a hole in me like no other. He had been a part of my life for such a short time. And yet it felt like I’d never lived without him.

My hands shook and I didn’t even realize I’d dropped my weapons. More arms went around me as I sobbed, unable to feel anything past the loss. Worse than losing Giselle. Worse than losing Dox or even Milly.

Blaz . . . he couldn’t be gone. This was a joke; a nightmare I’d open my eyes from and he would be there, inside my head teasing me about my growing feelings for Faris. Kicking my ass when I needed it.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Blaz was not in front of me, wings poised and waiting for our flight. He was in front of me, his body still. Wings that would never take flight again.

Sas stood to the side of us, Cactus holding her arms behind her back. Liam, Berget, Alex, Pamela, and surprisingly Lark, held onto me. I gently pushed them all back and stood.

Cactus’s eyes were wet, but his mouth was a hard line. “Rylee, what do you want to do with her?”

I took a deep shuddering breath. “Whose babies do you carry?”

She shook, her oversized body quivering with what I had no doubt was fear. She was alone, what was left of her people wiped out. “I don’t know. Perhaps the triplets. Perhaps Dox’s.”

Lark stepped forward. “I can tell you.”

Sas squirmed, but Cactus held her tightly, his hands lighting up. “I will fry your ass if I have to, ogre.”

She stilled and Lark stepped close enough to put a hand on Sas’s bulging belly. A few moments passed and she pulled her hand away. “Three children, one blue and two violet. All boys.”

So her babies came from both Dox and the triplets. Sas bared her teeth at me. “You are weak, you’d let me live because of Dox. You are a fool.”

“How close to term is she?” I asked softly, a deadly, vengeful part of me waking for perhaps the first time in my life. A part I wasn’t sure was good or not.

Sas started. “What do you mean?”

Lark looked at me. “Close enough. But what would you do with the babies?”

The reality of what I was saying, or more accurately what I wasn’t saying, and what it would mean for her seemed to hit Sas as Lark and I stared at each other. Sas began to fight in earnest, bucking against Cactus, but he did as he said he would and his hands heated her skin, burning it. Screaming, she went to her knees.

“You can’t do this! You’re a monster if you take my babies, they’re all I have left!” Her sobs didn’t touch me, didn’t soften me. Liam put a hand on the back of my neck and tugged me to him.

“Don’t do this.” No, that wasn’t Liam, it was Faris. I leaned back into him—just a little.

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t, Faris. They killed Blaz; what right has she to life? To go on as though nothing has changed.”

“Of all the people you know, I perhaps understand vengeance the most. My own father killed my sister, turned me into a vampire, and left me to die in the sun. Revenge”—his arms tightened around me—“is not who you are. Justice is.”

Justice. But what was just in this case? What could possibly account for Blaz’s life?

Lark lifted her one hand and Sas sank to her chin into the earth. “Death is justice, vampire. But I agree, taking the babies first is not the right way. Let her give birth, let her love them and realize the world she would have brought them into.” The elemental’s eyes hardened. “And then take them.”

I stared at her, seeing why she’d earned the nickname ‘The Destroyer.” I knew what it was to give up a child, to walk away knowing it was best for her. But what if someone had taken Marcella from me? My stomach rolled and I struggled to not let the turmoil show on my face.

“Let her up, Lark.”

As quickly as Sas had been pulled down, she was pushed up. I held my sword out and pointed it at her heart, resting the blade on the top of her belly. “For Dox’s child, and the triplets, you can live for now. But I assure you, I will come for them. And if I can’t,” I looked at Lark and she nodded.

“Yes, if you can’t come for the babies, I will.”

Good enough for me. I turned back to Sas. “The last thing any of those fathers would have wanted would be to have their children raised by a vindictive, manipulative bitch like you.” I stepped back and lowered my sword. “When you least expect it, Sas. One of us will come for you.”

She stumbled back, spun, and lumbered away from us as fast as she could. I watched her go, the night slowly deepening around us. Faris still stood with me, the only one touching me, the only one feeling the tremors there, just under my skin.

Without Blaz I felt adrift, lost. “He was a part of the prophecies, he was supposed to be the winged one who would carry me into battle,” I said. This was part of Orion’s plan, to cut me off from those I needed to help me face him down.

Faris put his chin on my shoulder. “I know you don’t want to hear this right now, but it has to be said . . . .”

I looked at him, his deep blue eyes rimmed in gold holding more compassion than I’d ever seen from him before, and I was nearly undone. I forced myself to hold it together. Barely.

“Whatever it is, say it. We don’t have time for anything else.”

He looked where Blaz lay, and I looked with him, my heart breaking all over again when his chest didn’t rise. His wings lay still on the ground. Pamela lay against him, still crying her heart out as Berget tried to console her. Alex sat beside her in his wolf form, a high-pitched whine in his throat as tears dripped down his fur.

Faris turned me away from Blaz so I looked only at him through watery eyes.

“There is one other dragon who is Slayer trained. One other who could take you into battle. You know that. We have to find her, which means you will have to Track her.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Which will take Orion straight to my daughter.”

There were no words for the horror that cut through me, for the reality of what I faced. Orion had effectively cornered me, making me decide between my daughter and saving the world.

And I had no idea what I was going to do.

CHATPER 15

RYLEE

KNEELING IN FRONT of Blaz’s face, I closed my eyes and put my forehead to his. “Wait for me on the other side, my friend.” The same words I’d said over Milly’s grave. I truly hoped I would not have to say them again in what was left of my life.

The feel of his scales under my skin like every other time I touched him; the sense that at any moment he would leap up and tell me he was fine. I couldn’t get over it.

“Rylee, we have to go while the night still holds.” Lark crouched beside me. “We can be in the Rim before the morning dawns and heading back immediately.”

“I know,” I said softly, running my hand over his closed eye. “You can bury him?”

She nodded and I stood. We backed away and with a sweep of Lark’s hands, the ground opened up and swallowed my dragon down as if he never were. So fast, it was easy to believe he was somewhere else.

That he wasn’t gone.

Yet I knew that wasn’t the case at all. I would never see him again.

“Wait, Rylee,” Lark said as I moved to turn away, unable to look at the spot where he’d been a second longer.

The ground where he’d been shuddered and green shoots shot upward at a rate that my eyes couldn’t follow. One minute the ground was barren and dead, and then it was covered in plants and grass, tree saplings springing up and growing into towering cedars.

Around one of the cedars, a climbing bush wrapped around the trunk, blossoms bursting open and filling the air with their sweet scent. Blue petals flipped open, their softness beckoning. Lark lowered her hands. “With the time constraints, it is all I can do. But I will come back and finish it. After this is all done . . . it is the least I can do.”

I stepped forward and plucked a blossom off the growing vine. It was the exact shade of blue that his scales had sported. “This is plenty. He’d have loved to knock it all down.”

Alex laughed softly and Liam joined in. I glanced at them. “He was kinda destructive.”

Pamela sniffed. “He
was
a dragon.”

I nodded and walked toward Eve, pushing my grief away. There was nothing else I could do but bury it as Lark had buried Blaz. We had to move on without him, no matter how much it hurt.

“How many of us can you carry, Eve?”

The Harpy fluffed her wings, her eyes still wet with tears. “A thousand pounds. But I need to carry at least two in my claws. That is where I have the most strength.”

Marco bobbed his head. “We can carry you all. It isn’t a problem.”

Lark snapped her fingers at Peta. “Cat, downsize your furry bottom.”

Peta let out a coughing growl and shifted from her leopard form into that of an ordinary gray and white housecat. Though I couldn’t hear her speak to Lark, I could guess at the conversation based on Lark’s expressions.

And based on the stiff-legged stalk of the cat to her mistress.

Eve would carry Pamela and Alex in her talons, and Liam and I would ride astride. Marco would carry Cactus and the blackout curtains in his talons and carry Berget and Lark and Peta on his back.

As we rose into the air above the battle site. I watched as the bodies of the ogres slid under the earth, like a wave washing over them. I thought it was Lark doing it, but she shook her head and pointed to Pamela.

“Pamela.” Just her name, and with it a question.

“They were fighting for their lives too, Rylee. No different than us.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the fresh air. She was right. “Stop being so wise when you are so much younger than me.”

Liam or Faris, whoever, wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly. A rock of strength, that’s what he was. What they both were. And it seemed they knew when to talk, and when not to.

This was one of the latter times.

Blaz’s death would haunt me; I knew it already, felt it deeply in my bones like a break that would never truly heal.

But like every other death I’d faced, I couldn’t let it slow me down, or take me from the path I was on. The world depended on me to kick Orion’s ass into oblivion.

I stared into the night sky and wondered how many more we would lose along the way.

And if I would crack under the grief.