rylee adamson 10 - blood of the lost (29 page)

I swallowed hard. “Then we have done all we can. We must hurry.”

Pamela looked around us with more than a little awe. “I would like to come back here one day.”

Finley looked at her and then did a double take. “She carries our element.”

“She carries all five.”

The young queen gasped and took a step back. “Is she Requiem’s child?”

“No, no. She is a blend of the five elemental bloodlines. Though she is the strongest witch ever born to this world; not an elemental in truth.” Finley slowly relaxed and I understood all too well her fear.

Requiem was a monster from her past. I didn’t blame her for fearing his shade still. “Finley, I can take us all there in a matter of seconds.”

She looked at me, and my hand on the weapon at my side. “Been making things you aren’t supposed to again?”

Hell, had everyone heard of my indiscretions? Likely, since that was something my father was wont to do; announce how very far his half-breed daughter had fallen.

“Something like that.”

Pulling the katana from its sheath at my hip, I slashed it through the air to the left of me, whispering the words, “
Velata facie terroris
. Take us to Rylee.”

The cut in the air shimmered and split open wide, but there was nothing on the other side. No world, no farm.

I let out a sharp breath. “Pamela.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means she isn’t on this plane of existence. Right now, she is somewhere within the seven Veils.”

Pamela grabbed my hand. “But what does it mean?”

“That right now we can’t use her as a pinpoint.”

‘Then use Alex. He’s on his way there with Eve and Marco,” she said.

“They are flying, Pamela. We can’t jump through to them.” But Belladonna should already be waiting for us at the designated waypoint. With a flick of my wrist, I brought the blade through the air again. “
Velata facie terroris.
Take us to Belladonna.”

This time, the cut opened up in the middle of a cornfield, the long waving stalks lolling back and forth in the breeze. Finley and the other Undines went through first. The young queen went right to my sister and embraced her as though they were long lost friends, even though I knew they hadn’t seen each other in many years.

I did a head count of the Undine’s who came through. A little over three hundred. Added to the two hundred of my family that gave us a tiny army.

But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Fiametta and the queen of the Sylph’s didn’t agree to fight at our sides, we were done for.

My heart clenched. To have come so far and to fail yet again . . . it was as though I heard the laughter of all those who’d told me I was not strong enough; that I was a useless half-breed with nothing to her name but a vague connection to royalty.

“Lark?” Bella called to me and I opened my mouth to answer her only I was unable to speak. The sight behind my sister stilled my tongue.

The sun was at the edge of the horizon, but that was not the image that froze my blood.

No, it was the black wave of demons pouring out toward us. Slashes in the Veil opened at a speed I couldn’t count, both on the ground and in the air. Thousands of openings, and out of each, thousands of demons leapt into our world.

A fierce anger ripped up through me, my connection to the earth opening fully. I was the Destroyer.

Time to do what I was created for.

“We have to keep them busy, long enough that Rylee has the time she needs. Fight with all you have!” I shouted to those assembled.

The Terralings and Undines spread out in a line. Five hundred against millions of demons.

Pamela put herself right beside me, her face tight with anger. “I’m not letting them get through.”

Ahh, to be so young. To believe one could conquer a horde with a faith so fierce that it shone. To think I’d been that young once was hard to recall.

I sent a wave of power through the earth. The ground heaved and rolled at the height of a redwood. It slammed into the first line of demons, sending them flying backwards, breaking them in half, tearing limbs from their bodies. A cheer went up around me and the other elementals joined in.

Cactus worked with Brand and his family, lighting fire to the corn and Pamela pushed the flames with her connection to the air. She caught it up into a tornado of fire and sent it spinning toward the demons. The smell of burning tar ignited the air as she cut a swath through them.

I ran forward, pulling my spear free. Whirling it around my head, I cut through the demon closest to me. His eyes widened and his mouth opened in shock, as his body began to dissolve. “You are not the Slayer; you can’t kill me.”

“Watch me,” I spit out as I whipped my spear around, clearing a circle around me the full length of the shaft. Everywhere the blade touched the demons evaporated.

Rylee was the Blood of the Lost, a Slayer in truth. But the makeup of her blood and mine was the same.

And while I did not have the blood needed to close the Veil and defeat Orion on my own, I did have the blood needed to destroy demons.

I closed ranks with a big boy, a creature that towered over me. His body was serpentine, lithe, and lightning fast. He snaked his head toward me, his mouth open and fangs dripping with venom. I got my spear up in time to deflect the bite, but the momentum drove me to my knees. I found myself looking right into the demon’s mouth as he tried to clamp down on me.

Both hands on my spear, I held it against him. I softened the earth under his feet, and sank him to his neck in a split second. Yanking my spear from his teeth, I spun it around and drove it deep into his mouth. The demon dissolved and I was grabbed from behind. The force of the grip crushed me to the point where my ribs creaked from the pressure. A blast of water slammed into us both, sending us flying.

“Sorry, couldn’t direct it better,” came a voice that I thought might have been Finley. In a puddle of mud, I spun on my knees, and dispatched the lobster clawed demon that had me in its pincers.

Around me, earth exploded, fire spun through the ranks, and deep lakes sprung up. The water swallowed the demons whole, dragging them down, but the lakes were quickly filled with writhing pissed off demons.

“Lark! I need more space for the water!” Finley cried out.

“Bella!” I ran for where I’d seen her last. “We need to work with the Undines!”

I whipped around two demons, taking their heads in violent slash. Where the hell was Bella?

River—my niece—was there, fighting for all she was worth as she spun her two elements together. Earth and water. I reached her side and dropped to one knee. To do what I was going to attempt, I needed to have my hands in the ground.

“Watch my back.”

“Always,” came Bella’s voice behind me.

Driving my hands into the earth I opened myself to the power that resided in me, delving deep into it as I hadn’t for years. Fear chased the power and I pushed it away. If I burned out, then so be it.

Around me the battle raged, and the demons were not being held back in any sense of the word. We were surrounded.

“Mother goddess, help me,” I whispered.

The voice that spoke softly to me was not the mother goddess I knew.
Destroyer. Do what you must to cleanse my land.

Power like nothing I’d ever felt slammed into me, a virtual avalanche of strength I couldn’t possibly contain. I let it go, pushing it deep into the earth and opening a crack. Tectonic plates shifted and the world around us groaned as I did the impossible. I knew it was impossible. I knew I shouldn’t be able to do what I was doing, and yet I still moved the ground with a strength that seemed unending.

With a groaning scream, the earth opened in front of me, the crack running deep enough that there would be no bottom. The elementals around me didn’t pause, didn’t hesitate. They pushed the demons toward the crack, driving them with all their strength, sweeping them away like the filth they were. Waves of water and earth crashed into the demons until only a few were left, stragglers that ran from us.

Breathing hard, I realized I still held the power that had been offered to me and was still using it to sweep the demons away. The edge of the massive crack through the earth crumbled and a pair of clawed hands reached up the edge.

“No, that isn’t happening,” I hissed. I drove my hands back into the ground and pulled with all I had. Closing a fissure of that size; I wasn’t sure even I could do it.

“Bella, help me!”

She dropped to her knees beside me, and so did River. The Terralings who’d come to fight at my side put their strength beside mine and with a creeping pace, we closed the wound in the earth, sealing the demons deep within, crushing their bodies.

A cheer went up around me. I looked and saw that there were only a few casualties, mostly bad wounds. How the hell had we stood against so many?

Bella reached up and touched my face, “Little sister, you are the reason. You united us and we worked together.”

“Lark,” Pamela’s voice cracked on my name, fear chasing it. I spun on my knees to see her facing the direction of Rylee’s farm. “The sun hasn’t gone down, so why is the sky still black?”

I stood, chills racing through me. That was why it had been so easy to take out so many demons. It had nothing to do with me.

“It was a distraction. They were there to keep us busy while the rest attacked Rylee.” The words slipped out of me as the horror of what was happening hit me square in the chest.

And now, Rylee was at the center of the true battle without me.

CHAPTER 36

ALEX

RUNNING FLAT OUT through the streets of Bismarck, I couldn’t help but nip at the wolves around me, unable to contain myself. A few nipped back, but there were no serious bites involved. The energy around us was hot with excitement and the thrill of the hunt.

It seemed I wasn’t the only one enjoying the breaking of this particular rule as our paws pounded the pavement. I kept my nose twitching, breathing in deeply, but it wasn’t me who picked up the scent of the half-breed trolls.

A howl echoed from our left and the monster pack shifted as a unit toward the call. We leapt cars and dodged traffic as if the city was an obstacle course set up just for us. A few people stared and pointed, and then more. And more.

How were they even noticing so many of us? No time to stop and ask questions though. Not that I cared.

Tongue hanging out, I bolted to the front of the pack, wanting to get there first to see the half-breed trolls.

I skidded around the corner and found myself staring at a tattoo parlor that jogged a memory. Blind Bats Tattoos had been rebuilt and looked as though whoever put it back together made an effort to have it look as rough as it did before.

Swallowing hard, I shifted and stepped forward. From above, Eve dropped me my clothes and I pulled them on quickly.

The auburn-furred wolf—Luca—shifted too, but didn’t bother with clothes. He would have given Dox a run for his money in the height department, standing at least six and a half feet.

His eyes, a light gray flicked to me. “Kid, there are a lot of them in there. Not sure there aren’t straight trolls too; that would be bad for your health.”

I stepped forward, my eyes on the doors of the parlor. “Yeah, I realize that.”

“And you’d go in on your own anyway?”

I shrugged. “I don’t expect anyone else to risk their life for me. That’s not how I roll, man.”

He laughed and fell into step beside me. “You’re an odd one, Wolf.”

“Man, have I heard that a time or two,” I muttered, but didn’t hold back the smile that tugged at my lips.

We reached the door and I knocked first.

Luca laughed at me. “Kick it down.”

“Nah, we want to talk to them, not scare them,” I said as the door cracked open and a human woman peered out. I drew in a deep breath. Not human, but her face looked it. “I need to talk to Tara. Please.”

Luca shook his head, but I ignored him. The woman’s face tightened and a flash of fear slid over her. “You can’t. She’s being interrogated.”