A Curse Unbroken (34 page)

Tears soaked Emme’s face and her eyes pleaded for me to help her. “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone,” I promised, wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

I didn’t speak again until I killed the vampires feeding from her and wrenched her away from Liam’s hold. She sobbed into her hands when Liam tried to follow her, his hands reaching to play with her hair. “He’s gone, Emme. You have to leave him here.” I clasped her wrist and pulled her away from Liam and into the hall, screaming for Shayna.

Emme’s clothing returned the moment we left the room. Her wild eyes swept up and down the endless hall only to return to the room we’d just abandoned. “Liam’s hurt,” she said. “We have to help him. I-I can’t leave him….”

I shook my head. “He’s already gone, honey. And where he is, I swear to you he’s whole.”

Although she cried, she nodded and stepped away from the door. “Now, I need you to concentrate. Tell me where Shayna is.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but then she veered in the direction I’d come from, and pointed. “There. She’s down there.”

I didn’t hear Shayna, but Emme did. “Show me,” I told her.

If Emme was afraid, she didn’t demonstrate it then. She sped down the hall, cutting right to a dark corridor and then left into another. She flung open the first door, yelling Shayna’s name.

Leathery wings slapped our faces. Demon children the size of infants with hideous yellow fangs flew around us, their beady red eyes glowing in the darkness and drool dripping from their mouths. There were so many, I could barely see in front of me. “Shayna.
Shayna!
”

“Ceel, help me!”

With a primal scream, Emme scissored her hands out, parting the flock of winged demons with the might of her
force
. Shayna writhed on the floor, the demons stripping the muscle from her bones. She lifted her head, terror gripping her face. “Get up, Shayna,” I told her. “You need to get up!”

Emme lost it upon finding our sister. She let loose her rage and the extent of her power, tearing the demon children in half and crushing their skulls. Shayna squirmed, forcing her upper body up and clasping her mutilated hand tight in mine. I wrenched her to her feet, calling to Emme as I rushed Shayna out the door.

Shayna’s hands slapped against her limbs and belly, disbelief clouding her features as her body became whole. Emme followed us into the hallway, her cheeks flushed with anger and effort. “Where’s Taran?” Shayna asked.

I yanked the doorknob free and passed it to Shayna. “I don’t know. Find her.”

As Shayna ran, calling for our remaining sister, the knob elongated into a sharp deadly spear. “Taran, we’re coming. We’re coming, T!”

It wasn’t until we rounded another corner and Shayna kicked open a moldy door that I heard Taran. I’d been brave and tough, but I positively froze when I met Anara face-to-face. The Elder who’d robbed me of my baby loomed above us in his humanoid wolf form with my sister tight in his grip.

Taran dangled in the air, sobbing as Anara crushed her zombie limb between his monstrous fangs. Her skin had completely bleached, her eyes had sunk into her skull, and sickly blue veins branched out across her body. And yet that wasn’t the sole cause of her torment.

She may have been blind, but her attention was trained on the far corner of the room where Gemini and Genevieve were making love. It wasn’t just sex they were sharing. Taran could have handled that better. The way Gemini held her, and the way Genevieve met his stare, more than a physical act was taking place.

I wrenched away and forced myself in Taran’s direction, knowing I should act, knowing she needed me to help her fight Anara. But his presence impeded my movements and it was our younger sisters who reached her first.

Shayna raced forward, grunting as she punctured Anara’s chest with her spear. He roared, releasing Taran to slump on the floor. Emme sprinted forward and lifted Taran with her
force,
away from the swipe of his deadly claws.

Anara roared again, ripping the spear from his chest and dropping on all fours. The thing was, this wasn’t Anara. It was Tura, it was all Tura. And now that I had my sisters, I had to
call
for the owner of the last remaining voice.

“Aric!”

The voices haunting me were right; I wasn’t alone. I had my sisters, and now my mate arrived in a blast of white light.

Aric’s giant gray wolf form soared into Anara when Anara snapped his fangs inches from Shayna’s throat. My sisters realized what was happening and lunged forward, beating on Anara and yanking at his fur with their bare hands—even Taran, whose grisly appearance melted away with each strike.

Shah materialized in my palm when I opened my hand. He had no voice of his own, and no real way of speaking. But he had sent the voices to me so I’d know how to fight. And now he wanted to fight, too. So I ran forward, leaping into the air and bringing Shah down against Anara’s snarling face.

The entire room exploded, sending me gliding along the snow, right in the middle of the
were-
vampire smackdown taking place on Den grounds. They stopped their onslaught. But it wasn’t because of me, or my sisters, or Aric sprawled in all directions.

It was because Tura in his corporeal tiger form had materialized before us and he wasn’t pleased with what I’d done. With roars and hisses that shook the ground, every preternatural rushed forward and attacked. Even the witches aimed their magic at Tura. They wanted him to die.

Except for one.

Chapter 29

Delilah’s eyes morphed from their light blue shade to that murderous coal black. Her talisman shimmered as she held out her hand and called forth her power. Shah, who had fallen mere inches from my hand, scooted across the ravaged field and into Delilah’s hand.

I scrambled forward.
“No!”

Tura’s giant paw crashed down on my chest when I tried to lurch to my feet. He held me down until Aric’s beast form snapped his bone at the joint. I shoved the limp paw away and bolted down the mountain to where Delilah had disappeared.

The sweeping branches of pines smacked against my face. Delilah glided around the trees with her power, circling the pines and trying to muddle her scent.

She was fast, but so was I, and my tigress demanded blood for her betrayal.

The ground rumbled beneath my feet when I’d almost reached her. Roots as thick as arms broke through the frozen ground, reaching for me. I cut left and right, trying to avoid the tangle of roots while Delilah thickened the barricade to slow me down. I knew what she was doing; she was buying time to build her magic and lock her claim on Shah.

The wall of threading roots grew taller and denser. But if she didn’t think a tigress could climb, she was dead wrong.

My front claws protruded; so did the ones at my feet. They punctured my shearling boots, shredding the leather and helping me scale the wall. I flattened against it as Delilah spat a curse, followed by another.

One sliced into my shoulder, releasing a stream of warm blood. It burned as it cut down to the bone, but the pain I felt only fueled my rage. I reached the top of the wall where she was levitating and pounced, bringing her down to the ground with my weight. I
shifted
before we hit the frozen earth and surfaced in time to watch her speed away and back toward the clearing.

I sprinted after her. In the distance I heard Tura’s agonized roars. The good guys were tearing him apart. But if Delilah was returning there, instead of fleeing, it was for a reason. And the reason surely wasn’t good.

“Aric!”
I called. “Delilah’s headed right toward you!”

Stakes speared out of the ground, puncturing my foot. I screamed, but managed to keep my wits and fall to the side, avoiding the field of stakes blocking my path. With a grunt and an even louder swear, I yanked the stake imbedded in my foot and backed away, racing along the rows of stakes with my bleeding foot until I found a section narrow enough to
shift
through.

I surfaced in front of the last of the stakes. Lightning struck as I hobbled in the direction of where the fight had begun. The sound that followed was unearthly. A screech, like hell’s fury itself, cut through the forest, forcing the sweeping firs to bend away from its rage.

My attention shot upward to where Delilah floated over the treetops screaming an incantation in Spanish. Particles of gray mass shaped like the silhouette of a tiger soared upward, despite the leaping
weres
in beast form snapping their jaws at it and trying to bring it down.

The fangs failed to connect, likely because what remained of Tura was quickly dissolving into the air. But what remained was important enough for Delilah to seek. In other words we were screwed if it reached her.

I broke through trees and into the clearing, stopping short between Aric’s wolf form and Misha. Both were injured and bloody, but that didn’t compare to the rage cloaking their auras. “She’s offering herself as a vessel for Tura,” Misha hissed.

“Why?”

“To absorb what remains of him, combining her power, Shah’s, and that of hell itself.”

Of course, because we weren’t screwed enough.

Genevieve wasn’t having it, and neither was her coven. The women circled Genevieve, who raised her staff and aimed their collective magic at Delilah.
“Muori!”
she yelled, throwing the ultimate death curse.

A thin current of gold light as bright as the sun shot through Tura’s dissipating shape and right at Delilah. She blocked it, using Shah to absorb the curse and rebound it. Everyone scattered, but not everyone survived. A
were
and several witches fell dead while two of Misha’s vampires exploded into ash.

Aric and I edged around the cluster of boulders he’d dragged me behind. “Goddamnit,” he yelled, his now human form pulling me to him.

Tura had just reached Delilah when Genevieve screamed another spell.
“Separa!”
She was trying to keep them from joining. Her hold didn’t last, but it didn’t have to. It was long enough for what remained of Tura to dissolve into the breeze.

Delilah screamed and raised Shah over her head, calling his power and hers. She was crazed with fury, and determined to make us all pay.

She thought Shah now belonged to her. I wasn’t so sure and I sprinted out into the open to find out. I ignored the pain from my injured foot as I ran and dodged the death curses Delilah flung like beads. When I reached the clearing’s center I stretched out my open palm. “Shah!” I screamed.

Shah materialized in my hand. I clutched him to me as Aric tackled me and rolled us away from a massive death curse that caved in the ground where I’d stood. He wrenched me behind a stand of trees in time to see Taran charge forward and launch a funnel of blue and white fire from her zombie limb. Delilah fell shrieking when Taran’s blaze struck her core. She slammed to the ground, the protective shield she’d gathered around herself the only device that spared her bones from breaking and saved her from sudden death.

What remained of the coven pounced on her and subdued her with their power. I didn’t move right away, too stunned that we were alive and shocked that Shah had actually come to me. I supposed I was right; the little guy was done being used. “Thank you, Shah,” I told him quietly.

Someone tossed Aric a pair of sweatpants. He yanked them on, his stare trained on Delilah as he then led me forward. Two witches held her by her wrists with their magic, allowing Genevieve to glide to her and easily yank the talisman from her neck. Genevieve whispered something over the stone, crumbling it to dust, then dropped the simple metal chain to the ground.

We watched Genevieve step back and point her staff at Delilah.
“Rivela,”
Genevieve commanded.
Reveal
.

My sisters gathered around me, their anger escalating as Delilah’s deep wrinkles faded, her plump form thinned, and her hair darkened as black as her stare, falling in waves to her shoulders. She couldn’t have been older than me. But that wasn’t the only problem, and my sisters saw it, too. The witch before us was an exact twin of the one we killed during a bloodlust epidemic raging through Tahoe.

Everything seemed to slow. “What the hell?” I rasped. I looked back at Taran, who initially met my face with shock. But then something changed in her expression, almost at the same moment it changed in mine.

It was then my world as I knew it unraveled.

And I realized exactly why.

Taran stumbled forward, her eyes shimmering with rage and clarity that caused a fear I’d never seen in her. She locked her stare onto the witch’s murderous eyes—their color so dark, they appeared absent of irises. “Are those similar to the eyes from your vision?” I asked, my voice shaking.

Tears streaked Taran’s face, and she nodded. She knew I understood. But the revelation, and the weight of its significance, did nothing to spare us. It lashed out like a whip and caused me to break down. Aric wrapped his arm around me. He didn’t realize why I wept. No one did except for my sisters. “You’re the daughter of the aunt who cursed us? Aren’t you?” I asked the witch.

Koda relinquished his hold on Shayna and stormed forward, wrenching the witch up by the throat before she could speak. “Answer her,” he growled before flinging her to the ground.

The witch clutched her throat, spitting up blood. The other witches didn’t care; at Genevieve’s order, they hauled her back to her feet. Magic streamed from Genevieve’s staff. “I believe you owe the Wird sisters an explanation.”

If Genevieve’s magic didn’t force her to speak, Aric’s protective hold over me made it clear he’d get her to confess by any means necessary. “I am Rosaliana, daughter of Griselda,” she said, raising her chin. “And sister of Perladina, whom you robbed me of.”

“We could say the same,” Taran snapped. “After all, your fucking
mother
had our parents killed!”

Taran was in hysterics when she turned to us. “Those
were
Griselda’s eyes haunting my dreams.” She swallowed hard. “Do you know what this means?” she asked me, although she already knew the answer.