Dawnbreaker (31 page)

But then, it had been a long time since it was last used. We stopped when both the bori and naturi were locked away and we could find more adequate and safer means of protecting ourselves during the daylight hours. There was also a danger to the Stain spell—it wasn’t particular to the soul it attacked. It attacked anything that happened within the perimeter—naturi, animal, or human.

Now, when we closed the perimeter, Bertha stepped over, with George hanging just behind her shoulder. “They say you’re performing a Soul Sucking spell,” she said, her eyes slipping down to our joined hands for a second.

“It’s the only way to protect us during the day. We can’t leave here now. Sunrise is less than an hour away.”

“What if they set fire to the place?” George demanded.

“I’ve got something for that too,” I replied, catching sight of Shelly coming out of the front of the lodge, with Danaus following behind her. “Can I leave you to prepare?” I asked, looking up at Stefan. “I have a couple of things that need to be taken care of.”

“I don’t understand what you’re going to do with him,” Stefan said, sliding his hand out from mine. “Drain them both and pray they don’t move until sunrise?”

“Not quite,” I sneered, then walked toward the lodge where the others waited.

The tension in the air grew thicker with each passing moment. The sun was creeping close to the horizon, and all of the nightwalkers could feel the coming death of the night. Naturally, those that survived the initial attack of the naturi had begun to wander closer to the lodge, as it offered cover from the rays of the sun, even if it was a deathtrap in itself.

At the same time, the naturi had pulled back their ranks around Rowe, who stood several yards away from the flickering blue flames. His eyes never wavered from me as I moved about the small enclosed area. I wondered if he knew what I was planning. Had he ever seen a Soul Sucking spell? Even if he had, was he willing to throw every naturi he had at us in hopes of killing us when we were at our most vulnerable? I prayed he wasn’t. The kind of power created by the spell would undoubtedly shine like a beacon to something dark and scary that lingered on the earth.

Shelly was pale and trembling in the cold night air when I finally reached her side. The nightwalkers that passed her watched the earth witch with slitted, hungry eyes. It had been a long night, a long battle already, and she represented a quick, warm meal.

“Cynnia is safely asleep in the basement,” Shelly said. “I thought it best if we put her as far from their reach as possible.”

I shot her a wry smile and nodded, resisting the urge to pat the witch on the shoulder. Between the fight at Ollantaytambo and now the war zone that surrounded her at the Sanctuary Lodge, I was willing to bet that she was already on overload. “Good. Don’t worry. Your job is almost done. I just need you to complete a couple more tasks for me.”

“And then what?” she demanded, taking a step back, so she was partially hidden behind the hulking figure of Danaus.

“And then you get to sleep. Just sleep. It’s been a long night and you’ve earned a little sleep,” I soothingly said. My voice dipped down into hypnotic tones, embedding the thought of sleep into the deepest reaches of her brain. I knew I would need to call on that suggestion later that night.

“Oh.” The single word escaped her in a whisper, but I noticed that she still didn’t move out from behind Danaus’s form.

“I need you to do a protection spell over the entire Sanctuary Lodge. I need you to make sure that it won’t burn,” I said. “I’m assuming you know that spell.”

“Of course.” Shelly stepped closer again, her chin raised a little higher at the idea that she might not be familiar with one of the most basic of spells. It was simply a couple of magic words and a symbol written in ash over the place you didn’t want to burn. It was so basic that even I knew how to perform it. All nightwalkers did. The spell wouldn’t allow a structure to burn.

“Good. Go over the entire lodge, from top to bottom. Get a few nightwalkers to help you. We need this done quickly,” I said, raising my voice a little so I would be heard by any nightwalker within a few feet. “Don’t worry. No one will touch you.” At least, they wouldn’t now that I’d thrown that promise into the air with an edge of a threat.

Shelly nervously nodded to me, then turned and went back into the dim light of the lodge.

“Will it be enough?” Danaus asked as we stood together in silence for nearly a minute outside the lodge. “The spells you’re working?”

“The fire spell will keep them from setting the place on fire, which I honestly think will be their last resort,” I slowly said. The growing lightness was starting to wear on me, and I suddenly found myself longing for my own bed back in Savannah. “Their first desire will be to try to acquire Cynnia alive, which will mean getting past the Soul Sucking spell Stefan and I are creating.”

“The Stain?” he said.

I nodded, then motioned for him to follow me into the lodge. “The Soul Sucking spell will drain the energy from any creature that enters the perimeter Stefan and I have created with the fire. When the sun rises, the fire will die, but the perimeter will remain.”

“Will it be able to handle this many naturi?” he asked, following me as I led him down into the basement.

“It will. It grows in power with each one that it kills. After a while Rowe will catch on and stop sending naturi after us. I figure he’ll have no choice then but to try to burn the lodge to the ground, which Shelly is now protecting us against.”

I paused in front of Cynnia, who lay curled into the fetal position on the cold concrete floor. Shelly had sketched out a circle around her and made the appropriate symbols in blue chalk. A matching blue dome rose over the naturi, protecting her, keeping her from moving until we finally released her.

“I didn’t think that nightwalkers were magic users,” Danaus said, standing beside me.

“We typically aren’t. We have enough special skills like speed, strength, and night vision to keep us ahead of our enemies. However, we’ve found it in our best interest to learn some more defensive magic. Most of us know how to protect ourselves from being set on fire during the day or maybe to erect a defensive barrier like the one Cynnia and Shelly taught me the other night. We don’t bother to learn magic that is used for attacking.”

“Why?”

“Because the magic drains from our souls. It weakens us. Defensive magic is less draining to maintain than an offensive spell. Besides, don’t you think a nightwalker has enough of an edge in a fight?”

“Not against a warlock.”

“That’s why we don’t go picking fights with witches and warlocks,” I said with a smirk as I gazed up at him.

“Where do you want me?” Danaus asked, his right hand resting heavily on the handle of a knife strapped to his hip. He was ready to take on any of the naturi he believed might get through the Soul Sucking spell. What he failed to realize was that they wouldn’t. It was impossible. Oh, the first few might actually get past the perimeter and onto the steps of the lodge, but I seriously doubted that any would actually make it inside. Particularly after the first five or six died, their souls sucked straight from their bodies.

I took a deep breath and slowly released it. With my right hand, I motioned to an empty space on the floor not far from where Cynnia was sleeping. “I need you to be right there,” I slowly said, dreading every word as it left my lips.

“You want me to protect the naturi?” His brow furrowed. “Is Shelly going to be down here as well? Are you?”

“Yes, Shelly is going to be down here with you. Most of us are going to be crammed down here, I imagine,” I said. My gaze darted away from Danaus for a moment and I licked my lips. I had to just come out and say it.

“The spell won’t discriminate between naturi and human. It will attack anything that moves,” I explained, looking back up at the man that didn’t trust my kind, and yet I was asking him for the ultimate moment of trust. “I want Shelly to put you in a sleep spell like Cynnia.”

Danaus’s face twisted with horror and rage. “No! Absolutely not!” he shouted, pacing away from me. The sound of his boots hitting the concrete floor rebounded off the walls, filling the room with his anger. “There has to be another way. I will
not
be helpless during the day!”

“Welcome to my world,” I said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve been helpless during the daylight hours for more than six centuries and yet I’ve survived. I’m asking one day of you.”

“I’m not a vampire!” he snarled at me. He undid the safety strap on the knife handle he had been holding and drew the knife. I was grateful that we were alone down there, or this could have become an even uglier stand-off. “I’ve been a hunter my entire existence. I won’t lie side by side with my enemy while the naturi come to kill us all.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he had been a hunter for too long, but then that was for another fight and another time. “We have no choice.”

“That’s your answer for everything!” He took a step closer to me with the knife drawn, but I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to do anything to give him the fight that he was currently aching for out of fear. “We’re trapped. We’re surrounded. The naturi have us beaten at every turn. Let’s combine our powers and destroy their souls!” he shouted at me.

“Well, then you should be happy that we’ve got an alternative this time,” I calmly stated. “This spell will only kill them. Their souls are set free to go on to their afterlife the moment the spell has been ended. From my understanding, it’s not a particularly painful death either. It’s just a need to sleep that can’t be overcome.”

“How nice! A humane death,” he sarcastically snapped.

“Do you have an alternative?” I growled, finally reaching the end of my patience. “We tried to kill them our way and it didn’t work. You may get your wish, and it may never work again after what Cynnia did to me. I still don’t know. All I do know is that the moment the sun rises above the horizon, all the naturi waiting just beyond the fire are going to come flooding into the lodge with the simple goal of beheading every nightwalker within its confines. You are a master swordsman and a warrior whose equal I have not seen, but you cannot win against that many naturi.”

“I won’t be left helpless during the day.”

“We’ll be protected from the naturi,” I said, finally taking a step closer to him.

“I’m not completely human. You know that. Maybe the spell won’t affect me,” he suddenly countered. It was an angle I had thought of and didn’t like. There was something else that could happen because of his bori background that I wasn’t too thrilled about either. Putting him to sleep was the safest solution.

“You’re human enough,” I sighed heavily. “It just means that it might take a few minutes longer to kill you, and the more you move, the faster the spell will work. It comes down to this, Danaus. You either let Shelly put you into a sleep spell so you can be protected here, or you try to sneak away from the lodge as it is surrounded by naturi. Your odds of survival are higher if you stay here.”

“I won’t be helpless!” he repeated, but some of the venom had left his tone.

I closed the distance between us and laid my hand over the hand that was still tightly clenching the knife. When I touched him, I could feel fear radiating through him, similar to the terror I had felt the first few nights I spent alone as a nightwalker. Helpless during the daylight hours, at the mercy of anything that happened to stumble across you while you slept. “We will all be protected from the naturi.”

“And what about when the sun rises?” he inquired, his grip on the knife loosening somewhat under my hand.

“Then you’ll awaken,” I reassured him.

“Not like you will. I’ll be trapped within a sleep spell. Someone will have to wake me up.”

“No one will touch you!” I snarled suddenly, finally getting to the root of his problem. It wasn’t just that he was afraid of being surrounded by naturi while he slept during the day, but that he feared being helpless against the nightwalker enemy when we awoke the following night. I reached up and cupped his face with both my cold hands, threading my finger through his thick black hair. “No one will touch you! I forbid it. You belong to me and me alone. I will be among the first to awaken and I will wake you. No nightwalker or naturi will touch you, I vow it.”

As I spoke, a dark, feral need rose up in me. I needed to pull him down to me and drain some of the blood from his neck. I needed to feel his blood coursing through my veins, marking him as mine. I needed for all in the nightwalker world to realize that none should lay a hand on the hunter. He was mine.

Biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood, I released my hold and took a couple steps away from him. I shoved my hand through my wind-blown hair and drew in a sharp breath through my nose, pushing those feelings deep down inside of me. Danaus didn’t need to know about such desires. It was a nightwalker thing—this strange need to possess and control. But he didn’t belong to me; not as a friend anyway. He was simply my enemy put on hold.

“Will you let Shelly put you into a sleep spell?” I asked when I was back in control of my emotions.

“You make it sound as if I have a choice in this matter,” he calmly said.

I smiled at him. “You do. You can agree to do this and we go about it calmly and quietly. Or, we fight it out until I knock your sorry ass unconscious and then Shelly completes the spell.”

“But the sun is rising. There’s only time for one thing.”

“Please, Danaus, don’t commit suicide out of fear. That’s all this would amount to. You’d die because you were afraid to sleep for a few hours.”

“I’m going to be helpless.”

“But protected.”

After a moment of tense silence as he turned the knife over in one hand, I knew he was drawing closer to his decision, though I wasn’t completely sure that I would like it.

“Do it,” he bit out abruptly, surprising me. I had thought he was going to force me to knock him out.

“You need me now?” Shelly asked, softly coming down the stone steps that led to the basement.