Teague’s rage-filled, dark eyes lit up with recognition.
“That’s right,” Kagen whispered. “At last, we meet again.”
Teague howled like a wild thing. He gnashed his teeth together and swiped blindly at Kagen with a vicious paw, drawing a deep, painful line through Kagen’s right cheek.
And that’s when Kagen saw red.
That’s when he released his cloak of invisibility, withdrew a thinner scalpel, and began to stab and slice, to dice and chop, like a crazed banshee, alternating between using the tool and his teeth, his claws and his fangs.
That’s when he leapt off the mangled pile of meat he had left on the arena floor, flew onto the raised dais, and smashed his forehead against the skull of the nearest beta lycan. That’s when he gouged out the male’s eyes and ripped out his intestines, turned to the guard beside him, and began to skin him alive in crisp, clean, uniform layers, stacking each new filet in a pile at King Thane’s feet. Kagen’s surgeon hands moved so quickly—perhaps at the rate of twenty to thirty strokes per heartbeat—that the entire filleting took place in mere seconds.
King Thane was enraged at the insult.
He booted the pile of discarded flesh away from his feet and lunged wildly at Kagen, swinging with a huge, iron fist. Kagen ducked out of his reach and back-handed him across the platform, sending him careening into the monstrous throne, watching as it splintered into a dozen pieces…as Arielle dove out of the way.
And then he turned his attention on the two remaining beta lycans.
His shoulders hunched, his biceps twitching, his eyes undoubtedly glowing bloodred, Kagen crept down low, distributed his weight evenly between his back feet and his front right fist, and looked up at his enemy like a hungry jackal. A rabid snarl escaped his throat, and he slowly licked his lips, releasing his fangs to their full, lethal length. “Come,” he whispered softly, “join my river of blood.” He stroked the familiar scalpel in his right hand like a long-lost lover and waited.
The coercion didn’t compel them—they weren’t exactly human—but the desire to dispatch him quickly elicited the same effect: The first of the two lycans started to shift and lunge at the same time, his sinister yellow teeth gnashing together in fury, even as he drooled in anticipation, practically salivating over his prey.
Kagen met the Beta’s lunge with equal force, thrusting his entire body upward and shoving his left arm, hard, into the lycan’s throat. He gave it an extra thrust on impact, crushing the windpipe with ease, and then he followed the blunt maneuver with a razor-quick stab—a fierce, neat plunge into the lycan’s left ear—impaling his brain with the full length of the scalpel, before swiftly pulling it out.
There was a one-second delay…
The lycan’s eyes stared fixedly ahead, as if he thought he was still in a fight, and then his pupils dilated, lost their focus, and his eyeballs rolled back in his head, completely absent of…life.
Kagen caught the dead lycan by the arm as he fell.
Like a child toying with a wishbone on Thanksgiving, he snapped the useless appendage out of its socket; drew it up, behind his shoulder, like a baseball bat; and widened his stance, preparing to swing. Just as Kagen suspected, the remaining lycan went for his jugular: With his jaws open wide, his gnarly teeth bared, he tried to rip out Kagen’s throat; and the vampire could not have asked for a better pitch.
Kagen swung the macabre club with all of his might, and the bat hit home with a thud. Teeth shattered; the lycan’s tongue rolled back along the roof of his mouth; and the entire contents of his oral cavity lodged in the back of his throat. As the lycan hacked and wheezed, choking on his own teeth and gums, Kagen sliced his carotid artery open and kicked him off the dais with a brusque shove of his foot. Let him bleed out on the arena floor, he thought, reveling in the fresh scent of more spilled blood.
He was just about to turn his attention to Arielle and King Thane when the explosive sound of gunfire, erupting from the center of the arena, drew his eyes to the battle, and to his brothers, once more. He turned in the direction of the rapid echo, pop…pop…pop-pop-pop, one long series of firecrackers following another, and gasped.
Nathaniel was emptying his AK-47 into the side of a rhino beast from no more than three yards away; and the moment the monstrous creature fell, Nathaniel leaped over his enormous carcass and began to unload a fresh clip into another one. The omega guard who had tended the southeast gate was nothing more than a pile of twisted skeleton and serrated flesh, and by the telltale position of his dislodged bones—they were protruding from his hind parts—there was no doubt that Nathaniel had done the nasty deed.
Nachari—well, the panther that was Nachari—had a third rhino beast on its back and was making exceedingly messy work of its throat, while Marquis twisted the head of the fourth creature in his brawny hands, trying to wrench the three-horned abomination from its bloated body.
And Keitaro…
Keitaro was lying, nearly lifeless and still, at the feet of the second alpha lycan, the one who had been standing in front of the dais on the arena floor. Cain Armentieres was lying next to Keitaro, and his torn, bloodied heart was still resting in their father’s open hand—no doubt, the Ancient Master Warrior had ripped it from his chest, even in his weakened state. But now, another Alpha was bending over him with a crude thrusting-dagger clutched in his right hand: His innards were oozing out of a wicked gash in his right side; his left arm was dangling morbidly, like a broken tree branch along the bloodstained trunk of his body; and his legs were barely holding him upright. Yet and still, he was about to avenge Cain by taking Keitaro’s life.
Kagen could not look away.
He opened his mouth to shout to his brothers, but no sound came out.
In an instant, he gathered two radiant balls of fire in the palms of his hands and hurled them in quick succession, one right after the other, at the alpha lycan, at his gaping wounds. The missiles struck their target and the male stumbled back, just in time to meet the broken horn of a rhino beast as Marquis Silivasi plunged it through his back, impaling him through the heart.
Kagen breathed a sigh of relief, and then he heard a deep, menacing growl behind him.
He had only turned away for a moment…
But it was a moment too long.
Tyrus Thane Montego had shifted into his magnificent lykos form. His thick, tawny hair was bristled and standing on end. His enormous pointed ears were tucked back and erect, literally twitching with anticipation. His vile, jagged teeth were brandished, and they looked like three-inch knives jutting from his bloody gums.
Thane lunged for Kagen’s throat, and as Kagen sidestepped to the right, the king caught his left arm by the bicep and wrenched at the muscle, tearing through the tendons as if they were nothing more than raw, tenderized meat. He spat out the flesh with disgust, opened his jaws wider than any jaws should ever open, and sprang once again at the vampire, this time, at Kagen’s head, trying to crush his skull in one lethal bite.
Kagen raised his good arm to block him. He kneed him in the ribs and fell onto his back as the lycan landed on top of him, the wolf’s vicious teeth sinking deep into the cage of Kagen’s skull.
Kagen grunted in pain, trying to maintain his focus.
He reached blindly for his largest scalpel, trying to feel for the blade at his hip, hoping it was still tucked inside the waistband. When at last he felt the familiar implement slide into the palm of his hand, he began slicing and stabbing wildly, going for every vital organ he could find.
The pain in his head was debilitating. Still, Thane clamped down harder, trying to crush Kagen’s skull with his powerful jaws. Based upon the overwhelming sensation of pressure, the sound of ligaments stretching and cartilage collapsing, it would only be moments before Thane succeeded if Kagen didn’t get out from beneath the lethal bite.
Why the hell didn’t the asshole respond to pain? To Kagen’s scalpel?
He didn’t even flinch!
And great celestial gods, there was
so much blood in Kagen’s eyes—he couldn’t see a thing.
Kagen dropped the surgical instrument and grasped Thane by the throat instead. He clutched him by the windpipe and squeezed as hard as he could, until he finally felt the knobs of the lycan’s spine, tight against his fingers, and then he tried to crush the vertebrae with his hand.
They wouldn’t snap.
What the hell was this lycan made of?
“Kagen!” Arielle screamed his name. She shot forward on the dais, bent over in her ridiculous gown of blue and white silk, and scooped the scalpel up from the platform. And then she began to stab the king, over and over and over, thrusting wildly into Thane’s shoulders, his sides, and his neck, screaming all the while in bloodthirsty passion.
Thane roared in fury and surprise, and the effort cost him his iron grip.
He released Kagen’s forehead, leapt back from their entanglement, and shifted back into human form. Swatting Arielle away like a fly, he reached beneath the rubble of the broken throne and retrieved his royal broadsword. “I will kill you as a man, vampire; and you will know the true strength of your enemy.”
Kagen blinked his eyes several times, trying to bring his vision back into focus. The dais was spinning around in dizzying circles, and his head felt like it was about to explode.
He was just about to black out from the pain when he noticed a thick blade of steel plunging toward his chest. Thane held the iron broadsword in a wrathful, primal grip and was mere seconds away from impaling Kagen’s heart, if not slicing the vampire in two, in his furious rage. He put the full weight of his enormous body into the thrust even as he bellowed a bone-chilling, guttural war cry, half human, half beast.
Kagen didn’t have time to stop Thane’s momentum, and he didn’t have time to get out of the way.
He was at the mercy of the lycan.
All he could do was react.
In that solitary, critical moment, as his life flashed before his eyes, Kagen drew on all the rage inside of him, the alter ego, Mr. Hyde, his long-repressed and conflicted core. He slammed the back of his right hand against the palm of his left and raised his arms like a shield. And then he called on the part of his soul that had been dormant, like a sleeping volcano, for 480 years, just waiting to erupt, just itching to unleash its molten power. He drew on the pain and the grief and the need—the absence of his father and the absence of his sanity. He drew on every instinct he had ever had as a healer and harnessed it, as one…
Kagen funneled the energy of his alter ego into the palm of his right hand. He used the power of his mind to pack the molecules tighter, to compress the bonds, and to increase the electrostatic attraction between atoms. And, in the process, he made his own hand into an iron shield of impenetrable steel rather than flexible flesh and bone.
When the tip of the sword hit his palm, instead of piercing his flesh, it vibrated wildly with resistance—and then froze—almost as if it had been thrust into the side of a concrete wall.
Kagen pushed back with everything he had, with everything he was or ever would be.
And the steel gave way to the vampire’s power.
The blade rolled back like a scroll, folding in on itself in the direction of the hilt; and as the metal wheeled into an improbable round ball, Kagen wrapped both hands around it and thrust back at Thane.
The king’s eyes flew open in shock as the vibration forced his hands from the grip and the pommel shot back at him, reversing directions, striking him squarely between the eyes. Kagen gave the trundled sword one more mighty thrust, and the pommel sank deep into the king’s skull, driving through his flesh and bone, penetrating his frontal lobe and his gray matter, like a battering ram piercing a castle wall.
It finally halted, lodged opposite of the cross guard, a twisted sword…impaled backward.
Thane slumped forward onto his knees, trying to extricate the massive projectile from his skull. His mouth fell open as sluices of blood gushed in crimson streams through his teeth.
They looked like miniature rivers of blood…
Crimson, thick, and beautiful.
Kagen wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, stumbled to his knees, and watched as King Tyrus Thane Montego drew his last breath on the royal dais. Just to be sure, he withdrew a silver-tipped scalpel from his waistband and carved out the lycan’s heart. He tossed it over the side of the platform and then reached out blindly for Arielle, swiping at empty air. “Sweeting? Angel. Come to me.”
A shadow of blue silk appeared at his side as Arielle rushed to be near him, dropped down on her knees, and threw her arms around him. “I’m here, Kagen. I’m right here.”
He ran his bloodstained hands along her back, her arms, and her sides. “Are you all right?”
She actually chuckled then. “I think I’m in better shape than you are.”
He forced a faint smile. “Yeah, well, you might be right about that, Miss Nightsong.” And then a feral growl rose in his throat. “What happened to you, sweeting? Did Thane…did he—”
“No,” Arielle rushed the word. “He did not. That…didn’t happen.”
Kagen sighed with relief, and then he began to choke on a glob of blood, most likely Thane’s, before spitting it out on the dais. “Would you mind cleaning off my eyes while I try to heal my cheek, my hands, and my head with my venom?”
Arielle nodded emphatically. “Of course.” He heard her rip the hem of her dress, tearing a long, silken strip upward, and he winced in pain as she began to dab at his eyes with the soiled cloth. But there was no time to complain or dally.
He needed to heal his wounds, and quickly.
He needed to get to his brothers and Keitaro…if it wasn’t already too late.
He could hear howls coming from wolves deep beneath the dais; snarls and growls outside of the stadium; rage-filled battle cries rising in the stands, and he knew that the king’s soldiers were amassing in force—those who had remained outside the stadium to guard the realm; those who had stayed in the underground tunnels to orchestrate the games; and those who were not on official duty, who had taken a seat in the stands.
There were dozens of lycans converging, and they were no doubt incensed at the murder of their king. Lycans were already fearsome vampire-hunters by nature; only now, they would be fevered in their rage.
Kagen and his brothers needed to get the hell out of Mhier.
And now!
They needed to gather their father, collect Arielle, and escape.
There was no point in staging an all-scale war they couldn’t possibly hope to win.
He turned to Arielle and cringed, wishing he had the time to explain things, wishing he had the privilege of diplomacy. In truth, he could afford neither one. “Oh, sweeting, this is not how I wanted to tell you, to do this, but we have to get out of this realm. And you are coming with me to Dark Moon Vale.”
twenty-three
Arielle clung tightly to Kagen’s back, her arms locked unerringly around his broad shoulders, her legs wrapped indecently around his waist, her head burrowed snugly in the crook of his neck as she struggled not to empty the contents of her stomach in his hair.
They were flying through the air at dizzying speed, trying to escape the lycans.
Marquis had slung Keitaro over his right shoulder, nestling the male between his blue-black wings in what Kagen referred to as a fireman’s hold; Nachari had taken point, leading the vampire pack just above the tree line, all the while hurling neon bolts of fire at the lycans down below; and Nathaniel was bringing up the rear, spraying the ground furiously with repeated bursts of silver bullets.
And all of them were flying.
Flying.
Covering the entire twenty-two-hour journey from the Royal District to the south side of the swamps in what would ultimately amount to less than one hour.
Arielle took a deep breath, trying to make sense of what had happened: Now that the vampires no longer had to worry about detection—they no longer required the element of surpris
e; they no longer needed to remain invisible; and they no longer needed to heft heavy packs of bagged blood, ammunition, and camping supplies—they had opted for the most expedient and nauseating form of travel, taking to the air like a flock of migrating birds.
They had dumped everything but the weapons and ammo they carried on their persons, fought their way out of the arena like a well-oiled machine, and taken to the air like wild birds of prey; and Arielle was going with them. She was returning with the Silivasis to Dark Moon Vale.
Arielle replayed the jarring moment in her mind:
Kagen had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was sorry to break it to her so abruptly but they were fleeing the realm of the Lycanthrope, and she was coming with them. There was a chance, albeit slim, that she might be his destiny. “Get on!” he had barked from the dais, dipping low to heft her onto his back. She had started to object, but his severe glance had brought her up short: Now was not the time.
Although she’d had a dozen or more questions, a hundred or more objections, talking them out in the arena, with the enemy converging like a swarm of nasty flies, had simply not been an option. Trying to locate remaining members of the resistance—if, in fact, there were any—had also seemed fruitless, at best. From what Thane had told her, her rebel family was either dead or on its way to being captured: One way or the other, the members were beyond saving.
Feeling frustrated, shell-shocked, and utterly lost, Arielle had climbed on Kagen’s back like a dutiful, disheveled equestrian mounting a wild steed—she’d figured she could think about the meaning, the repercussions, and the healer’s decision later.
“What if I lose my grip?” she had asked Kagen, feeling ridiculous for posing the least important question at the most important moment, but truth be told, it had been at the forefront of her mind. Arielle was human, and she couldn’t fly. Hurtling to the ground at lightning-fast speed, just to become a red dot, embedded in the earth, was not her idea of a well-versed plan.
Kagen had laughed out loud in that annoying yet endearing, roguish way he had of displaying his amusement. “Don’t worry, Miss Nightsong: I’ll catch you before you hit the ground.”