Chapter Thirty-Six
It was four in the morning when we pulled into the parking area in front of the big house. I got out of the car. Adriel grabbed my elbow before I could take a step.
“I’ll take you to him.” We’d run about halfway through the deserted village when Adriel released my elbow. “They’re here.” He changed into his werewolf and I continued toward their family home. I heard Adriel howl and slipped when his howl was answered by many others. The village was not completely deserted after all. I picked myself up quickly and ran.
I reached their house. I was met by Donnell, who came bursting out the front door. “I knew you’d come back.”
“Where is he, Donnell?”
“His brothers are guarding him out back.”
“Why are you still here? Adriel called you didn’t he? You and all of the others were supposed to evacuate. You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Donnell shook his head at me. “I would not leave Nicholas. None of us will.” I started jogging around the side of the house and Donnell kept up with me. “Don’t be afraid of him. Seraph rules them because she has conquered her fear of them. You can do this, Piper. I know you can.”
“Donnell, the Baobhans are here. You need to leave. Tell your family to run.”
“We won’t leave him or you.” I couldn’t stand there and fight with him. The brothers of Nicholas came forward in their werewolf forms, and I weaved through them until I found Nicholas. He was three times as large as the others, and I have never seen anything need as many chains as they had attached to him.
“Go and help Adriel,” I said to the brothers. “The Baobhans are here.” They left without hesitation, and I met the unseeing eyes of Nicholas’ werewolf. Donnell ran off toward the house, and I was left alone with Nicholas.
He was straining against the chains. His werewolf wanted me dead. A chain link snapped and the chain flew up, putting a hole in the side of the barn. The other chains were actually moaning from the strain he was putting on them.
“Nicholas, before you accused me of being with Toryn I had been coming to tell you something.” A huge part of me wanted to yell at him for his accusation and for his not being there when I’d had to leave. “I should have told you at the beach that I love you.” Nicholas jerked two whole feet toward me, roaring and snapping his huge jaws together a mere breath away from my face. “Stop it,” I screamed at him.
He can’t understand me.
“I do love you, you jerk.” I was breathing hard. I could hear the sounds of battle behind me. “I wanted to tell you that I understood what you were trying to tell me on the beach about Donnell and Heathera.” Fire exploded from Nicholas’ house and I could see one of the Baobhans coming toward me from the street. “Nicholas, you need to let this go. I didn’t sleep with Toryn. I told him that I chose you.”
“Piper, it’s time to come with us.” It wasn’t the one from the gas station but the one from the beach. The same one who had reacted to my blood and whose picture I’d found sketched in the black book. Cayden. “If you come willingly then we won’t have to make Seraph command you to come with us.” I pulled the key out of my bra and moved toward Nicholas.
Cayden moved fast like the wolves and was in front of me smiling. “Turn back, Piper.” I wanted to yell at him to get away from me, but I couldn’t get over the fresh blood that stained his teeth and mouth. I shook my head unnecessarily since my whole body was already shaking.
His long fingers reached out and took the key easily from my grasp even though I’d held on with all my might. “Let me help you make the right choice. Come with me.” He tossed the key and I watched it land in a pile of loose hay. Again, his long fingers came at me but this time he took firm hold of my chin. “Look at me. You want to come with us.”
I remembered the strange affect the black Sith had on me back on my grandmother’s sanctuary and I quickly closed my eyes. It didn’t stop him from draining me of my energy to resist.
My nails bit into his wrist but he didn’t release my chin. I twisted sliding partly from his hands, but he still had me. “I refuse. Let me go,” I said sounding like I’d spoken to him while asleep. My lips were heavy and numb, but he released me.
I opened my eyes and found him anticipating the attack of the werewolves that were headed our way. He didn’t look afraid and that scared me because there were three coming at him. They landed on him each sinking in teeth and tearing away limbs that broke away like wet papier-mâché.
Quickly, I jumped into the hay and just as fast the spiky straw was all over me. It had gotten in my mouth as I labored to breathe. I panicked as my body began freezing up on me, with the hay scratching at every exposed inch of my flesh. The key was small and I was too afraid to throw any of the hay around so I parted it and pressed at it trying to feel for the key I wasn’t seeing.
There was screaming and crying, and though I didn’t know who it came from I was crying with them.
The three on one were grunting and struggling with each other. It was disturbing to see the Baobhan regenerate and bite into the wolves. One of the three was down and not getting back up. His fur was falling away and being swept up into gusts of wind. His eyes were open, and his body twitched as it once again became human at the Baobhans feet. I could see in his blue eyes the very moment when his spirit left his body.
I tried to keep moving, to keep searching. My hands obeyed me first, moving again in the dry straw, but my eyes were still on the dead young man. Another bone crushing sound cracked at me like a whip licking the panic inside me. A second black furred wolf skidded to the ground.
Was it Adriel or one of Nicholas’ other brothers?
The werewolf got up and staggered, snarling as he was crushed into the ground.
Please Piper, just find it!
I stretched my fingers wide and ran them along the floor beneath the stack of hay and felt something cold slide next to my left pinky finger. Hope squeezed my heart as I held my breath and brushed the hay out of my way. I’d found it. I grabbed it and turned back toward Nicholas.
He was still so gone. The Baobhans would kill him, and I just couldn’t leave him defenseless.
I concentrated on Nicholas and used the wind to whisper to him, “I choose you.” He was still straining against the chains. When I looked back at the Baobhan, his pupils were pulsinheartbeat, butrtbeat but his eyes were fixed on Nicholas and the third werewolf was twitching on the ground behind him.
Don’t be scared, I told myself.
I turned the key in the lock and all the chains rolled away from his body. I don’t know if the Baobhan was trying to save me or if Nicholas was because they crashed audibly into battle the second Nicholas was free.
Spiked up fur, claws, fangs, blood and the cracking and ripping of bones and flesh filled my senses and I stumbled backward. I’d seen this fight back at the beach and I knew who was going to win. I had to do something.
Nicholas’ house was burning when I ran into it and I felt that as stupid as the decision was to run into a burning building I couldn’t stop myself. “Donell?” No one answered. Chairs were turned over at the dining room table. One was on its stomach up against the wall. “Is anyone in here?” I looked in the kitchen before I started down the hall.
There was so much noise all around me, crackling from the fire, yelling and crashing. It was hard to tell where the noises were coming from. I opened the first door in the hallway. It was one of the girls’ rooms. The pink comforter on the single bed had a huge bump in the center. I ripped back the blanket fully expecting to find one of the girls, but it was just pillows.
I turned and went back out into the hallway. The smoke had thickened and I had to bend over to see. Breathing was quickly becoming painful as well. I pushed open the next door and smoke rushed at the oxygen quickly filling the room as I searched it. I was sure I heard someone yelling on the other side of the wall.
Was it Donnell?
Rushing from the room
I forgot to duck down and the black smoke scorched my eyes and nose. The next room was Donnell’s room. I was sure I’d heard yelling but there didn’t seem to be anyone in his room. I was afraid he might have passed out from the smoke, so I searched the floor all around the bed and found no one.
More yelling sounded and I could tell this time it was coming from outside. I got real low to the ground before I went back out into the hallway. The ceiling at the front of the house and beginning of the hallway looked like it was boiling fire at its surface. It wasn’t going to hold much longer.
The rooms were empty. This meant Nicholas’ family that had stayed behind was outside in the battle that the gypsies were clearly losing.
I crawled on my hands and knees across the bits of burning debris and into the library. It took me a second to clear my thoughts enough to remember where I’d seen the books on plants and trees. Unfortunately, it was on the top shelf, and I had to stand up and climb up the shelf into the choking and burning smoke.
Stupidly, I tried to look for the book, but I couldn’t see, breathe or think. I knocked all the books off the top shelf onto the floor and then dropped down with them. My eyes poured tears from the smoke, and I was breathing hard, trying to get some oxygen from air that held very little.
I reached out and brought all the books toward me. There was one with a tree on the front and I opened it, tearing the cover as I tried to find the table of contents. I found trees and was scanning the subcategories for the one I was looking for in particular. Behind me at the front of the house it sounded like a wall had fallen or been demolished in the fight. My head felt so heavy. I turned back to the book doing my best to ignore the sounds around me.
Sweat was pouring from me as I lay there in the air choked oven. It ran down my face and into my already burning eyes. The smoke was as hot as the fire and scalded my throat raw, but I continued sucking in the incinerating black billows. I kept coughing and that really didn’t help.
Find it! I commanded myself turning the pages again. I found the name of the tree and the page number was right there next to it. I blinked hard trying to see the small numbers in the lower corners as I shoved handfuls of pages aside.
Page 1,943. How could there possibly be so much on trees?
I found the right page and tried to drink in every detail of the tree with what was left of my eyesight. Its light brown bark looked smooth. Yet the overall texture of the tree was like thousands of wooden vines twisted together at the base and then sticking straight out horizontal and skyward with its branches. The green leaves were small and looked like sharp green feathers. Red berries with holes in them like black olives dotted the green fingers of the branch.
My face rested on the book, it was too heavy to hold up. My chest was tight and I coughed harder trying to open my eyes I knew I needed to get up and take the book with me. My body was so heavy I couldn’t pick myself up. I was so tired. I clawed at the ground and drug myself a foot towards the library door before I fell into another coughing fit.
The book was under my stomach on the floor. I looked down to see it and realized the room was completely filled with smoke, from the roof to the floor. I rolled to my side and grabbed the book.
Which way is the door, now?
Strong hands lifted me from the ground. I found the picture and dropped the book as I was raised up into the thick sea of smoke. I pulled up my shirt collar over my mouth and nose, but I was still coughing and my lungs and throat were ragged.
We were out of the house and I found myself being carried in the arms of the Baobhan from the beach, the same one who had been fighting with Nicholas. “You’re safe now.” His eyes were on my neck where I knew he could see my vein pulsing. He started walking and I saw a line of Baobhans waiting expectantly.
Seraph was bound and forced to her knees.
One of the Baobhans held her there with a hand on her slender shoulder. Her chin was raised, but I could see fear in her eyes when they met mine. I looked at the face of the man holding her and in the same instant realized I’d met him before.
He was the man at my father’s house party. He had wanted me to sing. He was Morgan Castlerock, my father.
“Put her down, Cayden. We want her to come with us willingly.” One of the Baobhans said and he set me down but remained so close I could hear his breath and smell it too.
Where is Nicholas? Did Cayden kill him for good this time?
The werewolves were bleeding and watching their queen on her knees in horror. “Will you come with us, Kellan?” One of the Baobhans asked me. I didn’t see which one because I had been looking for Nicholas.
All of the fighting had stopped for this moment. Everyone watched and I looked around sweepingly trying to find Donnell or any member of Nicholas’ family. There were many bodies on the ground. Some were still moving and making sounds of pain and others were deathly still.
I didn’t recognize Donnell in the crowd of faces that were stained with blood and the trauma of battle. My eyes still burned from the searing smoke and blurred so much of what I tried to see. But I did see Seraph and she was not letting them break her.
Cayden stood behind me touching my hair and I remembered how Angus had said they looked at women. I noticed there were no Baobhan women, at least none present. “To what end?” I asked surprising myself with a steady voice.
“To no end, daughter,” Morgan said. “You will have everlasting life. You will not die but will live as a queen for all time.”
Murmurs of prayer glided past me in a rush of whisper on the wind. Pleas of mercy and justice for the blood lost found my ears. My family’s clan had suffered enough.
“Can’t you just let these people go? Give me time and I will decide then what I want.”
“Come with us and we will still allow you to decide. You cannot decide here surrounded by our enemies.” Morgan looked down at Seraph. “Command her to come with us. You are her queen. She will obey.”
Seraph didn’t look up at him, her eyes stayed with me. “Never,” she said. She held her chin higher and her dark eyes were like steel.
“Daniel has already told us he would die to have his sister freed from your reign. Shall we kill him to get your command?”
Panic struck through me at his words and I blurted out, “I won’t do something I don’t want to do for anyone.” They were looking at each other. Daniel was there and he was glaring at Seraph, he stood with the Baobhans. I felt sick at the pleasure I could see on his face from watching his mother forced onto her knees and at the same time I was so afraid for him.
Cayden’s hands slid down my arms and I took a step away from him. A blur of fur and huge teeth whipped past me crashing into Cayden. It was Nicholas and he was tearing Cayden to pieces. But Cayden kept regenerating and putting himself back together. I didn’t want Nicholas to be killed.
His poisonous fangs sank into Nicholas’ back and then his side. Nicholas broke off Cayden’s head only to have it evaporate and regenerate back onto his neck. Two Baobhans broke away from the line, their fangs extending, and I found myself moving toward them as if I could stop them.
“No,” Cayden yelled at them as half of his face regenerated. “This one’s mine.” He flew at Nicholas, who intercepted him readily reducing Cayden into a pile of broken pieces. Cayden regenerated and bit into Nicholas’s throat where he was ripped away along with some of Nicholas’ flesh as Nicholas shredded Cayden’s back all the way to the bone.
Nicholas was himself again and I was so relieved it hurt. There was clarity in his eyes and recognition. There was also fury and a thirst for revenge. He wasn’t going to back down from this fight. If Cayden hadn’t been able to regenerate Nicholas would have already won ten times over. If’s weren’t going to save Nicholas though.
Cayden grunted with the impact of Nicholas’ bite breaking off most of his right shoulder and then he wrapped his other arm around to grab Nicholas and sank his teeth into his collarbone. Nicholas tore him off and took anot
her chunk of flesh and fur with him. “Piece by piece,” he laughed.
They continued fighting, and I did notice Cayden was getting slower but so was Nicholas. Though they were both bleeding, neither showed any indication of backing down. Nicholas had already lasted longer than the three werewolves who’d been killed by Cayden but there was no way he could win.
“Stop him and I’ll come with you,” I said to the Baobhans.
“He has the right to defend himself,” Morgan answered and I stared at him in disbelief. “You will come with us, Kellan.” He looked over at the battle happening between the two and then back at me. “This wolf is holding you to these people.”
“Then I’ll just have to kill him,” I said and Morgan and the others laughed. I saw the challenge in Morgan’s eyes.
“We’ve already learned these people don’t know how to kill us. The secrets of that died with Angus.”
I turned toward Cayden and Nicholas. “Maybe they did and maybe they didn’t.” Everyone who had been standing by to see what would happen came to life. The werewolves were fighting with the Baobhans again and Seraph was free from their hold. I knelt down on the ground and set my palms on the earth. Closing my eyes I pictured the Yew tree.
“Grow. Please grow.” I closed my eyes tighter pushing at the ground. “Grow.” A tree next to me burst into flames. It almost fell on top of me, but I kept going.
There was a living energy in the ground that I could feel and it was gathering for me at my urging. It was a communication with the living earth that was overwhelming. I could feel something was happening below the surface I had no guarantee what would break through ground, if anything.
When the first twig sprung up from the ground I almost lost my concentration.
It’s working.
“Grow.” It was above the surface, and it was growing fast. The vines I’d seen in the frozen picture were whipping and winding together building the trunk of the tree. I concentrated on Nicholas. “Fight with Cayden near this tree,” I told him on the wind.
I didn’t know if he could or would register what I’d requested. I couldn’t stop and look around to check. The energy from below had died down and the tree and I were on our own to continue its rapid growth. The base was thick and the vines of wood began jetting upward toward the sky. Was it too soon? The tree wasn’t very tall yet.
Nicholas roared, and it shook the earth beneath me. They were close. He understood me. I could hear the Baobhans murmuring in hushed hurried words as the tree continued to grow. I was doing something right.
Was it the sharp leaves? What was I supposed to do next?
Nicholas tore away one of Cayden’s limbs and when it landed next to the tree, a wooden vine snaked out and snatched the limb and wound it up swallowing it into the stomach of the base. I continued to grow the tree and as Nicholas shredded the Baobhan piece by piece it was consumed by the tree. The sound coming from Cayden was a deafening screech that was crippling and stunning everyone.
I was ready and even waiting to be torn apart by the Baobhans but they didn’t stop me or Nicholas.
Why aren’t they stopping me?
People fell to the ground covering their ears. The sound was so loud and piercing. The tree burst into flame when the last of Cayden was added. It became black and the resin from within oozed red. The pieces of Cayden were frozen within the tree.
I couldn’t move. I didn’t have the strength to sit up let alone stand. The Baobhans were coming toward me, and I couldn’t do anything. I called Nicholas. He raised me up onto my feet, and I told him on the wind not to let go.
“You will leave now and let me make my own decision or you will all die.” I was completely bluffing. There was no way I could grow another tree. If the Baobhans decided to kill us all then we’d all be dead.
“You killed one of ours.”
I met the Baobhan’s angry gaze. He was just another Baobhan to me, but that said he had presence and fierceness in his mud green eyes that reminded me of a crocodile. “You said that he had the right to defend himself. I have the same right.” I waited for the Baobhans to leap on me and inject me with their venomous vampire teeth. No way were they going to let me live after what I’d done.
“We will not leave you with the enemy to decide,” Morgan said.
“I’m not staying here. Seraph knows this.” I concentrated on keeping my face void of the exhaustion that was slowly overpowering me. “I still have to finish school. I won’t be making any decision before I graduate.” The Baobhans were all measuring me, I could feel them. Was it the fear of the tree I’d grown that kept them at bay? “There will be a truce between the gypsies and the Baobhans as there was before I came back here. I will make my own choice on what I’ll do with the rest of my life.”
“We will grant you time. But we will not disappear from your life now that you know of us.”
My vision was beginning to blur and I could barely make out their muffled voices over the ringing in my ears. “Is there a truce or not?”
Crocodile eyes searched out and met my gaze. “If you leave the community we will honor the truce. We must have the opportunity to show you our way of life.”
“Fine.” I would literally be eating dirt if Nicholas let go of me. “As long as there is no harm toward the gypsies I will agree to those terms.”
“We will not honor the truce if the gypsies offer harm to us.”
Please make them leave. I prayed silently.
If I passed out they would know I couldn’t grow another Yew and they’d kill everyone.
“Agreed,” Seraph said. She must have been able to read the warning signs. “Now leave our grounds and we will help Piper to a mutually unbiased location.” They did not leave quickly. They hesitated as they had come intending to take me.
When they left Nicholas swept me up in his arms, and I felt the wind on my face as I lost consciousness.