Chapter 36

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

A n explosion ripped through the air and I was knocked from my feet by the fury of the blast, Moraine colliding with me as all of us were sent skidding across the Heliacal Courtyard.

My leathers took the brunt of the impact and I rolled, throwing my hands up and casting an air shield over the five of us as the heat and flames of the explosion blasted through the air.

"Flamebringers," Dalia hissed, wiping the blood from her split lip across her chin with the back of her hand before digging into her boot and drawing a wicked dagger from the concealed sheath there.

"Why would they attack Never Keep?" I barked, my instincts telling me that this wasn't the Flamebringers, even though they were the obvious suspects.

"Maybe they want to wipe out the conscripts from the other nations?" Everest suggested, a blade of ice forming in her fist as she kept her eyes on the billowing smoke which concealed the Night Gate.

Dalia cast the Raincarver a sneering look but said nothing, clearly not liking this tentative cease fire between me and our enemy.

"Moraine?" I barked, not taking my eyes from the smoke.

"I'm fine," she gritted out, her footsteps moving closer as she scrambled to join us.

"Cayde?"

"Right here, sweetheart," he said at my back and my pulse settled at the confirmation that my unit was secure.

"Let's see who's come to crash this party then," I said.

I lifted my hands before me, summoning a great wind into my fists as the cries of the wounded and confused punctured the air like the baying of babes in the night.

With a twist of my wrists, I released the power, the wind tearing from me and blasting the smoke, ash and debris back out of the Night Gate which had been blasted open by the explosion but still hung resolutely from its hinges.

My heart stalled in my chest as I took in the assailants moving towards us through the gate. Five of them in all – such a small force it should have been laughable, but terror rolled through me as I absorbed the sight of them.

The closest was tall with a dark skin and curling hair which hung to his chin, the sight of him jolting through me with a flare of recognition. I'd seen him before on the day of our Awakening.

"Vampires," I breathed, knowing that all five of them would hear me regardless, their senses heightened thanks to what they were.

The Vampires stayed out of our wars, coming close to the rest of the Fae only at Awakenings so that they could claim any of their kind who Emerged and steal them away to their hidden kingdom in the wastelands.

None who were claimed by them ever returned, abandoning all allegiance to their element and families and uniting with the terrible cruelty of their kind. If Fae were vicious then Vampires were the worst of us all, creatures of pure depravity who delighted in bloodshed beyond all other pleasures. Worse, they formed covens among themselves, like Werewolf packs only far deadlier. Their ferocious strength and speed - which were already far superior to all other Fae thanks to the gifts of their Order Form - were heightened by the bond they formed as a unit. It was said they could even communicate within each other's minds. They were formidable, monstrous and nigh on undefeatable in combat.

If the Vampires had breached the gate, this was going to be a bloodbath. The power of the covens they formed was insurmountable. Packs of five or six had been known to kill an army of a thousand, ripping through flesh like paper and moving like the wind itself.

There was a reason no one had ever tried to force them to conform to the laws of The Waning Lands. They were beasts who couldn't be controlled. Whatever fight they sought against the Keep would be bloody and vicious.

"Shield," I hissed and my sisters grasped my shoulders at once, their magic rushing towards me, colliding with mine through the barrier of our skin and combining in a vortex of raw, breath-taking power.

A shield sped from me, encircling the five of us with the considerable might of our magic and I swallowed against the lump in my throat as the Vampire to the right of the leader turned to look at us with a wide and threatening grin.

He was terrifying in his beauty, a creature surely carved by the hands of some vindictive deity who wanted to watch as his creation ensnared his victims through desire alone, but this Vampire did not tempt me with his wicked allure. I was a creature born of desire and I knew when it concealed a soul of evil because I wore that same mask myself.

The Vampire pushed strands of long, copper hair out of his eyes, the warmth to his complexion at stark contrast to the coldness of his gaze.

A blink and all five of them were gone.

I braced for the attack, knowing it was coming as a streak of movement, too fast for my eyes to track, shot straight for us.

The collision with our shield almost knocked me on my ass, a curse falling from my lips as the Vampire appeared a foot away, his fist slamming against my shield with such force that it took all of our combined power to resist him.

"At least our death has a pretty face," Dalia muttered, her tattooed fingers biting into my shoulder as she forced as much of her power into me as possible.

I gritted my teeth, fighting against the cracks which were beginning to splinter across the dome of magic that shielded us, my heels digging into the flagstones as I fought the urge to step back.

But the force of the Vampire's strength was unrelenting, his obvious glee in our defiance making my pulse race frantically. If he broke through, we were dead. The screams of the Stonebreakers who fought the other four Vampires were testament to that, their bodies crumpling in sprays of blood as the blurred forms of the Vampires raced between them, ripping out throats so fast they had no time to fight back.

Despite all of my effort, the cracks across my shield grew, the Vampire's excitement clear as he threw his fist against it again and again, the movement so fast I couldn't even see it, only the resounding booms of the collisions marking the strikes.

My power flared and faltered, my eyes meeting the feral gaze of our foe as I sought more magic from those close by and I locked onto his desires with an iron fist.

Revenge, blood, power, longing.

I took it all and I took it fast, ripping his magic from him and realising my mistake as his bloodlust grew from feral to insatiable.

An enormous crack splintered across our shield, Moraine gasping as she felt the moment of its demise closing in on us beneath his furious assault, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, fear found me in battle. Not for my own death but for the death of the two women who shared my soul and who deserved so much more than this from life.

A hand grasped mine in that final moment, unfamiliar power rushing towards me on a wave of ferocious magic.

I opened the floodgates to my own magic automatically, a tide of raw and foreign power slamming into me and stealing the breath from my lungs. It wasn't air magic but somehow, as the two forces within us collided, they merged, finding an impossible unity and becoming something that I could wield against all odds.

I threw Everest's power into the shield, the cracks sealing, the Vampire bellowing in frustration.

The shock of what we had just done crashed through me, but I had no time to consider it, my gaze whipping around as the wooden door to the Reapers' Quarters burst open and a tide of Reapers poured from the hidden passages there to intercept the Vampires.

The Vampire attacking us shot away without a moment's hesitation, racing towards his coven-mates and abandoning us as if we had been nothing but a petty challenge for him to conquer.

"Come on," Everest hissed, releasing my hand.

The others released me too, though I kept a shield around us as I looked to Everest, meeting her gaze.

"Band together!' Reaper Jaspin commanded. "Put aside your differences and fight as one for the good of the Keep!"

The Stonebreakers were fighting ferociously near the Night Gate, a band of Flamebringers throwing fireballs from their position closer to the entrance to the heart of the Keep, but they were in no way fighting as one.

"I'd sooner let those Vampires drain me than fight alongside our enemies," Dalia spat, echoing my own sentiments.

"This place belongs to the Reapers," I said. "So let them fight to protect it – it's no land of ours and those aren't our kin fighting."

Everest seemed uncertain of that assessment, but her eyes moved to that open door.

"I need to get to Harlon," she said firmly, the little blue lizard looking out at me from her shoulder beneath the wild tangle of her braided curls, half of them falling loose of its hold.

Cayde hesitated, his eyes roaming over the Stonebreakers where they fought a losing battle with the coven of Vampires but I grabbed his arm and steered him towards the door with us.

"You can test your prowess against a coven another time, Cayde. We have something else to do tonight."

His eyes met mine and he took a step closer, the violent heat burning between us as he leaned down to speak in my ear. "Let's see what you've been hiding then, Vesper. And it had better be as wicked as I've been hoping."

I flashed him a grin, turned my back on the Vampires and the Reapers who fought them then hounded after Everest as she slipped through the wooden door we were forbidden from entering and led us into the dark.