Chapter 53

TOBIAS

Hybrids.

Discovering that Gabriella's turning humans didn't entirely surprise me, but the possibility that she could create hybrids throws me completely.

Hybrids.

Is this possible? Has Gabriella created any yet or is this genuinely her first attempt? If the scene hadn't dazed me, I would've got my hands on Gabriella long before Andrei appeared on stage.

This woman dies. No question. But we need answers. There could be other witches who survived the First's blood, and we need to locate them.

But how capable is Andrei of staying in control long enough? Maeve spoke to me about an encounter she had with Andrei last night and her worry about his stability. But what can we do apart from hope that his decision to reach out and reconnect can temper his reactions. His obsessive need to kill Gabriella grows every day and, like all his other emotions, that hatred intensified since he changed. If Andrei reacts as strongly as he does when Maeve's threatened, Gabriella could be dead in seconds.

Andrei at least attacked the hemia first and focuses on those who'd stand between us and Gabriella, so at least he's thinking for now. Once the first recruit goes down, Gabriella's army aren't good little soldiers anymore, because the moment Andrei burns out two more who step forward to defend their leader, the others take pause, nobody else moving as they watch the scene unfold.

As Jamie and Maeve push through the standing, wary vamps, I grip onto Gabriella. Last time we fought in the woods near the Winterfall house, the day she abducted the child and intended to pin the crime on me, Gabriella bested me. Now? She isn't fighting back. Biding her time? Or held by my magic and the proximity of my nails to her throat? Either way, Gabriella's heart rate doesn't change, steadily pumping the small part of the First's blood around her body.

I'm pissed off that Gabriella isn't frightened. At all.

Each time I'm close to this woman, her scent overpowers me. Not only the expensive human perfume she drenches herself in for her special occasions but the natural sourer smell that the older hemia have from their aged blood. But the evil? That's not a scent, that's an entire aura.

Jamie and Maeve rush at the stage through the agitated recruits who shout and jostle at each other in a mass of confusion. Maeve runs straight to the witch crumpled in a corner and I straighten. Why? What can she do? Maeve must understand that the witch needs to die. The final answer to what Gabriella's planning wipes away any chance the Dominion leader can survive. Faceless, brainwashed army or not, the Dominion can not create hybrid weapons.

Gabriella laughs harshly. "Here we are, all together again although not exactly the same circumstances as beneath the academy."

Jamie joins Maeve in crouching on the dusty stage by the witch, and I glance over to where Ash remains backstage. There's no sign of him or the guard who stood on that side of the stage. Presumably Gabriella's security lies on the floor nearby with his neck broken, like the one Ash killed close to the emergency exit door. I definitely heard a yell from the other wing when I rushed Gabriella.

"Who invited you to my celebrations?" Gabriella asks casually. "I've spent weeks dodging you and that damn hybrid." She looks around and the sudden silence from the recruits isn't due to her speech but their new attention on us. "Is my dear friend here? Looks like the rest of your merry band are."

"Dorian?" I ask. "No. But he'd love me to send a photo of you and this address."

"I'm sure he would also love to join us, but the man hasn't visited this place before, so his magic won't work. Without blood runes, he'd never reach the theatre before I leave." She pulls against my grip. "Tobias, stop the mock threat. Everybody knows you won't kill me."

"Don't bet on that," says Andrei, darting a look between Gabriella and the vamps from the stalls that he's holding off—ones who can't decide how suicidal they're feeling as they weigh him up.

Gabriella slants her head. "I heard rumours something happened to my son. What are you, sweet boy?"

"I'm not a boy, and I'm not your son." My eyes widen in both alarm and warning. He's already retreated, Andrei's words never truer. The reckless, murderous guy created by the First fills his changed eyes and aura.

Andrei strides over to meet Gabriella face to face and despite the continued stoic stance, I sense the pain contort her body as his magic claws at her mind. "Are you the First?" she asks him. "Did you take my son's body?"

"Partly." His mercurial eyes don't leave her face.

"Her puppet?"

"No." His teeth bare and the void-like aura surrounding him engulfs more of the stage.

"Mmm." Gabriella pats his cheek and I snatch her wrist, pinning the arm to her side. "You won't kill me, Andrei-the-Partly-First. I can guarantee that."

"Then the First's blood has affected your brain," he snaps back. "You'll die before this so-called ritual's done, and so will your dumb followers."

Gabriella's walking on cracking ice by speaking to Andrei this way, and I picture the mocking smile on her face. I don't sense anything false in her bravado—does she honestly believe she's walking away from this? Because if so, what does Gabriella know that we don't?

"I see that. I'm happy you demonstrated what you are, Andrei," she purrs. "Since I missed the show beneath the catacombs, demonstrate to your mother how many you can kill and how quickly."

"Or maybe I'll show you first hand," says Andrei, and Gabriella takes a sharp breath.

Andrei isn't touching me, but a faint ache begins behind my eyes. "Not yet. We need answers about the witches she's changed," I urge him.

"Oh, that's not the reason at all." She chuckles.

"Then what?" calls Jamie from beside Maeve.

Gabriella looks at Jamie as if only noticing him—as if he isn't worth her attention, showing her teeth but not in a smile. I nod at Maeve as a wave of her pissed off energy rolls towards me—Gabriella sees Jamie as our weakest link.

"I can't deal with her bloody riddles," says Jamie. "Just kill her. There's no question anymore—those hybrids need to die."

My eyes widen in surprise at his vehemence, more so at Gabriella's continued calm demeanour.

"Isn't anybody defending me?" she yells at the confused and cautious recruits.

I shout out as a vamp appears from the wings, a smartly dressed guy who left the stalls and headed backstage, the idiot intending to take us by surprise. He lunges at a distracted Maeve who's closest to the edge of the stage with the motionless witch.

Smartly dressed but not a smart guy as he's on the stage beside Maeve in seconds, with no time to register what's happening before Andrei takes his life. Then Andrei snatches the guy from the floor like a rag doll and slings him towards the stage edge.

"Anybody else?" Andrei shouts at the recruits.

One of the other guy's in suits mutters something beneath his breath. I don't catch what he says, but it's more than enough for Andrei to act again. The vamp's unearthly scream as he dies sends the vamp beside him sprinting away, shoving into the kids retreating to the back of the theatre, as he blurs towards the stage wing closest to him.

Gabriella stills as she watches the vamps in disgust.

"You were supposed to be my best and you run like dogs! If these bastards kill me, you'll all die because you're chained to me by the blood," she shouts at the kids. "At least go down with the glory of protecting your leader, you pathetic creatures."

I choke a laugh at Gabriella's pompous words and grip her closer. She's fighting against my mind magic holding her in place while suppressing her own, but the potency I recognise from the last time we met peels at my mental fingers.

I don't have the First's blood, and I'm tuning in to her every thought and movement but her resistance builds. Since she took the blood, I'm something I've never been before: inferior to Gabriella.

The recruits didn't know about the blood link because the already panicked energy in the room shoots sky high, some whispering in shock to each other.

"And that's why you won't kill me, isn't it Maeve Winterfall?" Gabriella calls out. "Look at the poor little witch you're pointlessly protecting. You know there're others? Many, many more."

Maeve stands and Ash leaves the wings the second she does, standing behind her. He may've killed two of the four guards, but his appearance is unruffled—mostly. Ash grew larger recently, but never gave off any different energy. Now, I easily sense the dragon, but nobody would need the ability since his eyes shifted to reptilian, his scales multiplied and spreading along his neck, something I've not seen for a long time.

Ash doesn't bother looking at the useless army, his attention and large hands purely on Maeve as he rests them on her shoulders.

Maeve stares mutely at Gabriella, Jamie also by her side, and she flicks a look to me, then Andrei. "How many others?" she asks coolly and waves a hand at the kids.

No, Maeve. Don't go there.

"Witches or vamps?" Gabriella shrugs against me. "Most of the witches died, but a handful remain. Hemia? Oh, I'd say around a hundred."

Maeve blinks, mouth parting. "A hundred?"

"Some witches required persuasion." She shifts and I press my nails into her skin, along with tightening the magic band around her mind in warning. "You're far too good to kill innocents, Maeve. Your little human morals would never allow you."

"Wrong," says Jamie. "All your creations would kill us. Why would we spare them?"

Another ear-piercing scream comes from the stalls and I side-eye Andrei continuing to show that he doesn't care, smirking as if he's backing up Jamie's comment.

I'd held confidence that between us we could take on this number, fully expecting a lot of the kids to run, but Andrei's single-handedly picking them off. The terrified vamps in the room surging to escape now create a bottleneck through the door, or crouch behind seats, as if they're human and Andrei's gunning them down.

"My recruits will kill you all? That appears impossible," spits Gabriella as she watches her recruits in disgust. "I'm impressed Andrei. Will you end all their lives?"

"If you die, we won't need to," says Ash gruffly.

"Exactly." Andrei turns back from his killing spree, eyes mercurial, already lost behind the void.

A faint darkness surrounds Maeve's fingers, and she edges away from where Andrei stands, as the shadows manifest in response.

Gabriella chokes a laugh. "Shadow magic from a Winterfall? After all that resistance at the Blackwood house, here you are embracing the darkness. Very disappointing. Whatever would your Confederacy think of such a development?" But there's a new wariness in her voice. A Blackwood magic user. Not the good little human with her morals.

"I've seen the future," she says.

"Well, hardly a surprise since you're a future-sighted witch."

"One you're creating that needs stopping." The shadows continue to snake around Maeve's arms. "And now I've witnessed the horror you've inflicted on witches who never volunteered."

A vamp darts onstage from the opposite direction to where Andrei stands, and Ash leaps in front, slings the guy to the floor and stamps on his neck. Bone crunches, Ash sneering as the vampire has no chance at a final breath. "We don't seem to have a problem with killing your asshole recruits," he growls at Gabriella.

Grabbing the vamp by the hair with taloned fingers, he drags him to the edge of the stage and throws him to the pile Andrei's creating.

"Where are the other witches who survived the blood?" asks Jamie.

"That's a secret. Why don't you come here, Jamie, and I'll whisper you the answer?" says Gabriella.

"How fucking stupid do you think I am?" he snaps back.

Her voice lowers. "About as stupid as Tobias is to think he can hold me."