Chapter Thirty-Three

??ran? was under attack!

Faith raced out onto her bedroom balcony and looked down on Main Street, her heart thumping hard and fast. Women were screaming and running, some clutching children, most being rushed along by their husbands. Behind them, a swarm of dark-clothed men were bearing down on the fleeing townsfolk like an infestation of mutant black insects.

Faith gripped the railing as she watched people of the community being felled beneath brutal punches or bludgeoning clubs. Kacie! Where are you?! She frantically searched the chaos for her sister and her aunt. Please, let them be—

Faith gasped. Marissa! Dev's wife was falling behind in the confusion. Hugely pregnant, Marissa couldn't move at much more than an ungainly hobble, and as she lagged farther and farther back, two—No! Two red-haired Om R?u grabbed Marissa under her arms and scooped her off her feet.

Marissa's face went ashen with terror and her hands scrabbled protectively toward her swollen belly.

"No!" Faith screamed.

Dev Nichita appeared out of nowhere, seeming to rise up from the very cave rock. His eyes glowed pure murder, his fangs extended like twin white blades. He grabbed the two redheaded Om R?u by the backs of their skulls and rammed them at each other face on face. Their heads exploded like two plates of Spaghetti Bolognese thrown together.

Faith staggered back and gagged.

Dev snatched his wife into his arms and took off like thunder for the mansion.

Faith pressed a hand over her mouth, her eyes watering from the bitterness in her throat. She thought she'd seen the worst of violence when Adonis had strangled Bald Guy, but that had been nothing compared to—

Her hand flopped down to her side as she gaped in awestruck horror at the man who'd just appeared on Main Street.

Nearly eight feet tall, he was unreal, dressed in a black leather loin cloth, short black boots, and that was all…besides the adornment of a T-shaped chain that swung from his pierced nipples down to his pierced navel. A glorious mane of bright red hair fell down his back and well past his butt, turning him into a creature both beautiful and savage.

Bulldozing through the crowd, the redheaded savage charged straight for The TradeMark clothing store. Without bothering with anything so insignificant as a door, he crashed through the plate glass window in a burst of jagged shards, stomping a mannequin in half as he stormed inside.

Beth Costache's petrified scream rang out.

Faith clutched a hand to her throat.

Faith, I'm here, I'm safe.

Faith swung her head around and peered at one of the balconies below, relief nearly taking her knees out when she saw her sister standing with a group of friends.

Oslo, London, Dublin, Berlin—all the second-floor balconies below were filling with people. Faith couldn't see Rome, directly beneath her feet, but could hear the frantic chatter.

Faith knitted her brow at Kacie as she shared a moment of worry and fear with her twin.

Bull-throated shouting called Faith's attention back to the town. She turned to look…and felt the blood drain from her cheeks. The redheaded savage was standing on a shelf of cave rock jutting over the town cinema. Faith could see him clearly. He was directly across from her balcony, about seventy-five feet away. He had Beth.

Another red-haired enemy was clutching Ellen the dentist, and still more Om R?u hovered behind the four.

Both women were white-faced and sobbing.

Beneath the shelf, several Varcolac warriors were already scaling the cliff face: Dev, back on the scene now, plus Breen, Kasson, and Thomal, who was nearly unrecognizable with his purple-dyed hair and his sort-of clothes. Ellen's husband, Pedrr, was also trying to climb the rock wall, but kept falling off in his panic.

Jacken was standing in front of the movie theater, his legs planted wide, ruthless black eyes locked on the redheaded savage. Jacken had a knife in his hand, but no place to throw it. The savage was holding Beth directly in front of him.

Ellen's captor was similarly using her as a shield.

The redheaded savage gestured to Ellen. "Not one of the women I originally threatened to take, but she'll do." He laughed.

Faith cringed as the hair on her arms stood on end. Good God, that laugh was a chainsaw tearing through monkey bars—pure evil.

"You've captured two mated women," Jacken pointed out, his voice calm, but taut. "They're of no use to you, Josnic."

Josnic…Faith had heard this story. Over a year ago a faction of Topside Om R?u had been in the middle of handing over Marissa, Hadley, and Kendra to some of the Underground Om R?u when the Varcolac warriors had come to the rescue and stolen the women. Enraged at losing these precious Dragons, Josnic, leader of the Underground Om R?u, had invaded ??ran? and threatened to take Beth and the librarian, Hannah, if his three women weren't returned. They weren't returned, of course, and the town had lived with Josnic's threat ever since. Today, it appeared, was the day of reckoning.

Josnic hugged Beth closer to his body, his forearm pushing up her breasts, and smiled meanly down at Jacken. "I can still find something to do with mated women."

Beth whimpered, her lips quivering.

Josnic's voice lowered to impossible octaves. "You owed me three women, Brun. You should've paid that debt with ones that didn't mean shit to you when you had the chance. Ejohn," Josnic addressed one of the Om R?u behind him. "We have an unwelcome visitor."

Goodness, Faith hadn't even noticed Thomal, he'd moved so stealthily. Now he was at the top of the outcropping of rock, a knife clenched in his teeth like in the movies.

"Costache!" Dev yelled as the Om R?u named Ejohn proceeded to step forward and drop a rock on top of Thomal.

But Thomal had already seen it and was rotating out of the way—unfortunately, the sharp, twisting evasive movement made him lose his grip. He fell.

Breen reached out to make a grab for him. For his efforts, he was pulled off the cliff face, too.

Whoom! The boulder hit first, splatting apart against the cave floor, then Breen and Thomal followed, both men landing hard and rolling.

Shouts erupted behind Josnic and the air was suddenly cacophonous with the sounds of combat. Faith's heart surged forward with hope. The Varcolac had launched an attack from behind to save Beth and Ellen! She couldn't see the fight—it was too far back on the outthrust of rock—but she could hear the thuds of blow meeting flesh, ragged breathing, incoherent oaths, and…and then the noises faded.

Josnic threw back his lion's head and laughed uproariously.

The back of Jacken's neck turned red.

"We go," Josnic said to his men, then his vicious black eyes bored into Jacken. "Here's your woman's life now, Varcolac." Reaching up to the collar of Beth's blouse, Josnic ripped it down the middle, tearing away her bra with it.

Beth let out a wail and fumbled to cover her bare breasts.

The women on the second-floor balconies upped the volume of their screaming.

Faith clasped both hands to her mouth, a wintry rush of panic washing down her spine. Please, God, let somebody save her.

But no other warrior was high enough on the cliff face to do something. Josnic turned around…so did Ellen's captor. They were leaving! Everything was going wrong too fast!

"Stop!" Faith called out, raising her arm. "Please! I'll go with you!"

Instant silence.

Josnic turned back around. His gaze swept the balconies, found her and pinioned her.

Faith dropped her hand back to her side and shuddered. She'd blurted those words out of fear for Beth and Ellen's welfare, but now that she'd spoken them, she felt their rightness.

Both Beth and Ellen had children, homes, husbands.

Faith had nothing.

She didn't even know how to live this new life she'd been handed, without the rigid discipline of ballet to guide her, without Kacie—not now that her twin had a mountain of friends—and without Nyko. She just didn't know how to exist in the shadow of so much rejection. And there it was: the deciding factor. It was time to go.

Her entire body iced with the thought of leaving, never again to see her twin or her aunt. Would they miss her? Yes, of course. At first. But they both had such full lives now. She stood on their periphery, anyway, and that was beginning to hurt just too much. Would she miss them? Immensely. Nyko, too. But it helped knowing that with this final act of saving two dear women, Faith could go out with courage. She'd been acting uncharacteristically cowardly for too long.

She didn't delude herself about this choice. Wherever that redheaded savage took her, it wasn't going to be a pleasant place. But she was a practical woman who'd spent the better part of her years dealing with life's harsh realities. She'd deal with this, too. And the odd truth was, she'd rather go someplace bad, where her unhappiness wouldn't be questioned and her hopelessness would make sense, rather than continue listening to her sister and aunt incessantly harp on her to try a little harder here in ??ran?.

She was so sick of the struggle.

"You have to let both of those women go in exchange for me," she called across to Josnic. "You said that Jacken owes you three unmated women. Well, I'm an unmarked Royal Dragon, and that's worth three females, for sure."

Josnic's eyes blazed.

The community as a whole unfroze at that, voices from every direction shouting at her.

"Don't go!"

"Stop!"

"You have no idea what you're doing!"

"Faith, please listen…!"

Through it all, she heard Kacie's voice, the loudest, the most panicked and alarmed. But Faith forced herself to block her sister's protests from her ears. From her mind.

"Agreed." Josnic smiled, the expression somehow both attractive and menacing. "Krolan," he said, and a different black-haired Om R?u stepped forward, black teeth tattoos whirling up the entire length of both arms.

This Om R?u lifted a crossbow, sighted, and shot.

A bolt zinged past Faith's head and embedded in the wall of the mansion behind her. A long cord trailed from the end of it, and the black-haired shooter quickly hammered his end into the cave wall. Next he laid a pair of hand-holds over the cord and whizzed them over to her.

She caught them and climbed up onto her balcony railing. Her pulse pounded into her throat. She gripped the hand-holds so tightly, her fingers throbbed.

The shouting of the people around her rose to a deafening high.

Below her, Jacken looked on the verge of blowing a vein.

Terror over what she was about to do shrank her stomach. She hesitated, trembling.

With a lascivious sneer, Josnic seized one of Beth's breasts in his massive fist and squeezed it.

"Let those two women go now," Faith ordered in a tremulous voice. "I won't come until you do." Sweat trickled from her armpits.

"One now," Josnic countered. "The other when you get here." He gestured to Ellen's captor.

The red-headed Om R?u took a step back from Ellen and kicked her in the rear end.

Screaming, Ellen flew over the side of the rock shelf, her arms flailing.

On the ground below, Pedrr shouted.

Dev sprang off the side of the cliff and snatched Ellen out of the air, tucking her close to his chest. They spun together, picking up speed. As they hit ground, Dev angled his body sideways, taking the brunt of the fall onto his shoulder.

Pedrr staggered over to Ellen and hugged his wife.

Faith's attention was pulled away from the scene by movement on one of the balconies adjacent to hers.

It was Pandra, dressed in…my goodness, some sort of outlandish leather jumpsuit. Leaping up onto her own railing, Pandra started hurdling balconies toward Faith.

A band of panic clutched Faith's lungs. No! If Pandra caught her and stopped her, who would save Beth? Not even one warrior was left on the rock face now.

Someone pounded on her locked bedroom door. The knob rattled.

No more time. Be brave, Faith! She leapt off her railing. Wobbling on her hand-holds like a drunken acrobatics performer, she rode the cord for only a few feet before bumping into the large steel bars that surrounded the mansion. Wriggling her slender body sideways, she made it through the two-foot space that separated each bar, then crammed her eyes shut as she sped into open air.

Hundreds of voices rose in horror around her.

It felt like she zip-lined forever across the cave, until, finally, a large hand curled around one side of her waist, bringing her to an abrupt halt. Her feet happily found solid contact on the cave shelf. She started to exhale in relief…then caught an up-close view of Josnic, and the sight stopped the breath in her lungs. With his massive bone structure and body made out of Incredible Hulk parts, the Om R?u leader was even more terrifying than she'd realized. How had she ever thought of Nyko as big?

Josnic shoved her at Ellen's former captor, and then she was dealing with a different problem. Her throat pinched off and her eyes watered uncontrollably, blurring her vision. The red-headed Om R?u exuded a stink unlike anything she'd ever encountered, and she'd been around some very sweaty dancers in her days. But this was like…spoiled meat mixed with a hundred sweaty jockstraps and a swamp of rotten vegetation. Her head swam from the strength of it, almost making her think she was imagining it when she heard Josnic tell Jacken…

"Think I'll keep this one, after all." Laughing that horrible laugh of his, Josnic tossed Beth over his shoulder.

Faith shook her head violently, trying without success to voice a protest. Her tongue was glued to the roof of her parched mouth.

Zzzzzz…

All heads turned at the sound of someone else traveling down the zip-line.

It was Pandra. She'd looped a belt over the crossbow bolt cord and was coming at their group, fast, her focus fixed on Josnic.

Josnic's gaze lit. He handed Beth off to one of his men and prepared to grab his new prize.

Pandra punched out her legs as she arrived at the platform, landing a two-footed blow dead-center to Josnic's chest.

Josnic hurtled backward, stumbling down onto one knee, his eyes flaring wide.

His Om R?u brethren gaped, as well. It was probably extremely rare to see their enormous leader knocked down. Most likely never by a woman.

Josnic slowly lowered his head, peering down at his chest in abject shock. Blood was snaking from two holes there.

Pandra had stabbed him with her high heels.

Moving in a coordinated blur, Pandra leapt at Beth's keeper, dealing the Om R?u an uppercut that knocked his feet out from under him. As the man took a trip down to the flat of his back, Pandra plucked Beth off his shoulder, then rushed to the rim of the rock shelf. She dropped Beth as gently as possible into Thomal's waiting arms below.

Thomal stared at Pandra, the look on his face as shocked as Josnic's.

Pandra paused, locking gazes with her husband for a long moment.

Josnic surged to his feet. His eyes flashed red and he bellowed a deafening roar.

Faith clapped her hands over her ears, swaying in her captor's arms.

Pandra straightened slowly, her focus never leaving Thomal. "Be free, love," she said so softly, Faith almost didn't hear. Pandra took a step backward.

An expression of utter panic spread across Thomal's face. "No!" he shouted. Setting Beth down, he started to claw up the rock face. "Pandra! Don't!" Rubble cascaded down.

Pandra turned toward Josnic, lids sealed, and lifted her chin to his blow.