21. Bexley

21

BEXLEY

“Bexley, don’t,” Dom choked out.

I couldn’t help it, though. My back stiffened and I raised my head high. I balled my hands up into fists as I slowly turned around, and my eyes beheld my former boss. Her blonde hair whipped around in the wind, the flames of the fire kicking up, and her crimson red dress fluttered with every step she took. Despite the heat of the flames, she wasn’t sweating one damn bit. Her equally red heels seemed to glide across the ground as I backed toward Dom, shielding his body with mine.

“Bexley,” Dom said breathlessly.

“Shut up,” I muttered.

Delilah cackled. “I swear, it really does take a strong woman to rein these boys in sometimes, huh?”

My head tilted off to the side as my eyes darted around, and I couldn’t help but notice that the fire stopped moving. I mean, it was there. The wall of fire itself was at least twenty feet high. The flames reached toward the treetops, threatening to burn down the whole of the fucking forest if something didn’t give. But, the flames weren’t coming toward us.

Huh.

“So,” Delilah said as she clasped her hands behind her back, “I see we find ourselves at a crossroads.”

“A crossroads you created,” I spat.

She shrugged. “Does that make it any less a crossroads?”

“Bexley,” Dom whispered.

“Can it,” Delilah and I said in unison.

You know, before Delilah clapped with delight. “See!? That’s why you were always my favorite, Special Agent Anna.”

“I’m not a special agent any longer,” I said flatly.

“Well, you sure haven’t quit. And I certainly haven’t fired you.”

“As far as they know, I’m dead.”

Delilah shook her head. “Maybe missing in action. But certainly not dead.”

Screams and howls erupted in the distance, and it took all of the energy I had to focus. Dom struggled against his restraints, but he didn’t try for long. All too soon, his body slumped with exhaustion, and I had to press my back further against him just to keep him upright.

I stared Delilah down. “What do you want?”

“Simple,” my former boss said with a shrug. “Come with me, and Dom lives.”

“BEXLEY, GODDAMN IT, WHERE ARE YOU!?” Voss bellowed.

“Bumblebee, please!” Ronyn cried out.

Dear God, the commander general sounded damn near desperate.

“Are you really going to keep your boys so worried like this?” Delilah asked.

I peered over my shoulder and watched Dom’s eyes roll into the back of his head. His forehead finally stopped sweating, and I knew that wasn’t good. Without thinking, I turned my back to Delilah and cupped his face in my hands.

“Just stay with me a bit longer, please,” I whispered as I shook his face softly. “Open those eyes for me.”

But all he did was groan as his head fell back against the trunk of the tree.

“Let him go!” I exclaimed, whipping back toward Delilah. “He has nothing to do with this!”

“Oh, but he does,” she said as she shook her head, as if scolding a small child. “He has everything to do with this. They all do.”

Then, all of a sudden, the wall of flames moved steadily closer to us.

“What the fuck?” I asked breathlessly.

“Bexley!” Voss barked.

“Goddamn it, woman, where the hell are you!?” Ronyn cried out.

“They’re this way! Come on! Follow the smoke!” Merida yelped.

“Tick tock, the fire draws,” Delilah singsonged. “Are you really going to let someone else that you care about die because of your negligence, Special Agent? Because I have to admit, that really isn’t like you.”

“Jacob,” I whispered breathlessly.

And all at once, I caved.

“Okay,” I said as I locked my eyes with Dom.

“No!” Dom managed to bark as he helplessly struggled against his restraints, his oceanic eyes pleading with me. “Bexley, stop it! Please! You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what kind of deal you’re making!”

I took a few steps away from him, backing toward Delilah. “I’ll go with you, but I have some demands.”

“Nooooo!” Dom roared, tugging at the tree’s trunk.

Delilah’s voice rose up behind me. I didn’t want to take my eyes off Dom. Not even for a fucking millisecond. “Oh, I’m sure you do, Special Agent. But, they’ll have to wait until later.”

That made me spin toward her. “No, that’s not how this works. Before I go with you, you need t—AH!”

“Bexley!” Dom yelled breathlessly. “No! What have you done? Let her go, Delilah!”

“You’re safe, and that’s all that matters,” I said breathlessly as I turned back toward the woman who chased me into the woods in the first fucking place.

But once that bitch flicked her hand in the air, I heard Dom grunt as something dropped to the ground. I felt myself levitating through thin air as something hot and wretched spun itself around my wrists and ankles. I saw Dom, trying to press himself up from the forest floor. His hands, freed from the cuffs. Tears of joy sprang to my eyes as I looked down at my ankles, watching tendrils from the fire wrap around my skin. The searing heat forced pain through my veins, but I bit down onto my tongue. I wouldn’t give Delilah the satisfaction of hearing me cry out like I knew she wanted.

But when that same heat wrapped around my ankles and neck, it was harder to keep it together.

“Oh, God,” I choked out.

“Let her go!” Dom yelled.

My body rose higher into the sky as Delilah’s cackle grew. I saw Ronyn’s gray wolf jumping over the heads of a throng of vampires, trying to get closer to the ring of fire that blocked us away from the world. As Deliliah’s flames of restraint continued to shove me higher into the air, I saw Voss’s wolf leaping over the heads of vampires just to slam down into the middle of them. He was brutal, yanking them left and right. Snapping their necks with his jowls. I watched Dom bite the head off one before slamming his back legs into another one that Ronyn tossed his way. Merida’s bright red wolf jumped into the air, snatching a vampire out of a tree before it landed on someone else’s back.

Then, as if someone had alerted them to what was happening, I watched all of their massive wolf heads turn toward the sky.

But Voss was the first one to change back into his human form while he continued snatching vampires out of thin air and snapping their necks with his bare hands.

Jesus, he didn’t even need to be in his wolf form to kill them off.

“Bexleeeeeeeeeeeey!” he thundered.

Ronyn’s gray wolf turned his equally gray stare toward me, and I saw all of the hairs on his skin prickle at once. They stood so far on end that, honest to fuck on high, he looked like a goddamn furball. I couldn’t help but giggle as the bindings tightened around me. The one around my neck choked off my ability to breathe as everyone’s yelling blurred into one fantastical sound of chaos. I closed my eyes and steadied my heartbeat. I couldn’t let her kill me, and that meant I had to steady my body’s reactions to her movements. And even though that flame rope tightened around my throat, I managed to still my body enough to conserve the oxygen I needed.

That is, before I heard Ronyn’s booming voice echoing across what felt like the entire goddamn forest.

“For every mark you leave on that woman’s body, I’ll slaughter one of your soldiers just to show you that I can!” Ronyn erupted.

My body got yanked through the air, away from the ring of fire, and deeper into the pitch-black darkness of the woods. Everything rushed past me in a blur, as if we moved at lightning speed through space. And as the sounds of everything quickly faded into the background, only one sound stuck around.

The terrible, no good, very bad cackling of the psychopathic vampire that was once my boss.