MENA
Carver is dressed in a sharp black suit, a dark eye patch over his right eye, barely visible underneath the heavy fall of his hair. He ambles slowly, his cane on the uneven ground making for slow going. Ian said he was still healing from the injuries Javier slashed into his flesh, and it shows. Carver leans heavily on the wood and silver cane; the silver knobbed handle intricately carved into a lion’s face, and the wooden shank a silky mahogany with a smooth ferrule.
“Javier was committed to his cause; I’ll give you that. I mean, who else but a sociopath would fake being gay, stage a falling out with his family and cut himself off from his friends just for a fucking coup? A twenty-year-long coup. Commitment. Yeah, I’ll give him that,” Carver says bitterly, moving closer to this tense circle of frozen combatants.
“Like anyone should believe anything you say, viado,” Segundo spits, but he remains unmoving.
“Yes, because being gay makes me a liar. So you’re saying your brother wasn’t a viado?” Carver asks tilting his head, but Segundo says nothing more.
“It really doesn’t matter what you say or what lie you try to tell. I wouldn’t believe you anyway. Javier told me everything right before he attempted to rip out my heart and fucking eat it,” Carver informs them.
“So my question, Voyt,” Evan continues as if she were talking about her nail color and Carver hadn’t just dropped the mother of all bombs, “is whether you were a part of it. Your face says no, but Javier had me fooled, so I’m not so sure.”
“But I didn’t! I didn’t know. I was just going to talk to your mother about introducing us because you were unmated and I saw you at an art gala in Denver months ago. I swear. Segundo and Guillermo have only been my Guardians for less than a year,” he pleads hands raised in surrender.
“I’ll take that into consideration, but the rumor was that you were recruiting for a war. What war were you planning to start now that Iva has been taken out, Voyt?”
“I was not recruiting to start a war. I was sending aid to families and preparing for the eventuality of further attacks. That is not recruiting, that is being a competent leader. It is making sure our people are taken care of.”
“So noted. I’ll remember that while someone is trying to behead me in battle,” she snarks. “You have no idea what it means to be a true leader. If you think shelling out more money to already filthy rich people who could just as easily provide for themselves makes you a leader, you are sorely mistaken. Since you’ve been so benevolent to our people, I’ll let you live, but I want you to remember who your Queen is so you will watch as I turn them to dust,” Evan snarls, and then the screaming starts.
Javier’s brothers do not die quickly. Their skin abrades away slowly, showing muscle and sinew and then bone, before the bone chips away to show their organs and blood. So much blood. Before that, too, fades away to dust. All the while, Evan watches Voyt’s face morph from surprise to disgust to fear.
It is the fear she is going for.
After Evan is through with them, she delicately dusts off her hands, and walks to Voyt, grabbing him by the front of his shirt and raising him as high as her limited height allows.
“Mr. Voyt, I am letting you live so you can send a message to all your followers. My father made me Queen, and I will hold this position without a husband. Tell them what I do to traitors. What I did to the men who took my parents from me. If anyone tries to come and take my throne, I’ll be sure to remind you of my message. Personally. After I kill every single person you hold dear. Have I made myself clear, Voyt?”
“Y-yes. You have, my Queen.”
“Good. Oh, one more thing. Tell the leaders of each of the remaining head families that I will be meeting with them in one week’s time. Tell them to be ready for my call,” Evan murmurs and releases him so he thumps to the ground. Voyt wastes no time traveling from the gorge, leaving in a swath of smoke before he even regained his balance.
Then I feel it, the prickle of unease just as Aurelia screams, “Get down!”
We scatter; Cam and Aidan covering Evan, Rhys phasing on the fly and yanking Aurelia behind him, Carver wrenching a rapier from the head of his cane.
I try to move, to get in front of everyone so they can use the cover of my Aegis, but Ash bands an arm around my waist and hauls me to the slim cover of the brush line against the cliff face. I struggle against him, and his arm tightens before I feel his lips at my ear.
“Shh. We don’t want to show your abilities just yet. These could be the same people who tried to get you in Fraser,” he whispers in my ear, and I have to give it to him, I didn’t leave anyone alive in Fraser, so these guys wouldn’t know the extent of my abilities. I can’t just give it away now. I need them closer, in a group, so I can fry them all at once.
Ash pulls me behind him, but I smack his arm and hold my hand out for a weapon. He rolls his eyes and pulls a handgun from his left thigh holster, slapping it into my hand as he raises his compact assault rifle and we both start firing back into the dark. Then, I hear the sweetest sound, the thunder of the fifty-cal.
Thank. God.
I praised the heavens too soon, though, because Wraiths smoke in on all sides, advancing on us like a plague. But they aren’t strategic, they are untrained or disposable or both. I go for headshots, taking out five before my clip runs out. Shit. I reach for Ash, ripping the katana from its scabbard on his back, protecting his front as he drops his empty rifle and draws his kukri.
Aurelia and Rhys fight on my left as one, but Evan is having trouble with her Guardians doing their job a little too well, refusing to let her fight at all. Carver ends up on my right, slashing two men down before lifting his apparently decorative eye patch and giving me a wink with his right eye before popping it back down. He’s not as injured as he pretended, and Carver spins and twirls with ease over the rocks and bracken taking heads of three more men as he goes. The rest of the combatants that are left alive leave realizing that they are being mowed down like grass, and then the firing from the cliff intensifies, and it’s so much worse than before.
“Son of a bitch,” Evan screams when she’s grazed at the top of her arm, and Aurelia and I yell for Cam and Asher to get her the fuck out of here. They can’t though, because as soon as Cam touches her uninjured arm, she gives him a feral growl, and he rips his hand away as if burned.
Hell, he probably was.
I growl low in my throat and catch Aurelia’s attention as I see three men and two women stalking toward us in the dim. They form a loose semi-circle, tightening the noose as they stalk closer. Other than the lit pyre and the Fireskin of Aurelia, Rhys and myself, there is no other light. I discreetly motion to the advancing group and give her a cutting signal. She nudges Rhys and as one, we phase back, cutting off our light in the now pitch-black gorge.
I can see just fine in the shadows, so it’s easy to stalk in my bare feet closer to the rapidly advancing group of bastards trying to kill my family. And that’s what they’ve become. This rag-tag bunch of misfits are my people. Wraiths. Phoenixes. Doesn’t matter. They are mine, and I will protect them.
I don’t know what I’m capable of until it happens, but my phase comes without thought and draws the fire of the five in the water and several from the opposite cliff top. I don’t worry about the ones up high; their muzzle fire makes it easier for Ian to find them and take them out. The ones in the river, the ones dumb enough to get so close and not take the lead of their brethren, I make sure they pay. Their bullets ricochet off my shield, and bolts of lightning erupt from the tips of my fingers wrapping around their throats. I see bulging eyes, but I don’t hear screams.
Not that they’d be able to even if they tried.
I don’t hear gunfire anymore either, but I do smell cooked flesh and hear the muffled keening of their agony over the rush of the river. I feel my power rise in me, tethering to their bodies like a lash, raising them up from the water. The tips of their toes don’t even touch the surface as I raise them higher and higher, their trousers and dresses dripping over the surface of the rushing water.
“Do you see? Do you see your friends? Do you see them burning?” I scream into the night, and then I take one long beat of my wings, rising from the riverbank, dragging them with me.
“Can you see them? Watch them die,” I order into the dark and concentrate all my power into these would-be murderers. I watch their bodies fill with blue light and then explode in a shower of ashes to the water and ground below. I beat my wings, rising higher into the sky, making sure they hear me. Making sure they can see what I am capable of.
“You come after me or my family; I’ll do the same to you,” I growl into the stillness.
Silence is my only answer.