Kalina ~ Book Four

The vampires had arrived three minutes before Sylvie’s grand entry, Magnus had said, and their wide eyes, taking in the blood drenching her from head to toe, made her feel something.

Almost.

Their dirty clothes were pressed into metal chairs someone had procured, the rusty metal feet staining her creamy carpet.

Mess. Everything was a fucking mess. She gritted her teeth and stalked to the two monsters, leaning over them with fire in her veins.

Sylvie did not give them time to shut themselves away, pouring every ounce of her Vīs into her compulsion and leaning over the chained Vamps.

“What do you want from me? Speak the truth, and speak plain, or I’ll rip your head off your fucking shoulders.”

She hardly recognised the voice coming from her mouth, the rasp, the bite, the monotone hate. Perhaps this was always her fate.

This would have been her existence if Elias had truly died that day, saving her from the very same vampires that now shivered under her gaze. Why she even saved them hardly made sense. However, it didn't matter then.

Elias and Magnus stood behind the two Vampires, fisting the iron and silver chains that bound her prisoners, eyeing her with equal concern. She didn't need their concern. She was fine enough.

“Mates,” the taller one on the right hissed in answer to her question. His gaunt face hollowed deeply at his cheeks, and his skin lacked colour. The one on the left hardly looked any better, his eyes completely blank, as if his mind had checked out into another realm altogether. Sylvie just scoffed.

“I can’t give you mates. Try again.”

“But you work for the ones who can, Fate’s Champion.” The first Vampire's yellow canines flashed as he spat the name out, and Sylvie leashed her disdain.

They wouldn't ruffle her— not until she got her answers. Rowan had been the first to call her that name. How could they possibly know it, though, when vampires had been warded against?

Truths were unfolding for Sylvie despite them hardly saying a thing. Perhaps that was the point, though. Maybe they wanted her to know. To guess.

“Did you plant a scent in my home?”

Both vampires' eyes flashed with confusion, although the silent one kept his gaze locked on something far beyond the house's walls.

Elias’ posture went rigid. The itch of her marks proved he knew what she questioned, and his fury mounted from her secret. He could join the club.

“No.”

“Did you send Beatrice Herring to slit my throat?”

Another puzzled microexpression.

“We know no one of that name.”

We.

“Bea, then. Fourteen. Dark eyes. Pale.” With every word, the vampires drifted further away.

“No,” he whispered.

“Did you kidnap Penny and drain her of blood? What about Sam Grey?”

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

She was sick of hearing the word, but it told her something— it did. It wasn’t the answer she wanted or hoped for. No, it was far worse.

“And my pack healer?” She couldn't say her name. She wouldn't dare in front of her enemies—even Magnus.

He wouldn't see her break.

“Did you slit her throat too? What do you want?” Her nose almost pressed against the chatty Vampires’ but he had nothing to give.

No clarity. Nothing. It was like he wasn’t even the same being who attacked her on the highway weeks earlier.

She pondered that thought briefly and then ran her gaze down his bony body. Magnus had done a number on him. He looked almost desiccated. The whites of his eyes were stained a ruddy brown, and dark veins wired through them.

Just enough blood to stay eternally hungry. Torture if ever she saw it.

She scoffed and pulled back a fraction. “You couldn't hurt a fly, could you? Weak,” she drawled. “Must be someone higher up then, yes?”

The Vampire spat at her feet, but the dehydrated glob barely shot past his chin. She laughed darkly. “Pathetic.”

Magnus yanked the chain in reprimand, but Sylvie just shook her head. “We’re done here, Magnus. Dispose of them.”

“Is that an order, Highness?”

Sylvie stilled back to her father as she processed his question and the pressure behind it.

She spoke over her shoulder. “I’ll leave that answer for you to decide. General.”

With that, she stormed from the house to the next port of call—the lake.

Unsurprisingly, the Vampires left her with more questions than answers. If her hypotheses were to amount to anything, she needed to cut them down considerably—one idea at a time.

“Vee?”

Sylvie didn't slow. At this pace, she should reach the lake in forty minutes. “You should be with the others,” she growled.

Rosie’s tear-streaked face fell, but Sylvie couldn't dwell on it. Not then. Not after-

“She needs me, Vee. Let me start her pyre ceremony.” She had half a mind to yell at her, tell her to move her ass to the lake and stand in line like everyone else. But even in her darkened mind, she could admit Rosie was right.

Someone needed to be with the body, and Rosie was the only one she remotely trusted with the task. Amira deserved the greatest send-off of any shifter, and Rosie would make sure of it. She could just come back later and test her.

Sylvie nodded and continued. Despite her shifter friend's apparent desire, no other words were spoken between them. But that wasn’t right anymore.

Rosie had wanted space. She hadn't spoken to her in days, not after she promised to find her mate and failed to deliver. Sylvie had started the letters; she had, but there was always something more pressing. More urgent.

To her, perhaps, but not Rosie. Their distance was her fault.

Useless. Pathetic. Selfish. She shut out the thoughts.

The walk breezed by with nothing in her head but a droning whine. She breached the clearing and spotted Rowan building a bonfire as other weeping shifters helped.

She palmed her chest and thought of Kian. He’d find her soon, but she didn't want to wait long. Not with her adrenaline waning. This needed to be done and fast. Without Wren, Sylvie would discover nothing.

She pressed her back against a rough-barked tree and waited- and waited- and waited. By now, it had to be the witching hour, the perfect time to shine a light on the darkness that had breached her pack. She knew it had.

“Blessed one. What do I owe the pleasure?”

Sylvie turned and smiled at Kerensa’s mate. Even in this realm, Wren’s skin shimmered an unnatural golden hue, their eyes a burnt orange.

Kian stood behind Wren, skin sickly pale. He wouldn’t be able to portal anytime soon. Good. She didn't want him following where she planned to go anyway.

“I recall you saying something about highlighting the truth when we met.” Sylvie jerked her head to the milling pack.

“Everyone.” Wren didn't say it like a question, but Sylvie answered as if they had.

“Everyone. Give them everything you’ve got.” Sylvie stepped away from her tree and peeked over her shoulder at the sun fae. “If you’re game,” she added.

Wren’s lips curled into an appreciative smile even as Kians frowned. “Lead the way.”

Stalking towards the fire with Wren at her back, Sylvie asked Rowan, shirtless and stained with sweat and tears, “Is this everyone?”

“Yes. Except for Rosie.”

She nodded, reached to squeeze his hand, and then stopped when she noticed the rust stains all up her arm. Nothing would dull her edge, and Amira’s blood would remind her of what needed to be done. Her hand dropped. Sylvie wouldn't make the pack comfortable if one of them did this.

“Gather them,” she said quietly, standing in impossible stillness as he mindlinked everyone. The roots underfoot called to her, but she ignored them. There would be no hiding tonight and no forgetting, either.

As the pack gathered into a huge crowd, Sylvie gazed at them. They eyed her wearily, clearly able to smell the healer's scent dousing her skin. She rolled her shoulders and neck, sighing at the satisfying cracks.

“Nobody move,” she said darkly. “If you run, you die.”

With that, her pack shrank away but kept their feet planted.

Good.

They should be afraid.

She waved Wren forward and let a hideous smile draw her lips up, teeth bared. A list of opportunities that steadily dwindled until the truth came out— that’s what Wren offered. She would find the truth if it were the last thing she ever did.

For Amira, for Bea.

Wren gave her a short look but faced the pack anyway, hands glowing with the power of a thousand suns. “This shouldn't hurt,” Wren said before flaring their hands over them and lighting up the world.

Rowan couldn't believe his eyes and could hardly see, either, after the flash of heat emanating from the Sun Fae. A dozen of his pack, the ones from Fraser, all fell to their knees, black goo pouring from their open mouths. Their mates drew back in horror as the dark essence of what Rowan could only assume were demons splat on the dirt and fizzled, unmoving.

Move back from the affected.

His pack followed his order except for those still vomiting on the ground. His stomach sank until nothing but fury lingered there.

They had been played.

He looked at his mate, and his heart was crushed at what he saw: her body spattered in his healer's blood, her eyes dull, and her mouth curled into a sneer. She pocketed something Wren handed her and turned away from the chaos, stalking back through the dark forest, followed by the Fae.

He contemplated chasing her down but halted the thought. His pack needed him more then, and Elias and Kian were there. She’d be okay- eventually. The hole in the mind-link from Amira was almost unbearable. The missing tie between them cast darkness in his mind that threatened to pull him to his knees since it happened.

He didn’t understand it. There were no other scents in that cabin besides hers. The door was locked from the inside, and her body looked placed on the floor with calculation.

The Fae queen had said the mid and high-level demons had no scent, but the host body they inhabited surely did. Fraser's old pack certainly had a smell, and yet none of them were anywhere near that cabin.

He shook his head. Sylvie knew something. He knew the stubborn tilt of her head when an idea ran rampant. Those dreams gave her an insight he would never understand.

Throw the carcasses in the fire. He scooped up the black sludge with a shovel and dumped it in the bonfire.

His gaze returned to the forest. He could still catch up if he shifted, but a voice in his mind stilled him.

If Fraser's pack are all possessed, what do you think happened to our people who defected?

Rowan had no answers. Claudine hadn’t seemed entirely herself when they last saw her. He had to stop himself from tearing her apart when she told Sylvie not to return, the heartbreak in his mate mark enough to make his eyes water.

I don’t know.

Well, we have to save them, don’t we? We can’t let monsters control our people!

Rowan accepted the outrage, the fear, the angst and turned to the voice with steel in his heart.

“Tonight, we grieve for our lost ones.” Amira and the mates his people thought they had. No doubt they would be changed now the demons were exorcised.

“We say goodbye. We recover. We heal.” He clenched his jaw as the mark on his chest ached. Truly ached as if his mate had lied straight to his face in malice.

Rowan curled his fists at either side of him and let his beast prowl forward. The blend of man and wolf was enough to raise the hairs on the skin of every shifter before him. “When the sun rises, we take back our own.”

His pack murmured their agreement. Some cheered, others wept, and he turned one last time after his mate.

His light.

The forest quieted, and he finally palmed his mark. The emptiness there nearly killed him. He knew Sylvie would find the answers like only she could.

She was a genius and pure of battered heart, but after what he saw… What he felt… He could only hope Amira’s death hadn’t broken her for good.