The Elopement That Wasn’t, prt 4 is here … FINALLY!
As per the previous posts, this is unedited, un corrected, full of holes and boo-boos. And this is ending of the novelette. As usual, please send all corrections an non-cannon error fixes to the FB site at https://www.facebook.com/official.faith.hunter/
Enjoy
Leo picked up his once-primo and vanished into the dark, moving so fast I saw only a faint streak of white from Bruiser’s ripped, bloody shirt.
It was all I could do to not race after Bruiser. I stood, but I didn’t have comms. “Molly? Angie?” I asked Eli and Koun, focusing on the battle that seemed to be in a stalemate.
“In a limo with Big Evan and the rest of the Everharts,” Eli said, kneeling in the dark behind the trunk of a tree, “barreling down the hill to HQ. None of our people are down. Ten to one the shot was aimed at you and missed by because he dipped you.” Eli gave me a handful of rounds. I began reloading my weapon by feel in the dark.
“Why aren’t they shooting?” I asked.
He knew who I meant. The shooters on the roof. “Good question. First guess is they weren’t expecting so many guests, since you weren’t either.” His teeth flashed in the dark. It wasn’t a grin. The sense that leaked over to me was too annoyed, worried, and angry for that. “We should assume they have backup on the way.”
“How did they get up there?”
Eli shook his head, his frustration leaking over to me. He’d had drones in the air all day. And once the hedge was in place, there was no way for them to get to the roof. “Attic space we don’t know about? Secret passages built into the place? Former owner was eccentric. Liked castles and stone buildings. Spared no expense. New owner may not know. Or could have been coerced.”
I snapped the magazine back into position and dropped the rest of the rounds into my cleavage. Not a bad pocket. “Or she may be part of this.”
“Leo’s in the limo with Bruiser,” Koun said. “They are safe.”
I blew out a breath of relief. My shoulders dropped and I rolled them to release the tension. Wind caught my dress skirt and blew what was left around me. I was cold, but I wouldn’t trip on the remains of the dress. I was going to find and kill the person responsible for Bruiser’s injury. “Update,” I said.
“Shooters are repositioned to provide cover fire,” Eli said. “Mi-sook is armored. Coming as backup.”
The name was familiar as one of our new vampire security types. “You trust him?”
“Her. Yes. She’s good.”
A form popped into place, my ears healed enough that I heard her arrival. The woman was fully vamped out, her eyes like black holes in her pale mixed Asian face. “Sarah’s spotted a human form in the woods about fifty feet that way along with at least three Mithrans.” She gestured into the woods, her accent somewhere in the west, like Montana. “There seemed to be a physical altercation.”
Eli switched channels. “Hostage?” he asked Sarah into comms. A moment later he said to me,
“Could be one of ours fighting to free the human. Or a disagreement among our enemies.”
“Or bait,” Mi-sook said.
Bait. Someone who knew me too well, wanting us to race in there like idiots. Which would be stupid, but which we were going to do anyway. In case one of our people was in the woods in the hands of the enemy.
“Human in the woods is down,” Eli said.
I rolled my shoulders again, my skin pulling at my silk gown. I lifted the hem of my bloody wedding gown and tucked it into the smoother’s leg holes. I looked stupid. They’d see the white-ish in the dark. They’d smell me coming, Bruiser’s blood still fresh. My blasted dress marked me as bait. I said as much as I slid out of my shoes and squished my toes into ground—cold, winter-stiff earth.
“Don’t get killed,” Eli murmured.
From the roof off the chapel came the sound of swords clashing. “Go.” I darted into the blackness of the forest.
Skinwalkers were way faster than humans, and I was likely faster than most Skinwalkers, thanks to all times I’d died and all the vamp blood I’d been forced to drink to heal, but Mi-sook passed me after two steps and raced ahead at my left. I missed having Koun to my right. Eli faded into the night, silent behind me. I let myself make all the noise I wanted. Might as well be good bait.
Mi-sook whispered what had to be an expletive.
I sprinted up next to her. A bloody human lay on the ground, still as death.
The attack came from the trees above.
Two vamps landed on me. I was a tangle of limbs and dress and fangs and talons. If I’d had any thoughts of dignity and keeping one alive, they vanished. I fired five rounds into the nearest torso. Fangs snapped into my neck. I was already throwing myself to the side. The vamp fangs scraped through flesh, clamping onto my right shoulder instead. Both front and back.
Dog-fang vamps, with upper and lower fangs. I knew this vamp clan.
She shook me like a dog. Brought her arms down, hard. My arm bone snapped. My semi-automatic fell as lightning pain flashed through me. My arm went numb. Bitch-vamp leaped off the ground. Her teeth in my shoulder. This sucked.
True dat, as Jane would say, Beast’s mental tone ironic. Jane is stupid.
Shut up. Gimme some pain release.
Midair, I stabbed back. Groin strikes. Three of them, none hitting the artery feeding her leg, but finding the weakness in her armor I was hoping for. She gasped and her fangs released my shoulder as she landed. Her leg buckling. I’d hit something—nerve, tendon, something important.
Beast-fast, in a motion that was half dancefloor, half cat, I swiveled my body around and struck out again, cutting her face, trying for her throat. I moved in, My blade scraped off her gorget. This bitch came prepared.
She backhanded me. I spun, falling. A tree came at me. I hit it. Face first. Saw stars. Pain ricocheted through me. I let myself collapse to the side of the tree, twisting back around to face her as gravity finished its work. I landed hard.
Three shots. Three shots. Three shots. Eli’s firing style. But not at my vamp. I caught a glimpse of him. He was fighting two other vamps. Deon stood behind him. Firing. Three shots. My way.
Dog-fanged-bitch-vamp fell on me. Fangs out, mouth bloody. My blood. As she tumbled I raised the blade at the weak area of her armor, the groin. My previous strikes helped. Gravity helped this time. My blade pierced her armor at the weak point. I shoved in and cut around, following the path of least resistance. She grunted. Pulled her fist back for a face punch.
Two shots fired into her open mouth. Hot brass bounced onto my bare chest. Burned. The vamp fell to the side. “Crap,” I gasped.
Off to the side, another vamp fell. Eli finished off the third one and took both their heads. Deon did a little dance.
Mi-Sook took the dog-vamp’s head with a lefthand backswing of a longsword.
“Bonus, my lady,” she demanded, grinning like a fiend.
“Granted.” The word way too gaspy and soft. My vision seemed to be doing wonky things.
Mi-Sook frowned at me. Swept her gaze around the woods. Sniffed. Grimaced. Cursed again in the language I didn’t know. Dropped her longsword. Pulled a small knife and slit her wrist. Poured it over my shoulder.
I vaguely remembered that I had some healing amulets. Somewhere. Oh. Right. Inside Bruiser. Where they were needed. “The human?” I mumbled, remembering why we had gone into the woods.
“Alive,” Mi-Sook said, “and with a little luck, she should stay that way. It was the woman who owns the chapel.”
“Ah. Ummm. I don’t feel so good.”
And then everything went dark.
***
I woke to Eli placing me gently into a limo. The world whirled around me. I retched. Someone held my head out the car door and I vomited onto the asphalt. I hated the taste-feeling of sickness.
Eli wiped my mouth with something clean, eased me upright, shoved me over, against someone who held me upright by putting their arms around my waist, and got in beside me. I was pretty sure Eli had carried me out of the woods and around the chapel.
“Bruiser?” I asked. My throat ached and it hurt to swallow, the word more whisper than speech.
“Your Honey Bunch is just fine, Queenie darlin’,” Deon said. His words came from slightly behind me, at my ear.
I swiveled my head as much as I could before a shaft of pain tore my head off my shoulders. Or that was what it felt like. I was cradled in Deon’s arms. I could have said something about that weirdness, but settled on, “You shot vamps. You know how to fight.”
“I’m a lover not a fighter, Queenie. Don’t mean I can’t fight. Just means I’d rather cook or have sex than fight.”
Did I know that? Maybe. My head was kinda woozy.
Two vamps crawled into the limo with us. Mi-Sook and her wife, who cut herself and began bleeding on my neck again. Mi-Sook tore through my ruined wedding dress looking for more injuries, then cut her own wrist and put it to my mouth. I didn’t want to drink, but I needed the blood. I put my lips around the wound in her arm and swallowed her ice cold blood.
It was … tasty. Zingy. I really had to stop drinking vamp-blood. Gack.
Good vampire blood, Beast thought. Strong.
Gack. Gack, gack, gack.
I pulled my mouth away and croaked, “Bruiser?”
“You just asked us, Queenie darlin’. Your man’s fine.”
“Oh.” I swallowed more blood. Cold tongues cleaned and clotted the gashes in my throat and the punctures on both front and back of my shoulder. I pulled my mouth away when the wound closed and said, “She had dog fangs. The one who bit me,” I clarified, speaking not nearly as painful. “She was one of Titus’ people.”
No one responded. I figured they already knew that. Titus killed Leo—the second time.
I had killed Titus and taken his head. But before he died true dead, the vampire had created and maintained a wide and deep coalition of vampires, werewolves, and other supernats.
The pain in my shoulder eased. I hadn’t been close to immediate death. Had I been, Beast would have taken over and saved us. Presumably. But I’d been savaged. My shoulder and my broken arm were going to require a shift into Beast-form to heal fully.
“Who was she?” I finally asked into the silence. “The vamp who bit me?”
“Margaret Sarin,” Mi-Sook said. “Once upon a time she stood as fourth to Titus.”
Fourth in line to the leader of one of the greatest dangers I’d ever fought.
“And,” Mi-Sook’s wife said, but stopped, staring at Mi-Sook, her face doing that vampire thing where they became so still they were unreadable.
I couldn’t remember her name, so I did a little finger roll with my good hand to get her to continue. That gesture was very Leo-like. Dang it.
Mi-Sook took a breath and said, “One of the attackers was a werewolf. Male. By his scent, he was turned by a member of the Montana Red Pack. He also smelled of were-bitch, and was fully was also insane, which means she was turned before the were-taint was modified, or, it means that element of the were-taint didn’t vanish along with other ones. So far as we know, no one has tested that particular part of werewolf life. The wolf bitch got away.”
I vaguely remembered Mi-Sook sniffing something in the small forest. She had smelled the werewolf. Most packs with female werewolves had been hunted down and destroyed. The females were the most dangerous. In every way. What if we had missed one?
“Did she bite the woman?”
“No. Didn’t bite anyone. Odd for a female to have the ability to control her bloodlust and not bite.”
I said, “A human woman was bitten in the mountains east of the inn about a hundred miles.” I hadn’t considered the possibility a female was involved. Females always built packs. “I permitted Shiloh Everhart to go after the bonus.”
“Ah,” Mi-Sook said, her tone grim.
I thought about Shiloh. What if I had let Shiloh go after one of the worst kinds of weres? An insane female? Or, even worse, a rebuilt Red Pack? If so, then Shiloh was going into a trap. “Get someone to track Shiloh Everhart and bring her home, most preferably alive. By the order of the Dark Queen.”
“Yes, my queen,” Mi-Sook said. “Bonus?”
“Sure. Whatever. Imma take a nap.” But I was really passing out. Once again, darkness closed in around me.
***
I woke up snuggled next to Bruiser, his scent all around me. We were in our bed. In the Dark Queen’s HQ. The light from outside the windows was the grayish of dawn, though whether the dawn after the stupid freaking crap-eating wedding or the day after I had no idea.
Is morning. Jane and mate slept. Jane and mate need to sleep more. Jane is stupid to bleed so much.
Why didn’t we shift?
The I/we of Beast have control of our shifting, but dog-fang-vampire tore artery. Next time Jane marries, Jane should wear armor and gorget. Or Beast-form, with killing claws and fangs.
Good idea. But there will never be a next time.
Bruiser’s arms were around me. We were snuggled close, skin to skin. His breath tickled the loose hairs, that had come free from my braid.
It wasn’t the elopement I had wanted. And I was afraid some of our people might have died. I’d find out soon. But ending up here, in bed with Bruiser—with my husband—wasn’t a bad way to spend a wedding night. Not bad at all. And while we could still head into the mountains to travel and hide from the world, the world had busted up my wedding and presented lethal threats to my people and to my Prince Consort. No way did I think we had gotten them all. All we had was another mystery, another spate conflicts. And … Shiloh was probably still missing. So I’d get Bruiser time while I could.
I rolled over and woke him with my favorite method. From his reaction, it was his favorite too.
“Good morning, wife.”
“Good Morning, husband.”
The END