Blood Reign (#4): Alpha Warriors of the Blood (The Blood Series) (19 page)

Tharell scanned his surroundings and instantly assessed the options available to him.

The demonic had arrived in large enough numbers that the skin of the Singers who possessed sufficient angelic blood began to pale to partial transparency.

Their blood was reacting to the threat of their counterpart.

Veins appeared on nearly three quarters of the Singers. The thin map work of circulation, lined in silver instead of the human species’ blue, brightened and disappeared in time with their heartbeats.

It pulsed inside their skin like metallic lace.

Tharell smiled. He surmised they'd never faced their mortal enemy, their true place in this world unknown until now.

Yet their blood knew and summoned a response as ancient as it was automatic. The Blood Singers stood amongst the demonic in beautiful contrast. Had Tharell chosen another path, what was about to happen would have grieved him.

The Rare One was a thing of shining beauty. Her veins shimmered like small rivers of gold, lighting her unusual eyes from inside like golden flames, her hair a mane that floated like a cloud of gold as she glided into the circle of the Singers.

The demonic could not look upon her. She was as the sun, and they were weak before her light.

Jacqueline made a gurgling sound and Tharell sighed, loosening his hold.

Then she launched him fifteen feet behind her and into the nearest tree trunk.

Tharell hit the old growth tree, and it did not yield.

Though he was immortal, it still hurt like Hades to plow into a tree at thirty miles per hour.

He shook himself like a wet dog, picked himself off the ground, and walked toward her.

Tharell fell.

He looked down.

Both legs were broken, and one arm hung askew.

He snapped his face toward Jacqueline from his position on the forest floor, and she smiled. A little bit of the woman he'd first been acquainted with was peeking through the edges of that smug smile.

Tharell had underestimated his quarry.

He looked to the demonic nearest him and gave them telepathic orders.

Their black eyes slid away from Tharell and to the wayward Singer.

Pregnant with the one child that could ruin the demonic.

*

Jacqueline was gratified. She had spun the traitor off her back like the garbage he had proven himself to be.

How dare he murder Domi?
The pit of her stomach swarmed in emptiness, and she elected not to feed it with her ready despair.

If Jacqueline had been honest with herself, and she was never one for introspection, she would have realized she loved Domiatri. Jacqueline knew he did not feel as she. But he had treated her with tenderness, protection and respect. She had never known it.

Never deserved it.

She felt a pang of guilt, remembering it could have been thus with Victor, but for her vile temperament.

There was no time to consider these thoughts, though they had run through her mind like sand through fingers.

Three demons approached in a loose triangle as Tharell lay in a broken heap, trying to repair the damage she had wrought. She wasted a smile on him.

The wretched botch. He deserved everything she had managed against him.

Jacqueline gave no more attention to the
whys
behind his treachery. Tharell would pay.

She had mastered that in her past life, and the expertise had not left her, only the motivation.

Heat like liquid fire beat along her skin, and Jacqueline inhaled deeply. The feel of burning from the inside did not subside. It was everywhere and nowhere specific but flowed through her, ice and fire that dove and spread through her flesh as the demons drew nearer.

She glared at the demons. Their blood flowed through skin that was different shades of scarlet.

Veins flowed through their bodies like ink spilt over a parched river. Small horns decorated their heads, and whipping tails shook behind some of them like rattlers caught in a corner.

They were all male and similar in stature to her own species’ warriors, though which one she could now claim lay in question. But first and foremost, she was of royal Singer blood, and that afforded certain talents and strengths the others did not possess.

The demonic moved aggressively against the Singers. Empty-handed, they did not have obvious weapons to use against their enemies.

Jacqueline looked around her. Many of the Singers' skin were now paper-thin, translucent and pale.

Silver veins pulsed to shininess.

Their heartbeats,
Jacqueline thought.
Their circulatory system gets bright when their heart beats.

She brought her own hands up in front of her face.

Silver veins edged with ebony glittered like roads of thread through her skin.

When the first demon reached her, she turned the hand at which she'd been gazing and used her telekinetic abilities.

A forked tongue shot out of its mouth, hissing as it blew backwards.

Jacqueline straightened and prepared for the next onslaught. Her heart caught in her throat.

Her eyes widened as the one she had thrown into the forest rolled in a graceful somersault off the trunk into which he had slammed. He was instantly on his feet, the tail riding behind him like a macabre instrument of balance. He crouched low, facing her at approximately thirty feet away, and hissed, the black tail shaking in his anger.

Jacqueline's memories tumbled one over the other in a handful of seconds.

She would never be taken alive.

Her life would no longer be lived only for evil. Jacqueline laid a hand over her belly and an answering pulse lit beneath her flesh as if in agreement.

There was someone else besides her.

She did not think of Domi. Could not.

Jacqueline moved her hands to her sides loosely and readied for battle.

Then Tony appeared and her stomach dropped.

*

Tony ditched the car on the road, tearing off the plates and spinning them into the opposite side of the road. The trees sucked up his garbage graciously, the tops of the forest latching onto the twisted metal in a loving embrace.

He smiled. He walked to the car and jammed a busted broom handle against the accelerator and the back of the driver's seat. He slammed the POS into
drive
, and it took off down an embankment that dove into a ravine.

Tires spinning, it launched off in a lurching Superman dive.

Gravel, water from a swollen river below, and broken limbs showered in reverse as the car nose-dove into the shallowest part of the river below.

Tony waited, seconds sliding into a minute, and the gas tank cooperatively blew. Tony instinctively covered his face as it grew hot from the burning wreckage.

Fan-effing-tastic,
he thought with satisfaction. Good old Doug was laughing to pieces down there in the trunk. Literally. Of course, the dead had no humor. It was too perfect.

He laughed at his cleverness and backed away from the inferno.

After about a quarter mile outside the immediate scent reach, he caught the one smell he'd been hunting before trashing the burning evidence.

Singers.

And one in particular: Jacqueline.

The grin on his face reflected his satisfaction.

It fit him perfectly as he'd slipped his human skin to go to wolfen the instant his nose guided him into the thickest part of the woods where his prize lay hiding.

Tony ran, the small animals of the forest moving like water split by a ship's prow. They scampered as he tore through their habitat.

When he arrived where the Singers and demonic fought, he wore their small bodies to mid-shin.

If they did not move out of his way, he ran them into the ground.

It was this vision that filled Jacqueline's eyes when her gaze found him. He knew what she saw from the tenseness of her body.

Fucking weird,
Tony thought. As he looked around at the Singers, he noticed they wore some kind of silver all over their skin.

He squinted, looking closer, and realized it was the blood coursing through their bodies.

Tony took in Praile's minions, and his bowels squeezed into a hard rope of tension.

No way was he going to fuck this up.

He raised the blade coated with the blood of a high demon and waded into the melee.

It was time to do the master’s work.

Jacqueline stood stunned for all of three seconds as the fighting exploded all around her.

Demons attacked the Singers and they fought with their talents.

Tony blew through two Singers with the blade.

He was moving closer to her.

She swung her gaze frantically about her as horns and talents locked. One demon used his tail, with a bulbous end spiked everywhere, as a mallet and he bashed in one Singer’s head. Pulverized skull with brain matter blew apart like a bomb exploding, and the Singer fell to his knees.

Jacqueline stumbled then ran. She sought the Rare One, proof against the horrible strength of the blade. She could only Deflect as she ran and did so now, robbing some of the demonic who would assault her by making false visions pop up to confuse and disorient. Jacqueline could do so much more if she could only get to Julia.

Sweaty hands, hair, and limbs were everywhere as she slipped the grip of two demonics, only to be caught by a third.

She screamed as though death itself had captured her. And maybe it had.

Gallagher was suddenly there and she cried out in warning. Talons like knives of death lay against her skin and the Singer's blood shrieked in protest, shining like silver fire through his skin. The demonic that held her hissed at the vision of the shining Singer in front of him.

Then Gallagher took his head with a sword swipe. The breeze as the blade swung through the meat of his neck allowed Jacqueline's release.

Gallagher caught her and a look of understanding passed between the two.

“I am sorry,” Jacqueline shouted into the vacuum of noise.

“My sovereign,” Gallagher responded, and Jacqueline sobbed in the middle of battle, when her life was at stake.

It was terrible timing, yet emotion was always without thought.

His sentiment meant that much. He was her only link to Victor, whom she had treated abysmally while under her rule.

He grabbed her about the waist and lifted her from where she had fallen.

They looked into each other's eyes, and he smiled. It was grim and tired but genuine.

Then his mouth made a soft
O
, and Tony leaned over Gallagher's shoulder. “Surprise, bitch!”

Tony jerked the blade out of Gallagher's back and he slumped to the ground. Jacqueline spun away, running as if the devil was in pursuit.

He was.

The nightmare had found her.

*

Julia did not need her werewolf guards. The pool of red demonic swirled away from her, moving to her people, and she instinctively batted her hand in their direction. They bucked, arcing their bodies and falling where she flung energy.

Gold filtered out of her pores. It was full daylight, and her skin was soaked with what looked like glitter.

It was sweat. She was stunning the demons with her sweat.

A shape whirled past, sprinting for her life. Jacqueline.

Tony was in hot pursuit.

“Julia, no,” Adi yelled as Julia took off running. Jason and Slash accompanied her.

“Yes,” she threw over her shoulder, doubling her speed. Julia moved in behind Tony, and he heard her.

She ran straight into the blade.

It was an agony for which she had no words.

Tony shouted in glee like a banshee wail of a warrior celebrating victory.

Julia floated.

Her hands wrapped around the blade of their own accord.

Tony's face froze.

She pulled it out of her gut and fell backward.

Jason tore forward, the dirt from his claws spraying her torso.

She watched as though out-of-body. Jason did not perform the obvious attack.

Tony readied his blade.

He moved around his body, going low and took out his balls with a talon swipe.

Tony shrieked.

Slash moved in and took the front.

Tony stood bellowing to the heavens, the saber forgotten at his feet while his fellow Weres made him a soprano.

Jacqueline came to Julia's side and dropped to her knees.

“I am sorry,” Jacqueline said for the second time in a matter of moments, pressing her hands on the swamp of blood Julia's wound had become.

Julia searched Jacqueline's face as hiccup erupted. It tasted like a penny in her mouth. “I know,” she whispered.

“I would do anything to take it back.”

Julia nodded. She could see that. See her remorse as plain as the sun shining on the blood everywhere, so red in the sunlight.

Julia closed her eyes, and when she opened them, it was like a camera shutter.

Tharell stood behind Jacqueline.

The damn of Julia's telepathy burst, and she shouted her warning to Jacqueline
, Lay down.

Jacqueline's eyes widened, but she didn't hesitate. She folded her body against Julia, the side of her face pressed against Julia's heart. She put her hand against Jacqueline’s head, and Tharell moved in, stepping over a crotchless Tony being torn apart by the wolves.

The women lay together, and Tharell tried to scoop Jacqueline up.

Domiatri appeared behind Tharell, his blade moving so quickly it was  only a streak of silver in the sunlight. A sparkle, and it was there and gone.

A red line appeared in the perfection of Tharell's violet throat, a stunned look overtaking his expression.

The ripple of pink scar tissue at Domi's throat convulsed as he swung his leg out in a stabbing strike at Tharell's head.

It came off in a spinning leap, landing on the ground beside where Julia lay.

Jacqueline flinched, tightening her hold around Julia, unaware that Domiatri lived and fought behind her.

Julia used strength she didn't possess to turn her head and Tharell's blue eyes stared at her from his decapitated head.

Then blinked.

Julia screamed as she bled, the poison of the demon's blood making its way to her heart as the battle raged on around her.