One of the vampires stepped directly in front of Vasilisa, albeit ten feet from her. Siv knew how fast the vampires could move. They had thrown up their arms to cover their faces, but they were moving their feet in a pattern, almost like a dance, swaying in a rhythm in an attempt to hypnotize her.
“Give up his soul to us now, or we will allow the puppet to eat your brother in front of you while he is still alive.”
The vampire’s voice was harsh, grating on the nerves. Vasilisa barely spared the vampire a glance, looking down her elegant nose at him.
“You are very welcome to try to feed my brother to your disgusting puppet, but I doubt if you are able to do so. A better suggestion, if you want to live, is to move on quickly before you try my patience.”
Her voice was so sweet in comparison to the vampire’s that it was difficult to adjust to the difference. Even the vampire shook his head as if he had to clear it. He stumbled and nearly went down. All the vampires hesitated in their dancing, swaying pattern as if they had lost their way. Siv realized there were mesmerizing notes of her own embedded in her voice.
Another voice snapped them all back to attention, rapping out a harsh command. “Would you allow a helpless woman with a light sword to defeat you? One woman? The ancient and her brother are bound before you. Eat him then, Mark. He is all yours. They all are. They will make you immortal.”
That grating voice came from over Siv’s left shoulder, up high and in the distance. It wasn’t Vitus. He was far too clever to give his position away. Mars was the bull, wanting to get the fight over. To take it straight to them. He didn’t like sitting and waiting for the pawns to wear them down, not when they already had the advantage.
At the urging of Mars, the pawns surged toward Vasilisa. The puppet tried to rush forward as well but stumbled over a loose rock beneath the snow. He fell to his hands and knees. His bones cracked under the weight of his fall, wrists and ankles snapping loudly. That didn’t stop him. He dragged himself toward Garald and Siv, leaving long trails of saliva laced with wiggling parasites behind him. The trails had those same strange clouds of smoke rising into the air each place the white worms pressed against the pristine snow.
The salamander devils were creeping closer, using the snow and any other cover in an effort to escape Vasilisa’s blinding light. If they came up too fast and didn’t have cover, the light struck them, and they emitted a series of low notes that caused a slight tremor in the ground but sounded like a grumble to Siv’s ears.
He knew it was possible that earthquakes could be triggered by sound waves. Were these little demonlike creatures trying to create enough sound waves to produce a quake and distract Vasilisa? Undoubtedly, they feared her. The demons would simply keep producing the vibrations until the sound waves affected the finer grains of rock at the interface between the plates.
Siv had no time to answer the questions he had about the demons moving toward Vasilisa. The vampire pawns attacked her, rushing all at once, three taking to the air as hideous mutations of a harpy eagle with enormous talons and beaks. Vasilisa calmly reached into her open coat as she whirled in a circle and withdrew another sword, this one with a long gleaming blade. She tossed it easily so it flew end over end straight past him.
In the quiet of the snow-covered night, the sound of the sword windmilling through the air was unexpectedly loud—an ominous foreboding of coming mayhem. The sword reunited with its original wielder, landing solidly into Garald’s fist as he rose from the snow prison where he had been tied down with strands of magic and barbed cuffs on his hands, feet and wrists.
Siv was already in motion, rushing to meet the puppet first, needing to spare his lifemate and her brother the kill of a beloved friend. Still, out of the corner of his eye, he couldn’t help but see that Garald had grown in stature. He appeared regal and almost otherworldly, as if he had grown invisible armor around him. He leapt into the air to meet the first vampire, who dove toward Vasilisa with talons aimed at her face.
Siv moved so fast he was a blur, uncaring who actually saw the incredible speed he normally would have taken care to keep hidden. He slammed his fist deep into the rotting back of the puppet as he crawled toward his destination, seeking to reach Vasilisa. Even the hunter’s fist tearing through bone, muscle and organ didn’t stop him. He howled insanely, but he kept dragging himself toward his goal.
Pity moved through Siv. Pity he didn’t want or understand. He had closed himself off to all emotion, falling back on the ways of his life as a hunter of the undead for over two thousand years. Why would he feel pity? Ripping the shriveled and rotted heart from the hapless creature, he glanced up to see his lifemate looking, just for a moment, at her old friend. There were tears in her mind but not in her eyes.
She was surrounded by the undead. By demons. She took time to feel pain for a fallen friend. It was the space of a heartbeat or two, but it could get her killed. Before he could reprimand her, she was facing the first of the salamander demons as it approached, opening its wide mouth to show rows of sharpened, serrated teeth dripping with poisonous venom.
Siv severed the head of the puppet, tossed the heart into the air and called a lightning whip to incinerate both even as he whirled around to leap over the vampire closest to Vasilisa, putting his body between her and the pawn.
Garald smoothly drove his sword into the very heart of the mutation flying at his sister, twisting ruthlessly as if the blade were a skewer. As he landed in a crouch with both feet on the ground, he withdrewthe blade, removing the heart. He spun in a circle as he half rose, a small device that appeared much like a mirror in his hand. Small blue flames licked at the snow everywhere his gaze touched, amplified by the strange mirror. He held the tip of the blade with the vampire’s heart in the flame.
The vampire screamed as he fell from the air, no longer able to hold the pose as a bird of prey. He landed heavily on the snow-covered ground and tried to crawl to Garald in an effort to retrieve his heart. Garald sliced through his neck with one wicked blow, severing the head from the body and allowing the blue flame to leap to the body and head of the undead.
Two of the lesser vampires flung themselves at Siv in an attempt to overpower him while a third came at him from above. A fourth vampire sent a command beneath his feet to thorny, venomous vines that erupted through the ground in an effort to stab through his leg and ankle to hold him immobile. More vines burst around Vasilisa, rising high to build a cage around her, cutting her off from the two men.
As the two vampires rushed straight at him, their greedy eyes fixed on the open wound on his head, Siv shook droplets of rich, ancient Carpathian blood into the air. All heads turned toward him, including that fourth pawn, the one commanding the vines caging Vasilisa. The vines wavered for just a moment, turning toward him as well, the cage faltering.
Vasilisa paid no attention to the vampires, her brother, Afanasiv or the venomous, thorny vines bursting through the ground forming a towering cage around her. Her entire focus was on the demon creatures dragging themselves into the fray. She was well aware they could burrow beneath the ground and the vines caging her in. The venomous vines seeking to rip open her skin or stab through her to hold her in place came far too close for comfort, but she couldn’t take the chance of moving. Any movement could bring a strike.
She kept her light pointed toward the sky, the umbrella ofluminous beams a shield. Any moment, the gathering demons would attack. Timing was everything. She had trained her entire life to defeat demons, to drive them back to the underworld each time they found a way through a tear in the earth, a vent, a thinning wall. This was her job, her purpose. A legacy handed down from mother to daughter right along with Afanasiv’s soul.
She was aware of each of the foul creatures as they came closer. The earth’s heart beat beneath her feet, giving her the information she needed as they came from every direction, trying to conceal themselves beneath the ground, behind rocks, under the ice, in the trees and brush. They skittered under the vegetation lying on the ground like real salamanders might, but they were so much larger, and though they possessed some ability to do magic, they could not hide from one such as Vasilisa.
She waited, holding still, needing answers. There was something amiss here. Humans, Lycans, vampires and demons all acting together as one, or was this simply a coincidence? She didn’t believe so much in coincidences. With that booming, low-pitched note, the leader induced the others to charge as one. They rushed under the thorny cage and then scaled its walls, using the thorns dripping with venom as hand- and footholds to scale up the sides. They didn’t seem in the least concerned with the poison, as if they were immune. That was her answer.
She went into action before the demons could expand, taking their true forms. She spun fast, her sword of bright light tipping outward now toward the cage made of thorny vines with the occupants clinging to its walls. She called on the heavens above in her soft, angelic voice. Her musical notes rivaled that of the low booming notes that strove to displace the finer grains of rock in the interface between the tectonic plates.
As she spun, the sword aloft in one hand, she released droplets of a liquid from a vial she held in the other hand. The drops were caught inthe twister she created with her spinning sword. She didn’t appear as if she were going that fast because she was the center, the eye, completely calm. The drops expanded to become a deluge of rain, water pounding with force, hurling against the vines and creatures as they tried to reach her.
Siv could hear her soft voice as she continued to speak to the demons. Her tone never changed from that sweet, magical, melodic pitch. “Hear me, demons, sent by the commander of the army of Lilith, queen of the underworld. You cannot have my lifemate. You cannot have my brothers.”
She plunged the blade of the ceremonial sword into the icy forest floor. When she did, the vines shivered and shrieked as if she had sliced through them with the cutting edge of the blade. Bright red blood bubbled up everywhere the vines had erupted through the ground. The low humming notes of the salamander creatures turned to shrieks and screams.
“This ground is lost to you. This shape is lost to you. Each form she sent this night is now locked in this consecrated earth.” She scattered drops of the liquid from the vial in four directions and then above her head and onto the ground.