A Dawn of Strength Read online

  Extending a claw, she slit her wrist and pressed it against my mouth. Watching the mirror for any sign of improvement, I drank her blood. Vampire blood really did taste revolting compared to human blood. It was all I could do to not vomit.

  Finally, my body started responding to her blood. The black skin began to peel away and flake off as new skin grew in its place.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” I said, once there was almost no trace of black left and the pain had subsided. I lowered her wrist and pulled on the fresh shirt Corrine had laid out for me.

  “Where is Mona now?” I asked, shooting a look at the witch. As I’d lain there on the beach, I’d been half-in, half out of consciousness. I couldn’t recall all that had happened around me.

  Anxiety filled the witch’s eyes. “She’s facing off with Rhys.”

  Chapter 24: Mona

  My hands were trembling as I locked eyes with the tall dark-haired warlock. As soon as I’d found out that he was still alive, I should have guessed that sooner or later I’d find myself standing before him again.

  He assumed a poker face as he looked me over and began circling me slowly. It was impossible to know what was going on in that mind of his.

  The silence that followed as he continued to survey me was excruciating. I’d rather he just launched straight into an attack. Yet I couldn’t deny that, as much as I had reason to despise this man, a part of me still saw within him the boy I used to know. My best friend. Classmate. Fellow shell-collector down by the river where we used to play back in The Sanctuary.

  Now he was a dark shadow of his former self. I was shocked at how different his face looked in just the short time I’d been away from him. The black circles beneath his eyes had deepened, and he looked like he’d aged ten years.

  The finger that held Kiev’s engagement ring twitched involuntarily. I still remembered the night Rhys had proposed to me, and I’d accepted… only to stab him in the back the very next day. I’d felt a crushing guilt about it at the time, even though I’d known that marrying him would be like marrying death. Truth be told, I still felt a twinge of guilt when I recalled the way I’d played on his emotions and then betrayed him in the worst possible way. The joy in his eyes that night I’d accepted his proposal… I’d never seen him happier in his life. And then the next morning once he’d found out about my deceit, I’d never seen him look so crushed.

  I drew a deep breath as I tried to steel myself against my emotions. If I had any hope of surviving this, I knew I had to.

  Rhys chose the path he’s on. Nobody forced him to join the black witches. And nobody forced him to treat me the way he used to…

  I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him. Not now.

  I assumed the same stony expression as Rhys.

  “This lifestyle isn’t doing anything for your looks, you know,” I said steadily.

  He remained silent in the face of my insult, his eyes still boring into mine.

  “Why don’t you give it up? You’d be much happier for it. Perhaps you’d even find yourself a girl.”

  His jaw twitched.

  I knew I was treading on eggshells. If I kept this up, it wouldn’t be long before he snapped.

  But I didn’t care.

  “You’re not happy, are you? I don’t remember that you ever were. Lilith isn’t the most pleasant of people to work for, is she—”

  Before I could react, Rhys shot his palms upward and I found myself catapulting through the air. My back hit against the trunk of a nearby tree, and I slumped to the ground, panting.

  “Whore,” he hissed, flying toward me and gripping my neck with speed I hadn’t known even he possessed. “You dare even utter her name after you betrayed her?”

  I jolted him backward with a curse. I sat up and rubbed my neck, panting.

  I thought he was about to launch at me again, but he froze, his gaze fixed on my right hand. I wasn’t sure what he was looking at until I looked down at it myself. He was staring at my sapphire engagement ring.

  Rhys took a step closer, his focus still on the ring. “You’re… you’re his now?”

  “I will be soon,” I rasped, glaring up at him. I shot to my feet, anger coursing through me at his insult. “And before you call me a whore, I suggest taking a look in the mirror. Look at the lengths you’re willing to go to, the things you’re willing to sacrifice. All you’ve done your entire life is whore out your mind, body and soul for the sake of your so-called cause. A cause that’s built upon nothing but groundless pride and your insatiable greed for power.” I spat at his feet. “You deserve no respect.”

  It was clear that our conversation was over. His eyes lit up with anger and a fiery curse shot from his palms toward me. I manifested a forcefield in time to avert it.

  His arms began to shake as he hailed curse after curse upon me. Sweat formed on my brow as I focused on maintaining my shield. I just hoped Kiev would be preoccupied somewhere else and not notice. If he attempted to help me, I had no doubt in my mind that Rhys would kill him.

  I had to end Rhys once and for all. And fast.

  A wave of déjà vu rushed over me as I attempted to hurl curses back at him even as I fended off his onslaught. I’d managed to survive the last encounter I’d had with him and fight him off. Now should be no different. And yet I couldn’t stop a fear creeping into my bones that everything about this time felt different. His attack felt far more forceful than before. Rhys had grown stronger in the time we’d been apart, while I’d remained the same. When I did gather the courage to focus my concentration away from the shield, my attempts seemed feeble and slow compared to his. And from the flicker in his eyes, Rhys thought so too.

  It was frightening how much more powerful he’d become since our last encounter. I could only imagine how many more innocent lives had been lost in his pursuance of domination.

  I was no longer any match for him.

  I ducked behind a rock, panting for breath. Then, casting my eyes upward, I leapt up into the tree above me. Perhaps a height advantage would make this easier.

  No chance.

  He leapt up after me and began chasing me up the tree. I kicked and squirmed as his hand closed around my ankle and he pulled me roughly down to his level. Gripping my wrists and keeping my palms firmly pointing downward toward the ground, he backed me up against the trunk.

  I struggled against his grip, but as I did, his palms heated up and began burning into me.

  “Stop fighting me,” he whispered, his face inches from my own.

  I closed my eyes. I was so sure he was about to finally cast the spell that would end me. But he didn’t. He just remained standing there, holding me in place. I dared open my eyes and look at his face.

  I was taken aback by the look in his eyes. Gone was the fury I’d seen in them only a few moments before. In its place was… Longing? Regret? Sadness?

  “We could have been so good together, Mona,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I never wanted it to end this way.”

  “You decided our fate the day you took off with your aunt. You knew enslavement was never the life I wanted to live.”

  His gaze lowered once again to the ring on my finger. Melancholy flickered across his face. “That ring,” he said. “It’s similar to the one I gave you.”

  I breathed out impatiently. “Where are you going with this, Rhys?”

  He paused, the softness fading from his expression and leaving it once again stoic and unreadable.

  “Nowhere, I suppose,” he said, his voice several tones deeper. His grip tightened around my wrists. “Which is exactly where you’re going.”

  A current of energy burst from Rhys’ palms and flowed into my body. Before I knew it, my legs had given way beneath me. I would have fallen from the tree had Rhys not gripped my waist and flung me over his shoulder. He began deftly climbing up the tree, higher and higher until he’d reached the top. Sliding me off him, he laid me down on my back along a branch. A rope shot from his right arm and snaked around me,
holding me down so tightly I could barely breathe.

  I opened my mouth to scream, but no noise came out.

  Why is he doing this? Why doesn’t he just kill me?

  As if he’d just read my mind, he looked down at me and said, “I don’t need to end you to accomplish what we came for.”

  He lowered his palm to my forehand and pressed it against my skin, causing my eyelids to droop. When he withdrew his hand, I lost the battle to keep them open.

  As I drifted toward unconsciousness, my last coherent thought was:

  How is The Shade ever going to cope without me?

  Chapter 25: Rose

  When the boundary gave way and witches flooded toward the beach, I was sure that I would go insane with worry before I was ever reunited with Caleb and my parents again. I was probably some kind of masochist for doing it, but I couldn’t help myself; I inched as close to the edge of the cliff as I could without risking falling off and stared down as the horrifying battle scene began to unfold.

  The beach was quite far away from where I stood, but I could hear the gunshots and there were some figures I could make out distinctly even from this distance… like my grandfather being lifted out of the sea and carried toward the beach.

  I almost fell from the cliffside as a tall curly-haired man I couldn’t not recognize as Rhys grabbed hold of a vampire I suspected very much to be Caleb. My blood pounding in my ears, I stared in horror as the vampire writhed beneath the warlock’s grasp.

  What is he doing to him?

  I squinted, straining to see more clearly, but then a blaze of fire shot out from the entrance of the forest and both the warlock and Caleb disappeared from sight as flames and smoke engulfed the area.

  What the hell…

  When the smoke cleared enough for me to see again, Rhys had been flung dozens of feet away against a tree, while an armored figure towered over Caleb. The man lifted his helmet to reveal dark hair… and although I wasn’t nearly close enough to make out the details of his features, something about the way he carried himself told me that this was my father. A suspicion that was confirmed as I caught sight of my mother’s red hair approaching behind him.

  Dad.

  On seeing him race toward the warlock, I would have screamed out had my voice not caught in my throat. My eyeballs bulged in their sockets as fire burst from his hands. What? How? He turned back into a human?

  Although I was aware that my father had had supernatural abilities even as a human, thanks to the late witch Cora, I’d never seen him in action. Or, if I had, I’d been far too young to remember it.

  Now that I saw him shooting fire like some kind of superhero, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. It felt like a dream.

  I was quickly snapped back to reality, however, as my father fell to the ground. My mother and two other females—a blonde and a brunette, I guessed Mona and Corrine—rushed to his side. A few seconds later, Corrine, my mother and my father had vanished, leaving only Mona and Rhys.

  The two of them moved away from my view, moving closer into the trees, but I remained gaping at the spot my father had just disappeared from.

  Wow. My dad… he’s a real badass.

  I just wished I’d inherited some of those powers. Being able to turn into a fire-spurting dragon woman myself would have really come in handy right now…

  I stopped short in my train of thought.

  Dragons.

  They’d called me something during my visit to their realm. What was it?

  Maiden of fire. That was it.

  I recalled the way they’d been so convinced that there was something special about me, so much so that they’d bowed to my almost every whim to keep me from being “displeased”. I’d thought that the strangeness of my arrival—falling from the roof of their cave during a meeting into a vat of blood—had been enough to persuade their superstitious minds. But perhaps they’d noticed something more about me than they’d let on at the time…

  Could they have sensed that I was the daughter of a fire-wielder?

  Could it be that I have a trace of such powers myself?

  Chapter 26: Caleb

  I needed another gun.

  Before another witch could get hold of me, I rushed into the trees and began running toward the Armory. I didn’t know how many more of our army would have been captured by the time I returned, but I needed to bring back as many weapons with me as I could. As I entered the training fields, I caught sight of two large figures sitting on the doorstep of the Armory.

  It was the two ogres.

  “Move over,” I said as I approached. “I need to get inside.”

  They both stood up, allowing me entrance. I grabbed an empty barrel from a corner of the room and began piling guns and ammunition into it—as much as would fit.

  “Hey,” I called over to my shoulder to Bella and Brett. “Help me.” I pointed to more empty barrels. “Fill those up with firearms. And hurry.”

  I helped them with their barrel to speed the process up. Once five barrels were filled to the brim, I said, “Both of you need to help me carry these now. You both look big enough to carry two at once, and I’ll take the fifth one.”

  I was right. They bent down and wrapped each of their arms around a container. Then I picked one up myself and ran for the exit. “Follow me as fast as you can without spilling anything,” I called over my shoulder.

  We travelled much slower than I was comfortable with. Even as I kept urging them to run faster, ogres’ speed was just no match for a vampire’s. I breathed out a sigh of relief when we neared the entrance of the beach through the trees. I stopped behind a row of thick bushes and turned to face the ogres.

  “Both of you should stay here with these barrels,” I said, placing the container on the ground and gesturing that they do the same with theirs. “All right? Stay quiet and don’t leave this spot until I come back for you.”

  They both looked nervous but nodded their heads. I picked out four guns for myself, made sure they were loaded, then tucked two into my belt while I remained holding the other two in my hands. Then I left their company. Moving away from this hiding place, I remained beneath the shadow of the redwoods, holding my breath at what I might see on entering the beach again.

  The scene was looking more dismal than I had imagined. The line of members of our army lying paralyzed on the beach had grown considerably. I noticed several black witches fallen on the sand, their palms bloody, and dozens of vampires lying motionless, but some of those could have been our own. Even if they weren’t, we hadn’t even made a dent in their army. Gunshots fired all over the place as The Shade’s warriors continued to battle our enemies, some visible, others still not.

  Careful to remain unnoticed, I slunk through the shadows like a panther, moving closer and closer to the line of paralyzed people that was being guarded by Rhys’ sister, Arielle, and two vampires—a short dark-skinned one I didn’t recognize, a new recruit perhaps, and a tall ginger-haired one. Stellan.

  As I approached within thirty feet of them, I tucked the guns in my hands into my belt with the others and leapt up into the trees above me. I couldn’t afford to risk treading on something noisy in the undergrowth and drawing their attention at the last moment. I swung carefully from branch to branch until I was standing directly above the black witch. Her hands were balled up into fists as she gazed around at the chaos on the beach. I watched her closely, waiting until her hands slackened and her palms became visible.

  Barely daring to breathe, I drew out one of the guns and readied it to fire. I waited for her to twist slightly to her right, giving me a clearer view of her right palm, before pulling the trigger. The bullet exploded from the barrel and a second later, Arielle’s scream pierced the air. She fell to her knees, clutching her palm. I lost no time in shooting through her left palm too—now clearly visible as it nursed her right. She doubled over in pain as the two vampires raced toward her, looking around for the source of the explosion. I ducked behind the trun
k of the tree I was perched in. Resting the gun I was holding on a branch, I whipped out the UV-ray gun by my right hip. Peering out again, I fired a bullet at Stellan’s chest, then the vampire next to him. Both burst into flames the moment the bullets lodged into their flesh.

  Leaping from the tree, I jumped over the line of bodies and landed next to Arielle cowering on the ground. I dug my hand into her hair and yanked her head back before digging the barrel of my gun against her forehead and firing. Her eyes widened and her lips parted as she released her last breath before sinking back on the sand.

  Rhys has yet another reason to hate me now. I was sure that he’d be back on my tail again in no time.

  I turned my attention to the hostages and ran to the nearest one to me—Saira. Her eyes moved wildly and she looked like she was trying to speak, but her lips remained stiff. I gripped her shoulders and tried to sit her upright, but she was stuck to the ground and budging her even an inch felt impossible.

  I stood up again. I couldn’t remain here in clear view. Not after what I’d just done. I needed to find one of our witches fast to help free our people.

  I stepped back and was about to climb back into the tree when I collided with someone invisible. I feared for a moment it was a black witch, but then Ibrahim manifested in front of me. Gaping at the dead witch on the ground, he had a deep gash in his right cheek and his ripped shirt revealed burns in his chest.

  “Ibrahim,” I said, “we need to free the hostages.”

  He eyed the long row of witches and werewolves before exhaling sharply. Clearly, he was going to need help, but he began hovering over Saira and muttering beneath his breath.

  I climbed back in the tree and hid myself beneath the shadows, raising my gun and watching for any sign of more enemies approaching. I quickly spotted a group of ten vampires rushing forward toward Ibrahim across the sand. Positioning my UV ray gun again, I fired bullet after bullet around the tree until every vampire had fallen.