Everyone brace yourfuckingselves!
Before I could wonder at the panic in Jared’s warning, I felt the buzz of Sam’s energy leave the air. Her shield winked out. Oh, shit.
As the smoke began to clear, I watched as three dragons shot high into the air. Or, at least, they tried. One screeched as it was hit by a telekinetic blast that sent it crashing somewhere. The second shook as sparks of high-voltage electricity assailed every inch of its huge body. The third halted as a silvery-blue energy whip lashed out of the smoke and wrapped tight around its throat, yanking it back down.
They weren’t the only ones that tried to flee. They might have succeeded, but the problem for them was that since Sam no longer had to concentrate on keeping her shield in place, she could use her gift in other ways—ways that were causing the dragons to hit the ground.
“Hurry before he comes for her!” Marco shouted to a vampire on his right. That was when I saw a large, swirling portal. I’d be damned if I let Marco take me anywhere.
I kicked and punched at him, but all the struggling in the world didn’t make him release me. “Put me down, you fucking bastard!” I thrust my psychic hand into his mind, but it was tired and half-numb; flicking his blood-bond to his Sire did nothing more than make him wince.
“Imani, enough! We’re leaving now!”
“I’m not going anywhere!” I was about to telepathically call out to Jared when Marco sharply turned me in his arms, making my head spin. I’d sustained too many head injuries tonight.
“I’m not here to hurt you. I told him to keep you safe, and he didn’t!”
I realised he was talking about Butch. “He’s hurt, I need to—”
“What we need is to get you to safety!” Ignoring my struggles, Marco carried me toward the portal—a portal that abruptly closed as the vampire controlling it hit the ground with a thud.
“Let. Her. Go.”
Stilling in surprise at the familiar male voice, I looked over Marco’s shoulder. It wasn’t so hard to see now that the rain was putting out the fire and Sam had taken down her shield, allowing a lot of the smoke to clear. And there was Lazarus with a small group gathered behind him. I blinked. “What are you doing here?”
“We teleported to you so we could partake in the battle,” he replied. “My vampires are joining it as we speak. Marco, release her.”
Marco’s arms slowly slipped from around me and he turned to face Lazarus. No, he positioned himself between me and Lazarus. Like a protective barrier. Marco’s vampires flanked me, glaring at those that stood with Lazarus.
The Master Vampire held out his hand, a sense of urgency in his manner. “Now come along, Imani. You should not be part of this. Not when you are half-human.”
I would have pointed out that I actually wasn’t half-human, but this whole scenario felt distinctly wrong. “Marco, what’s going on?”
He didn’t take his eyes from Lazarus as he responded. “I told you, Imani. Good people do bad things sometimes.”
Realisation quickly dawned. And it hurt almost as bad as the burning pain in my chest. “Lazarus is one of the people you suspect injected me with the serum?”
“No, sweetheart, it wasn’t Lazarus. But he ordered it done.”
No way. “I don’t have time for games, Marco.” Butch was lying somewhere, wounded. Jared, find Butch and Paige. I think he’s hurt bad but I can’t get to him—I’m watching Marco and Lazarus have some kind of standoff.
“I knew it had to be one of two people,” Marco went on. “Him or Eleanor.”
I frowned. “Eleanor?” And then I saw her, standing slightly behind Lazarus. There was a seriousness in her expression that took me by surprise. She was usually always so animated and jolly.
“They both want the same thing so badly that they’ll do absolutely anything to get it. It was Eleanor’s mate who told me the truth…though he took some persuading.”
Eleanor gasped, eyes widening in horror.
I might have told Marco to just shut the fuck up because I wasn’t in the mood for games, but something occurred to me as I looked at Lazarus, whose expression was carefully blank. “You should be denying this. He’s accusing you of trying to kill me.” Yet, Lazarus hadn’t said a word.
“Lazarus didn’t want to kill you,” Marco said. “Oh, he’d known you could die, which is exactly why he’s going to suffer for what he did to you. But he didn’t want you dead.”