That last call is greeted with a series of cheers. I raise my arms up to quiet the crowd. It takes a few moments, but eventually, the outrage fades to a hush.
“Morgan is alive,” I repeat, “but very weak. She is sustained by ancient spells. In any case, I have already inherited the throne and the crown. I have erected the wards, giving ultimate proof of who is your monarch. The new discovery puts a small wrinkle in things, but I want to assure you that nothing—I repeat, nothing—that I have done for you will change. And nothing in what I’ve promised you will—”
I’m cut off by a sudden, unexpected, deep groan from within the earth. The ground trembles.
I shoot a look at Felix. He appears unperturbed.
The movement stops.
I cast a look around, waiting a moment to see if it will continue. When it does not, I keep speaking.
“Anyway,” I repeat. “Nothing that I’ve promised you will change. Moreover—”
Again, the earth groans. The ground starts to shake. The vampires go on high alert, crouching down, keeping their balance, looking out into the woods for any danger.
I grab hold of the Elemental Forces and prepare a dozen different offensive weaves. The wards around The Haven are all stable. This is not an attack from the outside. It is not—
Dozens of plumes of dirt erupt from the earth, and from the holes stream hundreds and hundreds of those vile, white creatures.
Seeing this all materialize, as if out of thin air, all at once, shocks me more than it should. I miss a step, and don’t react fast enough to throw the first current of magic against them.
That single tiny sliver of a moment is all they need. They throw their ghastly jaws open and start to scream.
The effect is debilitating. The mass of vampires crumbles down. Elite and Incolam alike fall to their knees, clutching their heads, covering their ears to try to block out the horrible noise.
I am not immune. The sound waves hit before I can erect any sort of barrier. I fall to my knees, desperately clutching the dais for support.
My eyes scan over the catastrophe going on in front of me. The white screeches are running laps around the vampires. Their jaws hang open, each of them emitting that awful sound. Some of the stronger vampires manage to stagger up, after the initial shock, but they are uncoordinated. They take swipes at the galloping creatures.
Their claws find nothing but air.
Anger surges through me. I will not let my vampires be made into fools by these pathetic, cowardly things!
Gathering all the willpower I possess, I concentrate, hooking onto the currents of magic swirling all around, and, in one last, desperate attempt, use them to create a shield around me and everything else.
It’s supposed to be a simple spell, requiring no more concentration than blinking would, but the effort needed to make the currents fall in place is harder than anything I’ve attempted before. My entire mind is splintering into a hundred different pieces as the shrieks keep coming and coming from all around.
But finally, mercifully, the weaves fall into place. I gasp with relief as the barrier around my ears blocks off the awful sound.
For a few moments, I just stay there, attempting to regather my strength, willing my mind back to the form it’s usually in.
But the screechers are nothing to be taken lightly. They are our weakness. Long seconds pass into longer minutes as my mind slowly recovers. I can see the scene going on in front of my eyes, all the vampires on the ground, screaming and squirming in tremendous pain, as the hundreds and hundreds of Tentoria just keep lapping them.
More and more are streaming from the underground by the second.
Finally, I am strong enough to stand. I rise and, channeling that immense anger streaming through me, aim a current of white hot fire right into the stream of screechers.
They are obliterated instantly. The beam of fire cuts through them like a knife. They don’t even go up in flames, their bodies are so weak. They simply disintegrate.
At the same time, I cast a particularly nasty spell over the gaps into the earth. Something like a portal but placed horizontally over the exit points. It’s made of red hot Fire that will instantly destroy any creature to touch it.
I watch, with a sadistic sort of glee, as dozens of Tentoria leap up out of the earth and are turned to ash.
Another minute and it’s done. The screechers who were circling my vampires are all dead. The streaming ones from underground have stopped coming—either because there are no more, or because they saw what happened to their brethren, I do not know.
My attention instantly shifts to the groaning vampires on the floor.
The weak ones have all passed out. Some of the unconscious have their eyes open, staring vacantly into the sky.
I am seized with immense worry. Only one vampire here knows how to heal them, and he is—
I look to where I expect Felix to be and find him missing.
Alarm shoots through me.
But then I find him rushing to the weakest of fallen vampires, somehow, already whispering those words he used to heal Raul into their ears.
I run after him. He’s moving quickly from vampire to vampire. While I’m still a little shaky, he seems to be entirely unaffected by what transpired.
“Felix!” I grab him by the shoulder and jerk him back. His face is unreadable as he receives me with ancient, secretive eyes.
“How did you do that?” I demand. “How did you recover so quickly?” A sudden spike of anger shoots through me. “Why didn’t you help me first?”
He blinks, seemingly surprised at the final question. “I did help you, my Queen,” he says solemnly.
My eyes narrow in indignation. “No, you did not. You left me to go—”
“I left you,” he starts, “after I was sure you had recovered. You blasted the vile creatures with your magic, did you not?”
My head is pounding, the pain running through my temples like the worst sort of migraine.
“You left me,” I reiterate. “And the Tentoria didn’t faze you. How?”
He grunts, then reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out a small item wrapped in velvet cloth. He holds it out to me.
“Go on,” he says. “Take it. It’s what protected me from the screams. It also did you.”
“It did not protect me,” I bristle. All the emotions running through me make me feel about as stable as a teenage girl.
Which, admittedly, I am, but after my transformation a wholly difficult sort of maturity set in.
“It’s a torrial,” Felix explains, as if I didn’t already know. “I had it with me because I intended to offer it to you. I knew that you should be the one to hold it, because only you have the power to take on the horde on your own.” He motions for me to take it. “Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to do so before the attack. On the flipside, we were very fortunate that you were so close to me, because the torrial exerted some of its protective effects on you.”
I eye him warily, then unwrap the cloaked item. Under the veil is a little figurine of a wolf, intricately carved and much lighter than it looks. It appears to be made of something like granite, but of course, the fragility is overridden by magic, making it extraordinarily strong.
Felix looks at me as I examine the figurine. Then I wrap it up and put it in my own pocket.
“I hope you didn’t think you were able to fight off the Tentoria entirely on your own,” he says. “All vampires are vulnerable. Strength does not matter, as we witnessed with Raul.”
I look around the mass of bodies. “The strongest ones resist it longer.”
“Yes,” Felix says. “But in the end, they all succumb.”
I press my lips together, displeased.
Felix nods once, considering the matter closed, and turns away to return to the task of revitalizing our vampires.
“Let me help you,” I say. “Tell me the words you say.”
He shakes his head. “You cannot help. The words are but one part of it. It is the male half of magic that is needed to restore the vampires to themselves.”
I cross my arms. “So, what, I just stand here, useless?”
“You can keep watch,” he says tersely. “That was only the first wave.”