And stumbled back from a sudden, searing wall of fire.
It was so hot, Nikita gave up on keeping his eyes open and tucked into a fast roll across the carpet. When he came up, squinting, he saw the mage at the helm of the fire: a very young redheaded girl, face gone white with strain.
The fire roared, then flickered, caught, retracted.
She gritted her teeth and made a low, anguished sound of frustration. She couldn’t hold it much longer, he understood.
“Thank you, dear, that’ll be all.” Val – a bedraggled, shaggy, rag-clad version of the polished prince who’d appeared in Trina’s grandmother’s living room – strode past the last flash of fire, a sword of his own in-hand. “I’ll take it from here.”
Vlad muttered something dark in Romanian.
Val answered in kind.
Light sparked along blades as swords came together with a sharp ring.
Nikita didn’t bother to watch. He scrambled across the rug and dropped to his knees beside Sasha, still in his wolf shape, curled up with his legs tucked, eyes shut, whining quietly.
“Sashka.” He stroked his fur, but got no response.
“Can you carry him?” Lanny asked from above him. “We need to go.”
“Yes.” And he gathered his wolf up in his arms.
*
Fulk had left their bedroom with his sword in his hand and his heart in his throat. Chaos meant one thing: the rescue attempt was underway. And he knew, with a certainty that made him feel sick, that only someone with sword training and preternatural strength had a prayer of getting between Vlad and the doomed rescuers.
He’d reached the portrait gallery when a man dressed all in green crashed through one of the soaring windows and rolled into a ready crouch, one hand braced on the carpet runner, the other on the butt of a handgun.
Not a man, but a wolf.
He stood up slowly, eyes trained on first the sword in Fulk’s hands, then Fulk’s face. His brows rose up until they disappeared into the glossy dark curls that fell over his forehead.
“Le Strange?” he asked.
And that was when Fulk noticed he wore green. Lincoln green.
It had been a long, long time since he’d bumped into one of Locksley’s boys, but he’d been left with an impression. If memory served, this one was Scarlet.
“Are you one of Sasha’s people?” Fulk asked.
Scarlet’s brows raised another notch. “Sasha? We’re here for the girl. And her angry Marine.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t expected that.
Scarlet smiled a little. “You gonna get in my way?”
Fulk didn’t know. “You broke my window,” he said to stall.
Scarlet’s smile stretched. “Word has it it’s not your window anymore. Or did you invite the Institute in?”
He didn’t get a chance to answer. A howl shivered through the air: Annabel’s.
Any other time, Fulk would have never turned his back on Will Scarlet. But now, with his mate calling him, he turned and bolted. He heard Scarlet behind him, running too, and didn’t care.
The gallery T’d into the main hallway, and at the intersection, another Lincoln green-clad wolf darted past, headed for the main staircase – and the cacophony that floated up from it. Fulk hung a hard left and followed, falling in beside the second wolf.
Who was Rob Locksley.
The man glanced over and managed a double take, even as he was running. “Le Strange?”
“Get your people out, and stay out of my way,” Fulk snapped.
They pulled up at the railing, gazes drawn down, all the way to the massive foyer where a fresh batch of guards had finally arrived from the barracks and were pouring in through the front doors.
“Ah, shit.”
*
It was those cuffs, Rooster knew. He didn’t know what they were made of, or how they did it, but they sapped Red’s energy, and her power. She’d had just enough juice for one forceful show, but in the aftermath, she crumpled.
Rooster caught her around the waist with his free arm and towed her toward the door – toward the light that poured in across polished floors, a beacon drawing them out of his place.
He pushed everything – the clang of sword meeting sword; the curses and hurried movements of the others – from his mind save leaving. Getting Red to safety.
They staggered out of the room that looked like a library into a soaring space with a grand staircase and a marble inlay floor. The foyer.
He heard the thud of boots just seconds before he saw an incoming wall of black-clad armed guards.
Almost. They’d almost made it out. So close.
Rooster tightened his arm around Red, pulled her into his side. “Stay with me,” he said, and trained his sights on the leading guard.
The guard who took his next step, then stiffened, then collapsed to the floor.
With an arrow sticking out of his neck.
Rooster glanced up wildly, and found Rob and Will standing on the balcony above, fresh arrows nocked.
He couldn’t help it; he laughed.
44
The first meeting of the blades moved up Val’s arms as a shockwave. He felt the collision in his bones, in his back teeth, clenched so tight he thought they might crack. Vlad had always been the physically stronger of the two, and he was proving it now, well-fed, rested, fit from a strict training regimen.
But Val had the emotional advantage.
He was fee.
And his belly was warm with fresh human blood – he could weep with ecstasy to taste man-blood on his tongue for the first time in so long.
So Val braced his feet against the floor, met his brother’s next strike with a parry, and laughed, high and wild, the sound as bright and sharp as the meeting of the swords.
“You’re wounded, brother,” Val said, stepping back, blocking, parrying. “I can smell blood.”
Vlad grunted – disapproval, and not effort, Val thought.
“I hope it won’t affect your fighting.”
Vlad surged forward with an aggressive flurry of strikes.
Val deflected them, but he had to retreat seven steps backward, arms shaking with the effort. Shit, he wasn’t going to be able to keep this up for long. The long muscles in his back were already starting to burn.
But he grinned at his brother, even if his laugh was breathless. It was too fun not to goad him like this.
The next clang sent sharp bolts of pain shooting up Val’s arms, and he spun away, gasping, retreating.
Vlad granted him a moment, his own broad chest heaving. “What do you think is going to happen?” he asked, brows set at stern angles. “That you can overpower me? Because you can’t.”
Val panted; sweat on his palms made his sword grip slippery. The others, he noted – Nikita and sweet Sasha and their pack; and the mage and her Marine, her Gullinkambi – had left. He registered scuffles and barked orders, and much milling about out on the front steps. Heard, even, the distant crack of a rifle, and male shouts of alarm. They’d gotten away, then, all of them.
In that sense, he’d been victorious.
Even if his brother was about to run him through.
“How about this,” he said, struggling to get his breathing under control. Beneath his ratty clothes, sweat poured down his body. His left calf cramped up, sharp and sudden. “Let me leave, and you won’t have to see me again. You won’t even have to hear from me. All I want is to be left alone.”