The Mate Mistake(The Woolven Secret 3)(40)

“Crossed into territory that is not theirs. They came for me and mine, and I’m done running.”

One of the hunters looked at her and his face split into a smile. “We been looking for you, girlie.”

“That’s your mistake.”

“I got something you might want.”

He threw something at her and she snatched it out of the air, catching it before she realized what it was. Parker’s heart.

That thing that had uncurled inside of her, suddenly those scorpion stings she’d felt at her fingertips were everywhere, covering her body. She was vaguely aware of the strange blue glow coming from her as she advanced on the hunter.

Her body no longer belonged to her. She’d retreated into a strange subspace while an unholy fury possessed her. It was the fury and the darkness moving her arms, her legs, her lips and even her tongue.

She didn’t recognize the words she spoke, but the old gods did. The old magics that rose to do her bidding. Belle tried to fight it, to channel it. She only wanted to help Parker. To save him before they could take his head, and his life.

Until she saw he wasn’t alone.

He was curled around the smoking flesh of her father. He was protecting Tirigan from the sun.

The emotions that rose within her warred with each other. Her werewolf husband might have given his life to protect her father—the vampire who would think nothing of destroying him. Yet it was all secondary to the fury. The darkness.

Their witch chanted words that echoed with power, focused by a crystal skull, one of the only things stronger than Tirigan, to keep the clouds from gathering across the sun again.

That skull became the focus of all that was wrong. All that was bad. And her magic, still stinging with scorpions erupted from her in a volcanic rush, washing everything in her lava.

The crystal skull filled with blue light, glowing brighter and brighter until the witch wielding it struggled to endure having it in her hands. Belle pushed more and more power toward it, almost detached from the melee that had erupted around her.

The rest of the Drago Knights had joined them, and they were fighting the hunters in their human forms.

Little did these hunters know, but they were all going to die.

Another burst of power caused the skull to catch fire. The witch screamed as the fire enveloped her. That wasn’t enough for Belle. She kept pushing her power toward the burning woman and her skin bubbled and popped as it slid from her body, the fire only devouring what Belle permitted it. She left the meat beneath untouched, all of her nerves raw and exposed.

The witch screamed and screamed, the sound like a kind of elegant symphony.

Belle knew she’d tipped over the edge and her humanity was a quivering thing that had hid itself in the shadows. But she didn’t have time or the inclination to coax it forth. It would emerge later, an armchair warrior who couldn’t stomach the heat of a real battle.

She wanted this witch to suffer for what she’d done.

She wanted them all to pay.

A contingent of hunters who all wore some kind of charm inuring them to the power of the skull, and her magic, mobilized and advanced on her. But all she wanted was to get to Parker.

The storm clouds the witch had been holding at bay crashed into one another and a black veil blocked out the sun. Gale force winds rattled the buildings around them, lightning crashed and thunder cracked like a godly whip, flaying the earth open where it landed.

As soon as the sunlight was gone, Tirigan emerged from Parker’s protection. The side of his face had been charred, his fingers, and a stake protruded from just above his heart.

He pulled it out with a roar and tore the head off the nearest hunter, drinking him deep and his wounds struggled to knit together. He grabbed another—this time, beheading him seemed to be as simple as pulling the tab on a soda. He attached his mouth to the fount and drenched himself in blood.

The Knights had fallen back as she and Tirigan destroyed all comers.

When the final hunter gurgled his last, the fury left her. It was like deflating a balloon. Her knees went week, and she collapsed, pulling Parker into her lap. Her bloodstained fingers left streaks on his face, everywhere she touched him.

The gaping hole in his chest was still smoking and Tirigan fell to his knees next to her, carefully removing the silver blades still in Parker’s skin.

A strange, ragged howl rent the air, and when Tirigan grabbed her shoulder, hard, she realized the sound was coming from her.

“Help me,” she growled. “Save him.”

“I don’t know how,” he said, softly. “I can’t give him our blood. It would kill him.”

She looked up and met his bloody gaze that somehow held no horror for her any longer. “There has to be something.”