"Mmm. Very sweet. But how'd you do it, witch?" His hard, black eyes held hers. "I watched you burn."
Yes, he'd gloated in the carriage as he delivered her on the step of doom into the hands of more monsters who stripped her body and tied her to post, then set her on fire. A humming pulse swirled in her belly, blooming outward. She welcomed the fire-flower, willing it to open for her.
"Get your hands off me, creature," she spat.
He grinned wider, his canines sharpening more. "Volkov has business with you first. But when he's done, I'll be happy to take the leftovers."
The bloom spun into a spiral of burning energy filling her chest, bosom, arms, legs, hands. Boris flinched as he watched an ethereal glow emanate from her skin.
"I said, get your hands off me."
By instinct, she punched out with her inner force, a pulse of orange flame leaping off her skin and scorching her attacker. He bellowed and fell onto the floor, clamoring backward. Filled with conviction, righteousness, and the need for absolute vengeance, she slapped her hand in the air toward the monster. A sinewy rope of fire extended from her wrist and wrapped his throat, sizzling his skin.
"You know what I am now, don't you, vampire?" she said, knowing now what the hartstone had made her. "I am the Red Witch of the Wood."
With a snap of her wrist, the fire-rope sliced through his neck and severed his head in a clean, cauterized cut. His head rolled to the floor, eyes and mouth still moving as it thunked against the wall, smoking.
…
The wood was alive with cries of agony and death. The black oaks stood as sentinels and witnesses of the carnage spilling vampire and hart wolf blood on the new fallen snow. Bron streaked by, leapt in the air, and attacked a vampire scrambling up a tree, shaking it by the leg till it was a mangled, twisted mess. As it writhed and tried to crawl away in the snow, Bron crunched into his throat and snapped his neck.
Dane grappled with two vampires at once, one clinging to his back and trying to sink his fangs into him. But the burly wolf was too ferocious for them, shaking them both off. He clamped his jaws on the face of one and shook till his head popped free. The other started to run, but Dane was on him, a paw between his shoulder blades as he ripped his head off, too. Dane swiveled and charged another leaping for his brother.
The packs of hart wolves filled the night with fierce growls and crunching bone and snapping limbs. Nikolai had no idea there were so many hart wolves lurking in Silvane Forest. But now he was glad of it. These vampire fledglings were hardly a match for skilled warriors.
Nikolai and Volkov had been in their own death dance for far too long, while the wolves fought several opponents around them, dispatching them quickly. Nikolai was ready to end it. They circled each other once more. Nikolai tore his ragged shirt from his chest and tossed the frayed garment to the ground, relishing the kiss of cold snow on his heated skin. They'd sliced each other several times, the wounds healing slower and slower.
Nikolai hadn't felt his own claws prick from his fingers in ages. The most primitive aspect of the vampire, claws extended only when more monster than man took hold. Nothing felt better than tearing through Volkov's flesh and hearing him scream.
No. That wasn't true. The best was yet to come.
With an evasive lunge, he leapt and somersaulted through the air over Volkov's head. Landing directly behind him, he gripped him with his forearm across his throat, his other around his gut.
Even now, Volkov laughed, a maniacal sound knowing his life was at an end. "Tell me, lieutenant," he taunted, still using Nikolai's lost title.
"Dying words? Go on. Say them."
"Is this rage because I tasted your girl? Or is it because she liked me better?"
"Enough." Nikolai dug deep into the flesh of his belly and ripped, pulling out the sinewy muscle, hot blood streaming into the white snow with a hiss. Volkov screamed.
A tumult on the main path snapped his attention. Wolves still snarled and yelped nearby in battle with their enemies, his own kind. But vampire cries lit up the falling night along the trail. Orange light emanated from the gloom. Volkov was limp in his death-clutch as his lifeblood drained away, but not quite dead.
Nikolai dragged his body, an arm hooked around his throat, to the trail to see what new devilry had stumbled into the wood. There he found it was heavenly, not something from hell walking up the path. Frozen, rooted to the spot with Volkov still in his grasp, he watched in rapturous awe the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.