“She’s getting up now. I told her you need her; she’ll be here as soon as…here she is.” The phone changed hands and Regina came on the line.

I burst into a breathless explanation of what was going on. As soon as Crawl’s name left my mouth, she reacted.

“We are on the way. Do your best to stay out of his reach, but, Cicely—be cautious; he is tricky and has many powers that you don’t know about. He can bilocate, which few vampires can do, but he is one of the oldest Vein Lords and he bears the mark of the Crimson Queen. She sired him and nurtured him and he suckled at her breast, fangs plunged deep in her alabaster skin, as he was reborn.”

I stopped for a second to tuck my cell phone away, but the image of Crawl’s insectlike limbs and hideous grin stayed with me, and I was on the run again. I remembered his teeth on my shoulder, and my body burned with the memory. The rasp of his tongue against my wrist, the ripping as his fangs sank into my skin, the fetid smell emanating from his body…these images rose to my thoughts, clouding out my reason as my fear rose up again. I let out a strangled scream, stopping as Check turned to make sure I was all right.

We rounded the corner and stopped short in front of a pair of double doors. But behind us, I could feel Death coming, in an ancient body, long, long past any humanity Crawl had ever possessed, if he had ever been mortal. He marched on, and I knew he would be here far too soon—before Regina and Lannan could arrive. And our guards, strong as they might be, were no force against the powers of the Blood Oracle.

I pushed forward, beyond the guards, any sense of reason fleeing, and burst through the doors. There, staring at us from a large table in a very large room, sat Anadey—Peyton’s mother. She was with Geoffrey and Leo. We were fucked. We were so fucked. Caught between two sadistic forces, with nowhere to run.

Peyton stared at her mother and then let out an oath. “What the fuck? You are still with them? Even after they killed Rex? Even after they attacked me? You bitch!” She lunged forward, but one of Check’s men caught her back and, kicking and struggling, she finally submitted, the look on her face murderous.

Geoffrey stood, very slowly, a steel-cold grin lighting his face. “Oh, isn’t this lovely. We knew you were in the building, but waiting was definitely a torture. Leo and I had a bet going on whether you’d make it this far, Cicely, before Crawl caught you. I won.”

And he moved—in a blur—stopping just out of reach of my guards, who drew their daggers of silver. Geoffrey took a cautious step back. Leo was brooding, staring at us with open hatred. The gangly look was gone—the vampiric glamour having taken hold of him—and I felt a thud in the pit of my stomach as he gazed at me, a malefic grin spreading across his face, then turned his attention to Rhiannon.

“My sweet little whoregirl. And her ever-so-soft boy toy, Chatter. You have a big fat cock for my sweetheart? For my fiancée? You stick that big old cock of yours up her cunt? Did she scream? Did she squirm and say, ‘Oh, Chatter, fuck me, fuck me up the ass?’” The look on Leo’s face turned from perverted to baleful, and Rhiannon paled, crying out as she stumbled back a step.

Chatter stood firm, holding her tightly, but he said nothing. I could tell he wanted to rise to the bait, but he was smart, and he held his tongue.

All too aware that Crawl was coming behind us, I wanted to shout for the guards to go after Geoffrey and Leo, but my fear that they’d all die before Lannan’s reinforcements could arrive stayed my order.

But then the odds turned, and not in our favor. A door on the far side of the room opened and a group of vampires—no doubt Geoffrey’s cronies—entered. We were outnumbered by a good fifty percent. We were going to have to fight. With a heavy heart, I motioned for Chatter to move Rhia out of the way.

“I think…I have no choice,” I said softly, closing my eyes to summon the winds—my strongest ally. “Let her fly, and make it a good one, because folks, we are not going to get a second chance.”

A brief pause, then three deep breaths as the ticking of the clock on the wall slowed to almost no movement. In that framework between making a decision and acting on it, a world of thoughts can run through, a river flowing wide and deep—so full, we cannot see the individual images. We cannot hear what our minds are saying, because the adrenaline is building as we prepare ourselves to die.

In every battle, there is a death. The loser may laugh it off if the war is short and sweet and without cost. Or the loser may bleed out, if the war is to the death. Either way, when the call to march comes, there’s that one moment when we stop, reflect, and realize that yes, today we may die, today may be the end. And then—we move. And that pause, that breath, becomes forgotten in the heat of the battle.

And so it was here, as always. I pivoted on the fulcrum of my feelings, feeling the swing from fear to acceptance to readiness to…action.

As the guards moved forward, their silver blades flashing, the vampires cautiously spread out to form a half circle around us. They were leery, but truth was, unless the tip went center into their hearts, no harm would come to them. So they had fairly decent odds of surviving an attack by my men.

Check would not let me move to the front. He and two of his men pushed us back, but Grieve and Chatter joined the guards, and though I didn’t want them to, so did Luna and Peyton. Peyton looked fit to kill, and I was afraid she’d head directly toward her mother, but instead she quickly stripped off her clothes, tossing them to the side, and turned into her werepuma self. Then she launched herself onto the table, growling low and rumbling. Anadey screamed and backed away.

Luna began singing a low dirge, and Ysandra glanced at her, then joined in. Somehow they were amplifying their powers, joining together as they cooked up some sort of spell. Whatever it was, I let them be and focused on my own source of power—the wind.

I called up the winds, trying to keep control of them, not letting them entrance me like they usually did. And then, as they began gusting lightly around my fingers and through my hair, I closed my eyes, sinking into their siren song. Ulean was not here to help pull me out of it this time if I got lost, and neither was Lainule, so I’d have to manage on my own.

I lowered my chin to my chest and then, as the power settled within, raised my head, staring ahead at the vampires, and under my breath, in the lightest of tones, I whispered, “Gale Force,” and a stiff breeze sprung to hand, quickly gusting into a howling wind that raced past me, carrying my spirit with it. I spun up and around, growing tall. Like Myst, I towered over the room, looming larger than life in my spirit. My body was still below, but I was rising out of it, trembling in the storm that raged around me.

The howl of the winds ripping past me tore anything light not rooted down off whatever surface it had been on and sent it flying through the air, spinning topsy-turvy into the maelstrom. Within moments, the room was in chaos, with both my guards and the vampires struggling to stay on their feet.

I moved forward, growing still stronger, my spirit rising still taller, laughing as the power began to take hold. I leaned back, letting loose my laughter, and it echoed, a shattering of crystal, over the roar of the storm.

But somewhere inside, I could feel the caution—the warning signs as my delight in controlling the forces grew—and I struggled to compose myself, standing on the edge of the insanity that the power brought with it. As I wavered, holding back just enough so that I didn’t destroy the building as well as the town, my guards launched themselves at the vampires.

Geoffrey had moved back, as had Leo, and their grunts were fighting the battle for them, trying to wear down my forces. The slash of the blades glinted in the light, though the sound had been lost in the face of my storm, and I watched in horror as the vampires attacked my men.

This is war; this is what it means. This may be in your future yet again, so you’d better get used to it. The thought ran through my head and I tried to shake it away, but the conviction grew. After we took care of Geoffrey and Leo, we still had Myst to battle, and she would not make it easy on us.

I gathered my breath and went back to holding the storm steady, preventing myself from sinking deep into thrall. I couldn’t see what was going on. If I tried to focus on the fighting, then I lost track of the winds and they would either fall away or catch me up, neither of which would help. As it was, even though they also hindered my men, they were throwing the vampires off track. My guards knew what to expect from them, but the vamps—Geoffrey and Leo included—had no clue of how to handle the whirlwind raging around them.

But then, a shriek raced through the room, and I lost my concentration. It was Peyton, and she was screaming in pain. As I let go of the storm, the energy suddenly wrested away from me and spiraled out to fill the room. A great groaning and creaking shattered the air as the sudden twister—the remnants of my gale—spun out of control and crashed through a nearby wall, the brick spraying pebbles on anyone near the area. The building shook, moaning as it took the direct hit, but all I could think of was that Peyton was being hurt.

Geoffrey had caught her in his arms, and he was biting into her neck. I raced forward, but Check caught me before I could travel more than a few paces, motioning for his men to go in my stead. As I watched, helpless and terrified, they pushed through the fighting, but before they could get there, Anadey began to scream and beat on Geoffrey’s back.

“My daughter—don’t you hurt her! Let her go!” Mother Bear was out, it appeared. She clawed at him, and in that moment, Geoffrey dropped Peyton, who fell to the ground and immediately scrambled away. He turned to backhand Anadey against the wall so hard the room shook again.

She snapped against the brick, her head jerking forward, then back again in a whiplash motion. Then, slowly, she opened her mouth to speak, but slid down the wall to puddle the bottom, and her eyes closed as her head lolled to the side. A bloody streak covered the wall where she’d landed. As far as I could tell, Anadey was dead.

Peyton began to sob, but she had the presence of mind to get out of Geoffrey’s reach. My men advanced on him, blades cautious and glittering, but then—in one of those moments where the ground shifts and the world changes—everything stopped as someone yanked me away from Check, out of his arms.

Gasping, I turned to gaze upward at my captor. And there, staring down, leering with uncontrolled desire and hunger, stood Crawl.

As my stomach flipped and I realized he was launching his fangs toward my throat, I began to scream, and scream, and I couldn’t stop.

Chapter 17

Crawl stared at me, holding me tight by the neck, preventing me from moving without cutting off the breath flowing through my windpipe. His lurid face was a mask and mockery of what once had passed for human. But his birth had been so many thousands of years ago that there was no telling what race the Blood Oracle had been, or what he’d looked like, or even if he’d been old or young when turned.

With blackened skin that looked like it had been long ago burnt to a polished hue, he was limber and thin, like sticks held together by a taut, wired force. And he was hungry—ever hungry. I could see it in his eyes. I could feel it in his aura. I could hear it in the energy crackling around him. When he leaned down to sniff me, brushing his tongue over his fangs, I knew I was simply a snack to him, a plaything until I broke and couldn’t be fixed.

Grieve moved to run forward, but I struggled, holding up my hand. Chances were, if anybody interfered, Crawl would squeeze and that would be it. He liked his blood fresh, but freshly dead was nearly as good, and chances were he wasn’t going be too particular.

I struggled to breathe, trying to slow down my heart so I didn’t go into a panic attack.

Crawl leaned in, looming over me, sniffing at me. His lidless eyes were black as night. “We have missed this one, we have. She is known to us, we remember the scent, we remember the taste. We remember how sweet the blood rolled onto our tongue, and how loud her screams were.”

“L-let…m-me go.” I managed to stammer out a few words. Begging would do no good. While I wanted to tell him, I’m the Queen of Winter and you endanger your people by threatening me, I couldn’t get it out, and it would have been a waste of breath. The room started to spin, and all I could see was his hideous face staring down at me.

Grieve’s voice rang out. “If you hurt her, you’re staked. Put her down and we’ll come to a calm end.”

My wolf growled, shifting, and I knew that Grieve was one step away from attacking Crawl. I prayed he wouldn’t. Crawl would break my neck, then mow down the entire party, and Regina had warned me that he had powers we knew nothing of.

“Her blood is sweet and hard to forget. Yes, it is.” He pressed the remnants of blackened lips against my throat, and once again the scent of mothballs and decay filled my nose. I let out a cry, shifting slightly as he opened his mouth to strike.

“Put her down, Old Master.” Regina’s voice echoed from behind us.

Crawl snapped his head around, fire filling those glimmering black orbs that passed for eyes. He snarled. “This one is mine. She is my drink of life.”

“Put her down, or I will summon the Crimson Queen. You are not to be out walking, ancient one. You know the rules—you must return to your lair. The Crimson Queen herself has decreed this. You must bow to the Mother.” The sound of her heels on the floor clipped with precision, and I could tell she was making her way over to us.

“Cicely, hold still. Do nothing.” Lannan must be trailing Regina, judging from the direction from which his voice came.

Crawl growled like a dog protecting his bone. He turned back to me, and the next thing I knew, we were being body-slammed.

Sprawling, taking me with him, Crawl lost his grasp. I tried to roll out of the way, but he landed on my legs and held me fast.