A Cursed Bloodline (WG 4) (17 page)

“My darling, I am a vampire, not a saint. Now, at the moment, you are very alert, as are those lovely nipples. So let’s not waste another moment speaking.”

I twisted beneath him. “Misha, we’re not having sex!”

Something large and heavy landed on top of the limo and ripped the roof away so forcibly, Misha and I fell on the limo floor. I couldn’t believe my eyes when a giant pterodactyl peered down its long beak at me.
“Celia Wird!”
it screeched.

Chapter Fifteen

I rolled to the side just before I would have been impaled by his gargantuan beak. The impact jolted the car like a missile strike. I scrambled toward the warped door behind Misha. Misha kicked it open and we crawled out. We backed away slowly in disbelief that a prehistoric raptor hovered overhead, flapping his long, leathery wings and stinking of reptile and copper.

Copper? Oh hell—shape-shifter!

The giant creature watched us carefully.

Misha led me farther back. “Do not fear; my guards shall protect us.”

Screaming, guzzling, and crunching sounds made me glance toward my right. Three of Misha’s decapitated bodyguards flopped around like fish out of water while a giant saber-toothed tiger slurped a fourth like spaghetti. If I had wanted to meet a similar fate, I’d have taken a moment to bang my head against a tree.

“Master, run!” some vamp’s head yelled from the woods.

Ten miles remained to Misha’s estate—close enough that his entire family would sense their master in danger, but too far for them to reach us quickly. I knew shape-shifters could assume the form of any creature, alive or dead, but this was beyond eff’d up and so totally unfair.

I took in the prehistoric mob bosses and moved forward. “I’ll take the cat,” I muttered right before
changing
.

“Cat” was a loose term. This thing was more bearlike and about two hundred pounds heavier than my tigress. Six-inch fangs hung from her blood-soaked mouth. One bite from those jaws would kill me, so I thought better of challenging her. My tigress equally thought we could kick her ass. I pounced on the saber-tooth’s face, clawed at her eyes, and then bolted like a thoroughbred on crack.

She was faster, but not used to this form. I was in my second skin. I dodged and whipped around trees. She barreled through them, sending strips of bark to pelt my back and sleeping birds jetting out of the branches in a frightened scurry. All I was doing was buying some time. I wasn’t stupid. No way I could beat her on my own.
Shifting
her was also out of the question. I needed to be able to hold her for a few seconds, and she didn’t strike me as the type to stand still.

I cut through the woods and doubled back to return to Misha when the thundering of massive paws stopped. That would have been a good thing had it not suddenly been replaced by the beating of powerful wings. The shifter had transformed into a pterodactyl. Unlike in her other form, this one allowed her to move with ease, grace, and unholy speed.

The trees around me blurred as I dodged and leapt, and still I wasn’t fast enough. I dove the last thirty feet to the road and
shifted
through the pavement. The earth above me rattled with the force of a massive quake. I surfaced a hundred feet away, still feeling the ground rumble beneath me. The pterodactyl had crashed into the road, temporarily stunned from the impact. I leapt onto her back and
shifted
her far below before I lost my breath. My body resurfaced through the pavement and barely avoided the stampeding feet of a giant woolly mammoth.

The shifter that had attacked the limo had taken on a new form—one that could attack on the ground. Misha and a horde of his vampires rode the beast, stripping chunks of flesh from his back. The deafening trumpet sounds signaled his agony, but the damn pachyderm wouldn’t die! He snatched two vampires with his trunk and stomped them into bloody ash. I jumped on his nose and hacked into the muscle until he swatted me away like a pesky fly. I landed hard on my paws, moments before he charged.

“Celia Wird. Celia Wird. Celia Wird,”
he shrieked in a demonic voice.

I was already freaked out that a nine-ton, supposedly extinct creature was barreling at me, but throw in the psycho voice and I just about passed another seed.

My claws raked against the tendons of his legs while I tried to avoid his sweeping, bloody trunk. I’d managed to sever one of his hind legs when deep, riled hisses cut through the cold night. The rest of Misha’s keep had arrived.

We skewered and dug our fangs through the leathery skin, beating the shifter into submission with more brute will than grace. We brought him down just as the earth erupted beneath me.

Pebbles and chunks of asphalt smacked our faces. The road cracked and the shifter I’d buried reemerged. And damnit to hell wasn’t prehistoric predators the flavor of the evening. The former saber-toothed tiger turned pterodactyl morphed into a tyrannosaurus. This couldn’t be happening. To transform with such ease and hold so much power took scary-ass evil to a whole new dimension. I jerked out of the way of her snapping jaws when a silver Yukon slammed into her side and rode over the top of her.

Anyone else driving would have hit the gas and kept going, but then again Shayna was behind the wheel. The wheels squealed in protest as she thrust the SUV in reverse and parked it over the
T. rex
’s throat.

Shayna leapt out with a prima ballerina’s poise, converting her sword into an axe as she twirled it in her wrist. Taran stumbled out behind her, tripping in her high heels. “Son of a bitch!”

I trained my efforts on blinding the dinosaur to help protect my sisters. If she couldn’t see us, she couldn’t eat us, right?

The creature’s furious eardrum-shattering shrieks mixed with wails of agony. Above it, all I heard was Shayna chopping away, and I smelled the burning flesh as Taran set it ablaze. A few vampires abandoned the mammoth to help us, puncturing where the
T. rex
’s jugular pulsed.

“Celia, look out!” Emme’s face deepened to purple as she suspended a jagged boulder in the air. I moved—
fast
. She crushed the gargantuan skull, and still she couldn’t kill it. The
T. rex
writhed, taking out a couple of vamps with her tail like a cluster of bowling pins.

I pounced on her head and pulverized her cracked skull, anchoring my body with my hind claws while my front burrowed into her head. Slime and blood soaked through my fur. I just about retched when I reached the brain and mashed it with my paws.

The
T. rex
collapsed. Shayna jumped up and down and cheered…until the last hunk of brain fell in a wet splatter between her and Emme. They hurled. Not wanting to feel left out, I leapt off the shifter and joined them.

Cries of horror erupted behind us. The vamps had failed to finish the other shape-shifter. He morphed again into another giant pterodactyl, staking anyone within reach with his long beak. The vamps scattered like marbles to avoid him. They screamed, unable to escape the jabs of his pointed beak. The shifter screeched with triumph and spread his wings, lifting into the air before diving at Misha and spearing him with its talons.

Pandemonium erupted through Misha’s tortured hollering. I leapt onto the pterodactyl’s narrow torso while the remaining vampires worked to bring the shifter down. Except his wings were too strong and they couldn’t hang on. Emme launched an array of sharp stones like bullets. They bounced off his leathery skin. I tore an opening in his chest, trying to break through the rib cage to reach for the heart. I never made it. He snapped my front right leg with his beak and yanked me back, holding tight so I couldn’t wrench free. The pain was blinding. I
changed
back to human, unable to maintain my tigress.

Shayna launched four knives at the creature as a strong wind chilled my bare skin. The shape-shifter took flight while my sisters and Misha’s family yelled below.

Pain and weakness kept me from
changing,
but not from acting. I tugged one of Shayna’s knives free from the creature’s neck and jammed it into his eye. His clamp on my wrist released and I plummeted to the ground, landing on what felt like a giant hand.

Emme had caught me with her
force
. She lowered me as the shape-shifter flew toward the rising full moon with Misha. “I’ll find you, Celia Wird. I’ll find you!”

“Master!” Tim yelled. “Master!”

The Catholic schoolgirls collapsed against one another, bawling hysterically. Tears escaped my eyes as I watched Misha’s writhing form disappear into the moonlight. The bad guys had my guardian angel—my
friend
—and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do.

Hank solemnly draped his cashmere coat over my shoulders as I broke down. Emme hurried to heal me. I jerked violently when her light enveloped me. The bastard shape-shifter had crushed my arm in two places. The pain receded, but my tears did not. For whatever reason, the shifter had come for me. In my place, he’d taken Misha and my last defense against Anara’s wrath. There would be nothing to keep Anara from killing me now.

Emme’s healing touch kept me from falling into a state of despair, but just barely. If Misha died, it would be my fault. He could have escaped with his family. Instead he’d stayed and fought to protect me.

Emme released me and rushed to where Taran lay across Shayna’s lap. I hadn’t realized she’d been hurt. “What happened to Taran?” I managed.

Emme held Taran’s face. “She was drawing lightning when the pterodactyl smacked one of the vampires into her.”

Taran awoke—in a really bad mood. She took in the carnage and sorrow around her. “For shit’s sake, did we at least win?”

Tim kicked the bits of asphalt near his feet. “No. We killed one shape-shifter, but the other abducted the master.” His shoulders slumped, and he was unusually pale. It was more than the need to feed from blood loss; Tim was frightened. What he did next, though, scared the bejeebers out of me. He knelt at my feet and bowed his head. If that wasn’t bad enough, the remaining vampires followed his lead. “Celia Wird,” he said, his voice grim, “mistress of the House of Aleksandr, we pledge our devotion to you.”

“Our devotion,” repeated the vampires.

“We will serve only you, until our destruction or your death.”

“With our existence we serve only you,” echoed the others.

My jaw fell open, unable to comprehend the vampires’ actions. Tim lifted my hand to his lips and tried to kiss it. I yanked it from his grasp. “What the hell, Tim?”

Tim scowled at me. It was more of how he usually treated me, so I relaxed ever so slightly. “Give me a break, Celia. I’m trying here!”

“Trying to do what?”

“Swear our allegiance to you. With the master gone, we belong to you now.”

I really had to work on my language. It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to curse like I did then in front of my baby. But the pleading expressions of the surviving vampires proved their sincerity and desperation.

“Everyone on the ground now!” Dozens of deputy sheriffs spread out around us.

My sisters fell to the ground. They were smart. The deputies appeared jumpy and ready to shoot the crowd of blood-smeared suspects standing amid scattered limbs and demolished vehicles. I let out a sigh. “Okay, everyone. Time to convince Tahoe City’s finest there’s been an earthquake.”

The vampires’ heads snapped up, instantly entrancing the deputies. My sisters followed me quietly when I left them to approach the dead shape-shifter. Her
T. rex
form had dissolved. In the street lay a naked woman, surrounded by sections of her broken skull. She couldn’t have been older than forty, and despite her broken body, I was left with the impression she was once beautiful. It sickened me to think what she’d sacrificed for power. She’d hurt so many and gained nothing as far as I was concerned.

Agnes walked slowly to my side, tugging nervously on her pigtails. “Will she stay dead or do we need to do something special with her body?” I asked, knowing her expertise on the supernatural.

“She can’t come back, Mistress. She surrendered her soul long ago to her deity in order to gain her ability to transform. We need only to dispose of the body.”

I touched the corpse with my finger, wanting to have as little contact with it as possible. She might have been dead, but I could still sense evil permeating from her skin. I
shifted
her deep into the ground and returned to the vampires.

Liz bowed before me so deeply, the strands of her ice-blond hair brushed against the asphalt. “The deputies believe an earthquake took place as you requested, Mistress. They’re helping to locate eyewitnesses so we may influence their memories as well. Do you desire anything else of us?”

Liz was so solemn then, and so sad. I would have preferred her bitchy and self-centered disposition rather than seeing the level of gloom she carried like a casket. I closed my eyes and willed myself to be strong. “Yes. Stop calling me Mistress, find me some pants, and get someone here to tow what remains of the cars.”

Though Liz remained close to tears, she smiled a little. “As you wish, Celia.”

Taran muttered a few swears. “I don’t like this, Ceel. You can’t adopt the damn bloodsucking prom squad. You’re not one of them.” Her comment earned her a few hisses from the surrounding vamps. She rolled her eyes and flipped them off.

I rubbed my face. “I know, Taran. But for the moment I’m all they have.”

Shayna threw her hands in the air. “Ceel, you’re a mess. How can you possibly take care of a family when you can’t even take care of yourself?”

Shayna’s question made me defensive, especially given my pregnancy. Like Misha’s vampires, I was all my baby had. “I owe it to Misha to watch over them until his return.”

Emme stared at the ground. “What if he doesn’t return, Celia?”

I couldn’t think about life without Misha. He was my friend. “I’ll phone Uri when we return to the house and figure things out. For the time being, I have to assume the role of head of his family.”