Dawnbreaker (12 page)

“We were counting on that,” the female naturi replied. Her voice was garbled by mist.

“Do yourself a favor and swim away.” I smiled at her so she could see my fangs. It was her last chance; I honestly didn’t expect her to take me up on my offer. That would have been too easy. I was simply stalling in an attempt to give Danaus a chance to regain his strength.

“No,” the naturi said.

I grabbed my knife and reached down into my powers, ready to ignite anything that moved, but the attack didn’t come from the front I’d been expecting. The sound of birds suddenly filled the night, as if thousands had cried out at once as they lifted into the air. At the same time, I heard the distinct sound of jaws snapping together. The alligators were on the move.

Find the animal clan naturi,
I ordered Danaus as he stepped forward with a long knife in one hand, ready to take on the naturi as they approached. For now, they were content to hang back and let the animals under their control do the dirty work.

“Easier said than done,” he growled at me.

It was on the tip of my tongue to make a snide comment in return, but I didn’t get the chance. Birds burst from the trees and dive-bombed us, beaks and talons ready to rip, tear, and shred. With a wave of my hand, a wall of flames washed through the water fowl, burning feathers in an instant. The air was filled with an enormous cloud of orange and yellow flames, followed by black smoke. Their small bodies plummeted to the earth before us, their cries piercing the air.

“No!” Shelly screamed, drawing my eyes back to her. Knox, Tristan, and Shelly were circled by a low wall of flames, keeping the alligators at bay. Yet Tristan and Knox were trapped as well, keeping them from helping in the battle. Shelly’s tortured gaze was on the birds dying at my feet.

“Kill the alligators and help us!” I shouted at her before turning my attention back to the naturi.

They had left the tree line and were now rushing to attack us. I moved to create a wall of fire between us and the naturi, but Danaus was already on the move, ready to engage them. I couldn’t risk cutting off the hunter’s ability to retreat. With a grunt, I stepped forward and swung my knife at the first naturi to approach me. A knot tightened in my stomach. We were painfully outnumbered and the enemy was too close for me to start lighting fires. I needed space and time to concentrate on what I was doing. If I paused now, there was a good chance I would end up with a knife in my back.

Danaus and I cut down one naturi after another, but still they continued to come. Shelly managed to keep the approaching alligators off my heels, but it locked both Knox and Tristan at her side. We were quickly becoming overwhelmed.

Behind me someone screamed in pain. I tried to turn my head to see who had been injured, but the distraction cost me. A blade plunged into my chest, clipping the edge of my heart. I gasped, every muscle tensing in pain as precious blood poured from the wound.

Danaus
…I whispered, reaching out for the hunter.

“Mira!” he cried, not far from where I was slowly sinking to the ground. The naturi pulled the knife from my chest while I crumpled to my knees. He grabbed a clump of my hair and jerked my head back so my neck was exposed. Closing my eyes, I focused on setting the naturi that held me on fire. I was weak and doubted I would be able to kill him before he was able to remove my head.

And then Danaus’s powers rushed into me, filling me so there was no escaping the energy that flowed through every vein and burned in every muscle. I screamed, and the naturi holding me exploded in flames.

Seconds later Danaus was kneeling beside me, his hand pressed to my chest as he tried to stop the bleeding. I opened my eyes to find the naturi taking a couple steps back as they watched us anxiously. We had finally caught them by surprise, and we had to take advantage of their confusion if we were to survive this fight.

Help me destroy them,
I pleaded as Danaus started to withdraw his powers from my body. The relief was intense, but it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to be free of the pain, but I wanted to be free of the naturi more.

Not like this,
he replied.

It’s the only way,
I said. I laid my hand on his, holding him connected to me, my blood seeping through both of our laced fingers.
They’re killing my people. They’re killing the lycans, and soon it will be the humans. I’m not strong enough without you. We won’t destroy their souls. Help me end this tonight.

Mira…

Please, my friend.

The power exploded through my frame like a torrent of water rushing through a narrow canyon. My body bowed forward under the force of the energy that ran through me from Danaus. My head fell back and my eyes closed, but I could sense them, all the naturi in the area, just like when we hunted them down in England. Gathering up the energy, I focused on their bodies with the sole intention of setting them all on fire. But it didn’t work. I reached out again, my grasp encircling their frantically beating hearts, and still I could not set them on fire.

I tried again and again, beating back the energy that was demanding to be used. I didn’t want to destroy their souls as we had in England. There had to be another way, but I was out of time. The energy that Danaus was pouring into me had to be used before it destroyed me, destroyed us both. Hating myself, I reached for the wisp of energy that floated in every naturi and set it ablaze.

There were no screams of pain. The end came and went for them too fast. With Danaus’s power still flowing through me, I reached out past the marshlands and killed all the naturi within my domain. My people would be safe for at least a few nights, and the Savannah Pack would be safe from the reach of the naturi for now. Two dozen naturi died that night, and I felt the touch of every soul as it was extinguished. Two dozen new reasons for me to be damned to Hell when this existence was over.

Danaus jerked his hand out of my grasp and I fell forward in the sand, landing on my stomach. I was too tired, in too much pain, to try to catch myself. The world went black around me and I welcomed the emptiness.

Eleven

I
opened my eyes to find Knox kneeling beside me, one hand sweeping across my forehead. His clothes were torn and there were a collection of scratches and bite marks on his body, which were slowly healing. I looked around to find Tristan sitting in the sand near me, looking much the same. They both had been wrestling alligators. Shelly stood off to the side, her face pale and streaked with tears. Her hands trembled. I had made a horrible error in allowing her to come along.

“Are you okay?” Knox asked, drawing my gaze back to him. I had yet to see Danaus, but I could feel he was close by, his anger boiling silently on the inside.

“I’ve been better,” I grumbled, slowly sitting up. “Let’s go find Amanda and get the hell out of here. I’m going to need to feed tonight.”

Knox grabbed my elbow and helped me to my feet. The nightwalker remained close to my side as we walked deeper into the island, as if waiting for my knees to give out on me. I appreciated his concern but it put me on edge. I didn’t like being this weak around other nightwalkers, even though Knox wouldn’t try to take advantage of the situation and stab me in the back. It wasn’t his way. I almost felt as if he was attempting to protect me from either Shelly or Danaus, since he was careful to keep his body between myself and the hunter, while his eyes continuously drifted back to the earth witch on the other side of me.

“There’s someone over there!” Tristan called before darting ahead, anxious to finally have Amanda back in our safe keeping.

“It’s not her,” I murmured, my brows drawing together over the bridge of my nose. I could see the creature’s hair color, and it wasn’t Amanda’s bright blond.

“It’s naturi!” Danaus said, and I understood his surprise. We had killed all the naturi within the region, reduced them to gray ash. Surely there couldn’t be one still alive and in one piece.

When we got close to the naturi curled on the ground, we could see that she was covered in a blue dome of energy. Beside her in a hole in the ground was Amanda, curled up and unconscious.

“Is she still alive?” Tristan asked, ready to jump in the hole the moment I deemed that it was safe.

“She’s asleep,” Shelly said, her voice soft and wavering. The earth witch stepped forward and looked down on the two women, as different as night and day. Amanda was pale and blond, while the other had dark hair and tanned skin. “This is a sleep bubble. It keeps whoever is inside in a deep, protective sleep.”

“Why keep a naturi asleep with a nightwalker that you’re holding prisoner?” I asked as I knelt down across from the naturi, keeping a safe distance from the bubble. “Is the naturi torturing Amanda in her sleep?”

“Unlikely. They’re both asleep. A deep sleep. There’s no thought, no dreams. It’s like being dead.”

“It’s two prisoners,” Danaus suddenly said. “Look at her wrists.”

The naturi was curled into the fetal position, with her hands pressed against her stomach, but there was no missing the iron bands wrapped around her slender wrists or the chain connecting them together. This sleeping creature was a prisoner, an enemy of my darkest enemy. A smile flitted across my lips.

“That’s interesting,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

“What do you plan to do?” Tristan asked, taking a step away from Amanda for the first time. The situation had become more complicated. It wasn’t as simple as waking Amanda up. I had a feeling that in order to remove Amanda, we had to get rid of the bubble, which meant waking them both up.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I truthfully replied. “A naturi has just fallen into my lap. What should I do with it?”

“Besides kill it?” Tristan snapped. “Is that…that spell hurting Amanda?” he demanded, turning his attention to Shelly. The witch had bent down to examine some marking in the dirt around the bubble.

“No, she’s perfectly safe. She’s simply asleep.”

“A healing sleep,” I added. “Something she needs right now. There’s no telling how long the naturi tortured her before we were able to get to the island. Let her sleep while she can.”

“Are you planning to keep her like this because of the naturi?” Tristan demanded, taking a step toward the hole that held Amanda as if he planned to jump in and grab her up, spell be damned.

“No, of course not. But a few more minutes won’t harm her.” I rose and walked over toward Tristan. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back a couple steps away. “We need to think this through. We have an interesting opportunity before us and we need to make the most of it.”

“What do you mean?” he said, his hand slipping from my grasp.

“Yes, Mira,” Danaus said with a hiss. “What exactly do you mean?”

“We have a naturi prisoner at our fingertips. Don’t you think it would be within our best interest to try to get some information out of her?”

“You’re not going to kill it?” Tristan shouted, pointing at the sleeping naturi as if it were a snake slithering toward them on the ground.

“Of course I’m going to kill it, but it’s all a matter of when.”

“Is it the same ‘when’ that has Danaus’s life hanging by a thread?” Knox asked, bringing a frown to my lips. I had been saying for months now that I would kill the hunter, and it had yet to be accomplished. I still had too much use for him. I didn’t expect the naturi to be quite as useful.

“Not quite,” I growled. Walking back over toward the naturi, I crouched down low so I could closely look at it. She seemed young; a teenager somewhere between the age of fifteen and seventeen, but then that was just her appearance. The naturi aged slowly if at all. She could be centuries old and not look it. Her clothes were dirty and there was a bruise on her temple. While she hadn’t been treated as poorly as Amanda, she was no precious cargo either.

“She could be a plant,” Danaus said, breaking into my thoughts. “The naturi knew she would be of interest to you like this and took a chance that you might try to get some information out of her. She could prove to be nothing more than a spy.”

Dusting off my hands, I stood and turned to face the hunter. It was an angle I hadn’t considered. We certainly couldn’t trust her if we did bother to awaken her. “True, but who is she going to report to? We killed all the naturi within the immediate area. She has no one to report to even if she does find something out.”

“You think nightwalkers are the only telepathic creatures?” he retorted. “I bet she could talk to any naturi she wanted to, regardless of the distance.”

“And tell them what? Where to find me? They already know Savannah is my domain.”

“It’s worth the risk,” Knox said, sliding his hands into his jeans pockets. “Any information that we can gain at this point would be of value.”

“You expect her to tell the truth?” Tristan asked.

“Not at first,” Knox replied. He shrugged his wide shoulders, a dark grin lifting one corner of his mouth. “But I’m sure under enough pain she’ll talk.”

“Shelly, wake them up,” I said, taking a step back from where Amanda and the naturi were encased in the glowing blue dome of energy.

The witch stepped up to the bubble and paused to look over her shoulder at me as if questioning one last time if this was what I truly wanted. I nodded once, prodding her on. Drawing in a heavy breath, Shelly reached her right foot forward and with the toe of her shoe smudged the circle in the dirt that surrounded Amanda and the female naturi. There was a small pop in the air as the bubble over the two completely disappeared.

“That was it?” I asked in surprise.

“Sure. It’s just a sleep spell,” she replied, stepping back at the sound of Amanda beginning to stir within her hole in the ground.

“Could you replicate it if necessary?”

“It’s been a while, but I think so.”

“Brush up on it. We may need it,” I said, returning my attention to the two creatures at my feet.

A low moan escaped Amanda as she slowly awoke and shifted in the hole. Keeping one eye on the naturi that had yet to move, I walked over to the hole so Amanda could see me. Her beautiful blond hair was matted with dirt and blood. Her clothes were torn and the visible skin was crusted with dried blood. She had briefly walked through Hell and survived, but I was solely concerned about how it would change her. My time with the naturi had not left me a better person.