Scarlet Night (Limited Edition) (22 page)

They were down, but they were most certainly
not
out of the fight!

But the filthy dog’s efforts
had
bought it enough of an opening to slaughter Zoey before they could get to them. As its claws came down at the screaming Zoey, their eyes widened to take in the horrific yet enticing sight of the impending death.

But it didn’t come.

The other dog—the one they’d been ready to maim moments earlier—suddenly seemed to have a change of heart and held his comrade’s arm only several inches from Zoey’s face, bearing his fangs at him as a warning before pulling him away from her and shoving him down the hall, not shifting his gaze until the other was gone.

Zoey looked up at her unlikely savior, her eyes shimmering with an expression they didn’t understand. “Isaac!”

The therion grunted and puffed its chest, but made no move to attack her.

Their eyes narrowed at the two as the scene unfolded.
“
YOU
KNOW
THIS MONSTER
?”

Zoey looked at them and shook her head, “Zane! You don’t understand! He was being contro—”

Snarling, they stepped towards the two. Their scarlet aura whipped free and slashed at the walls, raining down debris on all of them. “
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE? LOOK AT WHAT THEY—”

“Enough!” Zoey glared at them and threw her sea-blue aura out and pinned them against the wall, “This is
hardly
the time for me to have to explain to you when you’re like
this
!” she closed the distance between them and slapped her hand on their side with enough force to drive her point.

And then they were tired.

So very, very tired…

Zane groaned, slumping to the floor as a nauseating dizziness turned the world on its side. In the distance—off in the real world, far from the haze he was trapped within—he could feel his body shifting and tugging; hear
ing the
pops
and
snaps
of a body doing what it was never meant to do:

Become something else.

As the sounds and sensations faded, so did his grogginess, until he finally felt secure enough in the world to sit up without fear of slipping into orbit. As he’d suspected, his body was once again his own. He blinked at the sight of his own fingers before looking up at Zoey and the therion. Luckily, his pants hadn’t been ripped too badly and, by some miracle that seemed only to work in comic books, were able to stay on.

“
Y-you’re getting
too
good at that!” he shook his head at Zoey and sighed, “And wasn’t this place on
fire
a second ago?”

Zoey shrugged, “I put them out.”

“You can do that?”

Another shrug, “No oxygen, no fire. All I had to do was—”

“You know what,” Zane held up a hand to stop her, “I just remembered that I have a headache and your big words won’t help that. Straight to the point; fire is gone! Now, more importantly:”—he turned his attention to the therion and glared—“
who
is this and
why
am I not killing him?”

Zoey bit her lip and glanced up at him before looking away again,
“He’s...” she blushed, keeping her gaze down.

The therion whimpered and Zane almost thought
he saw the creature blush.

Zane shook his head and sneered,
“It doesn’t matter, either way! They are our
enemies
!” He glared, “Or have you already forgotten about Grego—”

“Gregori’s death had
nothing
to do with them
or
their kind!” Zoey snapped. “Like it or not—despite all his wonderful qualities—he
was
an old and bigoted vampire with a vendetta against
anybody
that wasn’t a vampire! We’re at the cusp of a new chapter for this clan, and I suggest you shed all the unnecessary prejudices he taught you before they poison us any further!” She looked back at the therion and gave him a slight nod and watched as he started to change back. “Besides, Zane, we have the
same
enemy, and they can help us fight!” she shook her head angrily, “Assuming you didn’t
kill
all of them!”

Even the therion
, still in the middle of his transformation, looked surprised at her outburst.

Zane scoffed,
“Our enemy?
Helping
us?”

She had a
determined look in her face, “It was
Keith
!
He’s been manipulating them from the
start
! He was controlling Isaac—using him to give his pack commands against his will—until”—she blushed and looked at him—“he saw I was in danger.” She sighed, “Look, I can’t blame you for this—none of us can!—just like you can’t blame them! We’ve
both
lost allies because of Keith! They deserve a chance to avenge their own… and besides, we could use the help. Even
you
can’t deny
that
!”

“What I can’t deny,” Zane said with a disgusted sneer, “is that your boyfriend had better find some
place to hide
that
thing!”

Zoey frowned and followed his gaze to Isaac’s rapidly changing body and turned bright red as she realized that he had no clothes.

“Seriously! I’m willing to let bygones be bygones if you’ll tell Babe Ruth here to put away the slugger before he puts somebody’s eye out!”

The therion
finished his transformation, his skin tightening around his lean frame as several of his ribs noticeably shifted into place. Ignoring Zane’s remark and making no move to cover himself, he took in the carnage around him.

“Keith will suffer for every one of them!” he swore under his breath

“I’m suffering here and now, wild stallion! You want to put that thing in a stable so we can talk like civilized—”

Isaac glared, “Nobody’s asking you to look!”

“Oh, right!” Zane rolled his eyes, “Let’s try
not
to notice it! I’m surprised it hasn’t tried to bite me!”

Zoey blushed and stepped in front of him, “I’ll… uh, find him something to wear.”

“Please do,” Zane sighed, “And I’ll try
real
hard not to ask how you’re still walking.”

The auric’s already bright-red face blossomed with another flush of color and she started to herd the still-glaring therion down the hall
.

“
Send out a call to any survivors to meet us on the roof, if we’re going to work together than we might as well do it right.” He sighed and looked off towards the hole at the end of the hall and started towards it, hoping Serena hadn’t taken a turn for the worse, “And make it fast! This place looks ready to come down and I don’t want to be in it when it does!”

Stepping through the opening, he approached
Serena’s unconscious body and lifted her easily and started towards the lobby to wait for Zoey. While he hated the idea of abandoning the clan’s headquarters—even more than how much he hated the idea of trusting a pack of therions to keep him alive—he couldn’t deny that it was the only option.

“
C’mon, Serena,” he sighed, looking down at her face, “Let’s get out of here!”

T
he ragtag group of survivors—composed of the vampires of the clan lucky enough to survive the fire and the therions of Isaac’s pack fortunate enough to have survived Zane—were able to flee the building. Utilizing a psychic cloak that Zoey and the other aurics had put around them to avoid being seen by the slew of humans that had begun arguing amongst themselves over
how
a fire of such magnitude could magically squelch itself. Though they were able to avoid being detected, the combined force of the auras was not able to shade them from the sun, and the sang vampires, who were far more sensitive to the sun’s radiation than any of the others, soon became restless and agitated.

Including Zane.

“Shit! Where the hell will we go now?” Serena frowned, her own skin beginning to itch under the UV assault.

“The only fucking place we have left!
” Zane growled, glaring at Serena and growling when she glared right back at him. Finally, seeing that neither of them was about to back down from the other, he looked away, “Gregori had a backup plan for
everything
! Global battle, invasion, natural disaster… fuck, even
Z-Day
was considered!”

Zoey frowned, “Z-day?”

“Not now, Zoey!” Zane snapped at the skeptic tone, “The
point
is that he was prepared! And, given the shit we’ve found ourselves in, I’d say that what we need most is a place to hide and prepare!”

“Prepare for
what
?” A young blonde sang trailing behind spat. Though he wasn’t of age to be a warrior, his brashness made it clear that he was eager, and, while Zane admired his tenacity, he was hardly in the mood for his attitude. “Our leader’s
dead
, our home has been
destroyed
, our clan has been reduced to a
joke
, and we’re planning on a full-scale attack on a
Council
member with the help of a bunch of ass-sniffing
dogs
! What is there to plan, huh? Who shoots who first? ‘Cuz if
you’re
the best we got, then I’d rather take the bullet right here, right now!”

Zane’s eyes shifted back towards him and his fangs extended as his rage grew, “Don’
t tempt us, boy! I don’t have the time
or
the patience to deal with your shit and I’ve got
more
than enough ways to kill you and twice as many reasons to do so, but I’m hardly the one you should be watching out for.”

“Oh yea, tough guy? And
who
should I be watching out for?”

Zane smirked wickedly, “The ass-sniffing dogs. See, where
I’m
trained in a number of ways to kill you before you’d even
know
it; they’ve lived in the wild their whole lives; surviving by using tooth and claw to take apart anything that threatened that survival. So, you arrogant little shit, while you might not care if I end you with your dignity intact, I suggest you watch your fucking mouth around the ones that would tear you open and rape your insides with the sort of equipment whales would envy.”

The young sang stayed quiet.

Serena sighed and shook her head, “Dick!”

Zane smirked and nodded, “Exactly!” as they approached the outskirts of town and into the shady canopy of trees
the sangs of the group let out a simultaneous sigh of relief, “Anyway! Though Gregori
hated
the wilderness”—he glanced back at the therions—“even though there’s
nothing
wrong with it; he
also
knew that many others shared his distaste. So, in the event of a takeover and the need to retreat to someplace less obvious and more secluded, he had this built.”