Silence: Part Two of Echoes & Silence (49 page)

“For
me
? Why for me and not you?”

“If you hit a tree or something.” He cupped my belly to make a point. “The spell I put on your flesh is weak now. You’ve no more protection around her than an average vampire.”

“But my skin still can’t be cut,” I said. “I bumped into a shelf the other day and a nail snagged my shirt, but it didn’t cut my skin.”

He shook his head, his eyes nearly completely covered by the black blanket of hair laying flat over his head. “It will get weaker every day. I’ll replenish the spell once it’s faded entirely, but I can’t do it until then.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not how magic works. A spell must lift before you can do another—you cannot layer them.” He looked away then to our destination, lifting his arm to point ahead through the houses on either side of the street to the great fountain at the end, marking the centre of the village square. “See that tree on the other side of those houses?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m going to run to it at vampire speed, hopefully without knocking it down. Then, you can run to me and I’ll catch you.”

“Okay.” I nodded, kneeling down like a marathon runner about to start. “Go then!”

He vanished, appearing a second later through the slanted sheets of rain, his arms around the tree. I could barely see him, aside from the slight flicker of his glossy raincoat waving in the gust, but it looked like he made it safely enough.

“Okay, Ara,” I said to myself. “One. Two. Three!” I took off at a run, leaping over the fence just past the fountain, two feet landing gracefully on the other side, but as my heel came down hard after my toes, my foot slipped. I put my arms out, grasping at the air as I skidded forward, and a pair of tight, strong hands wrapped my waist before I hit the tree and spun my body so I smacked into the fleshy surface of his chest instead. My stomach went through my ribs and the baby practically came out my belly button. I coughed hard, folding over as the force shot back and left my limbs through the ground.

“Are you okay?” Drake leaned around to look at me.

I coughed again, nodding. “Just winded.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t make you do that again.”

“I’m okay,” I assured him, using his shoulder to stand myself straight. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“That’s my girl.” A beaming smile stretched his lips. “You always did have a fighting spirit.”

“Yeah, well, it’d be much easier to fight if this damn rain would stop!” I said, aiming the last words at the sky, or maybe the known Universe. And almost as if my words had commanded it, the rain stopped. Ceased completely. Not so much as a drizzle came down from the sky as its final word. It was just gone.

I looked at Drake.

He laughed breathily. “That’s quite a skill you have there.”

“Uh, no,” I said, and started walking. “That was
not
me.”

“I won’t bother trying to convince you.” He walked ahead of me. “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”

“Wait.” I caught up, shaking my head at him and his ridiculous statement. “Are you trying to tell me I can control the rain?”

“I’ve always suspected it—even when you were a little girl. It would rain when your heart was broken; it would be sunny if you were gay; it would storm when you were mad.”

I raised a brow at him. “Drake, no one says gay anymore.”

“My mistake.” He bowed, rolling his raincoat outward like a cloak. “Happy then.”

“Better.”

We both stopped on the cusp of a grassy field—the only thing now that stood between us and our destination. In the distance, swallowed by darkness, I knew there would be a forest. I knew it bordered this entire field, but the place I needed to be—where the Stone and its ethereal presence lived—was in a straight line directly ahead. A straight line at least ten minutes’ walk. A straight line in plain sight.

I said a quiet prayer inside my heart to the Goddess Lilith—for safe passage.

“So we made it,” I said cheerily.

“Do not be so sure.” He scanned the darkness with the eye of a hunter. “There are six guards in the area. Two there.” He pointed to the left. “Two there—” he pointed to the right, just near the manor, “—and there is one in the dead centre of the field. Two more walking a gridline over it.”

“Do you think we can get across without being seen? Or should we enter the forest here—” I pointed to the manor side of the field, “—and walk around?”

“If we cross through here, we’ll be exposed outside the throne room when we need to cross the clearing into the other part of the forest. It’s safer to go across.”

“Right.” I nodded. He had a point.

A few lights came on in the manor, but it looked mostly peaceful and quiet over there—like any other night. I wanted to be up there in my chambers, with David, laying and talking about baby names. My light was on—clearly
someone
was in there—and that just made me want to kill the bastard that started this whole thing even more than I did before. Whoever told Walter that my child was Anandene needed to be sniffed out and then snuffed out. I would make them pay for this, and then I would make Walter pay for kidnapping my brother-in-law and trying to kill my baby.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, tearing my eyes painfully away from my home.

“I’ll cloak us for the first part of this walk, but I’m getting weak,” Drake said, taking my hand. “I’m not sure how much more I can take.”

I looked down at his hand; it was shaking. “Are you cold?” I asked, cupping my other hand over his.

“My blood is thinning,” he said in a weak voice. “I need to feed.”

“Can you feed on me? I’m—”

“Unfortunately, Lilithians do not sustain me. I need human blood.”

“Okay, let’s just get this over with then.” I turned to face him, keeping hold of his hand with the two of mine, and led him over the grassy threshold into the open field. I knew we were cloaked by his magic, but I felt exposed and vulnerable—maybe because I could see my goal so close to me, or maybe because I could also smell several guards—but whatever it was, this feeling was worse than walking right between those two guards at the bridge. I forced myself to think about the fart in order to keep my heart steady and my breath quiet.

“Stop.” Drake put his hand against my chest, breaking the spell.

“What?”

“Did you hear that?”

My ears pricked. My face screwed up as if to aid my straining ears. I shook my head slowly. “No.”

“That!” he said, and a loud crack rang through the air, followed by a shrill scream. Our heads whipped up toward the manor as lights came on one by one all up and down the length of the building, and from what seemed like all over the open grounds guards appeared, shouting commands out in deep echoes.

“Faster,” Drake demanded. “We must move faster.”

“Hey!”

Drake and I stopped walking, moving our attention to the man about a hundred paces to our right. He shoved a hand to his mouth and whistled loudly, pointing right at us as he looked at something over his shoulder.

“He can see us.”

Drake’s legs buckled then, and he fell to his knees. “I’m too weak, Amara. I can’t go on.”

I squatted down in the long grass, taking in the smell of mud and rain and letting it calm me. “Lie down, you’re trembling.”

“No. We must fight now.”

“But you’re weak—”

“Never. Too weak—” he pushed his hands into the ground and stood up, “—to fight for my life.”

I stood beside him, angling my back to his as we circled on the spot, counting guards as they formed a ring around us. “We’re in a bit of trouble,” I noted. “Four to two.”

“Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Well, just remember,” I reminded him, drawing my sword and holding it up like a baseball bat. “The knights are immune to venom. You need to bleed them out for it to take effect and put them down permanently.”

He brought both bare hands up and pushed one forward in a ninja-like pose. “Or, I could just rip out their hearts.”

“Just as good,” I said with a nod.

The pale glow of the manor’s lights gave shape to things the night wouldn’t. I could see each face of each guard clearly, and I didn’t recognise even one of them.

A battle cry charged them forward then, and as they slid toward us in the muddy grass, we rooted our heels firmly into the ground.

Drake’s arm shot out, and I swung my sword right with the force of a hurricane. It cut deep through the flesh at the knight’s shoulder, snagging on the bone.

He screamed, stumbling forward and falling to the floor, gripping his arm as my blade slid the length of it and cut his flesh wide open. I felt the next knight before I saw him, and swung around, my blade meeting his, as Drake slammed a detached heart to the floor beside me, turning at the shoulder to impale another runner as it landed against his fist.

I smiled, ducking down under the swing of a heavy weapon, dropping and rolling as the knight brought it down hard into the mud where I’d been. As I lifted my feet up to shove him back, a bloody fist appeared through his chest. His eyes went wide. His mouth hung open, liquid death seeping through his teeth. His body quivered as he clutched the hand, looking down as it all sunk in. And the fist vanished, taking the meaty clump in its palm with it.

The knight dropped to his knees, his eyes still focused, and flopped forward like a heavy sack beside me.

“I can smell them,” Drake said, offering his hand. “There are more coming.”

I took his hand and he rolled me to my feet, steadying me by the elbow before letting go. “Seven,” I said, glancing back toward the manor. “I can hear them too—smell them.”

“Think you can handle seven by yourself?” he asked. “I need to signal the Warriors, or all this could be for nothing.”

“Of course.” I squatted down and planted my hands into a puddle, flashing him an impish grin. “I got this.”

He smiled back in exactly the same way. “Good girl.”

“Go!” I waved him off. “Stop playing Proud Father and go signal your men.”

His clothes dropped suddenly into a heavy pile, squashing the long grass flat, and a shiny black crow emerged, shooting into the sky, cawing crassly above my head before lifting off and blending with the night.

“That’s the signal!” a deep voice yelled. “Shoot it down before it gets to the Warriors!”

A swift, sharp gust brushed through the air with a dull whistle, having no effect on the sky as the black crow turned its wing and disappeared. The sturdy metal arrow landed in the grass a few feet away, and the knights gathered there on the cusp of the wet field like a wall, clearly planning their next move. Nothing they did would save them, though; no plan would alter the course of their fate. They couldn’t have known the danger that awaited them just a few feet out from the safety of drier ground. All I had to do was wait.

“Shh.” One of the men placed a finger to his lips, leaning closer to the other. “She thinks we haven’t seen her.”

I shook my head slowly, ducking down a little lower. These men were clearly not trained by Falcon. He would be so disappointed.

All seven of them drew their swords and pranced toward me like clowns on a tight rope, one foot over the other, the ring leader holding his hand up as a warning for the others to stay behind him.

Each knight followed the leader naïvely to his imminent agony, one by one entering the moist circle of my battlefield. And as the last stepped over the threshold, I buried my hands deeper in the puddle, the mud embedding itself between skin and nail, tiny bits of grass splashing up and sticking to the backs of my wrists. I didn’t need a thought to charge my hands; I didn’t need to concentrate to draw on my power; I sent a hot, powerful shot of Cerulean Light through the rain-soaked ground and it pulsed beneath the dirt. A flock of birds out as far as the lighthouse burst suddenly from the long grass in a flurry of high calls and flapping wings, and the knights looked up, a moment of ultimate stillness chilling the night, taking what I knew would be their last pain-free breath.

I laughed to myself, swinging around to stand up, watching with an arrogant smile.

The leader let out a sharp and sudden howl as his arms stiffened, and the men behind him thrust theirs out afterward, fingers freezing around their swords as the current flowed through their bodies and stopped their Lilithian hearts. Locked down by agony, they could only watch as I took a step away, followed by another, then another—bringing myself closer to the safety of the forest border. I didn’t even need to look back to know they fell down in steaming piles of agony—to know that the skyline would be once again clear, and any living thing that had dared to walk on that field in the last ten minutes would not be standing now.

And
that
took care of
that, I thought proudly, dusting my hands off. But as my beaming smile and I stepped foot over the forest threshold, a thick and very straight tree branch flew out of nowhere with a sudden whoosh.

My eyes met with the steely gaze of Walter among the pine needles before a blunt pop brought a sudden blackness.