Silver (Wicked Woods #3) (2 page)

“Unhand me, sir.”

“If I do that, I reckon you won’t live through the night, doctor. Not if you’re going to do stupid things like walking up to one of the blood drinkers and demanding she stop drinking blood.”

The doctor shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The young man’s smile flashed bright in the darkness. “Of course you do, doctor. You didn’t know what you were
doing,
more the pity, but you aren’t so stupid that you can’t see what she has become.”

The doctor sagged. “How do you know about that, then?”

“My family have been trying to deal with their kind for a long time now. We thought we had them under control, too. We’ve never been able to pin down where the blood drinkers come from, but we have at least been able to keep them in the woods.”

“Sorry.” The doctor said it automatical y.

The other man shook his head. “Don’t be sorry. Just help me to deal with the blood drinkers.”

“You have only just told me not to confront the girl.”

“She’s hardly a girl anymore,” the other man said.

“And no, we won’t be confronting her. We wil just be doing what needs to be done.”

The doctor caught the edge to that. “And that is?”

The other man laughed. “You
know
what that is, doctor.” He reached into the furs he wore with gloved hands, pul ing out a silver cross that gleamed even in the dark. The longest part of it had a sharp blade. “Take it.”

The doctor shook his head. “You haven’t so much as told me your name, haven’t told me anything much, but you want me to murder someone with you?”

The other man shrugged. “My name’s Saul Wickham. When you’re done here, I’l put you in touch with some other people who’l tel you al you want to know.

People I got that cross from. It’s time to choose now, doctor.”

The doctor stared at the other man for a long moment. He looked at the house he’d been watching, where a man lay dying from lack of blood. Final y, with trembling hands, he reached out and took the crucifix.

Present Day - Wicked, Massachusetts

The sounds of the battle started to recede as Briony clung to Kevin’s back, the silver sword she had used in the fight kept careful y away from his fur. The long strides of Kevin’s wolf form were taking them further from the fight at a rate Briony could never have managed on her own. Relief that he had been there to help her get clear from the carnage of the vampires’ ambush blended itself with guilt at running. Guilt at abandoning others to fend for themselves once it became clear that she could not help them.

Who had died? Even as Briony thought it, the sound of running feet came to her, and she caught sight of flashes of fur speeding through the woods not far from her. Which of the werewolves would it be? Her brother, Jake? Josh, the werewolf king? One of his family?

Briony ducked her head to avoid a low branch. They were moving quickly now. Too quickly to stop and think. Yet flashes of memory came to her. Of Josh ordering the retreat, and then fleeing with as many of his family as he could find. Of Jake helping Josh’s irritating sister, Carol, buying her time. What had she seen since then?

From the back of a moving wolf, it had been hard to tel exactly. Briony had thought that she had spotted Josh and his brother Brian changing and sprinting off, and that looked like the color of their fur out in the forest. She hadn’t seen anything more of Carol though, or of her twin, Channing.

Then there was Jake. The last Briony had seen of her little brother; he had been leaping into the safety of the forest canopy after helping Carol. Had he managed to get clear of the violence? Briony wanted to believe that he had.

After al , he was part vampire and part werewolf, so no single vampire should have been able to stop him. Yet they weren’t talking about single vampires, were they? What if there had been half a dozen of them? What if…

Briony found herself snapped from her thoughts by a flash of movement above her. A vampire, a young man dressed in casual clothes, his fangs bared in anticipation of the kil , was already in mid-leap as she looked up. He obviously intended to knock her from Kevin’s back and finish Briony while she was stil stunned.

Briony reacted on instinct, bringing the sword around in an arc that caught the vampire halfway. The momentum of Kevin’s forward motion only added to the stroke, and the blade sliced through the creature so neatly that Briony barely had to grip with her legs to keep her seat.

Looking back as Kevin ran on, she saw the two halves of the vampire hit the ground, already burning with the cold, blue fire that would consume him.

Briony shuddered, yet she was careful to keep a firm grip on Kevin’s fur. She knew that in a battle like the one she was fleeing it was kil or be kil ed, yet somehow, she felt that it shouldn’t be so easy. Taking a life shouldn’t be something you did on instinct. Yet what else could she do?

It was almost a minute before the next vampire leapt out. Kevin’s speed took the pair of them past the initial leap, but the creature succeeded in snagging a hand in Briony’s sleeve as it tumbled past. Briony found herself spinning from her spot on Kevin’s back, having to tuck and rol to avoid the worst effects of the fal .

Even so, it rocked her. At the speed she had been travel ing, she lost her grip on Kevin’s back and fel hard, smacking the ground that jarred her entire body. She forced herself to her feet, knowing that the vampire would not be slowed by a fal like that, and that she would be easy prey lying down.

This creature was a brunette woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. She was dressed more for a night at the opera than an ambush, in a long dress slit up one side. She even wore high heels.

“You did
n o t
just land safely in those,” Briony managed to gasp out. She looked around for the sword.

Had it fal en into one of the nearby bushes?

“Looking for this?” the vampire woman asked. She picked up the sword from a patch of undergrowth, holding it gingerly, with just her fingertips on the pommel. Without changing her grip, she flung it so that it lodged hilt deep in a nearby tree. “That’s better.”

Briony edged around to her left, looking for another weapon. She stil had her cross pendant, but she couldn’t use that yet. Not if she wanted the element of surprise.

“Pietre wil want me alive,” she said, trying to buy time.

“Wil he?” The woman shrugged as she said it. “Al he said to me was that a few of us should wait at the edges, making sure no one can get away. Stil ,” her fangs slid out,

“alive has possibilities.”

It was at that point that Kevin charged from the undergrowth, stil in wolf form, lunging and snapping at the vampire. The vampire was quick leaping straight up, letting the momentum of Kevin’s charge carry him under her.

The fight that fol owed was almost elegant. The vampire fought like a dancer, slashing with her nails and heels as she whirled away from each assault Kevin made.

She never quite managed to wound him, but she was at least able to stop Kevin from getting near to her.

Briony decided to even the odds, sliding out her crucifix and springing the hidden blade. She crept closer to the fight, looking for a moment to slide it home when the vampire wasn’t aware of her.

She was. The vampire’s kick was stunningly fast.

Briony managed to get her arms up in time, but even so, it sent her sliding back along the floor, the breath knocked out of her as Kevin and the creature continued their deadly dance.

Briony struggled to her feet, and then ran to the bushes where the vampire had thrown her sword. Gripping the hilt with both hands and pul ing, Briony put her whole weight into trying to remove the sword from the bush. The blade wouldn’t budge. Worse, behind her, she heard Kevin yelp with pain. Briony swore, bracing both feet against the rough bark of the tree and pul ing backwards with al her strength. She was not going to let Kevin be hurt.

For a moment, it felt like Briony was trying to pul the sword out of a rock rather than a tree. When she felt the first hint of movement, Briony hauled on the hilt with renewed strength. It came free with a kind of sticky slowness as sap clung to it. Briony spun, facing the fight once more, and saw that the vampire was pressing Kevin back, pushing him towards a tree to restrict his movements.

Briony did the only thing she could think of, and ran forward, the blade raised before her like a lance. This time, the vampire didn’t react quickly enough to stop the blow.

She half turned, only to have the razor sharp sword hit through the side of her ribs. It stil found the heart. The vampire barely had enough time to look surprised before she slumped back and the cold flames claimed her body.

Briony stood stil for a moment, trying to get her breath back, but Kevin’s wolf form nudged against her legs, urging her to climb on once more.

“I know, I know. We have to get out of here. Just give me a second.”

Kevin yipped, but Briony ignored it, retrieving her cross and putting it around her neck once more. Only then did she hear the sound of someone moving through the wood nearby, branches breaking under feet that didn’t care who heard them.

Briony didn’t need any more prompting. She sprinted for Kevin and more or less threw herself onto him, clinging to his fur for dear life as his muscles exploded into a high speed lope once more. Briony whipped her head from side to side, looking for danger, her sword held almost like a lance as she waited for danger to spring from the surrounding trees.

How long Kevin ran like that, Briony didn’t know. The constant threat of danger made each wolfish stride seem like it took hours to complete, yet at the same time, trees passed by in a rush. On and on the werewolf ran, until it seemed to Briony that he might be trying to run straight through the woods. He certainly wasn’t heading back towards anywhere Briony recognized.

Final y though, the trees began to thin out and Kevin started to slow. Briony patted him on the shoulder as a signal to stop.

“I think we’ve gone far enough, Kevin. I think we’re safe.”

Kevin seemed to agree, slowing to a crawl before standing stil to let Briony dismount. She turned her back only briefly in doing so, and that time was enough for him to change back into human form. As usual after transforming, his clothes were torn and unkempt, his shirt hanging open to reveal the muscular lines of his chest. His dark hair looked unkempt, and hung in front of his eyes. Briony reached up to brush it back out of the way.

“Do you think we got away?” she asked.

“Probably.” Kevin looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know how many other people did, though.”

“No.” Briony bit her lip and looked around, unwil ing to dwel on that for the moment. Not when Jake was stil out there. After a moment she looked back to the werewolf.

“Kevin-”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, not that,” Briony said. “Look around.”

The space around them was free of trees, but interspersed with blooming flowers of types Briony had not seen before. The grass was in better shape than it should have been given the time of year, and even the few trees that sprang up in the space before them looked odd. They were too… vibrant somehow, as though they almost glowed from within. Each was strong and healthy, yet al the trees had a slightly ephemeral look to them, as though there was something about them that wasn’t quite there. In fact, the whole glade look like the world around it never touched it. A smal brook babbled its way through the trees, just deep enough and clear enough for Briony to see smal fish skimming their way along the bottom.

“It’s very peaceful,” Kevin said after a few seconds.

“That’s just it.” Briony walked up to the nearest of the trees. The bark felt solid enough under her touch, but there was nothing rough about it. “After a battle like that, we shouldn’t be feeling peaceful, and yet I do. Then there are these trees. Have
you
seen trees like this before?”

Briony wasn’t surprised to see Kevin shake his head.

“It’s…” Briony struggled for the words, because something about this place felt vaguely familiar to her. “It’s almost too good to be true. Like something out of a fairy tale. Does that make any sense?”

“As much sense as anything around Wicked. So do you think we should leave?”

“I don’t know,” Briony admitted. “What is this place, Kevin?”

Sophie Edge stared straight forward as she sat tied to a chair in the back room of the diner, hardly able to bring herself to look at George. At what had been done to him.

To think too hard about the way that one of her closest friends had been turned into one of the undead was to invite either despair or self-recrimination. Despair, at the thought that something like that could happen to even the strongest of them. Self-recrimination because she had not been able to do anything about it. Had not even known about it until it was too late.

Sophie fought against the feelings. They were just what Pietre wanted. That was why he had left George there to guard her while he went off to see to more business.

Sophie would not let him win like that. She had hunted monsters for a long time now. Long enough that this wasn’t the first friend she had lost to them. Long enough to know that she had to stay focused if she wanted to live.