My energy blows out like an explosion and takes everything in its wake. Uncontrolled due to my sheer fear and mounting hysteria, time suddenly ceases to cling on in the slow-mo. Wooosh, the clock restarts, and everything in my wake is thrown wide like the after implosion of a nuclear bomb.
Sierra, Radar, the bullet, and Juan all catapulted away from me with force. Flying into a chaotic landing of limp bodies against the far wall behind the bed, taking a pillar and the canopy with it in a crashing chorus of thuds and growls. It’s a monumental fallout from something I didn’t mean to deliver so viciously.
I have no idea where the bullet has landed or if I managed to set it off course, and I scramble forward to unravel Sierra from the mess of bedding and debris around her, shielded by the hunched-over wolf form of Radar. He somehow managed to cling to and protect her even in freefall as they went down.
I sense Juan pulling himself up, slightly dazed, from my left against the wall. I throw another energy ball of anger his way that hurtles him another few feet toward his subordinates. Concentrated despisal in a specially wrapped package just for him, and the crunch of his bones as he collides with a dresser gives me some deep satisfaction.
“Stay over there, and don’t try that again! Next time I will throw you out the window!” I snap at him, appeased with the ashen look of disbelief and pain etched on his face as his nearest minion helps pull him to his feet. His body is already beginning to heal, confirming that this room is protected from the weapon against his own people. I don’t think he expected my reaction or ability as he has never seen what I can do since I left the Manor many moons ago. I turn away from him in disgust, more than confident he’s too startled for a repeat.
“Sierra, are you okay? Radar, what about you?” I hurry towards them, Carmen on my rear as the Luna’s guard moves with us and forms a shield in a semi-circle while facing all eyes on the other wolves in the room. I get to the two huddled figures as a groan is let out, and Radar seems to roll to his side, revealing a completely unharmed Sierra in human form as she pulls herself up into my arms. I hug her, the relief sweeping through my body like a wave of warm euphoria.
“Now, now, Juan, what kind of cowardly attempt was that? A gun? Silver bullets? Really…. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Are you that desperate to win, even if you die with her?” Leyanne mocks him from her position where she was already, unmoved, then smirks at the pathetic figure as he finds his feet to face her. Despite all the mess around us, she is like a statue of perfect posture in the midst and only brushes herself down to rid the falling dust from her black attire.
Radar draws my attention with another groan, this time a whimper in its core, and the sudden scent of blood pulls my eyes to him in alarm. The unmistakable scent of our own kind.
“Radar?!?!” Sierra must smell it too and is faster than me to click on what’s wrong. Pushing me aside so she can move to him and throws herself on the ground to kneel beside him as he returns to human. His shoulder is covered in red, oozing stickiness as it pours from a fresh wound and starts dripping on the floor at an awful rate. Now that he’s a fraction of the size as a person, the amount of blood is alarming and clear as day on human skin. Dark and oozing as his skin pales out.
“Oh my god….. the bullet hit you?” Sierra wails and hauls him to a sitting position, eyes scanning his body for more damage and then focusing back on his shoulder as tears prickle up in her eyes. I shudder in shock and follow suit to dive beside him, pulling his body against me and examining the bullet wound in despair. I can’t see it inside as it’s deep, but there is already swelling with a faint blue tinge from a combo of the two properties on earth which can harm us.
“The bullet was silver, and I can smell wolfsbane. We need to get it out, or he won’t heal,” I command my Rema, needing her to help me so I can lay him down and find something to get the shrapnel out.
“Move…. Worse than not healing, he can die…you know it’s a lethal combo and doesn’t take long to become irreversible. I’m sure Radar knows that more than most.” Leyanne is quick beside us, taking her eyes off Juan, who is no longer my main concern. Radar closes his eyes, his expression becoming calm even in pain and oddly still, and I wonder if he’s reminiscing about the scar on his face and his near death from this same poison in the war back then. My heart aches that of all the wolves, he’s the one to experience this again.
“That was the point!” Juan cackles out loud, sounding demented, unlike the Alpha I once trembled before. I think he really has lost his mind, and his sole purpose in luring us up here to this space was to kill his own son, even if all four of us died with him. He knows he’s defeated, and that was his last straw. He can’t win against the army of vampires, nor can he take down the fractured pack on our side, so he chooses the cowards' end of vengeance and suicide to feel like he won. He really has fallen from grace and given up on any future.
It pulls my focus for a second as I flicker around to glance his way, and the room erupts in seconds before I have a chance to blink at him. The lifeless and subservient minions spring up, almost as though they have been waiting, and fly at my guards. Juan turns in a flash into a huge and fierce wolf before lunging straight toward us, and the glow of many amber eyes in the dark is only outshone by the show of white teeth gnashing our way.
“Move” I push Leyanne harshly towards Radar so that she falls over on top of him and throw my hands up with a fiery glow of energy, pulsating, thrust his way as a counteract, and barely manage to keep myself upright with the kickback of my sudden power throw. It’s a frantic attempt to shield, yet it’s effective even if I lose control.
The room implodes. Wolf against wolf and his men do not seem to be affected by the frequency downstairs the way the others were. I wonder if this room has sound dampeners that stop them from being hit with the frequency outside. It would explain why they settled to sit here and wait, even with so few. It was his only fighting chance to weaken us as we came here while he sat with full powers and energy to tilt the balance. Colton not coming was the only part he didn’t plan. He must have known we would show or that the vampires were coming. I wonder if it was chance and they stay here endlessly waiting, or if this was all preconceived and he knew it would be tonight.
I try to keep my head as all-out aggressive warfare erupts around us, and Leyanne and Sierra pull Radar’s body to the corner to tend to his excessive bleeding. I focus on Carmen, who is in the thick of it and fighting fearlessly alongside the guard. She would be better downstairs, still dealing with the frequency for our wolves outside, yet I can’t get near her to tear her away and send her back down.
“This is going to sting…. A lot. Bear down,” Leyanne’s voice cuts through the noise of snapping teeth, snarls, growls, swiping claws, and breaking furniture, and I’m torn about what to do now. Carmen jumps up in the air and delivers a pounding fist to the top of a skull, giving her all, yet it’s too compact and chaotic for me to help with my power effectively. Bodies and fur fly everywhere at the speed of light, and I’m stuck between them and the efforts to save Radar. My head scrambles for a plan, yet my eyes are consistently drawn back to Juan in the messy battle before me.
“Stay with me, Radar…. You’re going to be okay.” Sierra’s soft voice claws at my heart, showing her panic and tears as she hauls Radar’s upper torso onto her lap and cradles his head against her abdomen to help hold him steady. His eyes are closed from the pain as a toxic venom flows through his body, and sweat rapidly collects across his skin surface. “You said you would stay by my side for the rest of my life….. you can’t break that promise, you hear me?” Sierra begins to sob as Leyanne pulls out a sheathed dagger, ornate with inlaid jewels in the exquisite handle, from under her cloak and starts cutting out the silver bullet. Slicing into his skin with the focus of a professional surgeon who doesn’t seem squeamish at all with what she’s doing.
Radar lets out a muffled groan and twitches as the blade cuts deeper, and he clings to Sierra’s arm as he tries to stop himself from tossing around. The witch is digging around to find it with the blade's tip, and I can’t bear to stand here doing anything.
Carmen…. downstairs…. go back to what you were doing! We need to disable the frequency.
I link her across the room with a subtle woosh and push of my energy ball. I separate her from the wolf she clings to while delivering a vicious claw stab to his shoulder. She seems startled for a second, then reads me loud and clear, takes off without hesitation, dodges wolves, and heads back for the door. Her eyes focused on her direction, and I turn to check on the three huddled figures.
Juan follows my gaze, catching the corner of my eye with his sudden halt in fighting, and I can sense his urge from here. He lets go of one of the guards he had by the fur of his neck and jumps towards me in my standing position. I lift my hands in readiness, knowing he’s no match for my ability to throw out a shield to hit him, but he heads straight for the back of Leyanne, and I miss him by mere millimeters.
Sierra seems to sense it too and looks up in time to see him coming down on the back of our witch with claws extended and a definite desire to impale her. I gasp a loud Noooo and turn to intervene, but Sierra does it for me. Jumping up and changing midair, she hits him head-on in a clashing collision of mass and sends him hurtling backward with her smaller self, clutching like a leech. They tumble back and roll across the floor through broken despair, swiping two wolves off their feet as they take out their legs and end up crashing into the edge of a wardrobe nearby. The crunching, cracking sound of bones snapping, and then they come to a dead halt. A moment of pause before the real fight begins.
“Sierra! No!!” Radar yells at the top of his lungs, almost deafening me as it comes through the pack link in amplified unison. My brain nearly explodes with the ferocity of his despair.
I’m after them in a second, heading her way, but Sierra and Juan are fast and seem to recover quickly. They lock on in a grappling fight, and she’s hauled to her hind legs to meet him eye to eye. Fierce meets fierce, and even from here, unable to do anything while they are close together, I can taste her desire to end this with him. Sierra has finally come to meet the man who kept her locked up for a decade, and my heart plummets, and my knees weaken as she turns her head slightly to me with a strange, still calm to her aura.
I know we’re not bound anymore. I’m a witch, remember? Some things I just know, and being a seer meant you would never be able to hide it from me. Take care of my son and my grandbabies. I love you. Now get out, all of you. This is between us.
Sierra’s voice rips through the link, silencing everything, and my blood and heart stop cold in my body as the fear of her words grips me.
Strangled instantly with emotion, choked to a rooted spot, and yet not shocked… because I already knew this somewhere deep down. I could feel it in her earlier. Her aura changed, her warrior stood up, and in my heart, I already suspected. I wanted to ignore it and have hope she would cling to life to protect us, but now it’s suffocated down, and I am faced with the fact that Sierra came here to end Juan and die in the process.
She knew….. We shouldn’t have unbound her. She already figured it out.
Oh my god, she knew.