Virgins and Vampires: Blood Falls (The Blood Falls Book 3)

The best villains are the smartest, and Rhine was very smart. Intelligent enough to try and take Head of House from Shoshanna, and when that failed, rely on patience to bring his prize to him with time. He laid in wait, in plain sight, allowing everyone to forget the urgency, to be lulled into a sense of safety that did not exist. And then, just as he planned, we walked right into his trap.

Which was why, half an hour after attacking the Rhine compound, I now found myself standing very still with the blade of a sword against my throat. At first it seemed we surprised them, just as we hoped. They were on the run, scattering through the house, attempting to shift but hitting our wards and enchantments. We had them in a kill box.

Except it was the other way around. Suddenly we were outgunned and outmanned. They’d been waiting for us and only playing along until they were sure they had us.

“My you’ve grown into a pretty thing, haven’t you?” Rhine’s black eyes sparkled with lust and greed.

Internally, all my lust shriveled up and died.

“Watch yourself,” Kris growled beside me. He stood to my left, just out of reach, caught by surprise, just the same as me.

My father stood to my right, closer to Rhine. He shook with anger.

Rhine didn’t move a single muscle, but the pleasure he felt in provoking Kris was palpable nonetheless. “I haven’t seen my niece in many decades. I’m simply admiring the female she’s become.” Then he let his eyes dart to Kris. “Shield,” he sneered. “Hard to believe Shoshanna let her out of her room long enough to procure a Shield outside the Gatlin bloodlines.”

So he didn’t know everything. “He doesn’t know,” I said to Kris. Rhine may have plotted and waited, he may have spies in the House and beyond, but he didn’t know everything.

“Who are you, boy?” Rhine squinted at him. “An Argo? Axl? You don’t have the build for much more.”

“Should I let you keep guessing?”

Rhine shifted his dark gaze back to me. “Dripping with sarcasm while I have a blade to her throat? You’re not a very good Shield are you?”

“I find it hard to believe you’ll kill the very thing you’ve been after for so long.”

I tried not to breathe or even swallow. I didn’t want to chance the sharp edge cutting my skin. I definitely didn’t speak. I had never met Rhine in person. Not that I could remember, anyway. He wasn’t tall, but he had a strong build with wide shoulders and a shaggy head of dark hair. He looked many years older than Aunt Matylda and I wondered if his anger ate at him from the inside out.

“I could press the blade just so,” Rhine purred. “Draw blood. That’s all it will take for me to justify sinking my fangs into her delicate throat.”

“Like hell you will,” Dad snarled.

The idea of having him any closer than he already was made my stomach roil, but there was nothing I could do. At the moment he had the upper hand. One wrong move from me would put Kris and Dad in danger too. With our enchantments in place no one could leave and Rhine’s army was bigger and more aggressive. They had us pinned down.

This would cripple the Houses. And it would be my fault.

Which just pissed me off even more. I tested my hands, wondering how low I could go voltage-wise before Rhine would notice.

I made the first spark but Rhine didn’t even glance at my hands.

I needed to keep him distracted until I could build something big enough to make an impact. “Why are you doing this?”

His eyes narrowed. “Why not?”

I increased the voltage, pulled on my bond to Kris to let him feel what I was doing and began lightly tapping the psychic channels swirling through the room. “No, I mean specifically. Is this about the return of the Ancient War? Do you want me as a weapon? Or are you just interested in bringing down the Houses?”

He cocked his head, focused on my words instead of what I was doing. “War?”

I reached out to Rhysa while he wasn’t paying attention. “The Ancient War? The War that would never be fought again? The Dark Times? They’re here. It’s what we’ve all been preparing for.”

“Isn’t the point of a War that would never be fought again…that it won’t ever be fought again?” He laughed.

“She’s right,” Kris said. “What do you think the darkness on the Plane is?”

Rhine grinned. It looked twisted and horrible on him, but it was still a grin. “That’s me. At least some of it is.”

He must mean the Watcher.

An ear-piercing screech cracked the air so loud it hurt, blotting out everything else. I lost all sense of up and down and felt like I was spiraling. Before I lost sight of Rhine I sent the psychic charge at him, blowing him away from me as I fell. Kris and Dad lunged toward Rhine, taking advantage of the blow. The sound didn’t seem to affect them the way it affected me.

Or maybe they couldn’t hear it.

Something cold and hard hit my head, arms, and hands–it had to be the ground–as the screeching continued. It was hard to distinguish my hands from anything else, but eventually I brought them to my ears in an attempt to block out some of the sound.

It didn’t work. The sound penetrated everything. I curled into a ball because it was all I could think to do and tried to focus on finding the source of the screeching.

It all traced back to the watcher.

“I f-f-felt y-y-ou reaching o-out.” The voice said while the screeching continued. The words came to me like in a dream, elongated and choppy. “C-can’t have y-you h-h-helllping-g them.”

This consciousness might not be tied to its body, but it was still on the Plane and somehow tethered. It knew where it was and what it was doing. It had focus and purpose. All of which should be impossible.

“Not impossible,” it whispered, suddenly seeming very close. “Not easy, but not impossible.”

Screech! Like a banshee. Yes…like a banshee. A female warning of death. A female caught in death eternally. Specifically a female Gatlin. A million ideas popped into my head at once. A million more possibilities. It was too much to compute, but it did give me an idea.

If Rhine convinced a female Gatlin to sacrifice herself and trapped her on the Plane, her body had to be somewhere and her consciousness was somehow being kept in a safe state. A psychic state. Maybe something like a bubble? If her psychic state could be protected on the Plane there had to be a way for me to protect mine here. A bubble of my own. Something I could hide inside.

I needed a strong thought. Something the opposite of death. Like life or…love. I thought of Kris and Dad fighting for me, possibly dying for me. I thought of how I would do anything to join them, defend them with my love. And I let that feeling rip through me.

For the first time I noticed the bubble of psychic energy I created. Only instead of letting it float away, this time I controlled it. Expanded it. Surrounded myself until the screech of the banshee couldn’t reach me anymore.

After a moment or two my sense of up and down returned and I was able to feel my limbs again. I sat up to find the room was in chaos. Fighting everywhere. Swords and daggers. Shifting, levitating, and magic. The movement was almost too fast to track. A bear, a panther, a bat, but no dragon. Not yet.

We weren’t losing but we definitely weren’t winning either. Incapacitating me had been a smart move, but could I help from inside the bubble? There was only one way to find out. I reached out to the psychic channels and was relieved to feel them as strongly as normal. I drew my psychic energy close, until it sparked and became electric, then shot it through every consciousness I did not know. Everywhere the bodies of Rhine’s supporters froze and jerked. Some fell to the ground; others grabbed their heads. For a moment it turned the tide in our favor.

But even better, I was able to feel my bond with Kris again and hear his thoughts.

“Are you hurt?” Kris asked.

“No. Are you?”

“I’m fine. What happened? I felt your pain.”

As I could feel his adrenaline and exhaustion now that our connection wasn’t blocked by the banshee. “Rhine has a banshee. The watcher is a banshee.”

“You’re draining yourself.”

I was. But I also felt powerful. Like I could do this for as long as I had to. Like I was somehow being fed almost as much energy as I was using. “I can’t fight without the bubble. The banshee turns me off like a switch.”

Another screech filled the room. Only this time I heard it as an echo. It didn’t affect me the way it affected half the room. Kris grabbed his head and fell to his knees, suddenly dark to me except for his pain.

The banshee was a very effective weapon. If your enemy couldn’t fight it was easy to defeat them. Rhine’s soldiers shook off the psychic shock and reached for their weapons. I needed to take the banshee off the board, block her from everyone the way I had her blocked from me. I drew in my energy and threw my hands out, expanding my bubble around the whole room.

After a dark moment I felt the tingle of Kris once again. “That’s a banshee.”

He pulled up his sword just in time to deflect Rhine. “Fucking hell,” he said back. “Her body has to be close to have that much power.”

My thoughts exactly. I pulled in yet again, threw my hands out, and expanded the bubble around the whole house. The banshee had no way to affect us or track us now. And, while it might be cheesy, I really hoped the feeling of Love I used to create the bubble would infect some of Rhine’s supporters and make them question whether they were doing the right thing.

I didn’t expect it to happen, but a girl’s gotta have dreams.

Rhine’s forces slowly pushed us all together. There was no such thing as “surrounded” in the shifter world, but they had us consolidated in one part of the house. They probably thought they had us—grab me and annihilate everyone who came to protect me.

But whoever had been spying for my former uncle didn’t have enough insider information. If they knew everything, they never would have allowed Kris and I to get anywhere near Rhysa and Dray. They were across the room but more than close enough. I reached out to Rhysa. “We’ve never done this before, but want to try and do some damage?”

Rhysa grinned, closed her eyes, and connected with Dray. When she spoke in my mind their voices came together as one. “We’re ready.”

I glanced at Kris. Our bond was stronger than ever. He gave me a nod, knowing what we planned without the need for words. I reached out to the other couple and let our energies link. I felt Dray’s hyperawareness—his ability to almost predict which paths would be dangerous or successful. It was like his mind had a heads-up display with Rhine targets painted a different color than ours. I felt Rhysa’s gifts and her powerful grip on the Plane. Rhysa and I connected and began to use the unseen to knock out the targets Dray identified. When we couldn’t turn off their consciousness I used psychic energy to render them immobile.

Kris was so fast as he protected me. It was like watching a magician. He was there, then he was behind, then in front, then across the room and back again. He confused everyone who tried to come near me.

Realizing his mistake, Rhine called for reinforcements to take us out. Suddenly everyone was staring at Dray and Rhysa or Kris and me.

“Can I now?” Dray shouted across the room.

“Yes,” I told Kris.

“Do it!” Kris shouted back at his brother.

A roar ripped through the air as Dray shifted into his dragon form. A very different screech filled the air as his shoulders shuddered. Everyone but Rhysa rushed out of his way.

Then he opened his mouth and shot fire across the room. Those that couldn’t shift or slide were burned on the spot. The walls went up in flames, already licking at the ceiling. Another roar and he chased them down the hallway, knocking over everything and destroying the rest under his powerful legs.

But Rhine didn’t run with the rest. No, instead he and a small group attacked.

“Fucking suicidal asshole!” Kris swore, spun, and raised his sword.

Chaos followed Dray, destroying the hallways and rooms he entered. The house groaned and shuddered in response. Rhysa and I formed a shield to protect our group. Rhine charged me.

Kris intercepted once again, allowing me to continue working in safety with Rhysa.

“I don’t feel drained, do you?” Rhysa asked.

“No.”

“Strange, isn’t it? I feel…something.”

A problem for another day. “We need to send our people back. This house is dying.”

She nodded. “Rhine is all that matters in the end.”

Kris kicked Rhine backward into a wall that crumbled as soon as his body hit it. He began pulling away the rubble but Rhine was nowhere to be found. “I lost him!”

Dad came up beside me, swinging his axe. “Get our people out of here. The longer they stay the more danger they’re in. Kris and I will find Rhine.”

“Good luck.” I didn’t have time to debate whether it was the right thing to do—to separate me from my Shield—or not. I just had to trust that it would all work out in the end. “Go get the bastard.” The house was in shambles, Rhine’s supporters were either dead or dying, and Rhine was on the run from two males very intent on ending his life.