Chapter 86: A New Threat Emerges

Chapter 86: A New Threat Emerges
Scarlett

The wind that night had teeth.
It whipped through the pine trees with a warning, a frantic, shrieking cry, shaking the windows of the cabin I'd just started to make my own. My hand reflexively ran across my belly, feeling out the curve that was decidedly becoming wider—life under my skin, warm and insistent.
"Did you feel that too?" I breathed to the baby within me. My voice was a sigh, overpowered by the sighing of the storm.
It wasn't the wind.
Something else changed. Something… wrong.
For since the moment my child healed me—torn flesh sewing back inside out, blood mending as if under the unwavering sorcery of the gods—I'd sensed it: a ripple. Not only within me, but about me as well. The trees had been still. The shadows deeper. And there had been voices in the blackness once more—ones I hadn't heard since the day Kael departed my world.
Lucien had felt it, too.
He was leaning here against the cabin door, black-clad guard, silver gaze staring into the night outside the trees. Ten minutes, not a word more, meant he was thinking or extremely, extremely frightened. Neither choice cheered me up.
"There's something outside," he announced at last, harsh and low.
I edged nearer. "What is it?"
He turned to face me, and for once Lucien's haughty attitude was gone. "It's not the bounty hunters. Not the rogues either. This is… older. Smarter."
I shivered. "What do you mean 'older'?"
Lucien clenched his jaw. "Don't you recall the tales I spoke of—of the Old Blood, of the vampire houses that went into hiding following the last Great War?
I nodded. How could I forget? They were the boogeymen of vampire legend. Beasts that dined on gods, not men. Raw power that could not be bound in any house or covenant.
"They're not all killed," Lucien said. "And one of them has felt the child."
A knotted spasm of nausea hit me, but it was not pregnancy. It was terror. True, thudding terror.
"They desire… what?"
Use the baby?"
My voice snagged on the final word.
He didn't glance away. "No. They want to own it, shape it, and control it."
I slammed both palms down over my belly like I could protect the life within with nothing more than flesh and will. "Over my dead body."
Lucien's mouth twisted into a half-smile. "You might want to watch what you say. They're the kind of people who'll take it literally."
I gasped shakily, turning away. My mind reeled, already racing for solutions. Could Kael sense this? Did the bond still bind us closely enough so that he could feel the danger spinning nearer?
No. No, I couldn't have counted on him—not now. Not when he'd walked away again. Not when I needed him most.
The door groaned shut behind me.
"Don't," I growled, without looking back over my shoulder. "Don't say it."
Lucien's footsteps faltered. "Say what?"
"That I should have been with Kael. That all of this is because I fled. I know what you're thinking."
"I wasn't going to say that." There was a pause. "But I was thinking it."
I spun around, flames searing my chest. "Don't play dumb, Lucien. That child isn't a child. It's a war zone. Everyone's hunting it—Kael, the rogues, the Old Blood now. And what do I get? A filthy hut in the middle of nowhere, some pilfered wards, and a vampire who claims he dislikes Kael more than he likes me."
Lucien stepped forward, his expression stern. "I did not say I hated you."
"Wouldn't have mattered if you had." My throat constricted. "I don't need someone else to try to steal me."
The floor shook.
It was a slight movement—just a little to tip the candle on the table over—but we both felt it. Lucien whirled to the door, pulling out his sword from its hilt in a single quick, merciless move.
"Wait behind me," he bellowed.
But I was already sliding my hand toward the silver-bladed knife in the drawer. "You don't have all the street smarts, I see."
Outside, the wind stopped. Just. stopped. The woods beyond it lay silent, so silent it pressed on the bones.
And that's when I saw it.
A shape. Barely bigger than a shadow against the light of the moon, silent as it moved, eyes flashing not red but white. Too tall. Too polished. It seemed to have been sculpted out of ash and obsidian.
Lucien swore under his breath. "Bloodmother."
"What's that?"
He did not reply.
The thing stretched out one of its long, impossibly thin hands, and the wards that protected the cabin exploded with a scream—glass shattering inwards, symbols searing into the air.
"Scarlett, run!"
But I was unable to move.
My feet refused to budge, transfixed by something invisible—like the air had turned to metal. The creature drew closer, and even though its lips never moved, I could hear a voice inside my head. Ancient. Hungry.
"The child is not yours."
"No!" I shrieked, advancing, knife out. "Don't touch him!"
A jolt of unseen energy struck Lucien, slamming him into the wall. His head cracked into it with a foul thud, and I didn't even have a moment to see if he was alive.
The creature was on me.
And then the world went up in flames.
The bond.
It clicked home like lightning, humming all the way down every vein in my body. I knew this, I remembered it, Kael. Kael was near. He'd experienced it. He was on his way.
And the thing picked up on it too.
It faltered in its step, the whiteness of its eyes flickering, unsettled now, and trembling.
"I said," I snarled, raising my dagger, power coursing through my arms like liquid flame, "you don't touch him."
I struck.
The blade bit deep, and something hard under the skin of flesh took it. The monster howled, not with voice but in my head, and then it was gone—never was, instead. Smoke, ash, and nothing.
Lucien cursed on the ground, bleeding but alert.
I dropped down next to him. "Come on?"
"Define come on," he croaked.
I nearly laughed. Nearly.
But then I felt it.
A heart that wasn't mine. A flutter. Then another. Firm. Resolute.
The child. My child.
Still alive.
Still fighting.