Magic and Alphas: A Paranormal Romance Collection, page 163
We all barely made it out of the way of the rocks.
“What the hell?” I demanded.
“Highness, there’s fighting down below. I don’t know what’s going on,” Melchior said, pressing a headset to his ear. “I can’t—”
“Let’s go!” I snapped and led the way back through the halls. “This better not be some stupid enclave infighting. I will end them all.”
“I don’t think it is,” Felicia said, also pressing her Bluetooth so she could hear better. “There are wounded of all clans and enclaves. There was an explosion.”
“In the stronghold?” I was appalled. No one ever dared to attack this mountain. “Who? Who is doing this?”
“I don’t know, your highness!” Felicia ran her hands through her hair, distressed by her inability to answer the questions.
I ordered, “Get everyone out of the public spaces. Get them all back to their rooms. If they are visiting, have them split among the apartments. Keep everyone out of the hallways! We have to get the security force through them, and I don’t want people getting hurt.”
My attention snapped to the Overlords, who were desperately trying to gain their sobriety back from the overabundance of blood at the ridiculous party they insisted was tradition.
First act as queen, that disgusting display of decadence was never happening again.
I could see they were going to win their sobriety, so I had that for me. As we headed for the deepest parts of the mountain, the very ground shook again. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like that the whole mountain was moving.
What kind of explosives did they have?
Felicia barked commands into her headset.
We all started running.
Two explosions?
Or was this a mistaken analysis of an earthquake?
We were on the area of the world the humans called The Ring of Fire, and we were subject to both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Was this stronghold about to be consumed by a volcano? We would have to evacuate immediately—everyone would get out, but our lives would be left encased in granite.
I stopped dead, and the half-sober Overlords behind us crashed into Nial.
I pointed at Melchior. “Get everyone out of the mountain. Treat this like an eruption. Out. I’d rather let them back in after everything is fine than lose a single life. Go.”
Melchior took off at vampire speed through the hall to implement the evacuation plans I knew existed. Felicia, Nial and I started down the hallway, this time at near vampire speed to where she had said the source of the problem had been.
The chamber, where only hours before thousands of vampires had been housed while I was crowned, lay in shambles. ‘Shambles’ was kind, I corrected myself. It was gone. The mountain had been brought down, crushing nearly three quarters of what had been open area before, and there was a hint of cold, thin air in the room.
“A breach,” Nial said.
A bullet whizzed by us, embedding in the rock nearby—and exploded.
Everyone ducked to a crouch.
The Overlords completely sobered in that moment. Someone had breached our stronghold and was now going to start firing at us, with blast rounds. And those rounds meant that whoever was trying to get in knew exactly what we were.
And how to kill us.
Another bullet and explosion.
“We have to find out where that is coming from. This isn’t a volcano.” Lord Pippin, who had been the least drunk and was the most sober, now crawled up to me. He looked at Felicia and Nial. “I don’t know if it’s smart to evacuate or not, but we’ll let it go for now.”
“They can get away much easier this way, if we’re being attacked,” Nial offered.
“Who is properly outfitted for a fire fight?” I looked at the others around me, and watched as exactly Felicia and Nial raised their hands. “You lazy ass Overlords. No more blood parties.”
I pulled out two of the four guns I had on me, hand one to Lord Pippin and one to Lord Otto.
Felicia pulled out one for Lord Xenon, and Nial lent two of his five to Cato and Lord Belshazzar.
Nial rumbled, “Remember that you only have those rounds and one spare clip. Don’t go walking around like you’re a fucking Terminator, shooting willy-nilly.”
“What’s a terminator?” Lord Otto asked.
Nial rolled his eyes. “Oh, for—”
“Nevermind!” I snapped the word off. “Just don’t fire at everything, since it seems you’ve forgotten to take care of your military training. Spear and cannons aren’t used anymore.” I glanced at Felicia. “Schedule them all for range time.”
She grinned. “Yes, your highness.”
“Nial, go right and stay low. Look for the breach. That’s where they had been shooting from.”
“I suggest we assume that they’re as conservative with ammo as we are,” he said. He pointed to Lord Otto, Lord Xenon and Lord Belshazzar to follow him. Hunkered down, they walked behind the rocks that had fallen out of what we were all assuming was the line of site for the shooter—or shooters.
“What are we doing?” Pippin asked, hefting the gun. “This is nice. I’m out of practice.”
“No shit,” Felicia grumbled. “We’re looking for the same thing they are—the person who shot at us and who blew up the side of a mountain.”
Cato looked at me. “You realize this was probably mistimed? That this was supposed to go off hours ago and crush the dais.”
“You think?” I leveled my gaze at him. “That would have taken out the five of you, me, and anyone close by, and left this place in tatters.”
“And the whole damn vampire population with no guidance.” Lord Pippin tapped his nose.
“So we are attacked—”
Another explosion went off and a hail of explosive rounds followed it in the direction of the others. I moved, running out of the way of the bits of falling debris and following the bullets back toward the origin. Lord Cato, Felicia and Lord Pippin were right behind me, and we were able to scramble out of what I thought was their field of vision.
More bullets and we moved again.
Closer to where we could see a touch of daylight streaming in.
A body moved ahead of us in the breach. I took aim and fired.
By the spray and smell of blood from the exploding round, I guessed I must’ve hit whoever was in there.
That was confirmed a moment later. “Bitch!”
I grinned in feral delight.
“So this was an attack,” Felicia said.
Cato snorted in agreement of the obvious.
There was a small hail of bullets aimed at where we were and they ricocheted off the rocks they were hitting, and exploding when they finally found a target. Carefully, slowly, I crawled up the broken walls of the chamber, staying low and remaining out of view.
“You know, as Queen, you really should have evacuated with everyone else,” Lord Pippin stated not so helpfully, crawling right along with me.
“As Overlord, so should you. But here we are, trying to sneak toward the gunfire and hoping we don’t get shot by exploding rounds.”
The gunshots were sounding much closer, and I suspected we were close to the source.
Nial’s voice cracked through the air. “Run! Get out of here!”
I hadn’t realized he was screaming at us, and I didn’t move.
Almost the last thought I ever made was, damn, his voice could really carry.
Nial’s speeding vampire form darted across our field of vision as he grabbed something out of the air just above us. He hurled it back toward the direction it had come from, and the stick of dynamite lodged into the far rocks…seconds left on the fuse.
Who the hell used dynamite with fuses anymore?
There wasn’t time for much more thought beyond that as Nial grabbed me, triggering Lord Pippin, Cato, and Felicia to kick into high speed and get away from the crack in the rock where the dynamite had lodged.
Speeding away from the disaster, I watched as it unfolded in almost slow motion.
The flash of detonation changed into the fire of rapid expansion. The compression wave it created pushed the rock away from other rocks, cracking them under sudden compression and impact. It blossomed outward like a red flower of death hurling the rocks in its way, with forces hard and strong enough to rip a man’s head from their neck.
What I saw in the next moments rocked me to the core.
Instead of Cato running with us toward the door, to escape the crush of the rock and burn of the fire, I watched as he plunged in headlong to the heat and ash. He found the attackers in the moving debris, and grabbed the flying bodies out of the air. All four of them, and in his death grip, he pulled their forms to the side, out of the way of the crushing rocks.
But he wasn’t saving them.
Two of them, he viciously ripped their heads from their shoulders and tossed them the ground. The third, he snapped their neck, ripping the skin and sinew away to let them bleed out. The last, he dug his fangs into and sucked the blood from their veins as it pumped wildly out of the body.
We turned the corner and there was no view of what was going on. Just the air pressure of the explosion, the chaos of the sound of crashing rocks. Smashing ourselves into the far wall as rocks, debris, and dust were vomited out of the opening to what used to be a massive amphitheater. I scrambled to my feet and tried to run for the small opening left to the once cavernous room.
“Why the fuck didn’t you move?” Nial grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“We didn’t know you were yelling at us,” Lord Pippin said. His eyes found my struggling form, as I tugged on my captured arm. He muttered, “Relax. We’re all alive. And they should all be dead now.”
Nial dusted off one of his sleeves with his free hand and shrugged.
“That attitude got us here,” I snapped, and I finally yanked my arm out of his grip. “There are five Overlords here who were basically drunk and useless because of a blasé attitude. Someone attacked our stronghold and you’re trying to keep me from going back in to make sure they’re all dead?”
Nial leaned back against wall and crossed his arms. “No, but you don’t need to run into the line of fire.”
“Stop. Now.” Lord Belshazzar growled at us. “Lord Cato is taking care of it.”
That exact man crawled out of the hole to the former room. He was covered from head to toe in blood and dust, and truly looked like a nightmare in vampire form. Dusting his hands together, he tipped his head at me.
“Kept the crown, eh, girly?”
I walked over and punched him. I was going to have to find a new way to express my anger at people, but not right now. “What the hell was that hero shit? You’re an Overlord!”
Cato’s brows rose on his gruesome face. “Gwynorre, despite your assumptions on my person, I can handle myself. And others.”
“Let’s all try to pretend we like each other for a short second.” Nial ran his fingers through his delectable hair, voicing what I really wanted to know. “Anyone want to explain why they think the vampire stronghold was attacked?”
Cato, through the blood, gore, and grime covering him, stared at the filth on his hand, and then looked up at Nial and I standing there. One side of his lips quirked up in an unamused grin, and stated, “You have no idea what’s coming…”
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About the Authors
SCARLETT DAWN
New York Times bestselling author and award-winner, Scarlett Dawn, is the author of the Forever Evermore new adult fantasy series, the Origin paranormal dystopian stories, the Mark new adult science fiction saga, and the Lion Security contemporary series.
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Katherine Rhodes
Armed with a pen name, Katherine Rhodes has gird her loins and set her mind to writing erotic romances which are kinky, dirty, and fun. As a lackadaisical laundry goddess, and an expert in the profundities of bad music and awful literature-thanks to her husband--Katherine strives to find balance in the universe and time to cook dinner. An East Coast dweller, currently located in the Philadelphia Tristate area, she is the proud servants of three cats and would take a vacation in Prague over a day at the beach any time…
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Michael’s Honor
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Darkwater
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Copyright 2017 © Katherine Rhodes
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