Page 17 of Between Bloode and Death (Between the Shadows #5)

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Tiger Mountain, located near Cougar Mountain in the Issaquah Alps, took them over an hour to reach the right trailhead. A good thing Val had decided to move their hiding place. The last time she’d been up here, she’d battled witches.

“Onvyr, you lead,” Khent said as he grabbed her from the car.

“H-hey,” she sputtered as he lifted her into his arms and started running at a speed she’d never be able to match.

They flew up the trail toward the summit, which had a panoramic view of the city. Val had once hiked this same path and remembered it being over six miles round-trip.

Not a fun way to spend a Saturday, in her opinion.

Riding in Khent’s arms, while the thick forest flew by like a blur, was something else.

“When we arrive, I expect you to hold your own,” Khent stated, not at all out of breath.

Did vampires even breathe?

“Human?” he prodded. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes, yes. I’ll take the vampires apart so you don’t dirty your precious little hands.”

He smirked, an expression that seemed to be his default when not glowering with ill intent at the world around him.

“I’ll circle around and attack from the other side,” Onvyr announced as he peeled away.

Khent moved even faster, and it took her a moment to realize they’d stopped before he set her down.

She wavered on her feet, dizzy.

“Easy, female.”

“My name is Val.” She tried to sound mean, but her breathlessness didn’t help.

He nodded. “Of course, Valentine.”

“I said Val. I— Oh, forget it. Now where are they?” She didn’t see or hear anything.

In fact, the woods seemed strangely still.

They moved up the slope, where the trees thinned. And then she saw the first body.

Minus its head.

She swallowed, familiar with death but not that fond of the gore that sometimes went with it.

“Stay close,” Khent ordered.

She swallowed the impulse to tell him he couldn’t order her around, especially because she had the creeping sensation they were being watched.

Past a gaggle of trees, they found a cluster of death on the summit. What looked like a group of at least two dozen hikers in Magic Rocks blue tee-shirts soaked with blood lay strewn like broken dolls over a grassy clearing. The blood looked black under the intense moonlight overhead.

“A waste.” Khent shook his head.

The death energy felt weak, and Val estimated that the group had been killed some time ago. By hours at least. She could take the energy but had no desire to. Not just because the dead were human, but because it felt wrong.

This loss of life had been meaningless, a fight between predators and hapless prey.

Something she would never be again.

“I sense them coming,” Khent murmured.

She nodded, the push of fresh, powerful death creeping closer.

“A lot of undead coming,” she warned.

He arched a brow. “Your point?”

She huffed. “Never mind.”

The charged bolt would have hit Khent had he not sidestepped at the last second. Val immediately went on the defensive and pulled two corpses upright to shield her. What she should have done as soon as they’d arrived.

“Sloppy, but acceptable, I suppose.” Khent critiqued her as if her teacher.

“Up yours, fanger.”

He grinned, and the expression turned him from simply stern to undeniably sexy.

She hated that she noticed and turned her attention to the group of undead rising from the ground and moving closer. The group looked to be her age or older, and many of them looked to be mages, holding fists of fire, electricity, and water as they surveyed the summit.

They narrowed in on her and Khent and positioned themselves to surround them.

The sounds of screams and grunts came from the woods behind her. Likely where Onvyr had gone. Unless someone else battled the dead on the mountain.

Quite a collection of undead, she had to admit. The blue tee-shirts indicated they belonged to the same group. A reunion, maybe? A class gathering? She couldn’t imagine what they all had in common besides being magir.

She studied them, noticing more than mages. She spotted a few lycan, several druids, and what looked to be at least three or four witches.

Gods, but she really could do with less witches in her life.

“Witches.” Khent sighed.

Ha. Great minds think alike. She refused to say that out loud, lest he take the “great” comment to heart. “Well?” She said when Khent just stood there. “Get going.”

He looked back at her.

She and her dead humans stared back at him.

He grimaced. “I supposed you’d like me to thin the group?”

“You want me to?”

“I’d like to see what you can do. But perhaps this is too great a challenge.” He shrugged. “You are just a human.”

Even knowing he deliberately baited her, she couldn’t stand being thought inferior by Khent of the Night Bloode. The horse’s ass.

“Fine. Stand back, weak one.”

His eyes narrowed.

She’d pay for that later, but she didn’t care, caught up in the swirling miasma of energy around her. Something had powered up these creatures. And something else, of a fae—and dead— nature lingered up in the trees.

Now those she hadn’t sensed in years.

Val stared up at the nearby pines in awe. “Dryads?” She could use a few nature fae in her arsenal.

Without waiting for Khent, she pulled on the power trying to control the fae creatures who lived in trees.

In response, roots burst from the ground of the nearby pines and plunged through her dead bodyguards.

Khent sidestepped another dagger-like root aimed at his neck. Val didn’t bother moving, continuing to steal the bodies of the dead closest to her, swirling her magic to make the slowly shifting mountain of flesh and bone a shield.

She found it beautiful in a grotesque kind of way, that there could be power in the beaten and broken. And she used it while she struggled to wrestle control from the one powering the dryads.

She broke one free and immediately tapped into its—no, her—connection with nature. Dryads were only ever female.

Val gasped as the wealth of knowledge from the tree at her back surged into her in welcome. Then she used the hardy wood to her advantage, letting the lure of the earth tempt the dryads to succumb to her control.

One by one, Val stole the dryads while Khent watched the few mages with any power try to zap her, drown her, or set her on fire. While he did nothing.

“Not bad.” Khent nodded.

Onvyr appeared on the far side of the clearing and stabbed with a short black sword, cutting into a dead druid, which did nothing but annoy the dead guy.

“You need to cut off the head,” Val yelled and dodged a deluge of water that got her wet but didn’t drown her. “Khent, what are you waiting for?”

She tired, using so much energy to keep everyone moving. And all that on top of still holding so many dead back at the Beast Brigade HQ. Unlike the vampire and elf, she was a human with human frailties. Although being a necromancer gave her power, it wasn’t unlimited.

A lightning mage struck a little too closely at Khent, lighting a fire under his sexy butt to stop playing, she hoped.

“The heads, Onvyr. Stop fucking around,” Khent growled.

Then he moved.

Val took a moment to catch her breath, her back against the tree that would let her know if anyone approached, and watched Khent and Onvyr tear through anything that so much as twitched.

Val kept her three dryads close by, not wanting to lose them. But she dropped the many dead magir she’d used to defend herself from magical attacks.

She found it interesting to watch the vampire and the elf, the way they both threaded through danger. Onvyr’s strikes were strong and brutal. Khent used his speed and precision to decapitate and slaughter the enemy. He didn’t waste an attack, using only as much force as required to end the threat.

Like poetry in motion, she thought, grimacing at the trite but true comparison.

Mere minutes passed, and no one stood but the three of them—Val, Khent, and Onvyr.

“That was way too fast,” Onvyr complained as he whipped his blade away, flinging blood to the ground.

“And too easy,” Khent murmured, shifting on the balls of his feet as he turned all around. “Where are you, puppeteer? We’re waiting.”

Wait. What? Val had thought the battle challenging enough. The enemy had impressed her, despite the speed of the fight. Watching Onvyr and Khent move had been a thing of beauty.

Awash in the power of the fading souls on the mountaintop, she wasn’t prepared for the form that shimmered to life in the center of the clearing, stepping delicately between bodies.

The robed and hooded creature stood a few heads taller than Khent, slender, a clawed hand clutching a tall staff that had an ungodly glow at its end. A calling of sorts that pulsed like a heartbeat.

Val felt that thumping deep inside, but it couldn’t reach her the way it wanted to, the way it tried to steal back her dryads.

Khent smiled, and the threat in that expression had her flattening back against the tree, its limbs cracking down to wrap around her, dragging her high out of danger, protected by her dryads as well.

“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Come to play, necromancer?”

It took her a moment to realize Khent didn’t mean her. But she hadn’t felt another of her kind nearby and still didn’t. The creature holding that staff wasn’t human.

What the hell was it?

It spoke. “Khent of the Night Bloode. Finally, we meet in person.” The creature pulled back its hood. A skeletal face, covered in taut black skin that cracked when it smiled, exposing the fire of life bleeding under those fractured lips.

As if a hint of lava threatened to pour from its mouth.

It had no ears or nose, just a mouth full of sharp teeth and four eyes, one pair on top of the other, no hint of anything but white sclera.

Val didn’t know what she was looking at, not at first. And then Khent spoiled it.

He laughed. “Demon, am I happy to see you. Now the true fun begins.”