Page 33 of Gemini Hunted (Dark Witch Academy #5)

Vasili

I’m gleefully sinking one of my knives hilt-deep in the beating heart of another loathsome hyena—one of several I’ve caught and butchered trying to sneak past me into the tunnel—when Zara’s dragon brings the roof down.

Glaring straight into the hateful snarl of my father’s minion (and devoutly wishing it were my actual father), I twist my knife with vicious spite. A chuff of hot breath, stinking of blood and carrion, spills from the creature’s lungs directly into my face in the most disgusting way.

“Do you mind terribly?” I inquire coldly, over the rend and tear of splitting rock. “That’s repulsive. Next time, try a breath mint, do. ”

Apparently my little verbal jab is the coup de grace . The wicked glow of life in the scavenger’s eyes goes dark.

Truly, it’s about time.

“Oh, crap .” Neo’s voice, shrill with alarm, spills from the tunnel behind me. “V! Watch out!”

A long shadow falls across my eyes. Fueled by blind instinct, I wrench my knife from the shifter’s carcass and leap aside. In fact, I leap barely in time to avoid being crushed to a bloody smear—like my four-legged prey—under a falling pillar.

The stone column hammers into the floor behind me with a deafening boom! that makes my ears ring.

The tingling rush of my Mogadon magic triggers my levitation. Seeking safety in the air, I let the violet soles of my favorite combat boots lift from the ground.

Just before a falling rock strikes my brow a glancing blow.

My focus splinters into rubble. My witchcraft sputters out. An eyeblink later, my stunned body collides with the floor. Knees throbbing, palms stinging, I stare blankly at the chunk of concrete lying before me that nearly split my skull.

Something warm spills down my brow and drips in my eyes. My dazed hand drifts to my throbbing forehead, then lowers, dark with blood.

“Ouch,” I murmur, faint and breathy, trying to focus my doubled vision on the blur of my bloodstained fingers. “Let’s hope… I don’t scar.”

In the distance, Zara’s dragon is roaring—a brassy bellow of challenge that lights up the sky with my queen’s electric rage. Oddly, I can barely hear. My ears are ringing like a school bell, a shrill buzz that muffles her deafening roar and the rumble of falling concrete.

Dimly, thoughts forming slowly, like a swimmer backstroking through a soup of mud, it occurs to me the roof hasn’t entirely fallen.

Yet.

But that open slit of skylight now yawns much wider than is structurally sound. Misty gray daylight, weeping with rain, seeps through the split. After the Stygian darkness of McSnicker’s wretched spell, this sudden blaze of light hurts my eyes.

Swaying on hands and knees, I lower my throbbing head and breathe. In. Out.

Concussion .

The word floats to the surface of my dazed mind. Blood drips from my eyebrows, between my splayed palms, to splatter the floor with crimson.

Somewhere in the distance, now strangely muffled, Neo is shouting my name. “V, are you there? Vasili! ”

I may be damaged, but I’m still his alpha. I’ll always come when he calls. So I swing my head toward the dear boy’s voice.

Even that modest arc of movement makes my gut heave.

The bleary sight of that fallen pillar lying across the tunnel—blocking the entrance, sealing Neo and the others inside, shutting the rest of us out—rips from my chest a groan of dismay.

Overhead, lightning forks and dances through the skies.

No doubt summoned by my vengeful queen, who’s raging across the cavern.

I’m a bit nearsighted (a flaw in my scrumptious perfection I’ll never admit, and don’t even mention wearing glasses).

Still, my head injury makes the condition worse.

I struggle to focus my blurred vision, swing my head toward the far entrance, and resolve my splintered eyesight from three Zaras into one.

My little queen’s teal dragon alights near a writhing tangle of four-legged shifters, fighting and snarling at the entrance.

A vicious swipe of her taloned foreleg carves a path through the slaughter. Her long neck snakes in, jaws parting to grip a writhing hyena. She slams the creature into the wall with killing force, hurls the carcass aside, then trumpets in the deep bronze rumble of the lightning voice.

Her outraged roar cleaves my throbbing skull like a battle axe.

Yelping with alarm, hyenas scatter before her rage.

Scales gleaming in the dim light, Zara parts her jaws around a fork of lightning that electrifies her next four-legged target to a blackened husk.

She’s a lightning dragon, a very rare one, and feared for an excellent reason.

Snarling a warning at the rest, she plants her magnificent bulk protectively over the still form of a fallen wolf, his familiar chestnut pelt dark with blood.

“Lucius,” I say thickly. “Dear God.”

A desperate fear for my love (for Lucius is that, I love him, I’m ridiculously in love with him) squeezes my chest and ribs like a bear hug. My gut twists with dread. Surely, surely, my little darling will protect him.

My Zara.

My faith in her is absolute.

After all, I wouldn’t bend the knee to just anyone. I’ll follow no other queen, love no other queen, obey no other queen but this one.

The Gemini queen.

Typically, I find it rather quaint that our luscious sovereign believes it’s her role to protect us . It should rightly be I, as her alpha and Lucius’, who protects them both.

But I can’t.

I can’t.

Not just now. I can’t even protect myself.

Thunder crashes and savages my head. With every thud of my pulse, a red stab of pain digs cruelly behind my eyes.

Gradually, while Zara guards Lucius’ fallen wolf and hurls gigawatts of lightning at any hyena who dares venture into sight, it occurs to me I’m in considerable trouble.

Debris from the compromised roof rains down around me like hail.

Tiny nuggets of rock pepper my skin. I’m already bruised.

Contused. Concussed. Confused. Now dust chokes my lungs and dries my mouth to cotton.

Very clearly, I must find shelter.

Somewhere.

The problem is, with the tunnel and the door both blocked, I’m not at all certain where to go. Levitation is, rather obviously, out of the question. The mere thought of trying to shift to my serpentine dragon form and fly out makes me so nauseous I nearly hurl.

Not to mention the fact that yet another dragon popping into existence in this battered cavern truly will bring the roof down.

Over the muffled chorus of Neo’s insistent and increasingly desperate cries, shouting my name with an urgency that makes my chest ache, the grinding crack of splitting rock drags my aching eyes up.

Another of those pillars—one of several smashed by Zara’s dragon—is swaying on its pedestal.

“Move your derrière , darling,” I murmur. Not to the pillar, but to myself.

Like a drunk, I too sway, braced on hands and knees, witless as a cow. I simply can’t seem to gather my legs under me. Instead, as that compromised pillar trembles, teeters, then tips heavily to one side, I observe its majestic descent toward my unprotected body with an odd detachment.

My, my. That’s going to make such a mess—

A hand closes around the back of my collar, grips a fistful of my uniform shirt and blazer, and drags me backward so forcefully I’m lifted to my feet.

Stumbling in my glittery combat boots like I’m strapped into platform heels, I find myself hurled with considerable force into the tiny cavity created by two fallen pillars, one slanted over the other.

Head spinning so hard my eyes cross, I fling out my arms blindly. I collide against the rear wall behind the pillars with bruising force. Thanks to my outflung arms, I barely manage to avoid breaking my precious nose.

Behind me, my unseen rescuer crowds into the modest cavity. Behind him, the deafening boom of the falling pillar makes my skull ring like a bell.

The crossed pillars overhead shudder violently. A cloud of dust fills the close air. Unless I’m mistaken (which rarely occurs), that final pillar has just sealed me into this alcove.

Together, in uncomfortably close quarters, with my unknown rescuer.

“For your information… there was no need to toss me… like a dwarf.” I lean my aching head into my crossed arms and pray I don’t humiliate myself by vomiting all over my favorite boots. “You needn’t have been… quite so rough.”

“I’m sure I beg to differ, Vasili Nikolayevich Romanov,” a cool silver voice says wryly. “You were about to be crushed under that baluster like a beetle under a boot.”

Truly, this day just keeps getting better.

Hearing Zephyr’s silky tenor stroke my senses, I barely swallow a groan. Of all men living, having this infernal creature witness my moment of weakness is really too dreadful to endure.

He may be my sworn enemy—my rival for Zara’s love and Ronin’s—but I never underestimate him.

Not for a moment. To stand toe to toe with a creature of myth and legend like the Dark Fae King demands every atom of wit and strength and cunning I possess.

At present, I’m not feeling at all my usual glorious self.

Not to mention, I’m positively disheveled.

Now don’t laugh, darling. I’m terribly vain. I truly am. Even at such a moment.

Vanity is one of my many sins.

Faced with my miserable silence, the infernal Fae crowds closer. “Cat got your tongue?”

“For fuck’s sake. If you have an ounce of decency… don’t talk to me about cats… at a time like this,” I mutter, speaking thickly with my cottony tongue.

Beyond our enclosure, through God knows how many feet of solid rock, the distant bellow of Zara’s dragon makes the walls tremble.

I fully intend to remain upright, the better to deal with this entire situation. But my legs have other ideas. My knees buckle without my consent.

Zephyr mutters an Unseelie oath.

I’m sinking to the floor like a swooning Victorian, laced too tightly into her corset, when his hard hands catch me under the arms and lower me gently to the ground.

I’ll admit, for a bit my world goes dark.