Page 36 of Kiss the Dawn (Order of Helsing #4)

PADMA

I watch my friend die. Powerless. Impotent.

Watch as metal spikes pierce her body to jut out of her chest and belly. Watch as her blood seeps into the machine that she’s bound to and is funneled to the plinth that is powering the golem.

All I can fucking do is watch and scream and rage.

Holly shakes the bars, rocking our cage, and I scream for help. Where is he? Where is the fucking entity when I need him?

Merry cries so hard I can feel her pain low in my solar plexus, but my tears don’t come; there’s only rage.

“You bastard! You fucking bastard!” My words are buried beneath an unearthly rumble as the golem begins to shake .

“She’s here!” Jacqueline yells. “I can feel the dark power.”

“Yes!” Christian throws up his hands. “We have her. She’s trapped.”

The gems pulse and flicker, and the blue lines of power on the golem fade in and out. Micah, still attached to the plinth, begins to shake, his head whipping back and forth.

A melodious voice saturated with wrath fills the chamber. “You think to hold me in stone and spells and curse? You think to control me!” The golem shudders, and Micah screams—a high-pitched, unnatural sound before being catapulted away from the plinth and into the far wall.

He hits it with a crunch and slips to the ground, his head at an odd angle.

“NO!” Christian runs toward the plinth, but lightning strikes it from nowhere, and the whole structure splits in two. The pieces fall away with a crash, and the golem explodes.

We curl away from the bars, covering ourselves to shield from the stone fragments.

The ping against the bars, too large to make it through.

Silence falls. Thick and pregnant with expectation, and I turn back to the scene below. To the golden light that beams from within the shattered remains of the golem.

A statuesque woman emerges. Her flowing dark locks are threaded with silver, her eyes like the moon. She’s a butterfly exiting a chrysalis, and my heart is too large for my chest as I stare and stare, but she only has eyes for Orina. She glides across the ground toward her broken and bloody frame. Christian rushes forward, but she flicks her wrist, and he explodes in a mist of blood and guts.

“Ah…” she says, standing over Orina. “This I did not wish for you.” She reaches out to caress Orina’s cheek.

“Don’t touch her!” Merry cries, alerting the goddess to our presence.

She smiles, thin and cruel, and slowly raises her moon-bathed gaze to us. “You cared for her. Loved her even.” She cants her head. “You should join her, then.” She lifts her hand, ready to click her fingers, and I brace myself for death.

There’s a roll of thunder, and Loviator leaps away from Orina as a beam of white light lances down from the ceiling.

“NO!” she yells.

I catch sight of forms in the light. Winged beings.

“White wings,” Merry whispers. “Oh…Oh blessed be.”

The white wings attack Loviator, golden swords gleaming as they swipe and slash, forcing her back toward the light in the golem. Wounds open on her face and across her torso even though the swords don’t make contact .

“NO!” Loviator pushes her hands out, and the white wings are forced back into the light. “Not this time.” She spins, bringing her arm up in an arch, and shadows emerge to cloak her. The next moment she’s gone.

The white wings run for their shaft of light and propel themselves up into it, vanishing from sight.

All except one.

This one is different.

His wings aren’t pure white like the others, but speckled with gray, and I can’t help but feel I know him. But the light shining out of him is so bright I can’t make out any features.

He strides toward the thick beam of light through which the others have vanished but slows as he comes abreast of Orina’s broken body.

He stands, wings drooping, head bowed. The beam of light dims, his face is revealed, and shock punches me in the chest.

“Kaster?” Merry whimpers. “Oh…oh God.”

“Hey!” Holly shakes the bars. “Get us out.” Her voice is thick with emotion. “Get us out, dammit.”

He looks up at us then, his face a mask of despair, eyes dark pits of sorrow, and I don’t care how it’s possible for him to be who he is. I don’t care about the lies and the secrets. All I want to know is if he can bring her back.

“Please…” I swallow back a sob. “Can you help her? ”

He slowly reaches out to touch her cheek. His shoulders shake with grief, and the last of my hope dies.

The beam of light brightens, and his head whips up to stare at it as it pulses. He shakes his head, but the light goes brighter. Insistent. I can feel his conflict as he wavers between the light and Orina, but in the end, he tears himself away from her and launches himself into the beam. He throws out a hand toward us a moment before he’s swallowed by the light, and the padlock on the cage falls away.

The room goes dark.

Silent.

Dead.

We climb out of the cage, one by one, dropping to the ground with a jarring impact, and approach our fallen friend.

Merry takes her hand. “She’s so cold.”

Holly checks for a pulse. “Nothing.”

We know it. We saw it. But we need to do something, anything, even if it means going through the motions.

A loud crack makes my ears pop and Ezekiel hurtles into the room through the wall, which happens to be on the other side of a black magical barrier.

He steadies himself, nostrils flaring, probably at the scent of blood. His gaze finds us first, irritation drawing his brows together because we aren’t why he’s here. I nudge Merry and nod at Holly .

Together we step aside, and his gaze drops to the chair. To Orina impaled by metal spikes.

He staggers back as if he’s been punched, then rushes forward, a silent wail falling from his lips as he snaps away the binds that hold her. He pauses then, hands hovering over her form as if he can’t decide where to start, how to extricate her.

Holly makes to help, but I grab her wrist and shake my head in warning.

This is the vampire king in grief, and it’s unwise to get in his path.

He makes a strangled sound, part sob, part growl, and slowly lifts her free of the spikes.

I wince at the sound, the awful fleshy sound, and the fresh spurt of blood.

He sinks to the ground with her cradled in his arms and rocks her back and forth, his hand on her cheek, his forehead resting on hers.

“Ezekiel…” I crouch so I’m eye level with him. “Loviator is free, and I think…I think the white wings have gone after her.”

If he hears me, he gives no indication. Every iota of focus is on Orina.

But he needs to know. He needs to understand the dire situation. Orina would want us to stop the bitch goddess.

“Ezekiel.”

He holds up a finger and leans in close to Orina, his eyes narrowed, and then he smiles, a slow-burn smile accompanied by a shuddering breath. “Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Merry asks.

“Her heart. Can you hear it? Listen…”

Silence stretches for a long minute. “There,” he says. “She’s alive. She’s fucking alive.”

Holly and I exchange glances, but Merry approaches Ezekiel and lightly touches his hand. “Ezekiel. How can she be alive? The spikes?—”

He pulls aside the torn material of her shirt to show us the unmarred skin beneath.

No wound. How is that possible?

“It saved her,” he says.

“What do you?—”

Orina’s eyes snap open, golden irises rimmed in crimson, and when she opens her mouth to take a deep breath, I see them.

I see her fangs.

Orina’s story concludes in Claim the Twilight