Page 30 of The Curse of Eternity (Descendants of Helsing #1)

Rise and Retreat

Drake’s footfalls across the frozen-solid ground were barely audible over the achingly loud noise of my breathing.

So I held my breath, my gaze scanning the woods around us.

We were already moving faster than I could easily run, but I had to be weighing him down, holding him back.

Still, I clutched tight to him while he avoided piles of soggy fallen leaves and leaped over tree trunks knocked down by weather or decay.

Not needing to breathe, Drake moved quiet as a mouse—which made the growls growing closer sound that much louder.

Through the dense pines and sparse oak trees, shapes moved almost as fast as a vampire.

Except the glimpses I caught of their furred bodies were anything but human.

Spittle gleamed along a jowl, reflecting the moonlight above, but then the long-snouted being faded to nothing when Drake swiftly changed course.

Pulse hammering, I tried to be our eyes and ears while Drake focused on our escape through the woods.

Apparently, I’d failed at that, too. His head whipped toward our left, braking his steps so suddenly that the momentum made my insides feel like they tried to keep going while he held me close to his blood-stained clothes.

My eyes widened to take in the shape that launched itself across our path, right where we’d have walked straight into its assault.

Too-human eyes reflected the moonlight above, like a nocturnal animal, as the lycanthrope clawed its way to a halt several feet to our right.

An oily sheen covered its straggly coat, the texture somewhere between human hair and animal fur.

Even the creature’s nails seemed wrong, thin and broken but elongated.

Long hind legs let the lycan start toward us with a powerful leap.

Before I could think to scream, Drake stepped aside.

His fingers pressed into my ribs and outer thigh while I clutched his neck and hoped the lycan wouldn’t catch the skirt of my awful dress.

It missed us by inches, but our pause in the small clearing had allowed the others to catch up. Just how many of these things were being kept inside that manor? When Drake tried to turn, my gaze shot over his shoulder, and I screamed, “Look out!”

Another one flanked us, and the beast’s jaws opened wide as it leaped off the trunk of a fallen tree—aiming for Drake’s face.

“Apologies,” Drake murmured, so quiet I didn’t have a chance to wonder who he was talking to before I free-fell.

My tailbone hit the frozen earth, sending a shock outward through every limb.

I inhaled a gasp on impact, scrambling to get my numb-feeling legs working despite the cold cramping every muscle.

The stupid velvet skirt bunched across my knees when I rolled onto all-fours.

Luck was on my side since I barely dodged another werewolf pouncing for me.

Behind me, the sounds of a brawl was distinctive between the canine yowls and dull thuds of fists meeting fur-clad flesh.

Except I didn’t dare look, my focus captured by the horrifying thing two feet in front of me.

Adrenaline surged, overriding every discomfort.

Even my breathing seemed like background noise.

Too fast, the lycan sprang at me. Its eyes glowed, despair and pain obvious in its widening pupils, but its open maw overshadowed whatever humanity remained behind the imperative to tear into my flesh. On instinct, I leaned away.

Raising my arms in a cross, I pulled my legs up and out from under me as my back hit the ground. The lycan hadn’t expected that, and I kicked out to hit the beast directly in the chest. Pain and terror helped my muscles to work double-time, launching the lycan several feet away.

A wet slap echoed through the narrow clearing, just like when we were in the parking lot across the street from the Two Fools Tavern.

I didn’t have to look to know a bloodbath drenched the cold earth not far away.

Struggling to stay in the moment, I tried to stand but my muscles spasmed when I crouched.

Shit —the lycan had regained its footing.

It felt like a ton of bricks weighed down on me when I tried to stand, only to stumble and fall onto my side.

Damn it, move ! Hairs rose along the nape of my neck, and I sensed the shift in air behind me while gurgles slowly cut off to nothing.

Then Drake was in front of me, his actions a blur as he intercepted the lycan heading for me.

This time, I didn’t have the luxury of my back being turned.

Drake caught one of the beast’s elongated paws in a fist, his fingers clenching hard enough to break through the lycan’s bones.

Blood spurted from the beast’s demolished front paw, but it didn’t make a sound.

Instead, its mouth opened wide to reveal pointed sharp incisors.

Drake captured the lycan’s snout with his other hand, shoving the snapping jaws aside.

My breath caught when my vampire didn’t hesitate to lunge for the lycan’s exposed jugular.

The beast howled as Drake bit deep enough to tear through more than just a few layers of skin.

When he pulled away, dropping the body, a chunk was missing from the werewolf’s throat.

I couldn’t do anything but stare in stunned silence while blood rushed from the lycan’s torn open flesh, pumping out its life.

Then it went still, the strangely human eyes glassed over, and I looked up as Drake spat out a hunk of tissue.

He seemed to hesitate before turning toward me.

Fresh blood dripped from the corners of his mouth, covering the entire lower half of his face, down to his neck where his button-up shirt darkened—drenched.

With the back of his hand, he smeared the cascading blood across his chin.

Something about it triggered the truth. Never before had I really thought of him as being undead.

Not since I’d first encountered him at the abandoned warehouse, when my conditioning had overshadowed reason.

Now, with his face coated in another’s blood and his posture unrepentant, I trembled.

He took a step closer, and I reached behind me, my palms scraping the sharp rocks protruding from the packed earth while my heart raced.

Clearly sensing my knee-jerk reaction to flee, Drake halted mid-stride.

Raven-dark eyes bore into mine, and the ferocity I’d seen in him a moment ago was nowhere to be found—replaced by an emotion I could only guess at.

Disappointment, by the pursed set of his mouth, but it didn’t seem to be directed at me.

“Are you uninjured?” His voice hadn’t changed, still way too soothing and making me kick myself by how it calmed my rapid breathing but sped up my heart into a fury.

“Y-Yeah.” I finally exhaled a breath that felt like it’d been lodged in my lungs since before we left Albuquerque.

His pale hand flashed out, and I startled, but he’d only been offering it to me.

Drake’s stoic features hid the whirling thoughts behind his dark eyes.

Hesitantly, I grasped his cold hand a split second before he pulled me upright.

The blood rushed down my limbs, making me sway, but I steadied myself by gritting my teeth.

Drake’s hand hadn’t left mine, and he was already bending to lift me again when I said, “I can walk.” It was a statement, not as sharp or prickly as my usual tone—and I blamed the blood loss for my weakened will.

Drake frowned like he was about to argue, but his hand only squeezed mine before pulling me along in his wake.

“That is fortunate, because you will require some fortitude to cross.”

“Cross where?” I asked, staggering but catching myself before he had to.

I refused to glance toward the dead littering the clearing while we walked away.

A pang resonated through me at the memory of despair within the lycan’s eyes.

It must have known it would die, and maybe that’s why it fought so hard. They —they were people, not things.

Not like the weapon of war they were forced to be.

With Drake’s hand holding mine, the pressure gentle enough that I barely felt the rough surface of his palm, it was hard to compartmentalize the version of him that I knew with the unfeeling monster I’d just witnessed ripping apart the lycans.

Maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment. I had no idea what he felt when he tore apart flesh and bones to save my life, again .

Was it so different from what my family and I trained ourselves to do to survive and rescue others?

Just because we decapitated and dismembered with a machete to make the process cleaner didn’t make Drake using his bare hands any different when the results were the same.

Even knowing that the lycans were people, I would have struck them down just as fast if they’d gone after one of my own…

“The Hudson,” Drake replied, and my focus snapped back to the present situation.

“The river?” I balked, and then registered the thrum of rushing water not far off. That explained why we weren’t running anymore.

“We have to become submerged to prevent them from following us by scent. The lycanthropes may be of little consequence, but the other immortals will chase us as nobles did foxes. Once they have all fed to regain their senses. Can you swim?”

“I know how to, but will I make it? I’m so tired…

” The forest became sparser, and through the trees ahead, the wide expanse of sky almost reminded me of home.

Except the colors of dawn seemed wrong, more of a bruised-purple that hovered over the hills, visible on the other side of the dark emptiness which must have been the river.

Holy shit , how wide was it? The opposing shoreline was invisible beneath the inky black heavens, with only the tallest trees being discernible under the glow of impending day, each treetop as tiny as a toothpick.