Page 84 of White Raven (Nevermore Duet #2)

“Rhaena…stop.” Foley slapped cash down on the table, and nodded to Foster, who promptly stood and started following him out. “We’re on the way.”

“We?”

“Foster’s with me.”

“Hurry, Malcolm…I’m not sure how this is gonna go.”

“Is it Sykes?” Foster asked from beside him. Rhaena must have overheard.

“No. Sykes is on her way out west. John Allan ordered a hit on her family. On her, and on Leigh Erickson…just to hurt her. I told her to go. But Brandon counted six vampires, and—” There was a loud bang, and muffled shouting. Foley stopped dead as he opened his car door.

“Rhaena!” he called, but all he could hear was loud commotion. One gunshot. Two. “Dammit!”

“ Go, go, go! Fucking step on it, old man!” Foster cried from the passenger seat.

His heart thundered, and the wolf inside was howling to be set free. He sweat profusely, and the anxious knot in his stomach ached. He blared the siren, and flashed the lights in his unmarked car, and tore the asphalt the entire way to Rhaena’s building.

There were way more than six. Brent tried to control his breathing and concentrate on who was who in all the chaos. Wren pulled Rhaena’s couch away from the wall, and shoved Leigh behind it.

“If you see it, fucking shoot it!” She screamed, tossing a blanket over Leigh’s tuft of pink hair. Some finely-dressed, undead asshole went for Wren. His dark hair was close-cut on the sides…reminded him a bit of Athan—if Athan was an oiled, lowlife thug without tattoos and a leather jacket.

“Not today, fucker!” Brent ground out, leaping at his back, and plunging a large kitchen knife through the back of his neck, just as the guy had exposed his fangs to tear into her.

The way the blade slipped, and slightly resisted through muscle, and scraping past bone, made Brent want to gag.

He tried to remind himself that this wasn’t a human being.

“Bastard!” Wren agreed, digging her own knife into his chest, and twisting it twice.

“Wren!” Rhaena called…only it barely sounded like her. When Brent looked over, Rhaena’s skin was a deep brown blanket of short fur. Her face seemed almost the same, but—wild. Her mouth dripped with blood, and the neck of the vampire she’d tossed to the floor had been ripped wide open.

Holy fuck…

“The heart, Wren!” Rhaena screamed. “Tear his fucking heart out!”

Wren only hesitated for a split-second, ramming her bare fist through the hole she’d made in his chest, and ripping an eerily dark-colored heart back. “Aaaggghh! Fucking gross! ” she cried, flapping her hand in disgust when she dropped it to the carpet.

Gunshots rang out behind him, and Brent startled, flinching, and grabbing his head. It was such a bad fucking time to harp on bad memories. It cost him. He bumped into a body—a body that was anything but warm—and jerked himself around to meet a set of elongated fangs. It was a woman…but it wasn’t .

“Hi there, handsome,” she smiled, those fangs gleaming. Her eyes shifted over his shoulder before they went wide, and cooled, dark blood sprayed his face. Wren had slashed her throat from behind him. The woman grasped at her bleeding neck, unable to get her bearings.

“ Bye there, bitch!” Wren snapped. He got ahold of himself and punched into the woman’s chest—trying not to think of her as a woman—and snatching the heart out.

She dropped like a stone. Wren’s body jerked backward, and her startled scream was cut short in a gurgle from the angle of her head as another vamp yanked her backwards by the hair.

He hissed as his mouth went wide, fangs lengthening, and turned Wren’s head to bite into her jugular.

It was like watching it all unfold in slow motion. Brent’s body froze.

Another gunshot rang out, and he blinked, opening his eyes to see brain matter explode from the man’s head, Wren’s body falling with him as they both crashed to the ground. Brandon was there a second later, taking that heart for himself.

“Don’t let ‘em touch you with those fucking teeth!” Brandon yelled, tossing the heart across the living room, and aiming left, as he fired two more shots, and went for another falling vampire.

Brent dropped to his knees, helping Wren up, and pulling her around the side of the couch.

Leigh screamed, pointing Wren’s gun at them before realizing they weren’t the enemy.

“Stay with her, Wren!” Brent pleaded. Wren shook with fear and adrenaline and grabbed his hand.

“No! You already tried to die for me once, Brent! I’m not letting you do it again!”

He palmed her blood-spattered face, smearing spots of it over her cheek. “Yes, you will. We’re not fucking dying today.”

“Fuck you, Stratford,” Wren bit, shoving him back, and kissing him hard. “I said I’m going with you. You’re not gonna make me fall for your bitch-boy shit, and then think you’re doing this without me. Move!”

She didn’t give him much choice as she plunked his back against the wall and left Leigh shaking with the gun in her hands.

He could only think of the term ‘battle-cry’ as that spunky redhead screamed at the top of her lungs and raced into the fray, knives out, and swinging.

Brent glanced at Leigh. “Point and shoot, Leigh!”

Then Brent pulled the butcher knife from the neck of the limp body next to the couch and went after his girl.

There was so much blood. So much, and yet…

Rhaena’s heightened senses, especially in this form, didn’t make out any blood that was human.

What the hell was Ryan Sykes capable of, for Poe to send this many vampires after her?

It was like they kept coming in waves. An army sent to take on a single hybrid.

It only pushed her to deliver more, ravenous for whatever potential she had now, that she didn’t before.

Her razor-sharp claws ripped through flesh and bone.

One right after the other, and she made sure to sink her teeth into them for good measure.

So far, none of them had gotten back up.

Her stomach turned at the thought of how long it must have been by now, and how Brandon, and the others would be tiring soon from lack of experience.

She didn’t have any experience to account for either, but…

she wasn’t human. Someone was going to lose their life if these fuckers didn’t stop getting into this apartment.

She looked through the breakfast nook to see Wren viciously holding her own, Brent fighting like hell alongside her.

They were both covered in dark blood. She swore she even saw Wren swing a toaster at one of them, while Brent nearly sawed a head off right after.

Where was Leigh?

Surely, they hadn’t gotten to Leigh, if the steady flow of fresh vampires was any indication.

This was fucking madness. Brandon reloaded his weapon, and Rhaena covered him, shooting three rounds into an ambitious shit head that was trying to catch him off guard.

She stabbed her claws into his chest, raising him with one arm, and tearing into his throat with her teeth before tossing him aside.

“Thanks babe,” Brandon huffed, utterly exhausted.

One second, they’d locked eyes, the next, Brandon was emptying his gun into another vamp.

Rhaena looked around with her sharp sight and focused her hearing to single Leigh out.

She heard panicked whimpering near the hallway to her bedroom and darted towards the sound.

Leigh was cowering behind the couch, the barrel of Wren’s gun sticking out from the edge of the blanket she was covered in.

“Leigh!” Rhaena called. Pink hair shuffled from beneath the blanket, and Leigh looked up at her. She couldn’t blame the girl for dropping her mouth open at her appearance. “I know it sucks but come to me! I’m locking you in my closet!”

Leigh’s head shook back and forth. The poor girl was terrified. “I—I can’t! What if they—”

“Rhaena!”

It was Brandon’s voice she heard, but the roar that accompanied it…

Rhaena turned abruptly, just in time to see Foley in his wolf form, taking a vampire’s neck in his maw, and shaking it like a squeak toy.

The head rolled across the living room floor.

Leigh screamed. A steady stream of gunshots followed behind, and Rachel Foster charged in behind her captain, both hands firing off a weapon in every direction.

Her blonde ponytail flopped back and forth as she took one down after another, Brandon following the trail, along with Wren and Brent as they took the hearts from each one.

Leigh scrambled from behind the couch, and Rhaena locked eyes with the massive black werewolf. Something like a snarling smile stretched across his snout. She smiled back, nodding, and—

“No!” Rhaena screamed…but it was too late.

A hulking vampire with carved muscle, and a disgusting man-bun latched onto Foley’s neck, tearing through flesh as his pained roar rattled the walls.

Shots fired from behind her, and she turned to see Leigh unloading every bullet in that revolver into the vampire’s body.

Rhaena leapt, slashing claws across his throat until they broke through the other side, and she grabbed the bun of bloody hair, and jerked the head from his beefy-ass body. “Cap!”

The sounds of war and bloodshed drowned out around her as she let Brandon finish off the brute and lowered her body to Foley’s side.

He was panting, blood rushing from the wound on his neck, and his body trembling as his wolf form began to slowly disappear.

He met her eyes, as his face—the face she knew best—showed itself little by little.

She gripped a claw-tipped hand around his…

it was then that she realized, it too was soaked with blood.

Bright red. Warm. Rhaena looked down at his chest. One of Leigh’s bullets had gone rogue.

Rhaena felt her body slowly changing, and hot tears pooled in her eyes as she placed a hand over his chest.