Page 41 of Retribution

I closed my eyes for a second, and all I could see was Ellis, there one moment and ash the next. All I could hear were his words as he comforted Liberty and her guttural cry at the realization that this was it; the end had found him. It would haunt me. It would be the nightmare that woke me every night for as long as I lived, and I doubted the pain would ease. I doubted I would ever see anything else when I closed my eyes or heard any other noise when I sought a moment of solitude.

The head I was holding fell to the ground as my grip relaxed. The coppery slime of congealed blood clung to my fingers and mixed with the greasy feel of decaying fats. It was everywhere, coating the ground and my clothes, stinging my nostrils with its stench. I shuffled forward through the bodies that littered the floor—pushing the masses away as they rapidly decayed into sludge around me.

I glanced around, searching for others, praying they all made it through before I saw Liberty. My heart, my pulse, the one thing worth fighting for. Her eyes were tightly shut as she held her stomach. Her contractions were faster. Quicker. More intense. In front of her, Sterling fought his father, the fucking good-for-nothing bastard, nearly knifing him in the heart.

I felt Maggie’s power shift over everyone, and for a moment, everyone froze. Then the chaos resumed. Bodies turned, people fought, my brothers – they – my eyes searched around, spotting all of them but Lenin. He shouldn’t have been hard to miss; he was enormous. His height surpassed my own, his width larger. But I didn’t see him. I spun around searching, praying that the fates weren’t so cruel to take another life from us when they had already claimed so much.

Then I saw him. His large body was contained in chains, his arms pinned to his side while he fought. He fought hard to resist the pull, hard to stay in control, but the chains were thick, and they pulled him back, his body never standing a chance against their strength. They pulled him toward the wall, then up, hanging him from the ceiling.

I was too caught up, too enthralled with watching Lenin that I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t seen the chains until they lashed against my skin, the silver burning my flesh and causing smoke to rise from the wounds. I gasped, the pain nearly debilitating, but then I regained my composure.

I let shouts fall from my lips, curses, warnings. Letting all who fought for us know that it wasn’t just the dead we had to worry about. And they listened. My fellow men turned in circles, the wolves forming a loop to protect themselves, everyone aware of the new threat. Then, I searched for Liberty again, finding her eyes, panic clouding her beautiful blues. She looked to Lenin. Horrified.

Then, she closed her eyes and hunched over before letting out a scream that pierced my ears painfully. Before me, the oily sludge and bodies both dead and alive, burst into flames, the smell so horrific that I thought for the first time in two hundred years I would vomit. Then, as the fire vanished, the smoke cleared, and the bodies were gone; all I saw, all I could concentrate on was Liberty.

She approached Sterling’s father, Jedidiah, with fire in her eyes. “You killed him.”

“With pleasure,” Jedidiah said, not an ounce of remorse, and fury flooded my veins. I struggled, I fought, I needed out of the chains that clashed and imprisoned me.

“I’ll kill you.” She growled, sounding more like her mate than a human.

“I doubt you could,” he replied smugly before flicking his wrists.

More bodies piled in, foul, dead, decaying bodies, walking intently toward Liberty. I blinked. My mind not processing what was happening until wolves jumped at the bodies, trying to tear them down, tear them to pieces before they made it to her. The wolves tore off limbs, and the limbs still crept forward. Michelle blasted them with fire, Maggie with power, but the never-ending trail of bodies kept coming. Hadn’t Liberty killed them? Decimated all of them? Where were they coming from?

Sterling stepped between Liberty and his father. “You will never touch her.”

An emotionless laugh fell from Jedidiah’s lips. “No, I’m saving her for Greta. But you? You, I have more than the right to stake.”

A stake surfaced, and I screamed Sterling’s name, issuing a warning before it was too late. He dodged, barely missing the metal. But in his attempt to move, he tripped, his knife falling from his hands and skidding across the floor. His father wasted no time before he fell to his knees, his body over Sterling’s and placing the dagger at his throat before it hovered over Sterling’s heart.

My heart fell. My eyes searched around for help, but I had nothing. Liberty closed her eyes, her power streaming toward him, his body shielded from the effects. Shit. I couldn’t bear to watch Sterling fall, not when Ellis’ demise was still so fresh.

I spotted Lacy. Her name left my lips before I could stop it, and the girl, the tiny little slip of a being, opened her eyes that were closed tightly and looked at me. “Please.”

I begged, but I don’t know what I was asking. For her to look away, to keep me distracted? To not watch the horror that I knew was about to take place? But the girl knew. Her eyes turned away from him, finding the dagger on the floor. She stared at it, her concentration hard, before it slowly slunk forward, inching its way toward Sterling until it was in his hands.

“I wish I could say it had been nice having you around,” Jedidiah said with a smirk.

Sterling swallowed. “I wish I could say the same too.” Before the stake could plunge into Sterling’s heart, his hand shot up, placing the dagger at his father’s throat.

Liberty used this distraction to her advantage. She fumbled over to the couch she had abandoned and grabbed the arrow before whirling around and plummeting it in Jedidiah’s back. He blinked three times before his body slumped forward, decay instantly taking hold. The moving limbs and dead bodies around us went limp, bursting into flames before vanishing altogether. Sterling pushed the body away from his, the decomposed sludge already coating his clothes.

“He…” His breath was coming out in pants, “I didn’t know he was a necromancer.” Fuck, well, neither did any of us. As far as we knew, he was dead long ago. The initial shock that the bastard had been alive all this time hadn’t fully worn off.

A string of wolf growls and whines filtered through the silence before a woman stepped forward, her hands slowly clapping as she stepped over the rubble. “It’s a shame that he wasn’t as strong as I thought. But he served his purpose; he’s weakened you all.” Weakened us? Weakened us how? As if I had spoken those words out loud, she continued, “It takes a lot of energy to wake the dead, you know. To give them life. The life force had to come from somewhere. Had to be stolen to sustain the sheer amount of bodies in his army.”

I – I thought it was the silver in the chains holding me down. But now, I did feel the bone-deep exhaustion. I felt the drain on my energy. The pull I had thought was silver was draining my life away.

“It’s a shame he didn’t hold out longer. We could have finished off some of these boys.” She flicked her finger toward me, and my body jolted before I went limp. Unable to move, I felt like a shell, wholly present but unable to communicate. Her magic coated my skin, trapping me.

I screamed. Warned Liberty. Begged her to run away, to save herself and our daughter. But no words left my lips. I was trapped. Stuck in an insufferable illusion, a prisoner of my flesh. A failure to those I loved.

Chapter 23

LIBERTY

My spine tingled;fear had me nearly petrified in place. In front of me stood Greta.The Greta. The very person who had fought so hard to harm my men and me. The same being that wanted me dead. I needed Oak, my protector, my rock, but his body hung limply in the air, held up by a chain that undoubtedly held debilitating silver.

---