Page 34 of Marked Resistance

The nerve of this man.

“What?! I’m a Fang Ranger. I don’t run and I don’t need you to defend me.”

“Did that motherfucker turn his back on us?” Mikhail asked, his voice two octaves higher than earlier.

Xavier ignored him and remained locked on me and Sarah. “I know I don’t need to defend you, Zee. I need you to defend your sister. She’s untrained. If anyone gets by me, they can’t get by you.”

Xavier pivoted around until he faced the five Fang Rangers sworn to end us.

“Hey!” Sarah called out to him. “There’s five of them and only one of you.”

“I know,” Xavier exhaled. “It’s a shame they don’t have more. It's unfair to them.”

“You mother—” Rene started.

Xavier interrupted him with force. He dashed forward at speed unseen up to this point, through the door, and barreled himself straight into the body of Renee. They both catapulted into the air from the force of the impact, with Xavier’s knee on Rene’s chest as if he surfed the waves of the ocean with Rene as the surfboard. With both his hands, Xavier grasped the sides of Rene’s head, pulled, and wrenched it off of his neck in a bloody explosion of muscle, bone, and flesh. Rene’s body slammed into the ground with Xavier on top and Rene’s head in his hand.

“Bastard!” David bellowed.

Xavier drew Rene’s sword and took it in his hands. He threw it like a javelin with deadly accuracy and speared David in his left eye, impaling him deep. The tip of the sword protruded out the back of his skull, and David twitched and dropped on impact.

“You will fuckingdiefor this!” Mikhail bellowed.

Rapidly waving both arms in a huge circle, the air around Xavier turned orange and then red. With a sudden thrust of his arms forward, Xavier formed and propelled an incredibly large fireball forward. The fireball’s intensity as it jetted past me singed, my clothing. It landed in a large explosion of red and orange flames, and engulfed Mikhail, burning him instantaneously. His screams were drowned out by the red-hot intensity and his armor melted like snow on a summer day. His body fell to his knees, then to the ground, in an awesome display of terror.

I gave a small yelp and widened my eyes as my heart froze, and then pounded in my chest. I rushed to Xavier, flung myself into his arms, and wrapped mine around his neck. “That was amazing!”

“Where’s Ilanis and Grim?”

I heard him speak, but the crackle of the flames, and the rush of blood flooding my ears, masked his words. “How did you do that?”

Xavier placed his hands around my forearms and removed him from his neck, pinning them to my side. “Do what?” He asked. His eyes darted everywhere as he scanned the surrounding area.

My heartbeat began to slow. “Generate flame like that? Where’s your lighter? I didn’t see you pull out a lighter, so how did you do that?”

“Later. Zenobia,where’sIlanis and Grim? And Sarah?”

Sarah? Shit!

Chapter fifteen

“I failed her,” I wailed and collapsed to my knees. My hands flew to my chest and all air left my body. Waves of throbbing, nauseating pain pulsed within my abdomen, and my breakfast threatened to return to me in an instant.

“No.”

My eyes darted all over, searching for Sarah and any way to relieve my body from the miserable pain blasting every inch inside of me. “In the excitement of the moment,” I sobbed, “I did the one thing I swore I’d never do. I’ve killed my sister.”

“They didn’t kill her,” Xavier corrected as he walked around the bloody battlefield.

Clouds infiltrated every inch of my mind, but his voice guided me like a ship lost on the waves and only a lighthouse could guide it to safety. My body grimaced and I swallowed harder than at any point in my life, human or vampire. Xavier knelt on the ground and examined the blades of grass where Ilanis and Grim stood prior to the fight with the calm of a scholar studying for an exam in which he already had and knew the answers.

“How do you know? Xavier?”

I needed something. Anything to lighten this load pressing down on my chest and crushing my lungs.

“No blood,” he explained and returned to his feet. “The grass is pressed down. They sped to her under the cover of the chaos and swooped her away.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t kill her when they reached a safe distance.”

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