Page 44 of Heir of Blood and Moonlight

“They’re here,” I said, stumbling over the words. I tore my stare from Amaya to meet Gavin’s fierce silver eyes. “Two dozen shifters. They’re taking the stairs, and they have guns.”

Gavin’s eyes locked with Bastian’s, and a silent conversation seemed to pass between them. Finally, Gavin nodded, a single dip of his chin. “Follow me,” he said, his attention shifting back to me. The elevator dinged, and behind him, the doors whooshed apart.

We rushed out into a wide, industrial-looking hallway with aged brick walls and exposed pipes and immediately turned right. Gavin led us around two corners, then barreled through a heavy fire door into an expansive, blue-lit space filled with row after row of humming, blinking servers. He turned, heading around the perimeter of the server farm, and we followed.

The sound of another door banging open resounded through the room, and my heart lurched into my throat. Hushed voices and sneaking footsteps joined the electric hum.

“Hurry!” Amaya shouted, blinking into and out of sight in each aisle as I passed.

Bastian released my arm, and a moment later, a dark shadow leapt over my head. I ducked even as I ran, looking up to see a huge panther land silently on top of one of the server towers. Bastian leapt from row to row, his sleek black form guarding us from above.

I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to find eight vampires trailing behind me, but I only found Thane and Ash. Where were the others? Lurking atop the server towers like Bastian? Or slinking down the aisles? I returned my attention to the way ahead as we neared the last row of servers.

Gavin rounded the corner first, Micah and I trailing a few steps behind. He slowed, extending an arm to hold us back.

I looked past Gavin, fear gripping my heart when I saw the four armed Sun warriors in human form stalking toward usbehind a huge russet wolf that may very well have been the same woman who had shifted and attacked me in the parking lot of my apartment building.

About midway between us, some thirty feet away, a shadowy vortex swirled in the wall, streaks of midnight lightning flashing in its impossible depths. The portal.

Gavin stopped, one hand raised defensively in front of him. The shifters stopped as well, and for a tense moment, our two groups stared one another down.

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Iheld my breath,pulling Micah closer to me, dreadful anticipation making my muscles tremble. Micah’s arm curved around my shoulders, clutching me against his side as though attempting to shield me from the threat ahead. But he was just a human. A mere mortal. There was nothing he would be able to do against bullets or shifter claws and teeth, except die.

At a whisper of movement above the servers, the armed shifters glanced upward.

Too late.

Bastian, in panther form, and two vampires dropped on top of them. Gunfire exploded in the enclosed space, bullets cutting through the walls and ceiling and lodging in the servers, making the machines spark and flicker. Ash and Thane lunged in front of Micah and me, forming a protective barrier of immortal flesh.

Vampires weren’t impervious to bullets, and gunshot wounds still hurt like hell, but bullets had to be solid silver to prevent immediate healing and to do any lasting damage. But not even a silver bullet to the brain would kill the weakest undeadvampire. Decapitation was the only sure method to end the life of an immortal vampire, a feat that was almost impossible when facing a powerful vampire guardian. The sigils on a guardian’s skin, gifts from a vampire queen, enhanced the immortal’s strength, senses, speed, and durability beyond those of standard undead vampires, sometimes going so far as to make their skin impervious.

Micah and I huddled together behind the wall formed by the two vampire guardians. Once the snarls and grunts of hand-to-hand combat replaced the crack of gunfire, I dared to peek around Thane’s arm. Gavin was no longer with us, but somewhere ahead, lost in the blurring mass of violence. The vampires and shifters all moved too quickly for my eyes to track.

“Get her to the portal!” Gavin shouted, though I still couldn’t make him out in the chaos.

My remaining protectors didn’t waste any time following Gavin’s order. Thane took hold of my arm and, grip firm, pulled me closer to the portal. Micah clung to my side, and Ash fell in on my other side.

We were mere steps away from the portal when a giant, tawny beast leapt down from atop the servers and landed on Micah, knocking him back and taking him down to the floor.

“NO!” I screamed, spinning around in time to see a cougar pin Micah to the concrete floor.

Micah cried out as the huge cat flexed its paws, digging its long, curved claws into his shoulders, but he fell still when the cougar opened its jaws wide mere inches from his face.

I tugged against Thane’s grip, but the vampire refused to let go, though he stopped pulling me toward the portal.

A blur blew past us, rustling my silk shirt, and suddenly the cougar was gone. Ten feet away, Gavin grappled with the enormous cat. I stared wide-eyed as the vampire sank his teeth into the cougar’s neck and bit down, then yanked backward,tearing out the shifter’s throat. Blood gushed from the wound, and the shifter went limp. The injury wouldn’t kill the shifter, but it would keep them out of the fight. So long as their heart was intact, a shifter could regenerate.

Gavin rolled to the side, dumping the limp shifter on the floor, and planted his knees in the growing puddle of blood before regaining his feet. Blood stained the lower half of his face and the front of his dark button-down shirt.

He looked exactly as he had in my dream of a cougar attacking me in my bedroom. Had that been some sort of vision or premonition?

“Get her to the portal!” Gavin commanded, then moved in another of those too-fast blurs, only becoming fully visible again when he stopped and crouched beside Micah.

Neck craned as Thane and Ash dragged me toward the portal, I watched Gavin scoop up Micah, cradling him like a much smaller child. Blood seeped from the puncture wounds on Micah’s shoulders, leaving patches of crimson bleeding through his sweatshirt.

Energy sizzled over my skin, and suddenly all the air was pushed from my lungs as darkness swallowed the world. We were inside the portal, I realized, and it was as if, for a moment, time stood still.

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