Page 79 of Rejected Exile

So be it. I'll show them teeth and claw until the end. At least if I take down as many of them as possible, I'll die with sick satisfaction in my chest.

I only hope it's enough to help Delilah get away.

Delilah.The thought of her sweet face, melting into laughter and pleasure, is enough to make me twist up on three legs and take another vamp hand for the pile. I shake it back and forth like a dog until it twists off its body, then spit it out to join the pile of rotted vamp flesh at my feet.

As I do so, a kind of warmth fills me. Like a new sun rising on a cold wintery day to chill the frost of a long, dark night.

Maybe it's the warm, comfortable feeling you get just prior to death.

If so, I better find another vamp limb to sever, because I'm not wasting a single second of this life of mine.

But no, that isn't what it is, I realize as the tingle moves through me and sets my fur on end. Turning my head, I meet two pairs of eyes across the clearing—soulful yellow and clever black. Then I look the other way, towards the darkness where a vampire woman was holding Delilah.

They're gone.

Nothing but darkness is in their place.

And a moment later, thecrashof thousands of gallons of water. Like a tsunami far from the ocean's shore, an entire wave moves across dry land. Its rumbling force sweeps at legs and plucks entire bodies away, swiftly dragging them underwater with its force. Yet the water parts all around my feet, doing nothing but gently spraying at my skin.

Within seconds, at least a hundred vampires have been dragged screaming and cursing beneath its depths.

Then, like some kind of living ooze, the water reverses course. It gathers the bloodsucking flesh-eating cretins and jerks them in the other direction. I feel it as they're sucked away—taken hundreds of miles through the forest, out to dead land at the edge of Glass Pack Territory, where war with humans was once waged, and dumped in a landfill.

The forest whispers secrets in a light breeze near my ears, which prick up at the sound of it. A large, shaggy white form streaked with blood paces up to me, and I turn questioning eyes to Lance.

Did you do this?

He feels the whisper of thought as he would my voice. A moment later he shakes his head.

I look to Roarke, who negates my question as well. Reluctantly, I glance at Kieran—surely he couldn't be capable of such a thing—but he also shakes his head no.

Delilah.

Lifting my nose, I scent the air for her. The others do the same. On three legs, I hop towards the spot in the darkness where she once was, and bury my muzzle in it, searching for the last traces of her scent.

It's all gone.

As if she was never here at all.

Twenty-Eight

Delilah

The waves close over my head. I struggle for breath, unable to swim to the surface. Water pushes in on me for what feels like an eternity, dragging me away from home foot by foot, yard by yard.

At some point I become certain that I'm going to die.

What an irony that would be. Though I'm pretty certain that warm tingling feeling I felt wassomethinginside me calling to the land and tugging on its bond with the pack, clearly the earth doesn't include me as part of "the pack" yet. The power I called on wasn't my own to control, so it threw me in with the bloodsuckers and is pulling me under to my death.

My only saving grace is that I'm not alone under this dark, warm water. Bodies bump up against me—and other things. Severed hands and limbs mostly. Apparently when the earth throws invaders out of pack territory, it getsallthe pieces.

The desire for air claws at my chest, and I open my mouth to inhale water.

A moment later I'mthrownfrom the waves and onto the ground. I land on my hands and knees, coughing and retching. Water and bile sputter from my lips. Groaning, I roll over onto my back and flop onto the ground, a putrid scent hitting my nose.

It's dark out here, far from any kind of urban environment, but my extra-sensitive wolf nose tells me that I'm not far from some kind of garbage dump. From there, I'm able to figure out pretty quickly that I've just been pushed to the edge of pack territory—right to the deadlands, where humans and werewolves once fought, and nothing now grows.

Smack dab in the middle of vampire country.

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