Hot Blooded (Jessica McClain)

chapter 9

We hiked straight up. The incline was steep, but the vamps seemed to glide over every stump and rock like it wasn’t even there. During the walk Danny had sidled up next to a patient Naomi and filled our walk with light banter. Eamon had taken in the lead, and the rest of us trailed after them.

“So what do you eat when you’re traveling, then?” Danny asked. “Not many humans out here to nibble on. Except for the one we’ve brought along, of course. We can loan him to you for the right price.” Danny laughed good-naturedly. He was pouring on the charm, and even though Naomi was keeping herself close, I could tell she was having a teensy bit of fun.

She indulged his curiosity pleasantly. “We don’t need to feed often. Our bodies are well preserved, requiring a fuel source only every few weeks or so. If we find ourselves out longer than necessary, we can take the blood of an animal. It’s not as nutritious, and has a terrible aftertaste, but it will suffice. We will not starve.”

“Where are you going to sleep when dawn breaks?” Danny asked. “Not a lot of spooky manors or crypts around here.”

She gave him a patient look, paired with a slight smile. “My brother and I have scouted this area. There are caves and cool places for us to stay during the daylight hours. They will do.”

I cleared my throat, coming up behind the two of them. “Will we arrive at the next pass before the sun rises?” As we’d climbed, I’d become more and more agitated. My body sensed Rourke was near. His essence was inside me and his blood sang directly to mine. I craved him.

My wolf prowled in my mind like a caged animal, sensing constantly for danger as the air grew thicker with Selene’s signature. Much like the immediate power a supe gave off, but more widespread. It brushed against my skin like an angry breeze.

“We will reach the peak in a few moments,” Naomi answered. “Then we will start our decent. Likely we will arrive at the bottom of the gorge by daybreak. From there my brother and I will escort you to her direct perimeter line, which starts after the stream at the bottom. We have been forbidden to take you farther. Eamon will sense the area and try to prepare you for what you will encounter, but once we reach the edge of her lands, you will face her obstacles on your own.”

“Of course,” I said. My agreement with the Vamp Queen had been for tracking to Selene’s boundary and nothing more.

Eamon stopped abruptly at the head of the line and we all slowed.

“What is it?” Tyler asked, edging his way to the front. The altitude was very thin here; the trees were less dense and scattered. We were just about to crest through the trees to the rocky edge of the summit, but we still stood within the forest. Ten feet in front of us the tree line stopped completely. Rolling granite covered the top before the cliff sheered off on one side and led down to what I assumed was a stream.

I heard the water bubbling below.

“I sense something.” Eamon turned in a slow circle. “But Selene’s lands do not extend this far, so it should not be so. The signature is here, yet it’s different somehow. Changed.”

Tyler immediately put his nose to the sky and inhaled. “I smell something slightly acidic in the air. It smells like guano, but with a sharper twang.”

“Bat guano?” I asked. “Maybe we’re by a cave and the bats just came out to feed?”

“No,” Eamon said. “The smell is layered with a taste of Otherness, but one I’ve never sampled before. It’s bitter. Bitter always means bad.”

“I’m getting a trace of Otherness too.” Tyler opened his mouth to take the air over his tongue. “It’s almost undetectable, like it was supposed to be veiled, but the scent trickled out anyway.”

“I can’t detect anything,” Danny said. “But smelling is not my strong suit. Much like directions. I just don’t have the knack. Now, knocking someone out cold or handing them their teeth after a brawl, I’m your man.”

I inhaled, forcing the air in slowly. My wolf twitched her ears. I noticed something too. After a few breaths it became stronger as it settled over my taste buds. It was faint, but definitely bitter. “I’m not exactly surprised we’re coming up against something before we hit her ‘official’ territory,” I said. “She’d be foolish to let us draw too close without a fight. Plus, she loves games. Putting up some puzzling roadblock sounds like something she’d do. We need to tread very carefully from here.”

“I will investigate a bit farther.” Naomi strode for a large opening past the trees. A bright moon and a bevy of stars kept the night sky luminous. The stars ran in an almost continuous swath of white. With my newly enhanced vision, I could see so much more. Stars that had been undetectable before now flickered in the sky. It was breathtaking. The only person who had an issue finding his way in the dark was Ray. He’d stumbled along behind us at less than half the pace, swearing up a blue streak as he went. But since he was following us on his own, I wasn’t complaining.

“Be wary out there,” I called. “It could be a trap.”

Naomi reached the clearing. “Once I pass out of these trees I’ll take to the sky and see what I can find—”

The instant she crossed the tree line she was swarmed.

Small, black creatures coated her, flapping their wings in furious motion. I ran toward her shouting, “Are those bats?”

If they were, they weren’t any kind of ordinary bats.

Before I could processes what was happening, Danny dropped his pack and lunged into the fray. “Get the bloody hell off of her, you beasts!” He tore them from her body. As they came off, so did bits of her clothing and skin.

“What are they?” I yelled to Eamon, coming up short of the trees and dropping my gear by the edge of the clearing. We had to know what they were in order to fight them. They hadn’t attacked her until she passed through the trees, so that had to mean there was a delineation of some kind. Eamon froze in place, staring at his sister. “Eamon!” I shouted. “What are they?”

“Winged devils.” He said it so quietly I had to strain to hear him.

“What?”

“Their proper name is Camazotz, which translates into ‘Death Bat of the Underworld.’ ”

Underworld? These were from the Underworld? “How do we stop them?” I urged.

He didn’t answer, so I shouted behind me, “Ray, head back into the forest! Find a log or something to hide under. When this is over, we’ll find you.” I turned to my brother, who hovered next to me at the edge of the trees, equally helpless. The bats had fully engulfed Danny. If we went out there now, we’d be swarmed too. “Tyler, we have to stop them! What do we do?”

We watched as Danny struggled to pull them off his own body. Naomi had fallen to the ground now. Danny collapsed to his knees.

I took an unconscious step forward and my brother’s arm shot out to stop me. “We can’t go out there.” He grabbed on to my forearm to keep me in place. “They covered Danny instantly. If we go out there, they’ll swarm us too.”

“What are you talking about? We can’t let them die out there,” I insisted. “Selene must have them contained. They aren’t coming after us here, so this tree line must be the cutoff. If we can drag Danny and Naomi back here, maybe they will disappear.”

“Jess, there are too many.” Tyler dropped my arm and started pacing back and forth agitatedly along the tree line. “I can make a run for it, but there’s no guarantee I can grab them both before the suckers bring me down. They look like they’re multiplying too. Every time Danny kills one, another one pops up in its place.” It did look like there were twice as many as before, and every time one died, another popped up. They couldn’t get ahead, because the beasties weren’t dying.

“Eamon!” I turned and ran over to his still immobile form. “You have to help us save your sister. Eamon!”

He stared stoically forward. “There is no way to help them. The Camazotz are summoned from the Underworld for protection. Selene has paid for them with a piece of her soul. Their claws are like razor blades, their teeth venomous. They are things feared even in the Underworld. We cannot stop them.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled in frustration, throwing my hands in the air. “If they exist, there’s a way to defeat them. They have to have a weakness.” My voice was frantic. “Think, Eamon. My friend is dying and I’m going to help him, even if I have to run out there on my own. If you know Selene, and know where they came from, they have a flaw. Think!”

“A witch’s spell,” Eamon said with hesitation. “It might have an effect on them, but only temporarily. It won’t kill them. The Camazotz are born of demons, and demon magic is born of the blood. Witches have an innate protection against blood magic. Their spells are crafted of the earth. But no witch is strong enough to kill them completely.”

“A spell?” The darts from Tally. Tallulah Talbot was a powerful witch. If her magic wasn’t strong enough to knock these things out for a few precious seconds, then no spell was. “I have spell darts in my pack.” I dove to my backpack and tore open the zipper. I snatched the darts off the top and unrolled the fabric, careful not to shred it in my haste. I had no idea which one to pick. They were color coded, but there were no helpful labels or instructions. Two blue, two green, one orange, and one yellow. They were different hues than any of Marcy’s. “Which one do we use?” I looked up at my brother, who stood beside me.

He knelt down. “There aren’t enough darts in there to hit every devil.”

Danny howled, and both Tyler and I wrenched our heads in his direction. He crawled toward Naomi, ripping the beasts off his body as he went. “Get the bloody hell off of me!” he roared. “You will not be the end of me. Naomi, stay with us! Naomi!” He reached her and started to yank them off her, only to have them reappear a second later.

“We have no choice.” I jumped up with the spell case in my hand. “We have to start throwing them or they’re going to die.” I gritted my teeth as I watched Danny continue to struggle. “Tyler, we have to act!”

“Aim the darts at their bodies instead,” Eamon said, walking toward me. “When the spell explodes into their bloodstream, it will instantly contaminate all the winged devils. The Camazotz are consuming their flesh and drinking their blood; they will absorb it by proxy.”

I met my brother’s eye as I held the darts. “Which color? We have freezers, sleepers, and two others, no kills. Choose.”

“Blue,” he said. “Try blue.”

I plucked out the two blues, rolled the case back up, and set it down on my pack. Then I walked as close as I could to the last tree before the clearing. I wedged the outside edge of my shoe against the bark for support and drew back my arm to take aim. Then I faltered. We had only a few precious spells and I couldn’t risk missing my target. If I threw it at Danny and it bounced off one of those the stupid blood-sucking rodents, we lost. New plan.

“Danny! Danny!” I called. He turned toward me, hearing my voice. “I have two spells.” I waved my hand in the air. “I’m going to throw them to you and you’re going to pierce Naomi and then yourself. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

His face was bloody and ravaged. One of his eyelids looked like it was completely gone. Most of his face was covered so I couldn’t see his expression. I couldn’t tell if he understood me or not.

“Danny!” I shouted as I held up the potions again and waved them. “Do you see me? I’m going to throw these to you.” I mimicked tossing them underhand. “You have to catch them and inject Naomi and then yourself!” If he injected himself first, he would be spelled and out cold, so he had to hit Naomi first.

After a moment, he seemed to understand. He turned to Naomi, but instead of turning back to me, he started mindlessly pulling more off her, ignoring me completely.

“Tyler, he’s not listening,” I cried. “Or he can’t understand me anymore. I have to go out there and do it myself. We’re running out of time. Naomi hasn’t moved in too long. I can’t let them die. I’ll run out fast. We know what to expect. I’ll drag them as close as I can back to you before the bastards eat me and I’ll spell them. Then you can shoot me with another dart.”

Tyler hooked me around the waist as I took a step forward. “You are not going out there, Jess. Do you hear me? They will eat you alive, Lycan or not,” he growled. “If Danny’s not listening, make him listen. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go out there.”

“How do I make him listen? I just yelled at him and he ignored me.”

“Your wolf is above his and he’s submitted to you already. I’d do it, but Danny might not listen to me. Command him. Force him to hear you.”

Danny’s wolf had recognized and submitted to me the first time he’d seen me in my Lycan form. “Are you sure it will work?”

“F*ck no!” Tyler shouted. “But it’s the only thing we have left. Do it!”

I gathered as much power as I could and shoved it into my voice. “Daniel Walker! Listen to me!” The sound echoed out of my body in a strong, steady current. I wasn’t sure how much to use, so I threw everything I had at him. “Stop!”

Danny froze, his stunned gaze turning to meet mine.

It worked.

“I’m going to throw something to you. You will catch it,” I told him, strength vibrating my vocal cords. “Insert one dart into Naomi and then one dart into yourself. Do it immediately! Do you understand me?”

He nodded slowly. As he stood, he batted the devils away from his face so he could see.

I was at the very edge of the boundary. A pulse of energy hit me as my foot strayed past the tree. A shock of warning. How could Naomi have missed it? It raced through me like an alarm, running up my leg and back down my spine. I yanked my foot back. The magic had a menacing undertone. I’d never felt anything like it.

Danny opened his arms to ready himself and I lobbed a single dart underhanded. He stumbled forward to catch it. It hit his open palm and he curled his fingers around it, capturing it without breaking it. Then I threw the next one. Once he held both, I yelled, “Go! Pierce Naomi first and then yourself. Do it now!”

He jerked around and fell to his knees next to her. There was a mass of devils on her chest. He ripped them off, their mouths saturated with blood, and plunged the dart deeply into her stomach.

She convulsed once and went still.

Then he turned the second dart on himself, stabbing it right through one of the screeching devils high on his thigh. Danny froze in place for a millisecond before he toppled onto Naomi, none of his body parts moving.

Blue meant freezer.

Almost immediately the devils started to fall off. Each of them twitching once before freezing in place on the ground.

“Ohmygod, it’s working! Come on. We have to go get them now,” I yelled, tugging Tyler’s arm. “Eamon said it won’t last long.”

I moved forward only to be yanked back once again. “Tyler! You have to stop doing that.” I turned, angry. My irises sparking. “I’m not a child and you’re wasting valuable time.”

“The hell I’m letting you out there,” he snarled. “My job here is to protect you. It’s what you hired me to do and that’s what I’m damn well going to do. Get another spell primed for me. I’ll bring them back, and if those little f*ckers get me, stab me with it once I cross the line.”

He took off before I could argue. I hadn’t technically hired him—my father had. But he was right; it was why he was here—that and he loved me. As he ran, the winged devils that hadn’t succumbed to the spell swarmed him. “Tyler!” I screamed. “Keep moving!” I tried to infuse as much power as I could into my voice. I had no idea if it would work on my brother, but it was worth a try.

He raced to Naomi and flung her over his shoulder. She landed stiffly, which made it hard. Then he turned and grabbed Danny by the arm. Instead of lifting him, he dragged him behind. I fumbled for another spell, this time yellow. I fisted it right as Tyler barreled back through the trees.

He tossed Naomi at a stunned Eamon, who caught her with ease. At the same time he let go of Danny and dropped to the forest floor on his knees. The few of the devils that had clung to him fell off and seemed discombobulated, opening their red-stained maws, gasping for breath. None of them had bitten him. “Why didn’t they bite you?” I asked.

“I think they all had a taste of the spell, even if it wasn’t a lot, and I think they’re confused.” He grabbed one off the ground where it had fallen. The thing tried to latch unsuccessfully on to his finger. Its eyes blazed a feral orange and its skin was both scaled and leathery. Tyler gave it a squeeze. Its chest imploded and it went limp. Before he could toss it back over the boundary line, it disappeared right out of his hand with a little pop.

“Okay. That was strange.” I took a step closer and one of the devils on the ground flew halfheartedly at me. It wobbled like it was drunk, but its intentions were clear—it wanted my flesh and blood. “Oh, no you don’t.” It zoomed at me lopsided. I angled my arm back. When it was within a foot of me, I pounded my fist into it. It connected hard, and the thing exploded with a shriek and sailed outside of the boundary line and blinked out of existence.

Tyler started picking up a few errant ones. “Help me toss them out there.” He gestured to the clearing. “You need to kill them first so they go away. Then chuck them past the trees.”

“Wait,” I said after he’d killed two and threw them back. “We should keep one.”

He glanced at me with a question. “Why would we keep one?”

“The ones that aren’t frozen are dazed in here. Look at that one.” I pointed to one on the ground that wobbled in a circle. “We have to find a way to defeat them or we can’t go any farther, so let’s keep one.”

Tyler shrugged. “Okay. Fair enough.”

“Alive.”

He grimaced. “How are we going to keep it from attacking us? What if it decides to wake up?”

“We can tie it down somehow. How about nailing it to a tree?”

“That might work.”

“But we don’t have a hammer, do we?”

Tyler grinned. “I don’t need one. I can pound anything into a tree with this.” He lifted up his fist. “I’ll find a sharp rock.”

Now that the devils were figured out, I knelt by Danny’s side. He was lying facedown, so I gently rolled him over. It wasn’t easy because he was still frozen.

His face was almost unrecognizable.

Pieces of his flesh were missing and his clothes were shredded and bloody. There were gashes all over his arms and legs shaped in small, angry circles. Thank goodness the spell not only froze him—but knocked him out. He was a supe; he’d heal. I took his hand gently in mine.

Eamon had laid Naomi down a few feet away.

She was equally damaged. It was hard to look at her. The healing process would take time. I hoped it didn’t hurt too much and that they both stayed unconscious throughout the process.

“They will not recover from this,” Eamon stated, his voice remorseful as he gazed down at his sister. “They have been too gravely injured.”

I glanced sharply at him. “What did you say?”

Eamon shook his head. “The wounds might close some, but they will never heal over completely. They will fester and bleed until the venom finally kills them.”

“That can’t be true. They’re supernaturals.” I ran a gaze over Danny’s body.

Eamon was right; none of the wounds were closing.

“Naomi will need the blood of an immortal for any chance of survival, and she cannot drink mine. We are too closely bonded. It will not give her the healing properties she needs. Blood is her only chance, but even with it, she might not recover. Camazotz venom is powerful.”

“What about Danny!” I cried. “How does he heal? He doesn’t drink blood.”

“I do not know.”

Tyler knelt down next to me. “Nobody’s feeding a vampire, Jessica, so don’t even think about it.”

“Tyler,” I argued—it wasn’t worth pretending he didn’t know my thoughts exactly—“we have to be reasonable here. If we have a chance to save a life, we save one.”

“Jess,” Tyler said between clenched teeth, “our races don’t mix. We’ve never mixed. Naomi was ordered by her Queen to do a job. It’s not our problem if she dies. That’s the risk her Queen took—”

“I’ll do it.” Danny’s voice broke as he gasped for air. “Give her my blood then. I’ve lost a hell of a lot of it, but if there’s anything left, she is welcome to it.”