Jocelynn Drake - Dawnbreaker

“Will it be able to handle this many naturi?” he asked, following me as I led him down into the basement.

“It will. It grows in power with each one that it kills. After a while Rowe will catch on and stop sending naturi after us. I figure he’ll have no choice then but to try to burn the lodge to the ground, which Shelly is now protecting us against.”

I paused in front of Cynnia, who lay curled into the fetal position on the cold concrete floor. Shelly had sketched out a circle around her and made the appropriate symbols in blue chalk. A matching blue dome rose over the naturi, protecting her, keeping her from moving until we finally released her.

“I didn’t think that nightwalkers were magic users,” Danaus said, standing beside me.

“We typically aren’t. We have enough special skills like speed, strength, and night vision to keep us ahead of our enemies. However, we’ve found it in our best interest to learn some more defensive magic. Most of us know how to protect ourselves from being set on fire during the day or maybe to erect a defensive barrier like the one Cynnia and Shelly taught me the other night. We don’t bother to learn magic that is used for attacking.”

“Why?”

“Because the magic drains from our souls. It weakens us. Defensive magic is less draining to maintain than an offensive spell. Besides, don’t you think a nightwalker has enough of an edge in a fight?”

“Not against a warlock.”

“That’s why we don’t go picking fights with witches and warlocks,” I said with a smirk as I gazed up at him.

“Where do you want me?” Danaus asked, his right hand resting heavily on the handle of a knife strapped to his hip. He was ready to take on any of the naturi he believed might get through the Soul Sucking spell. What he failed to realize was that they wouldn’t. It was impossible. Oh, the first few might actually get past the perimeter and onto the steps of the lodge, but I seriously doubted that any would actually make it inside. Particularly after the first five or six died, their souls sucked straight from their bodies.

I took a deep breath and slowly released it. With my right hand, I motioned to an empty space on the floor not far from where Cynnia was sleeping. “I need you to be right there,” I slowly said, dreading every word as it left my lips.

“You want me to protect the naturi?” His brow furrowed. “Is Shelly going to be down here as well? Are you?”

“Yes, Shelly is going to be down here with you. Most of us are going to be crammed down here, I imagine,” I said. My gaze darted away from Danaus for a moment and I licked my lips. I had to just come out and say it.

“The spell won’t discriminate between naturi and human. It will attack anything that moves,” I explained, looking back up at the man that didn’t trust my kind, and yet I was asking him for the ultimate moment of trust. “I want Shelly to put you in a sleep spell like Cynnia.”

Danaus’s face twisted with horror and rage. “No! Absolutely not!” he shouted, pacing away from me. The sound of his boots hitting the concrete floor rebounded off the walls, filling the room with his anger. “There has to be another way. I will not be helpless during the day!”

“Welcome to my world,” I said with a tinge of bitterness. “I’ve been helpless during the daylight hours for more than six centuries and yet I’ve survived. I’m asking one day of you.”

“I’m not a vampire!” he snarled at me. He undid the safety strap on the knife handle he had been holding and drew the knife. I was grateful that we were alone down there, or this could have become an even uglier stand-off. “I’ve been a hunter my entire existence. I won’t lie side by side with my enemy while the naturi come to kill us all.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he had been a hunter for too long, but then that was for another fight and another time. “We have no choice.”

“That’s your answer for everything!” He took a step closer to me with the knife drawn, but I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to do anything to give him the fight that he was currently aching for out of fear. “We’re trapped. We’re surrounded. The naturi have us beaten at every turn. Let’s combine our powers and destroy their souls!” he shouted at me.

“Well, then you should be happy that we’ve got an alternative this time,” I calmly stated. “This spell will only kill them. Their souls are set free to go on to their afterlife the moment the spell has been ended. From my understanding, it’s not a particularly painful death either. It’s just a need to sleep that can’t be overcome.”

“How nice! A humane death,” he sarcastically snapped.

“Do you have an alternative?” I growled, finally reaching the end of my patience. “We tried to kill them our way and it didn’t work. You may get your wish, and it may never work again after what Cynnia did to me. I still don’t know. All I do know is that the moment the sun rises above the horizon, all the naturi waiting just beyond the fire are going to come flooding into the lodge with the simple goal of beheading every nightwalker within its confines. You are a master swordsman and a warrior whose equal I have not seen, but you cannot win against that many naturi.”

“I won’t be left helpless during the day.”

“We’ll be protected from the naturi,” I said, finally taking a step closer to him.

“I’m not completely human. You know that. Maybe the spell won’t affect me,” he suddenly countered. It was an angle I had thought of and didn’t like. There was something else that could happen because of his bori background that I wasn’t too thrilled about either. Putting him to sleep was the safest solution.

“You’re human enough,” I sighed heavily. “It just means that it might take a few minutes longer to kill you, and the more you move, the faster the spell will work. It comes down to this, Danaus. You either let Shelly put you into a sleep spell so you can be protected here, or you try to sneak away from the lodge as it is surrounded by naturi. Your odds of survival are higher if you stay here.”

“I won’t be helpless!” he repeated, but some of the venom had left his tone.

I closed the distance between us and laid my hand over the hand that was still tightly clenching the knife. When I touched him, I could feel fear radiating through him, similar to the terror I had felt the first few nights I spent alone as a nightwalker. Helpless during the daylight hours, at the mercy of anything that happened to stumble across you while you slept. “We will all be protected from the naturi.”

“And what about when the sun rises?” he inquired, his grip on the knife loosening somewhat under my hand.

“Then you’ll awaken,” I reassured him.

“Not like you will. I’ll be trapped within a sleep spell. Someone will have to wake me up.”

“No one will touch you!” I snarled suddenly, finally getting to the root of his problem. It wasn’t just that he was afraid of being surrounded by naturi while he slept during the day, but that he feared being helpless against the nightwalker enemy when we awoke the following night. I reached up and cupped his face with both my cold hands, threading my finger through his thick black hair. “No one will touch you! I forbid it. You belong to me and me alone. I will be among the first to awaken and I will wake you. No nightwalker or naturi will touch you, I vow it.”

As I spoke, a dark, feral need rose up in me. I needed to pull him down to me and drain some of the blood from his neck. I needed to feel his blood coursing through my veins, marking him as mine. I needed for all in the nightwalker world to realize that none should lay a hand on the hunter. He was mine.