Jocelynn Drake - Dayhunter

“Do it.”

Ryan drew in a deep, cleansing breath while his eyes fell shut. I was turning my back toward him again when a gunshot rang out. Damn it. We had company. The warlock was of no use to me now. He couldn’t be distracted from the complicated spell he had committed himself to, and I needed to protect him no matter what.

Pulling the gun from the holster at the small of my back, I turned slowly around, holding the weapon before me with both hands as I scanned the area. I didn’t see or hear anything yet. A second shot was fired, the bullet pinging off a stone behind me.

My stomach lurched and I spun around in time to see a naturi running toward me with a short sword raised above his head. I squeezed off three rounds before I finally managed to lodge a bullet in his chest. The naturi jerked at the impact before stumbling over some broken rocks, sending him to his hands and knees. With a loud clatter, the sword hit the ground while the naturi softly groaned.

A smile drifted across my lips, and then I was unexpectedly knocked to my knees. My arms fell and the gun almost slipped from my numb fingers. Nothing had hit me. From my back came a tugging sensation, as if something within me had been snagged or caught. My vision blurred and fatigue weighed on my shoulders.

Ryan had succeeded in tapping into my energy. I doubted that most humans would have even detected it, maybe only paused and yawned at the sudden wave of fatigue and then gone on with their day. However, my existence was pure soul energy, I could no longer generate my own, which was why I had to feed on the blood of others. If Ryan didn’t release me soon, I would need to either feed or sleep. Not an option at the moment. As much as I wanted to drain the moaning naturi dry, their blood was poisonous to all nightwalkers.

A scrape of stone and a new voice jerked my attention back from my own fatigue. A second naturi knelt next to the one I had shot only seconds ago. With her right hand, she was helping him to sit up, while still holding a sword in her left.

I pushed to my feet at the same time she rose to hers. Gritting my teeth, I prepared to attack when I saw Danaus and Penelope appear out of the shadows to my right. They had finally come to join in the fun. I realized then that the naturi were attacking from the east. They had circled around to surprise us. But that also meant they had either slipped by Hugo undetected or silently killed the nightwalker before reaching the palace. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go looking for him until the naturi were taken care of.

Turning back to Ryan, I found the warlock standing where I’d left him. His hands were stretched above his head, reaching toward the heavens he sought to control. His lips were moving quickly but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying. The wind had picked up, dropping the temperature in the area several degrees. Overhead, dark thick clouds churned in the formerly clear sky, blotting out the stars. A massive storm was forming.

The weight on my shoulders suddenly lifted and the fatigue slipped away like a wave pulling back out to sea. Ryan had released my energy and started to use the earth energy that was rising up from beneath our feet. The warlock grunted, drawing my gaze back to him. Lines of strain deepened in his face. Above him, his long fingers trembled. I wanted to ask him if he was okay but knew better than to distract him. Regardless of what his answer would have been, there was no turning back now.

A whisper of cloth, a prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck—they were my only warning. Turning on my left heel, I spun around, raising the gun in both hands at the same time. I unloaded four shots in the naturi before he finally fell to the ground dead. Clenching my teeth, I hurried over and picked up the short sword he’d dropped.

Standing over the dead naturi, I took an extra moment to cut off its head. No reason to take silly chances. I wasn’t a very good shot with a gun. Strangely, this naturi had been from the earth clan. From my experience, they weren’t melee fighters. That was left to members of the animal clan. The earth clan preferred to use magic, letting the earth and plants do the fighting for them.

The naturi weren’t using magic. Was it for fear of tapping into the earth magic that permeated the area? A smile lifted my lips as I turned back around to where Danaus and Penelope were battling four naturi. My guess could prove to be right.

Large drops of ice cold rain started to fall from the sky, landing on my head like small pebbles and instantly soaking into my T-shirt. A flash of lightning forked through the sky, darting from one black mass to the next before being followed by a loud bang of thunder. The storm was still building.

The wind gusted, blowing my hair in front of my face, momentarily blinding me. I pushed it back in time to see another earth naturi running toward Ryan and me, sword raised. Returning the gun to the holster at my back, I beat the creature back with the short sword in my right hand. I didn’t think the worsening weather would help my aim, and I needed to save the last few bullets I had for an emergency.

It was a struggle to fight back the naturi as the storm continued to build. The wind roared while the rain fell in relentless sheets, blinding us. Lightning lashed at the sky, lighting up the area like a strobe light in a smoky nightclub. After finally dispatching my opponent by plunging my sword through his heart, I turned back to Ryan, pressing my left hand to my left thigh in an effort to stem the bleeding. The naturi had gotten in a lucky strike before I killed him. The pain was only a dull throbbing in the back of my mind.

The rain was coming down so hard I could no longer see Danaus and Penelope. All sounds of the battle had been drowned out by the rain and thunder. I couldn’t see Ryan either. He had been only a few feet behind me. I took a few frantic steps forward, sucking in a lungful of air to shout his name when I nearly tripped over his foot. The warlock was seated on the ground, his arms resting on his bent knees before him.

Kneeling before him, I grabbed his slumped shoulder. Ryan jumped, his head snapping up. The tension instantly eased from his shoulder when he realized it was me. “It’s done,” he announced, wiping some of the water from his eyes. His clothes were plastered to his lean frame and he was trembling, either from the cold or exhaustion.

I glanced up at the sky. The storm was still building around us. The lightning that had been content to jump from cloud to cloud was now slamming to the earth with increasing frequency. A couple of trees had already exploded in a shower of sparks and wooden shards as they were struck.

“What do you mean it’s done?” I shouted over the pounding rain. Water blurred my vision and dripped off the end of my nose. If I still breathed, I would have been afraid of drowning. “The storm is getting worse.”

“The storm is getting its energy from this spot. It will continue to build until the energy runs out,” Ryan shouted back.

I instantly released him and nearly lost my balance, as if the world had shifted beneath me. The storm was drawing its power from the well of the earth. It wouldn’t run dry. “Are you insane?” I screamed. “You have to stop it!” If this storm left Crete, it would sweep up through the Aegean Sea, crushing one island after another before slamming into the mainland. Thousands of people were going to be killed.

He stared at me, his mouth soundlessly opening and closing a couple of times. “I can’t,” he finally said when he could use his voice again. “I released this spell. I can’t call it back or control it.”

“Are you insane?” I repeated. It was all I could think to say. Terror had locked up my thoughts.

“You said you wanted to use up the energy,” he shouted angrily back at me.