A Wicked Night (Creatures of Darkness 2): A Coraline Conwell Novel (31 page)

Anger reared a ferocious head. She reached inside herself, digging to the center of her being, to the pool of power she knew was there. She delved to the very pit as she resumed Sadira’s incantation with the full weight of fury in her tone.

Magic requires control.

Right now, rage blitz with anger and fury, indignation and outrage, revenge and resentment. There was an upheaval inside her riotous brain, making her feel slightly high and wholly
out
of control, and yet, at the same time, laser-focused.

Under her, the snow began to melt in a slow ripple till the frozen ground became visible. Then, like an ink stain, the earth corroded, blackened, spreading outward. Farther and farther. Crawling toward her doomed captors.

The two men stared at the darkening halo, then shared an incredulous look. The one closest to her, the man who had murdered an innocent father and mother and would likely do the same, or worse, to two helpless children, cursed. Eyes widening, he took a tentative step back.

Still chanting, her voice almost unrecognizable to her own ears, she rose to her knees and then pushed to stand, bracing her legs. A gale stirred up snow, whirlwinding around her and whipping through her hair.

The dogs lowered their heads and whimpered, turning in the next instant to dash away.

Behind her, the rope around her wrists began to dry and turn brittle. She could practically envision the fibers unraveling and flaking to dust.

The man with the straight nose turned nearly white as he stood frozen, staring at her as though she were some unimaginable creature.

She wondered if he saw his death reflecting in her eyes.

It would be the last thing he saw.

Bray, whose ropes were also withering like hers, flexed his considerable muscles, tearing free as though he’d been held not by thick cords but by flimsy lace.

Both men turned to him now, apparently deciding he was the more urgent threat.

The man with the crooked nose reached into his pack for, she assumed, the tranquilizers.

Bray got to him first, wrenching his head to the side by a fist full of hair and gouging his jugular with diamond-sharp fangs.

Before the other man could raise his gun to Bray’s head, Cora’s ropes fell away. She launched herself at him as though she sported deadly claws. She slashed at his face as they both tumbled to the ground from her momentum.

The man’s head ricocheted off a protruding rock, stunning him.

Mindlessly, she trenched her fingers in his hair, pulled his head up, and then slammed it back down against that same rock.

“Why did you have to kill them!” she screamed, repeating the action. And then again. “Why?” she demanded, though there was no chance of the man replying, not while his skull was repeatedly bashed, over and over, till blood stained the stone, the snow, her hands.

And yet she couldn’t stop. She kept ramming his skull, disfiguring it, uncaring that bits of brain were now splattering in all directions. She barely heard her own war cries as she worked the man’s mangled cranium. She only heard her mother’s scream, tormenting her as the ceiling crumbled down atop them. A family destroyed in a matter of seconds.

A familiar, cooing voice penetrated her rage-drunk brain. “Angel…it’s over.”

She slowed her wild slaughter and huffed in some much needed air. “Why did they have to die?” she murmured, quivering. Her vision blurred.

She registered a cold wind over her face, icing the rivulets that ran down her cheeks. The swashes of gore covering her front drew her attention next. Then the clumps of hair tangled in her fingers alongside blood and… “Oh goddess. Get it off me!”

She frantically wiped pieces of the man away, managing only to smear more blood over her arms.

Panic and disgust welled, ruthlessly crashing over her consciousness. She couldn’t get enough air.

Diving for a patch of white snow, she rubbed frozen flakes over her skin, besmirching the snow but not fully removing the red stains that marked her.

Just then, the sun breached the horizon, highlighting the carnage. Bile rose in her throat, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it down. She heaved the contents of her stomach onto the now pink mound of snow. Luckily, there wasn’t much to evacuate.

“Come,” Bray said, scooping her up. “Let me help.”

“Wait. I might puke on you.” Her body shook beyond control.

He dismissed her protest with a resolute, “I’ll live,” then carried her into the cabin and closed the door against the sun.

The crackle of a roaring fire in a small hearth caught her eye. A half burned stick that leaned against the red-brick frame had been turned into a makeshift poker. She imagined the bearded man using it to stoke the flames just moments before his demise.

“The children?” she asked in a frail voice.

“They appear to be hiding.” He gestured with his head toward a large, dusty hope chest that took up one corner of the room. A bare table had been shoved against the wall next to it as though the chest had been utilized as a two-seater chair.

No doubt Bray could hear the children cowering from within. She pictured them clutching each other in abject fright and her heart split with a maternal need to comfort them and the selfish desire run far from here. To spare her the torment of reliving the parallels of her own past in the mirror of their youthful eyes.

Of course, the former won out. But in her current state, she’d only terrify them further.

Bray seemed to read her thoughts. “They’ll be fine where they are for few minutes.” He set her on shaky legs and tenderly cupped her cheek, checking her wound courtesy of the man’s backhand.

Satisfied that the wound wasn’t serious, he examined the rest of her. There were no other severe cuts, just a few bruises and scrapes.

All the same, he said, “You should take some of my blood.”

She shook her head, swallowing a gag at the thought of more blood. Her life seemed to be filled with the stuff. And she was damn sick of it.

Bray relented with a nod.

“Look there.” He pointed behind her. “A basin of water.”

Cora swept her gaze to the small, metal tub that matched the one on the porch. This one was filled with soapy water and bunches of partially submerged fabric that apparently someone had been in the middle of washing.

A few feet away, a pot filled with what looked to be vegetables boiled on an old stove; a stew by the looks of it. The smell was horrendous, but that was probably because she still had the acidy tang of bile in her throat and her stomach wasn’t finished flipping over on itself.

She steeled herself against the devastating thought that only five minutes ago this family had been peaceably going about their daily lives, and now...

She gulped and plunged her bloodied, shaking hands into the soapy water. Red leaked out in ebbing swirls.

It hit her fully now. She had just taken a life with such unrestrained, brutal savagery. Not with her undisciplined magic that lent a measure of absolution, but with pure, rabid hate and vicious bloodlust.

With her bare hands.

“I’ll see if I can find you a change of clothing.” Bray disappeared into the other room. Cora instantly felt alone and vulnerable—and somewhat frightened of her own thoughts.

She worried at the dark, wild, primitive part of her that had reveled in snuffing out that man’s life. Thrilled at seeing his brain matter fanning in all directions from the force of each merciless blow. And hungered for more.

She splashed cold water over her face, then caught a fist full of submerged fabric and used it like a rag, scrubbing the blood from her skin. After a while, her motions became robotic. Adrenaline leaked away, sapping her energy. She stared aimlessly at the wall, not really seeing, and told herself that she’d had no choice. There had been no other option.
I chose us
.

It was a defense that no jury would dispute—the man had needed to die—but that didn’t ease the weight that had settled heavily in her heart.

Bray reappeared, a couple of polyester frocks draped over his arm. He laid them out next to her, then yanked the front door open and disappeared outside.

Alarmed, she scurried to call after him but swallowed her words as he began carting away the bodies on the porch, like sacks of potatoes. Though his handling of the corpses seemed callous to her—she had to assume being a vampire, he was desensitized to this sort of scenario—but at the same time she admired the logic in his actions. The last thing the children needed was to emerge from their hiding spot to the lingering sight of their dead parents.

Cora’s throat worked overtime to drive her bubbling emotions back down. She could come apart later.

The fact that Bray had hastened himself back out into the day was distressing, but he could get the job done quickly enough without the sun draining him too much. Besides, she didn’t have it in her to lay eyes on the straight nosed man’s mangled carcass again, even to spare a couple of children the continued horror.

Stripping out of her soiled clothing, she balled them up, and tossed them in the fire. They flamed up as though frosted by gasoline. She was captivated for a moment at the resulting blue flames.

Then she turned to examine the clothing options Bray had laid out for her. The first frock she picked up looked as though it was made for a woman three times her size and would in no way stay put if the need to run arose. Definitely couldn’t have been made for the wife, who had been fairly thin herself. Probably a second-hand item.

The other frock was still too large but tied in the back, making for a better fit. It was a muted, plain fabric, not quite tan and not quite gray but somewhere in between. The hem was trimmed by a flourish of colorful, nondescript flowers that crawled half way up the skirt. All in all, better than some of the castoffs she’d accumulated in her youth.

These people might have been poor, but clearly they’d made the best of their situation. As she glanced around the family’s meager belongings, everything took on a hominess that had previously gone unnoticed. A solid roof over their heads, a warm fire to snuggle by, a bounty of simmering food to fill their bellies. To a young Coraline, all of this would have been extravagant.

Bray reentered the cabin carrying their captor’s belongings. Where the bodies resided now, she really didn’t want to know.

He dumped the satchel’s contents out on the floor to rifle through. There were two to firearms, one of them specifically for tranquilizer darts, a bundle of rope, some energy bars, three bottles of water, two lighters, and…

“Is that a phone,” Cora breathed.

“A sat phone, in fact,” Bray replied coolly. “Let’s hope it’s charged.” However, he grabbed for the pistol first, checking the magazine.

Full.

He snapped the cartridge back into the holster, double checked that the safety was on, and set it aside. Next he disarmed the tranq gun and, with an impressive display of swift movements, disassembled the gun into small, unthreatening pieces.

Finally he claimed the phone, switched it on, dialed a number, and then rested the receiver against his ear.

“Who are you calling?” she asked, ecstatic that the phone appeared to be in working order. Perchance did he have Mason’s number memorized?

Bray raised his forefinger at her and then greeted, “Trent. It’s Brayden.”

Her reverie fizzled.

There seemed to be a long pause on the other end of the line. Cora moved in closer, hoping to catch Trent’s reaction.

“Is this a fucking joke? Rolo? If this is you I’m going to castrate you, I swear to Christ.”

“No joke,” Bray replied, deadpanned. Then he swiftly relayed a shorthand account of his capture five years earlier, subsequent imprisonment, and finally his and Cora’s escape.

Again there was silence before, “You don’t mean Coraline? Coraline Conwell?”

Bray’s forest-green eyes snapped to her in apparent shock as he mouthed
Conwell?

She shrugged, confused by the sudden worry in Bray’s expression.

“I do,” he confirmed into the receiver.

“Is she with you now?” Trent asked.

“Yes, she’s here.”

“Put her on the phone.”

Cora shook her head at Bray, for some reason not wanting to speak with Trent. Why was she suddenly so nervous? Oh, right, because, yet again, she had unintentionally bonded another of his clan. Would Trent accept that it was an astronomical coincidence?

Bray noted her apprehension. “You can speak with her later. We don’t have a lot of time. We’re being hunted. I need you to trace this phone and triangulate our location before the battery on this phone runs out. Tell me you still have that old, refurbished helicopter.”

“Yeah, I’ve still got it. It’s a piece of shit, but it’ll run.” As if he’d covered his receiver, Cora heard Trent’s muffled voice calling to a couple individuals.

Then it seemed as though he handed his phone to someone else because a different voice barked out, “Bray, man, damn good to hear from you. Where the fuck’ve you been hiding?”

“Osborne, you prick. Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of seasoned tracker?”