Alliances (Guardians of White Light, #1) (22 page)

The General nodded.

“I’ve never done it to someone so
human
before. It could cause some momentary disorientation and nausea,” she warned.

“If you’re gonna do it, do it now,” Jenna said, gesturing to Orion who was already recovering and climbing to his feet.

The General approached her. She took his hands in hers and closed her eyes.

Her hands sparkled with what looked like countless diamonds. They spread to the General’s hands, snaking around his arms, his chest, his legs, until his entire body was covered. The brilliance hummed around him, hugging him tightly. The sparkling flickered for a few seconds, and then he was gone.

Alna’s eyes snapped open. “He’s there,” she reported with a relieved smile.

“Alna, we’re in a completely defensive position here,” Mathias warned.

“Mathias, if I release my magic, they’ll overrun the two of you!”

“If you don’t, Orion will kill you. He’s trying to force you to summon the blackest of magic. It will destroy you.”

“Going out in a battle is a better way to die than having the man you used to love with all your heart behead you in a dark dank alley.”

Jenna looked away uncomfortably.

“You know I wouldn’t do it like that. Give me some credit, Alna,” Mathias responded.

She reached for his cheek and stroked it gently. “I’m sorry. Your heart loves so much, despite what you are. You know you're not like the others. Have you ever wondered why? I'll give you this last gift and tell you. The white light within you is too strong for the demon to extinguish. That's why you're caught between the two worlds of vampire and human. It's why your conscience weighs so heavy on you for the things that you did when you were first turned and had no ability to control your vampiric instincts. I don’t want my death to add to that weight. I cannot let you be the one to do it, Mathias. Tonight has presented the perfect opportunity.”

“Alna, please!”

She wrapped her arms around him tightly. He stooped down to meet her and he took her in his arms. She could feel his tears against her cheek. “I need you to let me go. Please, Mathias.”

The barrier shook suddenly and he felt her body’s pain from the attack. The attack on the barrier mirrored the effect it was having on her. They were one in the same. He pulled her to him.

“Goodbye, my everything,” she breathed in his ear.

She pulled back and Mathias released her. He watched her shake as the barrier took another hefty hit. Both her hands shone with blue light.

“Jenna, please keep him away from this,” Alna said.

Jenna nodded at her sadly and pulled Mathias to her, holding him back.

“Take care of him.”

She winked at him and walked through the barrier with the ease of a ghost walking through a brick wall.

They watched as she assaulted Orion with both handfuls of magic. It blew him and a dozen or so of Immortalia’s soldiers a couple of hundred feet backwards. Such was her power.

“Ready?” Jenna asked Mathias as the barrier began to dissipate.

Thanks to Alna, the soldiers were no longer surrounding them. She’d blown half of them away from the fight. Jenna counted ten soldiers in front of them, including the idiot Arthur and the greatly misguided Tanya.

Mathias composed himself and gripped Jenna’s hand tightly. “Yeah.”

“Let’s destroy them.”

“Watch your defense,” he chided as usual.

“I know, I know, I’m mortal.”

“For now, anyway.”

Such an optimist,
she thought to herself.
We’ll see if I can get that far.

***

Inside the research facility, General Clark gripped the wall for support as he made his way across the control room towards the central computer.
Disorientating?
That’s an understatement and a half.

He could barely stand, let alone even try to attempt walking in a straight line.

But he had a mission to carry out. It was all that mattered.

He fought against every instinct permeating his body to keep moving in as straight a line as possible, toward the central computer. The mainframe. The hub. He could see the fingerprint scanner in the center of the keyboard.
Just a few feet away now.

He froze suddenly at the muffled sounds of heavy footsteps hurrying down the corridor outside.
Security guards.
He waited until the sounds faded into the distance. They weren’t coming for him.
But
if they were running they had likely been summoned to a serious situation of some sort. The General knew exactly what that situation was. Alna’s force-field dome had dissipated and a battle had ensued outside. He had to hurry to assist them!

Just a couple more feet. Come on! Move, dammit!

***

“I thought you were going to rip my throat out?” Jenna called as she watched Tanya’s back jar painfully against the trunk of an aged Oak.

Tanya shrieked at her, baring her fangs as she tried to wipe Jenna’s muddy boot print off the front of her white leather jacket.

Jenna could barely hear a thing; the sounds of thunderous magic from Alna’s battle with Orion over on the south side of the research lab were deafening. Lightning. Thunder. Explosions.

She and Mathias had already taken out most of Arthur’s soldiers. She stole a quick glance at him. He was battling two soldiers and Arthur, holding his own as only a warrior of his experience could. Jenna had been raging a battle with Tanya for the last ten minutes thanks to Mathias’ insistence that she not kill her. Something to do with a code of honor between him and her brother, Luke. Luke had to be the one to end her. Jenna had never subdued a vampire before—she had always killed. Aside from that being her job description, it was extremely difficult to just subdue a vampire. They could recover quickly from any wound because they didn’t have to worry about blood loss. It was time to hedge her bets and go with knocking Tanya out cold with some blunt force trauma to the head.

Tanya withdrew two throwing stars and hurled them, one after the other, at Jenna. She was so fast and they came in such quick succession that Jenna only managed to dodge one. The other bit into the upper left arm of her tactical jacket. Despite the protective nature of the jacket, the blade sliced into her flesh. She winced and ripped it out. In the second that took her, Tanya was upon her. She fought to force her into a choke hold, but Jenna resisted.

“He is not for you!” Tanya hissed in her ear as she struggled to maintain her grip on Jenna.

“Learn to take rejection,” Jenna shot back.

Those words incensed Tanya and she lost control, becoming wild. She shrieked as her talons clawed Jenna. She yanked at The Hunter's hair, turning into a whirlwind of unrestrained animalistic violence. Jenna’s tactical gear protected her from the worst of the onslaught. She switched to a defensive position and finally managed to grab hold of one of Tanya’s arms. Wasting no time, she forced her into an arm lock and held her steady.

“You’re barely more than human, little girl. You can’t satisfy him like a vampire can. He’ll tire of you quickly,” Tanya seethed.

Jenna responded with a powerful roundhouse kick that propelled Tanya brutally into the wall of the lab. She smacked against it with such force that she lost her balance and crashed to the ground. Before she could even attempt a recovery, Jenna was on her again. She dragged her to her feet and gripped the back of her neck, pushing her face against the cement wall.

“Here’s something you don’t know: fucking The Hunter is an infamous fantasy among powerful vampires. That’s what you are to them, girl. Nothing more. Now you’ve spread your legs, the novelty’s over. He’ll be done with you!” Tanya laughed, a vile and maniacal sound of triumph.

Jenna’s fingers dug into the back of her head, causing the laughter to be replaced by a scream.

“You know nothing,” Jenna spat.

Before she could utter any more poison, Jenna slammed her face into the concrete wall, over and over until finally the vampire lost consciousness.

Jenna released Tanya and stepped back. But any chance of being granted a mere moment to recover was shot to hell when the ground beneath her began reverberating violently.
What the hell?
She turned towards the south and froze.

Alna levitated thirty feet off the ground, her arms held out to her sides, crackling with blue magic. But it wasn’t just her hands that held the magic this time. It stretched from the heavens to the earth, with her at its center. The power was so great that it cracked the sky in half causing heavy rain and thunder to burst forth. Blue magic tore through the earth, splitting the ground like an earthquake.

“Mathias!” Jenna bellowed as she watched the crack spread towards him and Arthur.

He followed the sound of her voice and saw what she saw. He was so shocked that he dropped his guard against Arthur for a mere split-second.

He was brutally tackled to the ground.

Jenna sprinted towards him, yelling, “Roll!” The ground split beneath her feet and she vaulted over the widening gorge. Ear-splitting cracks of branches ripping from trees and the roar as they thudded to the ground assaulted her senses. Her instincts screamed at her and she looked to her right to see a towering fir tree toppling towards her. She leaped from its path with all the supernatural speed that she possessed, and the heavy tree missed her by a hair. Her heart beat ferociously with surging adrenaline. She fought against it to focus on the situation at hand and continue on forward. She watched in horror as the gorge spread to the wrestling figures of Mathias and Arthur. They sensed it before they saw it and rolled out of the path, onto the same side that she ran along.
Phew.

By the time she reached the two of them, Arthur had Mathias held in front of him, his sword at his neck. But Mathias was barely concerned with his own life as he watched Alna in the distance. His head wasn’t in the fight. Neither was his heart. For a warrior that meant only one thing: sure-fire defeat.

Jenna ripped off a four-foot branch from a fallen tree and raced towards Arthur. She stopped a foot from him, clutching the makeshift weapon tightly.

Arthur eyed her weapon. “You’ll kill us both,” he warned her.

“Release him and face your fate like a warrior.”

“We both know you won’t do it.”

Jenna's eyes narrowed with determination.

“Jenna!” Mathias protested. “Retreat! Go to Jax,” he choked, as Arthur pressed the blade into his neck, drawing blood.

“Tell him why you hesitated that night, why I was able to stab you,” Arthur ordered.

“Final warning,” Jenna said calmly.

“Fine, I’ll tell. The Hunter is tied to Silas and his blood brethren—me. How does the book put it? ‘...she is connected to Immortalia, to its leaders. She will feel the pain of their death and suffer with them as one.’ Nasty stuff, huh?”

She saw the look of alarm on Mathias’ face.
Why didn’t you tell me?
He caught her eye and she looked away uncomfortably.

“Don’t worry, when I’m done with him, I'll put you out of your misery.” He gripped Mathias’ hair and told him, “I'll drain her dry.”

Mathias struggled, but Arthur drove the blade further into his flesh.

“Get ready,” he breathed, grinning with the anticipation of murdering his father’s arch nemesis.

A sudden white-hot pain seared his heart. He lost his grip on the sword and it fell to the sodden ground. He looked down at his chest to see wood embedded in his heart. She had driven it all the way through Mathias and into him.
No! This is not the night of my death! It can’t be so! Noooooo!

“It can’t…you can’t…no…no…” he murmured as he pushed Mathias off him, ripping free from the branch that had pierced his heart.

He gripped his heart and gazed at her dumbfounded. He heard her scream, clutch her own heart and collapse to her knees.

It was the last thing he saw.

And then he was dust.

“Jenna!” Mathias choked out as he gripped the branch embedded just below his heart. He thanked the Gods that her aim was so precise. He braced himself and ripped out the offending object, growling as it tore through his flesh. The pain was so severe that he could feel his body fighting his will, needing to shut down. But he couldn’t pass out now.

Jenna’s screams of agony forced his body forward, crawling through the few feet of muddied ground to reach her where she lay, clutching at her chest.

He pulled her onto his lap.

“It hurts!” she rasped, her eyes finding his.

He ripped open her tactical jacket and pulled up her tank top.

“Let go,” he urged her as he fought with her to break her grip on her chest.

He was shocked to see that there was no wound there. His heart sank. He didn’t know what to do. A wound, he could fix. But this was something different altogether. It was internal. He couldn’t free her from the pain. He couldn’t do
anything
.