River Cast: Part Two in the Tale of Lunarmorte (26 page)

He blinked, seeming
surprised by her tone. “I just wanted to say good luck, and please
don’t do anything stupid.”

This concern, this
tenderness, created an urge to scratch her claws across his face
and spit and growl and snarl until she was hoarse with it. She
didn’t want to see that he worried for her. She didn’t need the
confusion it brought with it. She twisted her mouth in derision and
jerked away from his grasp. “Why don’t you save the concern for
Rose. I can handle myself.”

Dark uncertainty fell over
his features. “Caia wh-”

She didn’t stay to hear
the end of that question. Instead she almost ran for the portal,
knowing he wouldn’t be able to plague her with his questions once
they were through. A rush of pressurised air blasted her hair back,
almost as if she was on a rollercoaster... on a rollercoaster in a
very, very dark place. A feeling likened to sea sickness engulfed
her and she knew she was through the portal. Hesitantly, she opened
her eyes, taking in the sight of Remnant forest, which even with
her lykan vision seemed to swallow them in its alien blackness.
Because of her awareness of them, she could feel the energy of the
amassed Midnights beckoning from the north like tendrils of hair
blowing in the wind. It was strange to now equate the usually
familiar and welcoming smell of a damp wood with this adrenaline
charged anxiety.

Ducking down to the
ground, Caia took in their position. Unit Two were already making
their way through the woods towards the perimeter guards. She
turned to Marion who was huddled behind a fallen tree in which the
growth covering it created a wall of defence.

Lucien was the last to
come through the portal and he snapped down to the ground behind
the tree so quickly she heard Anders laughing whispers, urging him
once more to join his unit at the Centre. Marion shushed them and
turned to Caia. Her eyes closed and she called on the trace to do
its job. She was able to hold on to the five spies’ energy in
synch, each like a different window on one screen of a computer.
The first members of the MacLachlans left their house, followed
closely by the three other families on that street. As their cars
pulled away, the Midnight watching sent a text message to Du Bois.
She almost smiled smugly at that; their outfit wasn’t quite as
swanky as their own.

Remembering what all this
meant, her amusement quickly faded and she pressed the ear piece.
“Team Three, you’re safe to proceed.”

“
Roger.”

Wow, that was loud in her
ear.

Anders and Phoebe were
grinning in anticipation of the fight.

Within a few minutes each
Midnight spy had completed their task and Caia had sent in all of
Unit One, each asserting within minutes of her order that the
Midnight was dead. After watching the first magik being chewed from
the inside out, after the reminder of her own fight with a daemon
not too long ago, Caia had been blasted with an empathy a soldier
couldn’t really afford. The surprise and shock, the undiluted fear,
the panic, the horrendous pain, and the awful realisation of
approaching death clawed at her throat. She knew they were magiks
bent on doing a despicable thing, but it didn’t make it any easier
to watch them die. She’d pulled out of the trace and hadn’t watched
whilst the other Midnights were killed. At the confirmation of
their deaths, Unit Three exhaled a unanimous breath of relief and
triumph.

“
Unit Two,”
Caia whispered over the comms, “Proceed to the guards.”

“
Roger.”

The sounds of all those
voices whispering down their comms made them flinch and she hoped
to Artemis that it hadn’t distracted Unit Two. She felt her unit
gazing at her as she observed through the trace. It was done so
smoothly, so perfectly executed. The magik distracted the Midnight
momentarily, whilst the vampyre, without a whisper of clothing or
intake of breath, surreptitiously slipped up behind the Midnight,
clamped a hand over their mouth to occlude any warning shouts, and
slit the guard’s throat. It was gruesome and underhanded, and Caia
couldn’t help feeling more pangs of disgust that this was even
necessary. Feeling their stares on her burning cheeks, Caia ignored
her own regrets, and gave them a brittle nod at the exact moment
the teams began confirming the guards dead over the
comms.

Now it was their
turn.

Mordecai, Michael and
Marion were to wait as the lykans changed into wolf form. Whilst
they stripped to nothing and began the change, Caia was already
there. With her magik she could transform within seconds to wolf
without having to strip, and using glamour she could transform back
fully clothed. She waited, however, as the others did, until
Lucien, Anders and the women were done.

They took off
simultaneously.

Caia was heading for her
magik, an older female fire magik. At her speed she came upon the
woman who was hiding with her back to her behind a large tree. She
turned a few degrees at the last second as she heard the cracking
of bracken, but it was too late; Caia was already clambering up her
back and taking her slender neck in her jaws.

As the warm blood pulsed
into her mouth, Caia pushed away the fresh memory of this woman’s
vertebrae snapping under the clamp of her strong jaws, the feel of
her warm flesh piercing under her claws like the skin of a peach
bursting. In fact, it was easier to forget reality altogether as
she waited for the magik’s heart to stop.

It did. And what seemed
like hours had merely been seconds.

Caia backed up off the
falling body and searched the other Midnights. Lucien must have
gotten to his magik almost at the same time and had killed him, but
not before the magik had let out a roar. The others were now aware
they weren’t alone.

Luckily, Anders had taken
his magik unawares and was just now finishing him off in the exact
manner Caia and Lucien had theirs.

Phoebe was in the middle
of a physical fight with her warlock, an air magik who was just now
attempting to suffocate her; she struggled violently against his
power and proved herself determined to win the fight as she
viciously bit down on his privates in order to loosen his grip.
Caia winced at the excruciating pain that ripped through his entire
being, and reminded herself never to get into a fight with Phoebe;
the Hunter fought dirty. At his weeping the magik finally let go
long enough for Phoebe to go in for the kill. Caia turned away as
his heart stopped.

Rose didn’t appear to be
getting anywhere near her magik. He had put up a shield around
himself almost immediately at the sound of his comrade’s roar, and
now Rose kept bouncing off of it uselessly. Caia wished she had her
comms so she could tell her to conserve her energy, to wait for him
to let go of the spell holding her off.

Michael was in an intense
fight with his fire magik, but he was managing to dodge the hits
from the Midnight and had even shot the bastard in the
arm.

At the same time, Marion
was struggling with a female earth magik; she couldn’t get a hit in
- the woman just kept dousing it with earth and creating weapons
out of rock. Poor Marion was covered in lacerations and
bruises.

Caia continued
sifting.

Du Bois.

Through his eyes she saw
him empty water from Mordecai’s dead body. He had suffocated the
magik; had enjoyed every moment of taking down ‘the inept boy’ as
if he were any older or wiser than his adversary. Hatred for him
and regret and fury over Mordecai’s demise flooded her, urging her
body into motion and propelling her through the forest towards the
Midnight responsible. Still tracing him, she saw Anders tear around
the corner and confront Du Bois, his jaw dripping with gore, his
huge wolf body an impressive sight. She thought she would feel fear
in Du Bois. Instead, as previously shielded thoughts poured out of
him in his excitement, the fear belonged to her.

No!

It wasn’t possible. How
could he have hidden this so successfully from her?

She burst into view behind
him, in time to see for herself the contents of a vial he had
produced bursting open into liquid gold, streaming through the air,
actuated by Pierre’s water magik. The horror of what that liquid
meant unfolded before her as each drop brought about Anders
transformation back into human form. He lay there, naked and
confused, as he gazed at his human hands curled into the dirt
ground of the forest floor. His eyes flashed up in panic, just in
time to see the water rush at him and force its way into his mouth,
flooding his lungs and drowning the life from his body.

And Caia hadn’t been able
to stop it. Instead her trace had automatically taken her to the
magik Rose was fighting off, and he was in the process of doing the
same thing. Lucien pounded into view and battered at the shield as
the magik transformed Rose back.

Crippling panic would not
do.

Caia concentrated and
changed back into human form, a shield automatically up and around
her in order to confront Du Bois.

He gazed, dumbstruck.
“That’s some trick.”

She glanced by him to
Anders lifeless body. Two of them were dead.

She narrowed her eyes in
loathing at this man who had created this devastation. “I was going
to say the same thing.”

Du Bois grinned
unapologetically. “Just a little something I picked up.”

Caia nodded,
filching through his mind with the trace. “You and your lover –
Thierry – the Midnight who is at this second inflicting burns on a
female lykan whilst my Alpha watches on helplessly… you did this
together. You hired humans to experiment on kidnapped lykans. They
came up with that concoction to transform them back to human so
that you could hurt them. You killed the human scientists. I marvel
at how well you hid it from Ethan. But then Ethan barely knew you
were alive. When he disappeared it was
the
opportunity. But I’ve been
watching you carefully, for weeks. How clever of you and Thierry to
keep those thoughts so tightly locked. And me... I didn’t know to
look, to kick down the door...”

Pierre had paled
considerably, he fisted a hand that seemed desperate to tremble.
“How do you know all that? Who are you?”

“
The same way
I knew where you all were this evening.” She felt her skin begin to
tighten as the trace told her the fighting was getting more
intense, the Midnights were triumphant, informing her that Michael
and Marion’s wounds were getting worse, that Rose was bleeding out.
Thierry was going to use the liquid on Lucien to change him too, to
kill him. “Your spies outside of the MacLachlan’s homes are dead.
Your guards are dead. Three of you here have been taken
out.”

A tube of water shot
towards her with the force of a speeding train but she blasted it
back with a flick of her wrist and it lost its form, de-solidifying
and splashing on to the bed of the forest before it even touched
her skin. Thierry was laughing as Lucien transformed; he was sure
Rose was dying and he was just about to set Lucien on fire. Feeling
the white heat, so familiar now, building through her body, she
grabbed a hold of it, determined to control this force that was so
powerful. Focusing her mind on Du Bois and the other Midnights’
locations, Caia pulled on the white heat and the energy she
utilised to wield her water element, and tied them together in her
mind’s eye.

And with that, she let it
out of her body.

The energy
constructed itself into cocoons of water, morphing its shape at her
demand. She looked on as it wrapped around Du Bois’ head and chest,
insisting it to do the same to the other Midnights, simultaneously.
As Pierre began to fight it, Caia squeezed the cocoon and waited as
the blood vessels in his eyes popped, his face turning purple with
asphyxiation. It was the same for the others, and it seemed to take
forever to draw to a conclusion. Holding tight to the four
Midnights was taking its toll, the muscles in her body burning in
agony, her own eyes streaming with water. All the while, she
couldn’t stop thinking how she was
actually
killing people, actually
making them cease to exist. The water streaming from her eyes
turned salty with tears. But she held on, maintaining the cocoons,
until one by one the Midnights disappeared from her trace… and Du
Bois’ heartbeat slowed to a falter, puttered and then
stopped.

Caia let go and a sob
burst out of her mouth. The deaths, the killing of this evening,
pressed on her chest, crushing in their overwhelming weight. If
only she had looked into Du Bois’ trace more carefully; if she had
crept into his mind like she had done with Ethan and broken down
his defences perhaps Anders would be alive, maybe even those humans
Du Bois had killed. The guilt weighed on her, begging for
relief.

Thankfully, like a prayer
being answered, her mind began to darken, and the last thing she
saw was the ground rushing towards her.

***

Nikolai trembled as he
dialled Kirios’ number into his cell. It rang out twice and then he
heard the strong voice of his partner.

“
So?”

Nikolai smiled wryly at
his friend’s charming manners. “My faerie returned; she watched
everything from the trees.”