Trial by Fire
Page 48

Fire exploded around my body, and knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop me from feeling the heat.
Trapped. Escape. Survive.
Power surged, crackling through my body and rendering Archer’s interference useless. One second I was in my head, burning, and the next I was back in the real world, stalking toward Archer. He took a step backward and threw something at me—some kind of firecracker, maybe, or a mild explosive—and this time, I caught fire for real.
Fight. Kill. Survive.
My hair was burning, but I couldn’t smell it. My eyes watered, and like a rubber band, the hold I had on my Resilience snapped.
At some point, I must have stopped, dropped, and rolled, must have extinguished the flame and disarmed Archer, but the only motion I was aware of was my fist plunging into his face, my body pinning his to the ground.
Fight.
I pressed my left forearm to his throat, cutting off his air supply. My skin was already beginning to blister from his assault, and the only thing that kept me from snapping his neck was a single sentence, issued from somewhere behind me.
“Let the boy go, Bryn.” I heard Jed’s voice, and it pulled me back, away from that lovely red haze in which I could fight, fight, fight without thinking, without hurting, without feeling anything at all.
Ignoring Jed, I dug my arm farther into Archer’s throat, feeling his trachea give, and the older Resilient responded by wedging a shotgun against the back of my head. “I said to let the boy go.”
Jed didn’t shoot me.
Mistake.
In a single motion I caught the barrel of the gun with my leg and knocked it back into the older man’s chin. He stumbled, and I whipped the gun around, caught it in my right hand, and rammed the butt into Archer’s face, hard enough to knock him unconscious.
Jed shook his head, smiled through the blood. The sense of panic—and the fight-or-flight mode that went with it—left me the moment I let my eyes meet his. There was no threat there.
None.
“That boy isn’t your enemy,” Jed said. “Not really. Easy thing to lose sight of when you flash out.”
“That boy,” I said tersely, “set me on fire.”
“You flashed out too early,” Jed grunted, ignoring my complaint entirely. “Fight isn’t over yet. You’re going to have to go again, and sooner or later, the back-and-forth will start to wear on you.”
I didn’t have time for Resilience 101—not with my pack out there fighting for their lives. The smell of blood was thick in the air. The sound of teeth, of claws, of screams and howls was deafening.
“Caroline has to be in position by now,” I said. Before Jed could reply, my words proved prophetic, and I felt—rather than saw—Chase take a bullet in the side.
My Chase.
White-hot pain. Silver in the blood. Hurts.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Jed told me. Another shot sounded, another howl of pain. I felt it as if it were my own, wished it was.
Don’t be dead, I thought, desperately trying to make the words an order. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
“Explosives,” I said out loud, my voice hoarse. “Very close to where I’m betting Caroline set up her little sniper’s nest. If you can take her out of commission without hurting her, do it, because otherwise, we will.”
For the first time, I had the experience of watching another human flash out. The look that came over the old man’s face was completely animal: more than fury, more than need, more than the basest instinct I’d ever seen in a Were.
Whether he’d get to Caroline before the explosives detonated, I didn’t know. With the smell of blood in the air and the feel of someone else’s pain shooting through my body, I didn’t care.
I had to get to them—to Chase, to the others. They were my pack. They were mine, and they were hurting.
Bleeding.
Dying.
“You really shouldn’t wrinkle your forehead like that, Bryn. It’s horribly unattractive.”
I turned at the unsolicited advice, and there Valerie was, five feet away from me, completely unperturbed that I was the one holding a gun.
“Your little friends are certainly keeping us busy, aren’t they?” Valerie said, casting her glance down at the battlefield below. A nagging sense of fear turned my stomach to stone, and I felt a sliver of ice sliding down the nape of my neck. I knew not to take my eyes off the woman in front of me, but I couldn’t keep dread from forcing my gaze to the right, where what was left of my pack was facing off against the rest of the coven.
Wolf teeth met silver-plated knives held midair by a woman who blended in to the background like her entire body was painted in camouflage. Maddy, Lucas, and Sage were caught mid-Shift, bones frozen in the process of breaking, muzzles protruding from otherwise human faces. Lake was bleeding from her eyes and nose, Mitch was on his knees, and between them, the girls I’d seen at the breakfast table were moving their lips, saying something I couldn’t hear, causing the others to writhe in pain.
“I promised not to kill the girls,” Valerie said thoughtfully, “but I think my partner in crime will understand if we lose just one.”
Maddy lunged, snapping her half-human muzzle at the old woman with the knack for influencing animals. She didn’t see the snakes rushing down from the forest, didn’t see the one close enough to strike.
I saw it, though—saw it and felt everything Valerie wanted me to feel as fangs struck at Maddy’s body, only to be intercepted at the last minute in a blur of darkness and fur.
Chase. Bleeding. Hurting. He stumbled, turned, cut the snake down the middle with his jaws even as its head clung to his hind leg.
I stopped breathing.
Hurts. Hurts, Bryn. Maddy? Okay?
Chase’s thoughts were a mess, as uncensored and jumbled as Lily’s. I wanted to go to him, but I couldn’t move, and all I could see was Chase beside me, Chase standing guard, Chase shielding Maddy’s body with his own.
Maddy? Okay? Bryn?
Chase’s voice was weaker in my mind now, and that was enough to tell me just how badly he was hurt. I could feel the burn of silver, the venom in his bloodstream.
Bryn … Protect … Mine …
I let down my walls, let him in. He filled me up, the way he and Devon and Lake had before, but this time, it was just the two of us. Chase and Bryn. Bryn and Chase.
Bryn. Protect Maddy.
For you.
I hadn’t realized how far into my head Valerie had managed to get until Chase was there, too. His presence pushed against hers, and my body finally recognized the invasion for what it was.
She was attacking me from the inside out. She was violating me. She was hurting the people I loved.
Red, red, red …
Everywhere, there was red.
On some level, I knew that my own body was injured, knew that once I flashed out, there would be nothing to keep me from pushing too hard, too far.
It didn’t matter. I could feel Chase lying on his side, bleeding, as his voice got softer and softer in my mind.
Red, red, everywhere, there was red.
Chase had saved Maddy. For me. He was going to survive this. He had to. We had to. With everything I had, I shoved Valerie out of my head. She blinked like I’d thrown something at her and stumbled backward.
“No bother,” Valerie said, her hair falling into her face as she recovered. “You’re a curious little thing, but I don’t need to be in your head to win this fight—or any other. I’ve already got so many little soldiers. Can you feel how much they hate you? How much they want to see your people bleed? It’s a delicate mixture—fear and loathing, the kind of curiosity they’re ashamed of, sorrow and fury—rising, rising, until they can’t stand it anymore.”
“Hello, Mother.” I didn’t know whether to take Caroline’s appearance at our side as a good sign or a bad one. At least if she was here, she couldn’t be targeting the rest of the pack.
At least if she was here, everyone else was safe—from her.
“Hello, Caroline.” Valerie sounded mildly pleased at her daughter’s arrival—no more, no less.
I looked at Caroline’s cherubic face, took in her doll-like features and the color of her eyes.