Page 107 of Thunder with a Chance of Lovestruck
ChapterThirty-Six
Rachael
As Drest disappearedinto the mix, I focused on the enemy, cutting through them, drawing upon the skills I’d honed over the course of the past thirty-six years. I used every tip and trick that Robin and Arch had taught me. I dropped another robed man and glanced up to find a Van Helsing guy there. He didn’t look to be out of his thirties. I didn’t know his name, but I had seen him around town.
He flashed a wide smile. “That was hot.”
“Austin, stop flirting with Demi’s mom,” said another man, who looked a good deal like him, as was the case with all the Van Helsings.
Austin stared me up and down slowly, punching a monster in the throat without looking at it. “You’re old enough to be Demi’s mom? No way.”
I snorted and spun, hacking a monster to the point that it was basically a torso.
Austin was still staring at me when I finished. “Wow.”
The other Van Helsing grabbed him by the scruff of his collar and yanked him off into the fight, glancing back at me while he did. “Sorry about him, ma’am. He’s harmless, I swear.”
“Come on, Elis, you have to admit, that was hot as hell to watch,” said Austin as he disappeared into the mass of people.
Purple slashed through the sky at an increased rate, lighting up the entire area. My attention was pulled to the biggest concentration of it. I shoved monsters away from me as I pushed through the masses, unwilling to believe what I was seeing.
Demi was standing in the center of what looked to be a plasma ball of energy. It was domed over her while she held her arms out, appearing strained, struggling against something I couldn’t see as lightning struck the dome. In the domed area with her was a man with long dark hair. He was dressed in clothing that hadn’t been in style for decades. It sort of looked like he’d just been puked out of a disco or something. It took me a second to realize I’d seen him before, at the courthouse, during Nile’s trial. He’d been with Drest when I’d testified, and there when my uncle was taken into custody again after attacking me.
And standing next to the long-haired man was someone I had hoped I’d never again see in my life.
My uncle.
But what I saw didn’t make sense. Nile was eighty years old now, but he didn’t look anything close to that age. In fact, he looked even younger than he had when he was on trial. The man had managed to turn back the hands of time. He was also incredibly buff now, as if pumping iron consumed as much of his time as collecting body parts used to. He was totally bald and covered in tattooed symbols. They went up his neck and onto his head even. He wasn’t wearing glasses anymore either. As silly as it sounded, that small detail stuck out to me.
Seeing him in the flesh once again left every feeling I’d had resurfacing, making me want to retch and scream. I hated him and that only served to make me hate him more.
And now he was doing something to harm my daughter. I wasn’t going to run or yell for help. I wasn’t the same woman he’d terrorized in that courtroom all those years ago. Or the one he’d belittled and traumatized in the basement of the manor. I was the sum of all his actions. And I planned to be his reckoning. The time had come for him to pay for his crimes. I would never permit him to harm another person again.
“Demi!” shouted Robin as he pounded on the dome’s energy wall, trying but failing to break through. I knew just how powerful Robin was. What were they doing that could keep a Fae like him out?
Arch wasn’t far from the dome either. He was covered in blood from head to toe. I wasn’t sure how much, if any, was his, but he was moving slower than normal, making me wonder how injured he might be.
Bram Van Helsing, who I’d met briefly around fifteen or so years ago, was there, looking exactly like I remembered him, trying to get through the dome of power too. He wasn’t having any luck either. Considering he was a powerful master vampire, who was also a natural-born slayer—one Bram Stoker had made infamous in his loose retelling of Dracula’s story—that was a testament to just how strong the energy around my daughter was.
A robed man with a sword came at me as I rushed toward my daughter. I brought my sword up, blocking a strike from him before kicking him in the nuts. I spun and hit him with enough force that he was sliced in half.
When I went to continue toward Demi, I found a man who was tall with dark hair there. His hands were shifted, and his arms had fur on them. He was wearing a T-shirt that announced himself as a law enforcement officer. He looked from me to the two pieces of the robed man. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”
“Behind you,” I said.
He twisted around and rammed his hand through a monster’s gut, pulling an arm off it in the process.
I nodded to him as I ran past him. I was almost to Demi when Drest, Stratton, and Astria broke through the crowd.
Drest went at the dome of power and bounced off it.
Stratton tried as well. The same thing happened.
Torid even made a go at it. He didn’t get through either. He was left sitting on his backside in the grass, shaking his head, looking dazed. While he was down there, he picked up a random monster leg that was lying there and popped it in his mouth.
Drest slammed his fist against the dome. “Gil, I will end you for this! How in the hell could you help that insane prick?”
The long-haired man in the dome laughed as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard all day.
