“Tripp, come in,” I said into my comm. “Anyone.”
I needed someone to take Orion so I could fight freely without hurting him or throwing him in harm’s way.
“Go,” Tripp said, breathing heavily.
“Finally. Thank fuck. Where are you?” I rubbed Orion’s back to keep him calm and hopefully to slow my racing pulse.
“Near the road on the backside of the farm. I just severed the head of a brute of a vampire,” he replied. “Get the fuck out of there. Kendra just called. Maeve is on her way from the gala. I would rather not deal with that powerful witch.”
Me either.“Roman has Layla and Luna.”
“Fuuuck!” he shouted in my ear. “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything until I get there. Where’s Ben and Kraft?”
Oh fuck.
“I don’t know. Ben was in the loft, but the barn is on its last leg. And Kraft followed me around to the front of the house earlier. That was the last time I saw him.”
Maeve had cast a spell on the entrances to the doorways of the house to ward off vampires, so I hadn’t been able to enter. Layla had fixed that problem with her banshee scream—a weapon of sorts that had broken down the magical barriers Maeve had erected.
“Ben should be fine,” I replied. My SEAL brother was half vampire and half human. If he was under the rubble, he would survive, as would Kraft.
“Do you have Orion?” Tripp asked into my comm.
“Yes. I need to get him somewhere safe so I can fight.”
Someone swore and growled nearby.
I jerked to my left and stepped out from the shadows with my gun trained on the rubble.
A tall familiar figure emerged covered in dirt and dust. “Motherfucker,” Ben said, throwing wood planks off himself. He raised his arms, the whites of his reddish-brown eyes standing out in the dark of night. “It’s me, Sam.” He climbed over piles of splintered wood planks, blood dribbling down from his temple only to coagulate as it stopped, thanks in part to his half-vampire side.
“I found Ben,” I said to Tripp in my earpiece.
A beam of orange light lit up the darkness behind Ben.
Suddenly, he was grabbing his head, wincing and swearing once again. “What’s happening to me?” He stumbled, spun around, and whipped out his gun, pointing it at the young, brown-haired woman. “She’s doing something to my head. It feels like she’s crushing my skull.”
Her palms pointed toward the star-laden sky, and her orange eyes were twin spotlights shining in our direction.
I, too, trained my weapon on her. But she didn’t seem fazed at all about the fact that she was about to die.
“Is this what a witch looks like when using their powers?” Ben asked in a pained voice. “Eyes filled with fire?”
The woman stood about ten feet from us, her arms stretched out as she mumbled foreign words I couldn’t understand.
Orion started crying.
I realized whatever she was doing was probably hurting Orion. He was wrapped in a bulletproof blanket, but that wouldn’t protect him from witchcraft. On the other hand, I wasn’t affected, since I was wearing an infinity protection bracelet to ward off any spells cast by a witch.
“Sam, go,” Ben said. “Get Orion out of here. I got this.”
We had no clue how to fight a witch, and while I would normally have his back, I needed to reach Layla before Roman and his men hauled her away. I was about to take off when the witch extended her arm in my direction.
With an accompanying flick of her wrist, she said, “You’re not going anywhere, Sam Mason.”
“Wanna bet?” I growled as I lifted my foot to move—but couldn’t. It seemed my boots were stuck in the dirt.
Motherfucker.
