Page 151 of Kick the Candle (Knight Games 2)
Julius laughed. "Give it your best shot."
They collided in fast-forward, teeth and claws, a tangle of black fog. The other vamps rushed in to help only to be thwarted by the other side. A battle raged around the book and the fire. I watched Naill slowly back away, disappearing into the woods to save his lucky ass.
I began working on my other wrist in earnest. Yes! I'd moved to my ankle when a beast I recognized crept out of the forest. I supposed it could be any werewolf, but the wound in its side and the way it limped toward me told me it was Silas. I jerked back as his weighty paw lifted and swiped for me. Only his aim was purposefully off. The rope binding my ankles split in two. Silas meant to free me.
"Thank you, Silas," I whispered quickly, then bound off the table and raced for Nightshade.
The Sun Also Rises
My limbs tingled from the cold and numbness of immobility but I forced them to obey my command. I leaped over the fire and reached for my blade. Nightshade's hilt slid into my hand with urgency as if she'd been straining to help me. Underneath her blade, the burlap sack rustled. I untied it and freed Poe. "Help Rick down," I ordered. He nodded once and took to the sky.
A hand landed on my shoulder. I whirled around to face a Mill Wheel vamp. He yanked me into a bear hug. Poor sucker must have been young or stupid. My blade sank into his gut and he exploded into a shower of ash. The other vamps were distracted with the fight, although that wouldn't last forever. Some were already down for the count, the winners joining in the tussle between Julius and Bathory. It didn't matter who won that fight. If either were left standing, I'd lose.
What I needed was to get out of there, but I couldn't leave Rick, Soleil, or the book. Think! I noticed Silas then, sniffing Soleil like a dog whose master comes home smelling of another pooch. The nightmare was still inside her, throwing off her scent. "Smart doggy." I smiled and sprang into action.
Rounding the skirmish, I shuffled to her side. I pressed Nightshade into Soleil's chest. At the site of the knife, Silas growled at me menacingly. I wondered how much of himself Silas had left when he shifted. "Don't worry. I won't hurt her."
"What are you doing?" the tenor voice asked through Soleil's mouth.
"Banishing you." Nightshade glowed ever brighter.
The nightmare growled and squirmed against Soleil's bindings.
"I sentence you to an eternity in hell." I felt rather than saw the immediate results of my sentence. My blade suctioned to her chest and then slowly, like a worm being drawn from the dirt, the nightmare wrapped around the blade, inch by inch from her chest. Tighter it squeezed until it poofed into nothingness. Soleil took charge of herself.
"Ew. I need a shower," she said, shivering.
"Just what I had in mind." I cut her free and pushed her down in the snow.
"Hey!"
"The mud, Soleil! Get it off." I turned my back to her and faced the brawling vampires. One by one, they noticed me, turning fanged faces in my direction. Even Bathory and Julius recognized the threat, pausing their war and fixing deadly eyes on me. I raised Nightshade. "Any time, Soleil. Could really use some help here."
"Almost there." I glanced back to see her rubbing herself with snow, steam filling the space around her.
Glancing back was a big mistake. Bathory barreled into me, thrusting Nightshade above my head. In no time, I was at the bottom of a very large heap of vampires. Fangs ripped into my flesh. I heard Soleil scream and knew she was in the same predicament.
I was battered and bleeding. And then, like a far off memory, Rick's words came back to me, "An entire universe of magic is at your fingertips." He was wrong. It wasn't at my fingertips. It was in the air I was breathing, the night air that surrounded us. Night air that was the source of my power.
The magic slammed into me like a tidal wave when I called, the air thickening to the density of pea soup. The power yanked me from under those vamps with windy tendrils that circled the camp, casting the undead aside in a wintry hurricane. The vamps covered their eyes against the blowing snow.
I used muscle and the mounting storm to reach Soleil. "Come on. You've got to flame out now!" I yelled. My power was already draining. The vamps were pushing through the wind to get to us. I couldn't hold them back forever.
"I can't," she yelled. "I tried. The mud's effect lingers."
Bathory and Julius reached for me, leaning into the wind and snow. "Sorry, Soleil, but desperate times call for desperate measures."
"What?"
"I yanked her into my arms. Holding her, screaming, in front of the vamps, I used Nightshade to slice a shallow cut across her chest, shoulder to shoulder. She screamed, but the cut paid off. Sunlight bled from the wound, and then the sun rose. Far from the dingy gray of a winter's morning, a blazing hot ball of orange swept through the clearing. Vampires burst into flame. Bathory wrapped one dying vamp around her like a coat and fled into the darkness of the woods, Julius right behind her. All of the vamps scattered or burned in the sunlight. When all were gone, I released Soleil, spinning her around to check her wound.
"I am fine!" she said, clutching the cut. "The vampires are gone. We are saved!"
"Sorry I had to do that."
Gradually, she began to pull her light back inside and heal herself. "It is nothing. I should have thought of it sooner." Her rose colored lips pressed together.
I nodded, turning in a circle to assess our surroundings in Soleil's fading light. A few vamps lay burning near the fire. All the others had made for the shelter of darkness. My eyes swept across the trees, looking for any stragglers that thought they might try to return for the Book of Flesh and Bone. I raised Nightshade when I saw a man stagger from the woods. Only, it was Silas, human again, naked and shivering. Soleil's light had broken the moon's hold on him. She opened her arms and he ran into them. The embrace was desperate, therapeutic. How long had Silas been possessed? Soleil captured? Seeing them together was a beautiful thing.
