Bold Mercy by Laken Cane

Chapter Twenty

When Avis had gone crazy and dragged the vampires into the public eye, I’d believed everything was about as bad as it could get. I’d been wrong. Now it was as bad as it could get. Surely.

Turning humans was a complicated process that didn’t often work—which is why there were so many more humans than vampires. If the bloodsuckers figured out how to turn humans as easily as just…biting them, the world was doomed. Vampires needed humans to survive, so they would die, as well.

Avis didn’t care.

“Avis,” I screamed, struggling in the chains that held me. “No! God, no!” I fought the heavy, cold metal, and the more I struggled, the tighter they became. They bit into my flesh, twisting and pinching, and I realized something that hadn’t even occurred to me before. The chains were not metal. They were magic.

No wonder they hadn’t bothered the vampire when he’d touched them. The same magic that hurt me seemed to protect him.

Avis was not powerful enough to do any of this. She’d been Frederick’s whore, his servant, and his rat in a cage to torture and experiment on. Every thought she had in her head had been planted there by him. Everything she did now was because of him. Spreading diseased magic, killing the world…that wasn’t her. It was him. While she lived, he lived.

I fought the chains, and despite trying to push the thoughts of my mother away, they rose suddenly to overwhelm me. Logically, I knew that if Avis really had my mother, she’d have paraded her in front of me. She would have made me watch as her newly created “child” savaged her. Logically, I knew that.

But what if? What if she really did have her? And that tiny what if grew and grew until finally, I was overwhelmed by it. In the end, I was sure of it. Avis had my mother, and they were killing her. Maybe they were even turning her, like the troll in the tunnels.

I screamed, fighting the magic like a maddened beast, as everything bad that had happened came to kick my ass. My mind, weakened by the fear over my mother, quickly exploded into a traumatized mess of panic, doubt, and horror.

My blade would have helped me. And I would scream for it. I would call it. Maybe it couldn’t come, but…

What if?

So I opened my mouth and my mind to summon it. I didn’t scream a word, but a feeling. I sent whatever power was inside me to my blade, and then, I felt it. But something else happened as I gathered that power and forced it outward. Two things, really.

I became stronger than the magic of the chains. They shattered like glass as I leaped to my feet, terrifying the vampires who’d remained behind to watch me. Shards of frozen metal flew through the air, embedding themselves in vampires, walls, furniture.

At the exact moment I freed myself, the alpha burst into the room like a terrible storm, growling and raging, blood clinging to his beautiful fur. His wolves were right behind him. Zach slipped into the room like a quiet shadow, deadly and intense. And then, like a furious, bald avenging angel, Joe stomped into the room, machete flashing.

There was only a millisecond of hesitation as they caught sight of me breaking my chains, and then there was only chaos. They flung themselves through the room, tearing through vampires I hadn’t even seen, vampires who’d watched from the shadows, as well as the ones who’d stood with Avis. In seconds, almost before I could take a single breath or a step forward, the vampires were dead, hearts flung across the room and heads, courtesy of Zach and Joe, thrown onto a rather nice couch and lit on fire.

Jared shifted as he strode to me, the change so seamless that for a second, I forgot everything but my awe. “Kill every vampire in the place and bring me Avis Vine,” he growled, and his warriors wheeled and rushed through the building, their howls raising the hair on the nape of my neck.

I ran to the alpha and jumped into his arms, and he wrapped me up in his warmth.

“Kait,” he murmured. He didn’t ask me if I was okay. He could see that I was, and that I wasn’t.

I shoved my nose against his warm alpha throat, but only for a few seconds. “They have my mother, Jared,” I cried.

He frowned. “They do not. I just left her, honey. She’s safe with my pack and no harm will come to her.” He searched my eyes, finding things there that made him begin to rage all over again.

I pushed and he let me slide down his body. “We have to find Avis,” I told him. “She’s turning humans, and not in the usual way. I watched her turn one right in front of me—in minutes.”

Shock lit his stare. “That’s impossible.”

“Kait.”

I turned at the sound of Zach’s voice, gratified to see him holding his long, thin coat out to me. “Thank you,” I whispered, shrugging into the warm jacket. Joe stood beside him, but he kept his eyes averted until I was covered.

“Joe,” I said. “You were injured. You should be home resting.”

He snorted. “I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

Something that I was afraid would happen sooner rather than later.

“I found your phone and a couple weapons outside,” Zach told me. “I put them in the coat pockets. Your clothes were ruined, though.”

I nodded. “Thanks, Zach.”

“Kait,” Joe said. “Don’t forget your knife.”

My heart jumped as I turned to where he pointed, and there, embedded in the wall where I’d just been restrained, was my demon blade. It had come when I’d called—I’d just been a little too busy breaking my magical chains to notice.

“You should shift,” Jared told me.

I shook my head. I didn’t tell him the magic was delaying my shift, because he could have pulled my wolf out of me. I didn’t want to shift because I had my blade back, and it felt good in my hand. It felt necessary in my hand. For right now, I wanted to hunt with my blade.

Jared shifted and streaked through the room, following his nose to the enemy. Zach, Joe, and I followed, and though I felt residual pain, it was nothing I couldn’t handle. Squeezing the handle of my blade, my two friends by my side, my heart swelled once again with a hunter’s joy.

And maybe I’d known deep down that Avis had been lying, but the fact that my mother was safe gave me indescribable relief. It also filled me with rage that the mutant vampire had managed to fuck with my mind.

The entire time I’d had the pain of that magic flowing through me, I’d been quietly terrified it would somehow change me. That it had been sliding through me, that magic, doing untold damage. And maybe it was affecting me in ways I didn’t yet realize, but as far as mentally, I was back to normal.

I was a hunter, and I was not afraid of anything.

I needed to enjoy that feeling while I could.