Shifter (Wicked Woods #6) Page 11

  Behind them, there was a pointed cough. Kevin turned to see Briony’s Aunt Sophie bearing down on them.

  “This is all very nice, and I’m very happy for you, but if you’re serious about getting married, you might want to find some very quick vows. I hate to be the one to say this, but… we’re losing this battle.”

  “We’re not losing,” Vigor said, appearing out of the throng to stand beside her. “It’s a momentary setback.”

  “We’re losing,” Sophie said. “And while I would never tell you to marry someone, if your heart is set on Kevin…”

  Briony nodded. She understood. Though as she saw the figure standing forlornly behind the others, she knew that there was one thing she had to do first.

  Chapter 17

  Briony went over to Fallon, taking him by the arm and pulling him back further away from both the fight and the others. She knew that she had to talk this through with him, even though there was nothing he could say that would change anything.

  “Briony, don’t do this,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Briony shook her head. “I want to do it, Fallon. Yes, marrying Kevin will help us to stop the vampires here and in Wicked, and maybe that’s why I’m doing it now, but it’s not why I’m doing it.”

  “Then why?” Fallon asked. He looked so hurt in that moment.

  “Because I love him,” Briony said simply. She knew that would be hard for Fallon to deal with. After all the times she’d bounced back and forth between them, it would be hard on him to find that she’d made a final decision and that it wasn’t him, but she had to do it. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  There was one thing she might be able to do to soften the blow though. She couldn’t be with him, but there was a chance that she could give him one thing he’d been looking for since he became a vampire. A way back. Hadn’t vampires come to Palisor to look for that so many times? If there was a way, then Briony had to believe that the power that would come with marrying Kevin would show her how. She didn’t say it right then though. She wanted to be certain before she made a promise like that.

  “You’re really going to marry Kevin?” Fallon asked. “Even though that will cause all vampires to die.”

  “I’m going to marry him,” Briony confirmed.

  “So you’re just going to sacrifice me? And Jake? You’ll kill your own brother to be happy?”

  “The unicorn told me that its horn gave us another way. That the vampires didn’t have to die.” Briony shook her head. “I would never put Jake at risk like that, Fallon. Or you. Not if I thought that marrying Kevin would lead to that. But even Sophie, Josh and the rest seem to agree that it isn’t inevitable. It’s something we can control. That I can control.”

  Fallon winced. “And there’s really nothing that I can do to persuade you to love me?”

  “Oh, Fallon,” Briony said, reaching out to touch his cheek. “Part of me will always love you. But Kevin… being with him makes me so happy. I don’t have to change who I am to be with him, and when I’m with him, I feel so at peace. I thought I loved you as much before, but when I was forced to think about marrying Josh, I couldn’t stop thinking of Kevin. You’re too good for me, Fallon, and I wish I can be everything you want me to be for you, but I want you to be able to live your life without having it revolve around me all the time. It isn’t healthy, and you have so much more potential than that. Someday you’ll find someone who will love you as much or more than you love them, and you’ll be the happiest man. I’m sorry, Fallon. I’m marrying Kevin.”

  Fallon nodded. “Then we’d better get on with it. There isn’t a lot of time to spare. Once it’s dark, the vampires will be nearly unstoppable.”

  He kissed her then. Softly, obviously saying goodbye.

  “Kevin’s a lucky guy,” Fallon said. He paused. “If you’re wrong… if I die, I don’t blame you. Just promise you’ll remember me.”

  Fallon didn’t give her a chance to answer. Instead he turned and walked away, heading for the heart of the fighting. Briony felt tears washing down her cheeks. She did love Fallon, but she loved Kevin so much more. Enough that even the hurt she felt right then was worth it to be with him. She forced herself to brush away the tears, heading over to Sophie and Vigor.

  “How soon can Kevin and I be married?” she asked. She would marry him now or a year from now, but if they couldn’t find a way to do it soon, then they would be overwhelmed long before it could happen. How long would it take them to find a church or put together a ceremony? “What do we need to do?”

  Vigor gestured to her and Kevin. “Kneel there beside one another. Bow your heads and hold out your hands.”

  Briony did it, though she started when Vigor drew his sword. The silver steel of it shone bright as the light started to fade over the battlefield. What was he planning to do? There had been a time when she’d been worried that he might try to take the throne. Was he trying that again now? If so, how did he think that Sophie was going to react, standing just behind him?

  “Relax,” he said. “This is just one of the oldest ceremonies on Palisor. Marriage is a lot of things, and ordinarily we celebrate all of them. For a royal wedding, there would normally be feasting and entertainments, a full week of celebrations. There would be a chance for your subjects to see you and swear their fealty to both you and your new consort. Kevin would be crowned alongside you, your families would take part in the ceremonies, and there would be so much more. Now though, there is no time for all that, and I… well, I suppose I have enough authority to marry you.”

  “How?” Briony asked.

  Vigor smiled. “The most important part is that the two of you are becoming one. Do you understand that? Do you want it?”

  Briony nodded. Beside her, so did Kevin. She’d barely finished when Vigor took her hand, pressing it to the sword blade. Briony gasped as it drew a line of blood from her palm. Kevin let Vigor do the same with him. The Hugtandalfer reached down to tear a strip of white cloth from the padding of his armor. He pressed Briony and Kevin’s hands together, tying them loosely with the cloth.

  “Briony, do you choose to take Kevin as your husband and consort? Do you promise to love him from now until Palisor is no more?”

  Briony didn’t have to think about that. “I do.”

  Vigor turned to Kevin. “Kevin, do you take Briony as your wife and queen? Do you promise to love her until Palisor is no more?”

  “I do,” Kevin said. “I always have.”

  Vigor nodded and took up his sword once more. He placed it lightly over the cloth binding their hands together, and the fabric parted beneath its edge.

  “Cloth can be cut,” Vigor said, “but some things are not so easily parted. Briony, Kevin, you are now one whole. Married. Congratulations. And congratulations to you, Briony. Truly, you are the Queen of Palisor now.”

  “Is this where you say ‘you may kiss the bride’?” Sophie asked.

  Vigor looked at her. “That is not part of the ceremony.”

  Briony started to stand, but Kevin cut her off with a kiss.

  “I think we’ll have to expand it then,” Kevin said, when they were done. He helped Briony to her feet. What happened now? She was the queen, but did that mean that she now had all the powers of the scepter? Did she have the power to deal with the vampires in front of her? Just like that? She hoped so, because they were getting closer.

  Briony felt the rumbling beneath her feet before she heard it, but once she started to hear it, it was deafening. Hoof beats and running footsteps seemed to come from every direction at once. Briony could hear them, and practically feel them. They were just over…

  The gate sprang up without warning, and creatures poured through it. For a second, Vigor and Sophie recoiled, obviously suspecting some kind of surprise attack, but this wasn’t that. It was help. Werewolves poured through the gate, and other creatures came with them. Creatures that came straight from the myths of her world. Griffons and giant eagles, trees that
walked like people, and people with skin like bark. And unicorns. They came in their hundreds. In their thousands. And at their head was a unicorn with a golden horn, seeming to glow almost ethereally as it strode towards her.

  “You?” Briony said. “But I killed you.”

  “Physically, yes,” the unicorn said, the words reverberating out. “But that was necessary. I was the first creature of Palisor, and the first slayer of vampires. I had to die to ascend to heaven to fetch my army.”

  “You were the slayer of vampires?” Briony said. “The vampire apocalypse?”

  Unicorns couldn’t smile, but Briony suspected it would have if it could. “I was death to them. My horn was. Now, I will be again, if you wish it.”

  “So the vampires won’t all be killed automatically?” Briony asked. She had put her trust in that, but she wanted to be certain now.

  “No,” the unicorn said. “My horn has much power. Had I lived, it would have heard my will, and my hatred of vampires ran deep. That would have killed them. But I wanted you to have another way. The power to kill, but also the power to change things. And the power to take things from the worlds. Like this army. There are friends of yours here, I think.”

  Briony looked around, and she saw that she recognized some of the wolves. Jake’s small wolf form was easy to pick out. Josh transformed back into his human form, nodding to her gravely. Carol also shifted, though she didn’t look happy. Briony hoped she would be, eventually, but Kevin was hers now. Finally, irrevocably hers.

  Briony looked around at the battle raging below her on the lowest slopes. Vigor’s army was still fighting hard, the dragons using sheets of flame to keep the vampires back for now, but she knew that without help it wouldn’t be enough. With the army that stood before her though… she could order the vampires wiped out so easily.

  Briony shook her head. She wasn’t going to do that. There were better ways. Ways that didn’t involve that kind of killing. She turned to the unicorn.

  “I just want them gone,” she said. “Driven back to Xylyx and buried again. There are too many vampires I care about to let you kill them all.”

  The unicorn said, “And that is why I let you slay me. To exercise your free will. Very well, it will be as you ask. One final thing. Have you ever wondered why the scepter is called a scepter?”

  Briony had wondered that a couple of times. It was only a large pendant really. Something that she could wear around her neck on a chain. She’d assumed before that it had been a scepter once, but that the handle had rotted or been destroyed. In that moment though, she understood. She lifted the golden horn of the unicorn that she had been fighting with and took the scepter from around her neck. She could feel them both thrumming with power, the way they had back in her room. She pressed the two together with the scepter as head and the horn as the staff.

  There was a flash of power, and Briony was surprised to feel it flowing through her. It was Palisor. The power of the land. The people. The life. And in that moment she was all of it. That power poured into the scepter, and it was a scepter now, only it was so much more than that. As Briony watched, it lengthened, becoming a staff as tall as her shoulder. A staff that shone golden with power.

  Briony lifted it, and that power flashed out as golden light, brighter than the setting sun by far. Where it touched the darkness that flowed along with the vampires, that darkness dissolved, leaving the savage vampires there blinking in the light and even shrinking back from the sheer force of it. In that moment, Briony understood how her father had managed to drive the creatures back.

  “Let’s go send these things back to their prison,” she yelled, charging forward. The unicorn’s army charged with her, but that wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was Kevin, in wolf form now and loping steadily by her side. Her husband. Her consort. Her love.

  Chapter 18

  Briony led the charge, the knowledge of everything she had to do next pounding in her ears as loudly as her blood was right then. Sophie and Vigor, Josh, Jake and all the others ran with her, people she cared about mixed in with the horde of fantastic creatures there to fight against the vampires. And at the heart of them, right next to her, was Kevin. Her husband.

  Just those words were so strange. Strange, but beautiful too. And right, like Briony had always known them. Maybe she had. Despite everything she’d felt for anyone else, despite Fallon, she’d kept coming back to Kevin. Now he was hers, and she was his. She thought about the vampires ahead of them. She was not going to let them do anything to ruin their happiness.

  Briony had the completed scepter in her hand, and she could feel the power within it. She ran with it like a spear, somehow knowing that it was the weapon she needed. The weapon they all needed. However far Xylyx was, they were going to force these creatures back into it. They were getting close now, and ahead of them Hugtandalfer warriors fought and died, the inhuman sounds of the vampires mingling with the battle cries of the soldiers. The vampires seemed somehow less organized now, with their shrouding darkness banished. They still attacked ferociously, but they did so individually, not swarming the Hugtandalfer warriors in mad mobs.

  The lines clashed, and for a moment or two, everything was chaos. A vampire lunged at Kevin, and instinctively, Briony thrust the scepter into the creature’s path to block it. The vampire barely brushed the golden staff, but power burst within it, leaving nothing but ashes where it had stood. Briony stared openmouthed at what had just happened. She’d known that the scepter had power. She’d known that it was a weapon, but this…

  She’d spent the last few months trying to strike at vampires’ hearts. That was part of what made them so deadly, because to kill them, you had to come almost within their embrace. If this staff could kill them with just a touch though… Briony swung it experimentally, catching another of the vampires on the leg. Again, there was a flash of golden light, and the creature was simply gone.

  Kevin leapt in after her, biting wherever he could. Briony saw the other werewolves doing the same. Jake seemed almost to be making a game out of it, darting between the legs of the vampires trying to kill them all, nipping and biting where he could. It seemed simply playful, except that every time he bit, a vampire died. Every time any of the werewolves bit, vampires died.

  Archer and the other dragons flew above them, safer now that they had more support. With the werewolves cannoning into the fight on the ground, several of the Hugtandalfer fighters were able to step back and nock bows, using them to target any creatures that tried to jump up to bring the dragons to the ground. That left the dragons free to burn.

  Briony almost reeled back as the first gouts of flame struck the ground, seemingly just yards from her. Close enough at least that she could feel the heat from them. Archer burned a line of flame along the flank of the vampire forces, scything down those creatures that fell within the flames, while Fletcher flew on the other side of them, doing the same. For a moment or two, Briony didn’t understand what the dragons were doing, but then she saw it. They were containing the vampires, stopping them from spreading out around their forces and coming in from the flanks.

  Stopping them from getting away that way too, because then the unicorns and other creatures of Palisor hit them. Briony had been a little worried about that part. Unicorns were beautiful, but she couldn’t see how they could be deadly. These were though. Some struck vampires and trampled them, knocking them down so that werewolves had easy bites. Some tore at them with their teeth and pummeled them with their hooves. More used their horns, piercing the vampires and in some cases killing them outright when they struck them through the heart. With their size and weight, the unicorns were even able to attack some of the strange, chitin covered creatures that skittered along with the vampires, cracking them open or squashing them like bugs. Griffons clawed at them, while eagles intercepted those that could fly as they tried to get away.

  The battle grew more hectic then, and for a moment or two, Briony could concentrate on not
hing but the fights immediately around her. She spun the scepter like a baton, keeping it moving, knowing that wherever it struck an enemy it would be enough. She twirled it in figure eights, blurring through the air as it struck vampire after withered vampire. One of the hard shelled creatures with them came forward at her and Briony brought the scepter down on it with an audible crack. Sophie leapt at it, finishing it, while Vigor spun in behind her, fending off a vampire who charged at her back. Sophie smiled at him then in a way Briony had never seen her great aunt smile at anyone else.

  The vampires kept coming. Would they have to kill them all to stop them? No. Briony was sure of that. Her father had driven them back, and so would she. Without the darkness binding them together as it had, they lacked the purpose they had possessed before. They were throwing themselves forward out of wild, animal fury, but even animals could be made to run when they weren’t bound together by whatever power had been connecting them.

  Briony swung her staff left and right, and everywhere it touched, vampires died. Another leapt at Kevin, and she stopped it with a touch. One swung claws at Sophie, and Briony took its legs from under it with her foot before bringing the staff down. Kevin stayed by her, protecting her back, making sure that no vampires could get to her before the whirling sweep of the staff could get to them. Around her, the werewolves bit, the unicorns skewered, and the dragons rained down fire, so that the battle was as hot as an oven.

  Even so, the fight wasn’t all one way. Briony saw a werewolf she didn’t know killed from behind by a vampire that leapt upon it and started rending it with its claws. The werewolf twisted enough to bite it, but by then, the damage was done. Half trained Hugtandalfer warriors fell as they tried to match the efforts of the werewolves, or of their queen. A unicorn collapsed with its throat torn out, in a sight that was uncomfortably close to the way the first unicorn had looked after she had killed it.