Silver (Wicked Woods #3) Read online

“Wil he?” The woman shrugged as she said it. “Al he said to me was that a few of us should wait at the edges, making sure no one can get away. Stil ,” her fangs slid out,

  “alive has possibilities.”

  It was at that point that Kevin charged from the undergrowth, stil in wolf form, lunging and snapping at the vampire. The vampire was quick leaping straight up, letting the momentum of Kevin’s charge carry him under her.

  The fight that fol owed was almost elegant. The vampire fought like a dancer, slashing with her nails and heels as she whirled away from each assault Kevin made.

  She never quite managed to wound him, but she was at least able to stop Kevin from getting near to her.

  Briony decided to even the odds, sliding out her crucifix and springing the hidden blade. She crept closer to the fight, looking for a moment to slide it home when the vampire wasn’t aware of her.

  She was. The vampire’s kick was stunningly fast.

  Briony managed to get her arms up in time, but even so, it sent her sliding back along the floor, the breath knocked out of her as Kevin and the creature continued their deadly dance.

  Briony struggled to her feet, and then ran to the bushes where the vampire had thrown her sword. Gripping the hilt with both hands and pul ing, Briony put her whole weight into trying to remove the sword from the bush. The blade wouldn’t budge. Worse, behind her, she heard Kevin yelp with pain. Briony swore, bracing both feet against the rough bark of the tree and pul ing backwards with al her strength. She was not going to let Kevin be hurt.

  For a moment, it felt like Briony was trying to pul the sword out of a rock rather than a tree. When she felt the first hint of movement, Briony hauled on the hilt with renewed strength. It came free with a kind of sticky slowness as sap clung to it. Briony spun, facing the fight once more, and saw that the vampire was pressing Kevin back, pushing him towards a tree to restrict his movements.

  Briony did the only thing she could think of, and ran forward, the blade raised before her like a lance. This time, the vampire didn’t react quickly enough to stop the blow.

  She half turned, only to have the razor sharp sword hit through the side of her ribs. It stil found the heart. The vampire barely had enough time to look surprised before she slumped back and the cold flames claimed her body.

  Briony stood stil for a moment, trying to get her breath back, but Kevin’s wolf form nudged against her legs, urging her to climb on once more.

  “I know, I know. We have to get out of here. Just give me a second.”

  Kevin yipped, but Briony ignored it, retrieving her cross and putting it around her neck once more. Only then did she hear the sound of someone moving through the wood nearby, branches breaking under feet that didn’t care who heard them.

  Briony didn’t need any more prompting. She sprinted for Kevin and more or less threw herself onto him, clinging to his fur for dear life as his muscles exploded into a high speed lope once more. Briony whipped her head from side to side, looking for danger, her sword held almost like a lance as she waited for danger to spring from the surrounding trees.

  How long Kevin ran like that, Briony didn’t know. The constant threat of danger made each wolfish stride seem like it took hours to complete, yet at the same time, trees passed by in a rush. On and on the werewolf ran, until it seemed to Briony that he might be trying to run straight through the woods. He certainly wasn’t heading back towards anywhere Briony recognized.

  Final y though, the trees began to thin out and Kevin started to slow. Briony patted him on the shoulder as a signal to stop.

  “I think we’ve gone far enough, Kevin. I think we’re safe.”

  Kevin seemed to agree, slowing to a crawl before standing stil to let Briony dismount. She turned her back only briefly in doing so, and that time was enough for him to change back into human form. As usual after transforming, his clothes were torn and unkempt, his shirt hanging open to reveal the muscular lines of his chest. His dark hair looked unkempt, and hung in front of his eyes. Briony reached up to brush it back out of the way.

  “Do you think we got away?” she asked.

  “Probably.” Kevin looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know how many other people did, though.”

  “No.” Briony bit her lip and looked around, unwil ing to dwel on that for the moment. Not when Jake was stil out there. After a moment she looked back to the werewolf.

  “Kevin-”

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No, not that,” Briony said. “Look around.”

  The space around them was free of trees, but interspersed with blooming flowers of types Briony had not seen before. The grass was in better shape than it should have been given the time of year, and even the few trees that sprang up in the space before them looked odd. They were too… vibrant somehow, as though they almost glowed from within. Each was strong and healthy, yet al the trees had a slightly ephemeral look to them, as though there was something about them that wasn’t quite there. In fact, the whole glade look like the world around it never touched it. A smal brook babbled its way through the trees, just deep enough and clear enough for Briony to see smal fish skimming their way along the bottom.

  “It’s very peaceful,” Kevin said after a few seconds.

  “That’s just it.” Briony walked up to the nearest of the trees. The bark felt solid enough under her touch, but there was nothing rough about it. “After a battle like that, we shouldn’t be feeling peaceful, and yet I do. Then there are these trees. Have you seen trees like this before?”

  Briony wasn’t surprised to see Kevin shake his head.

  “It’s…” Briony struggled for the words, because something about this place felt vaguely familiar to her. “It’s almost too good to be true. Like something out of a fairy tale. Does that make any sense?”

  “As much sense as anything around Wicked. So do you think we should leave?”

  “I don’t know,” Briony admitted. “What is this place, Kevin?”

  Chapter 2

  Sophie Edge stared straight forward as she sat tied to a chair in the back room of the diner, hardly able to bring herself to look at George. At what had been done to him.

  To think too hard about the way that one of her closest friends had been turned into one of the undead was to invite either despair or self-recrimination. Despair, at the thought that something like that could happen to even the strongest of them. Self-recrimination because she had not been able to do anything about it. Had not even known about it until it was too late.

  Sophie fought against the feelings. They were just what Pietre wanted. That was why he had left George there to guard her while he went off to see to more business.

  Sophie would not let him win like that. She had hunted monsters for a long time now. Long enough that this wasn’t the first friend she had lost to them. Long enough to know that she had to stay focused if she wanted to live.

  Too long, maybe. As much as Sophie hated to admit it, she was getting old. Her reactions weren’t quite what they had once been. Once, her hair had held no grey, and her body had been supple rather than simply wiry.

  Once, the vampires would not have been able to grab her in the middle of a battle. Of course, once, they would not have had to. Once, Pietre would have spoken to her, and she would have gone to him wil ingly.

  It had been a shock seeing him again after al these years. Seeing him every bit as handsome as Sophie remembered from her youth. In that way, at least, the passing of time was a blessing. Sophie had the experience now to see him for what he was. There was no way that she would be fooled again.

  “Okay. You’l be there?” George was making phone cal s as he waited, setting up the meeting that would trap the other members of the Wicked Woods Preservation Society. Currently, he seemed to be on the phone to Jil , who would have been working in the diner had it not been closed for the evening. Sophie knew that she couldn’t just let George lure them to their deaths like that.

  “Jil
! Watch out! George is…mmph!”

  The vampire’s hand clamped over her mouth, and George kept speaking. “Noise? What noise? Anyway, I’l see you then. Goodbye, Jil .” He ended the cal and moved his hand from Sophie’s mouth. “That was stupid.”

  “George,” Sophie looked up at him, hoping that there might be some way to get through to her friend. After al , the boy Fal on was his own man, and he was not much older in vampire terms than George, “you’re about to kil your friends.”

  The big man shrugged. “It is what Pietre wants. He knows best, Sophie. If you would just see that -”

  “I see that the man I knew is slipping away,” Sophie countered. “You have to hold onto that man, George. Hold onto the man who doesn’t shout at Percy for being clumsy.

  Who lets Jil leave early to pick up her daughter from the sitter. Who makes some of the best food in this town and then boasts about it.”

  “Food?” George whispered. For a moment, Sophie thought that she might be getting through.

  “Come on, George, fight. If some teenage boy with designs on my niece can be strong enough to fight Pietre’s influence, a grown man like you should find it easy.”

  “I’m not strong enough,” George said, looking away.

  “Stop being so weak,” Sophie snapped. This wasn’t the time for kindness. “I’ve known you for years, and if Pietre has gotten to you to the extent that you are going to start whining about how hard everything is, then I have been sorely mistaken about you. The only thing m y George whines about is the fact that his cooking isn’t quite as good as mine.”

  “That… is not true,” George managed, and for a moment, Sophie smiled.

  “You’l never be able to prove otherwise if you insist on becoming some kind of mindless minion, now wil you?

  Just think, George. Never making another burger. Never serving another drink-”

  “Don’t mention drinks!” George clutched his stomach as if it were cramping. “I’m hungry, Sophie. I’m so, so hungry.”

  Sophie shifted uncomfortably in the chair she was bound to. “Look at me, George. Don’t look away. Look at me.”

  The vampire looked up, his eyes reddening. “I am looking at you. I’m looking at you and thinking about al the sweet, warm, human blood pumping through those veins.”

  Sophie sighed. She had been hoping not to play this card. “Pietre wil be angry with you if you kil me, George.

  He’l want me for himself.”

  That was enough to make her former friend hesitate, and Sophie cursed herself for doing it. The last thing she should be doing was persuading George that he needed to fol ow the master vampire’s orders, yet if it kept her safe…

  Unfortunately, it didn’t even do that. George hung back for another second or two, but then let out an inarticulate roar of hunger, flinging himself forward with the blinding speed of his kind. Sophie kicked out as he got close; flinging George back even as she sent the chair she sat upon flying into the opposite wal . It splintered with a dul crack, and Sophie spun to her feet in a single, graceful movement that disentangled her from most of the ropes.

  She let one trailing end dangle from her forearm the way she might use a chain as a weapon, just in case.

  She also raised a hand to her throat, feeling the barest graze where George had tried to bite her.

  “You’re faster than you look,” she said.

  “I’m fast?” George replied. “You’ve just flung a chair across a room faster than a vampire could strike. “No human should be able to do that.”

  “Ah,” Sophie said, twirling the rope absently, “I think you have me there, George.”

  “You aren’t human?”

  Sophie smiled. If this was the only way she could distract George long enough to think of a better plan, then it was what she would use. If it came to a fight in here, then, as poorly armed as she was, things might get difficult.

  “Wel , not entirely.”

  George edged around the perimeter of the room.

  For now, he seemed almost normal, yet Sophie wasn’t going to trust that. His eyes stil burned red with hunger.

  They stil yearned for her blood.

  “What are you?” George demanded.

  “Why don’t you tel me? Or can’t you place the taste?”

  Sophie watched the newborn vampire lick his lips, catching the faintest traces of her blood. “I don’t understand. I don’t know…”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “You didn’t tel me.” It seemed almost strange that George should accuse her, given what he currently was, but Sophie could hear the hurt there.

  “You? I didn’t even tel Pete when I married him, George.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you are, you’re stil old.”

  He lunged suddenly, but Sophie was expecting it.

  She moved aside in a diagonal step that took her to a sitting position, and then whirled in a sweep that took out George’s legs from under him. The slight move wasn’t one that would stop a vampire, but it would buy her a second or two.

  “My human side ages,” she said, “but the rest of me? That just gets stronger, George.”

  The vampire rose to a feral crouch, al pretense of subtlety abandoned. Sophie didn’t try to avoid the next charge. Instead, she flicked out the rope she held in a move she had first learned with a leather bul whip, striking George in a painful blow designed to distract him. It took the momentum out of his charge, leaving her the time to step around him, sliding the rope around his neck and using the extra leverage to throw him again in an aikido move.

  Again, George got to his knees. “You can’t win, Sophie. You can’t hurt me.”

  “I can.”

  A dark shape blurred through the door, slamming into George and driving him back into the wal . It took Sophie a moment to recognize Fal on, and in that moment the boy had already drawn a stake from within his clothing and thrust forward, so powerful y that it went right through George, pinning him to the diner’s wal . The older man struggled for a few seconds before fal ing stil . Even so, no flames leapt up to claim his form.

  “Fal on, what are you doing here?” Sophie said.

  “It’s good to see you too, Mrs. Edge.”

  “Yes, yes. Thank you for saving me, young man, but don’t dodge the question.”

  Sophie watched Fal on shrug. “I have been here a while. I would have come in to help you earlier, but I had to wait until Pietre was gone.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  Fal on shook his head.

  “Then we just have the question of what to do with George left.” Sophie resisted the urge to reach out to the older man, dormant now, but obviously not finished. Pietre must have let him have next to no blood if an injury like this could reduce him to something so weak, yet a little feeding, and he would be just as dangerous again. Sophie turned to her niece’s vampire boyfriend. “You missed the heart.”

  She watched the young vampire lick his lips nervously. “Would you want me to have hit it?”

  Part of Sophie wanted to say yes. That it was the better option. That George wouldn’t want to be a monster.

  Yet she didn’t say anything. Nor did she reach down to the remains of her chair to find something with which to finish the job. The boy in front of her was proof enough that vampires could hold their natures in check for a time, however much the other part of her argued with the idea.

  Perhaps George would manage the same.

  “You did the right thing, Fal on. If we are lucky, we wil be able to help George, but we wil need to keep an eye on him.”

  Fal on nodded. “Um… not now though. We stil have an escape to finish, right?”

  Sophie smiled slightly at that. “Young man, I was escaping from vampires before you were born. Now, look escaping from vampires before you were born. Now, look around and see if Pietre left any of my things, would you?”

  Fal on hurried off, and Sophie found herself looking once more at her staked friend. It
would be safer if they could restrain him in some way, but who carried around silver chains with them? For now, George would just have to stay staked. A smal shudder passed through Sophie.

  When Pietre came back, he would not be happy. Stil , there was nothing she could do about that.

  “Mrs. Edge? I think I got everything.” Fal on was back, holding the weapons that had been taken from her.

  Sophie chose the ones that would fit out of sight and left the rest. They would attract too much attention walking through the middle of town. Final y, she abandoned earlier thoughts of the danger to reach out and pat George’s shoulder.

  “Be lucky, old friend. Maybe we’l both find a way to get out of this in one piece.” She took his phone and looked over to Fal on. “Wel , young man, what are you waiting for?

  Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 3

  Falon found that he didn’t have to slow down much for Briony’s Aunt Sophie to keep up with him as they fled the diner. The old woman was faster than she looked, and they had quickly made it out into the street. While they did it, Aunt Sophie was busy making phone cal s.

  “I’m serious Jil . George is one of them now. No, I haven’t kil ed him. I’l explain later. Just don’t go to the meeting, al right?”

  She seemed determined to tel each member of the Preservation Society personal y, rather than leaving it to someone else. It took Fal on a moment to guess why.

  “You’re worried that Pietre might have turned more of them, aren’t you?”

  Aunt Sophie nodded. “Perceptive, young man. The truth is that, while I hope none of them has been turned, I can’t know for sure. It’s why I have to make sure that I tel each of them separately.”

  “And why you haven’t told them where we are going.”

  Fal on saw her nod.

  “I told George everything,” Aunt Sophie said, “and look where that got us.”

  Fal on could hear the anger there. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “I should have known,” Aunt Sophie snapped back.

  “I

  know exactl y how cunning Pietre is, yet I keep underestimating him.”