“And then the demons would be destroyed once and for all,” Dray concludes.
The old man shrugs, something that sets him to coughing again, his weak body jolting with each violent eruption.
“Some more water?” Briony asks.
His eyes glint and he nods.
She lifts it for him but he doesn’t take it from her.
“A little help,” he croaks, eyeing the bottle with thirst.
Briony shuffles forward on her knees, leaning over the man and raising the bottle to his mouth.
The next few actions happen with such speed, they blur and bleed in front of my eyes.
The man grabs Briony by the shoulders. His eyes flame red. He opens his mouth wide and exposes long white fangs. He lunges for her neck. She screams. Dray pounces forward. Thorne lifts his arm, I swing my sword from its sheath, and then white light, powerful and more dazzling than the sun, blinding us all.
“Briony!” I yell, shielding my eyes from the force of it.
There’s a low hiss.
“So hungry, so very hungry,” the old man wails, and then more hissing, hissing and the stench of rancid smoke.
The white light whips away and Briony is on her knees, nothing but a pile of ash in front of her.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Briony
“I … I killed him,” I say, my voice trembling as I peer down at my own murderous hands. They’re not covered in blood but they may as well be.
“He was a vampire,” Thorne says, “and he was going to kill you.”
“He was hungry – starving,” I say, “I panicked.”
“He’d have sucked you dry,” Beaufort says.
In the commotion Dray has transformed into his wolf, and he’s whining and nudging his snout against my face, licking at my cheek.
“We don’t know that,” I mutter, wrapping my arm around Dray’s neck and burying my face in his fur.
“He was lying to us,” Beaufort tells me, resolutely. “Nothing good can survive out here. Definitely not for as long as he did.”
“He was the Head of the academy, he must have been good. The Empress must have trusted him.”
“She trusted Bardin too,” Thorne points out, “and she turned out to be evil.”
I nod my head, not yet convinced by their arguments. “I didn’t mean to do it. I don’t even know how I did it.”
“The light is harmful to vampires,” Beaufort says.
“But it doesn’t kill them,” I say, remembering what Fox told me.
“Yes, but your light is powerful, Briony.”
“More than the sun?” I’ve seen Fox out in the sunlight. Okay, never on a scorching hot day, but still, he didn’t wither away and crumble into ash like that man did.
“I guess so,” Beaufort says, looking at me in that way he does when he’s somewhat amazed by me.
