Holy hell.
It was a full-on war.
Sage and Sawyer were ripping people to shreds in their wolf form, while Demi was knocking fey back with some powerful force field stuff. The wolves and vampires tore into the fey, but they just kept coming.
I spotted a door at the far wall that led to some kind of underground basement or root cellar and saw Liv already running for it.
Bingo.
Bursting from where I stood, I booked it in and out of the crowd, meeting Liv at the padlocked door. A dead Munai was crumpled in front of it, her head a few feet from her body.
“You have to behead them like vamps or shoot them in the brain. They are basically zombies,” she told me.
Good to know.
Using my gun, I shot the lock off the door and then pulled out the chain. Once it was free, Liv and I knelt down and yanked the storm doors open. The musty smell of urine and stale air hit me and I gagged.
Liv peered into the darkness and then at me.
“Ready?”
I nodded.
Wrinkling my nose, I stepped into the dimly lit stairwell and walked downward. After about ten steps we reached a dusty, earth-packed floor. A flickering torch sat on the wall, illuminating a giant open room…
My throat tightened with emotion at the sight of over a hundred women and children.
One of them held a stone in her hand and was at least six months pregnant. She looked ready to crack me over the skull with it. She stood protectively in front of a younger girl who looked like her, about six years old. They both had dusty brown hair and wide green eyes.
“We’re not here to hurt you. We came to free you,” I choked out, holding my palms flat in a pose of submission.
“Those were the ones who rode the dragon!” someone hissed.
So they had seen us last time. That was good.
Liv stepped up next to me, her eyes glistening with tears. “We’re … your children. We were sold to the hunter society.”
The woman holding the stone dropped it with a thwack and then lurched forward, sobbing as she crashed into Liv. She wrapped her arms around Liv and the two hugged as other women pushed forward to touch Liv and me. They grasped my arms, my hair, my legs in affectionate strokes. Murmurs rose up among the others at Liv’s declaration.
“One of ours?”
“We’re saved.”
“One of our daughters?”
“Sold to the evil lady!”
They all whispered and spoke quickly, I couldn’t track the voices and my own emotions were hard to get into check. My chest heaved as I forced down a sob.
The crowd of women and children parted, kicking up dust as shafts of filtered light shone on the same Asian woman I’d recognized. She stepped forward with a slight limp, tears streaming down her face, making tracks in the dust. She was holding the hand of the little teenage girl I noticed from before.
“Are you … Aspen?” she croaked. “Because … I think you’re mine.”
You’re mine.Her words nearly brought me to my knees.
All I could do was nod as my tears rapidly blurred my vision. The next second I was pulled into a hug and her embrace was everything I thought it would be.
Safe.
