Chapter 548
“You okay?” Brandon shouted to me as he moved a little closer to where I was standing. The holes in the ground were not shaking now as much as they had been before, but they were still an obstacle we had to consider. I didn’t want him to get too close because of my tornadoes, but I was glad he was nearby.
“Great,” I called back, sending another pile of creatures over the side of the mountain.
Aaron was fighting his way through the crowd of black creatures, working his way to Cadence. The path was getting clearer, as far as the minions were concerned, but once he got within about a hundred yards of Cadence’s location, one of the Vampires that had been engaged with our forces closer to the top of the mountain broke off, clearly on his way to intercept the Guardian Leader.
Whether he liked it or not, Aaron wasn’t alone now. I wasn’t sure where she’d come from, but Eliza was running parallel to him, fighting off the monsters she knew better than anyone else as she went. Seeing the petite girl alongside my brother-in-law, my eyes flickered to my sister. She and Christian were conferring while it appeared Daunator was recharging his batteries. It seemed odd, but I guess even malevolent beings need a break sometimes. I saw a gleam bounce off my sister’s wrist and realized she was wearing gold cuffs, like Wonder Woman. That must’ve been one of Christian’s inventions. I hoped his new grenade worked as well as the bracelets seemed to.
Aaron and Eliza were getting closer to Cadence, but now a few of the other Vampires were able to break away and move in their direction. I wished I could go fight them off, but what I was doing was more important, and I was the only one who could do it. So I stayed put while Elliott and Jamie moved to head off part of the threat so Aaron could get through.
As my sister and Christian moved in on Daunator again, the ground shook even more violently. Clearly, the Vampire did not want Cadence’s husband to help her. The ground beneath Aaron’s feet opened up and sucked him down. My eyes widened in horror, and I was about to fly over and pull him out when I realized people were being sucked into the holes all around me.
Brandon teetered on the edge of a large hole, his heel no longer on the ground. I threw the creatures I had been gathering over the cliff and picked Brandon up for a moment until the quaking was over. Daunator was engaged again now and couldn’t open up the ground and fight Cadence at the same time. I put Brandon down and then returned my attention to Aaron.
Eliza was gone, too, but before I even raised my hand to start pulling the Guardians out, the small woman came flying out of the hole. It was odd, until I realized Aaron had managed to grab ahold of the lip of the hole and had flung her out. He pulled himself out just in time to meet the large, burly Vampire who’d broken away from Mikelli, one of the European Guardians, who was closing in on their location.
Jamie and Elliott were making short work of the smaller two Vampires, and Margie and Grant had left their position by Aurora to help closer to Cadence’s location. I thought I saw flames out of the corner of my eye and turned my head my sister’s direction in time to see blue light flying toward her. Scarlet, the Healer from Philadelphia, was over to her right and had apparently put out a fire that had engulfed my sister for a second. I was sort of glad I’d missed most of that.
So much was going on everywhere I looked. Cale was moving across the field now, toward my sister, and I was relieved to see at least she had a Healer joining her since Scarlet’s team was getting pulled farther away. Heather was still wrangling the black creatures, and no more were coming out of the earth. I contemplated leaving this task of throwing them to attempt to fill in some of the holes, but I didn’t know how Daunator was managing to keep the dirt from falling in. I needed to help get the few Guardians who had fallen in out so they could get back to work, but it had been such a physical strain when I’d pulled Christian out, I hated to use my strength for that when the Guardians who hadn’t managed to catch themselves and scramble out were people I didn’t even know.
While their ranks were thinner, the black creatures continued to attack. Brandon and Shane were both heavily engaged, and I did my best to keep more from stacking up against them. Brandon was trying to handle three of them at the same time, one of them was particularly vicious, with longer claws than the others, and I imagined she’d been in the ground a long time.
She was too close to him for me to get a grip on her without picking him up, too. Her long talons swiped out at him while he was focused on one of her counterparts, and his leg spurted blood. There were no Healers nearby, now that Jamie was off in front of us, tied up with a Vampire. Disposing of the group I had tangled up, I reached for my Glock just as the woman lunged at Brandon again. This time, he lost his balance, and with a little more effort on her part, he was falling into the hole behind him.
“No!” I shouted as his arms flailed out but missed the lip. If I’d had my hands out instead of fumbling for my gun, maybe I would’ve caught him in time, but I didn’t. Instead, I managed to grab hold of her instead and used my powers to ram her head into the ground a few times before I threw her over the cliff. The other two creatures who were nearby skittered around the hole my boyfriend was trapped in and headed toward Shane.
