“If you were in the same position, you would have done the same thing,” I said, rubbing my thumb across his scarred cheek.
“But I wouldn’t have been able to save you.”
“You would have tried, and that would have been enough.”
“I can feel a part of your soul attached to my own now.”
A half smile tweaked one corner of my mouth. “It looks like you’re stuck with me then.”
Rowe matched my smile and leaned in closer, letting his lips brush against mine. “I’ve heard worse news today.” My laugh was smothered by his lips as he kissed me in the mud and rain and blood.
Thirty-five
The Daylight Coalition was waiting for us as the nightwalkers turned their attention from the warring naturi to the scattering of humans positioned behind a grove of trees with guns. It was too late to try to cloak ourselves from view, as they had already seen us. However, we still had a few other tricks up our sleeves. On a silent count of three, we all ran at the coalition members in a blur of movement in the darkness. Gunfire exploded in the night as they desperately tried to hit us, but we easily dodged the bullets and fell onto our targets. Each man in the coalition force was paired up, in the hope that they would be better protected.
Sliding around one particularly massive live oak tree, I swung my blade so it sliced through the throat of one man before ripping a gun out of the hands of his partner. I tossed the weapon aside like a broken toy and sank my fangs into the jugular of my enemy. He squirmed beneath me, desperate to be free as I drained him of his life. I drank deeply, not bothering to push away his conscious thought. He wanted to fight nightwalkers. Well, then I was going to give him a good taste of what it meant to go up against a nightwalker and lose.
In the middle of my feast, I didn’t notice that he had palmed a large knife, but I felt it the moment he shoved it into the middle of my back. I released him, pushing him violently away as I reached around to pull the knife free. Quivering, he backed against the tree he’d been hiding behind and searched himself with trembling hands for another weapon. Blood continued to pour from his neck where I had bitten him. I sighed with relief when the weapon was finally free of my back. With a glow in my eyes, I surged forward, plunged his knife into his stomach and pulled upward, gutting him. He screamed once before passing out from the pain. It would be only seconds before he finally bled to death.
Standing with my hands on my hips, I turned to see my companions finishing up the last of the Daylight Coalition as if they were taking out a bit of trash to the waste bin. It had been a minor scrap compared to the fight with the naturi, which now appeared to be over. The sounds of battle no longer reached me, and on the hill I could see Cynnia standing with her sister’s head dangling from one bloody hand. A new reign had started.
For a breath, relief crept through my frame. Danaus stood at the edge of the woods with weapons drawn, waiting for me to join him. A number of nightwalkers were killed during the night, but many of my companions had survived. I could even sense a few lycanthropes out there among the naturi. We had done the impossible by taking on Aurora’s army, and not only survived the encounter, but triumphed.
My relief instantly disappeared when floodlights snapped on, blanketing the park with harsh white light from both sides. I stepped to the edge of the woods, shielding my eyes as best as I could to take a closer look at what surrounded us. My stomach twisted and a trembling started in my fingers as I saw not only signs of the Savannah police, but the National Guard as well. While we were engrossed in the battle with the naturi and the Daylight Coalition, the police had moved in to keep us trapped within the park.
To make matters worse, they were accompanied by the local TV channels as well as the press. Cameras were rolling, flashbulbs popping, and commentators were out, trying to make some sense of the carnage before them. No one had tried to stop us, because for the first few minutes no one understood what they were seeing. Humanlike creatures were flying through the air, balls of fire were spontaneously appearing and disappearing, and people were changing into animal form. Our world had been spread out for display at its worst possible moment, and now there was no taking it back. The Great Awakening was here.
I knew that everything as we knew it would be different from that moment on. Hiding would be more than a natural way of life to make feeding and sleeping easier, it would be an absolute necessity as humans who had never taken up arms before suddenly hunted creatures they didn’t understand and feared. Governments would quickly step in to calm the masses as they attempted to reestablish some type of order, which would mean, so far as they saw it, finding a way to rule over creatures that defied so many of their rules. They would demand blood samples and possible tagging so they knew where all the nightwalkers, lycanthropes, and other creatures were hiding each day. They would do it all in the name of protecting not only humans but also the supernatural world, but in the end, I knew if we were not extremely careful, the supernatural world was going to become the monster under the bed that had to be hunted.
We would have to proceed slowly, find ways to contact world leaders and reassure them—if not blackmail them—into believing that our peoples were not a threat to the human race. With the presence of the Daylight Coalition, no transition would be easy. Nightwalkers and lycanthropes were undoubtedly exposed, though the naturi might be able to sneak off into hiding for a while. I wondered if the witches and warlocks would stand with us and accept exposure, or wait in hiding for the worst of the chaos to blow over.
As the rain started to abate, I noticed a dark figure flying across the night sky toward me. I barely restrained the urge to pull a knife when I realized it was Rowe. The naturi landed lightly a few feet in front of me. His clothes were soaked in what appeared to be his own blood, and his neck had a fresh cut that had just crusted over with dried blood. Apparently, the battle against Aurora had been tough.
“The humans are here,” he needlessly announced. They were a little hard to miss on either side of us, with their bright lights and weapons. “Do we fight?”
“And make the situation even worse?” I cried, looking at him as if he had lost his mind. But that was Rowe, always out for a little—or a lot—of human blood. I could only hope that Nyx could change that.
“It’s too late. We’re exposed to the world.”
Rowe shrugged one shoulder, wincing at the motion as wounds still tried to mend. “I guess it was only a matter of time before they found out.”
“I would have preferred to handle it in a more civilized manner.”
“Why hide the truth?” he asked.
“Self-preservation,” I snapped. “They are going to be hunting us now to rein in the danger we present to them.”
As if on cue, a human barked out over a blow horn, “Everyone step out into the open with your hands behind your head! You are all under arrest.”
Rowe gave a snort as his hand fell on the hilt of the sword at his side. He was more than ready to jump into battle with a bunch of humans. To him, they were nothing more than vermin that needed to be exterminated. I gently laid a hand over his, stopping him from drawing the weapon.
“We can’t fight them,” I firmly said. “This is the Great Awakening. We have to face this mess and not make a bigger one.”
“Then what do you propose?”
I frowned, hating to utter the words. It was not something I was accustomed to. Like Rowe, I was a fighter, ready to face any situation head on, but now was not the time. “We run,” I said.
Rowe stared out at the gathering of humans around us, a dark look on his face. I think he was beginning to realize the futility of trying to fight this many humans at once. It would only bring more, and the humans outnumbered us, after all. It would be an endless battle that we couldn’t win. As Cynnia had suggested, we had to find a way to coexist, which wasn’t going to be easy or pretty.