Unleash The Moon (The Preternaturals Book 6) (26 page)

Sydney hadn’t felt any particularly strong
connection to the witch, she just wanted to get away from the
discomfort of not being accepted by Noah’s dad.

Every few minutes, Fiona made various animal calls,
but it was clear she wasn’t mindlessly calling like a hunter in the
forest seeking to mimic. She knew and spoke their language. A line
of animals formed behind them and followed as she collected more
for her menagerie.

Many were natural enemies and shouldn’t be able to
be together without fighting. Sydney wasn’t sure what the witch had
told them to make them play nice, but whatever it was, they’d
jumped the moment she called.

As they moved through the woods, a green glowing
mist trailed off the witch. She seemed like a siren to the woodland
creatures as the group grew ever larger.

“
So,” Fiona said when they reached
a clearing, “You don’t know me. Why did you want to join me for the
boring work?”

Watching the witch expertly communicate with the
animals and get such varying species to come along for their plan
was anything but boring.

“
It was too much back there with
everyone. I was about to come out of my skin.” If she’d been more
thoughtful, she would have suggested Noah go on this mission,
instead. If anyone needed space and to get away from everyone, it
was her mate. But Sydney knew he would have refused, insisting on
acting as a pack leader. In just a few days he’d become attached to
his new role. It was good for him to get out of his shell. He still
needed to prove himself, and wandering off in the woods at a time
like this wouldn’t accomplish that goal.

“
I know what you mean,” Fiona
said. She paused when a crow swooped down and started squawking at
her. She squawked back. The bird became enraged and dove toward
her. She lifted a hand, flicked her wrist, and the bird went
sailing back several yards. “Crows are seriously such pessimists.”
She squawked once more and the bird flew away.

“
You don’t like crowds, either?”
Sydney asked.

“
I used to be a shut in.
Agoraphobia. I was a prisoner in my own home for years because the
birds kept telling me that if I left my house something bad would
happen.”

Sydney could relate in a way. It wasn’t fear that
had held her captive in her own home, but she’d been a prisoner
since childhood all the same. “How’d you get over it?”

“
Z kidnapped me because he needed
a babysitter for Noah. I’m glad Noah’s okay, by the way. I was sad
to hear when he’d been taken. I know how heartbroken Jane and Cole
were when they lost him the first time.” Fiona stopped walking, and
the animals stopped as well. She turned to Sydney. “Cole will
accept you eventually. Just give it some time.”

Sydney nodded, concerned that perhaps Fiona could
read her mind or something.

“
Wait, Z kidnapped
you?”

“
Yeah, but I don’t think it’s
because he wanted a babysitter.”

Given the couple’s relationship now, Sydney was
pretty sure about that as well.

Fiona continued through the meadow, speaking to each
animal in turn. Some—like rabbits—she dismissed or maybe told to
hide. Sydney thought hundreds of aggressive hoppy rabbits might be
just as intimidating as all the rest of the assembled wildlife.

“
Why are we bringing deer?” she
asked. When one thought of hardcore animal fighters, one did not
usually picture deer.

“
They’re normally quite docile,
except during mating season. But they can kick like hell. I wasn’t
sure they’d come, but they agreed. Who am I to turn away good
help?”

An explosion sounded in the distance. Sydney turned
to see sparks of red and purple and green and blue rising into the
air. The magic users were there; the fight had already started. It
was much faster than she’d anticipated, even with Tam’s warning
that they were on their way. What if Noah and Sydney had gotten
home just a few hours later than they had? They would have walked
in on the fighting. At least Tam had a few days warning.

Fiona moved faster, speaking each species’ language
as she reached new animals. Each time, the animals gathered others
of their kind and joined them.

When Sydney and Fiona made it down the hill, the
melee had begun in earnest. It was almost impossible to tell who
was on which side as sparks and incantations flew. Fiona raised her
arms as glowing green light trailed from her hands, wavy like
strands of electric hair.

Hundreds of animals both predator and prey, running
and flying, had paused, waiting for her command. Fiona dropped her
hands, and the animals flew into the fray, attacking and
distracting the magic users who had come to do them harm.

“
Leave no one alive,” Tam shouted
from a few hundred yards away. “I’ve already got a messenger.” She
held a young scrawny man with red hair by the scruff of the neck.
Then she trapped him in a band of energy.

Sydney flinched at the order to kill everyone, even
though she knew the score here. It was kill or be killed. Leaving
survivors would just create a larger, angrier army to deal with
later. Decimating their numbers was the only hope they might be
left in peace.

Tam and Cain had brought in hundreds of demons from
the demon dimension. They’d no doubt used a nearby portal while
Fiona and Sydney had been out collecting animals. Even before the
animals were introduced into the fray, the magic users were
beginning to become overwhelmed by the demons they hadn’t expected
to fight.

Maybe Uncle Cain felt guilty for staying out of the
war years earlier. It hadn’t been his fight, and he’d refused to
send his kind in to help. The preternaturals might have lost
anyway, even with the demons. It was a big war. This, by contrast,
was a battle, and the troops the magic users had sent in were
ill-prepared to cope with hoards of unexpected demons and all the
local wildlife turning on them, too.

Cain and Luc fought with the rest of them, creating
a buffer for Tam, Anna, and Dayne to do defensive magic. Aunt Greta
was nowhere to be found, but she wouldn’t be. Except for being able
to shapeshift into a housecat, she didn’t have any real powers to
speak of. She had more than human strength but she wasn’t strong
enough for a fight like this. And she couldn’t do magic.

Sydney heard a hiss and looked up. A black cat sat
on a limb high in the tree above her. The cat’s body was arched in
angry panic. So maybe Aunt Greta hadn’t gone home. She’d pushed
through her fear to stay near Dayne.

Fiona wandered up. The witch was wiped out from the
magic and commanding the animals. Aunt Greta meowed at her, and
Fiona communicated back.

“
Dayne will be okay. I’ll head
that way.”

The black cat looked mollified but climbed higher in
the tree and kept her worried gaze in Dayne’s direction.

Noah fought nearby with a magic user Sydney
recognized. It was the woman he’d let go on the night of their
escape. What was her name again? Sydney edged closer.

“
Kristen, I spared you once,” Noah
said. “I can’t do it again.”

But Sydney saw the pain on her mate’s face, and knew
that if he could, he’d spare her a second time. Irrational jealousy
stabbed her. What had this woman been to Noah? Why did she hold
such power over him? Had she only been kind when no one else was
during his captivity? Or had it been something more?

Kristen flung a conjured ball of purple electricity
at Noah. He growled as it scorched his skin, then she turned and
ran. Kristen knew as well as Sydney did that Noah couldn’t bring
himself to end her life. But Sydney could.

Hostility and rage surged through her. The woman had
been kind enough when Sydney was captured, but the way she looked
at Noah, the way he’d hesitated… Somewhere in the irrational place
where the simultaneous claim and mating bond lived, Sydney couldn’t
let the bitch live.

She pulled a knife from a concealment band under her
top and put on a burst of vampiric speed. She’d slit the woman’s
throat before Noah could reach them.

His eyes glowed golden. “Why did you do that? She
was running.”

Sydney licked the blood off the knife, then bit into
Kristen’s throat, draining the body before letting it drop. Killing
with fangs felt too personal, but once her foe was dead, the call
of her powerful magical blood had been too much to resist.

Shame washed over her. All these years she’d lived
like a human with an odd diet. It was only now at her full power,
confronted with jealousy and mating links and rage, that she’d let
the monster out. And for the briefest moment, she’d felt that scary
predatory calm and lack of remorse. She brushed past Noah to join
the fight in earnest. She needed to do some killing she could more
easily justify to paper over the petty murder she’d just committed.
But he grabbed her arm to stop her.

“
Sydney.”

“
Don’t. I don’t know what I am
now. I can’t believe I just…” Yeah, Tam had said to leave no
survivors, and it was debatable if disobeying that order for one
additional person would make a difference. But they both knew that
wasn’t why Kristen was a drained corpse at the edge of the woods
right now.

Noah pulled Sydney into his arms, and she laid her
head against his shoulder. He petted her hair as she sobbed.
“You’ve never been tested before. You’ve never had to deal with the
consequences of your power before because it’s new.”

“
Have you? Had to deal with
consequences?”

He was silent, and she knew that it wasn’t the same
for him. He hadn’t been damaged by the lives he’d taken.

“
She made her choice to come here
to fight,” he said.

“
Was there something between the
two of you?”

Noah’s eyes widened. “Is that why you…? No. She was
just nice to me. She was a friend. Or the closest thing I had in
there.”

If he thought that would make Sydney feel better, he
was wrong. She just cried harder.

“
I don’t think we should fight
anymore unless they need us. You’re too upset.” He started to lead
her away, but she stubbornly refused to go with him.

The fight started to die down, but she ran headlong
into it, anyway.

Her father fought and ripped heads off bodies, his
face covered in blood like a madman. Was that what she was,
too?

Hundreds of bodies littered the landscape. The
enemy. Not the preternaturals this time.

Tam, Dayne, and Anna were starting to run out of
energy. A powerfully bright ball of fire hurtled toward the group
of them. Dayne didn’t see it in time. Before Sydney could call out
a warning, Fiona jumped in front of it.

“
No!” Sydney shouted as the witch
fell. Hadrian and Angeline rushed to try to heal her, but it was
too late.

The black panther roared and attacked the magic user
who’d thrown the fire. The two of them struggled and fought, the
magic user unable to overcome Z’s pure rage and grief. The demons
converged on the remaining few humans and killed them quickly.

Z emerged from his fight and struggled to reclaim
his human form. He was wounded but alive.

The core group stood over the fallen witch as the
demons faded back into the forest, no doubt headed back to Cain’s
dimension.

Birds flew over Fiona, circling her, their shrill
calls deafening in the forest fogged up from the smoke of too much
magic.

Sydney was sure she imagined it, but it sounded like
they were saying: “I told you so. I told you so.”

Z let out an agonized cry when he reached her, and
the animals fled back into the forest. Even the birds dispersed as
he sobbed over her.

Noah gripped Sydney’s hand. She knew he was thinking
what if it had been her? It could have just as easily been her. Z
held the witch’s limp body in his arms. He was shaking from
grief.

A black cat tentatively approached the circle, then
Aunt Greta shifted back. For the first time she seemed unconcerned
with her nudity. “It’s my fault. I asked her to watch out for
Dayne. I had a bad feeling. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt.”

Z didn’t seem to hear her, or else he refused to
acknowledge the apology.

“
We might not have won without
her,” Tam said. “It was an honor to teach her her craft. She came
so far from when we first met. Her animal communication gifts
expanded and grew stronger. And she was much braver than she ever
thought she was.”

But none of these platitudes soothed the angry and
distraught panther.

“
What was the point? She died,
anyway. If she’d left well enough alone with the magic, we could
have had decades more together. I didn’t care about the gray hair.”
He looked up at Tam, his eyes glittering gold. “Bring her
back!”

“
I can’t, Z.”

“
Bring. Her. Back. It’s your
fault. Bring her back. If you’re so fucking powerful, bring her
back. Or is your reputation just so much noise? Am I supposed to be
impressed by you? I’ll be impressed when you can bring a
motherfucking soul back from the grave. So do it!”

“
I can’t. I can’t call her back.
She’s in heaven now. She can’t come back to this body. It’s done. I
can’t defy the laws of magic anymore than a normal human can defy
physics.”

“
Then send me to her.”

“
You know how it is in heaven. You
can’t be with her there like you were with her here.”

“
The hell I can’t. Let them try
and stop us.”

Sydney expected Tam to give the panther some speech
about how time healed wounds, how he would recover and get better,
how he needed to work through the grief. But she didn’t. She simply
nodded grimly and raised her arms above her head. She chanted in
Latin as the energy gathered around her into a ball of brilliant
light, then she sent it straight into him.