Vivienne crumbled in Xavier’s arms. I knew she had just reached her breaking point. When Ashley sneered, I couldn’t take it anymore.
Gathering up all the strength I could muster, I hit both men holding me with my elbows, grabbed their necks and the fire just went out of control. With one loud scream, my palms burst into flames, evaporating my own tears as the two men who were holding me got incinerated into ashes.
Xavier’s eyes widened, taking on the shade of red before turning into a midnight blue. I wondered what each shade meant. His shoulders were trembling.
“How did you do that?” The hoarseness of his voice betrayed his terror. “There’s no way you could’ve… You can’t kill an Elder.”
Realization washed over me like a flood as I watched the piles of ashes that accumulated on either side of me. The Elders are dead. I swallowed hard, realizing that I didn’t even know which of my men they had possessed.
I turned toward Vivienne. When her eyes moistened with tears, my knees almost buckled beneath me.
What have I done?
If Xavier was encouraged at all by my momentary weakness, it didn’t show. He was still staring at me, white as a sheet. “It can’t be. Our kind is immortal. How is it…” His eyes slowly turned into pitch-black night.
Winds started to move all around me.
Chills ran down my spine as all the vampires possessed by Elders set their sights on me.
Before I said the word that would signal Corrine to use her powers to retrieve as many of our comrades as she could, Xavier screamed, “He has to turn back into a vampire! Turn him now!”
He threw my sister to the ground. That was when I said it. One word. “Now!”
The moment the word came out of my lips, chaos followed.
My vision blurred as the strong winds carried all the Elders right toward me in one quick swoop. It was a full-on massive attack and I had no idea how to get out of it. All I knew was that I couldn’t allow them to turn me back into one of them, because the moment they possessed me, whatever power I had would immediately belong to an Elder.
When I pictured my young wife’s face, an overpowering desire to live came over me, but should it come to it, I had no choice other than to die.
Chapter 35: Vivienne
The sight that unfolded before me was one of the most awful, breathtaking sights I’d ever seen.
Derek Novak had always been powerful. He was my brother and I knew him better than anyone else in the world, but at that moment, he was almost unrecognizable. His face took on a determination I’d never seen before.
I watched in horror as one of the vampires possessed by an Elder—Landis, Xavier’s brother—bit into Derek’s neck. When Derek pressed his hand against the man’s chest, I was sure that I was about to see one of us die—just like those two guards’ lives had ended just a couple of minutes ago.
However, as the mysterious fire once again flowed from my brother’s palms, touching Landis just as he was about to turn Derek into a vampire once again, the man simply collapsed to the ground.
Derek’s fire formed a flaming tornado. Screams of invisible—and supposedly immortal—Elders filled the air. As the lives of one Elder after another ended, Xavier, Liana, Yuri and Ashley moved away from the pack. Xavier took one look at the other three before they all disappeared. My heart sank. The Elders had taken them away from us. Hostages—people they would use against us.
I was so focused on Derek that I hadn’t noticed Corrine standing in the middle of the bloody arena, mumbling words that made no sense to me. Her eyes were as lightning, her long brown hair being blown away by invisible winds.
By the time I looked back at my brother, a dozen of the recently possessed vampires lay all around him. The flames—along with the Elders’ shrieks—subsided.
I had no idea what had just happened, but Derek, now covered in soot, looked completely exhausted. My heart dropped when he collapsed to the ground.
I rushed past the several levels of the Catacombs that separated him from me. I knelt on the ground beside him, raising his head and laying it on my lap. He was barely conscious.
“What was that?” I whispered. “How… What did you just do? You were able to kill Elders, Derek. How were you able to do that? What happened to you?”
I probably should’ve been more concerned for his wellbeing, because he didn’t appear to be doing well at all.
Derek’s lips opened to say something, but instead tears began rushing down his face and he sobbed. “I killed them all. I killed…”
I looked around at our people lying on the ground around us. They were all moving. Claudia looked through the mass of bodies. A disheartened expression was on her pretty face, her shoulders sagging in defeat, even though most of the people there were alive. “Claudia?” I whispered, unable to wrap my mind around everything that was happening.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
I could practically see Yuri’s countenance reflected in her eyes. My heart went out to her. Is Xavier’s face reflected in mine? I could still feel his hand on my body and I couldn’t suppress a shudder. Once he was free from the Elder’s grasp, would I be able to let him touch me without thinking of that moment? Of that moment when he wasn’t Xavier, but instead a complete monster. The regret, guilt and depression swept over me as I recalled my missed chance to let him know how much I loved him. Why didn’t I just say the words?
I realized that the most difficult times of my life had been when I had been taken captive by Borys Maslen and that time when I had been taken by the hunters—both times were made even more difficult because Xavier wasn’t with me.
Now wrapped in my own pain, I knew I had to snap out of it or it would eat me alive, so I did what I had to do. I switched the emotions off, even if I knew that it was an entryway to the darkness. I wondered to myself what darkness Xavier had in him so as to have an opening for an Elder to take over him.
Snap out of this, Vivienne. I once again caught sight of Claudia, looking lost as she stared blankly at the people surrounding her. I couldn’t be like her. I couldn’t be a lost, whimpering little girl, pining for Xavier. I had to be the leader Xavier had challenged me to be if I was to have any chance of getting him back.
Landis was the first to sit up. He looked me straight in the eye, this time no longer possessed, his irises clearly showing.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
He nodded, but he also frowned. “I think I have a fever.”