Page 78 of Flesh and Fury

Ari was watching Eoghan watch Kellen. He saw the pain for the man he’d once cared deeply for, and it broke his heart. Eoghan shook his head, and Ari suddenly knew there was nothing any of them could do to save Kellen. He was a dead man. Those vampires were too close to him. As he stood there, feeling time slipping away, Ari felt the slightest change in the atmosphere. He slowly looked around and was shocked to see the barest hint of a tall shadow moving along the far wall. The figure moved in the shadows, easing his way around the wall toward the back of the throne and then ducking behind the curtain.

He heard a sharp intake of breath at the same time the three vampires on the dais seemed to feel something was awry in the room. All three suddenly went on guard, stiffening, and looking around them.

The moment they took their eyes off Kellen, and Bradshaw loosened his hair, Eoghan screamed, “Kellen! Drop!”

As if in slow motion, several things seemed to happen at once. For the first time in his fucking life, Kellen did as he was told without being a dick about it. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, rolling away from Bradshaw and scrambling off the steps toward the safety of the gathered shifters and friendly vampires. Severin and Invictus suddenly burst onto either side of the dais at the same time. The disoriented vampires failed to move an inch, standing stock still as if paralyzed as the dragons shifted, dwarfing them.

The split second it took them to realize what they were looking at was all the dragons needed to open their mouths and breathe fire at the evil trio. They were instantly turned into vampire candles, setting the stairs, throne, and velvet hangings behind them on fire. Ari’s felt his eyes widen as he stared in horror at the crispy critters as they writhed on the stairs, screaming as they burned. They finally fell into smoking, smoldering heaps of raw meat, and rolled down the stairs, landing at their feet.

Ari and Eoghan moved as one, rushing the stairs, and dragging the curtains down, stomping on them before the whole place when up.

“Jesus Christ, I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Priest said.

“Really something isn’t it?” Eoghan asked.

Ari chuckled. “It never gets old,” he said, stomping out the last of the flames.

The chief smiled and turned toward the king as the shifters began their shifts back to their human forms and the vampires left the throne room, no doubt wanting to get as far away from the possibility of more fire as they could.

“Well, King John,” the chief said, “how does it feel to have your home back?” she asked, laying a gentle hand on his arm.

The king turned to her with tears in his eyes. “I have my kingdom back, Deputy Chief, but my family is gone.” He looked around. “And my people?” He shook his head, looking bereft. “We’re too late…there’s no one left.”

The moment he said it, the doors to the throne room where thrown open, and vampires rushed in. Ari didn’t recognize any of them, but the king certainly did. He let out an inhuman hoot of joy and rushed over to them even as they converged on him, throwing themselves at his feet andprostrating themselves before them, crying and laughing all at the same time.

Ari couldn’t keep the smile off his face as he watched the king hug one of them tightly before putting her down.

“Adeline, you’re alive,” he said, tears pouring down his face.

“I’m alive. We’re all alive,” she said enthusiastically. “But there’s nothing to eat and we’ve been reduced to slaves, serving Bradshaw just to get a small ration of blood a day to keep us alive to serve him one more day.” She turned and looked at the three humans in the room. The look in her eyes was pure hunger.

“Here, Adeline,” the king said, reaching for her chin and pulling her face around to him. “The humans and shifters are not to be touched. I’ll have food brought from the blood plant right away.”

The vampire nodded. “Is it true, Highness?” she asked. “Is Bradshaw dead like those strange vampires outside said?”

“Yes, my child,” King John said, stroking her hair before pulling her to him and hugging her again. He looked over at Ari, Eoghan, and the chief. “I don’t even know what to say to thank you for everything you did.” He let go of Adeline and walked over to the chief. “And you. You believed me from the very beginning.”

“You gave me every reason to believe you, Highness, and we only did the right thing. I just wish we could have done more.”

He nodded then looked around the room, stopping on the melted mess his golden throne had become. When he turned back around and looked at her, he was grinning. “Well, I could use a new throne.”

Everyone laughed.

When Ari glanced at Eoghan he must have had the same idea. He was looking at him with more love than he could have ever imagined.

Epilogue

EOGHAN

King John’s vampires gratefully opened up their homes to the surviving fighters that night, allowing them to shower the grit and blood away from their bodies. And even found them clean clothes so they wouldn’t have to drive home in the gore-caked ones they’d been wearing during the fight. Eoghan had never relished a shower so badly, slipping gratefully into sweatpants and a T-shirt as Ari did the same. By the time they’d showered and changed, the chief had hung up with Vance Ross—the big brown bear from Vegas—and gotten the good news that his biker pack had taken care of Bradshaw’s vamps in Tucson, Arizona, only losing two of his own in the process.

Edward Walters and Juan Garcia had also checked in from New Mexico to say that Santa Fe and Albuquerque were also free of the scourge of the Bradshaw vampires. None of Walters shifters had been killed in the process but Juan had lost one young werewolf when he’d been ambushed by four vamps at once. They’d managed to hold him down and drain him while his pack fought to get to him. They eventually had, just not in time. Juan had loaded his body into the semi which had taken them to Albuquerque and driven him back home to be mourned by his family and buried as a hero.

Andy Red Crow’s Denver clan had also been successful in closing down Bradshaw’s operation in Phoenix with Rana Fields’ clan fighting by their side. Phoenix had been thetoughest go aside from Flagstaff because next to Bradshaw’s headquarters, they had the most vampires. Red Crow and Fields’ clans lost five shifters in total, four in the initial fighting, and Andy’s brave second-in-command panther who’d died protecting him. The man had been young and newly-married with a baby on the way and of all of the shifters lost to the two clans that day, the hardest loss. Andy had promised to take the family under his protection and keep them safe. Rana secretly told Priest, the young leader would be smart to marry the girl and claim the child as his heir.

Shockingly, Two Trees and Alo’s Tahoe clan had lost no one. Though initially thought to have been dragged away to satisfy some vampire’s hunger, the young cheetah, Clarice, had been found unconscious with a huge goose egg on the back of her head, apparently knocked out as soon as the melee first began. After a large vampire had been toppled right beside her, he’d fallen on top of her, obscuring her smaller body until after the showdown at the palace and the search for her commenced. Everyone had been stunned when she began coming around, complaining that she’d missed all the fun.

Even though Kellen McGillis was an asshole of the highest order, who’d barely escaped with his life, Eoghan was grateful his former lover survived the ordeal in John Townsend’s palace. Severin and Invictus realized after witnessing the battle going on in the streets from their perch in the air, that the real fight was going to be down on the ground and not at the blood plant or anywhere else. That realization and nothing more had saved McGillis’ pathetic life.