Gypsy Moon (All The Pretty Monsters #4)(13)

It doesn’t exactly happen the way he warns.

As he moves his hands so fast that I barely register the motion, flinging out numerous silver spikes at once, leveling a row of wolves, it sets the room off into chaos.

Wolves bolt for the doors just as Emit’s dark wolf boulders through, his pupils so small they’re almost nonexistent.

Vance leisurely spins some kind of double bladed staff, taking off a few heads as though it’s any other day, eyes darting from place to place like he’s keeping count.

“It’s as though you don’t quite understand that we don’t really fucking die, but all of you do,” Vance goes on in a very Monday-morning-teacher sort of way.

Emit’s wolf is shredding others, not taking as many hits as he took the last time the battle raged on. I stay put, wondering where Damien is, because that’s the only logical reason for the way people are avoiding me like I’m a hot fire instead of a bleeding, vulnerable, exposed girl on the ground.

I feel the satin ribbon pulling through the wound on my neck, finally sealing it together, and relief spills through me when my blood starts pumping again, slowly easing the lethargy.

Vance has moved on to twin silver swords that let the blood slip right off without leaving a trail, keeping their gleam from one wolf to the next.

I watch the damage they’re capable of when they’re not even really putting forth much effort and wonder about just how horrible Idun is going to be, since they couldn’t even keep her underground without destroying her alpha House.

“I’ve gotten quite lazy, relying too much on my Van Helsing curse to aid my hunts and fights,” Vance continues on, slinging one of his swords through the room, and sending a ripple of headless bodies to the ground. The blade stabs into the wall so hard that it sends fresh, deep, long cracks scattering in four directions. I watch with some fascinated distraction as the silver turns to a rusty heap that’s now wedged there.

He swings his next swords as he turns and faces the room, lips tugging in a half smirk as he glances around.

“I’d forgotten how good I was at simply tracking someone down on foot. After all, there’s always a trail.”

His eyes flick toward my proximity, and then he turns as Shera appears at the balcony and drops something down to him.

After he catches it, she scurries back off like she’s got a hiding spot and she’s done whatever she was supposed to do. He tosses it over to the side, and another, almost muted explosion happens.

I hear bodies collapsing and small cries cutting through the air, but it’s all such a blur of motion, and a frenzy of yelps of pain and whines he’s speaking over.

Vance remains calm and casual, as though he’s mildly irked they think they’re worthy of his presence.

I’ve been stuck in this corner after pointlessly feeding a vampire, who went missing instead of bothering to help me out.

“You’re smart enough to fear the vampire. You’ll fear your true alpha soon enough,” Vance goes on.

The sea of wolves seems never-ending, and I don’t know where they keep coming from.

“For now, learn what happens when your Van Helsing gets thoroughly pissed off about his own laws being broken, even after the woman under his protection has shown you mercy once already,” Vance continues on. “You won’t remember Damien, but you’ll likely remember a little of what he can do.”

As if cued, everything I’ve been seeing abruptly changes. There have been so many layers of illusion that I was too oblivious to notice.

There aren’t hundreds of wolves standing like I thought. There are five. The rest are dead bodies, mostly severed, and lying on the ground, half turned back to flesh form. One of the live ones is standing directly in front of Vance, and its ears flatten when it realizes it stands alone.

Four others are crouched just a little in front of us. I say us, because Arion is sitting right beside me, legs crossed at his ankles like he’s been here all along with his hand on my leg, even though I can’t feel his touch.

Damien can be an asshole sometimes. He wanted me to think Arion had just abandoned me.

Which is a complex illusion he’s not supposed to be able to hold for so long…

I still can’t feel Arion’s touch, even as he absently draws circles on my knee, leaned over on me like he’s enjoying the touch I can’t feel and we’ve been watching our favorite show together.

I would glare at Damien, but I still can’t see him.

Emit’s wolf is circling the lone gray wolf in front of Vance, as the four wolves cowering in front of us make whimpering noises, their eyes on Arion like they’ve known he was here all along.

Now I understand why I’ve been avoided by the wolves.

It wasn’t an illusion that scared them off. It was the vampire alpha they sucker punched while he was briefly down.

“It’s quite the high. People revering true power for the first time,” Arion tells me absently, a dark grin twisting his lips. Then his nose wrinkles. “It’s less pleasant when they piss themselves in proper fear.”

Hundreds of dead wolves litter the floors before them. I’m sure they also thought those wolves were still fighting, as they crouched and hid like true omegas, once running became a terrifying option.

“This is what happens when you have a focused Van Helsing,” Arion goes on like he’s proving a point to me that I’m missing.