Elijah. Jacquelyn Frank
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them the means to destroy those she had once called friends. Beyond that lay every other Nightwalker race, innocent or not, who would be threatened by Ruth’s centuries of knowledge.
All that mattered to the humans was their fear of the unknown, terror of creatures whose power so outstripped even their wildest imaginations, making them quake with the conviction that it was only a matter of time before these night-living races fell upon the human race as myth and legend had predicted over and over again. It did not matter that, if they had wanted to, any Nightwalker race could have done so thousands of times over the last millennium alone.
Bitterly, Elijah felt that even if someone gave them the truth, they would still only expect the worst of all Nightwalkers because they were under the sway of stubborn prejudice and fear. The only thought that comforted Elijah in that moment was that his death would rouse a retaliation from the oldest and most powerful of his kind, and it would very likely be the end of this insurrection of evil.
“Spawn!” Ruth hissed the epithet with wicked delight, fueling the bloodlust of the women around him. “Devil in the guise of a human!” She smiled and said softly, “Elijah, the mighty Warrior Captain.” Ruth laughed, the sound deceptively beautiful as she leaned forward to peer at him, her voice low so others could not hear her familiarity with him. “Noah’s little pet pit bull, felled by mere women. I know your thoughts, Wind Demon. There will be no vengeance in your name. They will never find anything of you by the time we are through.”
Ruth straightened, tossing back a length of luxurious blond hair, smiling serenely. She kissed her precious child’s cheek, if one could call a fledgling Demon of almost ninety years of age a child, making Mary smile with a fawning affection that turned Elijah’s stomach. But a child she was, compared to the adults and Elders of her kind, and even compared to other fledglings her age. Though she had the beauty and the body of a full-grown woman, she was a little girl at heart and in mind, completely under the sway of her overprotective, smothering parent.
Why had none of them noticed Ruth’s detachment from her senses? As a Mind Demon, Ruth had no doubt blocked that awareness from other skilled Demons of the Mind. Why had no one ever insisted on separating the child from the unhealthy and domineering behavior of the mother? Because it wasn’t their way to gainsay a parent’s right to raise her child as she saw fit? Now their entire society would live with these errors and their consequences, just as Elijah would die because of them.
Too little, too late, he thought, with genuine sadness for the path the Demon females were choosing. Both were now spoiled, rotting beneath the breathless guise of their outer beauty. He didn’t need his genetically enhanced sense of smell to catch the vile odor of corruption eddying off their tanned flesh.
Elijah fell forward, putting out a hand to try and brace himself and keep his face out of the dirt. Hopeless situation or not, he would not be remembered as being too easy a kill. His pride would not let him make that kind of an end. There were slain opponents sprawled in the dirt behind the considerably lessened circle that attested to his ferocity as he had tried to save his own life. Women or no, anyone who sought to murder him deserved what they got.
He was aware of the others closing in around him. The stench of the dark magic that clung to the human sorceresses was overwhelming and unbearable. Energy crackled all around him as they played with their power. Blue arcs of electricity wriggled between them, almost like a macabre game of monkey in the middle. Elijah’s mouth pressed into a grim line as he understood what it meant to be the monkey in this particular case.
The first bolt that leapt from the ring of women struck him in his spine, jolting him into a hard backward arch, his arms jerking to his sides, stretching the muscles of his broad chest and forcing blood to pour out of his wound. The flow came so heavy, so fast, that he felt the gushing heat of it drenching him right down the front of his clothing, the denim of his jeans saturating completely in all of an instant.
He felt light-headed, dizzy, and strangely distant as the next bolt forced him to contort in another direction. He could smell the burning of his own flesh, amazed that it overpowered the reek of the magic-users. He tried to change, to find solace in the form of the wind he was so much a part of. If only he had the strength to metamorphose into even the littlest of breezes, they would no longer be able to harm him. But the time had passed for that. He had misjudged his situation and was now too wounded and too weak to concentrate on even the simplest of transformations.
He cursed himself for being such a fool, for walking into this feminine trap. He had been the one warning all others that no one was safe so long as the defectors, Ruth and Mary, were at large and stirring up unrest in the underbelly of the human populace. Had he not been telling them for the past half year, since they had first realized the traitors’ betrayal, that anyone could be a victim of the duo’s intimate knowledge of the Demons, their individual importance, their power? Ruth, her dementia disguised as maternal love for a wounded daughter, knew so many names, so many facts. Indeed, she could lead these murderesses to each and every member of the Great Council.
He would be but the first, Elijah realized, frustrated rage burning a second hole in his chest. Next would come the Enforcers, Gideon the Ancient medic, or perhaps Noah, the Demon King himself. And he would not be there to do his duty and protect them. Elijah thought about Jacob and Isabella, the Enforcers, who were the brand-new parents of a beautiful daughter who had her mother’s silky black hair and her father’s serious dark eyes.
The Warrior Captain had been chosen to be one of the two who, besides her parents, would attend her naming ceremony. To be one of only two Demons in all this world to be given the honor of standing up as the angelic babe’s Siddah. It was the most precious distinction one friend could give to another. Near her sixteenth year, he would have begun the Fostering of the child, taking her into his home as if she were his own. He would have taught her the ways and morals of their people, guiding her as she learned how to use and control whatever great power she would be gifted with. This responsibility would be shared with only one other person, the child’s female Siddah. In this case, Magdelegna, the King’s own sister.
Thinking of Legna brought him an even deeper pain. She was with child herself, about five months into term, and safe under the watchful eyes of her mate, Gideon. But what future would there be for both these innocents? Being hunted down? Destroyed? Treated like nothing more significant than the stray fly that needs a good, hard killing swat? Elijah grieved for the babes, blaming himself for not doing a better job of keeping himself safe and strong so that he could be their protector.
The warrior felt blackness creeping across him, but it was as much from understanding that he had failed his people and his monarch as it was from the deadly loss of blood. He heard feminine laughter, contorted into an ugliness of killer joy, a sound no woman should ever make in her natural state, be she Nightwalker or human.
Elijah finally collapsed, rolling onto his back in the grass until he was trying to focus on the stars above him. He was distantly aware of the wicked women toying with him, sending sadistically playful bolts of power through him. The black sky blurred into streaks of light and dark. The warmth of his blood seeped into the dried leaves and grasses beneath him. He had been calling the weather to him since he had been but thirteen years old. What he would not give in that moment for the simplicity of a rain shower. A final act of defiance, soaking the ground so any electricity sent into him would lash back onto his murderers.
But he would not be able to have that last act of retribution. He had known infants stronger than he was in that moment. All he had left were his thoughts. He did not care if Ruth could read his emotions, possibly even his thoughts at her Elder age, though that was usually a talent found only in the males of her type. She was corrupted by her fractured mind and all the evil magic poisoning those she had decided to associate with. Usually, unexpected power came with such malignant associations.
No. All Elijah cared about was the nature of the world he was going to leave behind him. To never again blow over miles and miles of untouched mountains and virgin beaches as the wind. To never wash himself and the world anew as the rain. To never drift slowly from heaven to earth with the random meanderings of snowflakes. To forever be deprived of the joy of these things made his heart rebel with despair and outrage. He opened his mouth to roar with