Unlikely Queen (Crystal Castle 1)

“Time’s a-wasting.” He steps forward before Bronik does and comes toward me. I freeze for a moment, but that’s all an angel needs. In the blink of an eye, he has thrown all the wolves in his path out the way, the same way Bronik did to John.

Fuck! John. Is he dead?

No, he can’t be.

Tatiana stays where she is, gripped to me, as is Patrick.

“He may like to play games with you, but I will do no such thing, little witch.” The other angel reaches out to touch me, and as he does, I grab hold of the knife—the knife that Death gave me—and slide it up out of hiding while the angel’s eyes are on mine, slipping it between us as he grabs my arm, painfully. In one swift movement, I jab it straight into his chest, and instantly his hand leaves my arm. His face turns into a soft smile before he looks up to the sky, and in the next moment… he is ash. I wasn’t sure where to stab, but it seems the chest works. Grim should have given me clearer instructions.

“How…” A vampire hisses, breaking my concentration on the pile of ash, trying to work out how it happened.

But there isn’t time to waste.

We are badly outnumbered.

I pull all the air I can take into my lungs before I reach for my power. It’s like birds singing in the sky—a worm finding its hole.

It feels like home.

No other place feels like this or feels this good.

Except…

I can’t think of him. Death. We could never work. And soon, I could very well be dead anyway.

“Do you see?” I hear the vampire say.

The sound of footsteps echoes around us, louder than before. It’s as if every step is amplified and only I can hear it. I hear the heartbeats of the wolves, and when I take a deep breath, I know John is still alive. Injured but alive.

Opening my eyes, Bronik is standing there watching me with a smile on his face, as if he’s excited to see what I am about to do. I don’t even know what it is, but I feel it. I feel the pull to reach out to every dead vampire here right now and snatch their power because they should not exist. They should be banished just as we have been for years.

I want to do worse, though.

So much worse.

Smiling, I let it go. It’s like snakes wriggling all over my body, lightly massaging as they go free, searching for their target. I feel when they grip onto who they are searching for, then they pull, the same way a vampire does pulling life from a vein.

“Extraordinary,” Bronik remarks in a whisper.

Two people drop to the ground, my sister and Patrick both unconscious as they fall. The only ones left standing are me, Bronik, and the vampire who promised to fuck my sister up.

I kept him alive for her because all the others are dead.

And by the look of horror that crosses his face, I know he knows it as well.

“Get me out of here.” The vampire turns to Bronik who simply smirks at me.

“You lied,” I say to him, feeling all that power creep back up my body and slithering its way back to where it belongs. He goes back and forth, so whose team is he really on?

“I did, and it was worth it.” He winks, then he’s gone.

I blow a spell at the vampire to keep him in place, sticking his feet to the ground, as I turn and head back to my sister.

“Tatiana.” I lay a hand on her, trying to be as gentle as possible. She knew what she was doing. We have trained before, but I have never taken that much power. Reaching for her hand, I push her power back to try and recharge her. She is so vital to who I am, what I am, that if I ever did anything to actually hurt her, I’m not sure how I would cope. Or how I would even survive such a disaster.

When I finally see the flutter of her lashes, I reach for Patrick’s hand and do the same. He wakes faster than Tatiana did and sits up straight away, transforming into a wolf and stilling.

“Are you okay?” I ask Tatiana, but she doesn’t answer. Instead, she blinks a few times and starts looking around.

“Tatiana.”

Her head swings around and she finds John. I step back as she crawls—no energy left in her—until she reaches him. Her hand touches his first, and the moment it does, he pulls her into him and cradles her as if she is his everything.

She is.

He is.

They are each other’s everything.

And that right there only goes to prove that in a world so dark, so fucked up, light can be seen through the smallest of cracks, and if you really look hard enough, you may be able to find it.