They took off simultaneously.
Caia was heading for her magik, an older female fire magik. At her speed she came upon the woman hiding with her back to Caia behind a large tree. She turned a few degrees at the last second as she heard the cracking of bracken, but it was too late. Caia was already clambering up her back and taking her slender neck in her jaws.
As the warm blood pulsed into her mouth, Caia pushed away the fresh memory of this woman’s vertebrae snapping under the clamp of her teeth, the feel of her warm flesh piercing under her claws like the skin of a peach. In fact, it was easier to forget reality altogether as she waited for the magik’s heart to stop.
It did. And what seemed like hours had merely been seconds.
Caia backed off the falling body and searched the other Midnights. Lucien must have gotten to his magik almost at the same time and had killed him, but not before the magik had let out a roar. The others were now aware they weren’t alone.
Luckily, Anders had taken his magik unawares and was just now finishing him off.
Phoebe was in the middle of a physical fight with her warlock, an air magik who attempted to suffocate her; she struggled violently against his power and proved herself determined to win the fight as she viciously bit down on his privates to loosen his grip. Caia winced at the excruciating pain that ripped through his entire being and reminded herself never to get into a fight with Phoebe. The Hunter fought dirty. At his weeping, the magik finally let go long enough for Phoebe to go in for the kill. Caia turned away as his heart stopped.
Rose didn’t appear to be getting anywhere near her magik. He had put up a shield around himself at the sound of his comrade’s roar, and now Rose kept bouncing off it uselessly. Caia wished she had her comms so she could tell her to conserve her energy, to wait for him to let go of the spell holding her off.
Michael was in an intense fight with his fire magik, but he managed to dodge the hits from the Midnight and had even shot the bastard in the arm.
At the same time, Marion was struggling with a female earth magik. She couldn’t get a hit in—the woman kept dousing it with earth and creating weapons out of rock. Poor Marion was covered in lacerations and bruises.
Caia continued sifting.
Du Bois.
Through his eyes, she saw him empty water from Mordecai’s dead body. He had suffocated the magik, had enjoyed every moment of taking down “the inept boy,” as if he were any older or wiser than his adversary. Hatred for him, and regret and fury over Mordecai’s demise, flooded her, propelling her through the forest toward the Midnight responsible.
Still tracing du Bois, she saw Anders tear around the corner and confront him, his jaw dripping with gore, his huge wolf body an impressive sight. She thought she would feel fear in du Bois. Instead, as previously shielded thoughts poured out of him in his excitement, the fear belonged to her.
No!
It wasn’t possible. How could he have hidden this so successfully from her?
She burst into view behind him, in time to see for herself the contents of a vial he had produced bursting open. Liquid gold streamed through the air, actuated by Pierre’s water magik. The horror of what that liquid meant unfolded before her as each drop brought about Anders’s transformation back into human form. He lay there, naked and confused, as he stared at his human hands curled into the dirt of the forest floor. His eyes flashed up in panic, just in time to see the water rush at him and force its way into his mouth, flooding his lungs and drowning the life from his body.
And Caia hadn’t been able to stop it. Instead her trace had automatically taken her to the magik Rose was fighting off, and he was in the process of doing the same thing. Lucien pounded into view and battered at the shield as the magik transformed Rose back.
Crippling panic would not do.
Caia concentrated and changed back into human form, a shield automatically up and around her in order to confront du Bois.
He stared, dumbstruck. “That’s some trick.”
She glanced by him to Anders’s lifeless body. Two of them were dead.
She narrowed her eyes in loathing at this man who’d created this devastation. “I was going to say the same thing.”
Du Bois grinned unapologetically. “Just a little something I picked up.”
Caia nodded, filching through his mind with the trace. “You and your lover—Thierry—the Midnight who is, at this second, inflicting burns on a female lykan while my Alpha watches on helplessly … you did this together. You hired humans to experiment on kidnapped lykans. They came up with that concoction to transform them back to human so you could hurt them. You killed the human scientists. I marvel at how well you hid it from Ethan. But then Ethan barely knew you were alive. When he disappeared, it was the opportunity. But I’ve been watching you carefully, for weeks. How clever of you and Thierry to keep those thoughts so tightly locked. And me … I didn’t know to look, to kick down the door …”