“So, what do we do?” Daggett asked. “We can’t simply walk right in and fight him. He’s gotta have some form of a trap set up for us. We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“Why can’t we just go home? Leave that fucker to his hellhole while we vacation on the other side of the world. I nominate someplace tropical.”
“You leave him behind, you’re only giving him preparation time to kill us,” Max informed Priscilla, silencing her. “He could recruit more vampires, werewolves, better weapons. Then, we’re all fucked. And he will find us. There’s no question about that. He has all the time in the world.”
“And we don’t,” I said.
“We end this now.”
Softly, Melanie said, “You don’t have to do this for me.”
“This is for all of us,” Max responded. “Once he’s out of the picture, we can all rest easy.”
Daggett sighed. “If we can even kill him.”
“We saw what silver did to him. He’s not some supreme being that’s unkillable, he’s just super fucking old and evolved. Every bit of strength that he has, Melanie does as well, and everything he is comes from us. We got this. Okay? We got this.”
Daggett let out another deep breath, closed his eyes, and lightly shook his head. “I’m glad you’re feeling confident.”
“We’ve been through hell. Every single one of us. We didn’t make it this far to get taken out by this sack of nothing. So, get your shit together, because we’re doing this whether we want to or not. We’ve got one shot at ending it all tonight, and we can’t fuck that up.”
I reached over and took Max’s hand into mine, slowly curling my fingers around his. His eyes softened in reaction. “We can do this. Together,” I told him. It sounded very Hallmark movie channel, but it was the truth. The only way we could defeat Master is if we came together as one.
Gone were the days of one of us not making it out alive. I was done with that. We either all come out of there in one piece, or we don’t come out at all.
I turned and looked at the two-door entrance to his castle. It looked empty and uninviting, as a breeze of thin snow swirled around it like a tornado and then flew past it.
He was inside. Waiting.
And we were ready.
Chapter Forty-Five
CORA
Max yanked open the front doors of the castle, and inside everything was blanketed in darkness. I knew they killed the electricity to make it hard for us to find them, and because of that, the interior temperature dropped a good ten degrees, allowing us to see our breaths in front of us. I shivered as I rubbed my hands against the sides of my arms, gradually moving with the group as we searched for The Master.
A faint light glowed from the hallway on our left. Flickering candlelight cascaded across the hallway wall, and on the opposite side where it was trickling from, was an open door leading to the chapel. It was the only room with even a splash of light. It’s where Master and his women fed from me.
The Master was in there.
When we entered the chapel, we found him seated at the altar with his wings facing away from us. Candles surrounded him, some on the floor, others hanging from the ceiling or placed in the windows. He sat there casually, as if in wait, and even when our footsteps echoed through the air, he never turned to look at us. He knew we were there, and it didn’t seem to phase him at all. Which, of course, terrified me.
“Returning the traitor?” he gurgled. His voice was raspy and deep, and he sounded every bit his age at that moment. The flame from the surrounding candles highlighted the edges of his monstrous face. His nose was flattened and his fangs protruded from his mouth like tusks, and little wisps of gray hair danced around his mouth as he spoke.
“Negotiations are over,” Max informed him. We all stayed behind as he spoke for us.
Slowly, Master turned toward us at the door. The eye that Dana injured was caked with patches of dried blood, and when he looked at us it brightened into an electric shade of red. “How unfortunate for you,” he whispered.
My hands began to shake.
“Like you’d ever be bummed out over a chance to kill us,” Melanie spat.
“It is awfully time-consuming. But if that’s the fate you lot have chosen for yourself…”
The chapel doors behind us slammed shut, as if a powerful gust of wind had been controlled by him. Priscilla involuntarily clutched my arm, realized it was me, and then let go and switched her grasp to Daggett.
“So be it,” Master finished as he rose from the floor. His feet levitated off the velvet carpet, and his wings spread far and wide. I wasn’t sure if his wingspan had grown, or if it appeared more significant inside a small room. The tips of his jagged, gargoyle wings nearly touched each side of the chapel, and his head was only inches from the ceiling. The flames from the candles illuminated him, and I could see the candlelight flickering through his wings. It was the first time I realized how sheer the skin was. It was almost see-through, yet looked sturdy.
He looked each of us over, as if debating with himself on who he should kill first.
We all pulled out a kitchen knife and rested it at our side. We had dispersed them evenly from Priscilla’s coat before we entered the castle. The presence of silver in the room made Master subtly recoil. He wasn’t prepared for us to have this many knives.
As much as I wanted him dead, it made my stomach turn knowing we were going
