I stumbled so hard that I went down on my knees, sick with the dread that had leeched into my mind from Adrian's. Belinda had betrayed us? Her niceness and concern and willingness to help us were all a trick? She had sided herself with Saer against us? She was his Beloved, yes, but did that mean she could turn on us? 'Nell? Are you all right? Let me help you up.' I looked at the hand held in front of me, aware but strangely uncaring that I was on my knees in the middle of a damp street, and the woman who threatened the love of my life was offering her hand to me. For one wild moment I saw red, my hands itching to draw something—ward or curse, I didn't know— my brain picking through the memorized charms from the book Gigli had given me to find something to destroy Belinda. All my rage and anger and fury that she would threaten the man I loved were channeled into one brilliant focus, and for a moment power was mine, filling me, snapping like stray bits of current from my fingertips as I looked up at her, the words of a destructive curse on my lips. Belinda's eyes widened as she stepped backward. I pulled on Adrian's darkness, the connection to a demon lord that I needed in order to draw a curse, sucking power out of the very surroundings until the streetlamp nearest us flickered and started to fade. The power within me took shape as I started to direct it at her, but at that moment pain blasted into my head, cutting through bone and tissue with ease, piercing every atom with the familiar white agony, a warning that I was about to seriously overload my brain.
Both the power and pain faded as I fell forward onto the street, sobbing with frustration and anger. Without the ring to guard my brain, I could wield no powers. I was helpless, useless to Adrian, just one more responsibility for him, one more reason for him to sacrifice himself.
And I had been about to destroy someone I had thought was my friend.
'Nell, what's wrong? Are you all right? You seemed to have some sort of fit. Are you epileptic? Should I get a doctor?' I sensed her hovering near me, but I couldn't bring myself to face her. I was shaken by the extent of my reaction to Adrian's fury. It was as if it had possessed me, consumed me. I lay on the street and thanked God that my brain had stopped me from killing a second time. 'I'll get Adrian,' Belinda said.
'No!' I yelled, prying myself off the wet street. She was there immediately, helping me up with solicitation and concern. The remnants of Adrian's anger fought with my own disbelief that she would turn on us. I struggled with the conflicting desires, but his emotions were still pouring into me. The anger won.
'Nell—'
I grabbed her arms, shaking her a little as I fought to regain control over myself. 'Did you betray us?'
'What?' We stood in the blue-white pool of light from the now steady streetlight. The light washed all the color out of the surroundings, leaving Belinda's gray eyes black, her skin a deathless white. 'Did I what?'
'Betray us? Did you lure me away from the house, separating me from Adrian so he'd be weaker? Did you do that? Did you betray us to your Dark One?'
'No!' she gasped, her teeth chattering in response to the shaking. 'I swear to you, I haven't done anything like that! I would never endanger Damian that way!'
I dropped my hands, the exhaustion that always followed one of my brain fits crashing over me like a fifty-ton weight, mingling with my regret that I had put Adrian's anger into words against Belinda. Sanity prevailed once again, and I believed her. Everything about her, everything in her eyes and voice, protested her innocence. She loved Damian—I knew that without a doubt, just as I knew she realized that to Saer, the boy was nothing more than a prize to be offered to any demon lord who would favor him. As much as it tore her up to leave Saer, she would not risk Damian's life by rejoining Saer.
'Come on,' I said, turning wearily and starting toward the street where Christian's house was. 'Saer managed to find a way into the house through our defenses. Christian has taken Damian off somewhere safe, but we have to help Adrian. I have a feeling that even with the ring, he's going to need us. I don't trust Saer any further than I can long jump, and if Sebastian is helping him, that makes it two against one.'
'More, with the Aryans.'
We ran around the corner to Christian's street, and stopped, shocked for a moment by what we saw. The house was crawling with Nazis, at least twenty cars parked haphazardly up and down the street, acting as barricades to keep anyone from traversing the street. Every car bore red banners with the white and black Wolfsangel symbol the white supremacists favored. On the car nearest us, a hand-painted sign hung in the back, declaring 'WAR—WHITE ARMY REVOLUTION—HAS BEEN DECLARED!' Beyond the cars, a handful of guys wandered around in front of the house, some holding baseball bats and other large, hard objects. Lights blazed from the house, and in the gap in one of the ground-floor curtains, I could see figures moving around inside.
From a distance, the wail of a police siren cut through the night; apparently, someone in the neighborhood had seen Saer's army descend upon Christian's house.
'Aren't they a happy little army?' I asked under my breath as we started toward them, my fingers itching to draw all sorts of horrible things upon them.
'Nell, wait!' Belinda cried, grabbing my arm and stopping me before I made it more than a few steps toward the Nazis.
I shook off her hand. 'Wait? I don't think so. That's my vamp in there going up against those guys all by his onesie. He needs me. I'm going.'
She grabbed my arm again, this time shoving me into the darkened doorway of a nearby house. The Nazis hadn't seen us, but I didn't really mind if they were alerted to our presence. They were road hash as far as I cared. 'We can't just walk up to the house!' Belinda said. 'We have to have a plan. We have to figure out some way to distract those men so we can sneak inside and do what we can to defeat Saer and Sebastian.'
'Plan schman,' I sneered, my lip curling with scorn as I pulled away from her and started toward Christian's house. 'We're immortal now, remember? They can't kill us. You can stay here if you want, but I'm going in to kick some serious Nazi butt. And then it's Saer's turn.'
'Nell—'
The distress in her voice was evident, but I didn't have time to reassure her. I charged forward, my hands fisted as I tried to decide which of the two curses mentioned in the charm book would be the worst—turning the Nazis into voles, or impotent. I decided that while the latter might keep them from breeding, the former was the way to go.
'We can be killed, you know,' Belinda said, deathly white with fear. 'If our heads are cut off, that's it.'
'Piece of cake. Voles aren't known for their tendencies to gnaw off human heads.'
'Voles?' Belinda asked, jogging to keep up with me. One of the Nazis, evidently on patrol around the perimeter of the grounds, spotted us and yelled to his buddies.
I waved at them as they took up protective stances.
'Water voles, to be exact. That's the only curse I can think of that won't actually kill them.' I slowed my trot to a walk, slapping a confident look on my face.
'You can't turn those men into water voles,' Belinda said, clearly shocked by my intention.
I stopped for a moment and gave her a long look. 'If I do not change them into water voles, it will take us much longer to get inside the house, and while I'm willing to bet that we won't actually be killed if they beat us up, it will probably hurt. A lot. Not to mention delaying us helping Adrian. Besides, there's something much worse for you to consider than watching me turn a few lowlifes into voles.'
'There is?' she asked, blinking a couple of times.
'Yeah. If they win, you'll be Beloved to the head Nazi.'
She grimaced. 'It's not that I don't want to help, but… they have terribly large sticks.'
I paused, watching men bolt out of the house in response to a warning call. The Aryans stood in a line, each armed with some form of weapon—several baseball bats, one cricket bat, and a couple of tire irons with spikes welded to the end to form a mace—all of them hurling taunts at us. Belinda had a point. I like to think I'm not a coward, but there was no sense in getting smacked around before I could turn them into voles.
'Turn around,' I ordered her, raising my hand to draw a ward. I kept her turning until I had drawn protective wards all around her, repeating the action on myself.
'Will this work?' she asked in a nervous whisper as we marched toward the line of Nazis that filled Christian's driveway.
'Of course it will. I'm a ward drawer from way back,' I lied, praying the wards might actually hold out if she believed in them.
