Free Royal Blood by Kolina Topel Page B

I wanted my Alex back. I ached to have him love me again. To taste his kiss again. To just be us again. After today, I didn’t know if there would even be an “us” anymore. What we were going to do, this fight, who knew how it might end up. There was no surrender in this. People were going to die. People I knew and loved. People like Ale…… No.
     
    “ No!” I shouted.
     
    “ Chris?”
     
    “ You can’t die. Do you understand me?” Tears were coming down my face now. “You don’t have to love me anymore and you don’t have to pretend, but you have to stay alive. I can’t lose you, not ever, not like that.” I couldn’t look at his face because I knew what I would see there. Nothing. Exactly what he felt for me now.
     
    Silent tears streamed down my face the rest of the car ride.
     
     
     
    * * *
     
    When we arrived at the church, everything turned all business. Demitri and Alex sat and talked for a few minutes, and then we all started in toward the city.
     
    I don’t think anything could have prepared me for what I was about to see—or any of us really.
     
    The city from my dreams was waiting below, but unlike in my dreams that showed me a dead and empty city, the rooftops were covered with vampires. Vampires with one agenda—to kill me. There were dozens of them. Dozens. Terror shrilled within me.
     
    “ Princess,” Calpurnia came to my side, “you don’t have to fight with us. I can stay here with you.”
     
    “ There’s just so many… . ” I gasped. “I can’t ask you to stay with me. You have to go with them. They need you.” And I can’t lose Alex. You have to stay with him , I added silently.
     
    S he nodded and turned to Demitri. “It’s time.”
     
    “ Nebula,” Demitri said.
     
    I turned to Calpurnia and she flashed me a wicked grin. I thought you never wanted me to see this, I thought. She winked, sunk back into her crouch, and bared her teeth to the awaiting surge.
     
    Nebula was behind Calpurnia with her back to us. She glanced over her shoulder and in one effortless and fluid movement, she spun ever so slowly toward us. She floated through us and stopped between Alex and me. At an agonizing pace, she raised her right arm level to her shoulder and flipped her hand, palm up.
     
    It looked like she was cupping something. She puckered her lips and blew out a gust of wind. What appeared to be diamonds flew from her hand down toward the city, like shards of crystals glittering in the moonlight, covering the earth below us.
     
    She pulled her lips back, exposing her teeth, and with a blink of an eye all hell broke loose. Screams broke out in a chorus of pain below. The tiny fragments were dancing their way through the bodies of the vampires that wanted to kill me, slicing their skin , and blood flowed freely on the rooftops.
     
    “ Three, two, one,” Calpurnia counted, and in perfect harmony everyone jumped off of the cliff into the sea of serpents waiting below. At the same instant, the crystals disappeared into thin air. A look of shock, surprise, fear, and anger washed over the many faces that waited below.
     
    I stood in awe for a moment as I watched Demitri manipulate boulders and tree limbs and slammed them into, and even through, unsuspecting victims. Marius leapt building to building, setting ablaze groups of vampires. Amasia followed closely behind, finishing them off. I watched in awe as Duncan blinded a victim, and then ripped off his prey’s appendages and tossed them into the fires. Calpurnia danced around all who advanced on her as she read their thoughts, and Alex sped through the crowd, mangling bodies in fractions of a second.
     
    It was the most spectacular sight I had ever seen. Like a perfectly choreographed symphony playing a death waltz. As I watched them, I grew hungry. The terror inside of me evaporated, and I wanted them to die. All of them.
     
    As Demitri was engaged in a fight, I eyed a vampire stalking behind him. My eyes tightened,