A Shade of Vampire 82 A Circle of Nine - Bella Forrest Page 0,79

the vessels shot past it, causing rolls to wisp away.

“They’re coming for us,” Hunter said, already preparing the pulverizer cannons that had been preemptively incorporated into the shuttle. I wasn’t exactly comfortable with obliterating the Aeternae. It didn’t fit our usual incursion protocols, even under tense circumstances like these.

“Hunter, no!” Kailani intervened before I could. “That would be a declaration of war!”

“It’s not the Aeternae we’re fighting here,” I reminded him. “It’s the Darklings. We have to find another way to get away from them.”

“We can’t exactly go to the hilltop now,” Caleb interjected. “They’ll follow us straight to Sofia and Thayen. The kid’s the only leverage we’ve got.”

“Well, we can’t fire at the airships, either,” Hunter replied, his nerves stretched as thin as mine. “So, what are our options?”

Moments passed in heavy silence. The clock was ticking, and time was flowing against us. Ahead, the airships were grouping in clusters of three, spreading out to take us on from multiple angles. Esme and Tristan’s shuttle could no longer be seen, but I knew they were around there somewhere. Even so, there wasn’t much they could do. Not without firing their weapons.

“Sofia, can you hear me?” I asked through the comms system.

“Yes, Ridan, we’re here. We can see what’s happening. We suspect the Darklings are guilty of foul play here.” Normally, as the matriarch of GASP, her voice offered me a sense of comfort. In this instance, however, it only pushed me closer to the edge.

“Any suggestions? We can’t exactly fire the pulverizers at them,” I said. “We can’t engage them in battle at all. It’ll be cause for war, and you know that’s—”

“Exactly what we’re trying to avoid, yes,” Sofia replied.

Caleb glanced at me, his hands firmly gripping the controls. “They’ll start unloading their weapons on us soon.”

“And they’ve got cannons on the ground,” Sofia added.

“What do we do?” I asked, suddenly wondering what my odds of seeing Amane again looked like. I’d been dying to hold her again since she’d come here, and I’d nearly gone mad with concern after she’d had to flee the palace with the rest of the crew.

We’d come through so optimistically…

The flight over had been seamless. We’d entered the solar system without detection, thanks to the shuttle’s embedded cloaking shield. With help from our ground forces, we’d even managed to breach the atmosphere unnoticed, only to see everything go up in flames right before our eyes.

I’d made myself a promise that I would stop at nothing to keep Amane and the others safe. But as the airships were flying toward us, I began to doubt the power of my own words.

“I’m not sure,” Sofia finally said. “Avoid them until you find a safe place to land. That would be my first priority.”

“There are a lot of airships locking in on us,” I replied. “I doubt landing is even a possibility.”

Kailani got up from her seat, her skin glowing with the power of the Word. “I can try to put the invisibility shield back on,” she said, spreading her arms out.

“The sooner, the better,” Rose muttered, her eyes on the menace ahead.

“Dammit, it’s not working, and I don’t know why!” Kailani cursed, shaking her hands.

“Sofia, we’re having some swamp witch magic trouble, too,” I said through the comms system. That news tore a string of expletives out of her.

We were pretty much screwed six ways to Sunday on this one. The Aeternae airships surrounded us, and we couldn’t engage them without igniting a literal war. There were too many lives at stake for us to bring the whole of GASP into this conflict, and deflection maneuvers would not be enough to save us from the wrath of the Aeternae.

They were angry and scared and confused. The Darklings had somehow managed to find and sabotage us. Our friends were counting on us to reach them, but I wasn’t sure we could do that anymore.

Derek

My eyes peeled open. My body felt heavy, as if every limb had been turned into lead. I was slumped over in a small cell. Three walls were made of dark gray stone, and sturdy steel bars prevented me from getting out.

The only light came from a couple of torches mounted somewhere nearby, and the silence was deafening except for the occasional drip of water in a puddle. I pulled myself up into a seated position, trying to remember how I’d gotten here.

It didn’t take long for Danika’s image to flash before my eyes. The gold guards. The ambush. I’d come to