Isabel and the Werewolf Beast (Vampire Tales #1)

33. Dante

Chapter thirty-three

Dante

A s cool as the secret passageway was, I didn’t know if Isabel would be safe from Silas in there. The woman had more secrets than the entire vampire population. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Silas was coming, and he wasn’t alone, but how dangerous were the others with him? Were they powerful warlocks? Was I about to be killed by those magic balls? I couldn’t stay here and find out.

I half-shifted into my beast form and burst from the room, colliding with Silas in the hallway. His hands were aglow, but he didn’t have time to shoot off his magic as we tumbled down the stairs taking the people with him like bowling pins. We all landed at the foot of the stairs in a pile of limbs. Some people were broken and moaning. Silas wasn’t. He restarted his glowing hands and locked his evil gaze on my face.

“You.” He sneered. “Again.”

“I could say the same to you,” I said as I jumped to my feet and faced him. “My mistake. I should have ripped you apart the first time.”

“Your mistake will cost you.”

“Not a chance.” I launched myself at him and tackled him to the ground.

His glowing hands brushed over my back, and I yelped in pain at the burning sensation running over my flesh. I blocked it off and slammed a fist into his face. His head flew backward, a loud crack coming from his bones. He fired up his hands again, and I had to dive outside to miss the ball of magic flying my way.

“Monster,” a woman screamed.

“Beast,” yelled a man.

“Get him,” hollered another man.

Fists and bats pummeled me from every direction. I wrapped an arm around my head and struggled to my feet in the crowd of people beating me senseless. Who were these humans? Why were they attacking me?

“See the evidence for yourselves,” Silas said, coming to stand in the doorway. “Werewolves. Monsters exist and we must kill them before they kill us.”

“Yes,” the crowd roared.

Ropes flew from every direction around my body. Wrapped around my feet and tried to wrench me over. I fought against them all as Silas disappeared from my sight into the castle. I roared my rage. An echoing roar returned.

Asher?

He shouldn’t get in the middle of this, but I needed help to get free of this hoard of humans intent on killing the wrong monster. A second later the humans started falling one by one. As the crowd cleared, I saw the half-shifted form of Asher and alongside him the wolf forms of his pack.

“Wolves,” a woman screamed.

Others screamed too. Hands stopped pummeling me. The ropes fell away. People ran from the wolves who chased them from the castle grounds and into the forest.

“Dante, you’re a mess,” Asher said.

“I need to stop Silas from finding Isabel.”

“Silas is here?”

“He brought all these people. Silas told them about werewolves.”

“He’s the Scum of the Earth. Let’s kill him,” Asher said.

“You stay out here where it’s safe.”

“Dante don’t be a dick. I can help.”

“Stay out of my way. She’s my mate and I’ll protect her.” I ran into the castle before he could argue with me more since I didn’t have time to waste on protecting Asher too and that’s what I’d have to do if he followed me inside.

My long legs leaped up the stairs with ease and I ran to the library. Silas wasn’t inside. Where was he? Had he found the secret passageway? I couldn’t hear Isabel, Lucian, or Maximus. Were they all dead? But that would defeat Silas’s plan. He wanted Isabel alive for himself.

He wouldn’t get her.

I sneaked back out of the library and checked the next room then the next but I couldn’t find Silas anywhere in the castle and I’d wasted a lot of time searching for him. Time away from Isabel. I walked back to the library and opened the secret passageway. Isabel rushed out and slapped my face. I deserved that.

“Did you kill him?”

“I can’t find him.”

“Then why did you open the door?” Lucian asked.

“So I’d find Isabel, of course,” Silas said, his body slithering from the curtain in an incorporeal form and then solidifying into his body.

I stepped in front of Isabel. Lucian stepped to her right side and Maximus to her left.

“You won’t get her,” Lucian said. “Not with three of us and one of you.”

“Ah, yes.” He waved his hands and his body turned incorporeal again, but this time he duplicated himself until there were twenty ghost Silas lined between us and the door.

The passageway was still at our backs, but we wouldn’t all make it inside in time and how secure would we be inside there against an army of ghosts?

“Shit,” Maximus mumbled under his breath.

If Silas was a ghost the way Isabel had been during the curse, did that mean we couldn’t touch him? Couldn’t kill him? I picked up the nearest book and threw it at him. One of his ghost shapes stood in front of him and absorbed the blow but then his ghost extra disappeared. One down, nineteen to go.

Maximus and Lucian picked up the nearest objects, a book, and a vase, and threw them at Silas too. Two more ghost warlocks disappeared on contact. Whatever magic Silas was using, it wasn’t permanent, and we’d beat him. As though sensing we would best him, the real Silas turned corporeal again. His hands glowed as he built his magic. I raced forward to tackle him, knowing Lucian or Maximus would take my place. Silas shot off his magic. The two closest ghost forms grabbed me so I couldn’t dodge the flying ball of magic coming for me. I didn’t even have time to regret my decision.

This was the moment of my death. I saw it in the glowing orb coming for my face.

“Dante,” Isabel screamed.

I couldn’t even tell her goodbye .

I suppose our love was never meant to be.

A body slammed into mine knocking me and the ghost forms to the floor. A scream of pain tore through the air then silence.

“Asher!” I rolled him over, but his face had frozen in pain.

Rage like I’d never experienced before surged through every vein in my body. My body grew. The rage grew. My head touched the ceiling. I swiped my claws the size of swords across the ghosts and killed them all in one swoop. Silas slapped his hands together and grew a magic ball larger than himself.

I shoved my hand through the ball. It flickered over my skin, piercing me in painful ways, but it kept feeding my rage. Building it so large that all I cared about was this warlock’s death. He’d killed my little brother. I sliced his head from his body. His ball of magic fell on top of him, and he burst into flames. His arms and legs twitched as though he suffered every one of those flames licking his body. I hoped he did.

I hoped he paid in the afterlife for all his sins.

Pain. Loss. The emotions slammed into me. I threw my head back and howled my pain.

“Dante,” Isabel whispered.

I snapped my rage-filled gaze to her. She stepped from behind Lucian and Maximus and held out a placating hand.

“You killed him.”

I was too far gone in my animal form to talk. My claws retracted into my fingertips, and I scooped her up by the waist in one hand, and in the other, I lifted Asher’s body, then I kicked the window out and launched us to the ground outside. I ran and ran. Where I was going, I didn’t know. Neither did the animal I’d become who kept howling his pain to the sky.