Zodiac Aligned

18

“Vampires,” I yelled, loud enough to be heard over the sounds of combat.

The alphas instantly shifted, flowing into their wolves and charging into battle without hesitation. Jordan let loose his Leo roar, which sent both the shifters and vampires near us scurrying away in a panic. Kaden and Ethan leaped over a tangle of fighting shifters and vampires in tandem, and then I lost sight of them in the mayhem.

A dark brown wolf was sprawled out close to me, bleeding from a gash in her side. She whimpered, turning her brown eyes toward me, but then one of the vampires rushed over. The vampire was painfully beautiful, with golden hair that curled perfectly at the ends, and her eyes met mine as she latched her fangs onto the wolf's neck. I gathered moon magic inside me and blasted her with it. It knocked the vampire back, my magic stunning her momentarily, but then she shook it off and came straight for me. She moved much faster than any shifter I'd seen, and I began furiously throwing balls of moon magic at her. I managed to stop her from advancing but wasn't doing much more damage than that.

"How do we hurt them?" I asked Larkin, who'd been fighting behind me.

Larkin created a bolt of moonlight shaped into something like a shard of ice, and launched it toward the female vampire, spearing her through the chest. The vampire slumped down, finally dead.

"They're vampires," Larkin said. "You need to stab them in the heart, or cut off their heads."

It seemed so obvious when she put it like that, but I'd never faced vampires before in combat, so how was I to know how much of the lore was true? A lot of the things that people believed about werewolves were a bunch of nonsense, after all.

“Aim for their heads or their hearts,” I yelled as loud as I could, hoping the shifters closest to me would spread the word to their other pack members through their telepathic bond.

More vampires charged toward us, and I copied Larkin and managed to take one of them down, but they moved so quickly it was hard to aim the moonlight spears to hit their chests in the right spot. A black-haired male vampire rushed at me, supernaturally fast, and I missed his heart, hitting the wall behind him with my magic, and my pulse raced as he got closer and closer.

But then Kaden was there, his huge black wolf protecting me with his body, and he swiped one massive claw across the vampire's chest. Fangs snapped at Kaden's throat, but he bit back, nearly as fast, tearing out the vampire's neck. He managed to rip the vampire's entire head off, making blood spurt wildly in a horrific display. It seemed he'd gotten the message about how to kill them.

And he wasn't the only one. I spotted Jordan across the room, back in his human form, actually reach inside a vampire's chest to rip its heart out. Ethan's gray wolf stood beside another vampire who looked like he'd been completely dismembered and turned to little more than bloody pulp.

More shifters, all Ophiuchus, emerged from the elevator to join the fight. Kaden let out a short howl, and the other Ophiuchus warriors fell into formation around him, changing their attacks to focus on beheading the vampires or destroying their hearts. It was like they'd trained for years to fight the vampires, and the few Libras in the lobby began to copy their movements too.

Damn, Kaden is a good alpha, I thought, with a pang in my chest. But even though I was packless, I could still help them in the fight.

Larkin seemed to have the magic situation under control, so I shifted and joined the other wolves in the fray. The first instant that my teeth met vampire flesh, my inner wolf practically cheered, as if she'd been waiting for this moment her entire life. I brushed up against Kaden's side after I helped him take another vampire down, and he nuzzled me with his bloody snout. I found myself nuzzling him back, relieved he was alive, and secretly thrilled to be fighting alongside him once more.

Within minutes, we got the upper hand as more and more vampires fell around us. My fangs snapped at the heel of a ginger-haired vampire, but he fled outside in a blur of movement, into the sun-lit gardens behind the hotel. By the time I'd chased after him, he was already long gone.

The fighting ended suddenly, going from absolute chaos to nothing at all as the remaining vampires escaped with their incredible speed. Blood splatter stained nearly every surface of the lobby, and the entire space had been destroyed, as though a wrecking crew had come through. Many wolves were dead or injured, covered in bite and scratch marks, and those that lived looked completely shell-shocked. There were dead vampires too, but their bodies were a lot less recognizable after the shifters had finished tearing them apart.

Kaden and I shifted back and he rested his hands on my upper arms, silently making sure I was okay. I nodded at him, unable to find any words to express the horror of what we'd just been through. I was just so relieved Kaden was unharmed, and I found myself pressing my forehead against his as I caught my breath.

Once the initial shock passed, I spun around and looked for the others. Jordan stood to the side, rolling his shoulder and wincing a little. Larkin's shirt was torn and she was bleeding from a small cut on her shoulder, but it didn't look too bad. I assumed she wouldn't turn into a vampire just from that, but what did I know? Not enough about vampires, obviously. I'd have to do something about that.

Ethan looked grim as he surveyed the damage to his hotel and the c*****e all around us. His gaze snagged on a dead shifter a few yards away, the Libra he'd danced with at the Christmas party, and a muscle twitched in his jaw.