And then I heard the snarling and screaming and screeching explode from ahead and I knew the fight was happening and I was too late to beat Diego there. I only ran faster. Maybe I could stil save him.
I smel ed the smoke - the sweet, thick scent of vampires burning - carried back to me on the wind. The sound of mayhem was louder. Maybe it was almost done. Would I find our coven victorious and Diego waiting?
I dashed through a heavy fringe of smoke and found myself out of the forest in a huge grassy field. I leaped over a rock, only to realize in the instant I flew past it that it was a headless torso. My eyes raked the field. There were pieces of vampires everywhere, and a huge bonfire smoking purple into the sunny sky. Out from under the bil owing haze, I could see dazzling, glittering bodies darting and grappling as the sounds of vampires being torn apart went on and on.
I looked for one thing: Diego's curly black hair. No one I could see had hair so dark. There was one huge vampire with brown hair that was almost black, but he was too big, and as I focused I watched him tear Kevin's head off and pitch it into the fire before leaping on someone else's back. Was that Jen?
There was another with straight black hair that was too smal to be Diego. That one was moving so fast I couldn't tel if it was a boy or a girl.
I scanned quickly again, feeling horribly exposed. I took in the faces. There weren't nearly enough vampires here, even counting those that were down. I didn't see any of Kristie's group. There must have been a lot of vampires burned already. Most of the vampires stil standing were strangers. A blond vampire glanced at me, meeting my gaze, and his eyes flashed gold in the sunlight.
We were losing. Bad.
I started backing toward the trees, not moving fast enough because I was stil looking for Diego. He wasn't here. There was no sign he had ever been here. No trace of his scent, though I could distinguish the smel s of most of Raoul's team and many strangers. I had made myself look at the pieces, too. None of them belonged to Diego. I would have recognized even a finger.
I turned and real y ran for the trees, suddenly positive that Diego's presence here was just another of Riley's lies. And if Diego wasn't here, then he was already dead. This fel into place for me so easily that I thought I must have known the truth for a while. Since the moment that Diego had not fol owed Riley through the basement door. He'd already been gone.
I was a few feet into the trees when a force like a wrecking bal hit me from behind and threw me to the ground. An arm slipped under my chin.
"Please!" I sobbed. And I meant please kill me fast. The arm hesitated. I didn't fight back, though my instincts were urging me to bite and claw and rip the enemy apart. The saner part of me knew that wasn't going to work. Riley had lied about these weak, older vampires, too, and we'd never had a chance. But even if I'd had a way to beat this one, I wouldn't have been able to move. Diego was gone, and that glaring fact kil ed the fight in me.
Suddenly I was airborne. I crashed into a tree and crumpled to the ground. I should have tried to run, but Diego was dead. I couldn't get around that.
The blond vampire from the clearing was staring intently at me, his body ready to spring. He looked very capable, much more experienced than Riley. But he wasn't lunging at me. He wasn't crazed like Raoul or Kristie. He was total y in control.
"Please," I said again, wanting him to get this over with. "I don't want to fight."
Though he stil held himself ready, his face changed. He looked at me in a way I didn't total y get. There was a lot of knowledge in that face, and something else. Empathy? Pity, at least.
"Neither do I, child," he said in a calm, kind voice. "We are only defending ourselves."
There was such honesty in his odd yel ow eyes that it made me wonder how I had ever believed any of Riley's stories. I felt... guilty. Maybe this coven had never planned to attack us in Seattle. How could I trust any part of what I'd been told?
"We didn't know," I explained, somehow ashamed. "Riley lied. I'm sorry."
He listened for a moment, and I realized that the battlefield was quiet. It was over.
If I'd been in any doubt over who the winner was, that doubt was gone when, a second later, a female vampire with wavy brown hair and yel ow eyes hurried to his side.
"Carlisle?" she asked in a confused voice, staring at me.
"She doesn't want to fight," he told her.
The woman touched his arm. He was stil tensed to spring.
"She's so frightened, Carlisle. Couldn't we..."
The blond, Carlisle, glanced back at her, and then he straightened up a little, though I could see he was stil wary.
"We have no wish to harm you," the woman said to me. She had a soft, soothing voice. "We didn't want to fight any of you."
"I'm sorry," I whispered again.
I couldn't make sense of the mess in my head. Diego was dead, and that was the main thing, the devastating thing. Other than that, the fight was over, my coven had lost and my enemies had won. But my dead coven was ful of people who would have loved to watch me burn, and my enemies were speaking to me kindly when they had no reason to. Moreover, I felt safer with these two strangers than I'd ever felt with Raoul and Kristie. I was relieved that Raoul and Kristie were dead. It was so confusing.
"Child," Carlisle said, "wil you surrender to us? If you do not try to harm us, we promise we wil not harm you."
And I believed him.
"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, I surrender. I don't want to hurt anybody."
He held out his hand encouragingly. "Come, child. Let our family regroup for a moment, then we'l have some questions for you. If you answer honestly, you have nothing to fear."