She could hear the battle going on behind her, but she needed to stop the life from being sapped from Darcy’s body. It was too much like her dream, and she would not let him die.“Fitzwilliam!” She pressed against the wound, feeling the bandage go damp under her fingers.“Do not leave me!”
Miraculously, his chest heaved, and she heard him groan.
Elizabeth stretched out over his shoulders and kissed the side of his face.“Please stay with me,” she whispered close to his ear.
“Help me up,” he moaned, his mouth turned into the earth.
Elizabeth came as close as possible.“What?”
“Help me to my feet.” In obvious pain, Darcy rolled to his uninjured side.
Elizabeth tried to turn him back.“You cannot!” she protested.
“Damn it, Wife. I need your help!”
Darcy pulled his knee up and prepared to stand. In opposition to what she knew he needed, Elizabeth braced his weight against her and helped him lift his frame to a standing position, although he hunched his shoulders forward in pain.
“Fitzwilliam, please,” she begged as he took a deep breath and staggered in the direction of the foray. Ignoring her pleas, Darcy simply gritted his teeth and took a few more faltering steps before his momentum gave an appearance of strength. Elizabeth trailed along beside Darcy, preparing to help him maintain his balance.
The battle, once powerfully contested, now was one more of strike and retreat than of continuous blows.The colonel used both hands to steady his sword as he caught Wickham’s downward thrust and deflected it. Spinning counterclockwise, Damon sliced into Wickham’s side with a horizontal arc of the blade.As it was with Darcy’s attack at the house, the blood ran in varying hues of red as it trickled down his side.
Now, hilts entangled,Wickham and the colonel struggled face-to-face, hellkite strength versus human resolve. Smelling of putrid decay, Wickham repulsed everything honorable in the colonel’s body, and Damon momentarily retracted—a foolish mistake—giving Wickham the advantage he sought. He used his waning powers to send the colonel’s body cannonading against the side of the church, fiercely knocking the breath from him.
Darcy and Elizabeth staggered into the midst of the horror, and now he stood between Wickham and his cousin. “Do what I ask when I ask it,” he murmured softly as he shoved Elizabeth away from him.
Wickham sighed heavily. “I thought to have disposed of you.” He pulled his shoulders back and prepared for another battle.
“I am not so easily discharged.” In a like show of strength,
Wickham, a lover of all things pretentious, smiled. “How shall we settle it, Darcy? Are you prepared to die today?”
Blood running down his back, Darcy wanted to sink to his knees, but instead, he returned Wickham’s jeer with one of his own.“Are you prepared to die again?”
“I do not believe that will happen, but I will accommodate you just the same.”Wickham took a step back, preparing to attack. “How will you defeat me, Darcy?”Wickham arrogantly rolled his wrist, allowing the rapier to whish the air. “Everything you tried has failed.”
Darcy feigned a shrug of his shoulders.“As you have a weapon, and I do not, I will have to rely on my wits, unless you choose to do the honorable thing and allow me to recover my cousin’s armor.” He shifted his weight as if to walk to where Damon lay unconscious against the building, but a countermove by Wickham cut that short, or so Darcy hoped it would appear. In reality, Darcy caught Elizabeth’s eyes when he turned his head. She stood where he left her, but she did not cower from the danger. His Elizabeth would go down fighting. He willed her with a nod of his head and a lift of his chin to move closer to the nearest grave. Intuitively, as if he led her into the steps of a waltz, her body responded to his signal, and she knew he planned something and needed her help.A sign of recognition turned up the corners of his mouth, and Darcy winked before he returned his attention to Wickham.
“I seem to have left all my honor at Wickford Manor,” Wickham taunted. “Hopefully, you will forgive me for taking the advantage.” He pretended to bow to his opponent.
Darcy needed a few more moments for Elizabeth to be in place. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she moved closer to the nearest mound. He stalled Wickham. “You call what you did at Wickford honorable?” he challenged. “Sending a cauldron and the plates and the antlers…and even the snakes spinning around my head?”
Elizabeth heard the emphasis on the word and knew Darcy reminded her of her dream of driving the deer’s rack into Wickham’s body. Now, if she just knew exactly what else he wanted.
Wickham laughed lightly. “The snakes were a nice touch, do you not think, Darcy? And the cauldron nearly knocked you out of the picture.”
“No more so than when I speared you with the horns. I have learned to control my energy.” Darcy noted thankfully that she understood, because Elizabeth surreptitiously worked the stave from its place.
“Yet your powers are but half as strong as mine, for your weaker human half is a detriment.”Wickham quit playing with the sword and set his chin with determination. “You, for example, have not mastered the power of the change, but I have.”
A split second later, the sword lay idly on the ground, and Wickham was the vicious wolf advancing on Darcy again. However, Darcy did not balk, nor did he give any indication of what he planned. His eyes and facial expression betrayed nothing. Only Elizabeth observed the slight shift of his weight.
When Wickham sprang, she heard Darcy’s “Now!” and she tossed the ash stave into the air.
Instantaneously, Darcy’s arms rose and time slowed. Wickham, as a wolf, rather than a vampire, came under Darcy’s control, and the animal pawed the air in slow motion, its unyielding jaw open in preparation for the attack. Slobber dripped from its gums, while the tongue lolled to the side. Coal black eyes widened as the energy sustained its flight. Sharp fangs lengthened in anticipation of finding its prey.
The wolf moved in a straight line towards the sharpened stave pointed at it, and nothing the animal did could change that fact. They were on a collision course, and, for a moment, Wickham fought the reality, and then he relaxed into the movement, accepting what Fate gave him.
Darcy watched with satisfaction as it all came together in a perfect crescendo. When the point of the pikestaff tipped for its Twank! The stave pierced the animal in the center of its chest, impaling it as if it were a butterfly specimen. And then Wickham abruptly fell upon the grave of what was once one of his followers—his twisted body broken and deformed.
“How did you learn to do that?” Damon’s voice came from somewhere behind him. A heartbeat later, Elizabeth was in Darcy’s arms, kissing along his chin line and sobbing his name. Recognizing the finality of the act, Darcy breathed out heavily and collapsed, sinking to his knees. Damon caught him on the way down, hoisting Darcy’s arm over his shoulder and leading him to lie upon one of the benches lining the gravesites.
“I need to get some bandages,” Elizabeth called over her shoulder as she ran in the direction of the church.
“It is finished, Darcy,” Damon assured him as he unbuttoned Darcy’s coat and waistcoat.“We will get you to a physician.”
“Thank you, Damon.” Darcy’s words were breathy and a bit slurred.“For everything.”
Damon ripped Darcy’s shirt to see the wound better. “No thanks are necessary.We have always been more than cousins.”The colonel touched Darcy’s side. “This one seems to be a surface wound.Anyplace else?”