A/N:
Released on Dec 26, 2018

Merry (late) Christmas everyone!

I waited to put this chapter up until Wednesday, in hopes that I can be on a Wednesday and Saturday update schedule again. But we'll have to see XD

I hope you enjoy this incredibly long chapter! It isn't the longest chapter, but it's longer than most.

I hope you enjoy! :)

Word Count: 3205

-----

Chapter 33: Suggestible Minds and a Foolish Scheme

It took a moment for the adrenaline rush to hit me, the one that accompanied every fight, watching with tensed muscles as the nearest vampire snarled and came at me.

At the last second I sidestepped, causing my attacker to stumble forward, giving me the advantage.

One hard shove and the guy fell on his face, the forceful impact breaking his nose. I spun around to greet the next one, glancing quickly at Zane to ensure that he was in action already.

He swung at his attacker, a deadly coldness blanketed across his face as he focused on that one hit. It was so swift that his opponent didn't have the chance to block it.

There was the incredible speed again, the one that was impressive, even for a vampire. The result of the wolf bites.

Was this it? Was this the final answer on whether or not he had become a hybrid? All signs pointed to the one thing Zane hadn't wanted.

If he was a hybrid, he wouldn't handle it very well. I could easily see him leaving me, for what he thought was my own good, to protect me like Ash did.

Bones crunched as Zane ruthlessly broke the guy's jaw, knocking him flat on the ground.

A choked noise escaped his victim's throat, but he was already moving on to the next person without another thought.

So I did the same.

I threw my fist at my next attacker, but I didn't have the benefit of being faster than the other vampires like my boyfriend did.

The guy in front of me was smarter than the guy I just took down, having grabbed my wrist in time to stop the hit aimed at him.

My instincts kicked in, allowing me to twist my arm out of his grip. He must have underestimated me, based on the lack of strength it took for me to escape.

I pivoted and swung my other arm, hitting him in the throat. He stumbled backward a few steps, eyes wide and full of shock, just as two more vampires rushed toward me.

The fight was about to get crazy. It would no longer be a few people to fight at a time. They were all about to surround us.

The next ones to challenge me were a man and a woman, but I didn't feel like fighting them when I knew Dalton was somewhere hiding in the crowd.

I glared at the two vampires that were only a few feet away, half a second away from reaching me.

"Dalton is your true enemy. Go after him, now! Before he kills you!" I commanded, pushing my will into their heads.

Fortunately, it only took that one try to get it right. The two took off with a snarl, searching for their new target.

But four more replaced them, causing me to let go of my telepathy for a moment to use physical violence instead. And once those guys were down, they were replaced immediately.

It reminded me of the hydra from Greek mythology. The most common lore of the creature was that it had nine heads, and when one head was cut off, two more grew back.

From the fleeting glance I got, we had already taken out over half of our opponents.

Why in the world would they send so little of an army to get us? I didn't expect for Storm to miscalculate the number of people needed to take us down. At least, not this badly.

"Round 2!" A familiar voice yelled what sounded like a signal. I spotted him behind the six remaining vampires.

Of course my order to those vampires who were supposed to kill Dalton didn't do what they were told. I had figured it would only be a distraction because the backstabber wouldn't hesitate to take out his own people.

Zane was heading straight for them with no one else to fight, but I still had to take care of the two that were circling me.

They were going for strategy, but I wouldn't allow them to win.

"Sleep!" I instructed in their minds, to which only one of them obeyed.

The man fell to the ground and the woman jumped at me while I was unfocused. That'll teach me to assume someone is unconscious and let my guard down.

I tended to forget that some people's minds were more protected than others, harder to manipulate.

The vampire's knuckles cracked across my face, knocking the breath out of me and shoving my head to the side painfully.

Her eyes glowed a blood red as she viciously hissed at me, already jumping forward again like a wild animal.

I leaped into the air to collide with her, gravity pulling us to the ground where we rolled, clutching at each other with our nails.

Once the movement stopped, the woman was already leaping to her feet with bared teeth. Before I could react, she had me by the arms and was pulling me closer, fangs poised to tear into my neck.

The first thing that came to mind, which was not the most brilliant idea, was what occurred next. I screamed, the kind of scream that would cause anyone near me to have immense pain in their head.

The hold on me loosened and my assailant dropped to her knees, keeling over with her hands over her ears in an attempt to ease the mental anguish.

My gaze landed on Zane protectively, noticing his hands were over his ears as well. Which was the reason for my actions not being a good idea. I couldn't exactly choose who the "sonic scream" affected while I was panicked.

And I only used it when I was panicking.

I quit screaming, unwilling to hurt my boyfriend on purpose. I raced over to him before everyone recovered, standing next to him to fight side by side.

It only took a moment for them to regain their senses. I watched the woman that was closest to me as she lowered her hands. There was a bit of blood on her palms, presumably from her ears because of her close proximity to me.

She scowled menacingly at me and started shoving through the others to come at me for her personal vengeance. But she couldn't get to me because the backup that Dalton mentioned earlier had arrived, only about a minute after he called to them.

And just as the traitor bragged about, there were about thirty more vampires swarming toward Zane and I. We moved so we were back to back, prepared for a fight that could quite possibly end in ruins.

They pushed forward as a group, predictably bloodthirsty. But a quick sweep of their thoughts showed that most of them were doing this job for approval from Storm.

I frowned at that discovery, wanting to dig deeper but having no time for that.

We were able to block the first few hits, but the other vampires were no longer attacking in any sort of orderly way. They were going into a frenzy, eager to get in any hit they could and shoving each other for the chance.

A hit to the jaw put me in perspective, making me realize that we were about to be overwhelmed if I didn't do something. The guy who punched me got a kick in between the legs, then I turned on the others with my telepathy, commanding them to go to sleep.

My focus was off and I was already spinning to check on Zane, so I only saw four people fall.

My boyfriend grunted in pain as he was punched in the gut. His eyes shone a bright red, just like the other angry vampires, as he caught the guy in a chokehold.

Someone grabbed my ponytail from behind, dragging me further into the crowd. I flailed my arms as best I could to hit at the others, but a few managed to get their hands on me, restraining my limbs.

I heard a series of loud cracking noises coming from the direction Zane was standing in, but I didn't have visuals on him anymore.

The person that had ahold of my hair yanked on it, making me fall on my butt. Even though it caused a momentary splitting headache, I was grateful for the person's actions because I could finally reach up and snap the perpetrator's wrist.

I was helped up from the ground by multiple hands around my arms, in which they pulled in different directions, while another person came up to use me as a punching bag.

Struggling didn't get me anywhere, so I struck out angrily with my mind, performing a mental punch on the guy in front of me. He flew straight into a few people near us, knocking them all over.

The ones holding me in place loosened their grips in shock. Both of my elbows reared back into the sides of the two of my enemies. I broke free with a hiss and bared my fangs at the others, throwing them with my mental punch as well.

"There's more where that came from!" Dalton's voice called out to me. "Go ahead and take them out. There'll be more!"

I couldn't see him through the crowd, but there was an opening on the other side, enough to see my boyfriend surrounded and fighting furiously.

I was instantly reminded of the last time Zane fought by my side against seemingly unbeatable odds. His fierceness was so intense, I saw an avenging angel instead of a vampire.

But that was very different from what I was watching unfold before me. That was a ferocious warrior. This was a wild animal on a hunt. It was his hybrid side emerging.

"Zane!" I yelled his name, hoping to get his attention. But he continued striking out ruthlessly, knocking out all of his opponents with bloody precision.

The second of distraction cost me. Hands grabbed at me, pulling me every which way. Another punch to the face had me spitting blood onto the grass.

Taking the beating in stride, I concentrated on an alternative defense, not having enough hands to fight with.

With the amount of times I'd witnessed one of my attackers shove another to get to me, I figured they were plenty greedy for more violence, even if it was within their own group.

I sent out a suggestion in their minds, getting enough of them to turn on each other that I only had to take out a few of them. A glance to the right showed Zane was taking care of the other stragglers.

Dalton was standing at the edge of the backyard, speaking quickly into a phone. Fury rose up inside me, one that only came with thinking of what Storm had done to me. And by extension, what Dalton had done.

The soles of my shoes only hit the ground a few times before I took a flying leap over some unconscious vampires. Once I hit super speed, my full intent was to kill the guy who'd messed with me.

I no longer cared about my humanity and the sense of what was right or wrong. I couldn't live in a world where he existed, not with the extreme outrage I felt toward him.

"Alicia, don't!" Zane warned, seeing me speeding at Dalton.

I ignored that, barely hearing it over the roaring in my ears from the red-hot rage. I didn't even stop when footsteps sounded from the other side of the fence.

I latched onto Dalton's jacket, slamming him into the hard surface behind him. A laugh sounded in my face, but I still held on to my thoughts of revenge.

I tightened my grip on his collar and slammed him back into the fence, listening to the wood crack like background music in my head. His laughter continued as I punched him in the face, watching blood splatter across his cheek.

"Alicia! Stop it, he's-" Zane yelled at me, but I only caught part of it as it became white noise and I punched Dalton, breaking his nose like I did last time.

His laughter abruptly stopped, piercing eyes glaring hatefully at me, but still having the wicked grin that told me I was going to lose.

So instead of listening to my instincts screaming at me to retreat, and Zane literally screaming at me, the hate I felt overpowered it all and I attempted to wipe the smugness from Dalton's face with my bloodied fist.

As expected, that ended horribly, but I was too far gone to care until it was too late.

The arrival of the other footsteps stopped my assault. A multitude of hands pulled me away from Dalton, but it wasn't easy for them. With the amount of flailing my limbs were doing, I got in quite a few hits.

Very slowly, my senses came back to me, letting me hear that Zane was still yelling for me.

But the real eye-opener was that I was completely surrounded and couldn't fight my way out.

To the right of me, half of the second round of reinforcements had managed to grab Zane, just like they had done to me. To make matters worse, it seemed that this third team of vampires had sheathed knives at their sides, ready for use.

And it was all my doing. The smirk on Dalton's face made it clear that he knew it to be the truth as well. Rushing into my revenge unprepared was our undoing.

The fact that I'd screwed up didn't faze me as much as it should've. I only contemplated it a moment as Dalton collected himself, popping his broken nose back in place and wiping most of the blood off his face.

It didn't matter that he had me in his clutches. I would get free and beat him to a pulp, even if I had to do it by myself, without any assistance from Zane.

My captors held me in place as the smug faced enemy walked up to me, stopping a few feet away with that stupid self-satisfied look on his face.

"Looks like your fun time has run out." Dalton teased with an exaggerated frown, as if he was sorry for me.

I left my expression blank as I reached into his mind to find the area of his thoughts that I could control. "Your nose isn't crooked enough. Break it."

Dalton blinked as if registering the command, then followed through with punching himself in the face.

There was a collective gasp as the soldiers saw their leader break his own nose.

But I could only do simple commands like that without concentrating more, so he was still his jerkwad self.

And unfortunately, Dalton's mind was a bit more shielded from outsiders than his friends, which made it harder to do more complicated things with his mind.

But if I could distract him, I could do something more drastic...

Once he realized what he'd done, he turned to me, eyes blazing a fiery red. "How dare you!"

One of the vampires watching the exchange took that as a sign to punish me as Dalton fixed his nose again.

I didn't make a sound as he pulled out his knife, slashing the cold blade across my face. Even as it stung and blood ran down my cheek, I could tell that it wasn't a silver knife, which meant that it wasn't fatal and I'd heal as I normally did.

"Don't touch her!" Zane growled, thrashing around in an attempt to escape. To everyone else's surprise, he managed to slip from their grasps and run a few feet towards me before he was caught again.

Dalton turned to stare at my boyfriend curiously, watching as Zane's bloody red eyes swirled with a lighter color, one that wasn't associated with vampires.

"Something's different about you, Zane." He mused. "It seems as if you're more than the wimpy traitor you were when you left us. When you left Storm. Tell me, how'd you get your eyes that color?"

Zane let out a growl in response, refusing to acknowledge that anything unordinary was going on with him.

Dalton spun on his heel to address his followers. "It seems we may have a hybrid on our hands. Storm will be pleased."

The vampires grinned, some of the more eccentric ones hissing in delight.

"This might just be the beginning of a new project for Storm. I'm sure he'd love to experiment on you again." Their leader suggested.

What looked like a moment of uncertainty flashed across my boyfriend's face. It was gone so quickly that no one else could have noticed it, but I knew that he was afraid to be Storm's experiment again.

He refused to talk about it, even with me, so I knew that he had some bad memories of that time locked away, hidden in his mind so he didn't have to relive any of it.

Which gave me the perfect idea.

Dalton gestured to one of the men standing near Zane. "You there, start testing our new lab rat. Let's see how much blood he can lose before his lights go out."

The vampire immediately took him up on the offer, swiftly removing his knife from its sheath and slamming it into his arm up to the hilt.

I clenched my teeth to keep from crying out in alarm. Zane did the same, refusing to give them any satisfaction.

I had another thought then, one that would go perfectly with the scheme I was stirring up.

"Great, you're sexist along with being cowards." I called out, looking from the one who had stabbed me to their stupid leader.

"What?" Dalton blurted out, confused on what I could be getting at.

"The only reason you stabbed him was because you're cruel." I explained and looked him challengingly in the eye. "But when I made the leader break his own nose, I received a shallow cut. Does that seem fair to you?"

Dalton's eyes burned at being scorned, but his lips pulled up in a callous smile. "I'll show you fair."

He grabbed his knife with his right hand and rammed it into my gut, leaving it there to instead wrench my head up by my hair.

"Is it fair enough now?" He taunted, oblivious to the fact that he'd fallen for my trick.

The diversion was enough to let his mental walls down, allowing me inside his head the second he became arrogant while causing me pain.

I spit in his face as I located his worst nightmare. "Perfectly just." I breathed out through the aching in my stomach, dragging his biggest fear to the forefront of his mind and leaving it there for him to suffer.

Dalton stumbled backward, swatting at massive killer wasps that only he could see. "No, please don't! I'll do anything!"

Apparently, he was deathly allergic to wasps and bees when he was human. Combined with that and Storm locking him in a confined space for eternity because he didn't do his job correctly, I thought his fear did a great job of causing him severe anguish.