“We can’t pull back,” I said with a wave of my hand. “If we try to maintain any other location outside the Sacred Valley, we’ll never reach the top of Machu Picchu in time to stop the sacrifice. That’s their plan. To destroy us or delay us.”

“Can’t we use that one somehow?” Stefan asked with a jerk of his head toward Cynnia. The young naturi took a step backward, hiding both of her bloodstained hands behind her back.

“She’s naturi?” Bertha asked. Her upper lip curled with the question, revealing a flash of her white fangs.

“She belongs to me,” I said, coming to standing between Bertha and Cynnia. “A bargaining chip I’m hoping to use at a later date.”

Bertha instantly backed off, taking a step back and holding up her hands, indicating that she had no disagreement with me. “You may be running out of time. Could it be time to use your bargaining chip?”

“I think she may come in handy,” I said, nodding, then looked over my shoulder at Stefan. “I need something from you to make this work.”

A cruel smile twisted his lips and he bowed his head. “What do you wish from me, great Elder?”

I matched his smile and bowed my head back to him. I had not meant to invoke my status as a member of the Coven, but if that’s how Stefan was going to be, I would play the part.

“I need you to pull a Stain on the lodge as a last resort.”

Stefan lurched a step backward, his hands balled into fists at his sides. Bertha also gasped, but I wasn’t surprised to see that the other nightwalker didn’t react. He was too young to know what a Stain was—I hadn’t heard of one being pulled in several centuries.

“Mira, I—”

“I know you know how to do it, Stefan. I studied under Jabari and followed the Coven for centuries. I can name every nightwalker that can perform a Stain. I would do it myself, but I know only the mechanics of it. I’ve never actually done it. You have, successfully.”

His hard jaw was clenched, which made his face appear as if chiseled from stone. “A last resort?” he demanded at last.

“I have a couple more tricks up my sleeve,” I said, flashing him a wry grin. “But we need to get going. We’re running out of night, and everything must be settled before the sun rises.”

“Then let us be gone,” he announced, sweeping one strong arm beneath my legs as he gathered me up into his arms.

“Not without Danaus!” I shouted, but we were already airborne. I tried to twist in Stefan’s grasp but he held me too tightly and the positioning was awkward.

“Don’t worry,” he chided, mocking my concern. “Bertha will see that the hunter arrives at the lodge safely.”

“And Shelly and Cynnia?”

“All will arrive safely just seconds behind us,” he said calmly as he sped through the night sky.

The air was cool. The wind whipped at our clothes and pulled at my hair as we crossed the vast black distance toward the lodge that was currently under siege.

“I’m surprised that you want the others along if you plan a Stain,” Stefan said after a moment of silence. “You seem to care for them. Or at the very least, seem to want them to stay alive a little while longer.”

“Precautions can be made so they aren’t harmed,” I said as I wrapped my arms more tightly around his neck and huddled against his larger body in an effort to avoid some of the wind. “It’s a risk, but we have no choice in this matter.”

“I hear some say that you have the same opinion of your place on the Coven,” he said, his French accent thickening as his anger bubbled to the surface. “That you had no choice in the matter.”

I snorted at him, drawing his dark silvery gaze down to my face. “I didn’t want it. I still don’t want it. I did what I thought I had to do at the time to protect our people. If I could hand the chair over to you right now, I would, but I can’t. Jabari would never allow it.”

“Word was that you and Jabari were…separated,” he said after a lengthy pause, as if searching for the right word to describe my current loathing for the Ancient.

“We are ‘separated,’ yet the nightwalker has found a new use for me, as a member of the Coven. And there I will stay, on the Coven, until someone kills me or…” I paused, leaving the sentence floating in the air beside us.

“Or…?” Stefan prompted, his hands tightening on me. I had my answer. I needed to know how badly he wanted that seat on the Coven.

“Or kills Macaire,” I finished.

“Ahhh…so that is the way the wind blows.” Stefan chuckled, his grip loosening on me.

“Are you at all surprised?” I asked. The war between Jabari and Macaire seemed to have lasted for centuries. At least, it was in existence for as long as I had been a nightwalker. And in the end, maybe I was the cause of the rift between Macaire and Jabari. But for whatever the reason, the war would only end when one of the two nightwalkers was dead. My only goal when it came to the Coven was avoiding becoming a casualty of the war, like Tabor, the nightwalker whose seat I now possessed.

Our conversation ended as we approached the lodge in the darkness. Fires flickered around the building and in what appeared to be gardens that looked up at the great Incan city. The Sanctuary Lodge would have been an exquisite oasis in the middle of the lush landscape that surrounded it, but in a matter of a few hours, we had reduced it to a battlefield.

“Drop me here!” I commanded as we flew close to the front of the building.

Stefan instantly obeyed as two naturi on butterfly wings streaked toward him, swords drawn. He didn’t need his hands full of me.

As I fell, I quickly pulled my short sword and a small knife, allowing me to slash through the first naturi I encountered while I hit the ground. I had killed two more when I felt Danaus hit the ground near me. We weren’t winning this battle. The naturi were too many and too strong. The power from the earth was making them faster, harder to kill than I remembered. We needed a new trick if we were going to finally end this.

Where’s Cynnia? I demanded of Danaus as I dodged a blow aimed to slice off my head.

Shelly is taking her inside.

Go get her. I need to talk to Rowe.

Danaus said nothing, but disappeared from my side, and was surprisingly replaced by Stefan.

“Rowe!” I shouted when I finished off the last naturi to attack me. Placing my hand on Stefan’s large chest, I forced him to take a step back. A second later a ring of fire sprang up around the lodge, cutting through the garden and lighting up the gravel parking area. The power came easier than I had expected. Earth and soul energy flowed through me constantly now, causing the fire to burn hotter and brighter than it ever had. The naturi trapped within the ring were quickly slaughtered by my kind, but so were the few nightwalkers trapped outside the flames.

“I demand to speak to Rowe!” I shouted again. My voice rang out clear in the crisp mountain air now that the sound of battle had subsided.

“Right here,” the one-eyed naturi announced as he walked to the front of the crowd of naturi standing just beyond the boundary of the flames. The fire wouldn’t hold out those of the wind clan, since they could easily fly over the five-foot-high flames, but then, this was just a temporary truce so the two sides could make a few threats before getting back down to business.

“I thought I suggested that you should not bring your people to Machu Picchu,” I said, inwardly cursing Danaus and his slowness.

“The door will be opened,” Rowe said. “And we’ll be happy to finish you off tonight if you’d rather. You don’t think that a little fire will keep us away, do you?” As he spoke, two naturi with pale blond hair stepped forward and raised their hands. The flames around the lodge flickered and grew low, threatening to go out completely.

With a growl, I reached deep, pulling more of the earth’s energy into my body, slowing its flow back into the earth. The flames flared again, reaching back to their previous height and then higher by another foot. I could feel the two light clan naturi fighting me, pushing against the fires, struggling to extinguish it.