74 What Did You Do To Her?

This took longer than he hoped it would. He was screaming on the inside, desperate to get in there and get this over with already!

Before Ruby ended up in the clutches of his archenemies, Ash thought he would want to draw out his revenge and savor it. He didn't care about that at all now; he wanted it to be over and done with so they could go home.

How things had changed. She changed a lot of things in his life and he hoped she would continue to do it more. But they had to save her first.

Everyone awkwardly huddled together to make it through the barrier and about a dozen wolves broke off as soon as they were through to catch any vampires milling about the gardens. There turned out to be five of them outside so a few more wolves had to get involved.

The rest headed inside and broke up to handle the layout of the castle as planned. They had to move silently in order to avoid being noticed by any Cromwells who weren't in their immediate line of sight.

Sirius's pack was incredibly efficient; they took out more than a dozen vampires without anyone else in the castle noticing. They snuck up behind their prey and jabbed their hands into the cores so quickly that there was no time to scream.

This was too easy. Ash felt a distinct feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach as they continued on. Nothing ever went this well for him.

They crept around checking various rooms that could potentially be the throne room, killing vampires as they went. Roughly a third of their enemies had been decimated before they found what seemed to be the right spot.

Ash hesitated outside the door. There were a bunch of voices inside so the moment they went in everything was going to hit the fan. They had to be smart about this.

He put a finger to his lips and gestured for everyone behind him to stay perfectly still while he tried to figure out when best to strike. As a result, he was able to hear some of those voices though they were muffled a bit by the door.

"Lord Dorian, please be mindful of the contract."

"Is it dead?"

"Not dead but close. I think it passed out. How pathetic."

"Fairies are incredibly fragile, aren't they?"

Blood roared in Ash's ears the moment he heard the word 'fairies' and the context clues all clicked together. Forgetting his plan to strategize, he burst through the door in a rage. Sirius was forced to quickly disperse some of his wolves to check the surrounding rooms catering to Ash's rash behavior in the background but he was too furious to care about that.

Heedless of the vampires that were getting pinned by his werewolf allies, Ash dove for her to check that she was still alive. There didn't appear to be any external injuries…at least she didn't appear to be bleeding.

It was a bit hard to tell if her skin had been damaged because of the patterns on it. Nothing was the same either.

One leg was pale yellow with black and white swirls below the knee and shiny blue like a sapphire above it while the other looked like diamond below the knee and sandstone above.

Her right hand and part of her forearm was reddish brown with what appeared to be white crackles running throughout while the rest of it was white with golden brown lines and swirls. Her left arm was pale blue with golden patterns all over and that extended through to her neck.

The curly hair flopping over either side of her face was divided down her middle part so one half shone purple like amethyst and the other looked rather like a common gray pebble with scattered brown and white strands mixed in.

Her face was a greenish gray swirled with white and even with the pattern it was obvious her cheeks were hollow and that there were dark circles under her eyes. The skin patterns might be a bit alarming but it was definitely the same face as Ruby's favorite glamour. A face he loved.

Ash leaned down and pressed his ear against her chest, desperate to hear a heartbeat, and found nothing for nearly thirty seconds. When he finally did hear a beat it was very faint. They were far apart too, which couldn't be a good sign.

She was alive but barely. No. This couldn't be happening. He couldn't lose Ruby!

He tightened his hold on the unconscious fairy and whipped his head up to look at Dorian, now struggling against two different werewolves. He was putting up quite a fight too; a third wolf had to join in to keep him down after killing the one he had been holding.

"What did you do to her?" Ash snarled.

The Cromwell leader bared his fangs as he continued to fight. "Nothing much. Fairies truly are weak. She couldn't even handle a little blood control!"

A little? In what world would 'a little' cause this kind of damage?! Blood control was the first type of blood magic to be discovered by vampires nearly a thousand years ago because it made luring human prey easier. It was not meant to be used as a torture device.

That was clearly what happened here based on the state of the fairy in Ash's arms. Her heartbeat was practically nonexistent and her shallow breathing had stopped during the time he was holding her.