A THOUSAND BATTLES

"Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories."

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

—

NOVEMBER 1835

HERMOSILLO, SONORA

The dust kicked up into the air did nothing to hide the man who shuffled away from her. It was an attempt to put distance between the two of them that Maria would not allow for.

"This isn't going to fix any of your problems," he taunted, as if amused by her fury. "If anything, it will only create more."

She lunged, shrieking. Her hands found purchase on his shoulders and she grasped the fabric beneath her palms, digging her fingers as hard as she could. His flesh did not crumble the way she wished it would and as she was tearing at his shirt, he grabbed her wrists and twisted them.

Maria's scream of fury turned into a cry of pain as the man wrestled her onto her knees in the dirt. She could feel her dress tearing with every kick of her legs and for a moment she contemplated ripping the bottom of her skirts away entirely; anything that would help her kick Oscar in his teeth.

He pinned one of her arms down to her sides just as she ripped her left wrist from his grip and swung. The crack of skin splitting satisfied something primal inside of her. She shook her hair free from her eyes and watched as the crack in his cheek—small, but still, it was something—quickly closed itself. Suddenly, he was no longer amused.

Maria pulled her elbow back once more and Oscar snatched her hand out of the air, baring his teeth and growling back at her. Finally, Maria saw the violence in his eyes and found herself not afraid, but satisfied. Invigorated by his change of demeanor, she pushed forward, taunting him right back.

"So you are capable of more than foolishness!" She laughed and yanked at her wrists. She knew he wouldn't kill her no matter how many hits she got in. Oscar Parra had always been a fucking coward and Maria would tear him limb from limb for what he'd done. "Put your lies aside and face me like a man!" She tried to knee him in the groin and screamed out of frustration when the tearing of her dress slowed her momentum enough to give him time to step aside.

If he would not fight her—if he would not face her and succumb to the fate she would inflict on him—then she would be forced to do to him what had been done to her. Oscar would either fight her now, or she'd kill everyone he'd ever cared about. Or at least the ones that were still alive.

Maybe then, he'd face her like the true enemy he'd made out of her.

As if finally pushed into action, Oscar stepped forward again and twisted her wrists in the opposite direction, as if testing to see which would cause more pain. Maria did not even register the discomfort as she glared back at him. Judging by the way he was watching her reaction, he was not intending on doing the smart thing and snapping her arms clean off.

She would make him regret his hesitance.

Maria acted quickly and collapsed to her side, watching with satisfaction as he moved with her. Surely, he assumed he'd be able to pin her into the grass now. Then, she freed her leg from beneath her and kicked him in the ribs, finally pleased that the tears in her skirts offered her more movement. He growled in annoyance.

Maria's kick wasn't strong enough to make him release her wrists, but it did allow her enough time to place her both feet back on the ground and pull herself upright. Instead of pushing further, she pulled against his grip, using his resistance of her movements in her favor. When he pulled back in return she took two steps forward and firmly planted her feet again. A violent dance that she would now take the lead of. Finally, she felt more prepared to dig her fingers into his face and claw his eyes out.

Maria knew he could see the violence in her eyes. Oscar tightened his grip on her wrists and held her restrained hands in the space between them.

He was trying to keep her at a distance, she knew. Unfortunately for him, no amount of side-stepping or hesitance would prevent her from killing him where he stood. He was a traitor, a coward, a spineless animal who needed to be put down.

Maria did not have many allies left. Benito's killing spree had done more harm for himself than good, and not only because he'd made enemies out of all the wrong people and gotten the Kings involved, but because he'd torn through a land already tense from other issues.

Maria had never taken kindly to being made a fool of, so when Coyo, an old friend who Maria had only seen once since before, had expressed confusion with Maria's use of the past tense when discussing Oscar, she'd fallen victim to a blind rage. Lise had told her that Oscar had died in the original burn of their lands. Lise had frowned and nodded and cried in front of Maria when she'd reported his, Bárbara's, and Nadia's deaths. Lise had claimed to be alone now, and Maria had pitied her for it.

Even more idiotically, Maria had fucking believed her.

But Oscar, Bárbara, Nadia, and even Lionel were all still alive. All because of the deal they'd made with Benito when they'd sacrificed all of their eastern allies to his delusions.

Maria's coven had been one of the first to die when Benito and his beasts fell upon Monterrey.

Maria had never entertained the thought of hell, but she hoped that one existed solely for that gutless rat. And she especially hoped that some form of eternal pain existed so that she could send Oscar fucking Parra down to burn with him.

"You don't even know what you're angry about!" He accused. Oscar pulled his arms down slightly, as if he could force Maria back onto her knees before him, and looked shocked at the way she did not crumble immediately. His frustration showed itself in the tightening of his grip and the worsening anger on his face. "You're nothing more than a flustered, hysterical child, throwing a fit at something you don't understand."

With another shriek, Maria pushed forward with one hand and pulled backward with the other; her movements were swift enough that she managed to cleanly yank her right arm from his too-tight grasp.

"You knew!" Maria screamed. She used her free arm to take aim at the wrist that still held her in place. Finally, he yanked his arm back before she could try and shatter the limb beneath her blow. "You knew the entire time that we would die! You knew what he would do to us!"

Maria lunged before he could brace himself, and when she got her hands around his throat she squeezed as hard as she could. In her mind she pictured all the death she'd witnessed over the past seven years, visualizing it with a crispness that only perfect recall could provide, and tried hard to emulate the hands of her enemies.

It was then, attempting her first murder, that she realized she had the angle off.

The disappointment hurt more than she punch Oscar landed in her gut.

Oscar, traitor and liar and scum that he was, spun her around during her disorientation and wrapped both of his arms around her torso, pinning her arms to her side and lifting her up off the ground. Then, before Maria could gather her bearings and start kicking, he took a backwards step and fell to his knees.

There, Maria sat, her legs sprawled before her and beneath her shredded skirts, knuckles brushing the ground, and screamed her voice raw.

"He trusted you and you sent him after us! The Kings should have burned you for your words exchanged with Benito alone—that itself is a crime that is deserving of death!"

Oscar laughed, even as he struggled to hold Maria still. "Just because Gabriel couldn't talk his way out of—"

Maria screamed again. "Don't you dare speak his name!" She clenched her eyes shut and ducked forward. She flung her head back as hard as she could, and the agony that erupted in the back of her skull was worth the hiss of pain that came from between Oscar's teeth. "He trusted you," she yelled again, "he would have never pointed Benito in your direction, even if given the chance!"

"Which is why I am still alive," Oscar growled, "and Gabriel is dead."

"I am going to kill you," Maria shrieked as she threw her head back again. She missed, and her anger turned into white-hot fury. "I am going to kill you and tear Lise limb from limb. You both are liars! You are filthy, rotten criminals!"

Oscar's next words, breathed against the back of her head, dripped with mockery. "Don't act like you wouldn't have sold us out to protect him. You're even more of a stupid child than I thought you were, which is why Dolores and Alba have had you leashed all these years! I warned Gabriel that it would be their fault if anything ever happened to him. They knew that he was too trusting which is why you were able to trick him into staying with you."

"If you say any of their names one more time," Maria spoke, her voice lowering and a deadly calm taking over her. Suddenly, she felt a certain sureness within her bones of what her future held. "I will never rest until you and everyone else around here are dead."

"Did you know?" Oscar continued on, tightening his grip on her and leaning forward to press her further into the dirt, "That there were rumors anyways, that one of Gabriel's old friends felt slighted by his departure to Monterrey? Someone else from the church he found himself so blindly loyal to would've killed him eventually." He paused and waited for Maria's responding hiss to subside. "Do you want to know how I found out he was dead? Someone showed me his rosary."

Maria froze. She had told no one about the hours she'd risked, days later after she returned to her coven's final resting place, sifting through the dirt and ash in the light of the morning, desperately trying to find anything left of the people she loved.

She'd never retrieved a single item.

"A man from Guatemala showed it to me," Oscar laughed, as if surprised and amused. "I don't think he even knew where he got it. Only that it was a token given to him by a man he'd recently allied himself with." He shook Maria once, painfully, and leaned close to her ear. "That is the only way anyone will survive anymore, Maria," he purred her name and she growled in response, "allies and strategy and expertise that a woman like you will never possess."

"I hate you," she spoke, her voice even and her mind focused on the fact that the jewelry of her loved ones lived on in the possession of murderers and thieves. "I will kill you," she vowed, no longer screaming, no longer shaking, and no longer struggling. "I will kill you."

Oscar laughed and stood up abruptly. Maria's legs dangled for a few seconds as he stood there, his cheek now pressed against hers.

"You are not clever enough. A smart girl would have never revealed to me what she knew. The only reason I won't kill you now is because you don't deserve to be reunited with Gabriel yet. He doesn't have to deal with you now; he's free." He shoved her forward and Maria caught herself on her hands and knees. She did not turn toward him nor did she erupt in another explosion of rage. She stared at the ground before her and waited.

Maria could hear Oscar brush the dirt off of his pants before he spoke. "If you want to survive, move on, get out, and remember that Monterrey never belonged to you in the first place. This is not your land, woman. It never was, and it never will be. Now," she listened as he backed away from her. His voice grew quieter as he moved, "be a good girl, go up North, and turn yourself into someone else's whore. I'm not interested in anything Gabe left behind."

It was in the moments after Oscar Parra's departure that Maria realized she would never stop until every person who had anything to do with Gabriel's death was resorted to ash. She would never rest until anyone who had ever even so much as looked at Dolores's bracelets or touched Alba's rings was scoured from the earth.

The girl who she'd acquainted herself with the year prior, Lucy, had faced the same fate: left alive by filthy, disgusting men who thought they were showing pity by not chasing down and finishing off a young woman who'd survived a slaughter. Lucy had spoken of others she knew in situations similar to theirs: spared by the whims of tyrants who conquered blindly. Who thought that they were above striking down some small, innocent girl. Who patted themselves on the back for their restraint and care. Leaders, they called themselves. Powerful, they believed themselves to be.

All they were to Maria were targets.

The next time Maria saw Oscar Parra, he had his coven of five, and four newborns with him. Maria had Lucy, Nettie, the Major, and twenty-four newly trained weapons.

It was a slaughter. Oscar and Lise were the only survivors from that initial attack. Lise fell later to a challenger from the north and every year Maria regretted not being the one to burn her traitorous tongue from her mouth.

Maria had turned grief into power. Death had become her legacy.

It was only when faced with a mirror that mercy infected her.

—

Maria vaulted over bodies, both moving and still, to close the space as fast as she could. The fight was too evenly matched before this, and now she feared that it would tip the scales in their enemy's favor and drive their numbers down even faster. She could not, under any circumstances, let their side spiral into hopelessness just yet.

The concentration was gone from the air, the fire was moving closer, and Jasper was dead.

It was a recipe for disaster.

Alice was still screaming when Maria's feet skidded to a stop in front of her. Thankfully, by then, Emmett had turned back around to protect her from the newborns that had zeroed in on the prone girl who sat, hunched over, screaming like a banshee.

"Shut up!" Maria screeched, knowing that it was a useless waste of breath. With Jasper gone, Alice would soon follow. Maria knew it with a certainty that two hundred years of fighting could back up.

Not on her fucking watch.

Alice sat on her feet and leaned forward far enough that her face was pressed into the dirt. Her arms were tucked around the tops of her knees and her unguarded back shook with every noise she made. It didn't even sound like she was taking in new breaths to produce the panicked screaming that was flowing from her with a grating steadiness. The noise was a beacon that wordlessly communicated one specific event across the battlefield: the pain of losing a mate.

Maria stepped next to Jasper's headless body and faced down a woman who charged her head-on. She used this new flavor of anger—this outrage that brought her wrath to new heights—to rip the woman's cheek open with one swift jerk of her hand. The newborn's hands lifted to cup at her face that now sported an extra wide mouth, and Maria dove forward. It took two seconds for Maria to tear a chunk of flesh from her side, to dig fingers into the hardened, petrified insides, and to rip the side of the newborn's ribcage away from her body.

Maria did not want to just kill Esteban's men anymore. She wanted to mangle them the same way she wished to mangle him. Maria wanted to tear them open and leave limbs to rot just out of their reach. She wanted to rip them all to shreds and not burn them, but to reattach all of their bodies with parts that did not belong to them. She wanted to do that over and over and over again until the god Esteban prayed to was no longer a thought in any of their minds. They would not bow and pray to an entity that was unseen, but to Maria: they would beg for death from her as if praying to a merciful deity. Then, and only then, would Maria grant their fucking wishes.

If Esteban would not step onto this battlefield to face her down then Maria would have to do the next best thing and take all of her pent up hatred out on each and every one of his stupid, brainless cult members.

Esteban deserved every bad thing that had ever happened to him, and more. Sparing his life had turned into the biggest mistake of Maria's.

Emmett paused at her other side, tossed a detached leg far away—the sizzle it made when it met the approaching wall of fire was loud—and stared down at Jasper's corpse. Maria watched as his eyes began to scour the ground and knew that he was looking for Jasper's head.

A pointless endeavor. Maria had already done that after she'd crossed the battlefield. His head was gone. Jasper Whitlock was gone.

"It's no use," she screamed at him, and when he looked up at her, agony and anger at war, she jerked her head in front of them. "Go!" she ordered. Maria was still in charge and was determined to use all the muscle they had until they could declare this fight fought and won. Once they won, Maria could find Esteban.

Maria would not rest until she'd fucking killed Esteban.

"I didn't—" Emmett stammered and looked back down to the hole where Jasper's head used to be. He looked away quickly, struggling to keep his head up and on the battlefield. "I thought—"

"Go!" she screeched and backed away from the body. She did not stop until she could see Alice in her periphery. The last thing they needed was for any other member of this god forsaken coven to get distracted by Alice's shrieking. "Now!" With a final look between the body, Maria, and Alice, Emmett rushed forward again.

The whistle she let out was sharp and loud, one full second in length, meaning move forward, don't stop.

For the first time in the twenty-eight seconds that had passed since the battle began, with her back to their perimeter, Maria looked out at the battlefield.

The buzz of Kate's ability triggered so many cries of pain that the produced symphony made Maria feel electric herself. Maria's newborns were fighting magnificently; the punches they threw were quick, their feet did not stop moving, and they tore when they could not kill and dodged when they could not maim. Alan and Morgan had succumbed early on, their two first sacrifices, but with the rate things were going, they had the bodies to spare.

Even though the Cullens were nothing more than a backwoods, weak-willed melange, they were tall, and they were fucking resilient. The instant that thought appeared in her head, the sentiment instantly vanished when she heard the familiar sound of Esme Cullen's cries.

Maria hurried forward and dragged what remained of Jasper's body out of sight. She wouldn't toss him to the fire just yet. She didn't need any members of the Cullen coven seeing that action without having witnessed the one that preceded it and turning on her. Instead, she set it behind Alice, heavy with stillness, and turned back in time to clothesline a man who had stupidly thought he could sneak up on her.

The bastard managed to give her a grazing bite across her upper arm, but when she threw one of his freshly-detached arms toward the fire she was pleased by his desperation as he limped after his lost limb.

Maria watched as a floating ember landed on the man's shoulder and ignited the injury in a burst of flame. Any wound, at this point, was dangerous to possess. Maria yanked her sleeve to the side and turned back toward the battle.

Maria didn't spot her right away, but she could hear the crying and knew that, at this rate, the Cullen matriarch was going to be the next one to get herself killed. With the attention she was drawing toward herself, it seemed certain.

Maria ignored the wide-arched approach of another cult member until the last moment—the man lunged for Alice's prone form, and the instant his feet were off the ground, Maria spun. She somersaulted sideways over him and twisted his head off, barely looking at him as she moved, muscle memory perfected.

It was like breathing, to kill like this.

Unfortunately his momentum wasn't impeded and Maria had to act fast after the headless corpse landed on top of Alice. Alice didn't flinch nor did her screams pause as she was crushed further into the dirt by the body, and instead—to Maria's frustration—she got louder. As fast as she could, Maria heaved the man's body off of Alice and tossed it several meters away, where it collided with a woman who was sprinting towards one of her newborns.

The only reason that every head on the battlefield hadn't turned and sprinted toward them was because only one other individual was creating more of a scene that Alice was.

Maria's eyes scanned the battlefield, both on the lookout for more bodies to tear into while attempting to find the hysterical woman, but when she found what she was looking for, and when she realized exactly what she was witnessing, her jaw almost dropped.

Maria was stunned into silence as she witnessed the most genius strategy she'd seen all night. Esme Cullen—the absolute goddamn lunatic—was chasing down Esteban's injured newborns, not with the intent to bite, rip, or tear, but with one lighter in each hand. One after another, she set fire to the most visible wounds she could find on the members of this twisted congregation. They all flinched back from her in terrified astonishment, but before they could react to her quick hands, they were reacting to the fire that started to burn them from the inside out.

Soon, they wouldn't be standing on a battlefield of crawling half-dead vermin, but a burning burial ground.

This was not fighting, this was extermination. It was risky, horrifying, and fucking brilliant. It was a suicide mission. With each wound she set ablaze, Esme cried harder, her anger and despair giving their enemy enough time to see her coming, but not enough time to realize her weapon of choice.

It was this—the Cullen's physical embodiment of weakness and grief in the form of a woman who played 'mother' to a house of misfits—that shifted the tides in their favor, all in the matter of seconds.

Esme, for all her weakness, was now threat number one to these desperate pests, successfully drawing the attention away from the bigger threats on the playing field. It would be a miracle if she made it out of this alive.

She certainly wouldn't make it out unscathed.

A familiar grunt of pain had Maria turning her head just in time to watch as Jamie fell, one arm gone, and then right after, his head. Edward swooped in and used the newborn's distraction to kill him. That was when Maria spotted the surviving hybrid, trailing after the mind-reader, her pale face streaked with tears.

Their victory was so close that she could taste it, but despite this, Maria knew that they were missing something. There were still at least twenty more cult members left, and they were still outnumbered now that they were down seven—no, eight. Maria tried hard not to think about the familiar remains behind her.

Two newborns, side by side, sprinted toward Maria. They'd clearly picked Alice's grief out of the air and zeroed in on, what should be, an easy target. They would not get the chance to even try.

Maria was almost annoyed when one of them fell to the ground before they could reach her. She didn't see what had caused it; not until the faster one reached her. The reckless youth was dead after they threw one punch and their head still rolling by the time Maria looked up.

Rosalie's blonde hair whipping by as she tumbled, head over heels, arms tangled up in the grip of the man she was wrestling with, was the only thing Maria could see of their brawl. Maria braced herself for her death—one more dead Cullen was the last thing they needed but it was too late for her to do anything about it—and the sound of a fierce growl, a hair-raising snarl that would've made a vampire younger than her cower, erupted from the pile of rolling limbs.

Maria would admit that she was impressed when a head rolled away and it was Rosalie that emerged victorious. Rosalie Cullen barely glanced at the mangled, exposed flesh of her shoulder before she turned and jumped back into the fray.

Idiot! Maria wanted to yell. That wound would either catch fire or the attention of their enemy. It was another red flag bared to the bull and Maria silently counted Rosalie amongst those who would not likely survive, ferocity be damned.

"They're coming," Bella yelled, loud enough to be heard over the noise of battle. Maria turned her head to watch as Bella shoved a man into Kate's waiting hands. Kate electrocuted the man—twice her size and fast—into submission with ease. Then, to Maria's delight, Kate swiftly pulled the top half of his skull from the rest of his head with two fingers through his eye sockets.

Bella's eyes were wide. Her head snapped to the side as she reacted to something in the distance. Something that Maria could not see nor hear. "I've got everyone under, but Alec just sent out a feeler! He's trying to see how far we are!"

The name made something click for Maria. Alec had been the guard member who had numbed Alice and Emmett into senselessness. If Bella could protect against that, and against anything else that the Volturi had to offer, then their victory seemed more and more likely with every passing millisecond.

Still, the battle raged on and Maria was left standing beside a gasping, rocking, senseless Alice Cullen. The very person that this guard was after. And behind her was the lifeless body of the mate they'd set out to kill from the beginning.

It pissed her off that they'd somehow still succeeded with that goal.

"Get up!" Maria jostled Alice with her boot, suddenly determined to get her to shut up before a new wave of enemies arrived. They needed her visions. They needed those fucking visions. Maria bent down far enough to grab Alice by the shoulder to jerk her upward…

… and was met with a mess of blond hair in her arms.

Maria dropped Alice like she was on fire and recoiled from the shock. Alice's head pressed back into the dirt as she readjusted her vice-grip on Jasper's decapitated head.

Thankfully Maria hadn't seen his face—the angle it was being held at had it pressed against Alice's chest—but the knowledge that Jasper's head wasn't ash yet hit her like a punch to the solar plexus.

Maria's eyes moved from the bits of light hair peeking out from under Alice's arms to the headless body, barely two yards away.

For a moment, the decision was so, so easy.

They were already winning. Between Maria's remaining newborns, the Cullen's horrifying new tactic, and the remaining gifted ones among them, Esteban's followers would fall and Maria would be able to reset their formation in time for the Volturi guard's arrival. Bella was already on the defense. Kate and Edward were hitting like lightning strikes and Maria still had bodies to spare.

Emmett had also seen Jasper's decapitation, and more had taken note of his headless body after Alice had gone down, curled in on herself with screeching despair.

But somehow she'd managed to get his goddamn head without any of them noticing. It was nothing short of miraculous.

That was…if Maria thought Jasper's continued survival was a good thing.

It was strange, how calm she felt as she weighed her options before her, the sounds of death a soothing background to her sudden reverie.

Before her was a slip of girl trembling with fear and panic. Alice Cullen continued to rock, shifting back and forth as if putting a child to sleep and not cradling the severed head of her mate. It would be so easy to move subtly. All Maria had to do was drop her own lighter onto Jasper's body and let the seconds tick until one of his wounds caught fire.

Or maybe she could stand by, do nothing, and wait a few seconds. The embers that were floating over their heads were beginning to land around them now, and soon they would have to flee with haste. If a spark landed on the hole in Jasper's neck and ignited him from where he lay, it would take the decision out of her hands. It would make this simple choice even easier.

It would be even better if the fire started moving just a smidge faster. Then she wouldn't have to wait for him to ignite. Maria could just grab Alice, give the signal, and flee with the survivors away from the wall of fire barreling down on them.

With Jasper dead, Alice would be untethered. The only person on the planet who would be as well-equipped to keep a power like that safe was Maria. The only person who could put it to any half-decent use, and not some sick perversion where they claimed it was for 'the greater good', was her. Perhaps a reintroduction to human blood was all it would take…

Perhaps if Maria let another few Cullens die, it would make the job of possessing Alice's foresight much simpler.

It was then that Maria could decipher some of Alice's gasping noises.

One singular word, stuttered over and over again. "Nonononononono," she repeated in lieu of screaming her little head off. "No no no no."

There was a choice here. Not just a choice but a sweet temptation. After all, Maria hadn't been allowed to keep her mate. Why should Alice?

Maria looked once again toward Jasper's body. Alice probably wouldn't even notice. No one would notice if she set a flame against his neck and let nature take its course. There would be no love lost with Jasper's death.

She'd planned for it all along.

In that moment, Alice looked up at her. There was something familiar about the expression. It was one Maria had seen before. Maria looked into Alice's wide, terrified eyes, and her choice made itself.

"Please," Alice's voice choked out her first understandable word since Jasper's death, "Please, no—no!"

Maria leaned down and ripped Jasper's head from Alice's grip.