POWER EXPLODED toward the figure half-hidden in the shadow of the downed tree, with only slightly less force than what I’d unleashed on the gunman back at the trailhead. But unlike the gunman, this guy was only a few steps away from me. He should have immediately flown backward into the sharp embrace of the grasping tree roots behind him.
He should have.
Instead, his hand lifted almost too fast for me to follow, brushing the blast of wind to one side like someone brushing away an insect. A section of roots shattered into kindling... and Nigellus stepped forward into the patchwork of dappled light filtering through to us from above.
“About time,” Edward managed, the words emerging breathless and reedy.
Nigellus approached without comment and plucked the old man from my grasp. I let him, still too frozen by shock to do anything else.
“You’re leaking,” the demon observed, eyeing his servant narrowly.
“Good of you to notice, sir,” Edward rasped. “Now, if you could perhaps—”
He was interrupted by a vaporous swirl of gray mist blowing through the little glade. I gasped, recognizing that unnatural, chilly fog for exactly what it was. The mist gathered into a tight spiral, darkening into the solid form of Leonides, grim-faced and sharp-jawed.
“I will return for you when I can do so without being observed,” Nigellus told him without preamble. “Do please try not to get killed in the mean time.”
“What?” I squeaked, as Nigellus grasped Edward firmly by the arm. The pair popped out of existence an instant later.
Aghast, I whirled to stare at Leonides, as if he could somehow push a magical rewind button and keep our ticket out of this mess from bailing on us without warning. But my boss was glaring with narrowed eyes at the place where the two had been standing.
“Fucking demons,” he muttered, the bitterness of decades lending a sharp edge to the words.
“Umm...” I began.
He seemed to break himself free of his moment of resentment, his dark eyes landing on me instead. A hint of vampiric light lit his gaze from within.
“Hello, Vonnie,” he said. “Please tell me you can do more with magic now than set off apartment sprinkler systems.”
The crash of many footsteps through underbrush reached us.
“Looks like we’re about to find out,” I said faintly.
His sharp gaze moved to the woods behind me. “Cover,” he said, and we both ducked behind the downed tree trunk.
“Did Nigellus seriously just throw us under the bus?” I demanded, peeking over the top of the rotting wood.
“Mr. I Can’t Interfere with Humans?” Leonides replied, sounding about as happy as I felt. “Oh... he’ll be back for us, assuming we manage to take out the rest of this SWAT team. Edward was bleeding—I could smell it. What happened?”
My stomach rolled as I remembered the spurt of red erupting from the elderly man’s shoulder... as I remembered what being shot felt like.
“He was trying to cast a misdirection spell so we could sneak past them and get away. His back was turned to the trail, and I didn’t see the guy with the gun until it was too late. He got shot in the shoulder.”
Leonides nodded. “Well... Nigellus will fix him up, anyway. Which is more than can be said for us.” The sound of breaking branches grew louder, and I could see dark shapes approaching through the trees.
“What do we do?” I asked, trying to force down my panic.
“You? Do magic until you can’t anymore—preferably without aiming any of it at me.” He pulled a gun from inside his long coat and grasped it in one hand, pulling and releasing the slide with the other. It snapped into place with an ominous snick. “Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can with this, after which all bets are off.”
I was pretty sure all of the men I’d seen had been wearing bulletproof vests, but there didn’t seem to be much point in mentioning that tiny detail—if he hadn’t seen it when he was flying around earlier, he would soon enough. That did raise a different question, however.
“Are these even real cops?” I blurted.
Leonides shot me a sideways glance before his attention returned to the woods where our attackers were about to emerge. “Are they sworn officers of the law? Probably. Are they under Fae control? Almost certainly.”
A twisting feeling roiled in my gut. There was something daunting about the idea of attacking the police... it was the kind of thing you couldn’t just come back from afterward, and pretend everything was normal again. I’d seen the Fae-controlled officers Teague had brought with him to close down the Vixen’s Den. I was aware that the police had apparently been ordered not to respond to Jace’s frantic 911 call, when Ivan’s goons had broken into our apartment.
But I hadn’t fought with them. Even though it had been clear self-defense, I’d already flung a SWAT officer against a tree so hard he’d lost consciousness. For all I knew, I’d broken his back. The guy could be lying there dead on the trail at this very moment.
And... I was about to do the same thing to as many of his comrades as I could, while my vampire boss shot a gun at them. Apparently, our only way out of here was going to be over a pile of injured and dead cops.
The cops in question—very much not injured, currently—swarmed into the clearing, rifle muzzles swinging to and fro as they looked for a target.
“You first,” Leonides murmured, barely audible.
Heart pounding, I dropped to my belly so I could get a clear line of sight through the gap between the downed tree’s roots and trunk—praying that my black coat and dark leggings would hide me in the shadows. As I clutched my pendant, I was aware of Leonides moving silently in the opposite direction, toward the bare branches at the far end of the dead tree.
I couldn’t tell how much of my shakiness came from exhaustion and how much came from fear, but it was clear that my magical resources were limited at this point. Fortunately, the idea of getting shot again terrified the shit out of me, and that terror was the fuel I needed right now.
With a silent prayer that it would be strong enough to do any good, I unleashed another blast of elemental wind toward the center of the group of men fanning out across the area. The ones at the edges of the group barely staggered, but several in the middle flew backward and hit the ground hard.
Those who’d kept their feet immediately trained their weapons in my direction, and I rolled to the side until the thick trunk stood firmly between me and a hail of death. A gunshot rang out from my left, and one of the men still standing fell, clutching his thigh. Immediately, half a dozen rifles swung toward the source of the shot and opened fire.
Adrenaline coursing, I took advantage of the distraction to call another blast of power. It was noticeably weaker, only sending two of the men to their knees. Another SWAT member fell to a shot from a different angle, scrabbling at a growing red patch on his right arm. In growing disarray, our attackers whirled to face the new threat. Mist swirled as Leonides changed position once more, taking out a third man with another leg shot.
One of the attackers shouted a warning, his gun training on me where I crouched, peeking through the gap at the tree’s base. Before I could even duck, Leonides solidified in mid-leap, slamming into the man’s back and driving his head against the ground with force. He came up with the man held in front of him like a shield, the rifle spraying bullets at the others in an arc.
And... holy fuck.
Maybe at this point I should have had a decent understanding of what it really meant to have a vampire at your side during a fight. I hadn’t, though. Not until this very moment.
My belly twisted again, this time with unexpected heat. I was so focused on the dance of destruction in front of me that I didn’t notice the armed man approaching the gap beneath the trunk until he was almost on top of me. Leonides’ glowing gaze flew to me, but he couldn’t shoot at the man without risking hitting me as well. I read the dismay in his eyes as they locked with mine, and a different form of power rose inside me.
The
tree burst into flame.
My attacker screamed, his gun clattering to the ground as he fell back, slapping frantically at his burning clothing. The two men still standing took advantage of Leonides’ moment of shock to jump him. He grunted under the double impact, jamming the stock of the rifle into the stomach of the man in front, who doubled over.
Then Leonides hooked an ankle behind the leg of the one in back and shoved him off balance. His dark coat flared out as he whirled, slamming the rifle into the side of the man’s head. He went down like a sack of potatoes, and a swift kick to the first attacker’s chin took him out of the game as well.
Around the clearing, only a handful of groans could be heard as those still conscious moved weakly to clutch at injuries.
I became aware that I was leaning against the burning tree trunk, ignoring the flames that licked at my arms without heat. My breath came as fast and heavy as though I’d been running a marathon.
Leonides straightened from the carnage and gave the flaming tree a wary look. I swallowed and backed away from it.
“Edward promised he wouldn’t let me burn down the forest,” I said nonsensically.
There was a brief pause before he replied, “I think it’s probably too wet out here for it to spread far.”
I blinked, my attention drawn to an ugly furrow on the side of his neck, oozing dark blood. It was, I realized with a jolt, a bullet graze.
“You’re hurt,” I said faintly.
He snorted, and crossed to the man I’d burned. The guy had managed to put out the flames by rolling on the damp leaf litter, but he was still writhing, making soft whining noises that cut me to the bone. Leonides dragged his head up and sank fangs into his throat.
My knees wobbled.
A few moments later, he let the man drop and straightened, scrubbing at the bullet wound on the side of his neck with his palm. Beneath the smear of blood, the furrow was gone. I fell back to lean against the burning tree again, heedless of the flames.
He eyed me for a beat. “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry about that. It’s a bit different seeing it firsthand, I guess.”
Wincing, he reached forward and hooked me by the arm, pulling me upright and away from the fire.
“Will Nigellus come now?” I asked blankly, staring at the destruction around us.
Leonides sighed, an irritated sound. “Let’s get away from this disaster area and I’ll give him a call.”
I nodded dumbly and took a step, only for my knees to buckle. Thought Rans fixed those, I thought distantly, as Leonides caught me before I could faceplant. Instead, I ended up clinging to him as my surroundings turned in lazy circles.
“S-sorry,” I mumbled. “Magic takes it out of me. An’... y’know... a clearing full of writhing and dead bodies.”
“Can you walk?” he asked.
I licked my lips. “Umm... yeah, I think so. Mostly because if you try to carry me, I’ll probably throw up on you.”
“Right...” he said uncertainly.
After a moment’s shuffling, I ended up leaning against his side, an ironic counterpoint to the way I’d dragged Edward through the woods earlier. The muscular form next to mine was strong, and more than a little tense. He led us deeper into the forest, putting maybe a quarter mile between us and the carnage we’d left behind.
When we came to a quiet glade, he propped me against a tree and pulled out a cell phone. His lips twisted as he glanced at the screen, and then up at the sky.
“One bar,” he said. “Good enough, I guess.”
He dialed, and a moment later Nigellus must have picked up.
“Come and get us, you fucking asshole hellspawn,” he said without preamble, before rattling off a set of what sounded like GPS coordinates. Then he hung up without waiting for a reply and pocketed the phone, running a hand over his face wearily.
Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I sucked in a breath, still on edge. Nigellus approached from the direction we’d just come, giving us a critical onceover.
“How’s Edward?” Leonides asked.
“Indelible,” Nigellus replied cryptically.
I hoped that if the old guy were in seriously bad shape, the demon would sound a bit more upset than he did. With luck, he’d used the time Leonides and I had spent overpowering an armed SWAT team to get Edward an ambulance or something.
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” Leonides muttered.
“Can we get out of here, please?” I asked.
“Indeed,” Nigellus said immediately. “Come, both of you.”
He grasped each of us by the arm, and an instant later my surroundings blurred as my aching body was wrenched through whatever crazy dimension demons used to travel instantaneously. When reality reformed, I recognized the living room in Leonides’ penthouse.
My stomach turned over violently, signifying that it had finally had enough. After a frantic glance around for some kind of receptacle, I staggered a few steps and landed on my knees next to the nearest elegant houseplant—where I promptly threw up in the tasteful ceramic pot.
TEN
WHEN I’D STOPPED trying to expel my toenails through my digestive tract, I became aware of the utter silence in the room around me.
“Oh my god,” I croaked, imagining what I must look like to two powerful supernatural creatures. “I am so sorry...”
My eyes were streaming, and I wiped them roughly on my sleeve, trying to swallow down the sharp bite of stomach acid coating my throat.
Leonides broke free of his paralysis first. “Don’t worry about it, Vonnie. I’ll just... take the plant out to the patio. No harm done.”
“Excellent plan,” Nigellus agreed, in the tone of someone who hadn’t spent much time in the presence of fresh vomit, and had no desire to start now.
For the second time in half an hour, Leonides steadied me as I regained my feet.
“Where’s Edward?” he asked the demon.
I expected Nigellus to rattle off the name of a hospital, and made a mental note to visit the old guy or at least send flowers. So when Nigellus said, “Changing his shirt, I believe—he does get terribly fussy about such things,” I blinked at him in surprise.
Nigellus met my gaze, still watching me as though he half expected me to recreate a scene from The Exorcist and start projectile-vomiting radioactive bile in all directions.
“I took the liberty of retrieving your belongings from the cabin while you were... otherwise occupied,” he said.
“Uh... thanks?” I rasped, still stuck on the part about Edward.
The demon-bound butler chose that minute to come bustling in—dressed, as promised, in a crisp new white shirt. “Good heavens, my dear! Come here immediately and sit down while I get you a glass of water and a damp cloth for your face.”
I gaped at him. “Edward. Your shoulder.”
He waved the words away. “Good as new, child. Don’t fuss. Now come here—you’re pale as a sheet. How much magic did you do?”
He gestured at Leonides to lead me toward the nearest sofa, and I let myself be shuffled along and lowered to the cushions. I was still staring at Nigellus’ servant in consternation.
“But... how...?” I asked, ignoring his question about my magic in favor of trying to understand the impossibility in front of me. “Did you... drink vampire blood or something?”
Leonides snorted, and Edward gave a little laugh. “Quite unnecessary in my case, my dear. Perhaps you don’t fully understand the implications of being demon-bound.”
I tried to think back to everything Leonides had told me. I was aware that being bound allowed the demon to stop a human’s aging process, but...
You must take my word that there is quite literally nothing these men can do to me that will stick, Edward had said, when he was trying to get me to leave him after he’d been shot. I’m demon-bound.
To the extent I’d thought about his words in the heat of the moment, I’d assumed it was some reference to him already having given up his soul. I
certainly hadn’t taken it to mean that his industrial-strength demon Tesla battery could be used to erase a bullet wound. But... why not, really? I’d been shot. Twice. And thanks to the power of the supernatural, I was good as new... except for the future PTSD-related therapy bills.
“Oh,” I said stupidly, before reaching up and resting my hand on his bony wrist. “Okay. I’m... really glad, Edward.”
“It is a rather useful perk at times,” he agreed. “Now, just let me get that drink and a washcloth for you. I’ll be right back.”
I sat for a few moments and just breathed. When Edward returned, I let him fuss over me while Leonides evicted his unlucky houseplant to the open air of the rooftop patio. By the time he returned, my face was clear of the botched blood symbol, along with its sticky combination of sweat and tear tracks.
“Now,” Edward said, “answer my question, Vonnie. How much magic did you do? You’re clearly exhausted, my dear.”
I swallowed a couple of times and licked my lips. “Umm... after you left? Two more big blasts of air magic, and...” My eyes cut to Leonides and quickly jerked away again. “... I set a giant tree on fire.”
The corner of Edward’s lips twitched in what might conceivably have been a hastily covered smile. “Ah. That would certainly do it, I suppose.”
Thankfully for my dignity, neither of the other two had any clue about the subtext surrounding that last part. This was confirmed a moment later, when Leonides turned his attention to Nigellus and asked, “Time for answers. What the hell was that performance when you were trying to get us to them after Edward called for help?”
Edward raised a bushy eyebrow and turned to the demon as well. “I, too, would be very interested in the answer to that question. I know what it felt like, but if it was really a Fae confoundment spell with enough power behind it to affect a demon of your abilities, sir—that’s worrying.”
Nigellus lifted his chin. “Your magical instincts are not in question, Edward. I received your summons, but when I attempted to trace it to the source, I arrived randomly some considerable distance away from where we eventually found you. After a second attempt yielded similar results, I traveled to the cabin, since I’d already been there once and did not require a beacon. When I did not find you there, I retrieved Leonides to assist with reconnaissance of the area from the air.”
Vampire Bound: Book Two Page 7
