Lucas simply raised his long, bony middle finger.
Across from him, Andre and Zoey leaned against the back of an armchair, fingers intertwined. At the sight of them, Ethan blanched.
Zoey smiled, baring her fangs.
Ethan let out a breath. “Well, that is a disappointment.”
Andre hissed.
“Surely we can discuss this,” Ethan said. “Eliminating me has no real benefits. My Hunters are everywhere.”
“Don’t be stupid. Killing you will be very satisfying to all of us.” Zoey turned to her mate. “Maybe I could rip his throat out—give him a little taste of the pleasure of a bite?”
“You won’t win,” Ethan said. “If you kill me, another leader will rise up. But if you leave me alive, we can negotiate a truce.”
Andre ignored the Hunter. “He does not deserve the mercy, love.”
“True.” She crossed her arms and strode toward their enemy.
“You never did know your place.” Fast, Ethan rushed at her head first. But far faster, she caught up a handful of his hair and bent his head back, stretching his neck long. He grunted, and Pedro chuckled.
“Good girl,” Andre said. He snarled at Ethan. “Now, I will reach into his chest and pull his beating heart out for what he did to you, and to Lena, and to my vines.”
“Don’t be selfish. I want to help.” Zoey shoved him.
Lucas’s mouth quirked, but Pedro steamed. “You all are loco. He’s mine. I’ll show you the mercy you didn’t show me, you sick prick. I’ll cut your feet off nice and clean before I slice your throat.”
“Maybe we should play rocks, paper, scissors for the pleasure of tearing him apart,” Zoey said, licking her lips like a hungry tigress.
“No.” Andre stood straight. “I am the head of this household, and this is my decision.”
Zoey glowered. Pedro didn’t know shit about women, but he knew Andre had made the wrong move. He’d just let them work it out, and take Ethan all for himself while they were busy discussing it.
A gurgle sounded just as Pedro turned to face him.
Ethan stood with the sharp end of something jutting from his chest. Behind him, Lucas sagged, but grinned triumphantly as his brother collapsed onto his knees and then fell forward, face first.
Jesús Cristo, where had he found the strength?
“Hope you don’t mind me borrowing your sword, big guy.” Lucas braced himself against the wall and nodded at an empty case where Andre had kept the antique. “I had to repay him for all the times he stabbed me in the back.”
Andre frowned, but his expression quickly melted into a smile. “I suppose there is as much justice in that execution as any. And, in your condition, it was an impressive feat of strength.”
“Power of hatred, or vengeance.” Lucas shrugged. “Don’t count on another one any time soon.” He slid all the way to the floor.
“Krist.” Kos wiped his brow, moving toward the door. “I’m going to find Lena and the others, to tell them Ethan’s dead.”
When the door closed behind him, Pedro dashed to Lucas’s side and squeezed his man tight, staring over at their enemy.
Ethan. Dead. Finally.
No one spoke, perhaps letting the reality sink in.
Eventually, Andre stirred. “What is the condition of my house?”
Pedro gulped. He hated being the messenger. “Pretty much gone.”
Andre lifted his chin, more stoic. “That is as I expected. The fire burned hot for hours.”
Zoey wrapped his arm around her shoulder. Inwardly, Pedro smiled at the way she played Andre’s tune—pretending she needed comfort when really she offered it.
“What about the other Hunters?” Andre asked.
Pedro glanced at the ceiling. “Uta has them under control. This battle is over.”
“But the war?” Andre stared at Ethan.
Yeah. The war. Ethan may be dead, but it wasn’t necessarily an end to the violence. Pedro squeezed Lucas’s hand, hoping like hell his plan was working.
Andre glanced up. “So, regarding the sun—Zoey and I must have a taste of Lucas.”
Pedro tightened their embrace. “No way. He’s too weak. Leo’s just above gr—”
“There’s always Ethan.” Lucas toed his brother’s shoulder. “That blood’s got to be good and fresh for a few more minutes, right?”
“Eeeeww.” A shudder shook Zoey’s shoulders.
“I agree.” Andre grimaced, rubbing the stubble of his chin. “That is truly repulsive.”
Lucas huffed. “What do you mean? He’s my brother. Our blood is practically the same.”
Pedro gritted his teeth to hold back his laugh. Andre and Zoey hadn’t guessed Lucas was pulling their legs. But as their revulsion took over their features, the giggle burst from his chest nevertheless.
Then Lucas laughed too. After exchanging glances, Andre and Zoey joined in.
“I’ll go up and see if I can find Leo for you,” Pedro said.
“No.” Lucas made moves to stand. Pedro helped him up to where he could support himself with the back of a chair. “I want them to have my blood. It will bind us together, before you turn me.”
“Lucas, that is unnecessary. We are already bound together in friendship and common purpose. And after two millennia, I can surely wait for Pedro to retrieve Leo.”
Lucas unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled back his sleeves from his wrists. He held them out to Andre and Zoey. “Please?”
When the vampires knelt at his feet, and ever so gently pierced his skin with their fangs, a hot tear fell down Pedro’s face.
Yeah. Lucas knew what he was doing.
After only a few sips, they both sealed up the wounds. Zoey reached for Andre to steady herself, but he wobbled too. Both trembled with the power of Lucas’s blood.
She touched her lips. “Oh.”
Andre wore a dazed smile as he leaned in to kiss her. They lip-locked like they were alone for the first time in weeks.
Yeah. Pedro knew the feeling, knew very well how Lucas’s blood could intoxicate a vampire with its power. He also knew these two might start undressing without an urgent reminder of the situation. He coughed.
Andre pulled back hastily. “Where are Bel and Uta?”
Pedro waved away his worry. “She was subduing the rest of the Hunters. I’m sure she has everything under control.”
Chapter 49
UTA FLEW LOW OVER the smoldering ruins of the house, careful not to be seen. The Hunters’ fire helmets, with their narrow windows of vision, would help her stay out of sight.
Pedro darted toward the group of men. He yanked the head off one Hunter like a human decapitates a cooked prawn, only the Hunter bled more. She took stock of the entire area. They had placed their command center across the highway—an ideal position—just where she would have located it. Men wearing fire resistant suits used heavy tools to sift through the debris of the house. A row of official vehicles had parked along the highway—fire trucks, police cars and unmarked vans.
Would Bennett be safely tucked away with the authorities, playing the hero, or down on the ground, trying to get to Andre?
He wasn’t in the tent where a handful of law enforcement officials sat, peering through binoculars. They’d been fooled by Ethan and didn’t deserve to die. She landed just out of their sight. A coiled orange extension cord lay under the bumper of a nearby van, and she picked it up, spinning the heavy plug at the end.
“Listen to me, gentlemen. You have been deceived by Ethan Bennett. I regretfully inform you that you have chosen the wrong side.”
One of them puffed up. “Who are you?”
“One of the good guys. I am going to lock you up, for your own safety, until this thing is finished.”
They raised their voices in a murmur of dissent. She whipped the extension cord down on a folding table. It split in two right down its width and collapsed.
“Okay, okay,” the pompous one agreed. “We’ll come with you.”
She herded them toward a van—the type full of surveillance equipment.
“We can’t all fit in there,” cried a vulpine man with large glasses.
“I promise you can. I am very strong.”
No one else complained, even when she pushed them into the narrow confines, packed tighter than commuters on a Tokyo subway, which she had always despised—too damn much blood pumping and tempting her. She broke the handles off the inside of the van’s door, then did the same on the outside, sealing them in. Still, the men didn’t peep. Maybe they realized they were in over their heads.
Now to clear the grounds.
From the vantage of the Hunter command center, she took stock. Her eyes still unaccustomed to the sun, she blinked and squinted until she found Leo and Bel, perched on the hilltop across the shallow valley from where she stood. Good. For once Bel had listened to reason.
Pedro had vanished into the cellar, leaving a pile of Hunters behind. Also good. With Andre, Zoey, Kos, and Bel’s whole crew downstairs, surely he had things under control.
She would clean up the stragglers who still searched the demolished house—oh, the lovely house. Just like Andre’s on Šolta. Her poor old friend had lost so much.
And Loki had lost his life.
She squeezed her eyes shut in a silent prayer to Loki’s ancient gods, and her own, and Andre’s too. Maybe one of them would hear. Please let this be the end.
Two men in yellow fire suits gestured at one another on the north end of the ruins. She dove off the peak and flew close the ground. The men stood side by side, and as she alighted gracefully on her feet, they turned toward her. She snatched the protective helmets off their heads to look into their eyes—two golden sets stared back at her, wide. For these Hunters there could be no mercy. She took hold of both their throats, crushing their windpipes as she lifted them off the ground. It took a little longer to let them suffocate than to simply rip their heads off, but she had spared many outfits with this bloodless technique.
When first one then the other’s legs stopped flailing, she dropped them.
She dispatched two more pairs of Hunters in the south wing.
A group of men in official-looking fire helmets used shovels and their feet to stamp out a grass fire bordering the highway. If they were not Hunters, it was probably best to use shock and awe. She flew toward them and circled several times until she was certain she had their attention. By the time she landed, they’d all lifted their goggles, revealing eyes in the ordinary range of blue and brown.
A few of them rubbed said eyes as if she were a hallucination. Another asked, “What the fuck?” All of their mouths hung open.
“Hello,” she said. “I am going to kill all those yellow-eyed sheep-fuckers over there. I have locked your superiors inside a van. I advise you to climb back into your fire engines and drive back to your station. It will work out better for all of us.”
“Ma’am,” one soot-faced man asked, wiping his hand over his sweaty head. “What are you?”
She liked his respectful tone, and his handsome smile was nothing to complain about either. How to answer? She tilted her head, thinking, and Loki’s voice whispered in her mind.
Tell them something amusing, child.
Was he speaking to her from the beyond, or simply alive inside her after so many years of friendship? She didn’t know. But words came to her nonetheless, in his honor.
“I am a Valkyrie, come to carry the souls of fallen heroes to Valhalla.”
“Cool,” said another bright-eyed firefighter. “I’ve read about you in comic books. You’re hot.”
She grinned. “Thank you. Now, off to your station.”
“We can’t do that, ma’am. Not without orders. The fire’s still burning.”
She strode right up to him and looked down to meet his eye. “Young man, that is very honorable. But I will have this fire taken care of momentarily. Your duty is to tend to your commanding officers.”
He stood at attention like a well-trained soldier, but did cast a glance over his shoulder at the other men before saying, “Yes, ma’am.”
The comic book fan nodded eagerly, and gradually the others voiced their agreement. She shooed them away, a dozen docile beefcakes.
She brushed the palms of her hands. Almost finished. She launched herself upward, and immediately the staccato rhythm of a machine gun punctuated the air, echoing off all the hillsides.
Sheep shit. She hated those things even more than Japanese subways.
She hovered, using her hand as a visor from the blazing sun while she searched out the shooter. The first bullet hit her shin in a white blast of pain, and she took off blindly, away from the blast of the gun, but the echoes in the valley confused the sounds. The bullets came faster, arcing across her pelvis then another round splinted across her chest. By Zeus, each one hurt like an exploding star. The shock of the pain slowed her as she flew to safety. The sound of the bullets stilled and she searched for cover—anything to hide behind until she could heal. She flew behind a tree and the Hunter fired into the branches, the bullets cutting across her midsection. Her blood pulsed out of her in a hundred hot rivulets. He ceased firing once again, and she spied a boulder just on the edge of the nearest vineyard.
As she approached, the shooter stood up from behind it and took aim.
Her senses sharpened and her mind raced at the peak of its vampire capacity—each bullet’s trajectory became clear—a straight line across her neck. At this range, it may very well take her head off.
There was just enough time to recall her prayer. Please let this be the end.
She had meant the war. For once, she hadn’t been trying to end her own life. The desire to live gripped her, demanding she see the end of this ancient conflict, even as she knew she might die.
As the first bullet landed, she twisted, hoping for a last glimpse of Bel. But the rest came too fast, and she dropped, falling to earth in black, bottomless pain.
Chapter 50
AS SOON AS BEL SAW the shooter, he took off down the hill. He had to get to her. Anyway, if she was dead, it rendered his promise to stay out of danger moot.
“Leo,” he shouted over his shoulder, “take him out.”
“I’ll do my best!”
Over their connection, he sensed something awful. Fear, from the fearless Uta. His heart ceased beating, paralyzed with dread. He looked up, and she began to fall.
Then her presence inside him flickered out, gone. In its stead, a dull ache began to throb.
Bel sprinted toward her. He hurdled over a fallen trellis and stumbled over the stumps of grapevines. Twice he tripped and rolled, scraping against rocks and sharp, burnt vines. The pain of her absence grew sharper, a burn in his skin and muscles.
Leo’s shots kept the Hunter gunman under cover behind the boulder.
Finally, Bel reached her.
Shite. The bullets had perforated her neck. She lay in a muddy, crimson ocean of blood and she wasn’t healing—she’d lost too much. Her skin had gone gray. Maybe if he fed her his own blood?
Trembling with the burning ache of her dying inside him, he pried open her mouth, but her fangs had retracted behind her teeth. Only the scent of blood would draw them out, but he had no knife to pierce his skin.
He couldn’t give himself a chance to think about it. He bit into his forearm as hard as he could, breaking the skin and tearing into flesh.
Fuck!
Wincing from the pain of it, he raked his bloody flesh under her nose. Nothing. Nothing.
Then, far too slowly, her fangs slid from her palate. He forced his arm into her mouth, pressing her jaw to bite down. Could she even swallow with her neck sliced through?
Another round of machine gun fire started up.
Gears clicked into place in Bel’s mind. A Hunter fired that gun.
Or, more importantly, a big bag of magic blood.
With his free hand out of sight of the Hunter, he waved at Leo, hoping the kid would get the idea: stop
shooting, draw him out.
No luck.
Bel stopped waving and tried again, slicing a horizontal line through the air. Cut it off.
Finally, Leo ceased firing.
Nothing happened. Bel massaged the underside of Uta’s chin, trying to coax a swallow. His blood wasn’t doing shite.
The Hunter stayed put.
The last thing Bel wanted was to leave her, but if he had to go get that Hunter and rip his throat open with his own teeth—so be it.
He tried to loosen Uta’s jaw so he could remove his arm. It had locked shut with impressive force, even though she still hadn’t swallowed. His own blood filled her mouth seeping from the corners. Swallow, damn it! How could he help her if she couldn’t drink it?
He glanced up to see the Hunter nearly on top of them.
Perfect. He drew his weapon and planted a bullet in the man’s forehead. The Hunter crumpled. She would have been proud of that one. Bel set his gun aside.
Leo scrambled down the hill, sliding in an avalanche of dust and gravel. Bel fought again to unlatch her teeth from his forearm with only one hand.
“Nice shot.”
“She won’t swallow,” Bel shouted, panic raising the pitch of his voice.
“Shit.” Leo stared at her, frozen. “What do we do?”
Bel wished like hell he knew.
The kid turned to the Hunter.
Fearful impatience shook Bel to the bones. He could not lose her.
The kid bent down to grab the Hunter and began dragging him. “Remember that story…” He stumbled backward with a grunt then recovered. “About her getting skewered on a fencepost at Kos’s house?”
No. But the kid clearly had an idea, and that was enough to get Bel’s attention. “Tell me.”
“The Hunter. Impaled on top of her.” Leo spoke through his labored gasps. “Bled into her wounds. Kept her strong.” He dropped the man’s arms so the dead Hunter lay at Uta’s side.
Bel sucked in a breath. “Tear that son of bitch open.”
Leo’s switch blade extended with a click. His hand shook, but he paused for only a second before slicing open one of the Hunter’s wrists to bleed onto her gaping neck. He made three deep incisions, but only a trickle oozed out. The man’s heart had stopped and his blood flowed too slowly.
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