“No,” said Maks, and for the first time there was something hard in his voice, but his hands on hers were still gentle.
“What?” she said.
“No,” said Maks. “Is … is wrong.” He pointed at the vodka in front of her. “Drink.”
“I don’t—”
“Vodka holds truth,” said Maksimillian, “and you are not speaking truth to me.”
“I am!”
“No,” said Maks. “You are speaking a lie you want to be truth.” He downed his vodka, refilled his glass. “The car you fixed, you say you don’t understand cars. Maybe so. But you,” and he pointed with his glass at her, “you understand what a thing should be. You, Adalia, are a person. With purpose, da? Your purpose is not to make lattes. Your purpose is something else.”
“To save the world?” Her words were bitter.
“Is possible.” He shrugged.
“I’ve already done that,” she said.
He looked at her, held her eyes. “Is possible world still needs saving.”
“What do you care?” she said.
He thought about that. “Is good question,” he said. “I do not have good answer. I have seen much of the world. Many things.”
“‘Many terrors,’” she said.
“Just so,” he said. “But also, many wonders. Is worth saving?” He held his hands up like scales, moving one up, then back down. “Is great question.” But he was looking at her like she was the answer to a different question. Like he was hungry for her too.
She drank more vodka, reached for the bottle, and poured a generous splash. “It is a great question.”
“The world,” said Maks, his eyes holding hers for longer, “has you in it.”
Her hand stilled as it held her glass. “Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
“Is good,” he said. “Is very good.”
She looked at him from under her hair. “Would you…” She paused, realized she was touching his hands again. But that was okay, wasn’t it? “Would you like to get out of here?”
“Da,” said Maks. “Very much.”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY
Liselle drew a long pull from her cigarette. “So you want to teach them to fight,” she said at last.
The vampire — who insisted on calling itself Jeremy, as if that were its name — nodded. “Yeah.” The vile thing looked at its feet, old sneakers on below denim that was faded and patched. “You could help.”
“Josef can help,” said Liselle. “He can still lift his sword.”
“And you can’t?” It snorted, almost a laugh. “You just lack the proper motivation. Like the rest of them.”
The two of them had walked through a door at the end of the big main room of the warehouse, arriving in what was probably a garage. A large cage stood open and empty, and there was a refrigerator with blood, and a few different vehicles. A Jeep. An expensive limousine. A tractor. She understood the blood, she understood the cage even, but she didn’t understand why they’d need a tractor. A big roller door — closed, so that the vampire didn’t burst into flames — sat between two windows, makeshift blinds blocking the Father’s light.
“What do you know of motivation?” She rounded on it. “You wear their shape, but hold all the worst parts of their hunger and viciousness. You’re driven by base need. I have seen a hundred thousand lives of men. I know what drives them all.”
“I think, you know, that it’s weird you’d open yourself up like this. I’m not even, what are they, like a counselor. A shrink.”
She wanted to hit it, to destroy it. She wondered if she still had the strength. “I used to be the strongest, next to Kaylan.”
“You’re only as good as your last album, that’s what they say in the biz,” the thing said to her. “Look, it’s pretty simple. We can stand back here while they talk about us out there. Maybe we can hit each other. I don’t think either of us want that.”
“I want it maybe a little.”
It nodded. “Okay, maybe one of us wants that.”
“It’s your nature,” she said. “You’re made of death and disease.”
The thing spread its hands. “Totally. We’ve always been a little on the treacherous side.” It licked its lips like it was tasting the memory of something. “You know. Knifing our friends in the back and eating them.” It turned from her, its back exposed. She could take her sword, drive it through. It would be a mercy.
A mercy for whom?
The thing was still talking. “Look, I’m not for big speeches. They want to learn to fight. I don’t mean with guns and knives and sharp sticks, they’ve got all that. I mean how to fight things that move faster than the eye can see. That can turn into a cloud of fucking locusts. That are stronger than Krazy Glue. I can show them that.”
She looked at him, brushing hair from her face. “Why would you do that?”
He snorted again. “I think you know why.”
“The end of all things,” she said.
“It’s not a super cool thing to have on your tombstone,” said the thing, eyes flashing in the gloom. “If there was anyone left to make you a tombstone. If tombstones still existed.”
Nothing will exist. She looked at this vampire a little more carefully. Perhaps it was different from the rest. Perhaps it isn’t. “Having you here,” and she didn’t say with John Miles, “is too great a risk.”
Its teeth glinted like ice. It’s smiling. It’s trying to smile. “You’ll just stand by while he dies? That it?”
“Who are you?” she said. “Really.”
“I’m just a kid from the wrong part of town.” It shrugged. “I don’t know much about these werewolf motherfuckers, right. They’re extinct, or that’s the line from Vampire High Command. But the stories they tell, they’re about these assholes being wrecking machines.”
“Yes,” said Liselle. “But … there are so few of them left. They pick all the wrong fights.”
“But for all the right reasons,” said the vampire. “You going to help them, or you going to see them snuffed out?”
“I—”
“Look,” said the thing. “You’re on the team or you’re off the team. Doesn’t even have to be my team. Pretend I’m not here. Hell, if they win I won’t be here. And … yeah okay, I think we both want that. But since you’re on Team Apocalypse, you should tell them what they’re up against.”
“I can’t,” said Liselle. “Kaylan—”
Bullets punched through one of the makeshift blinds, and the vampire was on her, so fast, by the Father, I hadn’t remembered, and now it will destroy this shell and kill John Miles, but it had grabbed her and was sheltering her with its body. Bullets hammered into it, she could feel each impact as it held her close, the blood stench of its breath, their faces so close they could kiss. The shooting stopped, and a man’s voice shouted, “Reloading!” from outside.
The vampire looked at her, the mirrors of its eyes meeting hers. “Do you see?” It wiped blood from its lips, something punctured internally. “Do you see what they’re up against?”
“I see,” she said. And, through the Other Place, she heard Josef.
LISELLE.
I LISTEN.
THEY COME, LISELLE. KAYLAN SENDS MY CHILDREN AGAINST ME.
The vampire stood her up, and — so fast, so fast she could barely see — ran to the workbench. It picked up a hammer in one hand, a pry bar in the other. It looked at her, lips red. “Your sword.”
“I can’t,” she said.
A man came in through the window, a rifle in his hands, a flash of sunlight making the vampire hiss and cower. She took in the little details. Body armor, but no flag. A camera on the side of the helmet. His equipment, everything from his clothes to his weapon, were black, anonymous, faceless. A private army. Kaylan had bought a private army.
The man’s eyes were still adjusting to the gloom, and he pointed the rifle at her. When this shell died, she wouldn’t have the strength to come b
ack for a long time, perhaps not ever, and that would stop the end of everything. She closed her eyes, welcoming it. There was a wet crunch, and he eyes snapped open. The vampire had thrown the hammer at the man, the tool punching through the armor vest the man wore, out his back, and splintering against the hard cinder blocks of the wall behind. The man’s rifle barked a few shots into the air as he fell, lips moving as he tried to voice words. Perhaps a request to the Father. Perhaps a request to his mother.
The wall exploded in light and noise and heat, shards of stone and brick flying all around her, the air pulling at her hair. She felt something sharp lick at her cheek, something hit her shoulder, and she stood before the Father’s light.
The vampire screamed as flames flickered on its skin then burst forth in a blaze. Kaylan’s children couldn’t stand before the Father’s sight, not for long. And here she was, thinking to deal with one of these abominations? She heard John Miles in her head. Because we need to. Because no one else is going to. Because we can. Then she remembered what this vampire, this thing, had said just moments ago. I can show them. And she remembered it standing in front of her, in front of this shell, ready to die for a Pack that wasn’t its own.
Oh, Father. Forgive me.
Liselle took three steps towards the vampire, grabbed the flaming thing, and threw it towards the back of the room. It burned a bright line through the gloom, guttering out as the Father’s light stopped touching it. Where it came to rest, smoke poured off it like a tire fire, but she was already turning away, towards the breach in the wall. Men were running through, running in to hurt her, to hurt them all. To hurt John Miles.
The first brought its rifle to bear, and she caught it by the barrel. The knife edge of her hand came down against the barrel, shearing through in a flash of heat and light. She stopped her movement, reversed it and slammed her palm’s heel into the man’s chest. He broke, shattered inside, his body tumbling back through the breach. The man next to him had his rifle pointed at her, at her face, and he pulled the trigger. They would hurt John Miles. Her head moved out of the way, once, twice, a third time, this last as a bullet kissed the other cheek, to leave a mark to mirror where the stone chip had hit her. Then she was on him, hitting him once, twice, a third time, faster than his rifle could spit bullets, breaking his shoulder, his chest, his skull under a helmet made of something too flimsy to hold back her fear and her anger.
A third. This one with a stupid expression, his rifle trying to track her, but tracking nothing but air. She tore it from him, smashed him again and again and again until the useless thing fell apart in her hands, the mewling thing at her feet nothing but red flecked with bits of white.
They would come here. To hurt John Miles.
The fourth, then. This one fast, for a man, and strong too. For a man. His gun she tossed aside, then pulled off his arm, then his leg, and left him to bleed dry against the hard earth. The fifth was trying to run, but not even her black horse could have run fast enough. She grabbed the man as he stumbled, snagging his leg, and tossed him into the sky, his body tumbling end over end over end until he was lost from sight.
To hurt John Miles.
She stalked back through the breach, to stand over the smoking ruin of the vampire. It looked up at her, charred lips cracking, bits of carbon flaking off. “Your … sword.”
“I can’t,” she said. “It’s too heavy.”
The thing craned its neck to look through the breach, at the bodies strewn outside. It looked back at her. “Too … heavy.”
Gunfire came from the other room, and she thought, John Miles. She left the thing to smolder in the dark, hitting the door at a run. It fell from its hinges, and she saw—
Josef. Standing in the middle of it, a red sword of fire in his hands. It was burning so bright, she hadn’t seen it burn like that for a thousand thousand years. But he wasn’t using it, he was standing still, the eye of a hurricane, as soldiers — his ‘children’ — moved around him. Jessica Pearce was at his side, a large rifle nestled against her shoulder, turning like a human turret, firing at any that came too close. Val and Danny fought, still human — still human! By the Father, they were masters of the Night — eyes a bright yellow as they fought by strength and fist. Their blows pounded through armor to the soft meat within. Carlisle was behind a fallen table, covering Sam Barnes with her body, her sidearm speaking with the promise of dead men at any who came too close. The old man Rex was locked in a wrestle with a huge, muscled man, and was winning. There were so many soldiers. So, so many. Their gunfire raked at Val and Danny, who shifted moment by moment to things that were huge and clawed and back to people again. And then back, as the Night called to them.
These soldiers sought to make the wolves lose control. To kill their own Pack.
And there, standing — not in cover, not crouched, not hiding — was John Miles. He held a rifle, and he was—
By the Father. He was trying to protect the werewolves. By shooting those shooting at them.
Liselle could see how it would happen. Saw that moment shift on the head of a pin, where one soldier saw John Miles, and then another. Saw John Miles standing like a hero from a bad action movie, firing his rifle from the hip, unarmored, uncovered. An easy shot even in the heat of battle.
“No,” she said. And she heard the vampire’s words: your sword. It was too heavy for her, but … what about the Night?
She reached into the Other Place, felt for the hilt of the familiar weapon. Closer than a friend, the grip more familiar than a lover’s face. She felt the fell blade, felt its hunger. It wanted to come forth.
They are given power over a quarter of the Father’s Eden.
She called to it. Called with her heart.
They are to kill by famine, by plague.
The sword answered, falling from the sky. It screamed with fierce joy as it fell, shattering the roof of the warehouse, to bury itself blade-first in the hard concrete floor. Smoke billowed out from where it landed, licks of flame hinted at from inside those dark clouds. A black blade, as tall as she was, with a hilt designed to be held by huge hands. Flames of ink roiled off it. She had named it Scourge. Her sword.
They are to kill by the wild beasts of the earth.
All action had stopped in the room, soldiers stunned, Josef’s mouth agape. She met the lambent eyes of Val, and he reached a hand to rest on the hilt of the black sword. She heard Scourge sing as Val tried to pull the sword from the ground. His muscles bunched, and the sword quivered, but he — even he — wasn’t strong enough. Scourge was heavy. To wield that sword was to hold a quarter of the fate of the world in your hand. It’s what she’d been trying to tell the vampire. She’d hoped that the Night would have been strong enough, and the shell’s heart jumped and skipped. Father, is this what fear feels like?
Rex had started to move, and a soldier’s rifle tracked his movements, and there was John Miles, in the way. Shielding the old man with his body. Because John Miles had seen the rifle, and there wasn’t enough time for words. There was a gunshot. It only took a single round. One of Josef’s children, afraid after the fall of Scourge. A soldier with too much adrenaline seeing two people moving, thinking it was a charge.
She saw John Miles looking down at his stomach, the red blooming there.
“No,” she said.
She saw John Miles stumble, the rifle clattering from his hand. Saw him fall to one knee.
“No,” she said.
Saw him fall against the earth, his life’s blood leaking out of him, bright red against his T-shirt.
THEY ARE TO KILL BY THE SWORD.
Her hand was around the hilt of the black blade, and she felt the shell around her crack for an instant, something too big for it to contain wanting to pour forth. Her hand remembered this blade. Scourge had been born in her heart, and it was black, black as night, black as the clawing hunger of a belly empty for weeks. Black as justice.
Black as vengeance.
She strode across the room and cut
with the sword, the man she hit split in two, his skin shriveling and drying out. A second man cut in half, his essence also going into the black blade, his body emaciated in less than two beats of a human heart. More black flames licked along Scourge’s length, hungry, so hungry. The third soldier then, and the fourth, and the fifth, and then to the sixth. The seventh, and eighth were the same, and how they deserved it. How they had earned their end. The ninth died trying to scream, but just a croak came from a throat suddenly parched with a thirst of a hundred year drought. The tenth. The eleventh. The twelfth.
The thirteenth stood in front of her, a young man, who said, “Please.” Then he died, the water leaving his blood, the flesh leaving his bones as the black sword cut him in two.
“Liselle,” said Josef. “They are mine.”
“No,” she snarled, the shell’s voice too small to hold all her hate. “They are mine.” A fourteenth. A fifteenth. And then she was outside, under the light of the Father, and still more stood against her. She pushed a car out of her way. She paused to draw a breath, and Josef was there. Her friend, her brother.
“Liselle,” he said. “This is how Kaylan wins.”
She walked past him, a sixteenth firing from a weapon that was tiny and ridiculous. You may as well shoot the ocean and try and stop it. He died, sucked dry and empty, his body falling to dust as it broke against the ground. Seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen were inside one of their tiny vehicles, and the black blade cut through it, harvesting them all like winter wheat. She felt their screams against the blade of the sword, felt the hunger of her grin, the answering need from Scourge.
“Liselle,” said Josef. He hadn’t walked to join her in the harvest. His sword was gone, that red blade of War. “Remember.”
The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy Page 92
