Blood Bond

by Shannon K. Butcher

  At least he was going to die near Justice. He could feel her behind his back, just on the other side of the wall. She was the only warmth he had now, and like before, he found himself trying to turn so he could soak up as much of her as possible.

  Her voice carried over the wall. He couldn’t make out the words, but he could hear the frantic note she sang.

  She knew he was dying too.

  Ronan pressed his skeletal hand against the stone and tried to catch her warmth inside his grasp.

  There was nothing there to hold. She was slipping through his fingers as surely as his last few seconds were.

  “I love you,” he whispered, wishing he’d told her before, when she could hear him. She was such a precious woman, she deserved to be told every day how much she was loved.

  Ronan was a fool for waiting. He was a fool for not realizing how he felt sooner. And now she’d never know how he felt.

  Something crashed through the trees over his head. At first, he thought it was a demon, but when no pain of teeth or claws came, he knew he must have been wrong.

  “…bottle…” she yelled.

  He didn’t understand what she meant, but a second later, he smelled her blood and saw a flashing light in the leaf litter nearby. That light was attached to a gleaming metal cylinder smeared with her blood.

  That’s when he realized what she’d done. She’d sent him a bottle of her blood.

  Animal desperation took over. He didn’t think he had the strength to move, but that sweet, intoxicating scent drew him closer as if compelled.

  He dragged himself over the ground, ignoring the scrape of sticks and rocks. His loose skin caught in places, but he jerked it free and kept crawling.

  The light was closer. Her blood was almost in reach.

  Demons still roamed the woods, and one of them must have smelled her blood too. Ronan heard it howl and knew that he was running out of time.

  No way was he going to let some monster have Justice’s precious blood.

  He inched forward, each tiny fraction seeming like a mile. Sticks tore at his face, breaking his thin skin. Tiny trickles of blood leaked down across his cheeks and over his lips. He licked them away, but there was no power left in his cells. They were utterly depleted.

  He had to stop twice to catch his breath, but he was finally close enough to reach out and grasp the looped handle with one bony finger.

  The bottle was cold and heavy. He was barely strong enough to pull it to him and open the top. On a growl of determination, the threads loosened and the top opened.

  A wash of sweetly scented power erupted from the bottle. He put it to his mouth and gulped the blood down, frantic.

  Justice’s power slid through him in a trickle at first, then in a torrent. Her innate magic flooded his cells and restored his lost tissue. His eyes blazed blue across the forest. Even with the weakness of sunrise upon him, he felt stronger than he ever had before.

  He consumed every drop he could coax from the bottle, then capped the lid to stop the smell from drawing demons to him.

  Thanks to Justice, he wasn’t going to die tonight—at least not because of starvation.

  The sun was nearly up. One Warden could kill dozens, maybe more, and as much as the idea of setting one of those crystalline warriors loose on his enemy appealed to him, there was no way to keep such a creature from killing allies as well. He had to seek shelter, and the closest shelter he could find was right on the other side of the wall.

  Justice was nearby, only a few feet away. All he wanted to do now was see her again, touch her again, and know she was safe.

  A demon crashed through the trees, searching for Justice’s blood.

  Ronan gathered a burst of power and used it to lift himself up and over the thick stone wall. As soon as he reached the zenith and got a good view of the battlefield, every bit of victory he felt at escaping his fate died a cold, hard death.

  Dabyr was ruined. The walls had fallen. Synestryn had broken through the ranks of warriors and managed to slip inside the main compound where the sun could not harm them.

  Humans were inside. Children, elderly, injured. Even if the Sentinels who were surely inside to guard the weak and helpless managed to kill every monster inside, never again would any human feel completely safe within those walls.

  Everything Ronan and his kind had worked for to ensure that blooded humans felt safe enough to have children was destroyed. Decades of careful planning and gallons of powerful blood were wasted. No sane parents would ever want to bring a child into a world filled with so much danger and terror. Without those children, the Sanguinar would starve.

  So, even if the Sentinels cleared the battlefield and repaired the damage done here tonight, it wouldn’t matter. The demons had already done irreparable damage.

  A snarl of rage pulled his attention away from the devastation.

  Eric Phelan was a few dozen yards from the wall, partially shifted into his wolf form. He was naked despite the cold. His dark hair was thick across his chest, arms and legs. His jaws were elongated and filled with sharp teeth. If not for his scent, Ronan might have not even recognized the man. His hands and feet were tipped with sharp, thick claws coated in black blood.

  Only a Slayer could withstand the touch of that deadly poison.

  As Ronan watched, Eric dug his claws into the body of a charging sgath and flipped it over onto its back. The demon locked its powerful jaws around Eric’s upper arm, but the Slayer didn’t relent. Sickly green light spilled across his distorted face, but there was no mistaking the pure hatred blazing in Eric’s expression.

  He ripped his arm free, tearing his flesh into ribbons as he did. Then he shoved the demon’s chin up and tore into the furry throat with his teeth.

  Black blood sprayed up in a grim arc to stain the dusting of snow.

  Eric kept pushing and chewing until the sgath’s head finally ripped free of its body. Before the demon’s eyes went dark, Eric was already looking for his next kill. His arm was bleeding badly but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

  Several more Synestryn were heading his way—or rather in his general direction.

  Ronan looked down at the foot of the wall beneath him to the true target of the demons, and the person he saw standing there was Justice.

  Her feet were braced apart, her gun steady in her hands. Three demons had made it past Eric and were charging her. There was no way she was going to be fast enough to shoot them all before they tore her apart. And even if she did, there was a limit to how much damage a single bullet could do to a creature who only died from fire or decapitation.

  All she was going to do was make them angry.

  ***

  Justice fired as soon as the first furry nightmare was in range. Even as she did, she knew she wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  After everything she’d survived, all the fights and thugs and monsters, after countless injuries from guns and knives, after years of compulsions and slavery to a power she didn’t understand, this was how she was going to die. She was going to get eaten by demons.

  If there was one thing she’d learned about herself in the last ten years of her life, it was that she was pathologically incapable of giving up. No matter how bad things got or how much she hated her lot in life, she never relented, she never stopped fighting. No pain, physical or emotional, was as abhorrent to her as the idea of surrender.

  So, when these creatures came to kill her and she knew she was outclassed, the only thing she could think to do was keep fighting.

  Her first round hit the shoulder of one of the demons. It tripped over its own foreleg and slid into a sloppy roll. She knew it wasn’t dead—these things didn’t go down easy—but she’d already turned her attention to the next most dire threat.

  It opened its jaws as it lunged from the ground. Its equally terrifying, equally deadly, partner was right on its heels. Even if she took out one of them, the second one was going to get through. She couldn’t fire that fast.


  Before she’d finished pulling Reba’s trigger, something came at her from above.

  She instinctively turned her head to see what the threat was.

  Ronan drew his sword as he swooped down from the air to intercept the demons. He lopped off each of their heads in one single blow, then landed gracefully on the ground as if he’d been set there by a giant hand.

  He spun in a half-circle. The demon she’d shot went down under his blade, spine severed just above its powerful shoulders.

  Justice blinked, unsure if what she was seeing was real.

  Ronan could fly?

  That was the only thought she could seem to find inside the jumbled chaos in her brain.

  He’d never told her he could fly. Or that he knew how to fight like that.

  He stalked toward her, lean and dark, like some kind of predator. His eyes glowed a bright blue so intense, she had trouble looking at them.

  His face was bloody. His hair was tangled with sticks and leaves. His clothes were torn and dirty. Still, seeing him alive and well made her heart sing.

  She raced toward him. He lifted the sword just in time for her to crash into his body without getting cut. She kissed him as soon as she was within range. Her mouth roamed over his lips, his cheeks, his jaw. She couldn’t get enough of him, so she went back to his mouth and started all over again.

  The familiar buzz of healing swept through her wounded arm. He ripped the tourniquet away and held her tighter.

  Her giddy sense of relief bubbled out of her in a laugh filled with tears. She could taste the salt of her tears slipping between their lips, along with a sweet, spicy…something she couldn’t name.

  Justice pulled back and licked her lips to gather more of the amazing flavor. Only then did she see that his face was flecked with blood from a dozen cuts along his cheeks. It had flowed onto his lips and hadn’t been wiped away.

  That’s what she’d tasted—his blood.

  It was amazing, unlike anything she’d ever experience before. The power of it soaked into her mouth, swept through her tongue and zinged down her spine where it spread out along her limbs. Tingling energy radiated out from her core and created a fizzing kind of warmth that drove away the cold.

  She could feel her body changing, adapting to this new source of fuel as if it had been craving it all her life. And it was fuel. It was power, pure and undiluted.

  The hairs on Justice’s arms and neck lifted away from her body. The back of her skull started to itch as if she was going to be compelled, but then instead of that desperate, edgy feeling forcing her to obey, what she felt instead was a presence.

  The woman.

  Her presence was warm and safe. Comforting and familiar. She was also relentless and as determined as Justice had ever been about anything. No wonder this woman had pushed Justice to obey her so fiercely. She didn’t know how to give in, how to give up. She won, period.

  A surge of excitement made Justice’s lungs swell. A noise of victory exploded from her mouth, but she was too busy focusing inward to worry about how strange she sounded.

  Justice reached for this presence, diving into herself deeper and deeper until she found a thin tendril of energy connecting her to someone else.

  They are dying, the woman said. Her urgency echoed in her tone, rippling with power. Save them.

  Save who? Justice asked.

  You can hear me? There was disbelief in her tone, along with a tremble of joy. After all this time, you can finally hear me?

  Had this woman been trying to speak to her all these years? Had she been trying to communicate, but her words had somehow been lost, leaving behind only the compulsion to obey?

  “Who are you?” Justice asked aloud.

  There is no time. Save them. Save your people!

  “I don’t know what you want,” Justice said. “I have no idea who my people are.”

  They’re sleeping. Underground. The demons are nearly there! They come from below. Hurry!

  “Who is sleeping underground?” she asked.

  Distantly, she felt Ronan give her a small shake. “Are you talking about the Sanguinar?”

  Justice repeated the question to the woman in her head.

  Yes, the sleeping Sanguinar are under attack! Go!

  The woman shoved Justice so hard, she was jolted out of thoughts and back into the here and now with Ronan.

  He stared at her with worried eyes. “What the hell is going on?”

  “The woman spoke to me. She says the Sanguinar are under attack.”

  Ronan turned around and looked. “No demons have breached that side of the compound that I can see.”

  “She says they’re under attack.”

  “They’re helpless. Asleep. We buried them deep below ground so they couldn’t be reached while they were vulnerable. Even if demons did get inside, they’d never make it through all our layers of security.”

  “She said the demons were coming from below.”

  All the color drained from Ronan’s face. “It can’t be.”

  “She seems pretty sure.”

  He shook his head as if to hold the sad news at bay. “If that’s true, then all is truly lost. Without enough Sanguinar to take turns facing our hunger, all the Sentinels will fall.”

  Justice absorbed that bleak prospect fast. “Then we’d better get our asses in there and save them.”

  She only hoped it wasn’t already too late.

  Chapter Twenty

  The ground rumbled under Ronan’s feet, as if something huge was tearing its claws through dirt and rock several feet below.

  As if the sound were some kind of pre-planned cue, the Synestryn pressing the front lines of Sentinels began to fight harder.

  Joseph’s voice rose over all the noise as he shouted orders to his men to tighten formation and hold the line.

  More Theronai trickled from inside the main building to add more swords to the effort, but every one that left put those inside at more risk.

  If the line of Theronai holding back the horde fell, Dabyr would be overrun. If too many men left the compound to hold the line, then the few demons who’d managed to slip into the building would be left to roam the halls, unchecked.

  The balancing act was precarious. One wrong move and all would be lost.

  Joseph was calling out more men for reinforcements, but he had no idea that there was another threat lurking below. They were being attacked from two sides.

  “Hold on to my neck,” Ronan said.

  Justice scooped up the strap of her duffle bag and did as he asked.

  He lifted them through the air, over the raging combat and onto the roof of Dabyr. Once there, he found the access hatch. It was locked as a precaution against curious children with more courage than education in physics. As strong as he was right now, the lock was no match for him. He ripped it free of its hinges, then slid down the ladder leading to the top floor.

  Justice was right behind him.

  He took the nearest elevator down and sent a quick text to every Sanguinar here. Sleeping chamber breached. Rescue the survivors.

  He doubted that with the battle raging, any one of the Sanguinar not already sleeping below would be free to check their phones, but at least this way, someone would know where to look for bodies.

  A deep, rocky growl erupted from the earth again, but this time it was much closer. The lights in the elevator flickered, and the very air seemed to vibrate around them.

  “She says we’re almost out of time,” Justice said.

  “Did she tell you what’s causing this? Or how to stop it?”

  Justice closed her eyes as if listening. “The key. She says we have to assemble the key.”

  “What key?”

  She rummaged in her duffel bag and pulled out two metal pieces. One was the brooch, the other was a hexagonal metal shaft with loops on one end.

  “That looks like part of a key,” he said, pointing to the shaft. “But where is the other end?”

  “Here,” Ju
stice said.

  She pried the gaudy crystal from the center. Some of the adhesive clung to the back. It was yellow with age, but Ronan could already see where the shaft might attach to the spot under the glue.

  “They fit together,” he said.

  “I think so, but I don’t have any way to fasten them.”

  “Let me try.”

  The elevator rumbled again. They were almost to the subbasement.

  He shoved out one of his claws and used the sharp edge to scrape the glue residue away. As soon as he did, the two pieces fit perfectly.

  “That’s it!” she said. “The woman says that’s the way it goes.”

  Ronan drove power to his fingertips and heated the metal until the two pieces of the key glowed red hot. He shoved them together and held them while he let the heat dissipate. As soon as it did, the key was welded together.

  Justice held out her hand.

  “It’s still too hot for you to touch.”

  She covered her hand with her sleeve so she could handle it.

  “What’s it for?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know yet.”

  The elevator doors opened on the lowest level of the south wing. Now that they were on the ground, he could feel just how violently the earth around them was shaking.

  There was a long hallway leading to the sleeping chamber. No lights were on since the only people allowed down here could see in the dark.

  Behind him, Justice stumbled.

  “You can see in the dark, Justice. All you have to do is concentrate. Your eyes will shift and the spectrum of light you can see will widen.”

  “I don’t know how to…oh. Wow.” She held her hand up in front of her face and stared in awe. “That is amazing.”

  “I told you that you’re like me. All you need is someone to teach you what that means.”

  “For now, I’ll settle with getting this woman to shut the hell up. I thought being able to hear her speak might make my life a little less crazy, but now I’m not so sure. She’s chatty and frantic.”

  Ronan swiped his ID and put his hand in the scanner so the machine could prick his skin and test his blood. Only a true Sanguinar could get past this door, and few of them were ever allowed entrance.