by Skye Knizley
Levac cleared his throat. "Ray? Our friend is back and I'm fresh out of frying pans."
Raven changed her aim and shot the rising demon through his eyes, nose and mouth, making a sort of cold iron smiley face with his head. The demon screamed and flame shot from the wounds as he burned away, leaving nothing, but foul-smelling ash floating in the blood that filled the well.
"You girls need to learn some new tricks," she said. "Now lay down on the ground and put your hands behinds your backs!"
Both women stared at the well in surprise. They then stood, hands still clasped. They chanted louder and Raven felt something pass through her and heard the wall behind her explode outwards, nearly destroying the corridor beyond. She shielded her head as pieces of the roof fell in and she could hear Levac coughing nearby.
"What the hell was that?" he choked.
"I'd say it was a spell," Raven replied. "But I'm no expert."
She stepped over a pile of rubble and moved closer to the two witches, who were staring open-mouthed at the two detectives. Raven pulled out the lozenge she'd been given and clamped her hand over Riscassi's mouth. She held her pistol to the side of the woman's head and said, "Swallow or I blow your brains all over your girlfriend."
Riscassi's eyes grew wide and she glanced sidelong at DeGrey, who was receiving a similar treatment from Levac. Both women reluctantly swallowed and Raven felt the magik leak from the room like water pouring away. Within just a few minutes the room was empty of fog and there was nothing in the well, but some reddish slime.
"Rupert, see if you can find our prisoners some clothes," Raven said, stepping back.
Levac began moving aside items while Raven covered the two women.
"I have to admit, it was a pretty neat trick to use magik to try and take me out," Raven said. "If you'd cleaned up after yourselves I would probably have never figured it out and Angul would have killed me. You'd have had your revenge."
The women remained silent, simply staring daggers at Raven.
"No monologuing?" Raven asked. "Isn't this the part where you tell me you almost got away with it and close all the gaps in evidence?"
"No, dear sister," Xavier said from behind her. "It's where I tell you I did get away with it, in spite of that pesky kid."
Raven started to turn and felt four feet of silvered steel slide through her gut. Her pistol slipped from weak fingers and she looked down to see the end of a katana stick out of her body just below her fifth and sixth ribs. She groaned in pain, refusing to scream. Xavier lifted her on the blade and tossed her aside to crash into what was left of the wall. She slid down, leaving a thick trail of blood. She put a hand over her wound and watched as Xavier killed both Riscassi and DeGrey, then blinked in confusion at Aspen who was kneeling quietly beside her.
"I'm sorry, Ray," Aspen said. "He made me his familiar against my will! I'm so sorry!"
Raven growled and tried to stand, but the silver was doing its work, killing her slowly.
Twenty feet away, Levac was firing his Automag at Xavier, who was cutting the rounds in half with his sword.
"Ah, Detective Levac," Xavier said, advancing on Levac. "We haven't been properly introduced. I am Xavier Tempeste Von Strohm, Prince of the House of Strohm."
"A pleasure to meet you," Levac said, backing away and changing magazines. "So that makes you Raven's sister, then?"
Xavier slashed with his sword, cutting through Levac's shirt and leaving a thin trail of blood. "That half-breed is no sister of mine! I am pure of blood, a true prince of the line."
"And the biggest shithead on the planet," Raven gasped. "Leave him alone, Whitey, it's me you want to fight!"
Xavier grinned at Raven, still blocking Levac's shots with his sword. "Indeed I do, Ravenel. But I have so much to do. While you've been distracted, our other plans have been in motion. You see, little Aspen there gave my men complete access to the estate. Mother, poor Thaddeus, Pandora and oh, the whole family are atop the tower awaiting father. Sadly, they won't survive his rising, but they will serve their purpose."
Hearing this, Raven pulled herself to her feet and began to stagger forward toward her fallen Automag. "Over my dead body," she whispered.
Xavier smiled and blocked another shot from Levac, who was trying to maneuver toward Raven. "Father would rather you join him by his side than die, sister. You are still Fürstin, if you join us it will make taking the throne that much easier. None would dare oppose us."
Raven continued forward, falling to her knees, almost to the Automag. "What? And spoil your dreams of you and the Antonio Banderas Life Size Blow Up Doll ruling the city as father and son?"
"It's true, I would rather you died, sister. But unlike some kindred, I obey my Master," Xavier replied. "If you continue toward that weapon, however, I will do what I must."
Raven continued to crawl, blood pouring from her wound. "Then get ready to disappoint daddy, you son of a bitch!"
Xavier sighed, spun and stepped in close to Levac. Raven felt rather than saw the blade enter Levac's body and she screamed, a keen of agony and loss. She fell to the floor and twisted, watching Levac collapse at Xavier's feet, blood dripping from between his fingers.
Xavier wiped Levac's blood from his blade with two fingers and licked them clean. "Mm, he tastes like cheeseburgers!"
Raven stared at him, blood and anger pouring from her. "You are going to die, Xavier."
Xavier laughed. "I don't think so, sister. The silver is killing you, your partner is dead, and your little witch has been my little purple-haired pet for weeks now. No one is going to help you, Ravenel."
Raven roared, showing fangs. In spite of the silver in her system and her fatal wound, the world went blue and she leapt at Xavier, claws bared. He extended his sword and Raven felt it enter her body, but she didn't care. She pushed until her body was against Xavier's. She snarled and clawed at his neck, tearing out his throat in a gobbet of warm flesh then spun away into the darkness. He gagged and choked, stumbling backwards, trying to get away from the maddened dhampyr.
Raven watched him with glowing blue eyes and pulled the sword from her gut. "I told you, you were going to die!" she snarled.
Xavier helped up a hand, trying to speak. Raven flicked the sword downward, chopping Xavier's hand off at the wrist.
"Tell your father I said hello," she said, swinging the sword in a powerful arc that sent Xavier's head flying across the room. His body slowly collapsed into flaming ash and Raven fell along with it, sagging to her knees and then onto her side. Color came back into the world and then began to fade, her life-blood seeping into the floor.
"Raven?" Levac said from somewhere nearby. His voice was weak, but he was alive.
"Yeah, Rupe?" Raven gasped.
"Your family is a bunch of flaming assholes."
Raven tried to laugh, but it hurt too much and became a bloody cough. She was struggling to breathe when Levac crawled into view. She watched him powerlessly as he cut his own wrist on Xavier's sword and held the wound to Raven's lips.
"Drink," he whispered.
Raven tried to pull away, but she didn't have the strength. "No!"
"Drink!" Levac repeated. "There is no point in both of us dying here and you still have work to do. That storm is growing, whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon!"
Levac pressed his wrist into Raven's mouth and instinct took over. Her eyes turned blue again and she drank deeply, swallowing Levac's claret like it was the finest of wines. She felt her wounds closing and her strength returning; a moment later she pulled away. When she let go, Levac folded into a heap beside her, his skin cold.
"No!" Raven said. "No, damn it!"
She straddled him and began CPR, repeating it over and over again.
"Come on, partner!" she said, tears streaming down her face. "Come on, I know you're still with me!"
"That won't save him, Raven," Aspen said from nearby.
Raven turned her head, her lips pulled back from her fangs. Aspen sto
od a few feet away, two bags of claret in her hands.
"This is your fault!" Raven screamed.
Aspen nodded. "I know. And I will die trying to make it right. But you know what you have to do to save him. You must turn him."
Raven shook her head and looked down at Levac, one finger tracing his mustard-stained beard. After a moment she bit her own wrist and sucked, filling her mouth with blood. Her lips stained red, she leaned down and kissed Levac passionately, her blood trickling into his mouth. When she was finished, she picked up his Automag and turned to Aspen. She snatched the medical bags from Aspen's hands and said, "Call 911 and watch over him. He better be at the hospital when I'm done. Am I clear?"
Aspen recoiled from the anger in Raven's voice, but nodded. "It will be done, Fürstin."
Raven said nothing. She walked over to her own Automag and picked it up, ejecting the cold iron magazine with practiced ease. She replaced the magazines in both weapons and left without another word, leaving Aspen to care for Levac's body.
* * *
CHAPTER NINE
Purple and black clouds hung low over The Dark, expanding outwards like a bruise bent on covering the entire city in a blanket of evil. Raven glanced at the clouds, but barely acknowledged them. Her fury was a palpable thing, a beast that wouldn't be contained.
She opened the trunk of the Bass 770 and pulled out a harness Thad had made for her, a sort of tactical vest that contained more thirty carbine magazines than she ever thought she would use. She slipped into it and zipped it shut. She then replaced her shoulder and inner pants holsters with a pair of tactical holsters that would hold the Automags in a low-slung speed-draw position. She added the katana to the scabbard across her back, slammed the trunk and climbed into the car. The engine roared to life a moment later and Raven raced deeper into The Dark. The oncoming squall was blowing old papers and debris all over the street and Raven could hear the car shake at the storm's power. She pressed harder on the accelerator, watching strike after purple lightning strike hit the tower ahead of her. Getting closer she realized what the building was; the family estate from when Strohm was Master of the City. Her father had shown it to her on the one and only trip they had ever taken into The Dark. He'd said, "Honey, that's where your family lived before the accident. I never want you to come here again."
Raven hadn't really thought about it since. Who wanted a gloomy old tower when they had the estate with all its grounds, stables and everything else a little girl could want?
It figured that whatever was going on was happening there.
She pulled to the curb a block from the tower. Here, everything was calm; the eye of the hurricane. It was also eerily silent. She could see lightning striking the tower, but there was no thunder, no sizzle of electricity, nothing.
Raven didn't pause to think about it. She walked around the corner and straight toward the tower. It was exactly as it was in her childhood memory, a huge black monolith with black marble steps leading up to iron doors on all four sides. Dragons made of volcanic glass stood on pillars at every corner of the building, the dark glass still polished to a mirror shine even now.
Every floor of the building had stained glass windows taken from churches all over the world and Raven could see firelight glittering from within. The tower was crawling with Xavier's renegades.
Lightning flashed again and this time Raven heard a noise; her sister Pandora's scream of pain. Raven drew her Automags and bolted forward, taking the steps two at a time. Six guards stepped out from behind the dragons at the top and opened fire with their Mp7's. Raven spun and dodged, calling on training she hadn't even realized she was receiving. Every twist, turn or flip brought her out of the line of fire while lining up one of her Automags for a clear shot. All six guards were ash in a matter of seconds.
She passed through the doors and into the huge lobby. Gas lamps burned from obsidian pillars, bathing the room in a glow that had all the warmth of a tomb. Uncomfortable-looking antique chairs and sofas sat in a variety of locations, marking out meeting areas where, in Strohm's day, vampires could meet to discuss business in private. A wide receptionist's desk sat empty, though several weapons lay atop the marble surface and dozens of paintings of Strohm and his court decorated the wall behind. Raven noticed these things with barely a glance. What really held her attention were the guards aiming their rifles at her from the balcony.
"I am Fürstin Ravenel. You all know me, if not in person then by reputation," she said. "Under vampire law I am here to defend the Mistress of the City. Any one of you who raises a hand against me is subject to summary execution. Anyone who throws down their weapon will be allowed to leave peacefully."
None of the guards moved a muscle. Raven watched them, waiting for any hint they were going to stand down. She got her answer when one of the guards threw a grenade. Raven shot him through his helmet and spun, taking cover behind one of the pillars. She felt the heat of the incendiary and grit her teeth against the pain as her sleeve and right pant-leg were burned away. Even before the flame had died Raven was spinning again, popping out from behind the pillar, both pistols spitting death. Ten of the guards burst into flame and she ducked behind another pillar. She reloaded and prepared to jump again when an incendiary landed almost right at her feet. She scooped it up with her toe, lifted it into the air like a hacky-sack and kicked it over the railing above her. The grenade exploded, spilling white-hot thermite over a dozen vampires. Raven smiled mirthlessly and stepped into the open again. Her weapons finding their targets and eliminating them as fast as she could pull the triggers. Within moments, the last of the guards were dead and the Automags clicked on empty chambers. Raven reloaded and checked her wounds. All were nearly healed and would be so within a few minutes. She holstered the Automags and walked down the hall, pausing only to gather a pack of satchel charges on her way past the receptionist's desk.
She stopped when she reached the old elevators. Here too the black surface had been recently polished and she could see herself in the glimmering steel. Half of her clothing had been burned away or melted, her hair hung down her back in a wild curtain of red silk and her cerulean eyes glowed with barely contained fury. She shook her head at what she saw and pushed the button out of habit. When nothing happened she pried the doors apart and stepped inside the dark elevator car. Her vampire sight made the car glow in shades of blue and purple, like a moon-lit night. She jumped and pushed open the emergency hatch. Soon she was standing on the roof of the car. Forty stories of elevator shaft stretched above her, lit only by a few beams of light flickering through cracks in the walls. She sighed and began climbing the emergency ladder, pausing at every few floors to place one of her stolen satchel charges against the wall of the shaft. When she ran out of charges she tossed the bag aside and began climbing faster, some sense telling her time was running out.
In spite of her vampiric strength, her breath came in great gulps and her arms ached from pulling her up rung after rung, four hundred feet in the air. She reached the top of the shaft and climbed on top of the scaffolding that held the elevator's useless motor in place where she paused to drain one of the medical pouches she'd taken from Aspen. When she was through she dropped it and shuffled across the I-beam until she could see through the grille of the air vent. What she saw made her skin grow cold.
A tall, black-haired woman was standing in the middle of some kind of magik circle next to a skeletal form covered in ash and blood. Her mother and family had been lashed to carved obsidian pillars placed around the outside of the circle. The sigils on the pillars glowed and pulsed with a purple energy that made Raven's skin tingle and she could sense her family growing weaker each time lightning flashed overhead. Pandora already hung limply in her restraints and Thad was looking gaunt and pale.
Beyond the circle stood a group of renegade soldiers, facing outward, no doubt waiting for Raven to exit the stairs.
Sorry to disappoint you, guys, Raven thought.
Beyond the tower the hurri
cane continued to grow. Heavy snow was falling across the city and Raven could see lights winking out as electrical systems failed from continual lightning strikes. The woman was somehow drawing electricity into the clouds to power her spell.
Raven hid her face in her arm and pressed the trigger for the charges she'd planted. The building shook in the chain reaction as twenty pounds of plastic explosive went off one piece at a time. She opened her eyes and looked down, unable to hold back a grin as chunks of the floors below collapsed, killing and crushing dozens of Strohm's soldiers. She did not pause long, however. Her surprise advantage would be fleeting at best. She crashed through the air vent and came up rolling, her twin pistols explaining her displeasure to the startled guards. Vampire after vampire exploded into sparks and ash as her bullets found their marks, punching through helmets, chest plates and any other vulnerable spots she could find.
When the pistols locked back empty she tossed them aside and waded into the guards with her hands, using the wood and silver hairpins Thad had made for her as stakes. No more than a minute after she'd exploded from the elevator shaft all of the guards were ash. Raven slid her stakes back into her hair and turned to face the witch at the center of the circle. The woman wore a black coat over a black leather catsuit and heels only a vampire could love. She had wooden stakes strapped to her left leg like shotgun shells, a pair of kukri knives hung from her corseted waist and a Desert Eagle pistol hung low on her right thigh in a tactical holster almost identical to Raven's. Her straight black hair streamed in the wind and cerulean eyes glowed from behind a domino mask that hid most of her face. The woman smiled at Raven and licked her fangs.
"Hello, sister," the woman said in Raven's voice.
"You're not my sister," Raven replied, trying to circle toward Valentina.
The woman laughed with the same musical quality Xavier had possessed. "Oh, but I am, Ravenel. Far more so than these other pathetic creatures."
"Yeah, whatever," Raven said, still circling. "I know all my brothers and sisters and I know how many you and the late psycho killed."
