Maeve swayed, murmuring to herself under her breath, then snapped her hands up, palms out. A wave of power washed over me from behind, making my skin tingle, and the doors to the library flung open.
We had mere seconds to assess the scene. A frothing wave of remnants held an unsteady crescent line between the front door and the grand staircase, held back only by the occasional repressing fire of DeShawn's team. Piles of shattered brick made a maze of the ground, tripping the remnants in their frenzy.
On the balcony above, Talia stood at the head of a huddled mass of Sun Guard, Emeline at their rear. DeShawn's sharpshooters had them covered, but they were pinned down, terrified to make a break for the stairs.
A rift divided the remnants, a deep shadow filling the broken mouth of the doorway. The click of hard heels echoed over the broken stones, the steady rhythm subduing the howls of the remnants into rumbling growls. Some whimpered. The line of their advance wavered. In the corner of my eye Talia shifted, preparing to take advantage of the stillness. I raised my hand, forestalling her. There would be no fleeing until we dealt with the nightwalker. For up close, her scent marked her clearly. This was not the Venefica. This was the maker of the remnants.
The shadows parted, or perhaps coalesced, the result was the same. The woman we had seen on camera smiled at us, her weapons still not aimed.
"Knock knock," she said with a faint Greek accent.
"Leda," Roisin said, "you died in Rome."
"Did I?" She made a point of examining her arms and legs. "Oops. Guess I forgot."
"She's one of Ragnar's," Roisin said to me.
I didn't know Leda, but I recalled Ragnar's name from Adelia's account of Roisin tracking down his hive, and the desiccated nightwalkers she had found within. My skin crawled. If Ragnar had been working with the Venefica back then, it stood to reason she was the source of the wasting plague that devastated the nightwalkers. Why Ragnar would have anything to do with her, or she with him, was another question.
"Where is your maker?" I asked.
She smiled, slow and coy. "So eager to see him again, are you? He comes, soon enough, to deal with you naughty girls. Don't you know you're supposed to be napping?"
"This ends here."
"Well then," she said, and raised her sword to a guard position even as she thumbed the safety off her pistol. "I promised Ragnar I'd wait to dance, but it'd be rude to turn down an invitation."
The remnants rushed us. Maeve was the first to act. An arc of power lashed out from her fingertips, slicing the advancing tide across their collective chests. Screams of rage turned to wails of pain as the first line fell, the remnants behind them blithely clambering over their fallen companions. Save for a few who stopped to feast on their remains.
My stomach turned at the sight, but there was no saving them. Gunfire pushed them back, made them hesitate. Leda's will yanked on them like a leash, jerking them forward even as bullets cut them down. Someone, probably Roland, took a shot at Leda herself. She misted into black smoke, swirling away from the line of attack, and blended into the frothing mess of her puppets. Mortal reflexes would not be enough to take her down.
Roisin's gun cracked and Leda jerked, the bullet tearing an arc of blood from the top of her shoulder. She glanced down at the wound, grinned, and raised her own gun, sighting at Roisin. That bullet, I told myself, would not find its mark.
She hadn't counted on my speed. Power pulsed through me as I tore through the throngs of remnants, dispatching them with casual flicks of my blade, my gaze locked on Leda. Her head cocked, sensing my approach before she could register the reality of it, her sight sliding off Roisin just long enough for Roisin to dance out of the way and take another shot, bringing down the remnant closest to her.
My skin tingled as Maeve lashed out with her power, but I never saw the results. Leda turned just in time to bring her blade up, knocking my swipe toward her center aside, but that hadn't been my true purpose. I brought my elbow up in a sharp jab, striking the hand that gripped the gun. That weapon spun out of her fingers, a momentary glitter of silver in the air, then disappeared into the mass of remnants who were too frenzied to figure out how to use it.
Leda sneered and broke away from me, putting space that remnants filled between us. I cut them down, one after the other, advancing on her as sure as any tide, her grin a momentary flash of fanged white teeth beyond the wall of tortured humanity that tried to drag me down.
"I'd heard you were fast," she said, her voice taking on the sing-song quality of a taunt. "But I believed the reports exaggerated. Lucien was fond of you, after all."
Her barb landed, hooked in my chest and broke my focus for a second. A second was all she needed. Leda swooped in, cutting down one of her own puppets to get near me, and brought her blade up under my guard, angling for my guts. I jerked down, stepping backward, but my reaction was too late. Cold metal parted the cloth of my shirt, separated my skin and jabbed upward, hungry for my heart. I reeled away, ignoring the sucking sensation of hard steel tugging on my flesh.
Fingers dug into my shoulder and yanked, dragging me backward, and the blade ripped free before it could do any real damage. Roisin's coppery hair occluded my vision as she swung her body between me and Leda, bringing her gun up to point blank range against the nightwalker's chest. She fired.
Gun smoke tinged the air. Leda let out a shrill scream and staggered away, the remnants dragging their hands over their ears and screaming in harmony with her. Roisin's shot had missed the heart, but Leda had to bring both hands up to cover the gushing wound in her chest.
"You're not the only one who can fight dirty," Roisin sneered and advanced.
Leda retreated, switching to holding her wound with one hand as she guarded her chest with the blade. Her arm shook. Black blood dribbled like ink down the front of her shirt.
"You're a dead woman, Quinn," she hissed. Brown-black blood tinged her fangs. "Ragnar only wants her." She jerked her head at me. The bleeding from her chest slowed. She was stalling. Letting her unnatural body heal. "Hand her over, walk away, and take all your sleeping friends with you. Leave now, and you and the vegetables in the boxes back there live to see another of your bloody sunrises."
Roisin leaned close, the words leaving her in a hiss, "You think I don't know that?"
She pressed the gun to Leda's chest and fired.
The nightwalker's head tipped back, a scream hot enough to boil the waters of the river Styx ripping from her throat. Leda's honeyed pallor cracked. Black lines raced across her skin, dividing her like a map to insanity, the flesh between the blackened roads draining away to cinder-white. Her scream dissolved into roiling clouds of black smoke wafting from her lips, the dark essence that'd sustained her unnatural years leaving her all in a rush. Her fingers curled, grasping at the air as if she could draw that mist back into her body.
Leda collapsed into ash. The remnants raged.
Free of control they fell upon one another, upon us. I didn't have a second to consider Roisin's parting words to Leda, though they rang in my mind like a bell. Roisin knew why Ragnar wanted me. She knew why I'd gone to the oubliette.
Fingernails clawed at me. There was no nuance to their violence, but they didn't need any. They had the numbers to overwhelm finesse. I heard Roisin's gun roar, but lost sight of her in the frantic, pulsing mass. The fighting was too close quarters to bring my blade up, so I extended the claws from my fingertips and lashed out—opening throats and gouging eyes. There was no time to do this properly, to show any mercy to the twisted humans who had been turned against us. If we hesitated out of kindness, we died.
Blood soaked my shirt, matted my hair against my cheek. My boots slipped on something grey and rubbery. A stranger's blood splashed my eyes, clouding my vision. Gunfire sounded from above as the remnants numbers thinned out, giving them clear shots.
"Now!" Talia's voice was a point of clarity among the madness. Clarity, and folly.
"No!" I shouted. "Hold position!"
More gunf
ire. I tore the face from the raving man in front of me and leapt. Talia and the guard were halfway down the grand staircase, at a wide landing just before the steps flared out to the ground. She had one hand on the rail, the other out flung to hold back the cowering group of mortals. The faces of DeShawn's shooters tensed as they focused their fire on the remnants that had broken off from the horde, running screaming toward this new prey.
I had to give the girl some credit, she was stony-eyed in the face of the frenzied mob rushing her. Roisin reached them first. She'd lost her weapons in the fight, and her long brown coat was stained with rusty blooms.
I gripped the face of a slavering remnant and thrust down, vaulting over him. Landing alongside Roisin we turned in unison, putting our backs to the mortals and facing down the tide that threatened them.
"Back," I ordered. "Up the stairs."
Talia turned, urging her terrified colleagues to retreat as the remnants lunged at us like starved dogs, nothing but mine and Roisin's claws between the mortals and a brutal death. A dozen or so remnants were left, a haggard line that shambled toward us, their bodies already damaged by the scuffle. Relief flooded through me. We could handle this. We were enough.
A figure stepped through the door. A tall, muscle-bound man thrown in silhouette by the light of the foyer. He was flanked by two other men, and as he reached up to scrape a hand through his hair. I recognized his posture from the drawings Roisin had made, though I could not see his face. That body language would haunt me through to my final rest.
"Ragnar," I said, drawing a hiss from Roisin alongside me.
He stepped through, into the light of the foyer's chandelier. To see him in modern clothes was jarring. He had been old before I was ever reborn, a man formed in the icy mists of Scandinavia, his original tongue lost to time. As long as I had known of him, he'd called himself Ragnar Varangot, but I doubted that was the name he had been born with. Mine wasn't, after all.
He turned baby-pink lips up into a smile, his pale blond hair sliding over one ear as he cocked his head to regard me. The remnants cowed, ducking down and covering their ears as if hearing some dreadful music. The men at his side—ghouls, I guessed—didn't so much as blink as they took in the blood-coated scene.
Ragnar wore blue jeans over brown cowboy boots, a white button-up tucked into the waist of his pants. He even wore a watch. Something about all that made me want to laugh, but I pushed the urge down.
"Ah, Magdalene. Roisin. I've been looking for you two."
"Get fucked," Roisin said, eloquent as always.
Before I could say a word, DeShawn fired, putting a golden bullet in Ragnar's chest.
Thirty-Three: Her Body
A black stain marred Ragnar's perfectly white shirt, spreading in a slow circle that dragged, melting down his chest. As the bullet struck he flinched, one shoulder jerking, and took a half-step back. He looked down at the wound, at the neat little hole puncturing his heart, and smiled.
"Gold. How interesting." He brushed two fingertips over the wound and brought them away, black and dripping. He rubbed his fingers against his thumb, smearing the liquid, then shrugged and flicked his hand, splattering droplets on the ground. The flow stopped. His ghouls smirked.
Ragnar made eye contact with DeShawn and inclined his head. "You are a brave man, and an excellent shot. Would you like to live forever?"
"Go to hell," DeShawn spat, and chambered another round.
"Ah. Hell." Ragnar smiled. If you ignored the fangs, and the blood dripping down his shirt, he really was angelic. "I am already there, my friend. And I am its king."
"He stinks of the Venefica," Maeve said, stepping forward with her hands held out as if holding an invisible shield. "Foul and ancient. Perverted. Corrupted. You are no king, creature. You are a puppet of a queen."
His perfect smile twitched, the muscles of his face jumping as he fought a natural frown. "Another Miss Quinn, I presume? A strange little gathering, this. I wonder if you and I are not after the same thing, hmm?"
Roisin stepped forward with such force that the overwhelmed remnants flinched away from her. "You and my family have nothing in common."
"Save a love of the Magdalene."
Roisin's lips curled, her claws flexed as if she were imagining Ragnar's throat in her grasp. He grinned at her, which, if he knew her at all, was the exact wrong thing to do. She snatched up a cowering remnant by the back of the neck and flung the creature with all her unnatural strength. It flailed through the air, cartwheeling, and slammed into the ghoul standing to Ragnar's right. Both hit the ground in a chorus of swears and grunts. Ragnar stepped delicately aside.
"Where are the others?" I moved to stand a slight bit ahead of Roisin.
"Guests of my home. Why don't you come with me, and join them?"
The heads of the remnants swiveled as one, each set of mad eyes fixing on us, and nothing else. The ghoul Roisin had felled scrambled to his feet. Both he and the other ghoul reached for the bulge of weapons hidden in their waistbands. They clustered together in front of Ragnar.
"I wouldn't," I said, and tipped my head to the pile of ash that had been Leda. "Unless you wish to join your better."
A flash of anger rode Ragnar's face, but my focus was on the ghouls. Both of them followed the tilt of my head, eyes widening as they regarded the pile of ash with familiar clothing heaped around it. As one, they leaned back, just a touch. I lunged.
The ghoul's throat opened to my claws, my other hand snapping out to be sure the other ghoul met the same fate. Their blood was cold between my fingers, a stark contrast from the still-beating hearts of the remnants, but they collapsed just like any other human, their bodies twitching on the bloodied ground.
Ragnar drew his hands up, but before he could react I kicked out, landing my boot square in the center of his chest. Watching that bastard go flying and land hard on his ass was one of the most satisfying moments of my life.
Sprawled on the ground, Ragnar clutched his chest where I had struck and cough-laughed, a broad smile stretching across his face. "My. You are fast. But you caught me by surprise, my dear." His smile settled into something colder as his laughter faded away. "That won't happen again."
I blinked, and he was in front of me. The stench of the Venefica's magic made me gag, and then his fist landed in my stomach and I doubled over, staggering backward. Roisin was between us, her claws flashing, and he knocked her aside with a casual swipe. She spun, overextended, and had to put a hand down to keep from falling sideways.
Ragnar's eyes flashed silver as he advanced upon me, his easy smile locked in place, but the hunger in his gaze undeniable. Someone on the stairs whimpered. He froze, and looked up.
The guard had retreated to the top of the stairs, hunkered down behind the defensive fire of DeShawn's people. Ragnar would have to get past the snipers to reach them, and I prayed they were topped up on ammo. As fast as Ragnar could move, he couldn't out-dance a hail of bullets.
He had other plans.
Ragnar cleared the distance from the floor to the rail in one leap. The guard screamed as he slammed into the railing sheltering them. Ragnar's clawed fingers ripped the wood away as if he were doing no more than opening a door. The shooter nearest him swiveled and fired, showing remarkable calm, but if a bullet to the heart wasn't enough to bring Ragnar down, then neither was one to the thigh.
He swiped the shooter away as if swatting a fly. The man fell, slamming into the hard floor with a meaty thump. I had to hope his body armor was enough to keep him from breaking anything too vital.
Ragnar stalked toward the wide-eyed mortal members of the guard, relishing in the stark fear written across their faces. My stomach twisted with disgust.
"To the library!" I shouted. "Go!"
There was no sheltering them, not anymore. Either they made it to the library, or they died. Ragnar reached out, grabbed the arm of a fleeing woman and yanked. Her feet flew up as she fell backward, the arm ripping from her socket with a torrent of
blood. Her scream pierced my ears. He tossed the arm aside.
Emeline, bless her, swung around and, without thinking, grabbed the fallen woman by the front of her shirt and hauled her to her feet, getting an arm around her shoulders just in time to sprint away from Ragnar's casual, clawed swipe. She only escaped because he was playing with them, toying. A cat with a mouse's tail pinned between its claws.
DeShawn sprinted to his fallen shooter as Roland rallied the others, tightening up to cover the retreat of the guard. Ragnar's body jerked with each hit, his limbs twitching and patches of grey skin spreading from the poison of the gold. But still he grinned. And still the air stank of the Venefica.
Roisin and I drew power to spring after him, but he must have sensed it. As one, the cowering remnants that remained threw back their heads and howled with bloodlust, swarming up the steps after the guard. The members of the guard were stuck between the mob and the casual violence of Ragnar.
They froze, struck with terror, watching the mass roil toward them even as they knew they could not retreat. I looked at Roisin and said, "Ragnar."
She nodded. "Remnants."
We sprang. Roisin moved like a lash between the remnants, cutting them down in a bloodied frenzy, her own voice joining the mad howl of the tortured creatures. I threw myself with all my strength at Ragnar, his attention drawn by Roisin wading into the fray. In the last moment, he saw me from the corner of his eye and shifted, trying to move away, but I wrapped my clawed arms around his chest and we crashed together against the opposite wall, flecks of plaster showering down around us.
His spittle smeared against my neck as he snarled and heaved, rolling us in an attempt to pin me down. Up close, the Venefica's magic singed the insides of my nostrils, the scent like rotten lemons.
He hooked a foot under my hip and shoved, flinging me off of him. I sailed backward, my back cracking against the rail. Wood splintered, but held. His silhouette blurred at the edges as he moved, wisps of black smoke coiling off him.
Whatever plan Ragnar had evaporated in those curls of smoke. I watched in mounting horror as his face split into a ripped-stitch grin. Primal. Hungry. Ragnar's age showed in the mercury swirls of his eyes—he'd scented too much blood tonight. He would not stop until he was sated, to hell with all his careful schemes. The monster of his blood rode him.
Sun Cursed (Shades of Blood Book 1) Page 18
