Night's Kiss (The Ancients)

by Mary Hughes

  Finally, his throat began collapsing like sand in a funnel.

  Before it completely dissolved, he managed a burbled, “Sword…poison.”

  He grabbed his neck with both hands, fell to his knees, and collapsed on the floor. His body began to slowly disintegrate from the inside out.

  Good news, the ruby serum had done its job. Bad news, it had taken longer than the blue-badges. Worst news, he’d blabbed about the poison, and the other suckers would avoid Joyce.

  Without warning, Keydew twisted and hit me midbody, carrying me down so hard my focus went totally toward keeping hold of my blade.

  The rifleman opened fire.

  The young officer had managed to throw us both down behind the couch. Elias huddled there with my sister. Thank goodness Rey went in for overstuffed furniture. Though bullets pocked, we were safe enough for the moment.

  “Rey.” Elias’s rasp was urgent. “Go.”

  He was still in his sick man disguise. With this much danger, I’d expect him to at least fang up. But he did nothing except urge my sister to flee.

  Maybe it wasn’t a disguise? Doubt gnawed at me.

  Keydew’s voice, deep with stress, broke into my thoughts. “Kat.” He smoothly drew his firearm and pressed it into my hand. “It’s got silver bullets.”

  I blinked at him. Nobody regularly chambered silver. It was too bloody expensive. Which meant… “You know vampires are real. Not just people who ‘think they’re vamps.’ Real.”

  “Yes. Sorry.” His expression was pained. “There’s worse. These vampires have trackers. They followed our investigations. Maybe even put a tracker on the patrol car.”

  “Trackers?” Numb horror flooded me. I’d led them here? I’d put my own sister in danger?

  The pock of bullets abruptly stopped. I shook off my horror, scrambled my legs under me, and rose into a crouch, inching my eyes over the couch.

  The noise had covered up the entry of half a dozen more vampire troops.

  As Keydew shucked off his duty belt, the SEVERE twins were stalking toward us, leading a squad of blue-badges, the thud of their combined feet like the heavy beat of kettle drums.

  Or maybe that was my heart. Joyce in one hand, Keydew’s pistol in the other, I coiled myself to spring, to throw myself at them while my sister escaped.

  I’d die. Yet I’d gladly give my life for Rey.

  “Wait.” Keydew’s fingers on my shoulder stopped me. “Kat. I’ll explain later, but…”

  He wavered. His body…fuzzed. Like a ghost.

  An uneasy premonition swamped me.

  His blue uniform fell a moment later to the floor with a muffled plop. A bang of displaced air, and Keydew’s body exploded solid.

  Or not Keydew’s body. I stared up, and up.

  A vampire rose beside me, talons and fangs full-length. He inhaled a bushel of air, chest expanding impressively, stretching his charcoal-gray V-neck to the breaking…charcoal-gray sweater?…then he roared with such bull defiance that the approaching vamps froze.

  I froze too, crouching there in horrified wonder. The clothes, the body, were Ryker’s, the human PI.

  But the facial armor…

  “H-he…h-he’s a… Sh-shit,” Rey said, her voice cold and shaking.

  The gigantic vampire glanced at me. That beautiful, terrifying mask, brandishing spikes for extra fear. Primal; deadly. I’d never forget it. Not Elias.

  Ryker was my vampire king.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As I stood there frozen, the vampire king dove for the SEVERE twins. His machete-size claws tore through Severe One like knives through warm butter—followed by two of the six blue-badges charging him.

  Yeah, terrifying apex vampire. But I had to admire his sheer destructive grace.

  I briefly clenched my eyes. Admire a vamp? I was sick.

  “Ear protection,” the gunman screamed.

  I was still trying to process. The vampire king. The sucker I’d hunted for years. I’d been working alongside, even kissing him. How had I missed it?

  Well, I’d only ever seen him in his masked fighting form. And who expects a vamp outside in broad daylight? The king must be one tough, strong-willed, fearless sucker.

  Oh, hell. I had not just admired him more.

  The king roared again. “Halba!” The charging squad faltered but didn’t freeze. His vampire compulsion must’ve been blunted by earplugs.

  The king grew his talons even longer and slashed twice as hard.

  Time to grab Rey and get out of here. Good idea, but my feet didn’t move. It didn’t seem fair to leave the king to fight these ravening monsters alone.

  Stab me with pitchforks—they were all ravening monsters. Even the one I’d kissed. The male who’d held me while I cried.

  All monsters. Weren’t they?

  A bang-bang-bang brought me out of my stupid self. The rifleman sprayed bullets like napalm, hitting everything between the door and the couch. Including his own comrades.

  Including the vampire king.

  I swallowed a lump of fear. Fear, for king vamp. Something was seriously wrong with me.

  And the king… He batted the bullets as if they were gnats.

  Relief cascaded through me. Damn. When had he slipped so completely under my skin? I had to kill him soon.

  Though not right now. Not while he was fighting our mutual enemies.

  Yeah, Rey would call that rationalization. Whatever, it worked.

  Sheathing Joyce, I pointed Keydew’s handgun at the rifleman.

  Rifle guy had edged around the corner of the entryway to draw a better bead on us. Positioned sideways, left hand forward on the rifle, he made a narrower target. Smart, tactical; these guys were more like Special Forces than bloodsuckers. Fear rolled through me.

  I had no time for it. Aiming for my only shot, his ribs right below the arm, I double-tapped the trigger. Bam-bam. Both shots hit him—and exploded.

  His gun drooped in his hands as he stared at the hole where his ribs had been.

  I dropped an incredulous glance at Keydew’s handgun. Silver exploding bullets?

  Ryker had taken out all six blue-badges and now he finished off Severe Two with a precisely orchestrated slash of neck and scoop of chest. Two’s head fell at his feet at the same instant his heart hit the floor a few feet away.

  Oh, double stabby hell. I’d started thinking of this giant scary-as-shit vampire as Ryker, not the hateful king.

  Take him out now. With our enemies down, this would be the time. Gritting my teeth, I geared myself to kill the king before he could kill me.

  His broad back was the perfect target.

  I groped behind me for Joyce. Mysteriously, I had no strength to pull her from her scabbard.

  Thud-thud-thud. More feet pounded up the concrete sidewalk outside. One, two, three vampires breached…and then a dozen poured in.

  A brick of terror lodged in my throat. Wrapping both hands around the pistol’s butt, I coiled myself in a crouched stance and drilled oncoming chests with silver shells. A pair went down. More kept coming.

  Ryker commanded, “Stop,” using vampire compulsion with such force it echoed in my skull. But the black uniforms must’ve been connected by radio, because they wore earplugs. They barely slowed.

  Roaring his bull roar, Ryker smashed bodily into the tide of enemy bloodsuckers.

  “Rey.” I threw the gun to her. She caught it with a grimace.

  Two deep breaths for courage, and I dashed out to join the king, drawing Shredder and Joyce as I ran. I hit a double chop into a blue-badge, distracting at least one of the mob from tearing at Ryker. Theoretically the vamp-dissolving solution would work into the rogue’s bloodstream and finish him for me.

  Sure enough, the blue-badge’s expression turned sick. His face got lumpy, like frozen butter
beginning to melt.

  Throwing one sucker into two others, Ryker made an opening, clearing a precious few seconds for me to slash off the head of another blue-badge.

  And then, working together as we had on the cop-shop stairs, almost as if we’d rehearsed the moves, we took out another set.

  Before tonight, fighting with Ryker had been fun. Now he was my sworn enemy, but we moved together so naturally, so right, that I couldn’t help bleating, “You lied to me!”

  Slashing off another head with two swipes, left-right, he snarled, “I didn’t lie. I’m always Officer Keydew around Alliance vampires.”

  “Not that. About you being the sucker king!”

  “The king? Me?” Ryker paused to stare at me as if I’d hopped on the nutty express.

  “You.” I spit the monster nearest me with Joyce, driving her straight through a red-rectangle patch into his heart.

  This enemy bloodsucker didn’t react like the last few. He only grabbed my fist and used it to pull Joyce out.

  I countered with an immediate headsman’s swing of Shredder into his neck.

  The blade caught in a spine harder than concrete—like DEFCON. The impact rang up my arm into my shoulders.

  The bloodsucker grinned.

  My knuckles were white on my hilts. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. The red-patches were hardier than the average sucker. No lumpy melting of flesh, either, so my serum had been mostly wiped off.

  “Me, the king?” Ryker side-kicked the vamp off my blade, a hard strike that folded the red-badge in two and rocketed him into the mass of attacking suckers. “I’m no king, never have been.”

  “Oh, pointy pig-stickers of hell.” This was a giant mix-up? I spit a blue-badge vampire on Joyce, distracting him long enough for Ryker to swipe talons through his neck. Sucker head went flying. “I don’t believe it. I have not disappeared down the rabbit hole into a British farce.”

  Blindly, I slammed Joyce into the nearest sucker. With the alternatives either fight alongside Ryker or die, I’d go with Ryker.

  “Kat, move!” Rey shouted.

  I hopped right. A bullet whistled past me from behind, hitting a monster’s chest. Boom, no more heart. Three more shots followed, then a click. I glanced back.

  Rey’s gun slide had locked open.

  Elias was already smacking a magazine into her outstretched hand. She began firing again as he ransacked Keydew’s dropped police duty belt, pulling out another magazine along with other weapons, hopefully also juiced up to be effective against bloodsuckers.

  More came thundering through the door. Their badges were going from blue and blue with gold bars to red and red with gold bars—and even one silver.

  That didn’t seem so good.

  Damn “Keydew” anyway. Being himself a vampire all along and not telling me. Yeah, I kinda got why he hadn’t told me, but it still burned. If we survived this, I was going to kill him.

  Well, since he was the sucker king, I was going to kill him anyway. But now I was going to yell at him really long and loud first.

  “You lied about being a vampire,” I gritted out. “Exactly like Max’s lover Juliette. You’re all monsters.”

  “I’m flawed, yes. Most of us are, both human and vampire.” He plucked a stake from my vest and plunged it into the chest of a sucker about to ambush me. “Tell me—haven’t you ever made a mistake?”

  I was silent, hacking hard at enemy vamps.

  “Here’s the big difference between me and monsters.” Amid all the blood and bullets, he grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to face him for a single instant. “I’m sorry.”

  A blue-badge fired a gun point-blank into his ribs.

  Ryker released me to slice off the vamp’s head. The hole in the king’s side was already knitting.

  The three of us whittled away at the monsters. I was almost thinking we might come out of this alive when, from outside, came the distinct metal shoop of a van door opening.

  “Alal,” Elias croaked. “We must go, now.”

  Ryker swore, a virulent string of syllables. I only recognized every third one, but fucking destroyer was laced liberally throughout. He wrapped an arm around my waist, lifted me off my feet, and ran behind the couch where he dropped me to snare Keydew’s belt. After plucking something from the belt, he tossed it toward the vampires.

  It rolled harmlessly under the coffee table.

  Ryker reacted as if he’d thrown a bomb. He snared my waist, snatched Rey up with the other arm, and bounded away so fast my stomach dropped through my legs. He plowed with us through the swinging door into the kitchen. Elias hustled through after us.

  “Where is he?” The front room shook with a rhino’s thundering challenge. “Where is Elias?”

  My stomach shot from my feet into my throat. That voice was terribly familiar. My heart leaped into overdrive.

  Two running thuds sounded like a supersonic tyrannosaurus. Like this was the owner of the ham fist that grabbed Elias and yanked him into the van.

  A monster so appallingly strong he’d overpowered Ryker’s vampire king—and he was coming for us.

  My heart rattled my breastbone trying to leap from my chest.

  Setting Rey down, Ryker opened the back door. As he snatched her back up, shouts came from the living room. And then…

  The kitchen doorway lit up with a fireball. Whatever Ryker had thrown under the table wasn’t quite the dud I’d thought.

  He bulled outside as the heat wave seared past us, curling my eyelashes and hair. Though at least we were safe from monster vamps for a moment. I let myself relax a fraction.

  Except this wasn’t a normal gang of each-out-for-themselves vamps. This enemy was cohesive and well trained.

  They’d left a rear guard.

  Two huge suckers attacked. Ryker jerked with a grunt. Something hot and wet splashed onto my head, and he dropped me.

  My stomach shot into my throat as my body plummeted. On the other side, Rey stumbled onto her feet while I did a two-point landing on the pavement. Before the pain had even registered, I glanced up to see Ryker’s throat was slashed. It was his blood spattered on my hair.

  Hands freed, throat rapidly healing, my king took off both suckers’ heads with a fearsome double slice of huge talons—fueled by fear, if his face was any indication.

  Elias ran to help Rey, face gray and as close to terrified as I’d seen it. I got the oddest impression he was less afraid for himself than for my sister.

  Finishing off the attackers, Ryker scooped me up, grabbed Rey’s waist, and carted us away as fast as he could run.

  Elias followed, panting, lagging farther and farther behind.

  “Greyson!” my sister screamed. “Wait for him. Please!” Her words sounded strangely muffled to my ears.

  “The patrol car,” I shouted. My voice was muffled too, laced with a ringing. Running on adrenaline, it was the first I processed that the fireball explosion had percussed my eardrums. I hoped they weren’t permanently damaged.

  “Trackers,” Ryker roared.

  Crap daggers. I wasn’t thinking straight. What else was wrong with me? I took a quick inventory. Mind slow on the uptake, pain in my ears, and a throbbing ache in my forearms…

  My breath frosted. Were my arms bleeding? Glancing down proved the pain was just my blades, flattened between my arms and stomach by Ryker’s encircling grip. Good thing we were running away. I wasn’t in any shape to fight monsters—much less whatever mountainous ogre had come through the doorway moments before the explosion.

  Alal, Elias had said. Fucking destroyer, Ryker had said. I didn’t like the sound of either of those.

  “Stay,” Ryker said.

  My stomach tried to merge with my vocal cords as he dropped me on my feet. I staggered to find my balance, unable to stop my sister when she shouted, “Greys
on!” and dashed toward Elias.

  He panted up a concrete ribbon, a homeowner’s driveway. Ryker had stopped, not at a fort or castle or anything that might protect us from MechaVampZilla. He’d set us down outside a normal suburban house.

  I sheathed Joyce and Shredder and spun to give my vampire king, mortal enemy or not, a good, fear-rousting bawling out.

  No Ryker. Only a family sedan with dark tinted windows.

  Movement behind the glass made me peer closer. He was hot-wiring the car. It roared to life a moment later.

  He buzzed down the window, his battle mask gone, and nodded at the back door. “Get in.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Rey was already helping a wheezing, panting Elias toward the vehicle. Besides, how else were we to escape a creature that could run as fast as a tiger? I threw open the back door, helped Rey get Elias inside, then circled to ride shotgun.

  The instant we were all in, Ryker floored it in reverse onto the street.

  Swiveling, I checked our six. A dozen vampires wheeled into the area behind us. And behind them…

  Ryker knocked the shifter into drive. As the car leaped forward, squealing around a corner, I glimpsed the owner of that terrifying rhino’s roar.

  The mega-monster towered above the running suckers like a skyscraper dominated a city skyline.

  If DEFCON OH-CRAP was a mountain of trouble, this guy was Everest.

  I turned straight in my seat, heart rat-a-tatting in my throat. “I don’t suppose you have any more of those explosive canisters?”

  “No,” Ryker said grimly. “We’re lucky I had that one.”

  “Right.” I glanced over my shoulder again. “How far away do we have to get to lose them?”

  The leading vamps wheeled onto the street behind us. One bright boy blew himself into mist and jetted forward.

  He solidified a moment later in front of us, fangs dripping in a malicious grin.

  I jerked straight, feet stomping the floorboard.

  Ryker ran him down. The instant the car bumped over him, my king vamp swerved onto a side street.

  “To be safe? I can’t say. If they’ve been tracking me for any length of time, I can’t discount they’re aware of all my local retreats.”