by Michele Hauf
“Thomas! What’s going on? Where is Verity?”
“She was around the corner, standing in front of that mansion.”
“The one we’ve staked out,” King said.
Thomas gave him a long look and showed his teeth with a growl. King cast him a what the hell look.
“If you are both knights sworn to slay vampires, then I am confused,” Thomas said, drawing his gaze sharply up and down King. “But that’s for later. Verity was using a spell to track something. At least that’s what I could figure.”
“My soul,” Rook said.
“Whatever she was tracking, it led her to the mansion. But she was taken.”
“By whom?” King asked.
“Doesn’t matter.” Rook stepped out onto the sidewalk and studied the mansion’s second floor, where the single light glowed. “They’ve got her. We go in now. You stay out here, Thomas.”
“Right. But don’t punish the knight who was supposed to guard her. I led him into the stinging nettles. He didn’t stand a chance after that.”
Then, behind Rook, a cat meowed and stepped out from the puddle of his leather coat. Rook grabbed it, and as he was pulling it on, he raced across the street and toward the mansion.
“I’ll go around back,” King called.
Rook rounded the corner cordoned off by a wrought-iron fence overgrown with white flowers that gave off an intense odor. Thomas careened past him and padded up to the gate that Rook might not have noticed for the mass of green vines that tumbled over it.
“Thanks,” he muttered. “Now stay out—”
The cat dashed through the gate’s iron bars, fitting its not-so-sleek body easily through the greenery.
“—of the way,” Rook finished his request. “Cats.”
Perhaps the feline could prove useful. He did have the skill to outwit an Order knight.
Rook pulled open the gate and slipped in, breaking off leaves and stumbling over a low ground shrub but managing to step high and land on a cobblestone pathway that he followed toward the side of the mansion. The night was dark and sheltered amid the vines and overgrowth, but the moon was too bright. If he stepped out into the open, he’d be seen.
With a stake in one hand, Rook dashed aside a long, hanging vine heavy with flowers and crept close to the brick-sided house. If King entered through the back, they’d find each other inside. Tilting his head, Rook listened, honing his senses toward the mansion and beyond the walls.
A meow alerted him. The cat sat on a windowsill, its tail wagging and its ears back. Rook cast looks all about in case the cat was signaling danger. He didn’t see anyone, but vamps were like shadows and could still manage to surprise him no matter how attuned his senses were to sound and smell.
He crept closer to the window and saw the panes were cracked open inward. The cat was good.
“I suppose I can’t ask you to stay outside?” He stepped over the hedge and then wedged a toe into the base of it to lever himself up to the sill.
Using its head, the cat nudged the window open further and leapt inside.
“Very well. But don’t think this means you deserve an honorary knighthood.”
King would laugh at him for talking to a cat, even if it was a familiar. Could they understand human speech when in cat form?
No time to muddle over that one. He entered what looked like a boiler room for the old, rusting metal pipes that hugged the ceiling and floor. Brooms and buckets were piled against a wall, so he corrected that it had probably been a utility or servant’s quarters. For the amount of dust, no one had likely been in here for years.
The cat went about his own way, and Rook was inclined to follow the paw prints. As he slunk down a dark narrow hallway, he noted the closed doors and ran his fingers over the knobs. All were dusty. No one behind those doors. Thomas darted left. Moonlight filled an open foyer tiled in black and white. The stairs leading upward in a grand spiral were not dusty.
Rook pressed his back to the wall and listened.
It is here.
Yes, but how many vampires lay in wait? he wondered. And where was Verity?
Oz hadn’t the ability to determine things like that. He was only as sentient as Rook could be. The soul must be what allowed him to know it was here. Oz had once felt Rook’s soul when he’d first gone into his body, so surely he would recognize it now.
Something swung around the corner, and Rook raised the stake in defense. King thrust up a staying palm. Rook signaled they take the stairs and took the lead on quiet steps that quickly brought him to the second floor. Foot trails through the dust verified that guess. They split up, Rook going right and King left.
Pressing an ear to the door, he heard something on the other side. Not footsteps, but low speech. When the doorknob turned beneath his fingers, he stepped back and to the side, stake at the ready.
A man walked through the doorway. Rook didn’t pause to gauge threat level because moonlight glinted on the fang exposed with the man’s yawn. He slammed his fist against the vampire’s chest and compressed the paddles. The stake pinioned out, pulsing his fist with the force. It pierced hard bone. Muscle tore, and the heart burst. Before the vampire could scream, his body disintegrated into a cloud of man-shaped ash, the clothing burning slowly.
The ash dropped. Rook jumped over the dusty pile and entered the room the same time King appeared from the other door.
Assessing the situation, he was suddenly fisted in the gut. Not literally, but what he saw reduced him to a shaking, trembling man who had once owned a soul and who had stood before the pyre as he’d witnessed his wife burn. His mouth went dry. The stake slipped in his loosened grip.
Tied up below a grand chandelier that provided the only light stood Verity. The image was horribly similar to that night outside his cottage as he’d been forced to watch the vampires erect a pyre and string up his wife.
“Marianne,” Rook murmured. “No. I can’t stop it. I…tried.”
Verity’s arms were secured behind her back, yet her ankles were free. He could smell the gasoline. Candlelight glinted in the liquid.
The scent of burning flesh returned to Rook’s senses, acrid and so horrible. Her long wavy reddish-brown hair had ignited so quickly, enflamed around her screams.
Rook’s jaw dropped open. He sensed King enter the room, and his friend swore when he took in the sight.
“I was wondering how long it would take the Order to arrive!” the vampire who stood beside the trussed witch called. “Come in. Make yourselves comfortable. We have an amazing show planned for one and all. The Demon Arts Troupe will be so envious.”
Exchanging glances with King, Rook assumed control, and King nodded confirmation. They would not rush them until they knew exactly what they were dealing with. Only two vampires in the room? If Slater had been waiting for them, he would have planned many more for defense.
But could he walk forward and stand before Verity when his soul had been blackened by his greedy desires?
He didn’t have a soul. And he must never take it back.
No, please.
I will handle this, Oz. Stay out of the way.
His eyes taking in the walls and the ceiling and noting the balcony on the opposite side of the massive ballroom, Rook stepped carefully forward. The balcony was dark, but he determined that others must hide behind the dusty velvet curtains, waiting for their tribe leader’s command.
Verity struggled as he approached. She was not gagged, but she didn’t call out.
The asshole vampire had poured gasoline around the fire witch in a wide circle. And yet, there, immediately around her feet and the column he’d tied her to, was another circle of gas, a replacement for the fagots that Rook had once watched burn his wife to cinders.
“Marianne,” he whispered.
Stay
in the present. Do not go back there. Not if you want to save the witch this time.
This time? It was happening again. Was he to witness another woman he loved burn?
“You looking for one of my tribe members?” Slater asked.
Rook lifted his head to meet Verity’s eyes. She was frightened, and he didn’t need to lay his palm over her chest to know that. But she was also worried. About him? She knew too much. And she knew all that she must to be a part of his world.
Stand strong, man.
Rook lifted his chin and exhaled. Tightening his fists and twisting his neck to stretch out the corded muscles, he nodded. No flames yet. He wouldn’t allow that to happen.
If Rook could consider himself placed at the north point of the outer circle, just a few feet from the gasoline ring, King stood to the west, Slater to the east and another behemoth vampire at the south.
“Where is Clas Dehrer?” Rook asked calmly.
“Why him?” Slater asked, spreading his hands out in front of him. “What has my second in command done to attract the illustrious attention of the Order of the Stake?”
“All of Zmaj has been killing recklessly,” Rook said. “You didn’t think you could take innocent human lives without consequences, did you?”
“Consequences?” Slater mocked a shudder. “Are you going to punish me? Spank me for my transgressions?”
Rook’s fist tightened around the stake. The longer he allowed a vampire to monologue, the more confident he grew and the more of his troops he could gather.
“I rather like Clas, idiot that he can be at times. I have another trade for you,” Slater said. “Want to deal?”
Rook noted King took a step to the left. He kept his eye on the balcony and the behemoth.
“No deals.”
“Not even if it returns her to you?”
“I’ll walk out of here with Verity in hand and you in a pile of ash,” Rook promised.
“Cocky hunter.” Slater produced a Bic lighter and snapped the silver lid open. “The deal is, the Order looks away from Zmaj’s philanderings and I’ll let her live.”
“I made a deal for a woman once,” Rook said. His heart clenched with memory. The ax had been sharp, but he’d had to cut through her neck three times to finally behead her and give her peace. “I’ll never do it again.”
“Very well.” Slater flicked the lighter’s steel wheel. Flame shot up.
“You won’t kill her. You want to watch her transform to vampire,” Rook tried.
Slater’s brow arched. The villainous vamp smirked. And he tossed the flaming lighter toward the outer ring of gasoline.
Chapter 21
Rook’s heart stopped beating. Flames blurred his vision. Smoke tainted the air. The screams he’d once listened to for so long he’d thought surely he’d go mad echoed up from the past and raged at him.
After all Marianne had done to orchestrate bringing him to the witch and allowing them to share their sorrows, to know that only they two were meant for one another, would that all slip away in the flash of flame and gasoline?
His knees weakened. He saw himself—Giles Martin Rochfeaux—falling to his knees, struggling against the vampires who had held him before the pyre, forcing up his chin to make him witness his wife’s gruesome death.
Yet Rook remained standing. The hardened knight who had abandoned emotion when he’d sacrificed his soul to the devil Himself no longer existed. The hunter would not allow the dark evils he had fought for centuries to destroy his happiness.
Rook felt a cool clench of terror climb up his spine. It was accompanied by the shuffle of feet as the creatures shrouded in shadow landed on the ballroom floor. Vampires jumped from the balcony, landing in a crouch or a walk. They crowded up behind Slater and the big one who had been acting as guard. Two dozen, he counted.
But no sign of Clas.
Rook sought his partner through the mire. King raised an eyebrow but also tossed him a wink. They could handle these odds. Been there, done that, ashed them all.
The flames were still far from Verity, but he mustn’t delay. Rushing toward the circle, Rook saw a vampire come at him. A warrior’s cry barreled up from his lungs, and he swung the stake through bone and muscle, his fist meeting resistance only so long as it took for the longtooth to ash.
He spun, meeting two vampires with a high roundhouse kick, body twisting in midair and landing on his feet. Both vamps went down but only to allow their cohorts a chance at him. He flashed a look toward the center of the flaming circle.
Verity watched with pleading eyes.
He leaped over the flames and was slammed midair by a vampire who collided with his back. They went down within the flaming circle, wrestling for control. Pinching the nerve at the vampire’s collarbone surprised his opponent, who swore and then dropped. Unconscious, but only for a few moments.
While King went at the vampires outside the circle, Rook crawled over to Verity. He wanted to embrace her, to kiss her, to whisper that it was all going to be all right. And it would be. But not with vampires running amuck.
He dug out a blade from his boot and sawed it through the ropes around her wrists.
“Rook, look out!”
Expecting a vampire to jump onto his back, Rook spun to see flame following the thin line of gasoline up to the second circle. It ignited the gasoline around Verity’s feet. He stomped at it to no avail.
Verity screamed and stepped from foot to foot, but she couldn’t avoid the flames, which licked at her flat shoes. He managed to cut through the thick rope and free her hands. Rook pulled off his coat and placed it on her shoulders. He lifted her, feeling the flames lick his leather pants. Jumping and stomping at the flame, he rushed the outer circle and leaped over it.
He landed in a wobble and went to the floor, turning to hit with his hip and shoulder as he kept Verity safely to his chest to avoid the impact. He rolled over on top of her. A quick kiss was necessary. She tasted like fear and ash.
“Get out of here. Go downstairs. Stay away from the vamps.”
“But Slater is hiding somewhere.”
He’d forgotten about that bastard. “Over by the door then. Stay within my eyesight. I’ll handle Slater.”
A vampire gripped him by the back of the Kevlar vest and tugged him up to his feet. Verity scrambled away. A beefy arm wrapped around Rook’s neck, jerking his head back painfully. He kicked and pushed them both to the floor.
Above and behind him, he saw the chandelier fall. Vampires yelped. King held the small crossbow he’d had fashioned centuries ago. Good shot. That would keep down the handful of vampires trapped beneath it in the flames for a while. Down, but not dead.
Elbowing his aggressor, Rook managed to free himself and twisted to stake the longtooth. He turned to see Verity—in Slater’s grasp.
* * *
What caught Verity’s attention was not her rescuing knight, but the slick lines of gasoline that glittered with reflected flame. The entire ballroom was crisscrossed with the fuel. As the fire circles blazed, slowly they began to feed into the lines radiating out from the center. It would be only moments before fire again threatened her.
With one arm banded across her chest, the vampire held her with ease. Reaching inside his pants pocket, Slater pulled out something.
“I’ve got one more trick in tonight’s performance,” Slater announced.
He gripped the back of Verity’s hair and yanked her head up so she had no choice but to look at Rook. Her rescuing knight, who had fallen to his knees to see her tied in the center of the
flames. She wished he had never seen such a thing. Twice.
Slater smelled…different. Some tangy note clanged at his unmanly sweet scent. Beside her cheek, he dangled the little wooden heart, which held Rook’s soul and Oz’s release.
“Choose,” the vampire called.
Verity’s vision was blocked by the wooden heart. She wanted to look into Rook’s eyes and tell him it was okay. Choose the soul. For in doing so, he would save two people: him and Oz. She wasn’t going to die. Slater wanted to keep her, to watch her transform. She would hate that, but she could escape from his clutches. Somehow.
“Such a dilemma,” Slater said.
“Not really.” Rook glanced again to King.
Verity knew the hunters communicated on a level they had forged over the centuries. They couldn’t read each other’s minds, but they had probably developed some nifty silent signals.
Rook announced, “I’m sorry, Oz. No deal!”
Slater squeezed the heart in his palm. “Then take him out, men.”
The remaining tribe members rushed Rook from behind.
“No!” she shouted.
Yet she had the sense to fill her hands with flames. Slater held her at the shoulders and chest, and she couldn’t move her arms around to touch him and ignite his clothing.
“You think I didn’t have some of that flame retardant you used to rub on your skin before a show? I’m not stupid, witch.”
Now she recognized the lemon thyme behind the obnoxious lavender.
Rook fought two vampires. He kicked high, clocking one on the jaw. The other grabbed his leg while it was still in the air and shoved, sending him to the floor and sliding close to Verity’s feet. He twisted into a crouch and stabbed the stake into Slater’s shoe.
The vampire yelped and softened his clasp on Verity enough so that she could slip free. Before she could move away from him, the vampire grabbed her by the hair, jerking it so she rebounded against his chest. He dragged her toward the fire.
Rook followed cautiously, stakes in both hands, his eyes darting from Verity to the melee that King handled alone.
