If I went directly after my prey, I would have a horde of humans with automatic weapons at my back. I needed to clear out the upper floor first before I went after Veyron and the others. Of course, I didn’t trust this setup at all. I knew that Veyron, Odelia, and Clarion cared nothing about sacrificing a few humans if it meant destroying me.
I relayed my plan to Valerio and Danaus, and neither of the two men liked it. They demanded that they be allowed to assist me, but I told them to hold back. If I could pick off each human without risking more lives than necessary, then I planned to proceed in that manner. They would be taking on enough risk when they went up against Clarion.
Save Odelia for me, Stefan demanded, surprising me. I had not felt his presence in my mind, but then I hadn’t been looking for him. Stefan abhorred my touch, and I had no doubt that he thought he was lowering himself to contact me in such a way, but at the moment it was a necessary evil.
I’ll see what I can do.
Take a gun, Mira, Danaus ordered as I started to pass by the bodies.
I swallowed my argument and picked up an ugly black weapon. I didn’t know how to load this monster and I could only hope that it didn’t have a safety that I needed to flick off. I just wanted to be able to pull the trigger and have the thing send out a spray of bullets at my enemies, but I wasn’t going to rely on it. I didn’t like guns. Too unreliable and too noisy. Knives were so much more personal.
Heading back to the front of the house, I paused at the foot of the stairs. The second floor was open and overlooked the main foyer. I felt too exposed standing there, and knew I would be pinned against the wall as I climbed to the second floor. Looking around, I spotted an ornate chandelier directly overhead. With a smile, I leapt straight up into the air and grabbed a bottom section of the light fixture. There was a slight groan but the chandelier held. I swung back and forth a couple times like a circus performer on the trapeze before releasing myself. My left foot slipped on the edge of the second floor but my right foot held, allowing me to catch the railing.
As I climbed over the railing, gunfire shattered the silence and lit the darkness. Crouched on one knee, I swiveled from left to right, firing back at the men trained on me. Bullets pockmarked the walls and the wood railing around me. I was hit a couple more times but not before I managed to kill the three men that surrounded me with the automatic weapon.
Sitting on the floor, I clutched the gun to my chest while waiting for my body to heal. I was tempted to feed off one of my still dying opponents but decided against it. There was nothing worse than being interrupted in the middle of a meal. I gazed down at the gun in my hand and frowned.
I told y—
Shut up, Danaus. I had no doubt that the hunter had been waiting months to utter those words, and this time he was right. In a firefight with humans, guns were effective against guns. Well, at least they were effective when I couldn’t set them on fire.
Do you need us? Valerio inquired. I wasn’t accustomed to having so many people running willy-nilly though my brain. I was tempted to throw up some barriers and block them all out so I could concentrate but decided against it. They might be needed in an instant, and it was easier to contact them if they were already waiting in the wings of my mind.
Not yet. I sense only two more humans in the house. Let me clean them out and then you can come, I said, forcing myself to calm down and relax. The first stage was nearly complete.
Rising off the floor with ease only a vampire could show, I silently walked down the hall to my right. I eased past one open doorway after another, peering into the vast darkness to see the vague outline of a large bed and what were probably ornate bureaus. Nothing moved.
At the end of the hall was a pair of double doors, with one of them cracked slightly open. I could feel the two humans huddled in the far corner of what seemed to be a large room. With the gun tucked into my shoulder, I eased the door open, its creak echoing through the entire house. Before I took my first step into the room, thirty guns clicked in unison. Shit.
Get here now! I screamed at my companions as I dove across the hall and into an empty room. Bullets ripped through the double doors and pounded through drywall and timber. A trio of bullets scraped across my flesh in various locations, leaving a burning sensation behind. I clenched my teeth and pulled myself into a sitting position as Stefan, Valerio, and Danaus appeared next to me. Danaus knelt beside me, inspecting the latest laceration on my arm. The bleeding was slowing, helped by his constant pressure.
“There’s a few more of them than I could initially sense,” I said between clenched teeth.
“How many is a few?” Valerio asked.
I pushed to my feet with Danaus’s help. “About thirty. Must be a freaking ballroom to fit them all.” After handing the automatic weapon over to Danaus, I withdrew a pair of blades. I felt more at ease with the silver knives in my hands, as if I had regained a part of me.
“Kill her!” screamed a female voice from the other room.
“Oh, and apparently they’ve sent Odelia on ahead to deal with me,” I said with a smile as I gazed up at Stefan. “Please don’t kill her right away. I would like to try to get a little information out of her.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Stefan replied with a bow of his head to me.
I smiled sweetly at him, trying to get under his skin. “Please.”
Neither he nor Valerio said anything as they disappeared again. They would attack the room from behind, but first we had to get their full attention.
“Shall we go serve as live bait?” I asked, turning to Danaus.
“You put a lot of faith in your friends,” he said.
My smile crumpled, but I raised my chin and met his gaze. “Yes, I do.” Valerio and Stefan had ample opportunity to easily kill both Danaus and me. We were going to walk in front of this firing squad, dependent on them to strike from behind and save our lives. A moment’s hesitation and Macaire would get his wish. Danaus and I would be ripped to shreds by the barrage of bullets, making it easy for Odelia to walk up and claim our hearts. At that moment, I was putting a lot of faith and trust in Stefan. It was more than a little unnerving.
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I shoved the air out of my lungs as I stepped back into the hallway and kicked the doors open. Danaus stood beside me and emptied the last of the bullets from the automatic weapon as the humans facing us took aim. Muscles clenched, I scanned the room for an easy target while counting the milliseconds until Valerio and Stefan reappeared. It felt like an eternity.
Screams echoed from the back of the room, followed by the crunching of broken bones and the heavy thud of a limp body hitting hardwood floor. They came. Bullets still flew in my direction, but the concentration was not as thick as they should have been. Danaus partially hid behind the door and picked off attackers with his handgun, while I launched myself into the room, killing whomever I came into contact with.
Silver blades streaked red flashed in the pale streams of moonlight that danced through the windows filling three walls of the large room. Men fell to their knees, throats cut, intestines spilling from their stomachs. Bullets punctured me from all sides, but the wounds were largely superficial. I was moving too fast for them to get a clear shot, and we had them trapped in the room. Surrounded on all sides, there was nowhere to go and no room for mercy.
The entire battle was over in less than three minutes, but the devastation was massive. Bodies were flung and piled around the large empty room, while blood pooled in the cracks of the hardwood floors and soaked into the few carpets. When silence filled the room again, I turned to find Stefan leaning over Odelia, his fangs exposed and dripping blood. He had not killed her yet, at my request, but he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.
Odelia was a bloody mess. Her face had a series of three long scratches across the front, and the way her left arm hung at her side made me think that her shoulder had been dislocated. Her dark hair was a matted mess of blood and knots from her strugg
le with Stefan. Long tears marred her clothes, revealing more wounds. She sat with her back pressed into a corner, her fangs bared as she tried to ward Stefan off, but she wasn’t winning that battle.
“My dear Odelia,” I purred as I walked over to her side. I slowly placed a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and squeezed. The nightwalker drew in a slow breath through his nose as he straightened and put his fangs away. He was back in control of his emotions again. “It seems that Veyron and Clarion have abandoned you to your fate. Sacrificed like poor Ferko and Sofia. Did you know you were so expendable?”
“I’m not! Veyron will come for me! Just wait!” she cried even as she pressed deeper into the corner.
I laughed, twirling one blade in my hand. “Oh, I’m afraid it is far too late for that. I’m just looking for a little information before we kill you.”
“And why should I tell you anything?” Her voice cracked as she spoke. I think she was beginning to realize that Veyron wasn’t going to come riding to her rescue. Otherwise, he would have done so already. He would not have set her up against the Fire Starter and two Ancients with only a group of humans and guns.
I shrugged my shoulders as I kicked away a severed limb sitting near my foot. “It determines your death. You cooperate and you die quickly and painlessly. You don’t, and . . . well, we can be creative.” Stefan glared at me but said nothing. This had not been a part of our agreement, and I wasn’t counting on him abiding by my wishes at just this moment.
“Did Macaire approach Veyron?” I demanded.
“Macaire came to Budapest months ago,” she said, her eyes darting away from me.
“What did he want?”
“How should I know? I’m not the keeper of Budapest,” she replied sarcastically.
I sighed dramatically. “Stefan.”
Stefan moved forward to grab her and she screamed, “He wanted you dead! He wanted you dead!”
“Anything else?”
“You and the human. He wanted you both dead, no matter what it took. We were to do whatever it took to kill you both. It didn’t matter who got caught in the cross fire,” she admitted between broken sobs. She covered her face with her right hand as tears streaked down her bloodstained face.
“And Michelle?”
“Wh-Who?” she asked.
“Michelle. Vamp you had killed,” I supplied. The edge retuned to my voice and I was about to hand her over to Stefan when she finally spoke.
“She didn’t belong here. She had no business being in Budapest.”
“No business?”
“She wasn’t welcome here—we have enough pretty female nightwalkers in Budapest. There was no room for more.”
“So you had her killed? How many others have been killed for that reason?”
“Dozens,” she said, looking up at me with a confused expression.
I shook my head as I turned away from her in disgust. I had heard of hunting and toying with fledglings, but even that practice seemed to be dying out. However, I had never heard of nightwalkers being killed because there was simply no room in a city for another attractive nightwalker. Ferko was right. Odelia had been jealous and ordered Michelle’s death because she was threatened by the potential competition.
I merely had to wave my hand and Stefan was on Odelia in a flash as I walked back toward the double doors. Her bloodcurdling screams echoed through the room until they vibrated through my brain and rattled my teeth. The tearing of flesh and the breaking of bones was sickening, but in truth I hardly noticed. Those sounds had been background noises from my nightwalker childhood. They couldn’t move me now.
Danaus frowned as he looked at me, purposefully keeping his gaze from Stefan and his work. “Wouldn’t it be more painful to stake her out in the sun?” he inquired.
“She’s asleep as soon as the sun rises. She would never feel a thing. Your idea is a slow death, but it’s also very merciful. Stefan is quick and messy, but she dies in pain, which is what he wants.”
After a couple seconds Stefan walked over, dripping Odelia’s blood, a rare smile on his face. He might have lost an assistant that was important to him, but he had personally destroyed both of her killers with his bare hands. He couldn’t ask for better justice. And in both instances, Ferko and Odelia had been my gifts. Stefan would now be more willing to fight at my side for the rest of the evening. At least, I hoped it worked that way.
“Veyron and the warlock?” he asked, pleasing me. Apparently he had a taste for blood this evening and was ready to get his fill.
“They are waiting in the basement,” I said with a frown. “The entrance is single file down a set of wooden stairs. If we head down in a line, they will be able to easily kill us all. Let me go down first and scout it out so you can appear in their midst.”
“Like we did up here,” Valerio said, and I nodded.
“You’re doing quite well in your role as bait,” Stefan teased.
I was doing quite well as bait, but I wasn’t enjoying it. In fact, I was downright terrified by the idea of heading down into a basement full of nightwalkers and a warlock without my powers. If my companions hesitated, I was staked. Sensing my unease, Danaus placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. At least he would not let me die without a fight. I just hoped that the others felt the same way.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Air from the basement wafted up the stairs, smelling of dirt and mold. A heavy energy snapped and crackled from both Clarion and Veyron as they prepared for me to enter the place where they had decided to make their final stand. I resisted the urge to look back over my shoulder at Danaus and the others as I descended the wooden stairs into the basement. The heels of my boots clomped on the stairs, sounding like the drumbeat to a funeral march.
I frowned as I turned the corner and found that the coffins that had filled the basement before were now leaning against the walls, leaving the floor open for the fight that awaited us. Roughly a dozen nightwalkers were arrayed before me holding all manner of weapons, ready to attack me at the first indication from Veyron, who stood at the back of the pack. I would have to push my way through all the nightwalkers in order to get to him. To make matters worse, he was standing with his back against the wall, making it impossible for my companions to pop in behind him for a quick slaughter. This was not going to be a quick and easy fight.
And that didn’t even begin to take care of the problem that Clarion presented. I wracked my brain as I slowly descended the stairs on effective ways to take out a warlock without the use of my powers. The only ace I potentially had up my sleeve was Danaus, assuming the warlock wasn’t aware of the hunter’s unusual gift.
At the foot of the stairs I found Clarion standing at the back of the room near Veyron. He leaned one shoulder against the wall in his neat suit and tie, looking as if he had just come from a business meeting. In his right hand he held a gold pocket watch, which he glanced at before looking up at me with a questioning gaze. I could guess what he was wondering. How was I going to handle this situation and survive?
And then it hit me, bringing a broad grin to my face as my gaze shifted to Veyron, who squirmed slightly. I didn’t need to handle both of them. Only one of them was truly my enemy. The other one could still be made into my ally . . . if I could deliver what he wanted.
Stepping onto the concrete floor of the basement, I dusted off my hands and stopped a few feet away from the nearest nightwalker, smiling. “Ferko and the lycanthropes are dead. Sofia is dead. The humans are dead. Odelia is dead,” I listed as I dragged my gaze over each one of the nightwalkers that stood ready to attack me. “Do you really want to join them?”
“You can’t stop them alone!” Veyron laughed from the supposed safety of the back of the room. “You don’t have your ability to control fire now. You’re nothing. We will crush you.”
“In other words,” I said sarcastically, turning my gaze to the nightwalkers before me, “he will allow you to die trying to kill me so he doesn’t have to get his hands dirty o
r endanger his life. He will let you die for him.”
“Who doesn’t want the honor of being able to claim that he killed the infamous Fire Starter?” Veyron asked sweetly.
“If it’s such an honor, why don’t you come here and try yourself?” I countered, smiling at him so my fangs showed. Veyron went quiet and I chuckled in the silence. “I thought so.” I walked to my left, leaving an opening to the stairs while placing my back to the wall. “This fight is between Veyron and me. Not you. Take what’s left of your lives and leave here while you still can.”
There was a soft rustling among the nightwalkers as they looked around at each other, surprised by this unexpected offer. This wasn’t an opportunity they would receive under most circumstances. But then, I wasn’t like most nightwalkers. I was worse.
“You can’t do that!” Veyron shouted.
“Of course I can. I am keeper of this domain. I am an Elder on the coven. I can offer them their lives if I so wish it,” I said with a laugh. “But if you’re going to go, go now.”
There was a soft shuffling among the nightwalkers as a handful of them edged toward the stairs, cautiously moving around me. They were obviously distrustful, and they had every right to be. They had attempted to stand against me, to betray their keeper. They couldn’t be allowed to live so they could betray me again at a later date.
Kill the ones coming up the stairs silently, I told my companions waiting for me up on the first floor.
Meanwhile, the ones that remained attacked at once. Blades slashed through the air and fists came crashing down, aiming for tender parts. I came alive in a flurry of action. With fighting quarters so tight, I opted for my small knives, allowing me to get close and personal with each of my opponents. I delivered a round of slashes and stabs that left three of my attackers rolling on the ground, gripping gaping wounds that would take several minutes to close. Stabbing one opponent in the stomach, I released my blade and slammed my fist into his chest. I grabbed his heart and pulled it free before he could fall over. Seeing his black heart in my hand, the remaining two attackers that I had yet to reach backed off immediately.
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