Gay, I thought distantly, or asexual, maybe.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that both of them had their guns drawn and pointed at me, stupid expressions of shock plastered on their faces. They couldn’t fire without hitting their fellows, but as soon as the last cop surrounding me fell, they’d have a clear shot. That problem was solved—temporarily, at least—when one of the ones pawing me hooked a leg behind my ankle and dropped me on the ground. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. I actually landed on a pile of shuddering male flesh, not the ground.
Fresh panic tried to claw at me as the cop shoved my legs apart. I stuffed it down and kept pulling from him, until his movements became sluggish and uncoordinated. Then, I wriggled a hand to his belt and unsnapped his holster, pulling the heavy weight of his gun free. When his body started spasming like the others, I managed to get a knee between us and roll him to one side.
Myrial was still laughing as though all of this was the funniest thing she’d ever seen. I fumbled with the unfamiliar safety on the gun and cocked it, grateful now that Rans had forced me to learn the basics of firearms, even though I hadn’t wanted to at the time. Now, it felt like a switch inside my brain had been flipped. With pictures of Edward’s dismembered body and Caspian’s sneering face as I was tortured swirling together inside my head, I’d happily kill every one of these motherfuckers and worry about my conscience later.
“You black-hearted demon bitch!” Caspian was yelling. “Don’t just stand there—do something!”
The Fae looked like he was battling himself to keep from coming closer to me. One hand was clenching his chest as though he could physically keep any more of his animus from leaking out. To be fair, I was finding it harder to draw on his energy than the humans. And he must have a lot of animus to spare, since so far, he looked more angry than debilitated.
His free hand was also scrabbling for a gun strapped in a concealed shoulder holster beneath his jacket.
Myrial finally got her laughter under control. “Oh, Fae,” she chuckled, “I may have delivered your prize to you with a pretty bow tied around her neck, but only because it was convenient to me. If you want her, that’s your problem now. You see, I’m not here for the hors d'oeuvres.” Her voice flattened and grew hard. “I’m here for the main course.”
I had no clue what the bitch was talking about, and I immediately lost interest in trying to figure it out when Caspian turned to the two cops who seemed to be immune to me and snarled, “Stop staring at her like a pair of simpletons—shoot her!”
My body was buzzing with stolen energy. It sharpened my reflexes, making me feel like the gun in my hand had a direct connection to nerve, bone, and sinew. There was no pesky having to wait for my brain to figure things out.
Three armed men faced me from about a dozen yards away, Caspian finally having gotten his pistol free and aimed in my direction. It was wavering visibly, its tremor the only visible manifestation of the life energy I’d sucked out of him.
My gun swung to the rightmost of the two remaining cops as though of its own volition. My finger tightened on the trigger. I knew even as I did it that it wouldn’t be enough. Caspian’s shot might miss me due to his shakiness, but the second cop would fire an instant after I did, and this time it wouldn’t be a minor bullet graze like the one I’d gotten in St. Louis.
The heavy gun kicked in my hand, the noise it made shocking. Blood erupted high on the first cop’s thigh. He screamed, his shot going wide as he fell backward to the ground, clutching his leg. I tried to lunge sideways as two more explosions went off in near-unison, but pain exploded high in my right shoulder. The gun dropped from my suddenly nerveless fingers as I spun around under the impact, getting tangled up with the pile of bodies surrounding me as I fell.
Some buried succubus instinct had me grabbing for the only source of animus still flowing—Caspian.
He stumbled to one knee under the fresh assault, but not before shouting, “Finish her!” to the last remaining cop.
I tried to scramble for my fallen pistol left-handed. The Fae-controlled police officer prowled cautiously toward me, sighting along his weapon as he crept closer for the killing shot. Every movement was agony. My fingers slipped and fumbled. Lightning flashed across the storm-dark sky above us, but my eyes were fixed on the barrel of the cop’s gun, looming huge in my vision as I waited for the killing shot.
The crack of noise that came next wasn’t loud enough or sharp enough to be a gun’s retort. For an instant, I thought it must be thunder—but then a voice called “Zorah!” and a dark blur slammed into the approaching cop faster than my eye could follow, tackling him to the ground.
SEVENTEEN
I ROLLED ONTO my uninjured side, trying to see what the hell was happening. The two tangled figures slid to a stop, revealing Rans clinging to the cop’s back, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other clutching his head. A sharp twist, a sickening crunch of bone splintering, and the human slumped sideways with his neck bent at an impossible angle.
A second dark figure flashed past in my peripheral vision, but I had already jerked my attention back to Caspian. He was still on one knee, but now he was trying to steady the wavering aim of his gun with both hands.
More importantly, the weapon was pointed at Rans, not me.
I growled and clawed at Caspian’s animus, unspooling it faster and faster until the itchy tingle of Fae magic made me feel dizzy and sick. He reeled and slewed sideways, catching himself on a hand and a hip. Still, the small semi-automatic pistol pointed at Rans.
I made another left-handed grab for my stolen gun at the same time Caspian fired. But Rans was already gone—dissipating into mist as the bullet hurtled through the place he’d just been. Caspian cursed. I got my fingers wrapped awkwardly around the gun’s grip, forefinger poking through the trigger guard.
I’d never even held a gun left-handed before, much less tried to fire one. But as motivation went, the fact that Caspian’s weapon was swinging back toward me was pretty fucking effective. I lifted the heavy pistol and sighted along it, pulling the trigger again and again until the magazine went click.
When the haze lifted from my mind, Caspian lay on the ground, unmoving, and Rans was peeling my fingers away from the spent firearm and tossing it aside.
“Where?” he rasped, his hands running over my bare upper body. “Zorah—where is it?”
Huh? I thought, before realizing he must be talking about all the blood smeared across my skin. Oh. Right. I’d been shot again, hadn’t I?
“Shoulder,” I said, surprised at how thin and shaky my voice sounded.
A gentle grip lifted and turned me this way and that. I hissed in pain, though I could feel a familiar tingling sensation growing in my shoulder as well—I was swimming with other people’s animus, and my succubus magic would already be trying to heal me.
“There’s an exit wound above your scapula,” Rans said grimly. “The bullet’s not lodged inside you. Drink my blood. Fast. We still have a major problem to deal with.”
With that, he tore open the base of his thumb and pressed the wound to my lips. Under the circumstances, I didn’t need to be told twice. I sucked and swallowed, ignoring the coppery taste as I tried to understand what the hell had just happened.
“How did you find me?” I choked out, after he pulled his hand away.
The wind picked up, buffeting my skin first with dry heat, then humid chill. Rans only pointed, and I followed his finger to the two figures prowling circles around each other like jungle predators sizing each other up.
Nigellus.
Myrial.
The other demon must have emerged from Hell and answered Rans’ call right after Myrial snatched me. But... how had they tracked me here without any sort of a trail to follow? I looked around at the unremarkable surroundings—patches of dry grass and sandy dirt, swirling into small dust devils as the wind stirred it. I still had absolutely no clue where we were.
I winced at the sensation of my
shoulder knitting itself together on fast-forward, clenching my hands into fists to keep from clawing at the deep, all-consuming itch. Rans hefted me into his arms and carried me away from the pile of fallen cops, his eyes never leaving the two demons circling each other a short distance away from us.
“Let me down,” I insisted once we were clear of the carnage. “What’s going on?”
“An imminent demon smack-down, at a guess,” Rans said grimly, setting me back on my feet. “The worrying part is, I’m not at all certain which one of them is going to be left standing afterward.”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. “Shit, meet fan.”
I still felt really, really strange—and not in a good way. My shoulder was nearly healed, but I was battling that familiar, unpleasantly overstuffed feeling of having drawn too much power too quickly. To make it worse, some of that power was Fae, and Fae magic had never sat well with me. Add in the shakiness of a full-on post-crisis adrenaline crash, and I sincerely hoped I wasn’t about to be called on for anything particularly athletic.
Sure, my inner voice taunted, two immortal demons are about to fight each other while standing a few yards away from you. What could possibly go wrong?
I really hated it when my snotty inner voice used logic on me.
“So, are we running, or...?” I prompted, unable to keep the nervousness from my voice.
“No point,” Rans said. “If the wards are weakened enough for her to be able track us, running won’t help.”
With a pang, I realized that I was the one with a beacon flashing over my head, thanks to my shared bloodline with Myrial. If it weren’t for me holding him back, Rans could dissipate into mist and disappear, slipping the demon’s net.
“Damn it,” I whispered, before clearing my throat. “Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how fucked are we, here?”
Rans was still keeping a sharp eye on the standoff. “Oh, an easy five, I’d say. The way I see it, either Nigellus will win and we’re safe, or Myrial will win and we’re screwed.”
The pair of demons had been exchanging words in the background, but the sound of the wind howling around us had kept the sense of them from reaching me. Now, the atmosphere stilled, our surroundings growing ominously quiet.
“... but it’s still not too late to retreat from this course of action, Myrial,” Nigellus was saying. “Even now, no irreparable harm has been done. There remains a viable path out of the current situation, if only you will agree to take it.”
My eyes flew to the bodies strewn on the dusty ground. At least one of them was unequivocally dead of a broken neck. I didn’t want to think too closely about any of the others. Apparently, Nigellus and I had widely varying definitions of what constituted irreparable harm.
What a shock, right?
Myrial was laughing again, the sound bright and merry—not to mention more than a little unhinged. It was a sound I was rapidly coming to hate.
“A path out of the current situation?” she parroted. “Considering the amount of energy I’ve expended in orchestrating this situation, why would I possibly want that?” Her gaze turned sly. “Goodness. After putting your broken toy back together—not to mention transporting these two creatures across an ocean of salt water—you must surely be feeling rather drained right now, mustn’t you, Nigellus?”
The last word was a hate-filled hiss. My stomach sank as I connected the dots to reveal a grim picture. Myrial had gone to great lengths to draw Nigellus here while he was still seriously weakened from the events of the past few days. Good god... was it possible the attack on Edward had nothing at all to do with my father, and everything to do with ensuring Nigellus would be drained from all the power he’d expended to heal the old man?
Everything in Hell is about power, Myrial had said. Gaining it. Losing it. Taking it. Once you understand that, nothing in the demon realm will remain a mystery to you.
For Myrial, this was only peripherally about us. Rans and I had just been tools she could use to maneuver Nigellus into a vulnerable position. They were both immortal—she couldn’t kill him. But I was guessing if she somehow managed to disable him, she could advance in Hell’s hierarchy, gaining stature over him.
And if Nigellus went down, Rans and I were practically defenseless. We had nothing except a single dagger made of salt and marine-grade epoxy to stop Myrial squashing us like bugs. And Caspian was here, for fuck’s sake—though I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. Either way, this was a perfect opportunity for her to make it plausibly look as though the Fae had broken the treaty by killing the last vampire. If she wanted the war to start up again, that seemed a quick and straightforward way to make sure it happened.
“You were never a match for me, Myrial,” Nigellus said, the words emerging in a jaded tone. “Not for me, nor any of the other first-tier demons. But as you’re clearly set on this course of action regardless, you might as well get on with it. I grow weary of the dance.”
Myrial’s smile grew dangerous, and Rans grasped my hand and started walking us backward, his gaze never wavering from the powerful creatures in front of us. In his other hand, he gripped the hilt of the salt dagger. I gathered that even if running wouldn’t save us, giving these two a wider berth to go at each other was a smart plan, so I felt my way back across the uneven ground a step at a time.
The wind picked up again, whipping at my hair. A spider web of lightning flashed across the sky, followed instantly by a deafening crack of thunder. Myrial’s human body exploded in a blur of motion, wings unfurling and spiral antelope horns sprouting from her temples in the space between one heartbeat and the next. A strange weapon like a staff with a sickle-shaped blade mounted on one end materialized in her hand, the wicked metal edge crackling with blue electricity.
She sprang, and Nigellus shifted to match her demonic form, his larger frame towering over her lithe, androgynous body. His tailored shirt tore under the power of his massive wings breaking free, and his horns curled around his skull like a ram’s. He lifted a hand, and a goddamned flaming broadsword appeared in it, just in time to block the first slash of Myrial’s glowing scythe.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” I murmured faintly, nearly stumbling over my own feet as Rans continued to pull me backward.
Above us, thunder rolled, rattling the inside of my chest with its force. The heavens opened, rain pouring down as the two figures clashed in a crackle of otherworldly power.
EIGHTEEN
I BLINKED RAPIDLY against the water droplets pelting my face, my bare skin prickling with gooseflesh as the downpour soaked me in seconds. Distantly, I was aware that I was still naked from the waist up. My shirt lay in a sodden pile somewhere nearby—too close to the whirling figures to even consider trying to make a grab for it.
Rans’ fingers were clasped too tightly around mine. I could feel the tension with which he was holding himself, poised for quick action if Nigellus couldn’t stand against Myrial’s challenge. Quick action to do what, though, I wasn’t entirely sure.
He was sheltering the dagger as best he could against his body, and I cursed inwardly as I realized one particular weakness of the weapon that I hadn’t previously considered. Much of the salt was encased within the epoxy, but the crystals also peppered the blade’s exterior.
And salt dissolved in water.
True, the thing wasn’t just going to melt away to nothing—but neither was the downpour going to do it any favors. I strained to see what was happening through the veil of rain. The only way to follow the fight was by the light flaring from the demons’ otherworldly weapons. The flames surrounding Nigellus’ sword sizzled as the rain hit it, but unlike my homemade dagger, there was no indication that the dousing was having any other effect on it.
The fiery weapon whirled and thrust, met at every turn by the crescent-shaped blade of Myrial’s battle scythe. Wings beat the air. Gradually, the heavy downpour at the front edge of the storm subsided enough that I could see through it properly. Nigellus was fighting with brute strength, wh
ile Myrial relied on blinding speed as she relentlessly parried her opponent’s attacks while searching for an opening with her own.
Rans remained taut beside me, ready to move in any direction. “Not good,” he muttered. “Her plan to weaken him had some merit, it seems. He’s moving far too slowly.”
I couldn’t even imagine what that kind of strength, with the addition of Myrial’s quickness, would look like. Of course, I supposed that would explain why Nigellus was ranked as one of the most powerful demons in Hell. None of that helped us now, though.
“There aren’t any weird rules about interfering with demon duels, are there?” I asked. “Like, if you interfere, you’re not automatically sentenced to death or something?”
Rans shot me an odd look, water dripping from his unruly fringe. “No. Hardly. Why do you ask? Because trust me when I say, getting between those two right now would carry its own death sentence—no trial needed.”
I remembered Nigellus saying, ‘Honor isn’t really a demon concept,’ and I nodded thoughtfully.
“I have no intention of getting between them. But what if I could pull animus from Myrial?” I asked. “She was able to pull energy from me in Hell. She said it was because of our blood tie.”
Rans’ brows drew together, and his attention flew back to the fight. Myrial got a swipe of her blade past Nigellus’ guard, and he whirled away—nearly going down on one knee, but catching himself and turning the stumble into a low charge.
“Then I think you’d better start pulling, because this doesn’t look like it’s going to end well,” Rans said grimly.
I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the chilly rivulets of water running down my body. “Right. Uh... fair warning, though. I don’t actually know what I’m doing.”
Rans shot me another look. “And not knowing what the hell you’re doing has stopped you... when, exactly?”
I shrugged, not trying to deny it. He eyed me up and down before stripping off his shirt in one quick movement and handing it to me.
The Last Vampire- Complete series Box Set Page 66
