His wife, however, was just as stubborn and protective of her family as he was. Nothing he said or did would stop her once she made up her mind.
So all he could do was quietly resign himself to supporting her.
The Druid released the tight rein she always kept on her ability to dampen the power of any Nightwalker who walked the earth. Damn the painful consequences she might suffer in the future; there was no holding back when it came to her family.
Jacob felt his mate scream in horror long before she actually found the voice for it.
Purely by instinct, he whirled to catch her in a single strong arm as she lurched in a back-arching seizure. She did find voice at last, her shrill screech of pain and poisoned terror echoing off every wall of his heart, as well as the cavern. He eased his beloved wife to the ground as gently as he could, considering the violent contortions of her body.
That was all the time it took for the enemy behind him to strike.
Jacob felt overwhelmed as he realized his exposure in the next heartbeat. Before the thought could even complete itself, however, the Vampire moved with the preternatural speed that his breed had been imbued with.
Jacob heard the strike, and then felt the repercussion of it in the air around him.
He jerked around, his wife still clutched to his chest, and looked up at a long, strong male figure that no amount of time could erase from his memory. He met the eyes of a man he had not seen in over four hundred years.
Adam.
His brother was holding the wrist of the Vampire in one powerful fist, crushing it with a stunning grip until the iron spike that had been headed for Jacob’s back finally fell with a clatter to the floor.
Adam had no time to ask questions.
He had felt himself resolving back into solid form one second, and had seen the threat to his brother the next. It only took him milliseconds to focus on the image of his brother doing the inconceivable: turning his back on an enemy to catch the falling figure of a diminutive, raven-haired woman. Jacob lowered the female to the floor with no regard for the threat at his back, concern and tenderness radiating from every last inch of his being.
That left Adam to deal with the fang-flashing Vampire reaching into his jacket for what he knew without a doubt was a weapon. Jacob’s elder brother moved with the speed of evaporated water through the air, transforming into a dense mist that arrowed the remaining few yards before he could solidify and come between weapon and target. The Water Demon coalesced so suddenly that the female Demon who stood beside the Vampire gasped in shocked surprise. Adam caught the Vampire’s wrist, understanding instantly that the Gypsy had been right, there was a strength and malevolence within these two the likes of which he had never seen before.
How Jacob had ended up in this place, in this situation, with these strangers, Adam had no idea. Neither did he care. The Gypsy had spoken the truth of the matter. His brother was in danger of losing his life to this threat, and Adam was there to see it stop.
As the spike clanked to the floor, Adam met the disbelieving eyes of his younger sibling. Jacob stared up at him as if he were seeing a ghost, still clutching that little woman as if she were his one true security in life. Adam only had time to narrow his eyes on the possessive grip for a minute, understanding that the woman was human and that Jacob’s behavior was nowhere near that of an innocent savior.
That was a problem that would wait for later, Adam thought, dismissing the Enforcer within himself for the moment. He had other justice to dispense.
The Vampire reacted to Adam’s interference violently. He snarled, fangs sprouting viciously and with gnashing threat that could not be mistaken. Adam understood this threat. What he could not understand was the Demon woman who stood beside the Vampire, reaching for his arm in a clinging manner as she screamed at him to finish Adam off so they could continue with Jacob’s destruction.
The Gypsy had warned about a Demon traitor, and by the foul smell of her, the corrupted blonde was all that and more. The whys and hows would wait for later as well. Adam was instantly drawn off his feet and into battle against the Vampire’s incredible prowess.
Nicodemous tried to throw the Demon into the stone floor with the hopes of crushing a few of the meddler’s bones in the process. To his shock, however, he found himself plunging, arms first, through water where flesh should have been. The deluge dashed to the floor, backsplash sluicing over the hostile couple even as it gathered with blinding speed into the shape of the intruding Demon. Water flew off the curling ends of the Demon’s black hair as he back-spun a kick into the dead center of the Vampire’s chest.
Adam’s metamorphosis had disoriented Nicodemous’s balance, so when the Water Demon struck, it took the Vampire clean off his feet. He crashed to the ground on his back, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust as a satisfactory cracking of bone echoed through the cavern.
At last, Jacob left his preoccupation over the human female to join in the effort to save his own life. He flew at the female Demon with no hesitation for her sex or seeming fragility. Adam was surprised. It had always been one of Jacob’s worst weaknesses, his inability to attack a woman. When had he overcome it? The older brother had no idea. But then again, he had not known about Jacob’s apparent obsession with a human female either.
Adam took out his confusion and frustration on the Vampire, leaping onto him and beginning to beat the bastard with his bare fists with a pummeling force that could have cracked rock. Jacob’s hands were around the throat of the Demon female, but he was too late to stop the string of foreign words she spat out.
A spell.
The inconceivable idea of a Demon uttering a spell took Adam by surprise just long enough to give the Vampire an advantage. With the speed of a striking snake, fangs struck for his exposed throat.
Again, Adam was thrown off his mark. Vampires were relentless sons of bitches, but they never went for the blood of a Nightwalker. It was utterly taboo, and they were terrified of what would happen to them if they did. It was all he could do to shove his palm into the Vampire’s path, protecting his neck just in the nick of time. The fangs struck, puncturing clear through his hand.
Ruth’s spell flew into effect at the same time. The air pressure in the room was suddenly sucked away, depriving the entire area of all oxygen. The Vampire did not require breath, but the Demons and the human did. Adam jerked around to look for his brother. He knew they were underground, and there would be no hope of replacing the lost air without Jacob’s ability to drill through earth and bedrock and all other things in order to provide a vent.
Jacob was forced to release Ruth as he reared back to do exactly that. He could not waste a single second. Bella and Leah could never survive such a complete vacuum.
Jacob leapt for the cavern ceiling, his body moving like a steel drill through the cavern limestone as if it were butter. Adam had no idea how deep they were beneath the topsoil, so he had only one choice. Grabbing the dagger at his waist with his off hand, he unsheathed it and put all of his vital power into the aim he took between the gaping jaws buried in his palm and wrist. The blade nicked through the webbing of his thumb in the process, but it also sank through the Vampire’s mouth and into the back of his throat. It crushed through the soft palate, the brain stem, and the skull in one vicious movement.
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, Adam plunged off the ground as a powerful wave of water, flushing over the human female, the child behind her he had only just noticed, and the Gypsy girl, who had been watching the entire situation with wide, frantic eyes. The moment he touched them, they turned into water at his command and they all spouted upward through the tunnel Jacob was drumming through the earth.
Jacob broke surface first, gasping for breath and moving out of the way just in time to avoid the pressured geyser at his heels. The water spouted as if released from the blowhole of a gigantic whale, spraying everywhere and landing in four separate streamers. As they hit the ground, they became Isabella, Leah, Adam, and th
e strange figure of a young girl Jacob had never seen before.
Jacob immediately sank his hands into earth, making the ground rock and shake until the tunnel he had created collapsed in on itself. Now full of soft soil, it was a dangerous sinkhole that could trap and kill an unsuspecting traveler, so he used a moment longer to concentrate on packing and pressurizing the soil until it was almost hard enough to replace the rock he had destroyed.
“We must move!” he shouted as soon as he was through. He plunged through thickets to grab his daughter up in his arms, and watched as if seeing a dream in action as Adam scooped up Isabella. He turned to look for the strange girl. He need not have bothered. She had already leapt for him, her arms winding around his neck and throat. For a moment, he perceived it as an attack. But before he could react, he realized he was being hugged and that she was sobbing near to hysterics. He awkwardly caught her weight and juggled his daughter at the same time, completely confounded.
The mystery deepened in the next instant.
“I love you,” she wept passionately, her arms nearly stealing his breath with their desperate strength. “I love you, Daddy.”
Speechless, Jacob looked helplessly toward an equally confusing mystery. His brother, who should be dead, yet was now standing before him. Then the constriction around his neck and ribs released, his breath rushing back in as he tried to find answers in the girl’s eyes.
All he could see, however, was the dark violet color of her irises, and the familiarity of them warmed his senses, forcing him to recognize her on a visceral level. From one heart to another. From his father’s soul to his daughter’s.
“Leah?”
She could only nod, her fingers all over his face suddenly, mapping his features as if she were starved for them.
“Don’t be angry with me,” she begged him. “I had no choice. They had to be stopped. And I was right. I chose right.” She looked back at Adam as her whole body began to tremble. She tried to speak again, but clearly couldn’t as her trembles became quakes and then violent jerks of her body. The hands against his face suddenly lost all weight and structure, fading and passing right through him, a condition that rapidly spread through her entire body. Then he was no longer holding her, and Jacob watched as his would-be daughter dissolved away into nothingness in his hands.
“What the hell is going on?” Jacob demanded to know, his heart hurting in his chest though he barely understood the reasons why. He couldn’t escape the notion, however, that he had somehow just lost his daughter. And even looking at the more familiar, five-year-old living version of her couldn’t shake off the pain of it.
“Later, little brother. I sense company coming.”
Adam watched as Jacob turned and closed his eyes for a moment, clearly reaching to feel what it was Adam had sensed. Again, this was different. He had always known Jacob had inherited that special sense that those few of their family acquired, but he had never seen him use it so readily and with such clear ease of familiarity.
The Enforcers, both of the past and of the present, were sensing the coming of the small army of the Transformed that Bella and Jacob had initially gone underground to escape from. Adam lived in a time of readily used black magic, so he was quite grimly familiar with his duty to destroy these unfortunate souls. They had once been Demons, as good and moral as he himself was, but not now. Not after a necromancer had discovered their true power names and had used them in a Summoning spell. Trapped in that controlling magician’s pentagram, it only took a short time before those Demon victims would begin to physically and mentally mutate into nearly mindless monsters, fanged and winged and viciously amoral. It was these poisoned creatures that had inspired the popular image of what Demons were within the human population.
Adam was short a weapon, his dagger still imbedded in the Vampire necromancer’s skull somewhere below them, but that didn’t bother him anywhere near as much as realizing his brother didn’t even carry so much as a knife on his person. He had never known Jacob to go unarmed anywhere. For that matter, the mode of Jacob’s dress completely baffled his elder brother. Minutes ago they had both been similarly dressed in a doublet and hose. Now Jacob was ... Adam had no idea what it was he was wearing. And the woman he was protecting was dressed as a boy! If not for her hair ...
There was no time to consider confusing fashions. Adam could feel the approach of the Transformed. It shocked him to realize how many there were. Everything, it seemed, was shocking and confusing. There was the wicked presence of black magic everywhere. Whoever that Gypsy girl was, she was gone. Had her magic gone with her, or was this all some kind of horrid illusion?
Still, Jacob seemed real enough, for all the change Adam saw within him at a glance.
Adam sought a source of water, another way of arming himself for the coming battle. The landscape was completely alien, he realized, nothing where it ought to be. Rivers, streams, and lakes were skewed and disproportionate to his mental mapping of where things should be. Finding himself too distant from a real water source, he reached for the water above him, seeding the clouds until it began to rain in a violent torrent.
“Get the innocents to safety!” he yelled to his brother. “I will handle these pitiful creatures myself!”
“You cannot possibly! Not on your own!” Jacob shouted back to him.
“Do you think the woman and child will help me, then?” Adam spat back. “You certainly cannot while you are distracted by them. Go! Make them safe. I will do this!”
It had been so long since Jacob had heard that obnoxious arrogance, but if he had had any doubts as to whether this man was truly his elder brother, they instantly disappeared upon hearing the unmitigated confidence in his declaration. Jacob took Bella’s drenched body from his brother, even while holding his daughter. Together they flew upward into the storming clouds, leaving Adam to his duty.
Surrounded by his element as it streamed down, Adam was aware of its blinding power. But for him it was merely a matter of senses. He felt every molecule of water on its path from sky to earth. He felt the topography of the land around him blossom into three dimensions as each drop of water hit a solid object. He could close his eyes and sense everything, stationary or moving, as the falling water shaped it in his mind’s eye. He could see it all without even looking.
The rainfall confused the Transformed. Those that were Water Demons took pleasure in it, not realizing that a powerful member of their former brethren was a part of its appearance. Each former Demon had his powers all intact, but the focus and understanding to use them to optimum advantage was gone. It was enough to leave them floundering and distracted in the rain. They saw no threat, so they did not act in defense. The master who could have guided their actions was not close enough or focused enough to maintain control under such conditions.
Adam was careful to remind himself that there were sure to be necromancers close by, and he would have to watch his back for them. In the meantime, he faded into the drowning fall of his element, drawing his sword for use. Each beast became isolated from the rest by the weather, and Adam darted in and out with little more than the flash of a blade and the subsequent rolling of a decapitated head to mark his presence. He dashed away, leaving the corpse to self-destruct in an explosive burst of flame.
Now that could be seen despite the deluge, and after the first four or five flares to warn them, the remaining Transformed realized their lives were threatened. This triggered a base instinct for survival, and Adam began to encounter significant resistance. He managed most of it with deadly precision, until he came up on one who turned to meet his approach through the rain as if fully expecting him. They began to fight, a sword against savage claws and fangs, not to mention powerful wings. The creature seemed able to anticipate his every move, and Adam caught a chest full of talons, the claws ripping him through clothing and flesh alike.
But the true shock came when he was finally set to make a death blow, and the cunning monster suddenly disappeared in a roiling cloud
of smoke that reeked of sulfur. Adam had only seen this trick twice before. Mind Demons, he lectured himself quickly. It was a new element, the skills and abilities barely eighty years old. However, he knew enough for his special Enforcer’s senses to ring warning of a Transformed presence appearing suddenly at his back. Smoke and sulfur clouded everywhere as the tainted Demon leapt for the Enforcer and found his blade instead.
Fire.
Not only from the falling corpse of Adam’s latest kill, but exploding in bursts all around him. It sent jets of steam off in the air as it mixed with his rain. Dread filled his soul as he was forced to contemplate the worst. That one of the Transformed was a Demon of Fire.
He looked up and saw an un-Transformed Demon. The face was instantly recognizable, and Adam couldn’t help the rush of relief that ran through him.
“Noah,” he rasped.
“Yes. And this would be much easier if you turned off the waterworks, friend,” a very familiar voice full of smoke and authority declared loudly.
Adam responded instantly, all of his instincts drawing the storm to a close just as swiftly as it had started. The last sheets of water fell away to reveal what remained of the Transformed and the Demon standing several yards away.
Noah raised his hands, fire immolating them before he resumed throwing molten balls of flame at the enemy, killing them off twice as quickly as Adam had done. Not to be outdone, even if it was by the Demon King, Adam went back to his work as well. Between the two of them, it took less than ten minutes to finish clearing the field. After the last one fell, Adam couldn’t help a victorious laugh as he jogged up to Noah with his free hand extended.
“Damn me, Noah, you make that look too easy! You will have others believing my job to be nothing at all!”
Noah had seen some pretty amazing things in his lifetime, but nothing ever so stunningly unexpected and inconceivable as watching Jacob’s long-lost brother walking up to him. The King automatically took the hand offered to him, wholly expecting the entire experience to be proved as nothing more than an apparition or illusion. Perhaps some magical trickery.
Adam: The Nightwalkers Page 11
