Haunted Blade (Colbana Files Book 6)

by J. C. Daniels

  “It’s back in England,” I said, tears still burning my eyes. Twisting and struggling against the branch-like vine that imprisoned me was doing nothing. I went to grab one of my blades—

  And found nothing.

  “Did you think I’d leave you armed?” Malcolm laughed. Something swayed through the air—another vine and it deposited one of my blades neatly in his hand. “Silver. Metal. So…tedious. There is no artistry to these weapons of the modern age, Kitasa. Nothing. You might as well call all rocks diamonds.”

  No artistry.

  Weapons.

  It’s weird the way that mind can slow down, processing things at a speed that seems out of time with everything else. How the world can be spinning so fast, but everything in your own little cosmos is spinning. Spinning. Spinning—

  With a shriek, I broke free of the vines at my waist- sawing through them with a blade I didn’t even recognize. It was rusty and old…and I’d seen it somewhere and my brain had filed it away.

  “You turn anything into a weapon…I bet you could decide an old tire iron was a weapon and call that.” Doyle’s words echoed inside my skull.

  Doyle’s…and the words of others.

  “Should they be ever-watchful of a wood from a foreign forest piercing their heart…death by drowning in salt water?”

  Foreign wood.

  And the weapons…

  Spinning, I flung out a hand toward Damon. Including the branch skewering his throat and pinning him to the ground. Anything could be a weapon. I knew that—so why hadn’t I realized what it meant?

  The branch ripped from him and the earth with an ominous crack and soon, his strangled groans turned to growls as his throat repaired the damage.

  He shredded the vining branches and another branch rose to punch through him—he twisted and pulled to the side just in time—I wrenched it from the earth as well, and spun, calling it to me as I searched for Malcolm.

  I didn’t see him.

  I heard him though. “What the…”

  “I told you not to get complacent.” Jude cut Malcolm’s disbelieving mutter off, striding out of the darkness. In his hand, he held a crossbow. I recognized the glint, the very scent of copper.

  Narrowing my eyes, I flung the makeshift weapon at him.

  He hissed and jerked back, but not in time to completely evade it. The branch’s bloody tip penetrated his upper right shoulder, pinning him to the tree behind him.

  Only…it wasn’t a tree.

  Both Jude and Malcolm bellowed and Jude wrenched the branch from his body before seeking me out with his eyes.

  “This time, you will hurt,” he swore. “You will hurt more than you’ve ever hurt.”

  Eyes lingering on the weapon he held, I settled into a crouch near the fallen trunk of a forest giant. Damon, covered in heavy swathes of blood and nothing else, drew low to the ground, skin rippling, then melting away as fur replaced it.

  “You’re going to die,” he said, staring at Jude. His voice was alien, even to me, so full of animal fury and rage, it was barely recognizable. “I hope you’ve made your peace with that.”

  “I wonder if your mother did. Your father.”

  Branches snaked up from the forest floor toward us and the ground rumbled.

  I steadied myself by going lower, hovering with my knees wide, hunkering close to the ground as I went from watching Jude and Damon back to Malcolm.

  Malcolm’s lips twisted in a sneer of a smile as he caught my gaze. “Interesting trick you pulled out of your cap there, Kitasa.”

  I didn’t let myself react.

  “How did you do it?” He eased closer. “You have no natural ability over things of the earth.”

  I also didn’t let myself get drawn into the conversation—the distraction.

  Keeping my focus split between him and Jude, I began to sidle along the earth, closing the distance between me and Damon.

  “She screamed, you know,” Jude said. “I heard each…and every…scream.”

  Damon’s growling snarl split the early morning air. “What are you playing at?”

  “You’ve been searching for answers for years,” Jude said. “You wanted to know who helped hunt down your mother…your father. Who found you…poor, lost little cub.”

  “Damon.” I wasn’t close enough to touch him but I knew he’d hear me. “Don’t let him get into your head.”

  “I don’t need to get into his head, Kit. I know his past.” Jude was almost even with us now and his voice, that low, rhythmic thrum of a voice rippled out to tease and taunt. I knew that voice, full of warmth, teasing and lies. “His past…something he hasn’t shared with anybody, except perhaps that miserable sod of a bodyguard. He escaped when we went to kill him…and we shouldn’t have had to. Your fool mother went and developed a conscience. She wouldn’t kill a child. A child…because children are innocent.” He sneered. “But children grow up and lay waste to plans that have been years in planning.”

  “You…I…” My gut had long since turned to ice, ever since I realized there was a possibility he wasn’t lying.

  “I’m not lying, darling Kit.” Jude’s lips curved in a smirk. “You weren’t supposed to hook up with the likes of him because he was supposed to be dead—this city was supposed to be mine.”

  “Do shut up,” Malcolm said. He took a step forward—

  And his head exploded.

  Jude threw himself backward. I called the crossbow he held and ripped each copper bolt out, using my mind to send them wherever they’d go—each one resisted. Copper, apparently, didn’t mix well with me in any way.

  “You.” The voice was low, angry…familiar.

  I had no idea where she’d come from, but as Rana came striding out of the forest, I knew she’d been there long enough to hear Malcolm’s words.

  Her eyes were glinting with all the fury and fire of hell. She stopped by Malcolm’s body and began to kick it, stomping on it in what looked to be a mindless fury. “You. It’s been…you.”

  The words came out in pants after a moment, each one running into the other and turning into nonsensical syllables that made no sense and all the sense in the world. When the words faltered, then started again in our native tongue, I reached out and took Damon’s hand.

  She spoke with a fury that transcended language.

  Damon grabbed me and thrust me to the ground. “Watch my back,” he said over his shoulder.

  That just wouldn’t be possible, though.

  He’d turned into a blur, moving with a speed that defied psychics, defied reality.

  A dull grunt echoed somewhere above me and I moved closer to Rana with a flex of my hand. In the next moment, I had my bow.

  “You mongrel. You misbegotten excuse of a whore’s son.” Hair falling into her face, Rana flung out a hand. Her blade was there in the blink of an eye, glinting silver. Then the silver became rubied as she brought it down then up, cutting into Malcolm.

  I heard a faint groan.

  “He’s still alive,” I whispered.

  “The coward’s spawn is too stupid to die,” she growled. She brought her sword up over her head, then slammed it down—but Malcolm rolled away.

  The bloody, misshapen mess that was his face might have been enough to give me nightmares, but it was almost…sweet seeing it.

  “He killed her, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Him, along with that blight of a vampire—Jude.” She stepped in front of me. “I’ll deal with—”

  Abruptly, we both moved back, each of us gripping the other’s arm as bodies hurtled between us. Blood splattered—the spray hit both of us. I tasted shifter blood on my lips. I scented vampire.

  “I’ll deal with him,” she continued. “It’s my right. But that one…”

  She looked in the direction where the bodies had gone. “Your lover and you…the vampire owes you more blood than he owes me.” She paused, then added, “He’s going to run.”

  Seconds passed as I struggled to make sense of those
words.

  Damon?

  Run?

  Then something pale appeared in the murky light. Jude—coming for us—me.

  I swore and flung myself to the side. Instinct told me too many things for me to process and break down. He’d expect the sword, he’d expect silver—

  I didn’t even understand what it was I called. I just knew something heavy, something with weight settled around my hands and I struck up just as Jude swooped for me, hands outstretched, like he wanted to hug me.

  But that wasn’t his intention.

  I slashed outward with my left hand, then under and up with the right. His scream resembled nothing human, nothing that had ever been human. Blood spilled out on me, thick and warm…alien.

  Then Jude was gone—leaving. The very tension that colored the air with his presence began to fade.

  Shaking, sick inside, I got up. Or I tried. I barely made it to my knees before I started to heave. Fighting back the urge to puke, I staggered the rest of the way to my feet and looked around.

  My gaze drifted over the spot twice before I really saw him.

  Damon stood in the shadows, staring at me.

  Eyes glowing gold-green, wearing the gray fur of his beast, he watched me with something that crossed between fear and incredulity. Blood poured from his chest and I froze for a brief second as I realized what I was looking at.

  Silver.

  Jude had rammed him through with silver.

  Somehow.

  Damon swayed once and slammed a hand against the tree nearest him.

  I never ran so fast in my life.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Idiot.” I went to catch him, but had to stop when I saw my hands.

  The clawed gloves. I’d called them when Jude came at me. Tekko-kagi, Chang had said.

  Swearing, I ripped them off, then caught Damon around the waist, bracing him with my body as I inspected the damage.

  It was…extensive.

  Jude must have led him into some sort of trap—one of his demonic pits, for all I knew. He had hundreds of small cuts all over him and they all still oozed blood. That meant silver had made them.

  And his blood…

  “Did he shoot you up with silver?”

  “Not…” Damon grunted. “Not him. He’s got…men here. Fucking coward. Get the spear out…Kit. Now.”

  “I…” Dismayed, I looked at the weapon that pierced his heart. It was as primitive—and solid—as they came. It looked like a sharpened spike that had been hardened at the tip, then coated in silver. I knew for a fact that my ancestors had hunted shifters with weapons quite similar to these for centuries.

  It was, after all, effective.

  “Come on, baby.” Damon’s eyes were squeezed tightly shut. “We don’t have forever here.”

  I didn’t like what that might mean. So I eased forward and reached up to wrap on hand around the spear. “You better not move,” I warned him.

  His eyes opened then and, face folded into grim lines, he looked out over the terrain. “You better hurry.”

  ⸸

  Something came flying by.

  I narrowly avoided being hit.

  Whatever it was, it smacked into a tree with a wet thwack and the scent of blood, coppery, sweet and…alien, had me approaching.

  “What are you doing?” Damon demanded, voice thicker and lower. He hadn’t switched back to his human skin and I doubted he would until we were at the car.

  “Going to look.”

  “It’s a leg.” The words were delivered with a brusqueness unlike him. “We’re not stopping to look at your aunt’s leavings.”

  The words didn’t make sense—and not just because he being so blunt.

  But he was hustling me along and I was caught off guard enough by the thought that somebody had thrown a leg, sans body, that I didn’t think about how much that should piss me off.

  Then we broke through the trees.

  A small clearing lay ahead of us. Beyond it, an area that I suspected was an old parking lot, but the pavement was pocked, pitted and overgrown.

  It looked like the scene of some horrific crime—and some might agree.

  What I saw was one of my mother’s killers being savagely dismembered by my aunt.

  Your aunt’s leavings…

  “Shit.”

  Damon no longer leaned on me and since I hadn’t attempted to fight him when he’d stopped me from checking out the leg, served rare, he wasn’t holding onto me now either. He was moving easier, too, although slow for him, that energy that was a part of him clearly dulled by pain and exhaustion.

  When I stopped, he kept moving for a few paces.

  When he turned, I was staring in morbid disbelief at the scene in front of me.

  It was like a sick scene from a demonic toddler’s playroom only instead of a toy that was being torn apart, it was Malcolm.

  And he wasn’t dead.

  I heard a distinct, clear heartbeat coming from the torso she was hacking apart.

  “The pathetic bastard will not die,” she said, not even looking at us. But I knew the words were directed at Damon and me.

  “Let me rip out his heart. That might do it.”

  “You need to deal with Whittier.” She didn’t even flick a look at us. Her pale skin was painted, like the way the Celts had painted themselves blue before they’d gone into battle. But her skin was streaked with red. “I’ll see this one dead or die trying.”

  “See him dead,” I said, voice raspy. Damon grasped my arm and pulled me along with him. When I slowed beside a body part, the left, lower forearm, I jerked away from him and called my blade.

  Damon caught my arm again but I shook him off, driven in a fit of rage and grief. “He killed my mother!”

  I slashed at the forearm—his left. I could tell mostly from the hand that was mostly still intact. The fingers splayed wide, grasping. Horror rose in me, then I lifted my blade and drove it downward, right through the palm.

  A scream came from behind us.

  Grim triumph twisted inside as we continued on.

  “You going to mount that on your wall?” Damon asked.

  “No.” Water slogged around our ankles now and I looked down, confused.

  “The water table probably shifted with the quakes he was tossing around like candy. Come on. We need to hurry,” Damon said, voice growing intense. He flicked another look at me, then the hand skewered on my blade. “Kit…?”

  I flung out the blade and the hand went flying off.

  Into up the marshy water.

  There was another scream from behind us.

  But I paid it little notice.

  I was too busy staring at the spot where the hand had hit the water with an splash. It was…smoking.

  “What the hell?” I whispered.

  Fingers split the surface for a brief second, a macabre imitation of treading water.

  “Damon?”

  “I’m seeing it.” He’d slowed next to me and the two of us continued to watch as the flesh cracked, blistered, the melted away.

  “That’s not normal,” I whispered weakly.

  “No.”

  ⸸

  “How are we supposed to get back…”

  The trees ahead cleared.

  The question faded away because the sight in front of me, while unexpected, was whole-heartedly welcome.

  Chang, dressed in fighting black, came striding up. Apparently blood was the accessory of the night, because he, like Rana, had a streak of it down his cheek. “Jude went missing. Our patrols couldn’t find him. We tracked you here and ended up surrounded.” A thin smile curved his lips. “They took some time to dispatch. I apologize for the delay, Damon.”

  Damon responded with a short nod, putting his hand at the area between my shoulder blades. “Get her in the car, surrounded.”

  “Hey…”

  Chang shook his head. “Jude is no longer here. Scott saw him leave, is tracking him even now. He’s nearly back to Orlan
do.”

  “Jude isn’t the only threat.” Damon’s voice deepened, the low, angry growl of a cat worried about what he saw as his.

  I was worried about what I saw as mine. Him and my aunt.

  “I’m not leaving my aunt alone with something that regenerates and doesn’t die.”

  Chang slanted a look at me, one brow quirking up.

  “A Green Man, especially one so ancient, can be resilient like that—it’s the earth elemental in him.”

  The voice, low and female, came from behind me, and I shifted as much as I could, trying to locate the source.

  I blinked, caught off guard by the sight.

  “You…I know you,” I said quietly—rather pointlessly.

  It was the Assembly contractor I’d called…hell, had it just been last week? Her round, pleasant face turned toward me and she cocked her head. Her eyes, dark as her hair, were also pleasant. Everything about her was just that…pleasant.

  But as I studied her face, she did something that wasn’t so pleasant.

  She blinked and when she looked back at me, her eyes went silvery-blue, pupilless and opaque. It was like staring into the icy heart of the ocean.

  Cold gripped my heart, then she blinked again and the pleasant, dark brown returned.

  “I know you,” I said again, feeling oddly out of breath. “Samantha Anne Diamond. Why are you here?”

  “Because you called.” Her mouth twisted in a semblance of a smile. “Not much else I could do. You managed to find me, so what was I going to do?”

  “Ah…live your life?”

  “Yes…” She tipped her head back, eyes closed. A low, rich chuckle—something completely not average, ordinary or pleasant—escaped her as she stood there. “Live my life. I was trying to do just that. Had been, even. For decades. But he showed up…madder than ever. Then you. You wouldn’t leave, either. Just like your mother.”

  “You—what? Wait. You knew my…” I stopped, sucking in a breath. This could be a trick, something set up by my grandmother, by Malcolm himself. Even by Jude.