by Misty Evans
Speaking of smells. I sniffed the chilly air and picked up plenty of scents. A lot of them were out of place. Grave dirt in December? Not normal. But were those smells coming from Toel’s Undead or mine?
Snagging an earpiece, I listened in to the strategy conversations going on, but after the sixth different approach offered and shot down, I’d had enough. My ear buzzed from all the strange voices and arguments going on.
I tossed the earpiece at Cole. “I’m going in. Cover me.”
“What?” He tapped his ear bud to shut off the mic. Grabbed my arm and spun me around. “One fuckup today isn’t enough? Now you’re going to throw the whole battle into jeopardy because you can’t think through a simple operation?”
“You call this simple?” I jerked my arm out of his grasp. “Simple is me walking up to that plane and kicking Noctifector ass.”
“And bringing hundreds of vampires down on the human population inside?”
“Not if I kill Toel before they have a chance to attack. They’re wired to save him. Once he’s dead, their tie to him goes poof.”
Cole set his hands on his waist, shook his head. “Look, I get it. You’re mad as hell at the Chaos demon because he pissed in your beer. But being reckless as well as stupid is not the way to get back at him.”
“This has nothing to do with Rad,” I said through gritted teeth.
“You sure about that?”
Yes. No. “Do you have my six or not?”
He took a moment, tried to stare me down. “On one condition.”
“Conditions are for pussies.”
That got a grin out of him. “They are, aren’t they? Well, tough shit. There’s a condition if you want me to join you on this stupid, reckless mission.”
Heading in to take on the Nocts and Toel all by my lonesome wasn’t the cheeriest thought, so I played his game. “What?”
“You follow my lead this time.”
My bodyguard had something up his sleeve. All counts considered, though, he was a War demon. Whatever was up his sleeve would probably work as well, if not better than, my simple but extremely rash plan. “As long as I get to kill Toel, I’m in.”
He held out a hand and we shook. “Whatever happens, you stay focused on Toel. Nothing else. Not me, not the Nocts, not Guitar Boy. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Glancing up at the sky, he frowned. “Is Maria here?”
I followed his gaze, shrugged. “Not that I can tell, but there’s a high probability.”
“Why does she give a fuck about Toel?”
“She doesn’t, but Vicky does. It’s Vicky who’s controlling her in an effort to keep Toel safe. The only problem, as we’ve already seen, is that Maria can loosen Vicky’s hold on her when she wants. That’s how she uses the other witch’s body, and how she appears as a ghost to me.”
“How do we defeat her?”
“Get her back to my place and send her to hell. It’s the only way I know.”
“Toel first.” Cole reached for his gun, checked the barrels of holy water bullets. Satisfied, he pulled out a second gun. This one was loaded with regular, human-killing bullets. “After that, you hunt the bitch down and get rid of her.”
For the second time that day, we agreed.
Chapter Forty-five
Cole and I snuck our way past security cameras, human guards and fences to land on the edge of the concourse’s northwest area. It didn’t take more than five minutes for Cole to slip inside an Employees Only door and secure two navy blue coveralls and badges to match. Giving up my cape wasn’t my favorite, but I shuffled some of my weapons into the deep pockets of the coveralls and slid Volante around my waist. In close quarters, she wasn’t the best weapon, but gave me more satisfaction.
A passenger jet with the official Catholic Church symbol nestled among bigger international planes at Gate 17. Hoses ran over the ground, several luggage carts sat empty nearby. And while maintenance workers walked, ran and drove around the other planes, no one appeared to be doing anything with the Noct plane.
“Maybe they got word about Toel’s plan of attack and left,” I murmured to Cole.
He scanned the plane, headed for the set of stairs leading to the open door. “One way to find out.”
His guns were out before I caught up to him. The scent of dead seaweed filtered through the air. “You’re not going to just walk up there, are you?”
“Yep.” He hit the first stair. “Stay here. Stay focused.”
“There’s only one way in, one way out. What’s your exit strategy?”
He grinned. “You’re my exit strategy.”
“Wait,” I called just above a whisper, but it was too late. He hit the top step and disappeared inside.
And I was reckless?
Touching fingers to thumbs, I raised my protective magic. A soft but strong bubble surrounded me and I felt stronger. Maybe my nap had done some good. I strained my ears to listen for any sounds of fighting, but all was strangely, eerily quiet. My nerves on hyper alert, I chanted Cole’s directions. Stay here, stay focused.
Rocking back and forth on the balls of my feet, I stroked a stake in the pocket of the too-big overalls, my hand itching to use it on someone. Anyone. Just thinking about it gave me an extra rush of adrenaline.
“Hey,” some big guy on the tarmac next to me yelled. He was also wearing ugly blue coveralls and a badge. “What are you doing? Get to work.”
Fuck this staying put shit. I gave him a mock salute and took the metal steps two at a time.
What greeted me inside the plane was one scary-ass sight.
Toel sat in a plush leather plane seat, a wooden table in front of him with a glass of blood on it. On the floor lay a human Noctifector, his head twisted at an angle and blood running from a large gash on his neck. A gash made by very sharp teeth.
Toel raised his glass. “Kal-i-for-ni-a. I’ve been expecting you. Come in. Have a seat. We need to talk.”
In the back of the plane, Vicky held Cole’s gun to his head. He was on his knees and his arms were pinned behind him. A giant vamp flanked him along with Vicky.
Toel’s voice lowered a notch, became more dangerous. “Sit, or the War demon dies.”
Toel had no intention of sparing Cole, but I sat across from him anyway, stepping over a second Noct body to get to the chair. I counted at least five more in various death poses throughout the cabin. Stupid humans. “What is there to talk about?”
“You. What you did for my brother.”
Word travels fast in the vamp world, but this was impressive even for them. “Which one?”
“Playing dumb doesn’t suit you.” He sipped his drink, set down the glass and laced his fingers over his stomach. He was wearing his usual surfer dude clothes, complete with flip flops. The surfer dude expressions were, thankfully, absent. It was the first time I’d seen him serious and clueless. “How exactly did you do it? Save him?”
Negotiation. Not my strongest skill, but worth a shot. “Let the War demon go, and I’ll not only tell you how I did it, I’ll show you.”
His interest peaked. So did his power. He crossed his legs in a casual manner, but the energy pouring off his body was anything but casual. How long before he knew it was my blood that had saved Dru? How long before he came at me with those powerful fangs?
My hand started to reach for my stake. He pointed a finger at Vicky. “Keep your hands where I can see them or my friend there might lose control of her trigger finger.”
“If you want the secret to Dru’s salvation, you have to let Cole go.”
His Undead eyes stared at me unblinking. Vicky called from the back, “You can’t actually be considering making a deal with that bitch.”
Her magic was chockfull of jealousy. Her voice, tremulous with unrequited love. If she hadn’t been such a bitch herself, I might have felt sorry for her. As it stood, I wanted to stake her. Repeatedly. Anything to shut her up.
But she might be my key to controlling Maria, so for now,
the best I could do was use her Achilles’ heel against her. I leaned forward and gave Toel a charming smile. “I meant what I said at Dalinda’s. I’m ready to serve you if you’ll just give me the chance.”
“As I recall, you raised a stake to me.”
“I lost control of my demon. She stakes everyone. Don’t take it personally.”
“And do you lose control of her often?”
I licked my lips. “Not if I have enough royal blood to quench my thirst.”
“You…” he looked even more perplexed. “You drank from Dru?”
I gave him an evil smile. “And the others. But your blood is the best. I want more of it. More of you. I’ll do whatever you want, master. Just let the War demon go.”
Zingo, bingo, bam. That sealed the deal. He nodded at Vicky, motioned for the vampire behind her to release Cole. The vamp grabbed Cole under the armpit and propelled him forward. Cole shot me a look that said there was no way in hell he was leaving me alone with Toel, but when he got even with me, I kicked him in the ass and gave him a hard push toward the door. He went flying, but so did the Undead guard hanging onto him, throwing them both off balance.
In one motion, I yanked Volante from my waist and snapped her toward Toel’s neck. He ducked but she nailed him in the ear and wrapped around his head, blinding him as her well-worn leather covered his eyes.
He cried out, being the wuss he was, and I snapped Volante back, cracked her at the guard who was back on his feet. He charged me at the same time her weighted tip gouged a bright red stripe across his cheek and knocked him sideways.
As he fell, he hit the table in front of Toel, pitching the wine glass of blood onto his master’s Hawaiian shirt and cutoffs. Toel had stood, but being smacked across the eyeballs with a whip left him partially blind and he didn’t see his guard falling until it was too late. The guard tried to catch himself on the small table and ended up sending it directly into Toel’s upper thigh.
Toel lost his balance, too, falling sideways into his chair, but only catching the outer edge. The bucket seat swiveled and dumped him, the table and the bodyguard over the body of a fallen Noct and into another chair behind him.
The comedy of errors was laugh out loud funny, especially since Vicky was yelling at the top of her lungs for Toel to do something. She still had Cole’s gun and shot it at my head, but the bullet missed me by inches.
I sent Volante sailing her way and the whip swept the gun from Vicky’s hand. The guard shoved off Toel and tried to help him to his feet. On the way back around, I let Volante wrap her leather around the guy’s waist and sent him flying down the aisle and into Vicky.
Cole had shucked his cuffs and was headed for Toel, who bared his fangs at me as he prepared to lunge. I stopped Cole with a hand. “I got this.”
A crack of Volante and she caught him around the neck like I’d planned to begin with. Once, twice, three times, she wound herself in circles, cutting through his skin. His eyes bulged and his fingers dug at her restraints, but it did no good. Once she was locked on, she didn’t let go until I gave her the command.
“Kill,” I whispered, sending a shot of magic into the whip’s handle.
She cranked down harder, cutting through tendons, muscle, and finally bone. The guard and Vicky had picked themselves up off the floor and stopped dead in their tracks at the sight and sounds of me decapitating Toel. I gave one last good jerk and Toel’s spinal cord popped, releasing his head.
Lotta blood as both his head and body dropped to the floor. Vicky screamed, the guard charged, so I withdrew the stake in my pocket and sent it sailing directly into Toel’s heart. His body jerked and turned to ash.
The guard almost hit me, but Cole jumped over me and the Noct at my feet and collided with the guy in midair. Cole flung out one of his massive arms on the way down, grabbed the stake from the ash pile and the guard went poof alongside his master.
By this time, Vicky was in a frenzy. She rushed Cole, dived over a seat when he reached out to stop her. Her foot caught on the seat and she fell forward, grabbing for me. I smacked her face and reinforced my protective bubble. I would have killed her right there, but damn it, I needed her to stop Maria, and to the contrary, I was rarely stupid or reckless when push came to shove.
The force of my slap knocked her into a window. Good thing it was reinforced for flight. The glass still cracked, but didn’t break, and the blow KO’d Vicky.
Toel’s bulging eyes looked up at me, unseeing, as I went to stand over him. Cole flopped down in one of the empty chairs, scraped a hand through his hair. “Shit, that was fun.”
A small laugh escaped my throat. “Yeah, it was.”
He was slightly out of breath. “We should do it again sometime.”
“I have to admit, your exit strategy was a good one.”
“She was,” he agreed, and like in the car when he held my hand, something passed between us.
“I’m sorry for beating up your girlfriend.”
“Not a deal. I’m going to beat up your boyfriend. We’ll be even.”
“My boyfriend?”
“Guitar Boy.” He got up, lifted Vicky and threw her into a fireman’s hold over his shoulder. “And I’m going to enjoy digging his heart out with a dull spoon to make him pay up for hurting you.”
I didn’t deserve them, but it sure was nice to have friends. I glanced down at the dead Nocts and a small part of me, even though I was still mad at Rad, was grateful he wasn’t among the fallen. “A lifetime of slavery might be more satisfying. He’s good at bringing us coffee.”
Cole shifted Vicky’s weight, seemed to consider it. “Okay, but only if I get to beat the shit out of him at least once.”
I picked up Toel’s head by the hair, grabbed my stake and impaled him on it. From somewhere far away, I heard the low blaring of an alarm. “Deal.”
Cole led the way to the door and I used a blanket from an overhead bin to cover my gruesome trophy. Volante was once again around my waist and purring contentedly. I wiped some sweat from my forehead and noticed Cole had stopped, blocking the doorway. “What it is?”
“We might want to rethink our exit strategy.”
He shifted Vicky’s dead weight to the side so I could peer around him. Here by the door, the blaring alarm was louder, and red flashing lights from the building jetted over the ground. But the sight that held my attention made my stomach sink. “Holy minion army,” I said under my breath.
Spread out across the concourse, runway and field were hundreds, maybe even a thousand of Toel’s vampires, lined up and still as death just like they had been outside of Dalinda’s house.
“I thought their link to Toel would break once you killed him,” Cole said.
“Apparently, they didn’t get the message. Maybe I better make it clear to them.”
I didn’t see any humans in the near vicinity, but there were probably enough watching the minion zombie fest parade, snapping pictures with their cellphones and not having enough common sense to vacate the premises even with that annoying alarm blaring away. But this was going bad in a hurry and I didn’t see many options. We couldn’t ignore them so the only option left was to try and reason with them. If that failed, there was Plan B: fight.
Lifting the blanket off Toel’s head, I raised the stake high and stepped out on the stair landing. The sky was a deep blue satin color, the snow surrounding the concourse and runway reflecting a lighter blue. “Toel is dead,” I yelled over the alarm and projecting my voice as far as I could. Even yelling wouldn’t reach the past the first few rows of vamps. “I’m your new master. Return to where you came from and you’re free to go. Stay and cause trouble, and you’ll meet the end of my stake, too.”
All their blue-white minion eyes looked up at the display in my hand but none of them moved so much as a muscle. Then in unison, they bared their fangs and hissed.
Definitely a thousand of them. The hiss was so loud, it sounded like I was facing a python the size of Godzilla.
&nb
sp; “Looks like we’re doing this hard way,” I said over my shoulder, draping the blanket over my prize once more and setting it on a nearby seat inside the plane. I released Volante from my waist and instantly she vibrated with anticipation in my hand. I chucked the overalls and grabbed my stake.
Vicky fell to the floor with a thump. Cole withdrew the gun he’d recovered from the floor and pulled the second one—the one with human bullets—from an ankle holster. “I always did prefer the hard way.”
We fist bumped and implemented Plan B.
Chapter Forty-six
Together we flew down the airplane stairs, and as we did so, shifters invaded the runway from the south and east. The vamp soldiers who’d accompanied us came from the west, and Bridge soldiers rained down from the north, skirting buildings and jumping fences with the ease of ninjas.
“This is SPARTA!” Cole yelled, launching himself into the madness, and I laughed while raising my protective magic.
Sparta, indeed. The clang of weapons echoed over the open air as the invading armies came up against the minions. Shouts, yells and death cries rose and fell. All around me, blood spurted, limbs dropped, heads rolled.
I cleared paths with Volante in one hand, turned my fair share of minions to dust with the stake in my other. I lost sight of Cole, and ended up surrounded by a dozen or so of Toel’s army, all hunched and ready to attack. None of them spoke. They just circled me, their blue-white eyes locked on my face and not paying much attention to my weapons.
Twelve to one. By most standards, I was in trouble. But I’m Kali Sweet. Odds were in my favor.
I took out four with one swipe of Volante. Another two with my stake. I kicked out at one of the bigger one’s knees, but as he fell, he clamped a beefy hand around my ankle, ignoring the small spikes of my boot slicing through his skin and the electrifying effect of my protective magic against his skin, and throwing me off balance.
A second minion tackled me from the back, ramming his head into my spine. A sharp pain ran up the back of my neck, but I twisted around and slammed the side of the stake against his temple. He fell, came up on a knee. The other minion jerked hard on my leg and nearly dislocated it. A third jumped into the fray, and by that time, my demon had had enough.
