“You’re on Alpha territory, Leonard Garthelle. Watch it.” He rolls his shoulders, flexes his hands, and the visible veins of energy pulse even brighter.
“Diplomatic sanctuary was revoked the moment Farken passed.” Leonard shifts, stepping forward. His hands are loose at his sides, but the aural field around him tingles along my nerves all same. Nothing soothing in the sensation—but I still find a measure of reassurance in it. “No perpetuity clause. This is my metro. These are my people. Alpha will no longer prey upon them unencumbered.”
One thing’s for sure: he’s better suited to facing down my sire than I am.
“Did you want to apply for renewal?” I can hear the bite of sarcastic humor in my lover’s voice. Baiting his childhood friend. Attempting to keep him off balance. To what end, I don’t know, although one thing is certain: there’s no way I would’ve been able to do what I did to Jhustyn if the lyche had kept his guard up.
I push up to my knees and edge back toward the door, my attention wavering between the lifeless form of Garthelle’s sire and the sneer of hostility mine is wearing.
A firm, almost painfully strong grip on my ankle drags me backward out of the room and into the marginal safety of the corridor.
“Black, jeez. Did you want ringside seats, for Gaia’s sake?” Jhez has this twisted expression on her face, like she can’t decide whether to scowl at me or be concerned.
An aural ripple washes over me, radiating from the room.
“Shit.” Jhez flinches, shudders. “I really don’t want to be around to witness this.” She hauls me to my feet with a hand around my biceps, her fingertips digging into flesh. A little excessive, and a good bit uncomfortable, but I don’t bother complaining. I just shove her down the hall, away from the room, and let her drag me in her wake.
I have no idea what Leonard intends to do. I just know I won’t feel even a twitch of remorse if the Monsieur of York is the only lyche to walk out of that room.
Jhez and I, we didn’t know our sire all that well. But whoever he was, and the memories we have of him—there’s nothing left of that person in the lyche who was prepared to stand by and watch another of his kind drain every last shred of chi from my body to further his own ends. That’s not the person our father was. I refuse to remember him that way.
“Move it, Black, come on, keep walking.” Jhez is murmuring a constant stream of words that finally begin registering in my addled brain. I just killed two lyche, lashing out at them with chi. Wielding aural energy like a weapon. I didn’t even know that was possible, but in the aftermath of it, I feel weak, dizzy. Disoriented. She’s pulling at me, urging me to keep moving under my own power. My legs are starting to feel limp. Like every last shred of tension is draining out of me. I can feel Leonard, could close my eyes and point straight to him, just by the constriction in my chest. He’s pulling, siphoning what’s left of my reservoir of chi across the increasing distance between us. I’ve no idea how.
The reserves I so carefully concentrated in my core are quickly gone. I wasted too much of it, lashing out at Farken and Jhustyn the way I did. Crudely, without any form or training to speak of. Talk about beginner’s luck. Ha. It could cost Leonard dearly. The edge he no doubt counted on having at a crucial moment isn’t there when he needs it.
I hear the roar of rage a second before yet another wave of projected energy washes over us. This time, it radiates hostility, burning white-hot with the same emotion in the uncontrolled timbre of the voice. Every inch of my skin feels exposed to the heart of a bonfire, as if any minute the flesh will quite literally melt from my bones.
“Get out here, now! Both of you!” Blue’s familiar voice draws my attention. He’s standing in the doorway leading to the courtyard, holding it open with his shoulder. And he’s looking past us, his face a contortion of fear, eyes wide. He goes ghost white, expression blank. “Shit. Duck.” He blurts the words, half gasp, half whisper, and twists around to shield himself with the heavy exterior door.
Oh, Gaia. Noire got past Leonard and into the hall. I know if I turn around now, he’ll be standing there behind us, arms up, hands outstretched toward me and Jhez. Curling tendrils of tainted aura pulsing around his fingers. I can almost feel him gather his chi to lash out at us. Like the charged taint in the air before lightning strikes.
Jhez shoves me the remaining distance toward the doorway, and I grasp at her hand, trying to pull her along with me.
She grunts, falters, falling into me, and I stumble outside, lose my footing on the loose gravel. The sharp rocks dig into my palms, gouge my knees through my jeans, but the pain registers vaguely.
“No!” What the hell is she thinking, using herself to shield me. I grab handfuls of her shirt, ignoring the zap of excess energy from her aura, drag her through the entry. Blue’s already pushing the door shut, leaning into it with all his weight, what [little] he has. I scramble over Jhez’s prone form—trying not to think about that—and hit the door with my shoulder.
“Need to jam the door somehow.” Blue’s gaze is wide and wild as he glances around quickly, then grabs a crowbar from the ground nearby.
“Where did that come from?”
“Vamp’s car. I insisted on having a weapon. It disturbed him, I think.”
The door jumps beneath my weight before falling back into the jamb. “Wedge it through the bolting mechanism here.” Loops of metal on jamb and door, just above the handle. As though they secure the entry with a locked chain from the outside.
Maybe to keep the diner’s cattle in?
The crowbar is a sorry excuse for a locking mechanism. And rather insubstantial, given the way it trembles under the onslaught from the other side.
“It’s not going to . . . hold him off for very long,” I manage to gasp in between long pulls of air. I have no idea why I’m out of breath. No doubt I’ll be feeling any number of pains once the adrenaline bleeds out of my veins. But for now, at least, I’ve got a shot of getting us all to safety.
“Car’s that way.” Blue points toward the corner of the building at the end of the courtyard nearest the gated exit. Then he scoops Jhez up under the armpits and gives a sharp jerk of his head. “Help me carry her, Black. You’re too weak to do it alone, and she’s twice my weight. Come on,” he growls when I don’t move fast enough.
Every movement feels like I’m pushing myself through molasses instead of air, but I manage to shove away from the door as it gives another shudder, and help him carry her to Leonard’s waiting vehicle. I remember the sleek little sedan from that first night Garthelle picked me up off the boulevard. Damn, why the hell didn’t he bring something bigger than that? A tank would’ve been perfect.
I don’t want to consider where Leonard is, or that we’ve barricaded him inside with my sire. I can’t, not right now.
Jhez groans, stirs. Twists in our grip, and then goes completely rigid. She throws her head back and screams, thrashing so violently that Blue loses his grip and falls to the ground with her to break the impact.
“Shit, shit. Something’s wrong, we don’t have time for this right now!”
“Get the car started.” I move around to take his place, cradling my sister’s head. “You driven one of those things before?”
“Yeah, I’ve ’jacked my share of them.” He scrambles to his feet and heads toward the vehicle.
Splaying my fingers flat against the sides of Jhez’s head, I let my aura twine with hers. Trying to feel what’s wrong. She recognizes my touch and calms down, then opens her eyes. Her nostrils flare with each breath she takes and her pupils are dilated, her eyes bloodshot.
“Oh, fuck it hurts, Black.” She tries to take a deep breath, but grunts and starts panting, shallow and controlled.
“What hurts? What did he do?”
“Just . . . slammed me with an overload. So much energy it’s . . . Gaia, it hurts . . . burning me up inside.”
“Give it to me.” It has to work, it did at the party. Auras just slid into each other. “Rel
ax and let it flow out.”
She goes still for a moment. Just staring at me. The tremors are still there in her extremities. Her fingers, her legs, twitch like she’s a marionette and someone’s playing with the strings. “Are you sure?” She clenches her eyes shut and tenses again, panting hard. “Fuck, there’s so much of it.”
“Just do it, Jhez. That door won’t hold long.” I close my eyes and focus on opening myself to her, letting our auras bleed together like they did that first evening at Dragulhaven. Sharing the pull of two dozen lyche.
It surges finally. In one huge gush, as if a dam just gives way in her. And it’s nothing like what Leonard gave me, nothing like how it felt, buried inside him, orgasm and equalization. The energy slams into me, hard, forceful, sludged and soiled. Dark and viscous as the residue in the gutters after the regeneration vehicles come through.
I force it down into my core, channeling it into the same kind of concentrated ball I used earlier. I have no desire to have the taint of a fin tap coursing freely through my body. Don’t have time just now to show her how to do it, so I start pulling when the flow slows.
“More. Give me all of it, Jhez. Let it out,” I murmur, flexing my fingers against her head.
“You can’t take it all, it’s too much.” She sounds weak, drained. Hollow.
Too much? I want to laugh. “No, it’s not.” I pull harder, dragging it from her until she twists away, trying to escape my grip.
“Black! Stop, please!”
I open my eyes to find Blue back at my side, hauling Jhez from my hands. Her eyes are wide as she studies me, an edge of fear in her expression. Panic and horror crawls up the back of my throat along with the burn of bile. I have no idea why I didn’t register that I was no longer just pulling out Noire’s clouded, dark energy. For a moment there, before she screamed my name, I was completely gone, totally lost. Energy thrall? A chill runs up my spine.
“Come on.” Blue sounds more shaken and frightened than he did earlier, trying to force that door shut. “I don’t want to hang around for the rest of this.” He helps Jhez to unsteady feet and into the back of the idling vehicle.
I’m on my feet and following in their wake, almost to the car when the heavy door gives way in an explosion of splinters. The force of chi from the impact rolls through the courtyard like a sonic boom, throwing gravel, dust, and chunks of sod into the air. It vibrates my body so hard I fall against the driver door before I can catch my balance.
Noire steps out, pushing impatiently at the remnants of the steel-reinforced wood. He pauses, scanning the courtyard, hands clenching and unclenching repeatedly. The visible signature of his aura, the chi collecting around his arms and hands, looks decidedly weaker than earlier, but that’s little consolation as I yank open the door and slide into the driver’s seat, hoping to Gaia the thing’s controls will respond to me. Little consolation, because there’s nothing to stop him from blasting all of us into dust. I don’t have the strength or ability to use whatever energy I have at this kind of range. And Leonard is . . .
Yeah, nothing to stop him.
The door closes with a faint whirr of sound, and the engine hums to life. “All in, Blue?”
“Yeah. Get us the fuck out of here.” His voice sounds as strained and strung out as I feel. A heartbeat of silence. “You can drive this thing, right?”
My laughter doesn’t sound the least bit sane. “Let’s find out.” I tweak the controls, closing my eyes to clear my mind and remember how Leonard did it that night. This pricy little toy of his is fancier than anything I’d been in before he came along. I’m sure he can afford a few more if I happen to scratch it, though.
When I open my eyes and look up from easing the vehicle into gear, Noire is sprinting at us. I have a sudden flash of memory from my childhood, watching a football game on television with my father. The quarterback got blindsided in the one play, looked up just in time to see the freight train of a linebacker slam into him full tilt.
Yep, quarterback here. Or . . . maybe I’m the damned football. I’ve lost track.
“Fuckfuckfuck.” The repetition comes out in one long string as I mash the accelerator and whip the controls hard to the right. But the little car doesn’t respond nearly fast enough.
Noire’s fists slam down on the glassy hood, and the impact shudders straight through the frame and travels through my body as well. His forearms pulse and throb with an ugly sheen of aura; his energy is so drained that the excess chi registers as little more than a heavy discoloration of his skin.
It’s the most grotesque thing I’ve ever witnessed. And yet despite mashing the accelerator to the floor, the vehicle only spins its wheels in the gravel. Noire still has enough strength to restrain it.
My body is shaking. I can feel it starting in my hands and feet, just a slight tremble. But the adrenaline is running its course, and in a few minutes I’m either going to be slipping into shock . . . or experiencing a fin tap firsthand, I guess. Lacking his potential alliance partner to do the job, I highly doubt my sire will hesitate to do the deed himself.
For retribution, if nothing else.
One hand sliding over the vehicle’s hood—maintaining the anchor of restraining energy, I assume—Noire eases around to the driver door. His face is devoid of emotion, his complexion pale, lines of tension showing at the corners of his eyes and mouth. The veins in his temples are prominent, pounding faintly with his racing pulse.
His eyes. Shit, his eyes. I’ve never seen such flat, dead eyes. Like there is no soul on the other side.
Is this what a lyche looks like after a fin tap? I stare into that gaze, and everything seems to just slow down.
Noire draws his free arm back, fists his hand. Coils himself, preparing to punch through the thin window, no doubt. I try twisting the controls over in the other direction, away from him; then I try shifting out of reverse into first. The usually happy purr of the engine becomes a yowl, and yet still no movement beyond the spinning of the tires.
I can smell the hot rubber treads shredding and smoking against the gravel.
In the back seat, Blue is cussing a streak. I don’t blame him. If I could find my voice, I’d be doing the same thing.
Movement in the corner of my eye. A flash, nothing more, but I instantly recognize Leonard. His aura is drawn in tight, skin flaring bright as the noonday sun as he clamps one hand on Noire’s neck, catching Noire’s upraised forearm in his other.
“I deferred when protocol and diplomacy demanded it, Vincent Noire.” Each syllable enunciated carefully, scant inches from the lyche’s ear, but I hear every word clearly. “You have become what you once hated most in this world. Do you remember that?” There’s a note of sadness in his voice, but not an ounce of hesitation. “These are my people. This is my home. I protect what’s mine. You killed your mentor, you killed my father. You expect me to stand by and let you kill these three as well?”
Noire’s eyes flash red for a brief moment, and then he’s throwing his head back and laughing, no longer straining against Leonard’s grip. Still chuckling, he stares down the Monsieur of York, meeting his gaze ounce for ounce.
“The blue-haired one killed my sister. And my son killed your sire, Leonard. Not me. Him. For crimes against the lyche, you would defend them from just retribution?”
Sane. Entirely cognizant, or at least he sounds it. No trace of the crazed energy thrall I thought would be there. That I saw traces of when he dropped Farken’s body.
Of course, the wealth of that spectacular individual’s chi now resides inside . . . me.
Fucking lovely. I shudder with the sensation of filth crawling over my skin like a thousand bugs, and want to bathe in scalding water.
Leonard’s resolve falters, and I hear Blue hiss in the back seat. “Get out of here, Black. Fucking now.”
I mash the accelerator again, but Noire’s arm tenses, aura flaring with energy, and the vehicle just squeals with futility. I can see Leonard’s lips moving, but don’t hear what
he says over the noise.
Okay. This is ridiculous. Obviously we’re not going anywhere, and I’ll be damned if I stand by while my sire accuses me like this without making some attempt to defend myself, for Gaia’s sake.
I glance back at Blue. “Stay in the car. Climb up here in the driver’s seat when I get out, and the second you have a chance, get her the hell out of here.”
“Black, don’t—” he starts. And Jhez too, right over him. “What the hell, Black?”
“Just do it, Blue.” I cut him off and push at the door, which slides quickly out of the way and closes behind me with a snick.
The Alpha Premier’s eyes lock onto me, and both lyche tense. I hold my sire’s gaze because I don’t have the intestinal fortitude to look at Leonard just now.
“Did you?” Of course it’s Leonard who finally breaks the silence.
It takes me a few seconds to work up the nerve to look away from Noire and meet my lover’s gaze. I’m not sure how to interpret his expression. His entire form is tense, screaming of the effort it requires for him to hold the Alpha Premier in check.
Not that many of Leonard’s standing could viably perform such a feat to begin with.
“Under duress, yes I did. It was self-defense. I have no idea what I did, and I doubt I could duplicate it.”
Noire laughs again—a rasp forcing past Leonard’s grip on his throat—his shoulders relaxing, hands unclenching. He flashes an easy grin at Leonard. “See? I told you so. All I’m guilty of here is killing one of my own. On Alpha territory. Now let me exact the price from his hide.”
“I see no reason why I should. First and foremost, this is no longer Alpha territory. And only a lyche could have created the energy stroke that killed my father. I had a chance to sense that much.” Leonard’s tone is dry, condescending.
“Lyche cannot be born of humans.” Noire stares at him in shock; the cadence of his words sounds like an official quotation.
Blacker than Black Page 33
