Flesh and Blood

by E. A. Copen

  A hand closed on mine and I kicked at whoever it belonged to, only to wind up hitting Leviathan in the chin. “You kick like a mule.”

  “We need to get out of here!”

  “How? That’s angel fire, Khaleda. It’ll burn us alive!”

  I looked around, gasping for air through the cloth of my dress. As I did, my eyes settled on Maggie, who was striding through the flames as if they weren’t even there with my obsidian knife in her fist. Her chilling gray eyes fell on me. I’d only seen that much hatred in one other person: my father.

  Leviathan wrapped an arm around my ribs and pulled me in the direction opposite the one I’d been crawling in.

  “Stop it! We have to kill her, Leviathan!”

  He shoved me another inch and held me by the shoulders. “We have to be alive to kill her! If we stay here, we’ll die.”

  He made a good argument. Already, my lungs were burning from the effort of drawing breath, and the angel fire was closing faster. With Maggie roaming around, ready to fling more of it at us the moment she saw us, we had no choice but to flee. But how? She stood between us and the door.

  Leviathan dragged me toward the flaming wall, reared back, and spat more venom in a continuous spray. Slowly, the wall began to melt away, creating a hole just large enough for us to duck through. He pushed me through first and I tumbled into another sealed room, this one lined with weapons. An armory.

  “Hurry!” I went to grab one of the swords from the wall. It wasn’t the best-weighted thing I’d ever touched, but I couldn’t afford to be choosy. The armory was filling quickly with smoke, and Maggie would soon find the hole we’d made. I turned around to find Leviathan studying a wall of weapons carefully. “What are you doing? Just grab something and let’s go!”

  He smiled and grabbed a flail before stepping back and opening his mouth to spit more venom. The flow started well enough, but fell off after just a few minutes, and he bent forward, hacking. “Sorry. Bit dry in here.”

  I struck the wall with the pommel of the sword and kicked it while he recovered enough to finish making a hole big enough for us to climb through. I gripped the wall, but Leviathan held me back.

  “We don’t know what’s through there. Spyder’s vampires are all over,” he said.

  I nodded and stepped back, letting him go first. Once he was through, I crawled onto the marble floor of the foyer, coughing and dragging the sword along, only to bump into Leviathan.

  Vampires had formed a semi-circle around us, hissing and snapping their fangs.

  “Evening, gents.” Leviathan smirked and let the heavy spiked ball fall to the floor while holding the wooden handle. “May I introduce you to my new ball and chain?”

  “Puns?” I said, standing. “Really, Leviathan?”

  He turned his head slightly to grin at me. “Whoever kills the most vampires wins, love.”

  The first vampire leapt toward us. I swept the sword in a wide arc, removing its head from its shoulders. “There’s one.”

  Leviathan swung the flail with absolutely no grace—all force and no flair. Typical male and his brute-force weapon. At least it was functional. The spikes smashed into the side of one vampire’s head, and the force of the impact was enough to push the first vamp into a second. He tried to yank the flail back, and half the vampire’s head came with it.

  “Welcome to why that’s the most ridiculous weapon ever,” I said, slicing through another vampire.

  He spat acidic venom on a vampire that got too close. “Think what you will, but you can’t say there isn’t something satisfying about the sound it makes.” He swung it again, and it knocked a vampire’s jaw clean off with a thunk-crunch.

  The vampires pressed closer, pushing my back to his, which was far too close for comfort with that flail flying around. I pushed off his upper back and slashed a path through the vampires, taking arms, legs, and heads with a series of blind diagonal cuts. Leviathan swung the flail in a wide circle over his head, forcing them to step back or be hit. It was a mistake. They crouched and sprang toward him, moving inside his reach. He got the first one with a mouthful of venom but ran dry before he could hit the next one.

  I swept up the head of one of the vampires I’d decapitated and pitched it fastball-style at the vampire closing on him. It hit the vampire square in the side of the head with enough force to knock him off-course. Leviathan sidestepped and let the vampire stagger forward before bringing the flail down on the back of its head.

  “Nice pitch, Your Majesty. I can confidently say that’s the first time I’ve ever been saved by a severed head.” He put his foot on the vampire’s upper back and yanked the flail free before looking around. All of the vampires lay dead or otherwise incapacitated around us. “How many did you kill?”

  “More than you and that ridiculous flail.” I stepped over the torso of a vampire. He still had one arm attached and was busy trying to pull himself across the floor to bite my ankles, despite having lost most of his jaw. “Come on.”

  “You’re going the wrong way.” He pointed toward the front door. “There’s the exit.”

  “I told you, I’m not leaving without Josiah and Stefan.”

  Leviathan cast a longing glance at the front door and turned back to me, and his face hardened. “You’d throw your life away for a human and the son of the enemy?”

  I shifted my grip on the sword and marched back to stand nose to nose with Leviathan. “I’d burn heaven to the ground and tear down every tower in Hell to stand by Josiah. He’s more than an ally to me. He’s my friend, and I will die before I leave a friend to face the enemy alone.”

  Leviathan’s fingers closed around the back of my head, twisting in my bloodstained hair. He pulled my lips to his and kissed me roughly. “That’s why you deserve to rule, my queen. You’re fearless. Now, let’s go kill some more vampires before the whole place burns to the ground.”

  We left the foyer and moved carefully through the lower hallways around the meeting room. Smoke flowed out from around the doors and billowed along the ceiling, forcing us to keep low. We were just about to pass the final door to the meeting room when it burst open and Spyder stumbled out, patting out a small fire on his shirt. He paused to glance at us, his whole face covered in burns, and one eyeball nothing but a cloudy white orb with streaks of blood. I readied my sword for a fight, but he turned and ran the other way.

  A huge stained-glass window stood at the end of the hallway. Spyder never even slowed down; he just ran straight through it and crashed face first into the ground. A normal man might’ve laid there for a long moment, but he got right back up and ran off, the colorful glass sticking out of his skin.

  Maggie walked out the door next and looked at the broken window.

  Leviathan’s hand closed on my shoulder, and he pulled me through an open door into a small room with security monitors. We wouldn’t be able to hide there for long, but maybe we could get a better picture of where everyone was from the monitors. I pulled away to scan them while he stood at the door.

  “We don’t have much time,” he whispered.

  “I know.” I found the keyboard and used it to tab through the cameras.

  “Khaleda, you need to hurry.”

  “I know!” Come on, Josiah. Where the fuck are you? “There! Second-floor hallway. He’s making short work of a few vampires of his own.”

  The ground rumbled and shook. I gripped the desk in front of me and barely managed to keep my feet under me. An earthquake? No, that was a bit much, even for most earthquakes, and too localized. A crack slowly spread along the floor. I met Leviathan’s eyes.

  The door suddenly splintered, the explosion pushing Leviathan back and tearing up the floor at the same time. Another rumble and the wood beneath my feet gave way. I plummeted into darkness, only to have my fall broken by a hard plastic surface. I rolled off it and fell to a cool concrete floor littered with wood splinters from above. Someone bent over me in the dim light, but I must’ve hit my head because I seemed to b
e seeing double—unless there were two exact copies of the same strange, naked man staring down at me.

  The dark basement suddenly came alive with hissing vampires.

  “Quiet, now,” urged Remiel’s familiar voice. A third copy of the strange man strolled out from behind some shelves, tugging on a white t-shirt. He smirked at me. “You’ll all get your turn soon enough, just as soon as I’ve extracted my pound of flesh.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Josiah

  I knew something was wrong as soon as I stepped out of the bedroom. Three vampires blocked the end of the hallway, prowling in a line. They looked up when I stopped moving and sniffed the air, big nostrils flaring, then crawled toward me, snarling and hissing.

  I lowered my hands and sighed. Remiel’s blood dripped from my fingers to the carpet. “Don’t suppose you fellas would listen to reason, would you?”

  The closest one lifted his head and snarled again.

  “Take it that means no, then.”

  He leapt off the ground like a big cat, claws extended toward me. I raised two fingers, formed the dripping blood into glass-like daggers, and flung three of them at the closest vampire. All three struck their mark—one in the eye, one in the throat, and one in the chest. None penetrated deep enough to kill, but it was enough to make the other two hesitate.

  The closest vampire shrieked from where he’d fallen on the floor, then grabbed the bloody shrapnel sticking out of his eye and yanked it out. I grabbed the blood leaking from his wounds with my magic and sent a shock of power traveling upstream. With a twist of my fingers, I reversed the flow of blood in his body, sending it all flooding back to his undead heart at once. The vampire screamed and thrashed, but it was a useless effort. In the end, he exploded, coating me and the wall with his insides.

  I exhaled and made a fist while the other two vampires backed up. “I normally make it a point not to waste my blood magic on fuckwits like you, but vampires are really starting to piss me off.”

  They looked at each other, and both charged me at once. Stupid. I pulled blood from the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, forming it into lances, spears, and arrows—whatever sharp objects I could—and sent them all hurtling toward the vampires at once. The one on the left dodged the onslaught with ease, but the one on the right wasn’t so lucky. An arrow pierced his throat and pinned him to the wall long enough for a blood spear to pierce his gut. With two extended fingers, I forced the spear upward, dragging it through his body to cut his heart in two. He too exploded into a gory mess.

  The third and final vampire tackled me, knocking me from my feet. He landed on top of my hips, slashing at my face and arms. I pivoted, throwing all my weight to one side. He fell away and hit the wall with a growl. I tried to pin him, but he was too fast. He scampered away to climb to the ceiling, where he hung briefly from a light fixture before trying to crawl away.

  I slapped my hand in the puddle of blood beneath me and started to form more weapons, but he turned the corner before I could. “Dammit! Fuck me, I’ll be damned if I let that bastard get away.” I pushed to my feet and ran after him.

  Once I turned the corner, the vampire looked back at me. The hall was a dead end. He was trapped with nowhere to go.

  I pushed up my sleeves and slowed my advance. “Looks like you’re fucked, mate.”

  He snarled, turned back to the dead-end wall, and opened a hidden door, revealing a dumbwaiter. The bastard jumped into it and closed the door behind him. I raced to pull the door back open, but the little shelf he’d jumped onto had already slid down the chute.

  The basement—that was where he’d be. I shoved away from the wall and raced toward the stairs. Good, I could stop in the meeting room on the way and rip out Spyder’s heart while I was at it, and kill every other vampire I found along the way. I was bloody sick of being jerked around and used as a pawn in someone else’s plan. It was one thing when it was just me paying the price, but they’d crossed a line. Every one of them needed to die. I’d bring the whole house down on them if I had to.

  As I reached the stairs, the floor shook violently, sending me scrambling to grab the railing. “Fuck me, someone’s beat me to it by the sounds of it.”

  Glass crashed somewhere nearby, and shouts rose. Smoke slowly curled around the corner and crept up the side of the wall toward the ceiling.

  Shit, what the hell have you done, Maggie? I let go of the railing and raced down the stairs. The smoke was even thicker in the next hallway, and only grew worse the closer I got to the meeting room. Someone had set fire to the house, but it wasn’t just any fire. Blue flame leapt from a doorway, devouring the wood. I reached out and let it dance over my fingers. Angel fire. So, Maggie was capable of it, after all. She’d unlocked her magic, or Remiel had, which made her a dangerous woman indeed. Could she do blood magic like me? Call down the Heavenly Host as I could? How much angel blood did one need to be able to do any of that?

  More importantly, now that she’d revealed herself, how long would it be before Michael showed up to kill her? I had to stop her for her own good.

  I put my hand on the burning doorway and stepped into the room. Blue flame licked at my clothing and tried to stick in my hair, but it could find no purchase. I was protected from it, just as she was . If the whole place burnt up, we’d be the only survivors. Stefan, I thought, waving away some smoke. Where was he? He’d die in this, just like the vampires. I had to find him and get him out.

  The floor rumbled again, floorboards shifting like waves in the ocean. Somewhere nearby, wood split, and the floor collapsed.

  I pushed on. “Stefan! Stefan, where are you?”

  Someone moved through the fire behind me. I turned and saw no one there, although I’d been sure. Maybe the fire was playing tricks on me. I’d never seen that much angel fire in one place before.

  He’s not in here, I thought and ran through the burning room. The table had been pushed over to the wall, and all the chairs toppled. No one had died there, though, at least not that I could see. The floor was distinctly free of bodies and blood.

  The far wall had a large hole in it, one not cut by human hands. I touched the edges and quickly pulled my fingers away to wipe them clean. Some sort of acid clung to the plaster, slowly dissolving it.

  “If you’re looking for your friends, you won’t find them here,” said Maggie from behind me.

  I turned around slowly. “Maggie, you need to stop this right now.”

  “Why?” she asked, pacing. “Because you’re my father, and you said so?”

  “Because if you don’t, Michael is going to come down and kill you.”

  “Let him try.”

  She was circling me like a shark. I turned so she couldn’t pass behind me. “Maggie, listen to me. You can’t beat him. Not even Remiel with all his power is poised to defeat Michael.” I surged forward to grip her hand. “Hate me if you want, but dammit, listen to me! Just once!”

  Maggie tore her hand away and took a step back, a disgusted look on her face. “Christ, you still think all of this is about you. You selfish son of a bitch! It’s not about you, Josiah. It’s never been about you. It’s about me. Remiel is the first person who’s ever asked me what I wanted. Do you know what my answer to that question was?”

  I shook my head. “Maggie, please.”

  “Power,” she spat. “I wanted to be powerful, so no one could ever hurt me again. But the joke was on me, wasn’t it? I was always powerful. You’d just decided I would be better off with my power sealed away. He had to purge the spell from my bones, Josiah. Do you know how painful that was?”

  “Why did you call me, Maggie? You called me, and I came for you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  “I wanted you to answer for what you’d done and to know if it was all true.”

  I threw up my hands. “What do you want from me? I did what I thought was best to protect you.”

  “You destroyed me!” she screamed. “Just like you do everything you touch. And now I’m goin
g to destroy you.” She lifted one of Khaleda’s obsidian daggers.

  “Do it, then.” I ripped my shirt open and reached to grab the dagger and place it against my heart. “Right here. Cut it out, dammit. Cut it out and let me die! Otherwise, shut up and listen to me for once, you stupid girl. Remiel is lying to you. It’s what he does. He takes the truth, and he twists it. Did he tell you he raped your grandmum and dozens of others? That he murdered innocents just to see what they looked like on the inside?”

  She growled and shifted the dagger to slice across my chest. I stumbled back, putting a hand to the wound. “It doesn’t matter! None of it matters! I have all the power now. You can’t hurt me. Ron can’t hurt me. My exes can’t hurt me. No one can! Not anymore.” She put the blade against the inside of her left wrist.

  “Maggie, stop!” I let go of the burning slice in my chest and dove forward to tackle her.

  We hit the floor hard, fighting over the knife. She kicked me, but I still didn’t let go of the knife. I didn’t want to hurt her, but she wasn’t giving me much of a choice. I gripped her wrist and tried to twist it, but she broke free and went to stab me in the face. I caught her hand just before the blade touched me and used all my strength to push it slowly away from my face. She gritted her teeth, hands trembling, and shoved back.

  Magic flared between us in a trembling blast. Burning timbers and bits of ceiling crashed all around where I lay atop my daughter, trying to push the knife away. I wasn’t strong enough. The magic she was using was more than mine. I recognized the subtle power of it, the gentle strength of Evette’s power, flowing out of her alongside the abrasive, searing heat of mine. Maggie was more than I could ever be. More than Evette. She was the best of both of us, and I couldn’t let her become like me, even if it killed me.