by D. N. Hoxa
“Take care, how?” I asked because it almost sounded like he meant, you know—take care.
“They’ll kill them,” Damian said, walking over to the wizard. So I’d heard right.
“They’re just kids, Damian. You’re not going to kill them.”
He stopped mid-stride and turned to me again. “And what do you suppose we do with them?”
I threw my dagger from my right hand to my left and hit Ginger on the back of his head once more, this time rendering him unconscious. “We leave them here. When they wake up, they’ll get out.”
Damian smiled. “That’s not very smart. They’ll speak to whoever hired them. They’ll tell them everything.”
Definitely an inconvenience. “You’re not going to kill them. They’re just kids. You don’t know what they’re going to do.”
“You seemed to do perfectly fine, hitting them,” John complained.
“Why do you fight with that toothpick?” Zane asked, pointing at my dagger. It wasn’t a toothpick. It was a damn good dagger.
“A total surprise, I’ll admit,” said John. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”
I jumped off the table and landed on the floor in front of them.
“I kill hellbeasts for a living. Of course I know how to fight.”
“Okay, little thief. We’ll let them live. Let’s hope we won’t regret it,” Damian said and walked to the wizard. He pulled something off his neck—a leather necklace with a bright blue, tear-shaped crystal attached to it. Then, he took some sort of metal box out of his pocket. He put the necklace in it and put it back in his pocket. So that was his third item. I’d wondered why he’d bothered to take off his shirt for the tub.
“I’ll carry the fat wizard, sure,” Zane said when both Damian and John looked at him. In one swift movement, he grabbed the body of the wizard and hauled it over one shoulder. Then, we left.
Chapter Ten
I hated tubs. Whoever had invented them was a cruel bastard. Three items? I had to take off the black shirt and leave it behind before going into the tub again to get back to Three Hills. John had searched outside of the house, and he seemed to think we were in Brooklyn somewhere. Too far away to return by foot—especially with the wizard hanging on Zane’s shoulders. So the tub it was.
When we got back, we found Emanuel and Moira just as we left them—keeping guard by the door. Kit was there, too, squeaking in excitement that I’d come back. Which meant he hadn’t found Sonny.
But it was okay. We had the wizard. He would know where Sonny was, and as soon as he woke up, I was going to find out.
Damian had taken off the wizard’s robe, slippers, and shirt, then put the metal box with the necklace in it in the waistband of the wizard’s boxer shorts. When we came back, he put it into his pocket again.
There were no towels in this bathroom, but I didn’t care. I rushed to my clothes and put my leather jacket on before grabbing my jeans. It was torture to put them on while my body was soaking wet, but I managed, keeping my eyes down. By the time I turned to the mirror to tie my hair, everybody had left the bathroom—except Damian.
He wore his black shirt again, but he hadn’t bothered to button it up. It was wet, just like the rest of him, and his hair looked even darker than before. I avoided his eyes through the mirror when he stepped behind me. I was trying to pull my long hair from under the jacket, and it was proving rather difficult.
“Allow me,” the vampire said, and before I knew it, his hands were on me, one pulling the jacket away, and the other taking my hair out. Kit squeaked in protest while I tried to pretend that it was no big deal, that his presence didn’t affect me, and I’d like to think I succeeded.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, and pulled my hair up in a high bun.
“Ready?”
I nodded, and we walked out.
The wet wizard was still unconscious when we arrived at the Shade. He’d been sitting between Moira and Emanuel in the backseat of their car, and Moira hadn’t been too happy about it. She’d kept cursing in four different languages all the way to the Shade, and then she’d jumped out even before the car had stopped moving completely.
Zane and John weren’t there for once, but by the time Emanuel hauled the wizard on his shoulder, they found us—dressed in new, dry clothes. Fuckers. My shirt and jeans were sticking to my skin in an awful way. As if I wasn’t already extremely uncomfortable in their presence.
Just a few more minutes, I reminded myself. We were going to the Guild’s Protection Unit, where Damian was going to hand over the amulet, and then he’d wake the wizard up to interrogate him.
“You’re going to ask him where Sonny is, right? You know what he looks like?” I asked as we entered the Shade. We slipped through the thick ward, and some of my discomfort disappeared. It was a tad bit warmer in there, even though it was way past midnight.
“I do. I’ve seen him in your memories,” said Damian. “I’m going to try talking to him, but it’s highly unlikely that he’ll tell me anything, so I’m going to have to take his blood. You brother is the first thing I’ll look for.”
Moira, who was walking in front with Zane by her side, turned to us, and raised a brow at Damian, as if she was asking him something. He said nothing.
“What about me? What will I have to do?”
“You’re going to use your Talent to relocate the magic in the amulet. I will try not to include you. If there is a way to do this without you, I will find out when I take his blood. But if there isn’t…” His voice trailed off.
I nodded. “I appreciate it.”
If I got to find Sonny and somehow got out of this without having to use my Talent, it was going to be a fucking miracle. And if Damian could do that for me, I’d be forever grateful. Sure, he was a monster. I’d seen it just minutes ago when he’d attacked the wizard in Brooklyn, but he hadn’t attacked me again. He was…okay. I mean, aside from the fact that he’d threatened to expose my secret to the Guild if I didn’t help him. But, to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad working with him—so long as it ended in the next hour.
We were walking toward Valent Street, and I suspected we’d get there very soon. We were all thinking of the same place, and the Shade would feel it. It would get us there in no time. The few people who passed us in the street stared at Zane holding the wizard’s body over his shoulder, but nobody said anything. Nobody approached us.
I counted the seconds in my head as we walked up the narrow street full of two-story buildings to the sides.
Then, all the glamoured crystals turned off. One after the other, they fell to the ground, breaking, filling the suddenly empty street with a shocking sound.
Damian grabbed my hand and pulled me back. He looked at me for a second, his eyes completely transformed into black orbs that sucked in the moonlight, and his fangs were clearly visible. Emanuel threw the wizard to the ground with a loud thump.
“Zane, John, get high up,” Damian said in a whisper. “Moira, take the front.”
With a growl Emanuel moved behind us. John and Zane were nowhere to be seen, and Moira was ahead of us, two feet away. She moved—put a hand behind her and grabbed at thin air—until her fingers tightened over a thick handle. She pulled it up, revealing a thick long blade, so sharp it glistened under the moonlight. It was a sword with the blade as long as her legs, and it glowed silver, just a tiny bit, but it looked breathtaking in the almost complete darkness. So there’s her weapon. She swung it around in front of her, her motions fluid.
I pulled out my own daggers. “Stand back,” I whispered to Kit, and he hurried down my body and disappeared in the darkness. I didn’t want him to get hurt, but if I needed him, he’d be near.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Moira sang, swinging her sword around as she searched the darkness.
“Seven,” Damian said in almost a growl. “Three on each side. Moira, let’s flip them.”
“Got it,” Moira said and ran forward, even though we couldn’t see shit.
But Damian could probably smell them, and he knew where they were.
Soon, I knew, too.
Two shadows jumped from the roofs on either side of us. Bright white lights illuminated the darkness for a second, long enough to see the faces of the people coming for us. There were three on either side, and they were already engaging with John and Zane, who moved too fast to see properly, and Moira slammed her sword against the man standing in the middle, holding one of his own. He stopped her blade with his, and she spun around and went down in one motion, trying to take the man’s feet from under him.
The man jumped to avoid her sword.
Damian moved.
Once second he was beside me, and the next, he was gone. In the time it took the man to jump with his arms raised, to avoid Moira’s leg, Damian moved almost fifteen feet away. He grabbed the man with the sword by the throat even before his feet had hit the ground. Moira rose up at his side and ran her sword in the man’s chest. He didn’t even get to scream before he fell to the ground, motionless.
Then, Moira took the left and Damian the right.
They fought the other four in the darkness which pulsated with lights of magic every few seconds. I stepped in front of the wizard lying on the ground with my daggers raised. A dozen spells were at the tip of my tongue—everything I could use to knock these people out if they came at me.
But the last time the darkness ahead pulsated with a yellow light, there was only one of them left standing, and as the dark robbed the light of the spell, I could see Moira’s sword moving fast for his neck.
Silence.
Was it over?
Emanuel, who was still standing behind me, growled. The sound of ripping clothes filled my ears, but before I could turn to look at him, something exploded ahead. Red light burned in the middle of the street, and it grew and grew into a colorful wave, extending faster and faster, until it hit the others. It pushed them back hard. I saw a crouched figure—Damian—with one hand to the ground for balance, slide back as if the asphalt was as slippery as ice. He slid all the way to me before he straightened, hissing at whoever the newcomers were. The air cracked loudly, and red lightning rose from the ground and shot up, revealing the faces of three people—or rather, three masks—walking toward us.
The three of them wore black clothes, completely indistinguishable, and their faces were covered with black and white masks of deformed skeletons with tiny horns over their foreheads. Around us, Moira, John and Zane came closer. A loud, heartbreaking howl came from behind us, and a second later, a massive wolf landed just two feet to my side.
Fuck, he was huge. At least five feet to the shoulders, chocolate brown, long fur covered him, and amber eyes glowed red as the skeleton masks shot their lightning again. Emanuel growled and shot forward at the same time as Damian, and the rest followed. I took a step forward, intending to join the fight, when my eyes caught something moving on the walls of the buildings.
The blood in my veins turned to ice. Hisses and growls assaulted my ears as I watched the creatures walking on the side of the walls, soundlessly, as if they were trying to impersonate Spiderman. And there were at least ten of them.
“Damian!” I called at the top of my lungs as the first creatures jumped from the buildings and onto the street. I needed to warn them before it was too late. A look from close up was all it took for me to realize what they were.
Maneaters. They were the same same species as hellbeasts, except they were a lot different. They had humanoid forms that looked like zombies raised from the dead, and they ate people raw. There was a special division in Hellbeast Affairs that handled them. The Guild teams that hunted them were made out of at least four people for a reason.
The smell of their saliva hit me hard as the first jumped at me. I swung around with my daggers raised, aiming for his throat. I never got to make an impact.
Damian materialized right behind him and grabbed him by the sides of his head. He spun the maneater around and threw him against the ground before he bit into the side of his neck and pulled his head off almost all the way. The maneater fell on the ground, motionless, before his body began to turn transparent. That was how they began the process of returning to the Underworld—just like hellbeasts.
Damian jumped to the side again to wait for the upcoming maneater, and another came from the other side. I jumped into action, swinging my daggers the way I’d done a thousand times. I’d killed a lot of hellbeasts since I became a mercenary for the Guild, but hellbeasts weren’t trained fighters. They didn’t have fighting techniques, though they had plenty of brute force.
Maneaters were a bit different. Normally, they had reason, could form thoughts, and their eyes looked very aware. They were strong, even if their greenish skin looked like it was about to fall off them. They wore rags for clothes and their bodies were incredibly thin.
When I killed the first one with my dagger through his eye, I knew something was wrong. These were not like the maneaters I’d heard about before. They were…slower, and their eyes were glazed over, like nobody was home, even though they moved. They were still conscious but not like a normal maneater would be.
Why?
I didn’t have time to wonder.
Before I could turn to the other coming for me, he hit me with his fist on my shoulder and sent me back two steps. He knew to mind my daggers, and he dodged more than a few of my blows. Deep purple smoke slipped from my fingers as I conjured my spells. My magic hummed with life, and every spell I conjured hit its mark. I primarily worked with standard, Guild-issued attack spells, which hit the opponent with the strength of the sorcerer, but eventually, I turned to Aunt Marie’s spells. They were rougher, faster, stronger, and they cared little about accidentally hitting someone else by mistake. Blue light flew out of my fingers, a spell meant to freeze the maneater swinging his skinny arm at my face. It wasn’t exactly illegal to use these spells, but the Guild didn’t teach them. It was up to individual sorcerer families to teach their young most of sorcery spells, anyway. Some families specialized in spells like light manipulation, or tailoring, or tattooing like my friend, but it just so happens that our aunt primarily taught us fighting spells.
The maneater froze, the side of his fist just an inch away from my face. I cut through his flesh with my dagger, and his hand fell to the ground. Then, I stabbed him in the heart with all my strength and twisted my dagger for good measure. The maneater fell to the ground, motionless, and another came rushing for me.
At the end of the street, the elf, the werewolf, and the two vampires were fighting the three masked men, while Damian was right behind me, on the other side of the wizard’s unconscious body, cutting through the maneaters.
Until I heard him fall to the ground. Heart in my throat, I turned to see four maneaters dragging him down, while another two were biting into his flesh. I spun around and cut through the neck of the one lunging for me, and I rushed to the vampire. I jumped over the wizard’s body and landed on the back of one of the maneaters biting Damian. I took him with me as we flew to the other side, rolling on the ground. Magic left my fingers in a rush as the words of the spell fell from my lips, hitting him on the side of his shoulder. His rotting skin began to burn from within. The pain would be incredible, and it stopped him from moving for half a second. More than enough time to drive my dagger through his heart.
“Kit!” I shouted as I jumped to my feet. I wrapped one arm around the face of the maneater hunching over Damian. By the time I cut through his neck, he’d bitten into my forearm. A scream tore from my lips as he fell to the ground, and then another landed right over him. Damian was on his feet, half his face covered in blood, his fangs glistening. A maneater jumped on his back, and he grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him to the ground in one movement. I stabbed him in the chest with both my daggers and twisted them before coming back up. A big body fell to the side, sliding on the asphalt past us.
Emanuel in his wolf form. The brown wolf howled and jumped on all fours a
gain before running back to the masked men. I didn’t have time to check as two more maneaters came from the darkness, lunging at us. I cut through their necks with my daggers in one swing and turned to see Damian fighting two others. One of them crouched and wrapped himself around Damian’s leg. Damian pulled him off, and something made out of metal hit the ground, rolling. The box where he’d put the blue amulet.
I leaned down to grab it as it moved toward the wizard’s unconscious body, but before I could reach it, a body slammed into my side, sending me tumbling to the floor. White, silky hair stuck to my sweaty face as Moira tried to get up, her glowing sword still in her hand. I stood up, too, ignoring the bright stars that took up half my vision. But even through them I could see that the masked men were much closer to us—and only two of them were left.
Then, one of them jumped in the air, so high it looked like he was flying, and he landed just three feet away from me. His mask was splattered with blood, and through the small holes, I could see his dark eyes glistening. Vampire.
He shot forward with his hand outstretched, but Damian was in front of him in the next second, and he took him down to the ground.
“The amulet!” Moira called, as her glowing sword moved against the coming maneaters—many more of them. I reached for the amulet again as Kit’s squeak reached my ears. He was close, trying to find a way to get to me without getting stepped on by someone.
Long, cold fingers wrapped around my ankle and pulled just as I grabbed the metal box. It flew from my fingers when I fell back and hit the ground on my stomach. I rolled around as the maneater opened his jaw lined with rotten teeth to bite me. I slammed my forehead on his nose and jammed both my daggers in the sides of his neck before I pushed him off me. I looked up to see another reaching for the amulet box.
“Kit!” I shouted once more and saw his small shadow running among slamming feet and toward the maneater. “Get the box, now!”
I rolled back on the ground and jumped to my feet, as Kit climbed on the leg of the maneater. He ran up his crouched back and onto his outstretched arm and bit the maneater’s hand hard between the thumb and the index finger. The box fell from his hand and it opened. Bright blue light blinded me for a second as the amulet broke free.
