by Elisa Paige
What was Militis that he could so captivate the slayers? What exactly were we up against?
At the limits of my strength, I sabotaged the last rifle and dragged myself up the hill to our forces. Solidifying next to Koda, I sank to my knees, almost hyperventilating from the effort I’d expended. On the next breath, he was beside me in the grass, holding a container of sugar water for me to gulp down.
“A little at a time,” he murmured, steadying my shaky grasp.
A handsome vampire appeared to kneel by my other side, his eyes alight with humor. “Is there a working weapon in any of the four divisions?”
“Sephti’s way too thorough, James.” Koda’s voice rang with pride, heating my cheeks. “If they have a functioning pocketknife left, I’d be surprised.”
James’s eyebrows rose. “We finally get to meet her?” A broad smile revealed his dimples. “It is a great pleasure, Sephti. Koda has mentioned you so often in our phone calls, I feel as if we already know you.”
“He has?” I asked, startled.
A gorgeous female with long chestnut hair braided down her back suddenly appeared, grinning down at me. “He goes on and on.”
James took her hand with a tender smile. I had the oddest sensation they were communicating with each other, yet neither spoke. “This is my Evie.”
Stunned, I looked up at a red-faced Koda. “It’s nice to meet you both.” I got to my feet, reveling in the euphoric sensation of sugar filling my system. “I couldn’t get to the slayers’ holstered pistols and at least half have a knife. But I didn’t leave enough barrel on their rifles to fix bayonets.”
“Well done.” James flashed a smile. “Now it’s our turn.” He stood and strode off with Evie toward the immortals’ ranks.
“You okay?” Koda asked me.
I nodded. “That felt good. Damn good.”
He gave me a feral grin and vaulted onto his horse’s back. “I’d like to chew your ass for not following the plan, but I can’t.”
Climbing on my dirt bike, I gave him a quizzical look.
“You no doubt saved a lot of lives by taking out the rifles and crippling their vehicles.”
I snorted and kick-started my bike. “If you want mayhem and destruction, I’m your gal.” Flicking a glance toward the vampires, I asked, “How’d James get them all here so fast?”
“He already had them positioned in a fifty-mile radius around the reservation. Most were warriors in their human lives, so rallying is second nature. The trick will be managing fighting styles, since they include a Spartan, two Crusaders, a handful of Celts, six Mongols and three Japanese samurai. There’s even a male who served under Ptolemy V.”
Astonished, I looked at the immortals standing in perfect stillness. Courtesy of my History Channel addiction, I had what humans called a fan-girl moment. It was thrilling to be in the presence of individuals who’d experienced the ancient worlds I’d avidly learned about on TV. “How did James pull that off?”
“He’s a bit of a legend among vampires since he’s the only one to ever survive one of their tribunals. Besides, there isn’t a vampire alive who’d pass up the opportunity to kill slayers. Going after Militis himself just sweetens the deal.”
Engines started and the horses began to prance, reacting to the rising tension as we made final preparations. Weapons were locked and loaded and bawdy encouragement called up and down the lines.
“How did you become friends with a vampire in the first place? His kind descend from European supes.”
Koda answered absentmindedly as he watched our forces making ready. “James fought on my people’s behalf during the Indian Wars. We’ve been friends ever since.” Calling out to Ahanu in Lakota, Koda lifted his rifle over his head. Thirty yards away, where he sat his horse in another group of mounted warriors, Ahanu returned the salute and whooped, touching off a cacophony of noise as the nations’ people echoed him.
Koda gave me a tender look, holding my gaze. “My wastelakapi.” His voice was low, meant just for me.
I squinted up at him. “You ever going to tell me what that means?”
“Beloved.” He grinned when my face flamed.
“There aren’t any words like that in Fae,” I murmured after a moment.
“Then I will share my words with you.”
I gave him a wistful smile. “I’d like that.”
“Keep yourself safe, wastelakapi, so that I can.” Koda’s eyes flashed then, the warrior putting the man to the side. “Kick ass, Sephti.”
“You too. On both counts.”
At James’s command, the vampires swept down the hill at speed, exploding into Militis’s flank in utter silence. As men and vehicles erupted into the air under the immortals’ ferocious onslaught, the slayers’ leader cut off his monologue midrant. It took several precious seconds before his slayers snapped out of whatever spell he’d cast to find themselves under attack. Which was when they also noticed the condition of their weapons. I had to admire their discipline—rather than panic, the soldiers abandoned their useless rifles and the sabotaged mounted machine guns, drawing their pistols and running to engage the immortals. Knowing that the slayers’ weapons were loaded with vampire-killing bullets, I spared a moment’s worry for Evie and James.
As the division commanders tried to swing their outermost ranks to meet the vampires’ charge on their left, our right wing charged down the hill to strafe the slayers on that side. The enemy turned to meet the deadly assault, which was what we’d been waiting for. Koda let loose a war cry and the center mass joined the fight, smashing into Militis’s front lines.
I’d only ever fought on my own two feet, so I leaped gracefully off the dirt bike at over thirty miles per hour, timing it so the riderless machine hurtled through the enemy like a runaway missile. Rolling when I hit the ground, I came up with my daggers drawn and it was hand-to-hand from that moment on.
Fighting like that, in the midst of opposing forces, was new to me. An assassin’s milieu is stealthy infiltration, cover of darkness and working singly. Even when multiple bitterns were triggered against the same target, we fought as individuals. But en masse like this…the noise alone was staggering. The painful volume of clanging weapons, rifles and pistols discharging all around, people and horses screaming, dirt bike engines whining…it was a violent shock to my sensitive ears, to my acute awareness. I could see only those combatants immediately around me and the bloody bodies beneath my feet. The fragrance of crushed prairie grass mingled with the horses’ sweat and terror, with the sting of the bike exhaust, with the coppery scent of blood.
I fell into a bizarre pattern of stab, thrust, dodge, stab, thrust, dodge as each enemy who faced me fell to my twin daggers. Eight, fourteen, twenty uniformed soldiers fell beneath my whirling blades and still they kept coming, their eyes alight with zealous hatred even as they died. Over the crack crack crack of gunfire, the horses’ shrill neighs and the shrieks of the dying, Militis’s voice roared out, the megaphone distorting his exhortations to his men to kill the supernatural scum. The more he bellowed, the brighter the slayers’ eyes blazed and the harder they fought—as if they were once again under some kind of compulsion. Again I wondered what Militis was that he had such power over his men.
A ripple spread through the fighters all around me as the battle shifted. Even as Militis screamed louder, the slayers began to give ground. A few at first, then an entire division. Then another. Soon, more than half the slayers’ forces were falling back. Adrenaline lent speed to my weary limbs and I pressed harder, cutting down four more enemies in quick succession.
We would’ve won then. We should’ve won. But we’d not factored in Militis’s fae allies. Between one breath and the next, I sensed an appalling number of warriors shift into the battle, all of them centered where I’d last seen the vampires. It was genius, really, since the warriors’ swords, arrows and their aughisky mounts’ bits were all made of ehrlindriel—every one of them capable of killing immortals.
Horses
screamed hideously and blood thickened the air as I felt our lines falter. I’d long since lost sight of Koda and the realization that he would’ve been in the heart of the mounted warriors sent my heart plummeting
Spinning toward the closest vehicle, which happened to be Militis’s, I decapitated the enemy who came at my side, dodging and eviscerating the next slayer before he could fire his pistol point-blank into my face. Shading, I leaped high onto the rear platform, scanning the melee surging all around the tall vehicle, desperate to see Koda.
Far off to the right, I caught sight of him rallying thirty warriors as he fired shot after shot into the enemies trying to cut his people down. The horsemen disengaged and galloped off with Koda at their head, before whirling back to strafe their opponents’ flanks. Shouting with glee, I watched his band attack relentlessly as they employed the Plains style of fighting—swift, lethal guerrilla attacks on Militis’s greater numbers. As Koda and his riders swept clear, Ahanu led another band to harass the same enemies. One after the other, with clockwork precision, the brothers brutalized the invaders. The strikes sowed fear, confusion and escalating violence as terrorized and wounded aughisky turned on their uniformed allies.
It was working brilliantly too until more Dark Fae shifted to meet the brothers and their fighters. The horses didn’t stand a chance against the overpowering number of carnivorous aughisky and had to withdraw, even as the riders turned at the waist to fire at their pursuers. Fully a quarter of the fae and more than half the aughisky fell to the Native Americans’ bullets. Then our forces on dirt bikes charged the enemies’ rear, harrying them not just with pistols and long knives, but with their machines’ iron and steel components. The metals were poisonous for the fae creatures to be near, throwing the closest riders into convulsions and panicking the aughisky into bolting out of control.
“Yes,” I hissed. “Yes!”
With fighters locked so tightly together, the brutal combat seethed back and forth across the prairie. Blood and bodies covered the ground, smashing the long prairie grass flat. From out of nowhere, thirty vampires appeared and slammed into our immortals, the sound of the collision carrying across the din of battle. From my invisible perch atop the command vehicle, I saw James rally his forces and push the attackers back. A blur of lethal motion, he seemed to be everywhere at once, urging his immortals on, filling in key gaps when the battle surged the wrong way, saving an ally, decapitating a foe. And right by his side, fighting like a creature possessed, Evie was a whirling demon—a strange bluish light coruscating around her like an electrical corona.
I wasn’t the only one to notice James’s importance, however. While the vampiric charge was repulsed, its few survivors fleeing for their lives, twenty slayers formed up to aim their pistols at James as a veritable wave of soldiers hit his front line. A pale wall rose high in the air mere feet from James as the weapons fired. Mini flares burst all along the pulsating shield, I guessed from the bullets exploding. Evie was glowing even more now, her fangs fully extended and she was kicking major ass as bodies flew all around her—attackers headed in James’s direction targeted for the most vicious reprisals.
Dozens of humans fell to our immortals’ vastly superior strength and speed, and it seemed the slayers had been repulsed. But the soldiers were relentless. Immediately behind the first assault came two more waves. I lost sight of James as he went down beneath an aughisky, then Evie ducked in the same spot. A second later, the aughisky and its rider were sailing high into the air and both were crackling with blue energy.
Although it felt like an eternity, I’d been perched on Militis’s vehicle for less than a minute, only long enough for brief views of the battle. It was high time I got back to work.
On the armored vehicle’s front end, with only two soldiers by his side, stood the man who’d caused all of this. Still bellowing into his megaphone, Militis’s features had taken on a different cast, like they were…like they were melting. As if extreme rage had softened the flesh of his face so it hung loose on his bones. I’d had enough experience with humans to know it sure as hell wasn’t normal.
Which meant he was a supernatural.
Which meant I could kill him.
Thrilled by this new development, I unshaded and dealt with Militis’s guards when they turned on me, then went after the bastard himself. With practiced grace, I struck, my blades whistling through the space where his throat had been. But the guy somehow evaded the swift blows. Not letting my astonishment slow my follow-up, I drove myself harder, throwing everything I had into the effort to bring Militis down. Never had I faced an enemy with the ability to dodge me, not even vampires. Yet for every ten blows I struck, only two actually landed. The only thing I had going for me was that he was having to work so hard to avoid my attack that he didn’t have time to draw a weapon.
Snarling savagely, I dredged up every shred of energy and threw myself at the uniformed bastard. Forcing him ever backward, I drove Militis even harder, making him dance across the armored vehicle’s raised side to keep from being eviscerated. His next dodge unbalanced him and he fell, rolling smoothly when he hit the ground. I followed him down, managing to slice the guy’s side before he got himself free.
Infuriated that I’d almost had him, I snapped a round-house kick into his jaw and screamed, “Die!” When his head whipped back from the blow, I drove in, scoring him deeply across the chest and shrieking with savage triumph. Using his reeling stagger against him, I drove my shoulder into his belly, in the same motion slicing my dagger through his left hamstring. As he collapsed, I coiled to slit his throat.
“Kiss my ass!” he roared back at me.
I stumbled and almost fell. He’d answered in Fae.
I looked at his face then. Really looked at it. And realized who it was I was fighting. Who was leading the slayers in their attack on the reservation. Who’d been behind everything, right from the start.
“Reiden,” I whispered.
Letting the last shreds of his glamour fall, the Dark king glared up at me, his tri-color eyes blazing with contempt. Then his gaze flickered to the side, just a hair, but it was all the notice I needed. Throwing myself over his prostrate form, I rolled to my feet and whirled, daggers up, to face the three slayers who’d tried to back-stab me.
Launching a blistering attack, I cut the guards down—mere humans, considering how fast they died. As the last slayer staggered, his pistol loose in his grip, Cian shifted in to stand by his king’s side. Lip curled in an arrogant sneer, my former stablemaster set an arrow to his bowstring and drew.
As the catgut stretched to full draw, as I stared at my impending ehrlindriel-tipped death in the seconds before it could find me, the entire scene snapped into crystal clarity. Without conscious thought, I moved faster than I’ve ever managed, catching the dying slayer as he fell. Wrapping one arm around his waist and holding him like a shield in front of me, I lifted the hand that still held his gun. Sighting down the sleek weapon’s barrel, I squeezed, forcing the limp mortal’s finger to squeeze the trigger. Only when the clip was empty did it register that the first bullet had blown out Cian’s heart and I’d been firing into a corpse thereafter.
Hurling the dead slayer aside, I closed on Reiden. Having made it vertical, he was leaning heavily against the armored vehicle’s flanks. Only the king had the power to stand so close to that much iron and steel, let alone touch it. But it was taking all his focus to hold off the convulsions, which meant he couldn’t shift away from my attack. It meant I had a chance against the greatest warrior among the fae.
“You’ve just guaranteed your death, bittern,” Reiden said, the promise of violence layering his harsh tone. “Berand will set the Hunt after you for killing his brother.”
“But I didn’t kill Cian. Your slayer did.” I grinned hugely. “My scent isn’t on the pistol, only his. There’s nothing for the hounds to follow.”
“You’re forgetting that I saw the whole thing.”
“I’m forgetting nothing.”
Baring my teeth, I closed on Reiden and coiled to attack.
“Do you even know how to kill me?” he sneered.
“Killing is what bitterns excel at. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”
“My geneticists do not breed regicide into your species, assassin.”
Smiling sweetly, I shook my head. “Just a little something special I bring to the party.”
I was beyond elated. Beyond jubilant. Here, at long last, was the culmination of all my hopes and plans. Having killed Cian too fast to fully satisfy my thirst for vengeance didn’t in any way dampen my satisfaction that he was dead.
Compounding this jubilation, I had Reiden himself within reach of my daggers, already injured and unable to shift away. It was as if the fates or the universe or whatever had aligned perfectly, just for me. There were no words that could adequately express the emotions surging through me as I moved into Reiden’s defensive circle. The king merely glared at me, his chin up and eyes blazing defiance. It occurred to me that, in his extraordinary arrogance, he didn’t really think I’d kill him. As only a fae king could be, he was utterly convinced of his own invincibility.
I was just the bittern to prove him wrong.
Sweeping Reiden’s feet out from under him, I snarled at his pained cry when the hamstrung leg folded. I lifted a fallen Native American spear and drove the four-inch long steel point deep through his shoulder and into the ground. A shriek tore loose from the king’s throat as his eyes showed white and he blanched with sudden, stark fear.
On the verge of a frenzy, with all of my rage and grief and growing exhaustion pounding in my head, savage triumph tinted my vision red. This is it, I crowed to myself. First Cian and now Reiden! Not needing Halloween or the vampire guards abandoning their posts sweetened my victory immeasurably—without even knowing it, the bastards had come to me.