Broken Elites (The Vampire Legacy Book 3)

by Rita Stradling

  “Wipe off your shoes before you get in,” she said as she flung open the driver-side door.

  The interior of Parker’s fancy-ass SUV was pristine, with white leather seats and cream carpet, but it reeked like a seventy-year-old smoker’s trailer. “Where’s Justin, Parker? I’m literally sick with worry, and if you don’t clue me in, right now, I will probably puke all over your back seat.”

  It wasn’t an exaggeration. Everything I saw tonight was amassing in me in a nauseating stew of worry and terror.

  Parker glared back from the front seat. “He’s in the back. Get in…” She turned the key in the ignition, “Or, I’m leaving here without you. If we stay a minute longer, we’re all dead.”

  I climbed up in the vehicle, but before closing myself in with Parker, I knelt on the back seat and peered over. Justin looked more like a lump of bloody flesh than any kind of living creature. Blood oozed from where his wings had once been. Great smears of crimson covered his back, but I saw his chest rise and fall infinitesimally. I could see the side of his familiar face, the sharp lines of his features, the high cheekbones, and the indent at the center of his chin.

  I reached over the seat, but four words screamed through my mind, making my hand still.

  This can’t be Justin.

  The winged man that looked exactly like Justin was here, and he was alive. There was no reason to delay any longer. I reached for the door when Parker screamed.

  “Fuck! The strzyga found us. Get down!” The SUV lurched forward, making my door slam closed as we shot into the parking lot. Our headlights illuminated fifty figures sprinting toward us, but not from the Pitchfork’s clubhouse. The massive winged creatures were surrounding the street.

  Parker swerved toward the exit, when a dozen feathered demons launched into the air, landing ten feet from us.

  “Play with us, Justin Roberts!” Boomed through the air, so loud we could hear it perfectly in the SUV.

  “Damn it!” Parker howled as she turned onto the grass.

  The anti-vamp lights blasted into the car, burning my irises like saltwater thrown in my eyes, and I screamed as we spun and slammed into metal. Something scraped over our van, screeching like a thousand bats. The whiteness bleaching my vision vanished, and I blinked open my watery eyes to see a long road riddled with potholes. Only our headlights broke the darkness of night, and as we spun onto another back road and left the searchlights behind, the country road behind us glowed to my dhampir vision. The street glowed a deep blueberry shade, and the chain-link fences around us were indigo.

  “The street is empty,” I called back, seeing only the glowing road and open night sky.

  “Are you sure? I can’t see shit back there.” Parker Cleary peeked over her shoulder as her hand fiddled in her console for her cigarette pack.

  “Yeah. No one is back there—”

  A thundering boom erupted through the vehicle, and the back of the SUV buckled down. The window cracked into a web of fissures. Both Parker and I screamed, and I reached down and grabbed Justin’s shoulder, pulling him toward me, but he was fast asleep and far too heavy to move. The boom ripped through the air again, and a clawed hand punched a fist-sized hole straight through the safety glass, sending pebble-sized pieces flying in all directions.

  “It’s on top of the car!” I called out as I did my best to cover Justin with an arm.

  There was a flash of rustling feathers through the hole, and then an upside down face lowered to peer through, illuminated from our interior light.

  “He is ours!” The winged creature proceeded to claw open the safety glass enough to peer through with two glowing red eyes. The face beyond appeared human and young, except its features were too severe and sharp, and becoming even more so every second. Parker had called him a strzyga demon, but he was nothing like the images I’d studied in History. The demon had sharp ears and massive fangs, but they didn’t look wrinkled and repulsive like a vampire. Instead, this creature was streamlined and so magnificent the sight of him stunned me for a second.

  “January! Take this!” Something metallic slammed against my shoulder, and when I reached back, an enormous gun fell into my hands. It was bigger than any handgun I’d ever seen, and I’d seen dozens. In King Street, you didn’t necessarily have running water, but you had a handgun, a shotgun, and sometimes, even a permit to carry both.

  “Give him to us. He’s ours. We want to play with our kin, or we’ll play with your guts,” the low, resonant voice boomed through the space, sending ice shooting through my veins.

  Play with us.

  It was what was written in corpses across the Academy lawn.

  I raised the gun, pointing at the hole in the safety glass. “Get off our car, or I’ll shoot…”

  The demon only dug in deeper, curling his claws into the glass and ripping chunks away.

  “Fucking shoot!” Parker screamed as she took another corner at probably sixty miles an hour. My shoulder pushed into the side of the vehicle as I took aim. My stomach flipped, and I pulled the trigger.

  I tensed for a kickback, but instead of spewing a bullet, the gun shot a long stream of water. Parker gave me a fucking water gun. The liquid hit the demon’s face, and the creature screamed, a high-pitched inhuman howl, but he didn’t let go of our vehicle.

  “The Princess of Blood is ours!” The demon cried into the night, and the sound echoed from a dozen other voices behind us. “The Princess of Blood is ours…”

  The demon before me screeched, long and low, but it cut off in a gurgle as my squirt gun wore away the skin of his chin until I saw the tendons and bone that law beneath.

  As I singed away his flesh, I realized that I had just declared war on the deadliest threat the Hawthorn Group had ever seen.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A long stream of water sprayed through the hole in the back window of Parker’s SUV. My heart thundered in my chest as I kept squirting the massive gun, hitting the strzyga demon. The creature clung onto the back of our vehicle, clawing through the reinforced glass.

  As I hit him straight in the face, it uncannily felt like I was playing one of those fair games where you had to use a water gun to shoot clowns off a shelf. I’d never actually played the games at the county fair, as the projected fun of squirting a clown for thirty seconds and winning a five-cent toy never seemed to justify two dollars. But, in those games, you weren’t spraying the clown’s face off and seeing the bone beneath. I gagged as bile burned up my throat and nose, but I kept the spray directly through the ever-widening hole in the back window.

  Every time Parker bumped over a curb or spun onto another street, my water stream hit the glass, and panic flooded me as I readjusted my aim. The scent of burning meat stung my nose as droplets of water sizzled on Justin’s arms and exposed back.

  “The spray keeps hitting Justin!” I yelled. “We need a blanket to cover him.”

  “We don’t have a fucking blanket. Keep shooting straight,” Parker yelled back from the front seat of her SUV as she veered around the corner so fast the vehicle tipped and rammed me into the door.

  “Then drive straight!” I yelled as she took another turn. My shoulder ached, but I kept my aim as true as possible. “This demon isn’t going to get bounced off. Drive straight.”

  “Fucking handle it, January! If he gets in here, we’re all dead!”

  Parker didn’t need to remind me. The creature furiously ripped out flakes of the stubborn glass, as his red eyes burned through the hole. There was no doubt in my mind that if he made it into our vehicle, I’d have a long and painful death by those sharp white claws.

  As he ripped, he threatened, “Daughter of vampires… soon you will be crowned with your own entrails…”

  I sprayed the demon’s eyes and nose until there were only holes and white bone, but he was still ripping, and he pushed his head and one shoulder in. His hand reached down, his fingers barely to Justin’s arm as the demon’s other hand clawed at the window, making the hole larger
by the second.

  “You’ll wear a gown made of your flayed flesh,” the demon hissed through a lipless mouth. Only a few scraps of skin remained on his face. His jaw was bare, and his sharp teeth caught in an eternal smile.

  I grabbed for Justin’s sizzling shoulder and held out my gun to hit the demon point-blank. The water gun sputtered, and the stream came in small spurts. I moved my aim for the demon’s fingers, but they were too close to Justin.

  “He’s still coming! The demon has to have a weakness!”

  “Go for the wings…” Parker called back as she skidded around the corner, hitting the curb and making our vehicle lurch. I saw a flash of chain link fences and old warehouse buildings all around us.

  “Do we have any more ammo?” The massive metal weapon in my hands probably only weighed a pound now.

  “No!” Parker shouted. “That shit is worth ten thousand dollars an ounce.”

  “Come with us, son of Dimitri…” The demon’s long nails scraped over Justin’s arm, inches from grabbing his wrist.

  “Try to keep your driving straight, Parker!” I jammed my finger down on the window control, steadied myself, and then leaned out of the window. Wind blasted my face as the cold bite of the night rushed in. We were traveling at speeds better suited for a freeway on a tight, one-lane industrial backroad, and even having my head out like this would be deadly if Parker swerved, and damn, she was swerving.

  The tinted windows prevented the dome light from escaping, and my dhampir vision came alive in the darkness around the SUV. The demon perched on the crumpled roof of the vehicle, leaning over the edge with his wings folding on his back. In my night vision, the feathers glowed a golden yellow. There were thousands. It would take ten minutes to disintegrate to bone. I grabbed onto the oh-shit handle and climbed all of the way out of the vehicle.

  I leaned as far as I could and got first sight of the demon’s wing joint shooting out at his shoulder. It was a bright white color behind his golden, mottled wings. I aimed the gun, sucked in a long breath, held it, and then I pulled the trigger. The gun sputtered and shot a short stream of liquid, and then clicked, empty.

  Blood exploded out, splattering into the wind. The demon screamed an inhuman sound that made every hair on my body prickle as one of his wings fell limp. He lifted his head and rage-filled eyes found mine. I ducked back in the SUV as he clawed closer, his talons slicing into the metal. There was a flash of wings and claws, and I jammed my finger up on the window control as panic flooded my chest. The window rolled up quickly, but his claws shot through the remaining inch gap and gripped on. His talons pushed down, and I brought the thick metal gun grip down on the gleaming white claws, smashing him again and again.

  “You’re dead…” There was a loud screech and resounding boom, and then the safety glass beside me fissured into a spider web of cracks. A scream escaped my lips, as I dove to the other side of the bench seat.

  “Get the fuck off my car!” Parker roared. The SUV veered sideward, hitting a pole that scraped along our side. There was a loud rustling, and then gray and white feathers brushed past the hole in the back window, before a severed, bloody wing joint flew past. There was a loud scraping, and then our back wheel bounced over something that made a wet sound.

  On the road behind us, the glowing demon launched into the air, but slammed back down. He ran after the car, but on foot, he fell behind quickly. “Where are the other ones?”

  “They flew up above us. Strzyga demons can dive-bomb faster than the eye can see, but we’re driving under a fuckton of powerlines, and that should keep them back for like a half-mile…” Parker yelled back, “Those demons can sense Justin. Take this and pour it on his body.” She shook a glass bottle in her hand and then held it back to me. “It should cloak whatever weird-ass demon pheromones he’s letting off.”

  I unscrewed the metal cap, leaned over the back of the seat, and poured the clear liquid over Justin’s bloody back. “Why didn’t we do this in the first place?”

  “I did,” Parker yelled. “Obviously. I poured four bottles on him while you were taking your sweet ass time leaving the Pitchfork Clubhouse. Clearly your boyfriend is letting off some nasty ass demon juice, and the spells aren’t lasting very long. Thankfully for us, I saved a bottle. You’re welcome. Oh, and go ahead and drink some blood while you’re back there, fang face. It’s in the cooler in the back.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I really would prefer you don’t attack me while I do you this ridiculously big favor. Thanks.”

  I wasn’t injured, but I found the small cooler and drank one fishy-tasting blood bag after the other. Parker and I didn’t say anything more as we raced into the familiar streets of Downtown Brightside. Streetlights illuminated the smooth roads, and only then, was I absolutely sure the demon was gone.

  After snapping the thick plastic medical cooler shut, I climbed up into the front seat and leaned into the dashboard. “How stupid do you think I am, Parker?”

  She glanced over while sticking a cigarette between her lips. Lighting it with a bright pink lighter, she answered me on an exhale, “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “You don’t need to. It’s already crystal clear—and it’s seriously insulting. There’s absolutely no way that you did all of this on some return favor for me handing my boyfriend a note. Your brother broke two students out of Alderwood who in turn got me out of Blackburn, and then you waited in the parking lot with a cooler full of blood while I took all of the risks and had to go into debt with a demon to get Justin out. You came fully armed with something that costs like a million dollars in ammo, that we used without a second thought. You knew strzyga demons were after Justin—something I knew absolutely nothing about—and you knew how to mask his demon pheromones from them. This isn’t a favor for me. By my count, you still owe me a small favor for delivering that note to Justin and a colossal life-and-limb risking favor because you used me tonight. All you need to deal with is a wrecked car, but now I owe a demon a favor and a gang of strzyga demons are planning to crown me with my entrails. How much are the Roberts paying you to do this?”

  Through my entire speech, Parker sucked on her cigarette and glared at the road. “One million, and I have to share it with fucking Mikey,” She said eventually, before she ran her tongue over her lips. “I should have asked for ten.”

  I closed my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. “Parker, you’re taking me with you to the Roberts’ and getting this witch to hide my absence from Blackburn. I don’t care how they do it, but the only way I’m going to get a straight answer from the Roberts is if I show up with Justin — or whoever that is in your trunk right now. And, I deserve an explanation.”

  “Fine.” Parker pushed her cigarette butt into an ashtray in the dashboard. “But, then we’re square.”

  “Hell no, we’re not.” I leaned further into the dashboard so I could glare straight into her face. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to fuck me over?”

  Parker glanced at me, her blue eyes lighting with humor. “Fine, January, you’re a bad bitch…or whatever. We’ll do this your way. But for the record—Blaze is a half-demon—and if you were going to owe anyone in that clubhouse a favor, he’s your best bet. Also, I would have been murdered the moment I stepped foot in there, and I knew you’d survive and have a good chance of getting Justin out alive. So before you get all vindictive and pissy, just know that I made the only choice that had a chance in hell of getting your boyfriend out alive.”

  “Maybe… but I’m still not sure that whoever is back there is even Justin.” I leaned back into the seat.

  “Oh, that’s him. Do you really think Gina Roberts would spend a single penny saving the life of anyone other than her precious baby?” Parker rolled her eyes. “At least this answers some questions about why Justin bugged the fuck out on me at the party. All these years, Justin has been hiding one hell of a secret. Honestly, with that family, nothing would surprise me at this point?”

  Parker’s SUV
veered to the right, heading toward the community where the wealthiest members of Blackburn hid from the rest of us behind iron gates and burly security guards. The gate guard didn’t blink twice at the state of Parker’s vehicle, just waving us straight through.

  The sky brightened to a pale vermillion as we weaved around the private roads in silence. The door to the Roberts’ mansion stood open, and Henry, the Roberts’ butler stood there, his form silhouetted by the warm interior light.

  “First favor, Parker.” I pivoted to her. “What does the Hawthorn Group know about me? What intel do they have on me?”

  Parker rolled her eyes, and her nostrils flared. “We will never have enough time to go over all of that. Their file on you is thicker than my fist. And, trust me, I don’t have the type of clearance to look inside it. I know it exists, and that’s about it.”

  “Give me the short version, then. I just want to know what they’re telling you to spy on me about, because we both know they’re telling you to spy on me.”

  She slammed into park, making both of us bounce back against our seats. A sharp pain squeezed at the back of my neck, probably a muscle spasm now that my adrenaline was waning. I rubbed it but kept my focus on Parker.

  “They want me to make sure you’re not skipping town,” she said as she exhaled a cloud of smoke. “They think you’re planning on bugging out, and they’ll do almost anything short of killing you to stop that from happening. If you are planning on skipping town—I’d do a serious rethink. They’ll lock you in an underground cement cell before ever letting you escape. Nice talk. Now, move along.”

  My heart sunk. Braiden must have taken the time to go through my drawers and found the bus schedule that I’d tucked in there. I had wanted the informant list to be fake so much that I had almost convinced myself that it was. “How do they think I’m planning to escape?”