Crimson Sword Stalker (Demon Lord Book 10)

by Morgan Blayde

  In a rush, the vampires accepted Kat’s bet. They had some confidence in him, but more in Kain’s legendary sword, whoever wielded it.

  The idiots. Don’t they know; the more powerful the sword, the more powerful the warrior has to be to use it? There’s a reason I don’t go around handing out demon-swords to just anybody.

  Kain came through the crowd of vampires. I don’t know where he got it from, but his sword was gripped in his hand. The vamps leaped to avoid its touch. Kain entered the open strip, painted yellow by a passing Will-o’-the-Wisp. He went up to St. Paul. “Since it is you that asks, I would be honored for you to employ my weapon.” Kain swung the sword around so he offered the blade hilt first.

  St. Paul sheathed the point of his Old West saber into the ground and reached for the other sword. His hand tightened on the black leather grip wound with a spiral of gold wire. I could see the fine patina of red on the metal from past feedings. Kain’s sword was as much a vampire as he was.

  He plucked up the saber and returned to the sidelines. He stood out front where he’d have an excellent view and handed the saber to Gloria who joined him.

  I looked over at Kat. “Time to close up the bets.”

  She nodded, finished up, and I gave her a moment to cut across the duel zone and return to Josh and the rest of her Pride.

  St. Paul faced me with his raised sword between us. He stared at the blade, absorbed, enthralled by the power he had to sense in the weapon. There was a reason Kain had carried it twenty-thousand years.

  I could have told St. Paul that he’d have done better with his saber, but I knew he wouldn’t believe me.

  I looked at the red crystal sword in my hand—and new it for a knockoff. This wasn’t Selene’s real sword, just a length of colored glass with fractures that were only obvious up close. The red lightning playing along the length was pure illusion, generating no heat, no bite. Since the hilt wasn’t insulated, I’d have felt some of the charge in the handle.

  I doubted anyone here but me realized Selene was playing a fast one. Not on me, of course. She’d know I could see the truth of any weapon I held. And now that St. Paul held Kain cursed sword, her plan became crystal clear to me. St. Paul would die after our first—and only—exchange of blows. I could see it all unfolding inside my head like an action movie on high speed.

  I looked over at Kat. “If he dies in the first ten seconds, give me ten percent of the prize.”

  She looked mortally offended, like I’d just offered her to be guest of honor at her first gangbang. “We’re going to need all this to set up our territory.”

  “You forget that as my representative the shifter businesses will be paying you a cut of their profits to protect them from the evil vampires.” I looked over at Branon and the other Bossier vamps. “No offense.”

  Branon smiled back. “None taken. We evil vampires want others to fear us. It helps us get our way.”

  Kain and Gloria both nodded.

  St. Paul stared past his sword, straight at me, and surged with a scream of fury tearing from his lungs. Kain’s cursed sword blurred, vibrating with eagerness. I could feel it’s killing intent much stronger than St. Paul’s.

  I moved in a burst of strength, faster than my vampire opponent. To my eyes, he seemed to attack at about half normal speed. The sword in my hands angled as I met his blade off-center, my body passing on his right side. At that moment, I filled the red crystal sword with golden lightning while packing its fault lines with expanding shadow.

  Designed to fail, my sword exploded in a blinding flash. St. Paul smiled like a wolf, thinking he’d done this. And then I was past him by several feet, turning to watch him die.

  Red crystal shards lay at his feet. Some had sprayed past him, leaving razor-thin cuts on his hands and face. A few larger chunks had impaled his torso. He bled.

  Kain’s cursed sword did the rest.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “It’s always easier to get what you

  want when people have no choice.”

  —Caine Deathwalker

  St. Paul staggered a step. He dropped his sword. It lay in the dirt, a sheen of crimson playing across the metal. The red crystal shards embedded in him shot from his body as his blood geysered from the wounds. I couldn’t see the scratches on his hands and face, but knew they were widening as more blood joined the exodus from his body. The liquid formed a thick mist in the air, with eddies that pulled the blood to the ravenous sword.

  He clutched at the holes in him as if to close them by force of will.

  The will of the cursed sword proved stronger. The misty blood sank into the parched metal, fully absorbed from the air. The ground beside the sword stayed dry; the blade wasn’t sharing.

  Running dry, St, Paul sank to his knees, fell on his face, and lay still. A vampire can survive on low blood; not on no blood.

  I walked back and kicked him over so his blind, dead eyes could stare at the uncaring night sky. The Red Moon beamed down on him in happy triumph.

  His wounds gaped. His white flesh shriveled and wrinkled as he aged several hundred years in a rush. His clothes caved in a little as his hair grayed, thinned, fell out, and blew away. The orbiting Will-o’-the-Wisps washed him with one color after another, each pausing to get a good look at the dead vampire’s remains.

  Not pretty.

  Held breaths whooshed out amid the bystanders as the how ended.

  “And so, the weaker sword wins.” I smiled. “Hey Kat, you should gather up these red crystals. Maybe you can sell them on the dark web. They lay like gemstones, dry of any trace of blood.

  I dipped low and picked up Kain’s fallen sword by the hilt. I straightened, his sword in my hand. It vibrated once more, still hungry, thirsting for my blood. But I had no open wounds. A last-second coating of shadow magic across my body had turned aside the shards raining my way.

  I smacked the flat of the blade with a bare hand. “Stop that. Behave.”

  It’s killing intent went inert. The slight thrumming sound died.

  Kain and Gloria approached, arm-in-arm.

  Turning, I held out Kain’s sword. “I believe this is yours.”

  Disengaging from Gloria, he took the blade from my hand and looked at it closely. “What did you do to it? It’s afraid.” He stroked the sword, giving reassurance. “There, there. It will be all right.” Still muttering to his sword, he walked off toward his RV. I think we were all done here. I followed.

  Gloria walked beside me. “You destroyed the weapon of a goddess by filling it with your own power. I’m impressed. You have definitely leveled-up.”

  I didn’t contradict her starry-eyed adoration by mentioning I hadn’t used Selene’s real sword. After all, I had looked magnificent. And silence isn’t a lie.

  My Will-o’-the-Wisps whooshed down and flew a tight ring around Gloria and me, their thoughts a hash in my mind, laughter mixed with thanks for showing them a good time. I felt their hunger to return home.

  “Run along,” I said. “I release you back to your own pursuits.”

  The wisps ringed me until they paled to nothing.

  “One thing,” Gloria said. “Counting, I’ll be your third official wife, including Izumi and Selene. That should be enough for you. I want you to give up the harem.”

  I stumbled a step. “What? How does that even make sense? You and I, we’re not human. Why bind ourselves with their tired old morality?”

  “It’s not about morality. It’s politics. I’ll be taking over Grandfather’s throne, leading the vampires in his stead. I can’t have the supernatural world believing they can get to me through a whore in your bed.”

  “Be reasonable,” I begged. “A man has needs!”

  “You think I can’t satisfy you?”

  “Well, a few times, we’ve come close to finding out, but it’s never been put to the test. We should postpone this discussion until I’ve cum in you a couple dozen times or so.”

  Kain called back over his shoulder to Gloria
. “Careful, men don’t buy the cow if they can get the milk for free.”

  Gloria hissed through gritted teeth. “Words to live by, I’m sure, but are you calling me a cow?”

  Kain hurried faster. “Just a figure of speech.”

  We passed Kat’s cabin and reached the area where the RV waited. My Mustang lay close, silently pleaded with me to go wild down the roads. I sent her a thought: Soon baby, soon.

  Kain opened the door to his RV and leaped backwards a dozen feet, surprised by a coughing grunt. Gloria ran forward, swords in hand. I speeded past her and stopped, staring inside the open door. An alligator looked back, bearing teeth in pain, covered with wounds. It was Ringo. He’d shifted, trying to use the change to heal himself—without luck.

  I counted six red gashes in him at vital spots. How he still lived amazed me—until I saw the empty tube of superglue on the carpet.

  That’s one way to beat a cursed weapon.

  Gloria peered over my shoulder. “An alligator!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Crocodiles have narrower heads and scoop-like snouts.”

  “I know that,” she said. “Tell me what it’s doing in our RV?”

  “Dying. It’s been stabbed by cursed knives, like those used on Vivian and Craig. It’s Ringo, a shifter we met here in Shreveport.”

  Kain joined us, pretending he hadn’t jumped like a wererabbit and all but pissed himself. He came around Gloria and stared at the bloody carpet around the alligator. “That’s going to be hard to clean.”

  “Use your sword,” I said.

  “Oh, you want me to end the creature’s suffering?”

  “No. We need to know whatever he can tell us about these warriors with the vine tattoos. I meant the sword can suck up the blood from the carpeting.”

  I turned to Kain. “While I’m thinking of it, you’re going to be busy. I’m sending you on a mission across worlds. You’ll be jumping ahead in time as well. Take your ghosts and bring back a lot of pictures.”

  “Of what?” he asked.

  “I didn’t defeat Anubis without taking damage. While I’m here with you, my earlier self is being tortured in a dungeon. I’ll be escaping it soon but I need you to run interference as I get away.”

  “I’m supposed to drop everything to do your bidding?”

  “I did settle down these rebel vampires for you. And I know you’ll go because you did go. Or do you intend on causing a temporal anomaly? Those can be dangerous, you know?”

  The alligator made a pained grunt, as if in agreement.

  “Fine, get the gator out of my RV and we’ll call it an even trade. Where do I go and how?”

  “Anubis’ Death World. You’ll need to summon your ghosts and have them open what you called a spirit gate. Working with them, I can send you to the right place.” I tapped my temple. “I have it in here, in my memories, the feel of the dimensional energies. I’m a god now. God’s don’t have to know what they’re doing; they just bludgeon their will into the universe, right?”

  “I’ll take your word for it, not yet being a god. Fine.” Kain closed his eyes and his face creased as he concentrated. The night wind worked up to a shriek, spiraling around us, deepening the cold. My breath appeared, a white mist, mine and Gloria’s. Kain wasn’t bothering to breathe.

  Spectral green lights—many with cameras—appeared. They closed in on Kain, circling him, as my Will-o’-the-Wisps had done to me, right before they’d shifted back to Fairy.

  The light left by the flying spirits filled inward until the air around Kain shone green. Even his skin and clothing took on that color.

  I walked toward them, calling up my memories, shoving them ahead of me. I felt the dimensional walls shiver and thin. And then Kain’s image distorted, flattening and spiraling into a two-dimensional line, as if my thoughts had bent him around an unseen corner. And then he and his ghosts were gone.

  I knew I’d sent him to the right place because the timeline didn’t adjust, putting me elsewhere. As a god, I’d have known.

  Fucking temporal physics will give me an aneurism someday.

  “Uh, Caine, this alligator isn’t looking good. Whatever you’re going to do, you need to hurry.”

  Right.

  I reached into the either, using the shadow tatt that connected me to my armory, and called the Sword of Light to me. I didn’t bother to wrap it in shadow since we were away from the other vampires, and Gloria could handle exposure to daylight or divine light. The area lit with a warm gold glow. I walked back to the RV, passing Gloria, and went up to the door. I stood there a moment—then stabbed the air above the gator. I held the radiant sword close to his back.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Change.”

  He closed bright yellow-green eyes with vertical pupils and seemed to sigh. Scales molted off him and melted away in the light of the sword. Pale naked flesh shone. His long snout collapsed in on itself, and the long, log-like tail dwindled as its mass was reabsorbed and distributed, widening and lengthening him.

  It took a while. I wasn’t sure he’d make it back to human form, but he finally did. Mostly. Ringo’s deep-set eyes each had two eyelids, uppers and lowers. The pupils were still vertical. His jaw looked heavy, the bone dense. And even closed, his mouth had visible teeth poking out. He’d gone gator so often, and stayed in that form long enough, so these distinctive traits would forever mark his humanity, hinting at what lay beneath. It was a risk all shifters faced, but not one they all felt to be important.

  He ended everything with an awkward flop onto his back, exposing different wounds to the light. They closed in moments, leaving no scars. I’d been right thinking that the cursed wounds of a cursed blade could be purged by the blessed light of a divine sword.

  I willed the Sword of Light back to my armory. Without the bright glow, early morning darkness rushed back in, hungry to reclaim me, and whisper secrets.

  Gloria moved past us both, entering the RV, disappearing from sight. The inside lights came on. The windows lit up. She came back with a blanket that she draped over Ringo.

  “Thanks.” His rough voice cracked as if his vocal cords were the last to settle down, returning to human function.

  “You made a mess of our RV,” she said.

  I knew this wasn’t about the mess, but an oblique request to know how he came to be hiding inside.

  “They put me there, thinking I was dead. It would be both a joke and an insult against Kain when he found my body; their way of saying: ‘No one is safe. We can do this to anyone.’”

  The grin on Gloria’s face was a savage promise. “I’ll have to thank them for their consideration, next time I bump into them.”

  “I found the superglue in a junk drawer in the kitchen. Sorry about the blood in there,” Ringo said.

  She shrugged. “I’ll call some minions to come and detail the RV before we return it. More crucial, who are these people with the cursed knives and the vine tatts?”

  Gripping the edge of the door, I leaned in, listening closely.

  “These people have recently settled over in the Kisatchie National Forest, near Emery Trail, and also down in the bayou near Layfette. They’re clannish, a secretive tribe. I’ve heard it said that they migrated from the Amazon, having been driven out of their territory. They don’t show their shifter forms. They may not even be shifters. All that’s known is that they have strong magic and kill with leaf-shaped knives that look more like spades than anything else.”

  “Why do you suppose they targeted my family?”

  He widened his eyes and shook his head as if he had no idea. Not quite a lie. He knew something he didn’t want to say. I could torture it out of him, but undoing all the work I’d put into saving him seemed a waste. I had another way. A patch of shadow formed on the back of my right hand, a well of deep black. The shadow formed a pattern, the shadow tatt for my Dragon Voice spell. Gloria could resist the spell, but I doubted Ringo could. I flushed the dark patch with a sizzle of golden dragon magic to activat
e it.

  Then I spoke, my voice deep, resonant, reverberating with unnatural force. “Tell me why they targeted my family.”

  He spoke at a fast pace, compelled to get it all out. “The Tribe targeted Colt because he came to where they were doing business in that biker bar down the street. First those Toms stumble in, causing trouble, then Colt arrives with a damned Liger in tow. Colt and Joshua stood there, like death gods weighing souls, like murder about to spill over. And the boy, he smells of divine power and dragon. His existence is a threat to those who think they must protect every secret.”

  I stared. “So, simple paranoia? Colt pops in while they were up to no good and they got scared that their whole operation was exposed.”

  Ringo shrugged. “Gods see deep. I think it was a South American jaguar god that drove the Tribe out of their jungle homeland.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why didn’t you tell me when I first asked?”

  Ringo sighed. “I was there, working security for the bikers. They work with the Tribe so I might be considered guilty just by association. I don’t need more trouble—at least not for a while. But give me some time to heal up and I’ll help you hunt these fuckers. They came waving money, wanting to buy information. I dropped my guard. It won’t happen again.”

  I scattered the shadow on my hand, releasing the spell, and looked at Gloria. The first faint gray wash of false-dawn hung in the eastern sky. “I’ll take him back to my cabin so you can get some rest.”

  She nodded. “Think about what I said, Caine. I’m serious. I want you to get rid of your harem.”

  Ringo’s head snapped up. “Harem? If you’re giving away hot blondes, I’ll take them off your hands.”

  “The soul of generosity.” I grabbed his arm and lent support while he scooted to the door and slid his legs out. He managed to stand but leaned on me as we left.

  “These are strong women, demanding. You wouldn’t last a week,” I said.

  “Maybe not, but what a way to go.”

  THIRTY