Blood Bond

by Shannon K. Butcher

  Ever since Connal had betrayed the Sentinels, Tynan had been careful with who he let have access to the weakest among them. One day they’d all take their turn sleeping, and it was important to believe that they were safe.

  The ground shook again, and this time, sparks sprayed from overhead where electrical wires passed. Hairline cracks formed in the walls and floor. The steel door unlocked, but Ronan had to shove it hard it to get it to open.

  Inside was a stone chamber where one of their kind usually sat guarding their sleeping kin. Today, it was empty as all available Sanguinar were needed to heal those wounded in battle.

  The stagnant scent of rot and starvation was thick in the cool air. Every few days, they’d check to make sure that none of the weak had died, and far too often, that check would reveal that another one of them had passed.

  He flipped on the lights to preserve his power.

  There were too few of his kind left. Perhaps fifty sleeping in coffin-sized chambers along one stone wall. Their fronts were hinged glass panels that opened for access. Dim red lights inside each chamber came on to reveal the shriveled, shrunken remains of what had once been a strong, powerful people.

  Most of the females had been killed two hundred years ago. The few who remained were wizened and gray, their hands curled in like hooks. The men fared little better, though they’d had more body mass to draw from in reserve. Still, they looked more like mummified corpses than people now.

  In the opposite wall was a vault that held the most precious treasures the Sanguinar had found—artifacts that could heal or kill, tomes of knowledge that would have been long lost to the world if their kind hadn’t saved them. Gold and gemstones to sustain them if the other races ever turned their backs.

  Ronan hadn’t been inside the vault in ages, but that key Justice had found made him wonder what else might be hiding in there now. It opened nothing he knew of, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some locked chest or book inside the vault they needed to access.

  The artifacts would have to wait. Right now, he was more concerned with saving lives.

  He pushed in a flat section of the wall—one that looked like one more chiseled rock than a button. Inside was a polished stone bowl that fed to a series of tubes that led to each of the sleeping Sanguinar. They didn’t need much blood to survive, but they did need some. He and his brothers took turns feeding them, and because of his chase after Justice, he hadn’t done his duty in too long.

  Time to make up for that.

  Justice stared at the Sanguinar, her mouth agape. “We have to get them out of here.”

  “We will.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to feed them, wake them. They’ll have to walk, because we can’t carry them.”

  “You think those dried up husks are going to be able to walk before whatever is trying to burrow in here reaches us?”

  To punctuate her concern, the ground rumbled and dust began to fall from the joints between the stones.

  She was right. It sometimes took days before a Sanguinar could move properly after a prolonged sleep. They sure as hell didn’t have that long. They didn’t even have hours.

  “Do you have a better idea?” he asked.

  “Not me. Her.” She tapped her temple.

  “She got us this far. What does she want us to do?”

  “I don’t know, but I think it has to do with these.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a wad of what looked like giant rubber bands. They were a variety of colors and about six feet long.

  “What are those?” he asked.

  “Resistance bands. For exercise.”

  Ronan had no idea how one would exercise with such a thing, but there was time for fitness training later. “What are we going to do with them?”

  “That floating thing you did to us? Do you think you could do that with them?” she asked, hooking a thumb toward the Sanguinar.

  He did a quick calculation of the weight. Even dehydrated and shriveled, his kin would still be a considerable weight if he tried to lift them all together. And there wasn’t time to do any less. They had a few minutes at most before the wall was breached.

  “I could try.”

  “You need to do more than try. If we can’t get them out of this tomb, we’re going to end up being buried down here with them.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Joseph could no longer feel his arm, but he kept fighting. Lyka was in his mind, a constant reassurance that she was still safe—none of the demons that had broken through the line had reached her.

  The sky glowed pink in the east. All he and his men had to do was hold steady for a few more minutes.

  Morgan was still hacking away at the Synestryn who weren’t smart enough to flee the rising sun. It was hard to tell over the din of combat, but Joseph thought the man might actually be singing as he fought.

  All the other warriors were spent. They’d been fighting for hours, constantly facing rank after rank of fresh Synestryn troops. The wearier the Theronai became the more mistakes they made and the more hits they took. A split-second glance down the line told Joseph that his men were gaining injuries faster than the three Sanguinar left on the field could heal them.

  In a few seconds, the healers were going to have to flee the sun and there’d be no one left to stop the flow of blood.

  Lyka was behind them, taking a stance on higher ground. He used their telepathic link to tell her to give the order for the Sanguinar to go inside. They couldn’t risk cutting it too close.

  Her high, clear voice rose above the noise, issuing his order.

  Now the fighters were alone.

  Why weren’t the remaining Synestryn fleeing? Certainly, they had to know the sun would fry their asses. Didn’t all creatures of darkness know when their enemy, the sun, was approaching? It wasn’t exactly a surprise.

  Still, the demons kept fighting, their mouths pulled back in a grin like they had a secret.

  That’s when Joseph noticed. The demons remaining on the battlefield were different. Not much, but a little.

  They had the same gray skin with patchy bits of fur. Their heads were bald, almost reptilian in texture. They were tall and strong and fought with swords, rather than teeth or claws.

  But their eyes…their eyes were lighter. Not black. Red. And their blood, while dark, was not nearly as dark as those he’d killed earlier in the night.

  Just as Joseph’s fears about what that meant entered his head, the first rays of the sun rose in the east. Golden tendrils of light slipped through the trees and over the horizon to land on the demons before him.

  They didn’t scream. Their skin didn’t smoke or light on fire. If anything, they squinted like they wished they’d brought sunglasses. But that was it.

  The day was no longer the sole domain of the Theronai, humans or Slayers. Now it belonged to the demons, too.

  ***

  Even with Madoc taking on much of her pain, Nika was struggling to deliver their little girl.

  She thought she’d felt labor pain before, but now she realized that whatever she’d experienced through her sister’s mind had been muted. Dulled. Either that, or she’d completely forgotten just how excruciating it was to shove a small person from one’s body.

  She was so tired. She’d used most of her strength in combat, trying to help her friends and family survive the night. She hadn’t thought to save more for herself. She hadn’t realized just how physically taxing this process was.

  And now she was paying the price for her ignorance.

  “You’re doing great,” Madoc said from between her spread thighs.

  She wished he were there for a more pleasurable pursuit.

  Nika didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. He was a solid, glowing presence in her mind, hovering over her thoughts with that overprotective vibe she’d grown so used to since meeting him.

  He knew just how close she was to the end of her strength.

  She felt him pull sparks of power
from the air and shove them in her direction, but she was too tired to even reach for them.

  “No, you’re not,” he said. He came to the head of the bed and slipped his left hand around the back of her neck. The ring he wore connected to the necklace she wore, allowing the flow of power from him into her to move more easily.

  The luceria hummed around her throat as if soaking him in.

  She leaned her head against his arm, not caring about the sweat she left on his skin.

  “You’re doing great,” he said. “Almost there.”

  Nika felt the demon’s presence before she heard it.

  “We have company,” she said, but he was in her mind and already knew what she’d felt.

  His sword was propped by the barricaded door, ready for use. They both looked toward it at the same time.

  There was a sniffing sound under the door, then a scratching as something pawed to get in.

  “It can’t get in,” Madoc whispered.

  “It’s strong. It has friends.” She was panting, still not recovered from the last contraction. “And I’m too tired to blow it up.”

  “Don’t worry about the furry fuckers outside the door. Focus on this. Right here, right now.”

  She didn’t want to. She so preferred killing to labor.

  The muscles in her body surged, then clamped down as the next contraction hit. Pain gripped her hard and drove all thought from her mind. She knew she was supposed to push, but there was no more push left in her.

  “The fuck there isn’t,” he said. He took her sweaty face in his hands and said, “We’ve been in worse situations than this. I know you’re tired. I know demons are at the door. I know it hurts like a motherfucker, but none of that matters. Our baby needs you to dig deep, be strong. So that’s what you’re going to do. Now fucking push!”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Justice was surprised that touching these mummified vampires didn’t creep her out at all. In fact, instead of disgust, what she felt toward them was a kind of kinship, and a shit-ton of pity.

  How desperate had they been to choose this state over staying awake and being hungry? How much pain had they endured to make this kind of life the better option?

  Justice couldn’t even imagine, and she prayed she never would.

  They’d found a few gurneys in one of the rooms used to store medical equipment. Ronan removed the feeding tubes snaking down each Sanguinar’s nose and brought the bodies to her. On each gurney she created a precarious stack of mummified people.

  They were stiff and dry, locking together like twigs. Some of them were more hydrated than the others, and those bodies were laid on the bottom of the stacks so they wouldn’t hurt the brittle Sanguinar on top.

  None of them moved or breathed. And they were so light.

  “Are you sure they’re still alive?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Ronan said. “Their sleep is magically enhanced. They only seem dead. I promise they are not.”

  “Is stacking them like this going to hurt them?”

  “Not as much as whatever is trying to break through the wall will.”

  Justice used the resistance bands to hold the bodies in place, making sure no stray arms or legs could slip free and catch a doorway.

  They put as many of the Sanguinar on each gurney as they dared, then lashed the gurneys together with more of the stretchy bands.

  The most gruesome train ever.

  At the end of the long room, dirt began to trickle from a crack in the wall. The rumbling was so loud now, they had to shout to hear each other over it.

  Any second, that wall was going to cave in, and a hungry horde of monsters was going to flood in here.

  “Time to go,” Ronan said.

  Not yet! Use the key, said the woman in Justice’s mind, her tone one of urgent fear.

  “Where? How?”

  The vault.

  “We can’t go yet.” Justice glanced at the steel vault door set inside solid stone, then she looked at Ronan. “Tell me you can open it.”

  “I don’t care about treasure. I only care about saving lives.”

  “She says we have to open it. She’s been right all along.”

  He hesitated.

  The wall began to buckle. More cracks formed. More dirt spilled inside.

  “Now, Ronan!”

  He ran to the vault, punched a series of numbers, pressed his hand against a panel and leaned close to the screen. A light passed over his eye, then a light turned green and there was a hiss of changing air pressure.

  He pulled the door open enough for her to slip inside. Lights flickered on, casting the space in a brilliant glow.

  The vault was a room about fifteen feet by twenty. On one side were stacks of gold bricks, tubes filled with gold coins, vials of glittering gemstones and a mountain of cash. There were ornate crowns and necklaces that had to have been hundreds of years old. On the other side were books and scrolls, and glass-lidded boxes displaying jewelry and daggers made from a dull silver metal. Many of them had the same intricate markings as the brooch and shaft they’d fused into a key.

  Justice found it interesting that the artifacts on the right side, which looked to be of far less value than the gold and jewels on the left, were treated with far more respect and reverence. Each one had its own padded case and was labeled with a shiny silver plaque. There were names and dates that declared whose possession each had been and when and where that item had been found. In some cases, the purpose of the item was listed.

  Cures blindness, binds demons, removes memories, slays the dead.

  The list of bizarre uses continued, but Justice was out of time.

  “What are we here for?” Ronan asked.

  She lifted the key. “This.”

  He looked around. “What’s it for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Look down. Below your feet.

  Justice did. In the center of the room was a small circle inscribed with more of the same marks on the key. Inside that circle was a depression, and in that depression was a hole that looked like the outline of the brooch.

  She knelt down and saw that the hole went deeper than she could see.

  Another loud boom shook the walls. A gold and gemstone necklace slithered from the table and hit the floor with a clatter.

  “We need to go,” Ronan said.

  Justice slid the brooch into the hole until it wouldn’t go any further, then she turned the looping end of the key. The metal spun easily, and she could feel a series of clicks vibrating through the shaft.

  She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen, but nothing in the floor moved. Nothing popped open, no panel slid sideways to reveal some secret treasure.

  “Do you know what this opens?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No idea. I didn’t even realize that lock was there.”

  She saw something out of the corner of her eye—a flicker of movement on the far side of the room, behind Ronan.

  A section of the vault wall eased down on a hinge. The opening was the same size as those where the Sanguinar had been stored, but this one had no glass front. In fact, if not for the key, she never would have known that this crypt was here.

  Not a crypt, she reminded herself. A sleeping chamber.

  Dust swirled as if the door to this chamber hadn’t been opened in a very long time. Inside was another Sanguinar mummy, but this one was wrapped in heavy chains, locked at its wrists and ankles.

  Ronan’s face paled. He crossed to the Sanguinar as if worried it would lash out at him.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “It can’t be. I thought he was dead. We all thought he was dead. Tynan said he’d killed him centuries ago.”

  “Killed who?”

  “Sargon, the mad Sanguinar.”

  Bring him, said the woman. At the same time, Justice felt the strong compulsion to do just that. She was propelled forward on feet she didn’t control and reached into the chamber with arms not her own.
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  “Don’t touch him!” Ronan said.

  “Too late.” Justice pulled his feeding tube from his nose and reached into the alcove.

  The mad Sanguinar was light, like the rest of the bodies she’d carried. He was taller than most, and a bit unwieldy, but she managed to get him out of the hole in the wall without dropping him.

  Ronan took him from her arms. “This is a mistake.”

  “Maybe, but it’s one we’re going to make.”

  They piled the mad Sanguinar on top of the last gurney in the train, just as the first chunks of stone began crumbling into the room.

  There was no more time. They had to go, now.

  Ronan pulled on the first two gurneys while Justice brought up the end of the mummy train. They raced down the hall toward the elevator, which was large enough for at most a third of their convoy.

  “We have to take the stairs,” she said. “You can float them, right?”

  He gave a tight nod, but she could sense his lack of certainty, even without seeing his face.

  Even shriveled and dehydrated, there was still a lot of weight to move.

  “I’ll take some up the elevator,” she said.

  “No. We stay together. There’s no telling what demons are roaming on the floors above. Too many broke through to risk it.”

  “It will mean more work for you. I can’t help you float them up the stairs.”

  “I will manage.”

  Another loud boom shook the earth around them. More rocks crumbled from the wall in a deafening avalanche. She could hear snarls and howls now. The demons were nearly through.

  Ronan opened the door leading to the stairwell. Justice took it from him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “You can do this. If you get tired, I’m here for you. My blood is here for you.”

  “It’s just the sun stealing my strength.”

  He jogged up to the first landing, then closed his eyes. A second later, the first gurney began to lift, staying perfectly flat and level. As soon as it reached the end of its tether, the second lifted, then the next. The whole string of beds rose and began making the awkward journey up the steps.