“Numbers, Colin,” she said tightly, sending a fresh blast of power at the new group of soldiers who were indiscriminately aiming their weapons at the combatants, apparently willing to kill their own in order to get rid of hers.
“A small company’s around a hundred, but could go higher. And a battalion starts around four or five hundred. Could he do that?”
She swung her head around to stare at him. “Five hundred,” she whispered. Then gritted her jaw, and stared down at the battle. Her greatest weapon might be the ability to lend strength to her vampires, but what they needed right now was another fighter. “I’m going down there,” she decided.
“I’m with you.”
“No. I need you at the back wall. That explosion was more than a diversion, and I want someone there who can think straight in the middle of a battle.”
“Fuck that, babe. I’m your shield. You’re the only person in this battle who has to survive. You die, they all die. And I already sent Tambra to the back wall with several fighters.”
Sophia wanted to punch him. She’d known he wasn’t needed back there. She just wanted him safe. But she should have known better. He was a warrior down to the very marrow of his bones.
“All right,” she agreed. “But if you get killed—”
Colin laughed as he wrapped an arm around her, and then jumped off the wall with her held close to his side. “Better men than these have tried to kill me, darlin’. Let’s kick some ass.”
LUCIFER BRACED A hand on the dash as Eleanor raced down the dark streets. It reminded him of their race through the streets of Montreal just two nights ago, when they’d been bringing Colin back to the hotel. The tires on the big SUV squealed as she made a sharp right turn onto a private road that ran along what looked like a river. Lucifer wasn’t all that familiar with the geography of this area. He knew the ocean was out there somewhere, but other than that . . .
“There,” he murmured suddenly, as the battlefield came into view. The estate was lit up like a beacon, and there were fires burning on both sides of the big house, with fighters milling back and forth in waves, and no one side seeming to gain permanent advantage. It was clear that Sophia’s people were holding the line for now. They had the better position, behind the high wall of the estate, while Berkhard’s people were concentrated around the blown gate, seeming not to have the initiative to climb the wall instead. It supported his supposition that the European vamp couldn’t control so many newbie vamps at once.
“You were right,” Eleanor said, her gaze fixed ahead. “They’re wearing uniforms.”
“You were the one who made the connection. I was almost too late in figuring it out. Stop here.”
Eleanor hit the brakes, skidding to a stop a good hundred yards away from the estate. She looked at him in question. “I need to get over there, Lucifer. I need to back up Sophia.”
“And you will, but we need to go where we’ll do the most damage.” Closing his eyes, he let his awareness drift to the battlefield. He could smell the blood and guts from here, could hear the howls and the gunfire. Not so different from a human war. Until he opened his eyes into the realm of magic. He wasn’t seeing soldiers and vampires anymore, but waves of pure power, like the light show at a concert. Sophia was marked by the enormous swell of power that surrounded her like a cloud, with flashes of amber lightning streaking out over the battlefield from her position. Duller spots of color indicated her stronger vampires. But the dullest ones of all were Berkhard’s baby vamps who were gathered around the gate, and dying like flies. It didn’t look like Berkhard had given them any direction at all. He’d simply pointed at the gate and said, “go.” And they’d all gone.
Lucifer tightened his jaw in anger at the waste of life. These men hadn’t been given a choice, either in their deaths or in becoming vampires. Berkhard had plucked them from the shelf like poorly honed blades, and thrown them at his enemy to die.
Lifting his gaze, he scanned the battlefield. He’d found Sophia, but where was Berkhard?
“Fuck,” he swore softly. There was a pattern to the fight, and he knew where Berkhard was, but did Sophia? “Let’s go,” he snapped. “We’re moving fast, Elle. We have to get to Sophia.”
She didn’t argue, but simply took off at his side, two blurs in the dark night, moving far too fast for their enemies to hit with their rifles even if they’d seen them.
As they got closer to the battlefield, they were still outside the wall, and they had to fight. Standing back to back, Lucifer wielded raw energy like sharp steel, and Eleanor slashed left and right, wielding her bo staff with deadly accuracy. As they fought, they maneuvered closer to the wall, aiming for a section that was still standing, and therefore less congested. Making a final dash to their target, they leapt to the top, lingering just long enough to get a mental picture of the scene, before jumping to the ground and racing along its perimeter to the spot where Sophia stood, shining like the sun itself, while her fighters battled around her.
The main conflict was taking place in a huge muddle of fighters where the gates used to be, the enemy forces surging forward and back, like a monster trying to force its way through the blasted opening. Lucifer’s biggest danger at this point was being “fired on” by his own allies. He was a significant power, but mostly unknown to Sophia, and completely unknown to her people. She could easily lash out reflexively if she sensed him coming in without warning. So maybe they should warn her.
“Elle,” he said urgently. “Let Sophia know we’re here.”
She gave him a startled look, clearly not understanding what he meant. He forgot sometimes that not everyone had his enhanced telepathic ability.
“Just blast your presence into the ether. She’ll feel it.”
Eleanor frowned, but he knew the moment she did what he’d asked, because he felt it, too. Eleanor’s presence was a warm embrace, familiar and loved, and he’d have pulled her down right there, and kissed the hell out of her if they’d been anywhere else. But for now he had to be satisfied knowing that Sophia would have felt it, too—differently than he did, to be sure, but just as strongly. Eleanor was sworn to the Canadian lord, and she’d been at her side for a long time.
“Let’s go,” Lucifer said, and raced toward the battle once more, confident that he wouldn’t find himself the target of Sophia’s wrath.
SOPHIA FOUGHT. IT felt like hours had passed, but the truth was far grimmer. It was barely a single hour since they’d been attacked. Berkhard’s vampires had given nearly as good as they got at first, but then they’d seemed to simply run down and wear out. Berkhard had miscalculated, or maybe he’d been forced to bring the battle to her earlier than he’d planned. But his fighters, for all their human military skill and discipline, were just too young as vampires. They needed more blood than he could possibly provide in his tight timeframe, and their early bursts of energy had depleted too quickly. They were so young, and innocent of Berkhard’s crimes. She hated the necessity of killing them, and spared them when she could, but her own people had to come first.
An unexpected swell of power had her spinning to the right just in time to meet a phalanx of soldiers charging through the fray. Sophia braced, and gathered her power, prepared to knock back this attack as she had the others, when a concussion of vampiric power slammed through the crowded battlefield, crushing friend and foe alike, and leaving only one vampire standing to oppose her. One very powerful vampire. Berkhard had finally shown his face.
Sophia glared at him over the field of fallen soldiers. Some of hers had died, but more were wounded, lying twisted among Berkhard’s dead who couldn’t even dust yet.
“Colin,” she said quietly. She felt him there at her back, as he always was. Her fierce and loyal mate, whom they’d tried to take from her. “Don’t get between us, meu querido. No matter what happens.”
“Fuck that, darlin’.”
His response made her smile, despite the blood and gore all around her, despite the desperate seriousness of their situation.
“I love you, Colin Murphy.”
“Show me later, babe. Now let’s kill this motherfucker.”
Sophia was still laughing when she launched a fireball of pure power, not at Berkhard’s head—which he instinctively hid behind a hardened shield, but at his gut, which he’d left vulnerable behind only a thin layer of power. It was a trick Colin had taught her. Hell, every trick she had was one she’d learned from him. He was the one who’d taught her to fight.
Berkhard stumbled back several steps, his gut dripping blood, and the smell of ruptured intestine wafted over the battlefield. He forced himself upright, weaving a solid shield around himself with every curse he uttered in his native German. His hatred scorched the air between them, and he grunted in pain as the vampire symbiote worked to heal his injury.
Sophia bared her teeth at him, mocking and smug, even as she constructed her own shields, layer by layer. It had been a lucky strike that hit him so hard, one he hadn’t anticipated, and she’d hurt him, forcing him to use a good chunk of his energy to heal himself early in the battle. But she didn’t delude herself into believing this fight was over.
Drawing on the core of her power, feeling Colin solid and sure at her back, she let her energy flow, trailing it down her arms to her fingertips and letting it fly. It hit Berkhard like a hundred grenades of power, pounding his shields, creating divots of energy that were more an irritant than a threat to him. The danger lay in his distraction, in the anger that fractured his discipline.
He roared furiously, and raised both arms, hands fisted as he crafted a response. Not grenades of energy, but bombs that crashed into her shields, shattering her outermost layer and bowing her entire construct inward.
Sophia forced herself to stand strong, ignoring the pain in her chest that felt as if he’d punched her heart. She ground her teeth. Berkhard might be the toughest bastard she’d ever fought, but he wouldn’t be the last. Because she intended to smoke his ass.
Re-forming her damaged shields, she eyed Berkhard’s still-gruesome gut as she twisted her energy into a lance of power. She could feel him gearing up for a fresh attack, could see his hands working behind his strengthened shields. She worked faster, wanting to hit first, to strike while he was wounded and still vulnerable.
But Berkhard recovered faster than she’d thought possible. He was old and powerful, and far more brutal than she was, as evidenced when he reached out and, without so much as a whisper of regret, simply sucked dry all of the baby vampires who’d made the mistake of standing too close to their Sire. Uniformed vampires fell as Berkhard laughed, reveling in the surge of power. When he finally lowered his gaze, it was to attack, standing there like an old bull, shoving both hands away from his body as he hurled a volley of crushing force that plowed into Sophia, cracking her shields and throwing her off her feet. She flew backwards, cursing herself for being too slow, for underestimating her opponent. Colin was there, yanking her to her feet, leaving himself wide open if she needed to draw energy from their bond. But for all his willingness, he was human, his power limited. She reached out. Her strongest people were still fighting—some few on the field before her, but most in the rear, where Berkhard’s allies had launched a sneak attack through the blown back gate. She couldn’t drain power away from any of them. If anything, it was her duty to lend them strength when they needed it to protect her fighters.
She felt a moment’s despair. There could be no victory if it meant sacrificing her own people the way Berkhard had done. She would rather die fighting to save them. She reached out . . . and suddenly there was Eleanor, strong and loyal, and wide open, her strength at Sophia’s disposal. And with her . . . meu Deus, with her was Lucifer. And no wonder Eleanor loved him. He glowed with power, a golden star come to earth. With all that power, he could have seized the territory for himself, could have simply waited until she was sufficiently weakened to attack her, and then destroyed an exhausted Berkhard in turn.
Instead he was offering that power to her, taking on the burden of her fighters and freeing her to concentrate on Berkhard.
With a whispered thanks, she stood, her legs braced wide, her eyes lighting the battlefield in an amber glow. “This is not your land,” she growled. “These are not your people.”
Berkhard’s eyes widened in shock. He’d been so certain that victory was his.
It was Sophia’s turn to laugh as renewed power filled every inch of her body, heating her veins, electrifying her nerves. It was delicious, addictive. She stretched her arms out, as if gathering in all the energy of universe. And then she lowered her gaze to Berkhard and grinned.
“Time to die, asshole.”
LUCIFER HAD RACED onto the battlefield with Eleanor a moment before Berkhard rose up like a monster of old and sucked his people dry to feed his own power. He scanned the destruction around him, noting too many bodies of vampires waiting for sunlight to turn them to dust. There was something uniquely cruel about creating baby vamps just so that you could kill them. And Berkhard had been a busy vampire. Piles of dead vamps formed a gruesome stage for the showdown between Sophia and Berkhard, but all around them the battle still raged. The numbers were dwindling, but Sophia’s vampire defenders still fought. Berkhard’s newbie vamps outnumbered them, but military discipline alone wasn’t enough to defeat Sophia’s well-trained and much older vampire guard force. For all their experience and skill, however, they were still leaning on Sophia for support—both psychological and physical—and that was preventing her from concentrating her power against Berkhard.
He and Eleanor maneuvered closer, focused solely on protecting Sophia’s back. But Lucifer was almost distracted by his awareness of a second battle that was raging behind the house. If their enemy managed to break through there, it would force Sophia to fight on two fronts, fracturing her power, and greatly diminishing her ability to engage Berkhard one on one, which was the only way this battle could end. One of the vampire lords had to die tonight, there was no other way. And Lucifer was determined that it wouldn’t be Sophia.
He knew the moment Sophia became aware of Eleanor’s presence, because she almost immediately began drawing on her for support. Berkhard was pressing his attack, killing off his people as necessary, while Sophia was trying to fight him, and support everyone else at the same time. What she needed was the powerful lieutenant she’d never had. Someone like Lucifer.
“Bella,” he whispered into Eleanor’s mind, not wanting to distract her. “I’m moving to the rear gate. You stay safe.”
She turned enough to flash him a confident smile. “You, too, baby.” And then she was back in the fight, her bo staff a black blur as she waded into the battle throng between Sophia and Berkhard.
Lucifer lingered long enough to satisfy himself that she was safe and strong, and then he raced for the back gate, circling around the big house until he could see with his eyes the battlefield he’d been sensing ever since they’d arrived. He stood for a moment, scanning the fighters, gauging the ebb and flow of the battle. And then, with an exultant roar, he unleashed the bonds that locked his power down, and let it flow.
SOPHIA RALLIED, flush with power as she formed a gleaming lance of energy and sent it slicing through the air like hot lightning. It slowed when it struck Berkhard’s shield, but it didn’t stop. Like a diamond-hard drill, it kept digging, ignoring Berkhard’s attempts to repel it, attempts that only weakened his defenses as he took energy away from his shields to attack the lance. It penetrated finally, breaching the German lord’s shields with a crack of sound, like ice breaking in the sunlight. And like sunlight for a vampire, it destroyed everything it touched, churning into Berkhard’s already-wounded gut, boring a hole that he fought frantically to repair, even as Sophia dispersed the lance’s energy, letting it expand into hi
s torso, until his entire chest was bloody and torn, as if her power was eating him from the inside.
Berkhard howled and reached out to his remaining vamps, but he was too weak to draw on them, and they were too weak to offer. He fell to his knees, his power a mangled swirl of energy that struggled to form something coherent and useful.
Sophia stalked closer, wanting the European vampire to know exactly who it was who’d bested him. She stared down at her enemy, meeting his furious glare, seeing his eyes grow dull with hatred as his power drained into the earth. She raised one hand in an intentionally negligent gesture, wanting this bastard to know just how little his death mattered to her, or to the world. And then she summoned all of the fear and rage she’d felt for Colin’s torment, the desolation at the possibility of his death. She shaped all of that into a hot ball that gleamed with the brilliant amber of her power, then she lifted her hand and blew on the sphere of energy. It shot from her hand as if driven by a hard wind, covering the short distance and driving itself into Berkhard’s gruesome chest like a bullet. It hung there for a long moment, as flesh melted and blood sizzled, and then it exploded, scattering the vampire lord into a million tiny pieces that hung suspended in the air for the beat of a heart before disintegrating into dust.
Sophia’s triumphant cry of victory soared over the battlefield, finding an echo in the cries of her people. Strong arms circled her from behind, and she turned into Colin’s embrace, holding him tightly, letting his broad chest hide her tears of joy and relief. She didn’t give a fuck what the surrounding vampires thought, didn’t care if they judged her weak for shedding tears of relief that her enemy was dead, and her mate was alive.
She was the God damned Lord of the Canadian Territories, tested and proven on the bloody fucking field of battle, and they could all go fuck themselves.
Lucifer (Vampires in America: The Vampire Wars Book 11) Page 31