by Alyssa Day
Well, if she wasn’t going with Option A: Figment of Her Imagination. Damn, this was confusing.
Either way, she had some questions for him. She was a social worker, for Pete’s sake. She put herself in danger as a matter of course. And she’d been inside this man’s mind. She knew he had no intention to hurt her. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she knew.
As she dragged on a pair of jeans, she laughed without much humor. “Danger is my middle name.”
The voice sounded in her mind, amused again. Glad she could provide so much entertainment for him.
She could literally feel his laughter curling inside her as he spoke. Or sent her thought waves. Or whatever.
Really? I would have guessed Trouble.
She grinned before she realized she was doing it. Her first smile in a long time. “You’d better be prepared for trouble, Conlan, if you can’t give me a good explanation for what you’re doing in my front yard.”
The smile faded from her face. Great, there was an Option C. He was some kind of freakish stalker. Like she hadn’t had enough to deal with, for one night.
For one lifetime.
But she wasn’t a coward. Or stupid, either. Riley yanked a sweatshirt over her head then grabbed a phone, the better to dial a quick 911 with. Then she ran down the stairs and peered through the peephole. Yes, he was still there. Conlan and some men who were clearly also from the Land of Hunks.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled open her front door. And that’s when all hell broke loose.
Vampires. It was raining materializing vampires.
She’d seen them before, sure, everybody had. Not just on CNN either. She’d seen them up close and personal, prowling the alleys and the backways of the city. Looking for victims who were all too willing, dangling the elusive promise of immortality, luring the young, the weak, the hopeless.
But she’d never seen a full two dozen of them, swooping down from the air, arrowing in on the tiny patch of lawn in front of her house.
The same lawn where Conlan stood with his men.
She snapped out of her shock; shouted a warning. “Watch out, Conlan! Vampires!”
But he and his men were already looking up, unsheathing daggers of some sort. The blades flashed like copper fused with diamonds, beautiful and deadly.
Sort of like the man himself.
Riley, get back! Conlan thundered in her mind. Close that damn door and hide.
But she stood there, frozen, the phone forgotten in her hand. The silence was surreal—battle scenes in the movies were always full of clashing armor and shouting.
The battle scene before her was all the more terrifying because of the near cessation of sound.
The largest of the vamps landed in front of Conlan, sword drawn. Conlan crossed his daggers to block the blow, then sliced down viciously, striking the vamp’s left arm. With an upswing, he drove his dagger into the attacker’s heart, and the vamp slumped to the ground.
More men came running from around the corner of her house. They were dressed in black leather and long coats, like some terrifying biker gang. One of them, hair in a long, blue braid to his waist, broke the silence. He roared—a name, a challenge—something that sounded like “Poseidon!” then flew into the air in a wild leap, a sword and dagger held up and out in front of him. He landed on top of a vamp who’d tried, but failed, to twist out of the way.
Blue-hair thrust both his weapons into the vampire’s neck, twisted his clearly powerful arms, still yelling fiercely, and then yanked the blades back out.
Riley stood, unblinking, hand-to-hand combat and sword-play crashing through the night around her.
Focused only on the vampire’s head.
The head that fell off his body and rolled to a stop a few feet away, right next to her dormant azalea bushes.
She clutched at the door frame with one hand, slowly shaking her head back and forth, swirling fog threatening to obscure her line of sight . . .
Well, that didn’t happen, did it? Because nobody decapitates vampires on my lawn, right? Can’t be good for the grass. Or the azaleas.
She recognized the symptoms, objectively. She was going into shock. Numbness, graying vision, a spreading cold—
Then she looked up and met Conlan’s gaze. He’d felt her terror. It must have distracted him, because she could tell he didn’t notice the vampire who leapt at him from behind, aiming his sword at his back.
Her numbness shattered.
“Nooo!” she screamed, hurling herself off the porch and toward the two of them. Unthinking. Urgency driving her. She had to help him. Had to protect him.
Must protect him.
“Leave him alone!” she shouted. She jumped on the vampire’s back, reaching around his neck to grab at his throat. Throttle him.
But it was too late. The vampire hissed at her as he pulled his sword back, dripping with Conlan’s blood.
“You leave him alone now!” she repeated, mindless with rage. Her self-defense classes kicked in, fingers reaching, digging, in a barely remembered tactic.
Go for the eyes, Riley. No matter how big they are, you can always go for the eyes.
She dug her fingers in, gagging against the feel as her nails dug into squishiness. The vampire screamed with agony and twisted, heaving her arms away from him.
Smashing her to the ground.
He turned, clawing at his streaming eyes, and Riley tried to crawl backward to escape. Then the vamp roared out his anguish again, spittle flying from his cracked and twisted fangs, and focused on Conlan, lying so still next to her. The vampire reared back one booted foot, clearly planning to kick Conlan in the head.
Riley sucked in a torrent of air and screamed with everything she had in her. She launched herself in front of the vampire to somehow block his foot from crushing Conlan’s skull.
And a hailstorm of coppery blades sliced through the air above her to land in the vampire’s chest and throat. His foot wavered, and he staggered.
An arc of blue fire—or electrical current—or something not human, no, never human, not even vampires had blue fire-balls, what the hell?—shot from the hands of one of Conlan’s men and incinerated the vampire’s head.
Incinerated.
Demolished.
As Riley collapsed back onto Conlan’s still form, she started to laugh.
Then she couldn’t stop.
She laughed and laughed, not registering when the laughter turned to sobs, finally looking up and seeing the ring of men looking down at her, blades drawn. Her head throbbed, ached, seemed as if it would split open from the reverberations of . . . what, exactly?
The one standing a little apart from the others tilted his head and pinned her with his icy green gaze. He was beautiful, like the rest of them, and yet his eyes were flat. Dead. In her job, she’d seen hardened recidivist criminals with more emotion in their eyes than his had.
“Conlan is not seriously harmed. The blade was coated in poison—the dose would have been fatal to a human,” he stated, imperiously looking down his nose at her. “It will be little trouble to clear it from his blood.”
She hiccupped a little, caught her breath, and then glared her defiance up at him. “You look like a serial killer, buddy. But whoever you are, unless you really can help Conlan, you’ll have to come through me to get to him.”
A collective gasp went up from the others, all six, no, all seven of them—she’d almost missed the one lying on the ground, blood dripping from his head as he raised it to look at her.
“She seeks to protect him where we have failed,” he gritted out, wiping blood out of his eyes with one hand. “And we, sworn to his service.”
Another one of them who looked an awful lot like Conlan nodded his head, face grim, then barked out a laugh. “She sure pegged you, Temple Rat.”
Laughing Guy dropped to a crouch on one knee before her, smile fading to somberness, and bowed his head. “Your courage is unknown to us in humans, lady. You offered yourself to protect my bro
ther. But you must let our healer help him.”
She clutched at her head, trying to keep it from cracking open, shocked into silence as she recognized the source of the driving pain. It was him. The one kneeling in front of her.
No, not exactly. She looked at them all, wonder drowning out fear. It was all of them. Their emotions. Their rage and pain.
Riley reached out one hand to the huge man who claimed to be Conlan’s brother, gently touched his arm, and then flinched back. “Pain,” she whispered. “Fear for your brother. Fury and vengeance . . . who is Terminus? . . .”
As the man’s eyes widened, mirroring her own shock, she scanned the rest of the group. Colors, too many colors, pain, the percussion, the drums of their fury pounding in her brain.
Pounding in her heart.
Pounding in her soul.
Too much. Too much. Toomuchtoomuchtoomuch—
She smiled her best, most professional “Hello, I’m your new social worker” smile and primly clasped her hands together. “I’ve had enough now, thank you,” she whispered.
Then she closed her eyes and, for the second time that night—the second time in her entire life—she slipped into unconsciousness.
But she heard him—Conlan’s brother—as she fell down the dark well of silence into the black. She heard the shock in his voice.
“She read me, Alaric. My emotions. And she may have been thought-mining me. She was reading us all.”
Barrabas lifted his head, hissing. Drakos raised his gaze from the maps on the table of Barrabas’s private chamber. “My lord? What is it?”
“It’s Terminus,” Barrabas snarled, smashing the lamp off the table and to the floor. “He is dead.”
“But—”
“Permanently dead. His connection to me snapped. I felt his violence and rage, as a master vampire will feel all of his bloodline.” It was an unsubtle reminder. Drakos was not of Barrabas’s bloodline, and so Barrabas always faced a twinge of doubt about him.
“Something—something new, Drakos. We’re facing something new, and whatever it is—whoever it is—has the power to manipulate the elements.”
Drakos turned his head to regard the steel vault door built into the wall. “Is it Anubisa? Are you still convinced that she seeks a return to Ragnarok?”
“The Doom of the Gods. Maybe. She is daughter-wife to Chaos. What else would she seek? She feeds not on blood, but on terror and despair.”
As I would if only I could, and more and more as the years pass.
Drakos interrupted his master’s thoughts. “Is it time to consult the scrolls?”
Staring at his most brilliant general, Barrabas pondered for a moment. Is he loyal? Can I trust him? Or, does it matter? If he helps me discover the answers I need, he can meet with an accident easily enough.
Barrabas crossed to the vault. “I think, perhaps, that it is.”
Chapter 11
Conlan’s nerve endings burned, pain searing through his body. He came awake with a roar, clutching the throat of the figure in front of him. “Death to the apostates of Algolagnia!”
And looked into Alaric’s pitying eyes.
He released his viselike grip on the priest’s throat, looking away. Pity was the one thing he’d never stand for—not now, not ever.
He needed—he needed—
“Riley?” he asked, voice hoarse. The healing process always burned the body, left the throat sore as if parched. Glancing down at his torn and bloodied shirt and the smooth, unbroken skin where he’d last seen a sword point piercing through, he knew he’d required a little help from Alaric.
Another debt to pay.
Alaric exchanged a glance with Ven, who stood on Conlan’s other side, then looked back at Conlan. “She is unharmed,” he said.
Conlan dragged himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, scanning the familiar room that he recognized as part of one of Ven’s safe houses. It hadn’t changed much in the years since he’d last seen it. Same utilitarian furniture. Same movie posters on the walls.
A couple of predators snarled down at him from the Komodo vs. Cobra film poster opposite the bed. Conlan looked from the giant beasts to his advisors and nearly laughed. He’d give even odds if the K or the C came up against his brother or Alaric.
On second thought, the reptiles wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Yeah, she’s all right physically,” Ven added cryptically.
Conlan stood, swung around to face his brother. “What do you mean, ‘yeah, physically’? Is she hurt? Did one of the vamp bastards get to her with some kind of mind trick?”
He was breathing hard with the effort of remaining upright, but damned if he wanted them to know. It was bad enough that Alaric got a free pass to his mind with every healing.
Ven shook his head. “No, in spite of the part where she threw her body in front of a vamp’s foot to protect your thick skull. Or—hey, this is good—the part where she jumped on the back of the bloodsucker who skewered you.”
Conlan’s blood rushed out of his face, and the weakness in his knees doubled. “She put herself in danger for me? Where is she? I must see her now. I’ve got to—”
Alaric smoothly interrupted. “Perhaps you might say a word to young Denal, who believes, in spite of being outnumbered three to one—”
“Yeah, and in spite of his head wound,” Ven interjected.
“That he has failed his prince,” Alaric continued, his eyes snapping green fire at Conlan. “Perhaps you might consider the well-being of your men above that of a human.”
Conlan clenched his fists, a berserker rage spiking inside him. He forced it down. “Perhaps,” he mocked, “perhaps you might tell me where they all are, so I can go see for myself.”
Ven motioned with his hand toward the doorway of the room, and Conlan headed toward it, first stumbling, then gaining strength as he walked. When he reached the doorway, he paused and looked around at Alaric. Remembering his duty, no matter how much the words stuck in his throat. “My thanks for the healing. And maybe, instead of berating me, you can figure out why my mind is full of nothing but this human female I just met.”
Ven laughed. “Hell, Conlan, I can tell you that. She’s freaking hot—”
Conlan whirled around, his hand rising without his volition to grasp the front of Ven’s shirt. “You’d better stop right there, brother,” he snarled. “Compare her to your whores at your own peril.”
Ven whistled, clearly unimpressed, then peeled Conlan’s fingers off his shirt. “At my own peril, huh? If she’s got you using formal speak on me, big brother, I guess she really is special.”
“Special, definitely. I’d say dangerous, as well,” Alaric said quietly.
Conlan ignored him and headed out the door, finally clearing the fuzz out of his brain long enough to remember that he could reach out to Riley’s mind. But when he tried, he got nothing.
Which didn’t help with his peace of mind, by a long shot.
Ven led him down a short hallway to one of the house’s several bedrooms and pushed open the door. Conlan could see a form huddled under the quilt, unmoving.
Fear pierced him. He clutched Ven’s arm in a steel grip, as much to keep from running to her as for support. “You told me she was unharmed.”
“Relax. She just seemed to shut down, mentally. Processing overload or something. And no wonder, after what she did.” Ven sketched in the details of the battle, including Riley’s part in it.
Conlan stood there and listened to how a fragile human had put her life on the line for him, and pain stabbed into his chest. Right in the vicinity of the heart he thought he’d lost.
When Ven got to the moment when Riley had stood up to Alaric, Conlan’s eyes gleamed. “That must have put a sword-fish up his ass. A ‘mere human’ standing up to Poseidon’s high priest? Damn, but she’s brave.”
Then he shuddered, self-loathing crashing through him. “Of course, I should have been protecting her. And the rest of you, too.”
Ven put a
hand on his shoulder. “Relax, bro. We had no way of knowing the vamps were sheathing their blades in poison these days. That sword wound wouldn’t have even slowed you down without it.”
Dragging his gaze away from Riley, Conlan looked at his brother. “And the rest of the Seven? Is anybody hurt?”
“Come on, I’ll show you while Riley sleeps for a while. Mostly nicks and bruises, nothing they wouldn’t get in a good game of Tlachtli,” he said.
Conlan almost laughed. Trust Ven to compare a deadly battle to the ancient Atlantean game of court ball. Well, the Aztecs had sacrificed the losers when they’d played it, right?
They headed back down the hallway toward the room Ven had turned into a games and TV room. “Denal got bashed pretty hard in the head. Luckily, his skull is damn near as thick as yours. Plus, he’s got a big-ass case of ‘I failed my liege lord’ going on. You may want to say something.”
Conlan clenched his jaw. “I’m a big boy. I don’t care about me. But you—all of you—need to protect Riley for me.”
Ven’s mouth dropped open, then he snapped it shut. “So. I’m gonna wanna know how this chick brought you to this state in—what?—a few hours?”
Conlan blew out a breath as they rounded the corner. “Yeah. I’d like to know that, too.”
The six warriors lounging in the room came to various forms of attention when Conlan and Ven walked in. Justice, his ever-present sword sheathed on his back, leaned against the far wall against the Godzilla movie poster. He paused from studying the view outside the room’s single window, flicked a mocking two-fingered salute Conlan’s way, then turned to look outside again.
Bastien and Christophe were doing battle on the air hockey table in the corner. Bastien’s huge hand swallowed the mallet he used to strike the puck. They looked up at him, but didn’t stop knocking the yellow disc back and forth across the table.
Brennan muted the sound on the television, then slowly rose from the couch to stand. He gazed at Conlan, dispassionate as ever. Poseidon had cursed Brennan for a minor transgression involving a Roman senator’s daughter by removing his emotions.