The Flawed Legacy (Legacy of the Shadow’s Blood Book 1)

by E G Bateman

  “Ha! Dolores is a genius.” As he held it, the lights blinked out one at a time. He held his hand out to Lexi and transferred energy to her, then picked up the second and half-drained it, leaving two blue lights. He picked his bag up and threw the power pack into it.

  They looked at each other and nodded. She turned to Jesús. “Start counting.”

  In silence, they stepped through.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the space of two steps, they were in a room that stank of abandonment and urine. Someone screamed, and they all looked up. The shriek had come from an upper floor.

  Scott twirled his finger. “We’re shielded, but I’ll have to drop the shield when we get moving or I won’t have the strength to fight whatever’s coming. Was that Dick screaming?”

  “I hope so. That means he’s still alive.” Lexi withdrew her flashlight from her pocket and played it around the room. A set of shuttered doors with small windows at the top stretched the full length of one side.

  “Is this a garage?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I’ll take point,” she stated and took a step toward the door.

  “Wait. Take this.” He fumbled in his bag, brought out two earpieces, and passed one to her.

  Lexi smiled. It was Kindred protocol to wear the communicators on a mission. “You can take the boy out of Kindred…” She placed it in her ear.

  “We don’t know what might be up there or how many. Be careful.” Edward shifted and padded through the room, sniffing. She followed him with the light while he examined dark corners and shook his head at the disgusting smells.

  They moved carefully to the hallway. She gestured that the shifter should go left and scout the rest of the ground floor and he nodded and turned away. Lexi smiled briefly at the absurdity of a nodding wolf, then climbed the stairs a few steps ahead of Scott. She reached the door to the second floor and extended her hand toward the handle when a garbled message came through her communicator. The sound confused her and she couldn’t understand why it only came only through the earpiece and not from directly behind her. She turned and gasped when she realized a black cloud was enveloping her and there was no sign of Scott. Lexi froze and waited for him to appear or to repeat what he’d said over the comm.

  “For fuck’s sake, Lexi. Move your ass now!” His voice came loud and clear and she guessed he must have boosted the signal with magic.

  “Forward or backward?” She hesitated and waited for the response. Finally, she panicked and turned to retreat down steps she couldn’t even see. Her assumption was if something was going wrong, it was probably behind her.

  The door flew open and before she could turn again, she was yanked inside by the back of her jacket. It immediately slammed shut.

  She found her feet in a second, slightly dizzy and with her blade out, but couldn’t identify anyone to aim it at. The room was in complete darkness.

  Whatever it is, it’s really fast.

  Lexi fumbled for her flashlight but she had lost it, probably on the stairs. A muffled yell issued from farther inside the building.

  Her mind began to play tricks. She imagined being surrounded by demons with their teeth bared an arm’s length away, and a cold drop of sweat trickled down her back. Cautiously, her senses alert, she drew her second blade. The long, metallic ring seemed twice as loud in the dark.

  She tried to breathe slowly to quiet the sound of blood rushing in her ears. It occurred to her that if she could hear her blood, so could a roomful of demons or vamps. Her heart pumped faster.

  As she strained into the silent blackness, she realized she could still hear Scott and that his tiny, tinny voice came from somewhere ahead of her. She’d also lost her earpiece, obviously.

  Knowing she had to move, her first instinct was to go toward the device, but she feared they’d be expecting that and block her exit. Instead, she backed up to the door. It had been reinforced and she couldn’t feel a handle.

  Well, shit!

  From there, she inched along the wall to where the window should be. Wooden boards covered it, and she didn’t dare to turn her back to the room to try to pry them loose. She continued around the room and kept the wall at her back while she waved her blades ahead and to the sides. As she moved, she tried to calculate the best use of the magic she had.

  I could use it to fill the room with light. But if I do that and there are fifty demons in here, I’ll need the magic to deal with them. What if I use it on whatever’s in here but Scott’s injured and I need it to heal him? What if I need it for Dick or Edward?

  Life was so much easier with Scott beside her.

  Lexi tried to recall if she’d seen any of the room before the door slammed but remembered nothing of any value. She’d heard something fall and roll when she landed and realized that would have been the flashlight. It could have rolled anywhere, though, so wasn’t of much use to her.

  The pained howl of a wolf broke the silence. Was that Edward? Where was Scott?

  She wanted to use magic but because it was finite, it was the last option.

  Her next step was taken with the thought that she hoped the floor was intact and that she wouldn’t step into thin air. Scott’s tinny voice hissed from the earwig again a second before a crunch cut it short, followed by silence.

  The sound had pinpointed the location of something, though. She flung a silver-tipped star and was rewarded with a screech.

  “You bitch! You’ll die for that,” said a voice from the darkness. It wasn’t one of the demons, then, so probably a vampire. Maybe the one who killed Leonard. She now had the sense it was only the two of them in this room.

  “I’ll die for that? Surely you planned to kill me anyway.” She hoped he might respond so she could throw another star.

  A second later, he surged into an attack that hurled her face-first to the floor.

  His knees dug into her back, and the swords were ripped from her hands. She lay helpless and grimaced as they clattered across the room. Instinctively, she stretched her hand forward in an effort to activate the magic in her unhealing scar, but her arms were wrenched apart.

  I should have used the magic earlier.

  Drips of liquid landed on her ear, and the metallic tang of blood filled her nostrils. She must have caught him in the face with her shuriken. The thought gave her some satisfaction, but she wasn’t strong enough to struggle against him. She had run out of options.

  Here we go again, she thought and twisted her head to let the blood drip onto her face. It ran in rivulets down to her nose, chin, and as anticipated, to the edge of her mouth. She licked her lips.

  It has been zero days since I last took vamp blood.

  Instantly, the darkness was gone and her attacker’s face appeared in the corner of her vision. She flashed her gaze around the room. It was empty and dirty with graffiti on the walls and a perfectly round hole in the center of the floor.

  Another scream from above dragged her attention away from the odd aperture.

  “Poor William isn’t faring too well. Caleb asked me to drag it out. It’s been fun, but nature will take over shortly. My friends will take him to the east side of the building to meet the sun. Perhaps he’s already there. I’m afraid you’ll miss that part.”

  His face descended and she jerked her head back and drove it into his nose.

  “Bitch!” He pulled away.

  Lexi used his momentary withdrawal to shove him off and turn onto her back, but the vamp attacked again. She tried to push him away with her feet but he resisted her effort to force him back. When that failed, she hooked him around the neck with her thighs. He tried to twist his head, no doubt to sink his teeth into her femoral artery. Thanks to his blood coursing through her body, her hold was strong enough that he couldn’t immediately extricate himself. By the time he realized his predicament, it was too late.

  She flipped to the side and smirked at the satisfying crunch when his neck severed from his spine. He slumped and she rolled free and raced to the wind
ow. She jammed the blade of her knife into the corner of the wood and twisted to lever a nail out enough to squeeze her fingers into the gap. Hastily, she wrenched one of the boards off. The vampire, paralyzed on the floor, was unable to move out of the morning sunlight from the east-facing window and burst into flames.

  While she was now able to see, she still couldn’t work out how to get the door open. She knew she could accomplish it with magic, but it might bring more of them. Frustrated, she sheathed her weapons, turned into the room, and looked through the hole in the floor. Her gaze moved above her and she located the place where bolts had been set in the ceiling. They were in an abandoned fire station.

  This was where the pole had stood.

  Before she could change her mind, she sat on the edge and dropped to hang by her fingertips. It was a fair distance but she let go, landed with a jarring pain in her ankle, and drew her katana before she’d even caught her breath. She didn’t think her ankle was broken, which was good. Her first choice was not to use magic on herself and she preferred to keep it for one of the others, if needed.

  She hobbled across the floor and into the hallway. To the left was what had probably been a small kitchenette. A wolf lay dead on the floor. She staggered momentarily in shock until she saw it was brown. Edward’s wolf form was white and gray. Its throat had been ripped out, so her teammate had been there. Quickly, she found the way to the stairs. The black smoke was gone and as she started her ascent, a string of expletives came from the hallway to the right. She knew the voice and hobbled around the corner to find Scott once again covered in slime.

  “Is this becoming some kind of fetish?” She was relieved, and tight knots of muscle relaxed that she hadn’t realized were tense.

  “Just don’t.” He looked furious and she helped him up.

  “Why didn’t you fix that?” he asked and looked at her foot in the beam of a flashlight.

  “Is that my flashlight?” She blinked in recognition.

  “It’s mine. It fell through a hole in the ceiling and hit me on the head so it’s mine now.”

  He took her hand and whispered something that sounded like “heal.”

  The pain in her ankle disappeared.

  When they reached the foot of the stairs, he shone the light ahead of her and up.

  “It’s okay, I can see. I’ve been at the hard stuff again.” Lexi strode upward.

  “I thought you threw that shit out.” Scott sounded disappointed.

  She stopped. “I did. I got it from the source this time. It was a situational requirement.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. Look.” Edward, in human form, peered down at them from two floors above. He appeared to be in pain.

  They hurried to where he was crouched and clinging to the railing.

  Scott stooped to assess him. He had a bite on his shoulder and a hideous rake across his face and Lexi assumed the blood around his mouth wasn’t his.

  “Don’t waste it on me. I’ll heal. See to him.” The shifter pointed through a doorway.

  The sorcerer placed a hand on his head. “I’ll hurry your healing along a little.”

  She entered the room, where a ripped white shirt lay on the floor with a pair of black pants next to it. At the other side, Dick sprawled in only his boxers and covered by a net of silver. The restraint became more difficult to see when it sank farther into him and hissed and sizzled. It was already deep in his flesh from his head to his feet. He shook violently as though in shock.

  “Hey, Dick. Smoldering hot as always.” She swallowed. He was difficult to look at but she did it. “There’s a vamp downstairs who tried the Lexi Thigh-Ride. I’m afraid he didn’t come out of it as well as you did.”

  He tried and failed to laugh. “I’ve met him. He doesn’t have my sympathy.” As he spoke, blood dribbled from his lips. She tried to move the netting from his side and a chunk of flesh lifted with it. He screamed and her stomach churned. Instinctively, she dropped the mesh and it hissed alarmingly.

  “How do I look?” he asked through chattering teeth.

  “Honestly? Like Pinhead, minus the pins. What happened?”

  “I raced out of my front gate at vamp speed, straight through a fucking portal, and into a brick wall.”

  Scott entered the room and turned immediately to hold onto the door frame. “Jesus, fuck!”

  “What can we do?” Lexi asked the vampire.

  “Well, it’s been on for a while and you can see how deep it is. I think this might be it,” Dick said and gritted his teeth to stop them chattering.

  “Scott?” Lexi turned to him for guidance.

  The young man rubbed at his face. “I’m not sure. On a vamp, silver clings to the skin around it. Taking that off will tear him apart. I can’t see how he’d survive it.”

  “Could you translocate it?”

  “Translocation causes friction in the air around the object. It wouldn’t be a…helpful result.”

  “What if we tarnish the silver like Caleb did?”

  “That won’t work. Tarnish is silver sulfide and water. It would like bathing him in liquid silver.” Scott looked away again.

  Dick dragged in a strangled breath as the net sank even deeper.

  “There’s something you can do.” He followed his statement with a low keen from the back of his throat.

  “What? Anything.” Lexi felt defeated.

  “You can tell me why you call me Dick. I might not get another chance to find out.”

  She barked a laugh and choked back tears simultaneously.

  “This will be so disappointing,” she warned him. “It’s because you’re a detective. A private dick.”

  “Are you shitting me?” He raised his head a little, then screamed. After a moment, he continued, “That is so anti-fucking-climactic.”

  Edward entered the room. The bite marks and scratches were gone. “Can you at least make it so he can’t feel it?” His voice broke. He sat beside his friend and slipped his hand under the edge of the net to cover Dick’s hand, so far untouched by the net.

  “I…uh, I might be able to try something else. I can’t tarnish the silver but maybe I could gild it if we had something gold.” He pulled his bag from his back, crouched, and began to yank everything out of it. “There must be something. I have to have something gold.”

  Lexi tapped his shoulder and when he turned, offered him her ring. “Is this enough?”

  “The ring Bryan gave you?”

  She could see he didn’t want to take it. “I’ve got a new family now and I don’t want to lose any of you.”

  Scott took the ring and turned it over in his fingers. He seemed to be planning how he should approach it. After a long moment, he drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “All right.”

  He closed his eyes and muttered while sweat gathered on his face. Lexi studied him quickly, a little concerned as he seemed unusually pale. The three of them turned to the vampire and noticed that the visible parts of the silver net began to take on a golden hue from the head downward. The hissing sound it emitted reduced as it changed and finally stopped. When Scott had finished, the ring was completely gone and the net was gold.

  “It’s not over yet. We still need to get it off him, but it should come easier and his own healing should kick in.” He sat on the floor, breathing like he’d run a marathon.

  With the net now covered in gold, it slipped more easily out of the flesh but it was still a slow and tense process. It took Scott and Edward about twenty minutes to peel it slowly from Dick, inch by agonizing inch, while Lexi found flattened cardboard and covered the gaps in the windows.

  Finally, footfalls on the stairs drew Edward to the door. “In here.”

  Jesús entered, carrying a length of rolled black plastic, which he dropped at the sight of Dick who was still covered in a bloody pattern. “Santa Maria!”

  “He should be healing by now. Why isn’t he healing?” Lexi asked.

  The Mexican clic
ked his tongue and shook his head. He turned to the three of them. “Out, you get out now.” He herded them out of the room.

  “What was that about?” Scott asked.

  “He’ll feed Will. It will help him heal. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of it,” Edward explained as they sat on the floor in the hallway.

  After a few minutes, Jesús appeared at the door. “We can move him now.”

  They walked in to find Dick zipped into a body bag.

  Scott looked at it and tilted his head with a small smile. “I’m surprised he doesn’t have a diamond-encrusted body bag.”

  “I’m right here,” the vampire said from inside and his voice sounded like it had gained strength.

  “Oh. Where’s your earpiece?” Scott asked Lexi as he picked the net up.

  She slung his bag over her shoulder. “The vamp stamped on it.”

  “He busted your communicator? What a bastard.” He shook his head.

  Startled, she stared at him with her mouth agape. “He also killed Leonard and tortured Dick. I know you like your tech but get some fucking perspective.” She slapped him upside the head and walked out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Caleb sat in his office the next morning and waited to receive the call informing him of Todd’s death. He wondered if he should have called off his request to burn William’s home after he’d set up the portal trap, but what was the point? The mayor had to be dealt with sooner or later and sooner was better.

  For a few moments, he fantasized about the call. Would it come from Stanley? Betsy? He imagined feigning shock and horror, then he imagined telling Betsy the truth and watching her little old face crumble. The mental image made him chuckle. It no longer mattered, though. Tonight was the night. It had to be. He’d clear Kate out of that store, pull its magical wards down, and tear it to pieces.