by Jasmine Walt
What did she mean by that? Luc was just a hunter right? Albeit a weird one with magic scars, but I never got the impression he was anything other than human. If he wasn’t, well, I’d have felt it right? So why was she so insistent seeming. Why had she been about to sacrifice him? And why was she here at all? This was Ariel, the founder of the Owls, after all. Surely, she had better things to do than deal with Luc and me.
Ariel smirked and took a step toward Luc. “I can see from your eyes that I am right.” She shook her head. “How very disappointing. I thought your kind was better informed, but in the end, you’re just like every other monster. Concerned with your own politics and missing the big picture.” Her words made me feel very small and embarrassed. Hadn’t I just accused Luc of the same thing earlier when we were dealing with the feeding holes?
Luc stood, and as he did so, the markings across his chest glowed every color of the rainbow, making the room light up like a disco ball. And yes, I knew what that was. Disco was pretty damned popular where I came from. Don’t ask me why.
“That’s enough, Ariel,” Luc said, his voice cold and even. “Say another word, and I’ll tear your tongue from your mouth.” He cracked his knuckles. “Though I’ll probably do that anyway. You know. For fun.” I’ll be honest, the sight of him standing there like an avenging angel filled me with the hope that maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t die in the next few moments.
“Whatever,” Ariel said and blood surged around her, engulfing her body in an instant before coalescing into spiked, crimson knight’s armor. She held a bloody two-handed sword in one hand and gestured at Luc with her other. One by one, his wards winked out as a thin, nearly-translucent rivulet of scarlet spun out of his body toward her outstretched hand. “You forget who you are dealing with.”
Luc smirked, fingers tightening around the bronze dagger. “Then I’ll just have to make this quick.” He charged forward, moving so quickly, I saw little more than a blur. He slammed into Ariel hard enough for the reverberation to shake the room. The vampire stumbled backward, mouth twisted in pain as she swung the huge sword at Luc. He blocked the blade with one arm, and it shattered into a thousand droplets of blood that splattered across the room like warm rain.
The bindings around my arms and legs loosened, only a little, but it was enough for me to realize Luc had broken her concentration, at least a little. I squirmed, my muscles cording as I tried to wrench myself free of the bindings. Another titanic blow rocked the vampire and my hands slipped free.
I sat up, watching in amazement as Luc’s hammer blows slammed into the vampire’s exposed torso, mashing her insides into jelly as the wall behind her cracked. But why was he using his fists? What had happened to his dagger? I glanced around, looking for it. He must have lost the weapon because the blade glinted only a few feet away from me. I held my hand out toward it and concentrated.
“Come,” I murmured, pouring magic into the word. The blade jiggled on the ground before flying toward me. I caught it in my outstretched hand, and a surge of energy ran down the length of my body. My eyes opened in shock as I stared open-mouthed at the blade. It sure felt powerful. What was it? I lashed out at the bindings holding my legs. The dagger didn’t cut through the blood so much as dissolve it into scarlet smoke.
Ariel yelled something in what sounded like French, and Luc’s body flew backward through the air. He slammed down hard on the cobbles, and the last of his wards winked out completely. He lay there unmoving, and I got the distinct impression he was unconscious.
The vampire didn’t look very happy. Her face had been busted open, and her bloody armor was cracked and broken which was weird because it looked like it was made from liquid. As she limped toward the fallen hunter, her injuries healed before my eyes. From the look of things, we didn’t have a lot of time before she was back to full strength.
“Stop!” I screamed, hurling the dagger at her with all the force I could muster.
She turned toward me, confusion evident on her face. The blade punctured her left eye, and she screamed. The sound was enough to wake the damned, you know, if she hadn’t already drunk them all dry earlier. Black smoke poured from the socket, filling the air with the scent of rotten eggs as she reached up, clawing at the dagger. She jerked the weapon free in a spray of black ichor and stared at me with her good eye. The wound pulsated, black veins worming outward from the hole in her head, contorting her face into a mask of rage and agony.
I didn’t give her a chance to do more. I tackled her to the ground and unleashed everything I had left. Fire leapt from my fists, lashing her in down with writhing flames as I slammed them into her body over and over again. My chest heaved with exertion as the spell consumed everything inside me. And the sad thing was, I knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Ariel drove the bronze dagger into the fiery bonds. The blade cut through my magic like butter. Heat exploded outward, washing over me and evaporating the blood and sweat clinging to my body. My binding spell shattered completely, and the smoking vampire stood before me, flesh charred almost beyond all recognition.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, glaring at me with her good eye. “Ransom or not, I’m going to kill you. First.” She grabbed me by the hair and hoisted me into the air. The movement was too quick for me to even try to defend against it. Had she been going easy on me before? Her remaining eye met mine, and I felt myself falling. Usually, I could shrug off a vampire’s gaze, but come on, this was Ariel, the veritable queen of the damned. And besides, she was pissed at me. Fighting her off was like trying to bail out the Titanic with a Dixie cup.
My hands fell to my sides, suddenly leaden and unmovable as her mouth opened wide to reveal fangs too large for her mouth. They glinted in the low light of the room as she leaned forward and sank them into my throat. Only this time, instead of feeling good, it felt like someone had stabbed me with fire. I tried to scream, tried to do anything, but my lips wouldn’t move. That’s when I realized I wasn’t even breathing. Panic surged up inside me as I fought to do anything at all.
The twin blades of Shirajirashii burst through the vampire’s stomach and tore outward, cutting Ariel in two and spilling the blood in her stomach across the cobbles. She screamed into my throat as her grip on me faltered, and she collapsed onto the floor, but instead of striking in two separate pieces, the moment her body struck the stone, it burst like a water balloon filled with red paint. There was no trace of her flesh at all. Somehow, it had all turned into goo.
Logan reached out, catching me in his arms as Ariel’s blood surged together and began to reform back into a vaguely humanoid shape. Well, that was a neat trick. I hadn’t known the blood queen could turn herself into liquid and reform. No wonder she’d been around for so long. With a power like that, she’d be nearly impossible to kill.
“Let’s get out of here before she recovers,” he hissed, pressing Set and Isis into my hands. As soon as my fingers closed around their hilts, their magic surged through me, breaking through the cobwebs of my mind and pulling me back to reality. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“What are you doing?” I asked as he hurriedly pulled me across the room toward Luc’s fallen body.
“Saving you, obviously,” he growled, grabbing the fallen hunter and slinging him over one shoulder like Luc didn’t weigh a couple hundred pounds. Normally, vampire super strength annoyed me, but in this case, I was willing to make an exception… for now.
“Why?” I asked as a chill swept through the room, setting my teeth chattering and standing the hair on the back of my neck straight up. “Why are you helping me? Why did you give me the necklace?”
“Because I want you to kill crazy pants over there,” Logan said, glancing back over his shoulder. He looked like he’d been about to say more, but instead of doing so, he stopped and stared wide eyed. “That should be obvious.”
I glanced at what he was looking at but wished I hadn’t. Ariel was striding toward us. Her features hadn’t quite solidified, so she sor
t of looked like a moving statue of molten lead. She reached one hand out toward us, fingers splayed. Logan faltered, clutching his chest with his fingers.
“Leave us alone!” I screamed, drawing upon Set’s power and letting loose a blast of red lightning from my wakazashi. It struck Ariel in the chest and hurled her backward across the floor.
Logan sucked in a breath which was weird because he didn’t need to breathe and surged across the room toward one of the walls. I didn’t quite see what he did exactly, but the next thing I knew, the stone in front of him slid away to reveal stairs. He gestured for me to follow and darted inside.
I did as he suggested and followed. What else was I going to do? Stay here with the blood queen? Screw that. Even though I had Shirajirashii now, I still didn’t want to tangle with her. I mean she’d survived being sliced in half and getting lit on fire after all. Those were my two default methods of dealing with vampires, and I wasn’t quite sure what to try next.
As soon as I stepped into the stairway, Logan looked back at me, already several steps up, and waved his hand at me. The door behind us closed with a thud, and I wondered if it would even hold Ariel back for long. I somehow doubted it, so I double timed it up toward Logan even though he was damned near sprinting up the stairs.
By the time I reached him, I was breathing so hard, I thought my lungs would explode. “Slow down,” I wheezed, not sure if I actually wanted him to because something slammed against the doorway below us and the entire stairwell shook. “You know what, never mind.”
Logan shook his head and moved even faster. The hallway shuddered again and cold flowed up toward us. Was she through? It seemed impossible, but she’d already demonstrated she could turn her body into mist. Maybe she’d just slipped under the door? I sure hoped not.
“We’re here,” Logan said from above and pushed a hatch open above his head, spilling bright light into the room. Another crash echoed below us as Logan turned toward me, silhouetted by the sunlight above and gestured toward me with one hand. “Let’s go,” he called and stepped out into the light.
The street was pretty normal. It even had traffic which wasn’t surprising since by the look of the sun’s position, it was well past noon. How long had I been unconscious? It had to have been a while since we’d gone down before dusk. The thought made my blood run cold as I realized a horrible truth. We had been fighting Ariel during the day… when she was at her weakest. A shudder ran through me.
Logan pulled open the back door to a black town car and shoved Luc inside before shutting it. He swung the passenger door wide, gestured for me to get in, and went around to the driver’s side door. I climbed in as he was buckling his seatbelt.
“Buckle up. It’s about to get fast.” He stepped on the gas, sending us flying down the road before I’d even shut my door which seemed pretty dangerous, but probably less so than getting caught by a vampire strong enough to boil the blood in his body with a thought. “And furious!”
“So why’d you save me?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him as we sped away, Logan using his superhuman vampire reflexes to weave through traffic like he was some kind of racecar driver. Then again, maybe he was. Lots of the more normal looking monsters played professional sports because they tended to be both stronger and faster than the average human. Then again, I wasn’t sure racecar driving even qualified as a sport.
“If I said vampire politics would you drop it?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow at me as he came up on the sidewalk and swerved around a blue minivan, narrowly missing a woman pushing a stroller.
“Unlikely,” I replied, pretty sure his driving wouldn’t make my hammering heart actually burst through my chest. It would be just my luck to survive a fight with Ariel only to die in a car accident. “You just assaulted your founder. That’s like a death sentence, right?”
“Yes.” He was silent for a moment as if chewing over his words. “But Ariel won’t be around much longer if my plans are a success.”
“And what plan is that, exactly?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t an integral part of said plan, while at the same time also hoping it wasn’t also worse than whatever Ariel was up to. I mean, she’d been in charge for a couple millennia and nothing that bad had ever happened. It was one of the reasons we hadn’t sent a squad of Hyas Tyees in to carve her into twain, well that and we didn’t exactly have that many Hyas Tyees anymore.
“Succession, obviously.” Logan stared at the road for a moment before huffing in a decidedly human way. “And even if you don’t want me in charge, you don’t want her plan to succeed, either. You just don’t.”
“What are her plans?” I asked just before the manhole cover in front of us shot from the center of the street and came crashing down onto the hood of our car. Logan tried to maneuver the vehicle, but it was too late. Our tire caught the hole, and we jerked to a stop in a squeal of shrieking metal. Then it began to rain. Blood.
15
The acrid smell of melting paint filled my nose as the car began to sizzle. Ariel came flying out of the manhole in a wave of crimson that crashed down on the street in front of us. Her hair had turned scarlet as she surged toward us, one hand clutching a ruby trident. Not only was her eye still a burned out hole, the entire side of her face was covered in black decay. Even from here, the stink of putrefaction was strong enough to make nausea rise in the back of my throat. That dagger had certainly hurt her.
Only now, seeing the look on her face I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing. Next time I attacked a founder, I’d make sure I put them down for the count. Assuming, of course, there was a next time.
Ariel held her free hand out toward us, fingers splayed. Power washed over the car, and the ceiling tore backward like someone was rolling up the lid on a sardine tin.
“Oh hell,” Logan muttered under his breath as his entire seat was torn from the frame. With an absent gesture, the blood queen sent him flying off behind her. He struck the ground hard enough to make me think everything inside his body had broken. Still, the vampire tried to move, but he shouldn’t have bothered. Ariel snapped her fingers and blood poured from his mouth, eyes, ears, and every other hole he had. I fought the urge to throw up as he collapsed into a desiccated heap. So much for him helping me. The jerk. Why’d he have to go and get all the blood sucked out of him by the blood queen?
“Get out,” Ariel called, her good eye fixing on me. I averted my gaze at the last second even as her command reverberated through me. Even without direct eye contact, it was enough to make me unbuckle my seat belt and start to open the door.
People were screaming all around us, and the cry of sirens filled my ears. Ariel had to hear it too because vampires had way better hearing than I did. Still, she didn’t seem worried which was odd. Ariel didn’t get to be as old and as powerful as she was by drawing unnecessary attention to herself. No, this was decidedly odd behavior for the founder. She should have let us escape and sent her minions after us. Not come out here in the sunlight to take us on herself. So why was she here?
“Fine, but not because you told me to!” I gripped the hilts of my swords, drawing them as I shoved the passenger door open. Their white blades glinted in the sunlight as I took a step toward Ariel, trying desperately to keep my teeth from chattering and the fear writhing in my belly from rising up to strangle me.
“This is your last chance, Lillim,” Ariel said, nodding at my swords. “Let me have the Wardbreaker, and I will let you live. Not only that, I will remove every vampire from the entire state. It’s a good deal. Take it.”
“No,” I said, tightening my grip on my swords. I knew it was a good deal. No matter who Luc was, he wasn’t worth an entire state’s worth of vampires. For her to offer a trade like that was too much. It made me know deep inside myself I couldn’t let her take him. If I did, something bad was bound to happen. I did not want to be responsible for that, you know, unless she killed me and took him. I could live with that.
“I’d offer more, but I can see from your eyes it won’
t matter.” She exhaled sharply as her lips set into a hard line. “Very well then. I shall make you an offer you can’t refuse.” Her lips quirked into a smile. “Death.”
As she raised her hand, I screamed, “Kongounonikutai!” as loud as I could and raised the twin blades of Shirajirashii high in the air, calling upon all the power Set and Isis could give me.
It was another technique Dirge had come up with and loosely translated, meant body of adamantine in Japanese. As soon as I said the words, the spell caused all the color to drain from my body, leaving me as white as alabaster. I took a step forward as power surged over my flesh, forming a thick shield of magic along every square inch of my skin. It was a good thing too because a second later, Ariel’s power slammed into me and flung me backward across the road. I skidded along the pavement, sure I’d have been ripped to shreds if it hadn’t been for my spell. That said, it still hurt like hell.
I gritted my teeth and popped to my feet. I wouldn’t be able to keep Kongounonikutai going for long, so I needed to stop her now. I charged at Ariel who had a strange look on her face.
“Interesting,” she murmured as I lashed out with my swords, swinging one at her neck and the other at her knees. She didn’t even bother to move. Just as the blades were about to cut into her, bloody liquid surged from the ground beneath her feet and coated my swords. My once razor sharp weapons did little more than smack into her.
She grunted, stepping through the blows that should have sliced her into pieces and cracked me across the face with her trident. The blow made my vision blurry even through the shield of Kongounonikutai. I didn’t even want to think it would have done if I hadn’t had my spell up.