by Riley LaShea
Rushing into the cover of bodies with Gijon, Haydn still heard the rub of the arrows against grooves, the release of the latches, the gunshots that filled the square. It took only a few turns with the crowd to realize those things were moving further away, instead of closer, and, coming to a stop, she felt Gijon turn at her side.
Squinting through chaos, Haydn watched as an arrow soared into a small throng of people, and traced its origin to a rooftop across the Museumplein and the side-switcher Fiona, as she flung a rope over the ledge and descended the side of the building in a free-fall rappel.
“This is a fucking spectacle,” Haydn uttered. And a completely unfair fight. They could kill them all, rip the hunters limb from limb, but they couldn’t do it in a public square with half a million witnesses.
Searching for higher ground, she decided the half-oval extension of the Van Gogh Museum would have to do. Anxious as they were to escape, no one in the thinning crowd even noticed as she ran at the base and leapt up its side, grasping the top of the wall and swinging onto its narrow ledge, confident any alarms trigged would be the least of police concerns that night.
“What are they doing?” Gijon called up at her.
Void of the open courtyard looming before her, Haydn looked out across the open half of the oval, the above-ground solid half of the structure casting a shadow across it.
Spotting Fiona and Jim first, she watched them close in with Slade and Sean and their two new recruits. Bolts, arrows and bullets flying, they concentrated on one small segment of the crowd, and Haydn found Raquel and Shikoba within it just as they were split up by the gunfire. Trail of bullets nipping Shikoba’s heels, it sent him into a faster speed, and away from Raquel, and, every discharge of a weapon further clearing the space around her, Haydn realized the hunters weren’t trying to launch a full-on battle, but had one very specific target.
“Gather everyone,” she said to Gijon. “Make sure they make it back.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just do as I say.”
Panic and adrenaline blooming like invasive vines in her veins, Haydn followed the curved wall in the direction of the chase, plunging to the concrete path below. Stragglers from the crowd working against her, she bumped into those who stood watching with fascination, too drunk to comprehend the danger was real, and cut across the Museumplein lawn toward the neoclassical facade of the Royal Concertgebouw, shuddering at Raquel’s agonized howl as if it was right at her ear.
Five darts of tranquilizer coursing through her, and still the deraph ran. Though, her pace had certainly slowed. Trailing her in the direction of the concert hall, they could almost catch up on foot, but it wasn’t the strategic move.
Blitzing the deraphs in the crowded, public square was risky enough. Only they knew what it was they were after. To onlookers, they probably looked like a gang of terrorists pursuing a harmless woman. People had to see what she was, what she could do, so, even if they couldn’t understand it, they would at least doubt everything their eyes had seen.
In the spotlights of the concert hall, they tightened their positions. Advancing from the front with Sean, Slade glanced to where Jim and Fiona covered the sides.
“Nowhere to go but up, Bitch,” he uttered, and the deraph realized it too.
Spinning in a whirlwind, she bounded the ten feet to the corner column of the portico, hauling herself up in spite of her weakened condition, and swung to the gable above. As she turned for the higher sloping gable, Garcia and Armand were there, appearing on either side with their weapons drawn, and, with no other way to go, the deraph jumped to the flat portion of the roof below Garcia and Armand’s strongholds.
A sixth dart from Armand’s gun sinking into her neck, the deraph staggered back against the roof’s railing, finally truly subdued.
Watching Garcia and Armand slide down the gable slopes to close in, Slade marched closer with the others, and, a moment later, the deraph dropped over the roof’s edge, arms and legs bound, and they caught the tidy package on its way to the ground.
“Dose her,” Slade said when sleek fangs snapped his way. Her eyes glowing red, the deraph was hungry for blood, theirs - fueled more by fury than famine - but, though Fiona pulled the syringe from her pocket, she hesitated to use it.
“You’re sure that won’t kill her, right?” Garcia asked as he made it to the ground with Armand, and the entirely out-of-character question may have been the real reason Slade was willing to take on this job. From everything he’d witnessed, it was clear Garcia’s main mission in life was to kill deraphs. The fact that he wanted this one alive was a mystery Slade couldn’t wait to unravel.
“Not completely,” he said. “But she dies, we get to do this all over again, right?” Yanking the syringe out of Fiona’s hand, Slade plunged it into the deraph’s neck, watching her eyes dull as he pumped her full of sedative.
When she went limp between Fiona and Jim, he felt the same fucking rush he felt when he killed the first one, and again when he put the bolt in Haydn and thought he was going to put an end to the leader of the pack. Felling a beast that seemed unconquerable was a helluva rush, and, as Fiona and Jim started away with the unconscious deraph, Slade kept pace, not about to let them get away with his trophy. Wearing a pointy little souvenir of his last kill, a reminder of his exceptional badassery, on a rope around his neck, whatever they needed with this deraph, he was going to make sure he got his memento.
“Let’s get her in the car,” Garcia said at the yells and renewed commotion rising up three-quarters down the block that could only be the Royal Marshals at last making it to the square.
“Uh uh.” Slade moved into Fiona’s place as she abandoned the deraph’s side to go retrieve their wheels. “She’s coming with us.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Garcia said.
“There was no deal,” Slade reminded him. “You asked for our help. You got it. Now, we want to see why we’ve exposed ourselves to the entire city of Amsterdam. Or,” he went on when Garcia continued to dither, “we can always keep arguing about it and wait for the KMar to catch up to us.”
Eyes shifting to the sounds of the police force fanning out over the neighboring streets, an aggrieved frown came to Garcia’s face as he realized he had as little choice as they’d given the deraph in her escape.
“Fine, but Jim and Armand ride with you, and Amber and Katlego are coming with us. You make sure she gets where she’s supposed to,” he said as an aside to Jim and Armand, before rushing off with Fiona, Amber and Katlego, and, satisfied with the arrangement, Slade looked across the deraph’s drugged form.
“What in the hell you waitin’ for? Let’s get the fuck out of here.” Tugging her forward, he spurred Jim into motion, and they made it to the utterly inconspicuous vehicle Sean had, unknowingly to the owner, borrowed for the night.
“Stoppen! Politie!” It was an unfortunate uni who caught up to them on her own. Gun shaking, the woman looked as if she’d have only a ten percent chance of striking any one of them if she did decide to shoot. She was probably new to the force, on the streets for crowd control, and would have been better served by running away with everyone else.
“Don’t,” Slade warned when the uni took a hand off her gun to reach for her two-way.
Taking it from her hip in spite of his warning, the officer had only a chance to breathe on the speaker before Sean pulled on her. Before he could shoot, the officer gasped at the tranquilizer dart that pierced her chest, before crumpling to the ground.
Casting a look of disgust Sean’s way, Armand holstered the dart gun and moved around the car to the passenger’s side, and, tossing his half of the deraph into the back between Sean and Jim, Slade hopped into the driver’s seat, sending a cloud of exhaust into the air as the beater choked to life.
The rhythm of the club throbbed above her head as Haydn made her way through the underground.
Emerging in the cellar of the shop next door, the party seemed to continue there
too. Indigo and Shikoba dancing to the invasive music, Layla and Cassius laughed over Samuel, who looked every bit as celebratory, despite the red-drenched towel Layla pressed against his shoulder.
“How’s the wound?” Haydn glanced to where Gijon hovered over Brooks’ leg. Better prepared for such an attack, the flow of blood appeared to have stopped, but the size of the crimson stain on the leg of Brooks’ jeans was still troublesome.
“Feels great.” Brooks tilted a bottle to his lips, tipping backward on the stool on which he had precarious balance.
“It’s closed now. Bled more than it should have, though,” Gijon validated Haydn’s concerns.
“Take him up to find something to eat.” Taking the drink out of Brooks’ hand, she turned away at his look of displeasure.
He wasn’t the only one. Having spent their nights imbibing what was, in many ways, poison, most of them would need to eat before they could head back. Just one more clue for the masses that not all was typical on the streets of Amsterdam this New Year, Haydn cursed her decision to let them take full part in the celebration with the death of Vinn still hanging over their heads.
“The hunters?” Gijon asked as he helped Brooks down off the stool.
“They’re gone.” Haydn nodded them toward the door. Before Gijon could take Brooks through it, though, Auris came rushing in, straight to Haydn, and Haydn felt the burden of having seen too much.
“Raquel?” she questioned, blue eyes darkened gray by something so rare she couldn’t name it. Auris was frantic, maybe? Worried? Sentiments they rarely had cause to suffer were difficult to classify.
Although it was her desire that they stay together, Haydn wasn’t surprised Auris had made her way back up to the streets, in search of that which she had to sense was missing.
“They took her,” Haydn said. “It was clear Raquel was who they were after. They trapped her on the Concertgebouw, and carried her away.”
“You saw them?” Gaze narrowing, Auris’ eyes further darkened. “And you didn’t try to stop them?”
“What would you have had me do?” Haydn asked.
“You could have killed them all.”
“Not in front of thousands of witnesses.”
“Witnesses?” Auris laughed the word as if it was inconsequential. “So, would you have let them take me too? Or were you just not worried about it since Raquel isn’t yours?”
Fury built up inside of her - at the hunters coming for them in the open, at the way they carried Raquel off like an animal for a roast - flaring to uncontainable, Haydn’s arm flew before she knew what was happening. Knuckles connecting so hard with Auris’ cheek, they knocked her off-balance, Auris staggered backward, hand going to her mouth to catch the blood that trickled from its corner, gaze registering her shock as she turned back.
It wasn’t how Haydn ruled, by threat and by fist. She had never once struck Auris, she had never struck any of them, had never been on edge enough to lose control, and she wasn’t sure what would come after the first strike.
Staring helplessly for a moment, Auris didn’t seem to know either. Then, blood smearing down her chin in her effort to wipe it away, she lunged onto Haydn. Arms sliding over her shoulders, Auris kissed her hard, lips fraught and punishing, and, in the blood, lightly laced with alcohol, Haydn could taste the need oozing out of her.
“Whoever needs to eat, go eat,” Haydn broke from Auris’ lips to command. “Be discreet. We’ve garnered enough attention for one night. Whoever doesn’t need to eat, just go.”
Holding Auris’ tormented gaze in the sounds of retreat around them, Haydn waited for the closing of the door before her hands moved to the waistband of Auris’ leather pants, sending the button pinging into the wall in her haste to get into them, one hand slipping between the constricting fabric and the soft comfort of Auris’ body.
Not sure if Auris was so ready from her earlier flirtation with the farm boy, the chase, or the slap, Haydn was just gratified Auris’ desire was now hers. In the end, it was always hers.
When Auris’ legs gave out, Haydn lowered her to the floor, the hand on the back of Auris’ neck ensuring a gentle fall, and questing for more, she felt the leather rip as her hand sank fully into Auris’ warmth.
Too much too soon, even for her, Auris’ head fell back against the concrete floor as she cried out. In pleasure or in pain made little difference. For them, the two were so intermingled, they were almost the same.
6
Road growing smaller and less traveled, Slade started to get the uncomfortable feeling he was driving into a trap. With Sean’s ability to take a bullet and fight through, it would be a relatively fair contest against Garcia’s team, even if, by chance, Amber and Katlego were somehow subdued in the lead vehicle. Still, he didn’t like it, the rural location, the lack of life he’d seen since they left the city limits, and, in spite of the tranquilizers at the ready, with the deraph starting to squirm again in the backseat, Slade wasn’t sure how much longer they could keep her down.
At least she was leverage. He trusted Garcia about as much as he trusted the bitch with fangs.
“What is this place?” Climbing from the car when they at last came to a stop, Slade glanced into the cover of trees, without letting his eyes stray too far from Garcia. He knew exactly what Garcia was - a righteous man. That made him a dangerous man. In Slade’s ample experience, those who believed they were doing some kind of great work always were the ones to be feared. Everyone else had limits.
“It’s a ruin, closed for the winter,” Garcia said. “No one stays on sight.”
“You’ve done your homework,” Slade realized.
“We needed someplace private.”
“You found it.” Jaw tensing as he glanced to Fiona, Slade was fairly certain he would see it on her, if there was something to see, but if there was any reason they should worry about being dragged into the woods in the middle of the night, Fiona didn’t give it away.
“Katlego, Amber,” Slade called his own team to his side, watching Garcia nod the same to Jim and Armand, and felt considerably more at ease when everyone was back where they belonged. Well, everyone, of course, but Fiona. “After you.” He gestured blindly toward the woods.
“After her.” Garcia nodded to the back of their borrowed ride, and Sean reached in for the half-lucid deraph, dragging her from the seat by her coat.
“Can you handle her?” Slade asked, and Sean laughed as the deraph’s fangs snapped weakly at him.
Her condition their own doing, Slade still had to admit it was a depressing sight. One of the most graceful creatures on Earth, dosed with the right amount of drugs, became nothing more than a mindless beast.
Satisfied when Sean walked up beside him with the deraph in his arms, Garcia headed off through the trees, providing quiet direction amidst the rustling of their footsteps, until they emerged into a frost-covered field. Half-moon casting an orange glow over the landscape, a dilapidated castle stood gloomily against it, no more than an outline of turrets and arches in the sky.
“Be careful,” Garcia uttered. “Try not to fall in the moat.”
Though it sounded like the punch line of a joke, it was even more amusing to discover the warning was real as Fiona pulled a torch from her pocket and aimed its weak beam at the ground. Assuming anything brighter would draw attention, Slade followed the sliver of pale yellow across the foggy terrain, each step careful to ensure the earth remained beneath him.
When the arced, wooden bridge that carried them above the iced-over water to the castle gate groaned with their combined weight, Slade glanced to the glistening moat below, expecting to find himself sliding across it when the bridge decided to dump them onto its surface.
Relieved as he reached the other side, he put his hand up to pass through the rock archway after Sean’s loud expletive alerted him to its low clearance, and, moon trickling through the open roof above, Slade could just make out what was left of towering walls as they cut across a grand entranceway.
<
br /> Two barely-standing rooms deep into the crumbling structure, a cry emanated from the bowels of the building, reverberating off the stone walls and seeping straight into Slade’s marrow. Glancing at Amber and Katlego as they pulled to a stop beside him, he was glad not to be alone in his hesitation. Human enemies, he could handle. Demon enemies. Any enemy he could lay eyes on. He didn’t do this ghost shit.
The remainder of the entourage continuing on without them, it occurred to Slade he wasn’t much of a leader if he couldn’t get past a few childhood fears and pave the way for Amber and Katlego. Not to mention the fact that, if he was going to have to be in a haunted fuckin’ castle in the middle of the fuckin’ night, staying with the group seemed prudent.
“Fuck me,” he heard Sean mutter as he at last forced his feet to move, and Amber and Katlego followed him into the next room.
Wall opening up before them, a staircase descended toward a lower floor, and Slade suspected the way would be pitch black, if not for the blinding light Garcia produced to shine down the narrow corridor.
“It’s twenty-three steps,” he said, and Sean took his grumbling down the first few, Garcia following him with the light, and Fiona, Armand and Jim walking behind.
Joining the march, Slade commiserated with Sean’s unenthusiastic response to deficient light and tight space. Steps of the spiral staircase so narrow the heels of his boots slipped several times, the stunted height of the passageway forced him into an uncomfortable hunch that, for Sean, had to have been double-fold.
Not far down, a series of thuds was followed by a furious proclamation from Garcia. Words unintelligible as they leaked up the stairs, by the time Slade made it to the bottom floor, the argument was halfway done.
“So, you just dropped her?” Garcia asked.
“It was hard enough getting myself down that fuckin’ staircase,” Sean returned.