by E.J. Stevens
“When were you in my room?” I asked.
The pistol sized crossbow was mine, a gift from Jonathan after one of our nastier fights. He’d carved a wolf howling at the full moon and a stick figure girl with her hands over her ears into the butt of the stock as a joke. Rooming with a werewolf definitely had its downsides, especially on the full moon. It’s amazing I never shot him with his gift.
“I stopped by when I went looking for Benjamin and Aleksey,” she said. “Don’t worry. It’s not like I went through your panties. I just thought you’d like your weapons.”
For all I knew, she’d snuck into my room and stole the crossbow for herself, but right now I didn’t care. My fingers traced the carved wood strapped to my leg and for the first time tonight, the muscles in my shoulders relaxed. Handling a familiar weapon can be like coming home.
“You think to grab my quiver of bolts?” I asked.
“Oh, I think so,” she said, biting her lip and rummaging through her bag. She was one of the most disorganized witches I’d ever met, a trait that did not inspire confidence. I just hoped she could find what she needed to blast the vampires into dust—and not her allies—when it counted most. “Here, I found it!”
I grinned as she pulled out the compact quiver. The quiver was filled with custom iron-filled, silver-tipped wooden bolts. Each bolt had a cross carved into the shaft and had been dipped in holy water. Those bolts would slow both faeries and the undead, but they were particularly useful against vampires.
I snapped the quiver into place, finished whittling the tip of the chair leg, and strapped my new stake onto the opposite thigh.
“Are we going to kill us some vamps?” Ash asked, looking from me to Celeste and back again. “Or are we just going to stand here all night, fondling our weapons?”
“I vote for killing and fondling,” Celeste purred. “Not necessarily in that order.”
“Stay sharp,” I said. “This isn’t a game. The three of us are all that stand between the people of this city and the bloodsuckers.”
Celeste pushed out her bottom lip, but she kept her mouth shut. Smart girl.
We made it down the embankment and through the iron grate without trouble—a fact that made me twitchier than usual. Celeste sent a ball of witch light to float above our heads, and my eyes darted to every wavering shadow. Even with the magically warded door in front of us, this felt too easy. After our previous clashes with the local vampires, there should have been guards posted at every entrance to their nest.
Had Philip’s vamps already taken out Dampierre’s men? Normally, I’d have cheered the French vampires on, but not now. Before putting the last vampire back at the inn out of her misery, I’d rolled her over and checked her lower back. The lion brand marked her as House Dampierre. When I withdrew the stake enough for her to answer my questions, she’d only laughed in my face, but that was alright.
I already had my answer. Sofia and Nicolas had been taken by Dampierre’s men. If there was any chance that the innkeepers lived, then I’d likely find them down in the sewers. So long as Philip’s men hadn’t come and exterminated every last vampire and human feeder in House Dampierre’s nest.
The only heartening fact was that the door ward was still functioning.
Celeste drew a circle and placed candles at each cardinal point. After lighting the candles with a touch from her fingertip, she closed her eyes and began chanting. My skin tingled and the marks beside the door began to glow.
“Oscail!” Celeste shouted.
My ears popped and a gust of air put out the flames of the red, green, and black candles at her feet. I bounced on tiptoe, trying to get a better look.
“Did it work?” I asked, keeping my voice low as I raised my crossbow and aimed it at the door.
In answer, the door swung open, belching the rotting stench of the grave.
Chapter 32
“A Hunter’s work is never done.”
-Celeste Dubois, Hunter
Ever leave a ham and mayo sandwich in your gym locker? Ever open that locker at the same moment a toilet backed up and overflowed steaming shit all over your gym socks? Well, the smell pouring out of the sewer tunnels was worse than that. Magnify that putrescence by a thousand and add in the stink of a charnel house and you have some idea of what it was like where I was standing. My eyes burned, and I struggled not to gag.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
Along with the foul stink came a swarm of angry vampires. They were on us like pixies to salt. Fortunately for us, I’d brought my favorite fly swatter.
I got off one shot with my bow before the vamps closed the distance and I switched to my sword. I took the first vampire’s head off cleanly and kicked the second in the knee, sending him sprawling into Celeste’s firing range. A flash of heat warmed my back, and a fierce grin tugged at my lips. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, baby.
Vamp number three wasn’t so easy. These front line troops were made up mostly of young vampires, but even the ill trained can get lucky. Bones, some with bits of cartilage intact, littered the floor surrounding the door and as I lunged to the side, I stepped onto a rib cage. My boot caught, slowing my movements by a mere second.
But when your opponent has the speed of an immortal predator, a second is all the advantage he needs. The vampire surged forward, and my blade missed his neck, instead becoming lodged in his shoulder. I kicked out at the vamp, trying to withdraw my sword, but it held fast. Shit, shit, shit.
The vamp gnashed its fangs so close to my face that I could smell its carrion breath over the stink of sewage. I swallowed hard and reversed my grip on the sword, struggling to use it as a lever to push the vamp out of biting distance, but he was strong and more of his friends were clawing their way through the doorway, trying to join the party.
So much for swatting flies. If I couldn’t fend off this vamp one handed, allowing me to draw another weapon, I was going to become this creep’s Slurpee.
Luckily for me, Ash had a fly swatter as well, and he wasn’t half bad at using it. With a roaring battle cry, Ash took the head off a vampire to my right. The vampire in front of me turned his head a fraction at the sudden cloud of ash and dust, and I used the distraction to my advantage.
The usual hand-to-hand combat tactics don’t apply when fighting vampires. Unlike humans, vampires don’t have a lot of functioning pain receptors. That’s the problem with fighting the undead. You stomp on top of a human’s foot, and they crumple to the ground. Do the same to a vampire, and they just try to eat your face. But there were ways to level the playing field.
My hand dipped into my jacket and before the vampire knew what hit him, I’d staked him through the heart. When it comes to fighting vampires, I prefer the classics. In this case, it was a sharpened chair leg through the heart.
“A little piece of justice from the Vandenberghe Inn,” I quipped.
The vampire didn’t laugh, didn’t even blink, but that was okay. He was paralyzed after all.
I pushed the vampire to his knees and gripped the hilt of my sword with both hands, yanking it free from his shoulder with the grinding sound of metal against bone and the snap of mummified cartilage. I grinned. This guy’s tendons might be like old shoe leather, but that had to hurt—even with a lack of pain receptors.
More vamps were pouring through the doorway, and without hesitation I put a boot on the vampire’s shoulder and launched myself over his body and onto the party crashers. The young vamps were standing shoulder to shoulder, and I took two heads with one swipe of my sword. Amateurs, now they were just making it easy.
Within seconds, I’d evaluated and targeted their weaknesses. But before I could finish them off, I felt a cool touch and Ash’s breath in my ear.
“Want some help, love?” he asked.
I shook my head with a grin.
“Not really,” I said. “But you’re welcome to watch and learn.”
I rushed forward and took the head cleanly from a vamp’s shoulders. Before
his friends could react, I spun and took two more heads. The remaining vamps hissed and rushed toward me, but I’d anticipated that. I jinked left and dove into a low crouch, bringing my sword parallel with my shoulder and cutting two of the vamps off at the knees. They’d heal, eventually, but maiming slowed them down.
Using the forward momentum of my strike, I ducked my head and tumbled, catching a vamp on the chin with the heel of my boot and snapping his head back at an unnatural angle. A broken neck wouldn’t kill a vampire either, but that’s okay. Now I was just having fun.
A smug smile on my lips, I came to my feet and, without even looking behind me, swung my sword in an arc. With a pirouette, I turned to watch three more heads fall. The vampires turned to ash before the heads ever hit the ground.
I started wiping my sword on one of the vamps I’d staked earlier, and Ash clapped his hands. I blushed, heat rising to my face. I wasn’t usually so cocky, but then again, I didn’t often have an audience. Still, I probably shouldn’t have shown off when lives were at stake.
“Not a damsel in distress,” Ash said, looking me over. “I’ll remember that.”
I shrugged and turned to survey the dead and dying. At least now I knew where the missing guards were. Dampierre was smart—not surprising since he was over seven hundred years old—and had pulled his men inside to defend the nest from invaders while keeping their flank protected. But that hadn’t worked out as he planned. Not unless he’d wanted a pile of ash on his doorstep.
Ash lifted his scarf to his face, covering the smile on his lips, and I held my breath as we finished off the last of the downed vamps. I’d have to come back and sift through the ash for fangs later. Sofia and Nicolas might still be alive. My trophies would just have to wait.
“Celeste,” I said, grimacing at the grit that coated my teeth as I spoke. Pieces of dead vampires choked the air. “Any luck finding the Vandenberghes?”
She’d crafted a poppet of mandrake root using hair that Ash had collected from the couple’s apartment. I’d growled when she first lifted the mandrake root from her satchel, wondering if she was going to light up and smoke it, but instead she’d carved the root into a humanoid shape and used candle wax to attach Sofia’s and Nicolas’ hair to its head and pressed a purple gemstone tied with a blue thread into its center.
According to the witch, the poppet would let her know when we were close to the Vandenberghes—so long as they were still alive.
“Nothing yet,” she said, shaking her head.
Her silky black hair and olive skin were untouched, a magical field keeping her pristine. I grimaced and turned to Ash, who also looked suspiciously clean for someone who’d just battled over a dozen vampires. Celeste was probably keeping the dirt and grime from touching him as well. I guess I was the only one not worth the effort.
I strode into the sewer tunnel and winced.
“I sure wish I had your affliction right now,” I said, turning to Ash as he came up beside me. The tunnel was wide enough here for three people to walk abreast, four if they didn’t mind touching the curved stone walls. I, for one, was steering clear of the damp surface caked with centuries of blood and excrement.
“What affliction would that be?” he asked. His eyes flicked to Celeste, and she shrugged.
“Having no sense of smell,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “This place stinks worse than troll farts.”
“Ah,” he said, a slow smile on his lips. “Not everyone can be as perfect as me.”
I snorted and gestured down the tunnel.
“Come on,” I said. “Stench or no stench, we’ve got work to do.”
“A Hunter’s work is never done,” Celeste muttered.
Ash gave her a sideways glance and winked.
“You have no sodding idea,” he said.
Celeste let out a throaty laugh, and I gripped my sword hard as I turned to trudge down the tunnel. I frowned as I dodged puddles of reeking effluent. By Athena, I couldn’t wait until this job was over. As soon as the Vandenberghes were safe topside and the city was cleansed of both warring vampire clans, I was asking for a transfer.
Anything would be better than this assignment. Hell, even being stationed in a desolate Siberian outpost would be better than working in this city. At least there I had a better chance of working solo—and if there was blood, piss, and shit, at least it would be frozen solid.
Chapter 33
“A true Hunter doesn’t balk when asked to wade through a moat of rotting corpses and liquefied feces.”
-Jenna Lehane, Hunter
The tunnels twisted and turned, branching off repeatedly in multiple directions. If it hadn’t been for my request that Celeste leave a magical beacon at each crossroads, a bit like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs, we’d never find our way back out. As it was, the growing heat of the place was making my chest tighten.
If we ended up cooked in some hag’s oven after sloshing through all this filth, I was going to be pissed.
My foul mood was made worse by the increasing stench brought on by the heat, and the fact that every vamp we’d killed in the past twenty minutes had turned to mud as their ashes mixed with the slop that ran down the center of the tunnel. That was a lot of fangs down the toilet. I was willing to do a lot to retrieve my trophies, but scooping up puddles of excrement like some feverish miner panning for gold was not one of them.
“Celeste?” I grumbled. “You getting anything?”
Her poppet had wiggled its arms and chirped about five minutes ago, and since then I’d badgered her with questions. Apparently, the crude effigy had made a connection to the Vandenberghes’ spiritus mundi or vital life force. As of five minutes ago, at least one of the innkeepers was still alive. There was a chance we might be able to rescue Sofia and Nicolas.
But a lot could happen in five minutes.
“By Hecate, it’s only been a few minutes,” Celeste said with a sigh. I frowned at an approaching crossroads and the witch rolled her eyes. “Fine, I will try to speak with the poppet.”
She pulled a flask from her satchel and, holding the root in the palm of her hand, she poured red wine into its mouth. At least, I hoped it was wine. I was sick to death of blood.
I fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot. We needed to keep moving, but if we took the wrong turn, we could lose all chance of finding the Vandenberghes alive. Ash came alongside me, eyes flickering up and down the tunnel and back to the poppet in Celeste’s hand.
The magical root twitched as the wine soaked into its skin. Celeste walked over to the intersection and slowly waved her hand to the left, but nothing happened. I grit my teeth and watched intently as her hand continued to move. When her hand shifted to indicate the tunnel to the right, the poppet did a lot more than twitch.
It screamed bloody murder.
“Bloody hell, Celeste,” Ash muttered.
He brought his sword up, and I raised my crossbow to lay down cover fire. I was getting low on wooden stakes, but the wooden bolts filled with iron and tipped with silver would paralyze a vampire just as effectively. In the ever narrowing tunnels, there was barely room to swing a cat sidhe let alone two swords, hence my current preference for the crossbow.
I held my breath, waiting for the rush of lightning fast feet as they sped toward us, but all I could hear was the scurrying of rats. Then again, my eardrums were still recovering from the poppet’s onslaught.
“You could have warned me that thing would start crying like a banshee,” I muttered.
Celeste shrugged and wrapped the poppet in a piece of cloth. It looked like a rudimentary doll in a blanket.
“I forgot,” she said with a shrug.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling at her and turned down the tunnel to the right. At least now we knew which tunnel to take. We also had another piece of vital information. One or both of the Vandenberghes remained alive, for now.
The tunnel straightened, giving me clear line of sight for a change. Confident that there were no vampires
lurking ahead of us, at least not in the next hundred yards or so, I took off at a run. Celeste grumbled, but she and Ash soon followed on my heels. We made good time racing down those tunnels.
Right up until the path was cut off by a bubbling river of steaming crap. I’d deny it to the death, but a whimper may have escaped my lips as I came to an abrupt halt.
The dungeons where the vampires took their prisoners must be somewhere up ahead. The poppet had screamed that this was the right path. As much as I didn’t like it, I had no choice. I had to keep moving forward. Come on, Jenna, suck it up, I berated myself. But my feet had turned to lead weights.
Hunters are stoic. Hunters put the needs of others above their own. A true Hunter doesn’t balk when asked to wade through a moat of rotting corpses and liquefied feces.
I’ve never regretted my decision to take my vows and join the ranks of the Hunters’ Guild. But right then as I stood there, looking for another way across that steamy river of filth, I was questioning my career path—because I sure as hell was balking.
“That’s never going to come out,” I groaned.
Bubbles rose to the surface of the slow moving river and popped, releasing more noxious gases into the air. If I ever made it out of here alive, I was going to have to burn every piece of gear I had with me. I swallowed hard and squared my shoulders, but Celeste tapped me on the back before I took another step. The witch flashed me a sly smile, and I halted, toes an inch from taking the plunge.
“I might be able to help with that,” she said, wiggling her fingers.
“I knew you were using a spell to stay so clean,” I hissed.
I would have yelled, but sound echoed this far down in the tunnels. We’d already pressed our luck earlier with the screaming poppet. The sewage was covering our scent from roaming vampire patrols, but if we wanted to retain the element of surprise, we had to communicate with whispers and hand signals.
Not that I wanted to take a deep breath down here. The gases would probably make me pass out, and I’d rather be dead than face down in a river of sewage and vamp leftovers.