53
Given that Marrack and Isabella had their hands full bringing about the end of the world, it was almost touching that they were still committing quality resources to bringing about my demise. Because here I was, out in the middle of nowhere, still unable to escape their daystrider scourge.
They had eyes everywhere: any place I might frequent. Luck—or perhaps the intervention of the cops—had likely been my only saving grace at the loft and Lux. Or it could’ve been the time-dilation effect. If Blaise had escaped the crumbling Weald a few minutes after, that would translate into a sizable head start for me.
I’d have been thankful for my luck, but considering he hadn’t died in the Weald’s collapse—after taking a flaming arrow to the shoulder—I chalked it up as a draw.
I vaulted the desk, eliciting a groan from Remington. His large monitor was subdivided into a checkerboard of camera feeds, each a window into a different sliver of his rural domain.
The front porch feed showed no sign of Ruby. But another at the property’s edge showed a half-dozen daystriders stalking across the open range. Remington’s back hoof tapped on the carpet with a rhythmic thump-thump.
Blaise—taller and more confident than the others—strolled in front, shoulder displaying no sign of damage. Fast healing bastards. My ribs still hurt from the showdown in the meat packing plant.
Strangely, despite being outnumbered by a factor of two-to-one, I didn’t feel scared. Instead, I felt a bizarre confidence. This was all that remained. After a series of encounters, I’d whittled down Blaise’s ranks, suffering no casualties of my own.
And now that I knew that they were not moon-burned, but merely garden-variety daystriders, it seemed but a footnote that I no longer possessed any demonic abilities.
Or even a firearm.
I caught Ruby slip past one of the backyard cams. Well, not her exactly—more her signature. A bolt of black lightning streamed across the landscape, distorting the grainy monochrome feed. The daystriders in the other squares suddenly tensed and scattered.
“Do you have guns?”
“Guns?” Remington said in a daze, staring at his bookshelf. “I do not believe in such tools.”
“Where’d my .45 go?”
“Destroyed. Melted down and recycled, rather.”
“You have to be shitting me.” I’d found the only pacifist ranch owner in the entire history of Texas.
“The magical wards will suffice.”
“Sure,” I said. “They’ll just leave.”
His chest puffed up so much that the brass top button popped off. “In more than four millennia, no one has—”
“Hold that thought. Someone’s knocking out your front window.” I watched the glass break into the foyer. “You were saying about the wards?”
“Oh, there are consequences.”
I watched the first daystrider slowly climb through the jagged window, scanning the room for signs of a threat. Remington reached beneath the giant desk. I heard a click. The vamp convulsed like he’d struck an electric fence. His skin smoked and sizzled before he disintegrated into a pile of ash.
Remington said, “See, demon? Consequences.”
“And here I thought you were a pacifist.”
He snorted. “Hardly. Guns are merely brutish and inelegant.”
“That leaves four.” Assuming Ruby’s shot had found its mark outside.
Steam pulsed off the vamp stew next to the wide-mouthed marble staircase. Elegant didn’t strike me as an accurate descriptor, but then again, what did I know? My gaze caught another daystrider coming through the window, but he stopped inside the wooden frame.
He retreated upon seeing his cooked brethren.
“They’ll find another way in,” I said.
“I’m counting on it.” Remington pointed toward a large dining room at the corner of the monitor. “If you can get them up there on the second floor, near the table, I can eliminate them all at once.”
“With what?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“Poison.”
“Remind me to pass on dinner invitations at Chez Landry.” I headed toward the office door. “Any way in particular you want me to handle this?”
“Just get them up there.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
Of course, there was another, unspoken variable.
Whether I would survive the trip in one piece.
54
Unarmed, I grabbed a fire poker in a lounge area on the way toward the front foyer. I still hadn’t come up with a way to lure the daystriders upstairs, especially since word had no doubt spread that the place was rigged.
I passed the broken window, stealing a glance outside. The tranquil summer landscape—scraps of grass, lots of dust—suggested that everything was fine. It was about the best-case scenario for the world at this point: normal and boring. A brief buzz nipped at my feet, and I jumped slightly. I gave a sour look at the camera in the corner, jabbing the iron poker at the lens. At least Remington was having some fun.
I stepped over the mound of daystrider goo by the marble staircase. The aromas of burnt fabric and undead skin were unpleasant, but I had bigger problems. I took the stairs two at a time, reaching the second floor without incident.
Pressing my nose up against a large bay window at the end of the landing, I saw the three daystriders and Blaise gathered out in the back field. Maybe they figured dealing with Ruby and her magical lightning gun was a safer proposition than trying to come in the front door.
As Blaise marched in front of his remaining soldiers barking orders, it dawned on me that there might be a simple solution.
I smashed the poker through the large bay window, the loud noise shattering the afternoon peace. Blaise whirled around in a seamless flash, his dark eyes latching onto me like a leech. They were a couple hundred yards from the house, but sound carried well across the empty plains.
“Guys having a little trouble?” I waved the poker through the jagged hole in the glass, taunting them. “Maybe I could lend a hand.”
“Your friends need not be collateral damage, Kalos.” Blaise’s smooth, easygoing voice glided across the air. “You can spare them.”
“I never pegged Marrack for being magnanimous.”
“Marrack is not here.”
“So you’re a practical man?”
“You mistake me for a mortal.”
“Aw, you’ll hurt my feelings.”
“You understand that this is where the story ends, Kalos.” Blaise loosened his shoulders and cracked his neck, to demonstrate his lack of concern. Then again, I couldn’t blame him. He still had strength in numbers.
I had Ruby, who was a plus, and Remington, who was a wild card. Then there was me, all bluster, armed with merely the fire poker. You could cook the books however you saw fit, but the odds favored Blaise.
Still, I managed to match his cool. “Why don’t you come up for a little visit?”
If there was time for him to respond, it was quickly interrupted. Because, just then, I heard the distinct growl of a convertible’s engine tearing ass across the grass. The car bolted across the expanse like a frightened horse, straight into the center of the vamps.
Three scattered, but an unfortunate soul got caught beneath the wheels, bones snapping. Ruby finished the job with a double-tap from the shotgun, the blue light vaporizing the wounded vamp before it could regenerate.
Angry howls slammed against my ears as the survivors were consumed by feral rage. One of the daystriders raced up to the wall beneath the broken bay window and clawed at the brick, working his hands raw as he climbed.
Balancing the poker in my hand like a spear, I aimed at the sunken, glowing eyes, blinded by bloodlust. I wondered if Isabella had ratcheted up the spell’s intensity, driving her servants mad to catch me.
I hurled the iron rod straight at the daystrider’s head. It connected with a splat, almost rocketing out the other end of his skull. The vamp’s eyes immediately went blank, and he fell into the winter grass below, twitching twice before going limp.
Argos’s little sense-enhancing potion was proving useful.
“I think you might need a new plan, Blaise.” I shouted it into the ether, to the surviving daystriders. A challenge to feed their frenzy, force them to ignore reason.
I was just taking a page from my partner’s playbook. Who needed poison when you had vengeance? Ruby understood the most powerful motivator in the world. Strong enough to throw caution to the wind and drive into a pack of daystriders.
As I listened to the convertible roar off and the plains go oddly silent, a cold gust rushed through the shattered window.
I shivered.
Only two more.
And then the real problems would begin.
55
I stalked through the house, grabbing another fire poker on the first floor to brain any intruders. None came. No longer having the advantage, Blaise had apparently decided to employ alternative tactics.
A nervous rumble in my stomach told me I didn’t really want to find out what those were.
After running through the house, I returned to the window.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight.
“Fuck.”
Underestimating your enemies will get you killed.
A wise man said that, right?
Blaise marched forward, leading not one daystrider but an entire goddamn army. The first attack party had been merely a group of scouts, ready to poke at the property’s weaknesses. Or maybe they’d been the only daystriders in the immediate area.
In any case, our initial victory had been short lived. But you already know what they say about success. It only brings new problems.
The house shook as vamps peeled off from the group, racing ahead. Heart firmly lodged in my neck, I tried to keep track of all the entry points. But that was like trying to plug a boat with seventeen leaks.
The ship was going down. Ropes attached to grappling hooks broke the remaining window panes at the top of the foyer, the late afternoon sun streaming through the open space. I slashed at the ropes with the poker, sending a few daystriders tumbling down in snarling anguish.
“You’re gonna have to claw up, assholes!” I yelled, receiving angry howls for my trouble. They scattered, clearly not pissed enough to grind their hands to the bone against the rough brick.
“Get to the room, demon.” Remington’s panicked voice burst loudly over the intercom. “Before we are overrun.”
Powerful hands shot through the floorboards and plaster, snapping at me like copperheads in a pit of snakes as I sprinted. Christ, they were already inside, swarming the property like an ant infestation.
I leapt over a hand clawing through the floor of the sitting room. Or, at least, I tried. It lashed out, grabbing enough of my ankle to send me tumbling. Remington and this fucking house. The second floor dining room was within view, but there was one problem: two more large, very open spaces still separated me from safety.
Given how fast vamps moved, I might as well have been staring at an endless desert.
Down on the first floor, amidst the shattering glass and other chaos, I heard daystriders scream as they sprang Remington’s many traps. But the assault had been so fast and absolute that expecting him to get them all was folly.
I kicked at the pale hand and crawled on my hands and knees toward an archway leading to a bar—or a gentleman’s lounge. The rich have always confused me with their fancy terminology, and my mind wasn’t exactly focused on being articulate.
There was one advantage. Climbing and punching through the floor slowed them down. The main bottleneck—the electrified entrance foyer—was still safe, meaning I wouldn’t be overrun from behind.
Until they started climbing again.
I stumbled through the wide arch, its Ionic flourishes hinting at Remington’s past. But there was no time for nostalgia. One of the large glass windows shattered in the greenhouse ahead, followed by another.
What was with rich people and atriums? For someone so obsessed with security, it seemed like an odd design choice. The dining room stood adjacent, glittering with the promise of safety.
Unfortunately, there was the matter of this large atrium to contend with. Rows of plants made maneuvering an impossibility: they hung from the ceiling, sat on pedestals, ran through the room in neatly watered hydroponic containers. Leaves and flowers swallowed up every open space, making the path forward windy and unclear.
Not least of all because two daystriders suddenly leapt through the shattered windows. Their fangs flicked in and out, nostrils flared, as they stared me down.
I did my best to stand straight, but even from the safety of the lounge, I had only a second at best.
Their pale veins pulsed as a tortured scream pierced the air, another one of their comrades falling to Remington’s house of horrors.
“You’re losing a lot of men,” I said, brandishing the poker. “Doesn’t seem worth it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Like some sort of anti-Robin Hood, Blaise swung in from one of the dangling ropes, landing with a smoothness that almost made me jealous. His blue eyes watched me intently from the edge of the broken window sill.
He beckoned for me to enter the atrium. I obliged. What was another few feet? It wasn’t like I’d see them before they slit my throat. Perched halfway off the sill’s lip, clearly unperturbed by the precarious position, Blaise stared me down.
A battle raged in his eyes, which is when I understood why I had been temporarily spared. He was fighting against Isabella’s mind control. Losing, but temporarily resisting all the same.
Blaise leapt off the sill, landing in the broken glass with a stealthy crunch. His undercut hair hung to one side in daring fashion. Plucking a wilted rose from a hanging pot, he walked along the edge of the room.
“You are quite adept at staying alive, Kalos.”
“Thanks.” I monitored his lean, knife-like form as it glided toward the leafy expanse. While his steps were measured, the fluidity belied a speed that could see his hands wrapped around my neck in a blink. “I guess.”
“These are interesting times, are they not?”
In the ensuing silence, we both listened to the sizzles and snaps of dying daystriders. We were, in that moment, kindred spirits. Isabella and Marrack were slowly ripping apart everything we held dear.
And we were helpless to stop them.
“I could do without interesting,” I said, instinctively reaching into my waistband for my .45. With annoyance, I remembered that Remington’s little safety box had melted it down. Just me, a bunch of plants, and a few daystriders.
All good, right?
Blaise stopped walking. “It does depend what side you’re on.”
“I’d say we’re both on the losing side, then.”
“The world has passed us all by.” He tapped his foot against the broken glass, causing the shards to tink slightly beneath his heel. “All we can hope for is survival.”
Before I could answer, I felt a slight breeze. The air moved, but I saw nothing but a blur hopping between the hydroponic beds, kicking up dirt as he rushed through the air. Sensing the disturbance at the last minute, I turned to protect my heart. Then my shoulder opened up, a long gash extending to my elbow. I heard the snap of fingers, and turned to find Blaise standing at the atrium’s opposite end, leaning against a wall display of shears and tools. He held a gleaming, bloody knife in one hand.
So much for Argos’s potion. It might’ve been an improvement, but my arm still burned like hell.
Mortal reflexes were slower than I’d thought. Blood streamed down my arm, dripping to the soil. I growled a curse,
gripping the poker tighter. I heard the vamps’ fangs click out and stay. Blaise’s minions slunk forward, the scent of fresh blood too tantalizing to ignore.
“Better call off your dogs, unless all you want is scraps.”
“Don’t worry.” Blaise wiped the blade on his pants like a butcher. “You will not die quickly.”
“You shouldn’t take orders from Isabella,” I said. “It’s dangerous for your health.”
“You damned son of a bitch.” Remington’s voice growled over the intercom, the static spiking in my eardrums. The daystriders, their senses already on overdrive from the fight and the bloodlust, whirled around, searching for the source of the noise. “I told you not to come in here.”
The intercom stayed on as Remington battled an unseen enemy. Using the distraction as cover, I shuffled toward a row of potted plants and grabbed a rusty trowel.
Brandishing my wounded arm like bait, I said, “Hey, asshole.” The nearest vampire’s attention snapped toward me. Before logic could override instinct, his feet blurred toward me. All I had to do was stab at the air with as much force as I could muster and hope I had pointed the trowel in the right direction.
At the speed he moved, it was like running into a buzzsaw. Blood spattered my face as he let out a pained groan of surprise. Unfortunately, my scheme also shattered the other vampires’ focus on the intercom.
“Kill him.”
Blaise and his companion sprinted forward just as I heard over the intercom, “No. No you son of a—”
Followed by a guttural scream that announced two things.
Remington Landry’s untimely demise.
And a series of ominous clicks that sounded like all the traps in the house being activated at once.
56
I would have died before ever hearing the traps go off, if not for the endless rows of plants. After Blaise attacked me the first time, I’d devised a new strategy: focus on the dirt. The pots and hydroponic beds not only slowed the daystriders, but it also left the tiniest trail which I could follow in real-time.
Moon Burn (The Half-Demon Rogue Trilogy Book 3) Page 23