Savi swallowed past the tightness in her throat. “I’ll give it to you when Colin asks them to help. We just need them ready to come in, when…if he wants it.”
The brief silence might have as well been filled with Lilith’s angry cursing. “Savi, this isn’t your fucking game. Colin isn’t as strong or as fast—”
“I know that.” Her fingers clenched on her lap, and she stared at the demon’s dark form on the screen. “It’s not a game. That’s why he has to go in. He has backup. They’ve got venom-laced bullets; those will slow Dalkiel down.”
“Untrained backup. They’ll be completely unprepared. Goddammit! Did he turn off his phone?”
“Darkwolf was Special Forces,” Arwen said softly. “And Gina was LAPD.”
Savi shot her a grateful glance before returning her attention to the monitor. “Send a couple of Guardians downtown, Lilith, or here to Polidori’s. But let him go in first. Let them go in first. If they can make a statement now, it’ll make all the difference.”
“Colin doesn’t have to defeat a demon to cement his leadership,” Lilith growled.
“It’s not about his leadership. It doesn’t even matter that it’s him. If we call the Guardians at the first sign of demon-trouble every single time, the community here will look weak. And the next demon will take advantage of it. And the next. Caelum isn’t strong enough to stop them every time.”
“And this is what he told you to tell me? That he intends to martyr himself for the cause? Fucking coward.”
“You know Colin doesn’t risk his life like that,” Savi said. “Dalkiel only threatened us yesterday; he’s not done playing with us. If Colin thought he’d be in real danger, he’d have called you in. And he didn’t tell me this. He didn’t have to.”
“You’ve known about vampires for eight months and you think you’re qualified to make that decision? That you know anything about demons and how they think? What’s…his…location?”
Savi closed her eyes. Each sharply bitten word made her feel like a recalcitrant—and stupid—child.
Lilith could make a rock doubt itself, but her words weren’t necessarily true. She’d simply say anything to get her way, particularly when someone she loved was in danger.
But Savi knew her argument had gotten through—Lilith had struck at a personal level.
Luckily, Savi knew Lilith’s soft spot: Hugh. “Not eight months, Lilith. I grew up with Hugh. Even when he isn’t aware of it, he’s teaching and lecturing, about fighting and manipulation and making things permanent. Not just winning a short-term battle, but making certain the effects last. I learned very well; I just didn’t listen until now. And I’ve known for a long time—I saw Hugh with his wings when he saved me. I remember him flying with me to the hospital. I just thought I was crazy.”
Stop, Savi. She shouldn’t have given Lilith that last bit. Weakness against weakness only dragged it out. But it was too late.
“Crazy? I suppose it didn’t help when the fugues began. Those were because you’d seen Hugh?” Lilith’s voice changed; the anger underlying it dropped to amused disdain. This was her strength, bolstered by two thousand years of practice: finding the deepest hurt and fear within a person and digging into it. Savi wouldn’t stand a chance. “And I thought they’d started because you saw your family murdered in front of you. Are you so eager to see Colin—”
Savi cut off the speaker and hung up before Lilith could finish. Colin had been right: sometimes, fleeing was the best option.
Sir Pup whined softly, and she patted his head. Arwen stared at the phone, then looked at Savi.
“Did you win?”
Savi shook her head. “I don’t know.” Lilith might be angry, but she’d do as Savi had asked. The Guardians would be in place to offer quick assistance.
Then she’d probably come down to Polidori’s and kick Savi’s ass, and start in on Colin when he got back.
The light from the monitor wall cast a blue tinge over Arwen’s pale face. “You guys really are trying to do what’s best for us. Not just working for the Guardians, I mean.”
“Well, it’s not all about you,” Savi said, and watched as the building door in Nob Hill opened, seemingly by itself. “We’re trying to save ourselves, too.”
A dazzling smile through the front glass got Colin inside; the doorman slumped over a second after buzzing him through.
Disappointed he’d not needed to drink from the poor bugger to put him to sleep, Colin held the door open, let the others through. He took his weapons and shoulder rig back from Fia, checked the pistols, and disengaged the safeties before sliding them back into their holsters.
Darkwolf did the same with his guns. His efficiency suggested he’d have no trouble using them. “How long is he going to stay like that?”
Colin had no idea; it was magic, not science. “Long enough,” he said.
“Better no one else sees us, though,” Fia said, glancing at the corner of the ceiling, where a camera recorded the lobby traffic. “Stairs or elevator?”
“Stairs.” Too easy to be trapped in a lift.
“You’ll want to take the north stairs up to the roof,” Savi said, and Colin quickly moved in that direction. “His condo is on the tenth level, three floors below.”
Was her voice shaky? “All right, sweet. I’m silencing the radio until we reach the roof. Are you secure?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
He scanned the space beyond the stair door before shouldering through. A soda machine hummed softly in the corner. The stairwell was sparse, utilitarian; no carpet muffled their footsteps.
Though impossible to see upward beyond the current flight of stairs, the psychic scents of several vampires—unfamiliar, arrogant—reached through the distance, despite their attempts to block his probe.
He signed the information to Fia, then pointed to the ceiling and held up four fingers to relay the same to Gina and Darkwolf. They wouldn’t be able to conceal their approach from the waiting vampires, but Colin preferred that the idiots thought themselves with the advantage of surprise.
“I don’t sense anyone,” he said aloud, then took the stairs, his blades ready at his sides. He paused just below the final flight, turned and gestured to Darkwolf’s and Gina’s guns, then shook his head. It wouldn’t do to alert the building residents with gunfire at this stage. “Wait here,” he mouthed silently.
He took a glance at heightened speed around the stairwell wall. Apparently, Dalkiel had thought the same; each of the four vampires held a gun with a silencer, swords sheathed at their hips. One female, three males. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their guns leveled at chest height toward the landing below.
A clever tactical decision—so long as the enemy didn’t get too close. Either Dalkiel didn’t care to protect these vampires, or he’d no idea of Colin’s swiftness.
Colin hoped it was both.
He stepped onto the landing. A near-simultaneous click and fire from the four vampires, but he was already ducking below the bullets’ paths, clearing the stairs with ease. He sliced through the legs of the middle two, rose up between them and took their heads before they could scream. The third’s gun clattered to the floor, her finger still clenching around the trigger. His blade was through her neck before she knew her hand was gone.
He finished off the last as the vampire turned toward him, desperately trying to pull his sword from its sheath.
Blood spread and trickled down the stairs. Colin wiped his face and neck to remove the worst of the spray. What a sodding mess.
“Come on up,” he said quietly, and frowned when he saw the horrified expressions on their faces. They’d been softened by their natures; blood wasn’t always appealing, even to the hungriest of vampires. It was best they learned now.
Sorry, Fia signed weakly. We know them.
Colin forced away his pity; he couldn’t allow his regret for their pain to get in the way of protecting them. If he hesitated in the future, wondering whose partner he might be cutting down, i
t endangered them all.
What had they thought fighting Dalkiel would entail—killing faceless strangers? A demon would always use friends and acquaintances against his opponents; it made the despair slice more deeply.
Colin cast a measuring glance at the solid metal fire door; he couldn’t hear anything from outside. It was possible Dalkiel hadn’t yet realized his defensive line had fallen. “Savi, love, we’re at the terrace. Give me a picture outside,” he murmured. Though Dalkiel must know they were coming, he might not realize they had the advantage of her eyes.
“Oh, thank god. That was a lot faster than I expected; I thought he’d have someone guarding the stairs or something.” She didn’t try to disguise the relief in her voice. He looked down at a vampire’s head, at the blood soaking his sleeves, and didn’t tell her she’d been correct. “You’re going to come out in the middle of the north wall. I’ve got a blind spot just to the left of the stair housing. The right side is clear. About ten feet in front of the door is an artificial pond. Just beyond that is a gazebo; that’s where Dalkiel and Osterberg are. They went into it about a minute ago, just after you turned off your radio.”
“Do you see Paul or Varney?” He met Fia’s gaze, gestured for her to replace the gun she held with her sword. Once we’re through the door, go around low and check the left side, he signed.
“No, but the gazebo roof is blocking most of its interior. It’s about fifteen feet in diameter, I’d guess. The sides are open.”
“If we need to take immediate cover, which direction should we go?”
“There’s a big concrete planter on the left side of the pond. About four feet high. It would block any shots from the gazebo.”
“Have you alerted SI?”
“Yes. They’re headed downtown, but I haven’t given them a location yet—not until you need it. Or until I have to. Lilith is…angry,” she said, and Colin could almost see her grimace.
“Bloody hell.” Best to do this quickly, then. “Hold her off. We’re going out.”
CHAPTER 23
I am inclined to let him rot in his sickbed. I daresay you will not find such a response acceptable, but that is why I abhor vows—they compel me to action. Both Hippocrates and your Guardian mentor would have done well to leave the hopeless and the cursed alone. Alas; to Greece we go? Perhaps I shall force him to finally admit that I am the more beautiful before I offer him my blood.
—Colin to Ramsdell, 1824
Colin thrust open the door and stalked to the edge of the pond, armed with his gun and a sword. Behind him, he heard a vampire’s cry as Fia struck one down in his hiding place, heard Darkwolf’s and Gina’s running steps as they fell into position behind the concrete box and took aim over its bulk. Their eyes widened with horror.
Fia’s psychic distress swamped his mind before she caught herself, cut it off.
Paul and Varney couldn’t have run; Dalkiel had taken their feet. Their blood formed a dark pool on the gazebo floor. They were still alive, their wounds already closed and their shields strong—likely for Fia’s sake rather than their own—but they desperately needed to feed.
Colin flicked a glance at Osterberg before returning his attention to Dalkiel. “As fond as I am of fangs—and as much as I despise pinkie rings—you were much more pleasant to look upon in the café.”
Much more. Colin had thought he’d known demonic, but Lilith’s form had never been so inhuman. Though the wings and curving obsidian horns were familiar, crimson scales glittered over Dalkiel’s body instead of skin, his knees articulated in the reverse, and his feet ended in cloven hooves.
The stuff of nightmares—but Colin’s reality had been worse.
“I shall adopt that form again when it suits,” Dalkiel said. His voice slithered over Colin’s skin, and the vampire had to repress a shiver. The demon’s glowing red eyes lit on Fia; his enjoyment in her pain was no doubt as great as it had been when he’d amputated Paul’s feet. “And I shall make improvements.”
Colin snorted humorlessly. “Don’t be absurd. Shall we bargain, then?”
The demon’s attention was riveted on him; pleasure pulled his lips into a thin smile. In Colin’s ear, he heard the tiny catch of Savi’s breath.
Do not fear, sweet. He’d no intention of making a bargain. One who did, and failed to meet its terms, risked an eternal torment: his face frozen in Hell and his body dangling—continually devoured—in Chaos.
Colin couldn’t imagine any gain worth that risk.
“What have you to offer that I cannot take?”
The crippled vampires sat propped against the left wall of the gazebo. Colin held the sword lightly in his right hand as he began circling the pond counterclockwise; his gun—the weapon Dalkiel feared the least—he kept between them. “Your life,” he said simply. “I’ll not kill you…tonight…if you return those two to me without further harm done to them.”
He knew Dalkiel only played with him when the demon did not laugh at Colin’s assumption that he could kill him. A demon hunter, luring the vampire prey close by letting it think it could defend itself.
Colin hated being prey.
“Two lives for one? Hardly an equal bargain,” Dalkiel said. The demon had to turn his back to Paul and Varney to keep Colin within his sight; in his arrogance, he wouldn’t feel threatened by them—but nor would he turn away from Colin to further mutilate them.
“You equate your worth with a vampire’s? I once heard a halfling demon say that a vampire’s life was nothing to her; what must you be, that two are worth more?”
“The inequality is theirs, not mine.” Dalkiel studied him through radiant slitted eyes. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest; not a defensive gesture, but one that stated he’d no reason to prepare himself. His hands had transformed into razor-tipped claws. “We cannot bargain with these terms, vampire. I believe I shall kill them, after all.”
He’d never had any doubt of the demon’s intention. Colin stopped halfway around the pool, giving himself a view of those inside the gazebo, as well as Fia, Darkwolf, and Gina. “Why bother to kill them if they are nothing? They hardly seem worth the effort.”
“Their lives are not, but their deaths?” With a smile, Dalkiel uncrossed his arms, reached out and clamped his hand over the top of Osterberg’s head. The vampire’s skull cracked. He shrieked, but Dalkiel had no mercy: he did not finish it. He held the vampire there, his head half-crushed. “Pain and fear. The most powerful currency in the world.”
Christ. Colin preferred to take Osterberg alive. He raised his pistol, held it on the demon’s face. After he’d sufficiently weakened and distracted Dalkiel, and given a signal, Fia and the others would rush in to retrieve Paul and Varney—but as soon as he fired, the Guardians would hear it, swoop down on them.
Osterberg screamed again.
Bloody fucking hell. They’d hear that, as well. Colin squeezed the trigger. Dalkiel’s head rocked back with the impact, but he remained standing. Blood poured from his missing eye.
The demon laughed softly, his lack of concern serving better than mockery. “You threaten me with a gun? Do you truly think these vampires will follow you when they see what I can do to them? How I easily erase liabilities?” He glanced toward Darkwolf with his one burning eye, and another sickening crunch sounded from Osterberg’s skull. “And any who resist me or expose me, I’ll consider a liability.”
“Not just a gun,” Colin said coldly. “Hellhound venom. Let him go.”
Surprise flickered over Dalkiel’s face.
Colin fired again; a hole appeared over the demon’s right eyebrow. He’d missed, but it’d have to do—the first eye had begun to regenerate.
Colin traded his pistol for his second sword; Dalkiel staggered backward, blinking. The two bullets had been covered with a minuscule amount of venom—the demon was at normal vampire speed, most likely, or just above that. Colin’s weapons switch must have looked instantaneous. “Let him go; you’ll need both hands to fight.”
&
nbsp; Dalkiel glanced over at Osterberg swaying in his grip, and tore off the vampire’s head.
“Get them,” Colin growled, and cleared the pond in a single jump, running after the demon when he turned and fled. Footsteps pounded behind him, splashing—then Fia’s soothing murmurs.
Colin sped through the gazebo, across the rooftop, his gaze fixed on the demon’s back. He’d catch him within a second or—
Dalkiel’s wings unfurled, and he leapt into the air.
Fucking coward. But shouting the insult after the demon only earned him Savi’s muttered, “Ouch. My ear.”
“Sorry, love.” He watched Dalkiel’s form until the demon disappeared amidst the grid of skyscrapers downtown, then swore again and swiped his blade through the air. He’d had him.
A subtle psychic pressure had him tipping his face back; overhead, a phalanx of fledglings arrowed silently after Dalkiel.
“Were those Guardians I just saw?” She sounded slightly awed.
“Yes.” He turned back to the gazebo; Michael was there, likely healing the amputations. “Did you see him run from me?”
“Better yet: I recorded it. You can’t really see him until he comes out, but the sound is there; it’ll make lovely propaganda. Though it’ll also appear as if he ran from the others, not from you.”
“That’s quite all right, so long as you appreciate how fearsome I was.” The tension of battle released, his hands began to shake with need. He was starving. If he didn’t go now, he’d begin sucking the blood from his shirtsleeves. “Can you drive with a standard transmission?”
“Yes. Kind of. Just don’t ask me to go up Telegraph Hill.”
She’d likely lurch all the way home and burn out the clutch. No matter. “Take Sir Pup, and I’ll meet with you at our house.” He could be there long before she could drive the distance, even taking the time to speak with Michael.
“Oh, thank god. I’ll leave now.”
“So keen?” His body roared to life with pleasure, with anticipation.
“Lilith’s on her way here.”
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