Derek stared at him. Their expressions were almost identical, flat, carrying an awareness of how vicious life could be and knowing they would never forget it.
“He looks like he’s been through some shit,” Derek said.
You’d know.
“What’s a crusader?” Desandra asked.
“Crusaders are knights of the Order,” Robert said.
“Aw crap,” Desandra growled.
The knights of the Order were strictly off-limits for the Pack. You might as well walk into a police station and shoot a cop.
“They’re not assigned to any chapter,” I said. “They go where needed and they bend the rules. They’re like janitors. Got a nasty problem, throw a crusader at it. He’ll cut it to pieces and leave town.”
“But he shot me! Doesn’t that count for something? What the hell is he doing with d’Ambray anyway? If he switched sides, I can kill him.”
“Crusaders are fanatics,” Derek said. “It’s not likely he switched sides. Jim thinks he’s undercover.”
“Even if he is, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “He made the decision to block us. But running up to him and trying to punch him is a bad idea. We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
We had to get past Nick. We had vampires behind us and taking a different route would take too long. We were committed now. We had to go forward.
“We don’t want to fight,” Robert called out. “We know who you are. We have no reason to kill you.”
Nick pulled off his gloves and dropped them on the ice.
“Perhaps you should negotiate?” Robert glanced at me.
Sure. I cleared my throat. “Move or I’ll cut your head off.”
Nick took off his leather jacket and tossed it aside.
“He has no weapons,” Derek said.
Robert grimaced.
No weapons meant magic, and whatever he had would be nasty, because there were five of us and one of him and he didn’t look worried. The Nick I knew had very specific powers. He could tell how much magic you had by touching you and he had uncanny hand-eye coordination, which made him very accurate with guns and knives. If he had combat magic, he didn’t use it even when fighting for his life, which probably meant he didn’t have it at the time. But he’d been hanging out with Hugh for over a year, probably more. Now Nick was a jack-in-the-box. There was no telling what fun surprises would pop out when you wound him up.
Nick pulled off his sweater. His arms weren’t just defined, they were carved, as if someone had cut him out of a slab of stone with a sharp knife. His neck was thick, his shoulders broad, and his gray T-shirt, tight across his shoulders, was loose over his middle. That body was the result of hours and hours at the gym, spent not bulking up by lifting heavier and heavier weights, but by kicking, punching, grappling, and running. He wasn’t shredded, he was just hard, conditioned to throw a devastating blow and to take one and keep going. He looked like you could punch him for hours and it would just make him madder.
His T-shirt followed. Yep. Just like I thought.
“Before you start dancing, we don’t have any cash!” I called.
“Woo!” Desandra waved her arms. “Take it off!”
“How do you want to go about this?” Robert asked me quietly.
“I can give it a shot,” Ascanio offered.
“Sit your ass down, Don Juanabe,” Derek said.
“Don Juanabe?” Ascanio pulled out his swords.
“Don Juan Wannabe,” Derek explained. “See, I shortened it. If you still don’t get it, I’ll write it down for you after the fight.”
“You’ve maxed out your wit quota for the night,” Ascanio said.
“I’m just getting started.”
“Be careful, you might sprain something in your brain.”
“Quiet,” I growled.
I knew why Nick joined Hugh. The Order hated Roland. He was their public enemy number one. It made sense for him to go undercover with Roland’s warlord. If Hugh had turned him to his side, then there was nothing I could do. But if he hadn’t, imagining the things Nick had to have endured to survive his time with Hugh turned my stomach. It would’ve been hell for him. Somehow Nick had done it and I didn’t want to end his sacrifice here.
“Let’s try to keep him alive if we can,” I said. “If we have to kill him, we will, but only as a last resort. If we do kill him, it’s on my authority. You’ll bear no responsibility for it.”
Nick flexed, warming up.
I slid off Cuddles and unsheathed Slayer. We needed to know what we were up against. “Desandra, want to go knock on his door?”
“Oh yes.” She bared her teeth.
“He’s really fast. Don’t get killed. Just tap him enough for him to open up and show us what he’s got.” I glanced at Derek. “Back her up.”
Desandra stalked forward, pulling off her woolen gloves one finger at a time. Nick watched her.
“Remember me?” She took off her jacket and tossed her long blond braid back. “You shot me.”
He rolled his head from side to side, stretching his neck. Derek followed Desandra, hanging about twenty feet back.
Desandra lunged forward, as if for a kick. Her leg went forward, then back. She leaped and hammered a blur-fast cross-punch at Nick’s head. He dodged, just barely, and struck at the back of her head with his left hand. She blocked with her left arm. Nick turned and sank a vicious hook to her ribs, while she punched his jaw with a hard right. The blow knocked Nick back. He dropped and rolled to his feet. Desandra staggered back, favoring her left side. Cracked or broken ribs.
Nick shook his head. I’ve been punched by a shapeshifter before. Not fun.
They circled each other. Desandra closed in, arms up, hands open, and launched a low kick. Her foot connected to Nick’s leg. Just barely too high, or she would’ve taken out the knee. He staggered back, his arms up, and she pounded a flurry of punches at his guard. He ducked, taking it on his arms, and snapped a front kick with his injured leg right into her stomach. His foot had shot out like a hammer. There was no deflecting that. Desandra staggered back. Her clothes burst. Bone surged upward, tendons and muscle spiraled over it, dark skin sheathed the new body, and fur sprouted from the pores. A seven-foot-tall werewolf snapped savage teeth.
Two olive vines shot out of Nick’s chest, spiraling over his arms, and clamped Desandra, winding about her like twin whips.
What the hell was that?
I started forward. Robert and Ascanio followed me. An eerie giggle broke free from Ascanio.
“Not yet,” I told him.
Desandra flexed, trying to break free, but the vines gripped her. Flexible, about an inch thick and at least twenty feet long. I’d never seen anything like it.
Derek sprinted forward and grabbed the vines, raising his tomahawk to chop them. Thorns burst from the twin shoots, biting into Desandra’s and Derek’s skin.
Oh no you don’t. I sprinted.
Bloody thorn tips emerged from the back of Derek’s hand. The skin around the punctures turned gray. Poison. Shit.
Desandra screamed. Derek chopped the vines and tore his hand free. The ends of the vines snapped back to Nick. The vise of vines around Desandra cracked and dried in an instant, turning into hard wood.
“This isn’t better!” Desandra snarled.
I lunged between them and Nick. Robert landed next to me.
Derek chopped at the wood with his tomahawk. The petrified vines held. The shapeshifters had resistance to diseases, but toxins could do them in.
Nick focused on us and began to spin the vines, faster and faster. I’d seen the technique before. Chinese chain whip, made of metal rods joined by rings. It was considered a soft weapon, but there was nothing soft about it and it took a hell of a lot of concentration to keep it going.
“Ascanio, run around him and throw rocks.”
The bouda dashed to the side.
“Divide and conquer,” Robert murmured.
“Let’s do that.”
<
br /> We spread out. Nick kept spinning the whips. They encased him, a weapon and a shield at once.
I feinted forward. The whip sliced my boot, ripping it, but not cutting through.
“Get me out!” Desandra roared.
“I’m trying,” Derek snarled, hacking at the vines.
I hurled a throwing knife. It glanced off the vine whips. I could use a power word, but it would both drain me and announce to Hugh our exact location. Power words had a lot of magic echo.
A rock smacked against Nick’s back. Ascanio ran around us in a circle, hurling chunks of ice and concrete at him.
Robert attacked, zigzagging and twisting like a dervish. Nick snapped the vines at him. Robert dodged. His knuckle knives sliced at the whips. The left vine slid off onto the ice and instantly dried. Nick spun toward Robert. I dove into the opening, sliding on the ice, and buried my sword in his side.
He twisted and kicked me, ramming his knee into my ribs just as I straightened. My bones screamed, cracking. Robert jumped and kicked at Nick’s head. Nick dodged. The whip coiled around me and I sliced at it before it caught me. Nick leaped backward like an acrobat, once, twice, and landed twenty feet away. Two new vine whips slid from his chest.
I flicked the blood off my sword. Robert straightened. My ribs were on fire. A dark red wound marked Nick’s right side. Blood slid from it, wetting his skin. I hadn’t hit anything vital. He’d live, especially with Hugh around to heal him.
Nick dodged a chunk of dirty ice flying at his head. Ascanio hurled another, and Nick spun his new vines, knocking it aside. We just had to keep Nick moving. The more he spun his whips, the more he would bleed.
“How far will you go?” I asked. “What won’t you do for him? Would you kill us for him?”
Nick looked at me, his eyes cold. “Whatever it takes.”
I had my answer. He wouldn’t break his cover. Fine. We’d bleed him out, nice and slow.
Nick charged me. The vines smashed all around me, scouring the ice with their thorns. I dodged and ducked on instinct. Left, right, left, left. We danced across the ice. My feet slipped. Thorns scratched my arms like stinging bees. I wasn’t fast enough.
Robert lunged from my right. The vine took him straight across the chest. Clothes ripped and a wererat in a half-form dropped to the ground. One vine whistled over his head. He lunged under it, snarled, and kicked Nick’s feet from under him with one devastating sweep.
Wow.
Nick stumbled. Desandra, huge and shaggy, leaped over my head and smashed into the crusader. Derek must’ve finally cut her out. Nick slid across the ice into the hole gaping in the pavement. His vines shot out and caught the ice with their thorns. I dashed forward, slid on my knees, and sliced across the vines. Slayer’s blade sliced through the shoots. Nick dropped down into the hole.
“Move,” Derek roared behind me.
I rolled to the side. A rusted truck blocked the sky. Derek turned it and hurled it into the hole, hood first. The vehicle slid in a couple of feet and stopped, wedged. A frantic scratching sliced against the truck—Nick’s vines scouring the metal.
I exhaled. My ribs hurt. Small cuts on my shoulders and sides stung as if burned.
“And stay there!” Desandra snarled.
I turned to Derek. “Let me see your hand.”
He thrust his left hand at me. The cuts from the thorns hadn’t closed. The skin around them turned dark. Blood streaked with gray oozed from the wounds. The toxin was killing the Lyc-V inside his body. The scratches on Desandra’s furry arms were still bleeding, too.
“I’m fine,” Derek said.
“Yes. We’re fine,” Desandra added.
There was nothing to be done. The best we could do was to get through to the crime scene and get back to the Keep, where Doolittle could treat them.
Ascanio sniffed at Derek’s hand. “Smells wrong. I think we should chop it off. Here, hold it steady.”
Derek pantomimed squeezing Ascanio’s throat with his other hand.
In the distance the two vampire minds stopped pacing and moved toward us. Shit.
“We have to go.” I jumped to my feet. “Now!”
• • •
CUDDLES GALLOPED THROUGH the streets. No need or time for stealth now. We had to get to the crime scene and get the hell out.
We swung onto Jonesboro and Cuddles pounded down the street. The Fox Den loomed before us, alternating apartment buildings of red brick and yellow stucco fused together into one giant complex. Finally.
The stucco had seen better days. Graffiti marked the crumbling walls. Trash sat in piles in the corners. If you saw the place in daylight, you’d steer clear of it. The night made it even grimmer. It looked like the kind of place that would shelter a rough crowd, driven to desperation by human predators and poverty. The type of people who’d see you being stabbed to death on the landing and shut their doors while you screamed for help.
“I smell Mulradin.” Robert turned right and sprinted toward the entrance to one of the brick buildings. I jumped off Cuddles, tossed her reins over a hook driven into the wall for that purpose, and followed Robert up the stairs. In his warrior form, he didn’t just run, he scurried, so fast, his paws might as well have been greased. I pushed myself to keep up.
One flight. Two, three.
Blood on the stairs. Faint smudges, getting bigger as we moved higher.
A door swung open above us.
I ran across the landing and up just in time to see Robert tear a crossbow out of a man’s hands. He looked about my age, Hispanic, and rough.
“Go inside,” Robert told him.
The man ducked into the apartment. The deadbolt clicked, sliding in place. Robert charged up the stairs and I followed. We cleared the third floor, another landing . . .
Robert stopped. I almost collided with his tail.
“A ward,” he said and stepped aside.
I walked up to the door. An invisible wall of magic enveloped the door.
“Can we get in from the outside?” Derek asked behind me. Next to him Ascanio and Desandra moved to watch the stairs.
I shook my head. Hugh would’ve warded the windows as well.
I pulled Slayer out of the sheath and tested the ward. Magic nipped at the saber’s point and the sword stopped, unable to go any farther. Usually wards had an elastic resistance, like trying to puncture a basketball that had gone a little soft. This ward was completely solid. I’d come across only one type of ward that was both invisible and solid like this.
I crouched and leaned forward, searching the grimy floor. There it was, a barely noticeable dark smudge. Hugh had sealed the place with his own blood.
“It’s a blood ward.” I straightened.
“Can you break it?” Robert asked.
When Julie had caught Lyc-V months ago, I had performed a ritual to cleanse her blood with mine. She retained some of my magic as a result. My father had used the same ritual or one very much like it to bind Hugh to him. My father’s blood was in that ward, which would make breaking it easier for me. But the power of Hugh’s own magic was in it too, and Hugh had a crapload of magic.
“If I break this, the backlash will be a bitch. I’ll be out of commission for a while.” And while I was trying not to pass out, whatever was inside the apartment would grab me. Nicely played, Hugh. One trap after another.
“For how long?” Derek asked.
“I don’t know. Could be seconds, could be minutes. Can you smell anything from here? Anyone inside?”
The four of them stood very still.
“No,” Robert said. “It’s like a wall.”
“That’s some messed-up crap,” Desandra said.
I knelt on the floor and examined the door. Several scratches marked the lock, all old. It had probably been picked, and more than once. Expected, considering the location of the door. The door itself didn’t look forced. Not much to go on. For all I knew, the apartment behind the door lay empty or it contained a giant fire-breathing terre
strial octopus in a bad mood. No way to tell. I had to break the ward.
“Hugh likes magic and traps. Once we’re in, don’t touch anything. Get ready to defend my deadweight.”
“Go for it,” Derek said.
I pulled my left sleeve up and sliced Slayer across my skin, just enough to draw blood. Curls of vapor slithered from the opaque saber. I turned the blade upside down, letting the blood wash over it, raised it, bracing myself, and pushed it into the ward.
The magic buckled, kicking at the blade like a wild horse.
I leaned into it. Slow and steady. My blood hissed on the blade, boiling. I fed my magic into the blade.
The ward didn’t budge.
Come on. I pushed harder.
Slayer stopped as if I were trying to thrust it into solid rock. If I pushed any more, the blade might snap. If I’d had time, I would have just sat there for the next fifteen minutes, keeping constant pressure on the sword, until the ward gave. But we had no time.
“Not working?” Robert asked.
“It’s a game to him.” I pulled Slayer free and slipped it into my left hand. The best way to break a ward was to slowly, methodically push through it. Slowly and methodically had failed, which left me with brute force. If it broke too quick, the repercussion from the magic would be very sharp and severe. This wasn’t my brightest move, but we had to get into the apartment and time was short. “Okay, fine. I’ll play. Stand back a bit. This could go really wrong.”
I squeezed the cut on my left arm, smearing the blood over my fingers, and thrust my hand into the ward. The magic snapped taut, trapping my hand. A hundred tiny needles of magic pierced my skin, tasted my blood, and recoiled. Bright red cracks split the empty air, radiating from my hand.
I pushed.
Thunder cracked in my head, slapping my brain. The ward broke and fluttered to the ground, melting as it fell. The world swam around me, the edges turning fuzzy. I shook my head, fighting to keep upright.
Robert pushed the door open and slipped in. Desandra followed. Derek and Ascanio hovered next to me.
I should probably go in. If I could only stop my ears from ringing . . .
“Clear,” Robert called.
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