Blood Vow

by J. R. Ward

  Now the emotions were settling into more of a pervasive sadness.

  "Well, do you want to--"

  His phone went off next, and as he looked at it, he frowned. "Fuck."

  "What is it?"

  As Mary glanced over at him, he jumped up. "Shit. There's an emergency downtown--listen, tell Marissa to call me when Bitty's ready--I've got to go, but I can break free."

  Or at least he hoped he could.

  "What is it?" Mary asked.

  "Trainees trapped with slayers--and I want the brothers to stay with Bit and the uncle, she's more important."

  "Be careful," his shellan said.

  "Always." He bent down and kissed her. "You know it."

  He hated leaving his mate there all alone, her eyes wide and scared. But there was no time to waste. He went upstairs, geared up, and then popped a window, dematerializing to the location that Axe had sent the SOS out from.

  He'd been looking for a distraction.

  Saving three recruits wasn't exactly what he'd been after, but he would take what he got.

  --

  Elise's heart was thundering against her sternum, beating so hard, it was a wonder the muscle didn't explode.

  From behind Axe's huge shoulders, she could see the three lessers approaching, their bodies moving with deadly-smooth strides, their expressions cold and flat, utterly emotionless.

  They had guns.

  The female trainee--Elise couldn't remember her name, but she recognized her from the night she'd first met Axe--stepped into their paths with a gun up and a murderous expression on her face.

  Elise couldn't imagine being that calm or that aggresive in a situation like this.

  "Stop where you are," the female said. "Or I'll shoot you."

  A fourth lesser, who seemed to come out of nowhere, just laughed. "Really, bitch. Do you actually know how to use that--"

  Elise's entire body jumped as there was a pop! and the slayer fell to the ground.

  That female had put a bullet right between its eyes.

  "Holy shit," Elise breathed.

  But that was the last time she had a chance to track anything. All at once, the drama went into overdrive--the three slayers rushed in, bullets flying everywhere and ricocheting around as she was spun to the left and shoved behind something big and metal.

  Car? Dumpster?

  No, it was a discarded meat locker the size of an SUV.

  A split second later, Elise felt a lash on her shoulder, like someone had put a curling iron on her skin--but she couldn't worry about it as Axe jumped in front of her again, and Peyton pressed into her from the side--

  "He's on top!" Peyton said.

  What? she thought.

  "Motherfucker!"

  As Axe cursed, he angled his gun up to the heavens and pumped off more rounds--and then a body was falling on them, a body that leaked black blood and smelled like baby powder and spoiled milk.

  "I'm out!" Axe said. And she took that to mean he had no more ammunition.

  Someone cursed. More gunshots. Her ankle hurt now, too.

  And then Peyton fell away. Just dropped off like a blanket falling from the side of a bed.

  "Peyton!" she screamed as she turned.

  Just as she was reaching out for him, that female soldier grabbed her by the back of her coat and hauled her to her feet.

  "Can you shoot?"

  Elise blinked, her vision going fuzzy. More bullets were whizzing by. God, where were the bullets coming from? And then she focused on the female. "You're bleeding! Y-y-y-you're--"

  The slap came from the left and made a cracking impact on Elise's face. But it was like throwing a window open in a smoke-filled kitchen. She was suddenly able to concentrate on the soldier.

  "Do you know how to shoot?" she was asked again.

  "P-p-point and pull the trigger," Elise blurted.

  "That's right."

  Suddenly there was a heavy piece of metal in her palm. "Two hands. And only if you need to."

  And then Elise was picked up and thrown.

  As she was airborne, her hair whipping her face, her body totally numb, she had the absurd thought, How the fuck was this happening right now? How the holy fuck was she--

  Bam!

  She landed on her ass, her body slamming back against something else--it was a Dumpster this time. She'd been thrown behind the bar's Dumpster.

  As she fought for her breath, her hands were shaking so badly they were a blur, but she was not going to drop the gun.

  Looking out into the alley, she saw Axe going hand to hand with a slayer as the female stood over Peyton, who--oh, dear Lord--looked like he'd been hit in the head. So much blood--too much blood!

  And the human police were coming--she could hear the sirens.

  Except then the tide turned. From out of nowhere, the biggest vampire she had ever seen in her life materialized right in the middle of the alley. He was blond and dressed in black and he attacked like a demon, grabbing on to the slayer that Axe was trading punches with and pitching the enemy against the side of the building like it was a doll.

  Axe moved on to the next, and so did what had to be a Brother.

  More lessers showed up, having obviously been called, but between Axe and the Brother and that female trainee, heads were snapped, and black blood that stank flowed, and bodies lined the pavement--

  Right as things were winding down, just before the cops arrived...something caught her eye.

  A subtle flash.

  That lesser who had been shot in the head, the one behind the meat locker where they had started out, was still moving, and it had raised its gun up, pointing the muzzle at the Brother.

  "He's going to shoot!" Elise screamed.

  Everything went into a slow crawl, and Elise watched in horror as the Brother turned his upper body in her direction--which put him directly in line with the shooter.

  And the lesser pulled its trigger, emptying bullets into that huge chest. Pop! Pop! Pop!

  Someone screamed--probably her--as the blond-haired Brother threw up both of his hands and fell back onto the pavement. And still the slayer discharged its weapon.

  Fuck this shit, Elise decided.

  Without thinking, spurred by an aggression that was as uncharacteristic as it was manic, Elise jumped out from behind her cover, ran across the alley, and got as close as she could to the lesser.

  Then she pointed...and fucking shot.

  Blam! Blam! Blam!

  Two hands, arms outstretched, eyes and body steady, she let the gun do the talking, black blood splattering back on her as she kept closing in and shooting and closing in and...

  She didn't know when to stop.

  Wait, she couldn't stop.

  Even when the gun was no longer talking, when the clip or whatever you called it was empty, even when the slayer was so bullet-ridden it was a sieve, she stayed where she was, standing over it, that gun muzzle pointed at her target, her body trembling so badly her teeth were chattering, her knees knocking in their sockets, her breath sawing up and down her throat.

  And her forefinger squeezing the trigger--

  "Elise?" Axe said from a distance so far off she could barely hear him. "Elise...sweetheart...I'm right behind you."

  "Wh-wh-what--"

  "I'm just going to take the gun, 'kay? Let me have the gun--no, don't turn toward me. Stay where you are."

  His hands traveled gently down her arms and carefully released the weapon from her cramped fingers.

  As soon as it was out of her grip, she turned to him and burst into tears. "I tried to save him, the Brother, I tried to--"

  "We've got to go--"

  Elise looked past his biceps at the dead body of the Brother: The blond-haired fighter was lying flat on his back, his arms out straight in a T formation, his heavy boots lolling to the sides.

  "I was trying to save him, oh, God--"

  "Elise, we need to go before the humans get here--"

  Across the way, the female sold
ier picked Peyton up in her arms. "He's not doing well. Where do we go--"

  Human police cars screeched to a halt at the head of the block, humans swarming free of the vehicles and pointing down to where they were in the shadows.

  "We can't leave him--"

  "Put down your weapons," came out from a speaker system. "Put down your weapons now or we will shoot to kill--"

  And then things got truly surreal. Like something out of a movie, the Brother's torso rose up from the pavement. And he looked down his chest, cursed, and said something that sounded like, "I just had Fritz buy this fucking thing."

  Then he reached into what seemed to be his own flesh, picked out a bullet, and flicked it across the alley.

  That was when he seemed to notice what was happening with the police cars.

  "Fucking humans, not again." He got to his feet and winced, but seemed otherwise fine. "You two, take the wounded and the female and go that way." He pointed to the far end of the alley. "Manny should be coming--there he is."

  At that precise moment, a large, boxy vehicle pulled across the other end of the lane, where the humans were not.

  "Go now!"

  At the barking command, Axe grabbed her hand and started running. And the female with Peyton did the same, the four of them hightailing it down the slushy way to what turned out to be some kind of fancy van.

  Just as its wide door slid open and she was about to jump in, Elise looked back. Flashes were flooding the sides of the buildings, and there were popping noises, but not from bullets being discharged.

  The Brother was stabbing the slayers back to the Omega, she thought with awe. Holy crap, was she actually seeing this?

  "Get in," Axe said as he gave her a shove into a well-lit interior.

  He followed and then dragged the door to a close.

  "Hang on, folks!" somebody yelled from up front. "This ride is going to be bumpy--stay on the floor."

  There was a roar and a lurch, and then they were moving. And Elise collapsed back against Axe. How had...what had...

  So fast. Her mind couldn't comprehend how fast it had all gone down. It was like...one minute they were walking up to Peyton inside the cigar bar, and the next she was in an action movie, except it wasn't a film set at all. It was real.

  Looking across the way, Elise blinked away tears. The female fighter had Peyton in her lap, and had braced herself against a mounted table in the center of the space--this was an ambulance, Elise realized. A massive ambulance with all kinds of supplies tacked to its walls or packed in glass-fronted cabinets mounted on the sides.

  "Is he alive?" Elise said.

  The female didn't look up. "Yeah. At the moment."

  There was so much blood. Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe...the blood...

  But at least they seemed to be going even faster--hopefully to someone who could operate in here, Elise thought. And as they banged and crashed, things rattling all around them, Axe kept her from bowling-balling it, his powerful arms locked around her waist, one of his legs braced against the stand of that operating platform.

  "How did he do that?" Elise mumbled. "How did the Brother...survive?"

  "Bulletproof vest," Axe said grimly. "He must have been wearing a bulletproof vest--and the damn thing saved his life."

  xe's adrenaline didn't stop flowing until Dr. Manello's mobile surgical unit pulled into some kind of downtown garage and the surgeon opened the sliding door.

  And even then, Axe was on a hair trigger. Natch.

  As he got out, he looked around at a dim, industrial interior that smelled like oil, gas, and old metal--and tried to pretend he wasn't losing his fucking mind.

  He couldn't believe that not only had Elise gotten ambushed with the rest of them, but that she had discharged about a pound and a half of lead into a lesser who had a gun--and worse, it was all his own fucking fault. If he and Peyton hadn't been going at it, playing dick toss in that bar, the three of them, and then Novo, and then Rhage, never would have ended up outside, exposed, and wrong-place-wrong-timing it with all those slayers.

  And yeah, then her fucking cousin, Peyton the Golden Boy, never would have gotten popped in the head. Plus, what if Rhage didn't get out of that human cluster-fuck okay? What if the cops got him or another lesser or--

  That open-ended nightmare was solved when a side door got thrown wide and the stench of vampire blood and lesser death wafted in.

  "How is Peyton?" the Brother Rhage said as he came into the light thrown by the surgical unit. "And what do I need to do to help."

  As Rhage passed by, he clapped Axe on the shoulder in acknowledgment, but focused on Dr. Manello, who had laid Peyton out on the operating table and was hooking up all kinds of shit to him. Before there were any answers, Doc Jane came in through that same door. She was in surgical scrubs, just like Manello, and she was not interested in anyone other than her patient.

  Inside the van, Novo was standing against the far wall with her arms crossed over her chest and her head down. Blood was dripping off her chin. She'd been cut there. Also on the forearm.

  Someone's phone started to ring.

  "That's me," Elise said next to him.

  Snapping to attention, Axe put his arm around her as she fumbled with the thing and put it up to her ear.

  "Troy? No, I'm so sorry, I can't talk right now. Tomorrow? Sure. What? Well...I've got...a friend who's in trouble. We're at the ER right now. No, it'll be fine. I'll call you tomorrow. Bye."

  She hung up and leaned against him as if the interruption had never happened. Which made it less likely he'd stalk across Caldwell to find her professor and black-eye him on principle.

  Okay, fine. He wouldn't do that. At least not in a world outside of his jealous streak.

  And why the fuck was he thinking like this right now?

  "Is he going to be all right?" Elise asked nobody in particular.

  "We just have to wait," Axe heard himself reply. "We just have to pray."

  After all, he didn't particularly like Peyton, but that didn't mean he wanted the bastard to go brain dead or into an early grave. Especially if Elise was even tangentially involved.

  After a little while, Rhage ducked his head out of the SUV. "Listen, I want you two to head home. There's nothing you can do here. We'll let you know what happens with him, okay?"

  "Is he..." Elise just let the sentence drift as if she recognized its futility.

  "We'll do everything we can for him." Rhage looked over at Axe. "You were a huge asset again, son."

  "It's my fault."

  "How you figure that? You send up a flare or some shit? Put an ad in Craigslist for your buddy to get shot in the head? Don't think so. G'on now, get her home and you do the same." Rhage then met Elise's eyes. "And you were amazing. You really showed up when you had to."

  "I don't know how to shoot a gun," she mumbled. "I've never shot one before."

  "Well, you have now. And I'm sorry you had to learn the skill."

  With his head thumping, Axe led her over to the door and opened the way out. He stepped through first, and as he glanced around, he saw that they were close to the river under the bridges, the highway elevated up on pylons, the sound of the occasional car and truck above echoing around.

  "You go now," he said to her. "And I'm right behind you. To your house."

  She nodded in a way that broke his heart. And then she closed her eyes.

  It took her at least a minute, maybe two, to ghost out.

  And then he was on her tail, traveling through the cold night in a loose collection of molecules that seemed to represent better who he was as opposed to the more organized, corporeal version of himself.

  Scattered was his very definition.

  When he re-formed, it was right beside her, something made possible because of the blood they'd shared.

  As she took his hand and started for the front door, he pulled her to a stop. "You have blood on your clothes. Is there a back way we can use?"

  Elise looked down at herself
like she had forgotten what clothes were at all, much less what she was currently wearing and what condition it was in.

  "Funny," she whispered. "This was how it all started."

  "I'm sorry?"

  She looked up at him. "With you. I walked into the house through the front door by mistake and that's how my father saw me. And if I hadn't done that...I never would have met you."

  Yeah, and how's it working for you, he thought grimly. You shot a lesser, nearly got killed yourself, and you're covered with the stains of war.

  "Tell me where the back door is," he said in a grim voice. "And I'll take us in."

  --

  There was nothing Rhage could do.

  As Doc Jane and Manny went to work on Peyton, stitching up the streak by his temple, assessing his concussion, trying to fix his too-low blood pressure, Rhage was pretty fucking tired of being in situations where he couldn't do shit.

  He glanced at Novo. The female trainee hadn't moved the whole time. It was as if she had turned to stone. "You want to go?"

  "No."

  In other circumstances, he might have argued, but she was tough. No matter what happened, she could handle it--

  His phone went off and he grabbed for it. "Oh, shit...I gotta go," he said as he read the text. "It's Mary."

  "We're safe," Manny said.

  "I'll send some people over."

  "That'd be good."

  Rhage was out the side door and dematerializing a split second later. As he re-formed in front of the Audience House, he didn't think twice about running up the front walkway and shoving open the door--

  Lot of people in the foyer and everyone turned to him--

  Complete. Fucking. Chaos.

  Mary gasped. Bitty yelled. Somebody started cursing--V, by the sound of it. And then his females were coming at him, talking a mile a minute, pointing, gesturing to his chest.

  He couldn't fathom what they were going on about.

  "Hold up," he said, putting his palms out. "How was it with Ruhn--are you okay, Bitty?"

  "You're shot! You're bleeding!"

  "Huh?"

  Except then he looked down at himself. Sure enough, there were bullet holes through the front of his shirt and his leather jacket; there was bright red blood on his hands and all over his clothes...and black lesser blood dripping off his daggers, which he'd restrapped.

  Oh. Right. That whole, you know, fighting thing.

  "I'm fine," he said. "I'm--"

  "I'm calling Doc Jane now!" Mary said as she went for her phone.

  "No!" He put his hand out again. "They're operating. And I'm not hurt--"