Chapter 29 #3
Cyrus looks concerned. “We should probably warn him, shouldn’t we?”
“I’ll call the front desk,” Yorick says, swiftly pulling out his phone. I can hear him asking to connect the call to Wick’s room, but Niles is already inside.
“Do we leave?” Ezio asks.
“It’s a bit too late to go anywhere,” Johnny says as he pulls his knives out and eyes the vampires moving in around us. They do stop, but they’ve made their presence known. It’s very much an “If you try to run, we’re going to stop you” stance.
How irritating.
I want to assure them that they’re not intimidating enough to keep us here, but before I can convey that, Niles leaves the hotel and starts over toward us.
“What do you want, Niles?” I ask.
“Where is Wick?”
“Dead.”
“You killed him because Morpheus asked you to?” Niles asks.
“Partly for that and partly because he killed Yorick’s parents.”
Niles laughs. “Yeah? I guess I can kill Yorick then, can’t I? If we’re just killing whoever kills someone else, then it’s my turn.”
“Didn’t we go over this yesterday?” I ask.
I can tell he’s trying to get me to step away from the others, but I’m not foolish enough to do so.
He’s twice my age, and while he’s not as powerful as Morpheus, I likely wouldn’t live through a one-on-one fight with him.
But with the others beside me, my chances of living through it are higher.
“Why would you think Yorick had anything to do with Lou’s death?
Your wife was damn near as strong as you, even if she wasn’t as old as you.
You think Yorick had anything to do with her death? ”
“I know she was poisoned. She wasn’t healing, and that weakened her. Who knows what happened then, but I do know that your precious little pet was the last person she was seen with. Hand him over or I’ll take him myself.”
I push Yorick behind me. “Leave.”
The people he’s turned have surrounded us. They aren’t close yet, but they’re here to show that if their maker strikes, they have his back.
We should have left earlier. We should never have stayed around here.
Who am I kidding? This nonsense would have followed us anywhere.
“Hand him over and I’ll let the rest go free. If I have to come take him from you, I’m going to leave the bodies of every single one of them on the ground for you to clean up,” Niles snarls.
Yorick is tense behind me. The second Niles mentioned harm coming to anyone Yorick cares about, he became willing to toss his own body forward. I feel like I now have to watch him to make sure he doesn’t throw himself forward as a sacrifice.
“Niles, I think Morpheus is playing you,” Yorick says, voice gentle.
“I was with him… you know he was watching me that night. He’d know everything I was involved in, wouldn’t he?
Yet he told you to come to Wick’s party.
He’s using you to pin down where this poison came from.
He said you and Lou were involved in it. ”
“Oh? And I’m supposed to believe you? Morpheus knows I wasn’t involved in the poison.”
“Then was Lou?” I ask.
“You don’t have permission to speak about Lou,” he snaps, not denying her involvement.
He dashes forward as a group of about fifteen vampires move toward our backs. I know he’s going for Yorick, so I rush to stop him. He hits hard, shoving me back and reminding me how many years older than me he is. He’s fast, too, and when he steps back, he’s wearing my blood on his fingers.
The rest of our group is trying to keep the others off me, but Niles is relentless. Every move he makes, I have to watch closely, anticipating where he’s going to go. He’s not as fast as Morpheus, but even so, he’s faster than me since he’s a good thousand years older.
And when he clips me again, Yorick slams him back.
“Yorick, stay out of it,” I growl, knowing that it would only take one slipup… one second before his life could end.
I’ve seen it again and again.
I can’t let it happen to him.
“You can’t do this alone,” he says, which I know is right, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. Anything to keep Yorick out of this.
A woman comes up on the right, moving fast enough that it’s quite clear she’s old. She’s the distraction Niles needs to split my attention, but Yorick is on her before she reaches me. Somehow, that makes it even worse. She’s too old; he’s going to get hurt. She might kill him.
Anxiety roils through me, and I realize just how distracted I am when pain tears into my chest a second before Johnny, of all people, throws me back.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he snarls.
The woman slams into Yorick, and I see him barely avoid her attack because his attention is on the fact that I got hurt. He needs to focus. He has to focus.
I rush forward and push him back before Johnny flings one of his knives at me. I catch it and use it to nearly sever the woman’s head.
“NO!” Niles yells, as though he started this fight without considering the consequences of it.
He’s on me in a second, rage fueling him, and even Johnny can’t slow him down.
My group is falling apart; there are too many of them and so few of us.
The instant they gain some ground, more flood in.
They’re swarming our group, they’re going to kill them, and all because of me. All because of my relation to Morpheus.
Niles is impossibly fast and hard to deal with on my own.
And even when I do draw blood on him, it’s not enough.
He rams me against a tree before white-hot pain rips through my chest caused by the sword being driven into it, pinning me against the tree.
I wasn’t fast enough. None of us are. He’s proven again just how much more powerful older vampires are compared to me.
“You are not enough to kill me. You know that. So hand over Yorick and move on with your miserable existence,” he growls. He knows if he releases the sword, I’ll be on him before he can get Yorick, so I think he’s planning on keeping me pinned here until the others grab him.
Johnny lunges at him, seemingly from nowhere, but Niles is faster. He grabs Johnny by the neck, and the only thing that keeps him from crushing his throat is Yorick slamming into him.