Chapter 22
An Archon could bathe in open flame without hurt, it was said. Perhaps they were indeed sanguinant evolved past the summa of daywalking, others averred they were some other demimonde species, though they were said to feed as the children of the Blood did.
He had never met one, and in any case it did not matter.
Half a fractional miscalculation amid the plumes of burning spelled a bright, terrible moment of consumption for a sanguinant elder, no matter how mighty; even the shimmering flows of heated air could tumble a fledgling to the ground and lodge a single spark in eminently flammable skin, hair, clothes.
To move in such conditions required care and experience.
To fight while doing so required skill, age, defiance, and a healthy dose of luck.
Twisting, turning, looping, driving a group of elder sanguinant into a wall of flame and veering aside at the last moment, a fledgling’s head separating from its neck with a crack unheard in the roaring of a burn-beast fed from the veins of earth itself, predicting the likely escape routes of those who decided a leman could not possibly be found in such a hellscape, arriving just in time to send his fellow children of the Blood to whatever underworld awaited their kind—his concentration was a still single point, the rest of him whirling about the memory of grey-blue eyes, wide and soft.
Nobody needs me. There was much to achieve, not least discovering why precisely she would say something so outlandish, but to do so he must needs be alive by dawn.
And every other sanguinant in the city dead, including Antinous. The soldier now knew beyond a doubt that his Maker was aware of the prize, for among the score of elders and as many fledglings roaming the burning wasteland were familiar faces, recognized battle-patterns.
No doubt many were intelligent enough to realize their patriarch was using them against each other. Yet the lure of a leman was overwhelming, a gamble well worth the risk even for fledglings barely past first glut.
For those in Antinous’s many territories who thought leman a mere phantasy, the chance to say one had slain Nemesis—whether in a group, after he had been weakened by other combat, or even as a lie—was attractive enough.
Now, with the clarity granted by his nymph’s shining presence, Maximus could imagine how much he was hated by those the patriarch ruled so stringently.
Some few might even privately think themselves as soldiers capable of killing an Emperor, and witnessing the latter’s unequivocal defeat would allow for their own fiefdoms to expand without fear of reprisal.
If, that was, Maximus allowed even a single sanguinant to escape catastrophe.
Quintus, Mure, Eli the Swift, both Roses, Manuel and Pelle, Aries, Silvya Ariste, Dagon and Taika and more, each an elder he had trained and fought beside. They all fell in fiery battle, alongside fledglings they had made.
Others would be roaming the avenues leading from this place.
Now that Nemesis had shown himself all would converge, assuming his leman held safely below seal in the outpost. If she by some miracle eluded capture—a nymph given winged feet, indeed—the soldier still knew where Antinous would be resting once dawn threatened.
There was, after all, no need to waste what the former owner of this territory had built.
If she were caught, as was overwhelmingly likely, escalating combat would quickly draw the patriarch’s attention.
Antinous would be monitoring events closely indeed, listening to the night’s subtle whispers, hardly needing spies and runners positioned throughout the city’s arteries and organs—dogsbodies and catspaws, mortals aware or unaware of their true master.
None of this mattered at the moment. All he could do was note who he had already slain, anticipate those likely to be creeping elsewhere.
And kill.
Among the flames Nemesis walked, and with him came death for his own kind.
The fire naturally escaped its bounds, sending tongues along summerdry scrub.
Mortal authorities were no doubt alerted to the danger by now, further adding to general chaos—not that sanguinant cared overmuch, since rebuilding near such a prime resource was a certainty and human calamity most often brought good hunting.
The last to fall, surprisingly, was sneering, skulking Jaye, only recently past fledgling status and much given to tactics of berserker ferocity. Yet even he burned like a candle, resisting the fire-kiss a few moments—a signal achievement, showing he was made of stern stuff indeed.
Nemesis did not wait. He wheeled in the direction he had last seen his leman and put on all the speed he could still muster, riding a searing, invisible wave even as his hair smoked and stinging, smarting eyes nearly collapsed.
Burning branches, mortal alarm stirring in a residential area past an overgrown, tinder-dry hedge, distant sirens beginning to howl…
…and a faint thread of rose-scent tinged with musk, fresh coffee, and the darker note of his blood in her sweet thrumming veins.
His leman was running. The slight trace of her managed to peel a layer of rising ossification from his senses, a sharp jolt of much-needed lucidity filling him for a dizzying moment.
The thrall woke, twisting inside his bones, far hotter than the escaped inferno. Every instinct protective and possessive, predatory or tender, demanded to find her, hide her, make her safe.
Cold unerring logic answered she would never be secure until every sanguinant he could also smell or sense within the city was slain. For their reek overlaid his prize’s delicate footsteps, and now it was only a matter of time before Antinous hunted her down.
A soldier’s desperate plan now entered its second phase—a running battle instead of siegebreaking. Nemesis was widely held to excel at both.
He hoped the estimation was accurate.