Chapter 30
The agony was immense, terrible, another sanguinant’s claws puncturing viscera, rising for the heart—was this what his own targets had felt, every time Antinous sent his son to kill?
It did not matter, for Leila had collapsed almost as he gave the order—the collar would render its wearer quick to obey a bonded protector—and he had managed to wrap his arms around his opponent.
Clinging, clasped cheek to cheek, close as lovers, Nemesis propelled himself for the windows. The last, literally gutwrenching effort, the final piece of his plan, and his mind was very nearly empty as glass shattered, dust-choked drapery shredding with the force of their passage.
Too late Antinous grasped the danger; perhaps he thought his eldest meant to kill them both rather than suffer another’s grasp upon the treasure.
It did not matter—the sun’s chariot was loosed from pink-pearl gates.
Swollen and venomously red through a haze of burning, the great enemy of sanguinant both fledgling and elder lifted a rim over the horizon, scattered its light from a lid of heavy cloud closed over the city.
Past the ballroom’s window was a flagstone patio meant for outdoor parties, then wide lawn sloping vaguely downward to a thick, spiny-green hedge masking the estate’s boundary.
No hole to hide in, no stick or stone to break the advance of quickly intensifying daylight—Nemesis’s boots had long since evaporated and his bare soles skidded against flagstone, driving hard even as claws nearly reached his throbbing, aching heart.
Is she safe? Was Leila in a shadowed portion of the wreckage?
Eerie bronze glow strengthened. It stung, though weak and filtered through both cloud and smoke; the fire’s breath now blanketed the entire city, swirling as the threatened storm lingered over outlying sand-scrub wilderness beyond the borders.
Yet even that shadowless glow was more than enough to kindle a fledgling’s tender flesh—or induce rapidly mounting anaphylactic shock in an ancient elder.
Only a daywalker or Archon could risk the sun’s eye. And Nemesis had discovered just the previous morning, racing to the outpost holding his leman in safety, that he had surpassed elder status.
Age was no guarantee of strength. Perhaps the many deaths he had meted out sharpened and strengthened him in the Blood; perhaps he had been capable of daywalking for some while yet remained unaware, assiduously and habitually avoiding the danger.
Or perhaps the touch of a star-eyed nymph had hallowed him, made him capable of a fresh miracle.
It mattered little. Grateful for the gift, faintly amazed the plan had after all succeeded, he bore down, their furious passage erasing a long strip of yellowing turf to bare dry dirt.
He held Antinous in smoke-tinted sunlight as the sun mounted and the dying Emperor screamed, no longer vibrating with a battle-roar but choking on a high whistling cry.
Certainly the light stung Nemesis’s hide, scoured sensitive eyesight.
It did not raise blisters or swelling, though, and even as his enemy clawed frantically, the balance had been tipped.
Steam rose from the roasting of elder flesh, curling grey coils freighted with veils of grit.
Muscles shriveled, eyeballs collapsing, the skin of Antinous’s face splitting and desiccating with increasing speed.
The more damage was wrought, the swifter sun-shock accumulated.
One more violent effort, wrenching the patriarch’s arms from his son’s flesh. Nemesis held the squirming, struggling, dissolving thing to earth as morn strengthened by increments.
A last gurgle, a final burst of glittering particles, and only yellow steam remained, shredding as thunder once again growled in celestial halls. Along with the smoke-tang, the greenness of petrichor intensified.
Rain was now increasingly likely.
Nemesis remained on hands and knees, shuddering as the gouges in his gut sealed. The sunlight did not quite harm a new daywalker, but he still did not like its inimical prickling, robbing him of strength even as the wonder of survival spilled through nerve and muscle both.
Leila. He was somehow upright, left hand a bar across his slowly healing midriff as he staggered for the house.
Shredded curtains waved upon a flirting, strengthening breeze.
Bits of debris pattered down, the villa now a slumped ruin.
A deep furrow was gouged across flagstone patio, the ballroom’s flank torn wide.
Stepping into shadow was a relief.
“Leila,” he whispered to the house’s shattered depths.
There was no reply.
The storm finally broke midafternoon, lightning piercing sky-dams, torrents sweeping over long orange-and-yellow tongues stretched from the cauldron of the oilfields.
The wrecked pumps still burned, belching smoke—it would take some time for every iron-gantry dragon to be subdued—but the refineries had both been extinguished and all told the mortal authorities were relieved at the rain.
Even if lightning had struck the old Schellburger mansion, provoking a much smaller fire which gutted the historical monument.
A certain rich local philanthropist had reportedly been caught in the flames along with several of his staff; that particular item of news would be buried under far more pressing concerns.
Of a ragged, half-naked figure carrying a long bundle swathed with dusty antique window-drapes from the residence, nothing was ever said.
The mansion’s cavernous garage had largely escaped damage, many of the gleaming vehicles within eventually auctioned off by authorities; if a dark-red SUV with heavily tinted windows had gone missing, nobody cared.
It was enough that Grishkov’s property was available for new owners; several developers had been eyeing the fraying estate for almost a decade now.
The city would remain free of sanguinant for a short while, but power—and predators—abhor a vacuum. Any territory so prime was meant to be ruled. There was unrelated, much more interesting news buzzing in the subterranean gossip-streams of the demimonde.
It was whispered that Nemesis had turned on his Maker, but none could say for certain. For all of Antinous’s get had vanished from the earth.