Chapter 9 Kendra #2
“I can’t hear you.” His voice is too loud, how people talk when they can’t hear themselves. He pulls one plug from his ear and winces immediately. “That damn cackle. It pierces right through you even with ear plugs.”
I steady him on his feet and turn back to Kade, who hasn’t moved from her position. Her look has shifted from irritation to something sharper, more calculating.
“They have protection.” Kade’s voice drops an octave, and she pauses, her bright blue eyes narrowing as something clicks behind them. “And I know exactly who they got it from.”
“Who?” I ask, but the answer never comes.
A metal canister bounces off the wall three feet from my face and cracks on the floor with a metallic ring.
The hiss starts before it stops rolling, white smoke pouring from both ends, expanding outward in a thick cloud that hits my lungs before I can hold my breath.
My eyes burn instantly, like someone threw acid in them, and I double over coughing, hands clawing at my collar, trying desperately to pull it over my face.
Kade grabs me and pulls me behind her with supernatural speed, positioning herself between me and the spreading gas. The smoke curls around her, but she doesn’t even flinch.
Kojo vanishes into the fog. I can’t see him anymore.
The corridor fills with white in seconds, thick and chemical, and all I can hear through my own desperate coughing are the sounds of violent impact.
A grunt. The heavy crack of bone meeting bone.
A body hitting the wall hard enough to shake the framed prints in the hallway.
Another grunt, lower this time, and then a scream that’s short and abruptly cut off by a wet sound I don’t want to identify.
A body slides out of the fog and comes to rest at my feet. A man in black tactical gear, his face mask pulled sideways, his jaw hanging at an angle that jaws don’t naturally bend. His eyes are open but empty, staring at nothing. I step back instinctively, my boot catching on his arm.
I look up at Kade. She stands with her arms crossed, that infuriating smirk back in place, watching the fog like she finds the entire situation tedious.
“Aren’t you going to help?” I cough through the words, my lungs burning. “You’re a vampire. You can handle this.”
Kade laughs, dark and short. “Honey, if I leave you alone with Aiden and something happens to you, I will have to put Kojo down.”
I narrow my eyes at her through the burning haze. She gives me a shrug so casual it makes me want to scream.
“Of course you don’t understand. You’re just a silly little naive human.
” She tilts her head and studies me. “You are the only thing in this world worth living to him. He’s not going to tolerate so much as a scratch on you.
” Her smirk deepens. “Go on. Be the little hero and try to help him. See what happens.”
She winks at me. I hiss at her and she laughs, the sound grating on my already frayed nerves.
I turn and try to push through the fog, pulling my coat collar over my nose, but Aiden’s arm tightens around my waist from behind, anchoring me in place.
He’s covering his own mouth with his free hand, his eyes streaming, but his grip doesn’t waver.
“Did you not hear her?” His voice rasps through the smoke. “Please understand what you are dealing with. Kade is right. You are the only thing holding him onto this world. If you get hurt, he will go insane.”
I huff in frustration, my lungs burning, my eyes watering until I can barely see. “So what are we supposed to do, just stand here and...”
Another body slides out of the fog. This one lands face down, his tactical vest shredded across the back, three parallel gashes torn through the Kevlar and into the flesh beneath, deep enough that I can see the white of rib bone through the cuts.
His rifle skitters across the carpet and stops against the wall.
“Oh, alright.” Kade uncrosses her arms with an exaggerated sigh. Her blue eyes flare bright. She raises one hand, palm flat, and pushes it forward in a slow steady motion. The fog pulls away from her fingers, thinning and rolling toward the walls until the corridor clears completely.
“What the fuck.” I stare at the now-visible corridor, my lungs still burning from the chemical exposure.
Kade rolls her eyes. “I told you, I’m a witch too. Though my magic is limited to controlling the elements.” She drops her hand and gestures down the now-visible hallway. “Shall we?”
I look around the cleared corridor. Stained carpet, peeling wallpaper, two bodies on the floor behind us. But no Kojo. The hallway stretches toward the stairwell door, which hangs open, one hinge bent at an unnatural angle.
“Where is he?” I pull against Aiden’s grip, suddenly desperate to know Kojo is safe. “Is he alright?”
Aiden tightens his hold and moves forward, pulling me with him as Kade leads us down the hall. Our boots crunch over broken drywall and spent shell casings, and I count them as we pass.
Kade reaches the stairwell door and stops. She grins, looking down the stairs.
“Oh, he’s just fine.” She pushes the door open wider and the sound hits me first. The crash of a body against the wall, a snarl that fills the stairwell like a physical presence.
“You’d be surprised how much power a Bouda holds.
Especially when they have everything to lose.
” She looks at me and the grin fades into something raw and honest. “You are his everything.”
The stairwell opens below us, three flights down to the ground floor, and I can see all of it from the landing, the entire brutal tableau laid out beneath us.
Kojo stands in the center of the first-floor landing, surrounded by four men in the same black tactical gear.
A fifth lies crumpled against the far wall, his neck bent at an angle that tells me he’s not getting up.
They’ve got rifles, compact and fitted with attachments I don’t recognize, but clearly designed for something beyond conventional warfare.
Kojo moves first. The closest man raises his weapon but Kojo closes the distance before the barrel can level.
He grabs the rifle with one hand and tears it from the man’s grip with such force that the stock snaps clean off, and drives his elbow into the man’s face.
I hear the crack from where I’m standing, three stories up.
The man’s head snaps back, he follows the momentum and hits the stairs behind him and doesn’t move.
The second man fires. A pulse of blue light, not a bullet, something else, streaks across the stairwell like lightning.
Kojo drops flat to the floor, the beam passing over his back where his head had been a half-second earlier.
He rolls and comes up under the shooter’s guard, both hands gripping the man’s tactical vest, and lifts him off the ground like he weighs nothing and hurls him into the third attacker.
They collide with a crack that echoes up all three flights, tangled together, sliding across the floor until they hit the railing.
Three of them are down, two still standing, and the one against the wall isn’t getting up.
The fourth man is smarter than his companions.
He doesn’t shoot. Instead he pulls something from his vest, a blade, long and serrated, and lunges.
Kojo catches the wrist mid-swing, twists it until I hear the pop from three stories up, and the knife clatters to the floor.
The man screams in agony. Kojo spins him by the broken wrist and slams him face first into the stairwell wall, then pulls him back and does it again.
The second impact leaves a red smear on the surface that I know will haunt my dreams.
The last man fires three rounds. Blue pulses light up the stairwell like strobe lights.
Kojo pivots, the first beam missing by inches, the second grazing the wall behind him, and the third catches him on the shoulder.
His body jerks violently. My hands grip the stairwell railing so tight the metal bites into my palms, and I have to stop myself from crying out.
But he doesn’t fall, doesn’t even stumble.
The burn mark on his shirt smokes, the fabric melting away from his skin, but he’s already moving, closing the gap between them with two strides that cover more ground than any human could manage.
He grabs the man by the throat with one hand and lifts him until his feet kick uselessly at empty air.
Then Kojo turns his back to the man. His ridge is fully extended, every spike at its full length.
He pulls the man forward onto the blades.
The spikes go through the tactical vest like it’s paper, sinking into the man’s chest, and I can count the entry points from the landing above.
The man’s mouth opens but nothing comes out, his frame arching in agony, fingers clawing uselessly at the spikes.
Kojo holds him there for three seconds, then drops his shoulder and lets the body slide off and hit the floor.
He turns to the two who collided with each other.
They’re trying to untangle themselves, struggling to their feet, reaching for weapons, but he’s already on them.
He grabs the first by the ankle and drags him across the floor, then drives his bare foot into the man’s ribcage.
Bones splinter with a sound that carries up the stairwell like brittle branches breaking.
The second scrambles backward on all fours, his rifle lost somewhere in the pile.
Kojo catches him by the collar and lifts him to eye level.
The glow from his eyes illuminates the man’s face, pale and contorted with terror, and Kojo stares at him the way he did in the motel room except stripped of everything soft.
“You were there.” His voice echoes through the stairwell, each word distinct and terrible. “The night my Queen died. I smell the fire from my village on your skin. You carry it still.”
The man tries to speak. Kojo doesn’t let him. He pivots and drives the man’s head into the metal railing with enough force to bend the steel inward. The sound rings through the stairwell, sharp and final, and the body drops.
Kojo straightens. He stands in the center of the landing, surrounded by the fallen, his bare chest heaving through the ruined shirt.
Blood covers his arms from the elbows down, streaked across his tattoos in patterns that make the dark ink look alive.
His ridge retracts slowly, the spikes softening back into fur and lying flat against his back.
The amber in his eyes dims from blinding to a steady warm glow as his breathing levels.
He looks up at me from three flights below, bodies scattered around him like fallen leaves, blood running down his hands, and tilts his head, studying my face with a look that doesn’t match the carnage surrounding him.
“Are you hurt?”
I stare at him, unable to process the disconnect. His voice carries nothing but genuine concern, directed at me alone. He stands in a pool of someone else’s blood asking if I’m okay, and I can’t make my mouth form words.
This man will burn the world down for me.
Aiden’s hand finds my arm and pulls me forward, past the first flight, then the second.
Kade leads the way, stepping over bodies without even looking at them.
I let them guide me because my body is operating on autopilot.
My legs are moving but my head isn’t here anymore.
It’s still on that landing, staring down at him, watching him ask about my wellbeing while he drips with the proof of what he’s willing to do.
Kojo falls into step beside us at the ground floor.
The exit door hangs off its hinges and snow pours through the gap, the cold hitting my face like a slap as Aiden pulls me through it into the parking lot.
The blizzard has buried every car under inches of fresh white, the motel’s neon sign flickering overhead and stuttering light across the drifts.
Our footprints fill in almost as fast as we make them and steam rises off Kojo’s bare shoulders into the night air.
I look at Kojo. He looks at me. I don’t have words. I don’t have a single word for any of this.