Chapter 13 Asher #2
I take a step away from the crate but then startle in surprise when Ian's bloodshot eyes open, and he looks right at me. He doesn't move or speak or even blink, but he's the only vamp down here to show any sign of consciousness, so there's that.
It sounds like there's a thud from somewhere upstairs. Tipping my head, I try to listen better with my left ear—the only one that works now. When I hear nothing else, I pat the side of Boone's crate.
"Hang in there, Champ. Your master's neck has a date with my knife."
Slinking to the stairs that will take me up into the mansion, I take a deep breath, pop my neck, and charge up the stairs.
The second I reach the ornate first floor, I counter a startled defensive magic spell someone flings at me. The caster starts to shout, but I take him down in a tackle, smacking his head hard enough on the tile floor that he's out cold.
An incubus falls out of Limbo and wraps his arm around my neck, clearly about to try snapping it. Slamming my head back, I feel the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking and hear his squeal of pain.
My head rings from the impact, but godsdamn. The rush of combat still feels so fucking great after the stale months I spent recovering and rebuilding my body.
I fling the pained incubus off of me, sending his body toppling down the nearby stairs. Swerving the attack of another caster in the closest corner of this hallway connected to the stairs, I spot the blur of a vampyr toward me just in time.
Dropping, I just barely avoid getting my throat ripped out by its fangs
The vampyr hisses and lunges again. I throw an incantation of slowed motion at it before smashing my elbow back into the face of the second caster, who was trying to creep up behind me.
Side-stepping the slowed vampyr, I capitalize on its delay, pull the knife from my pocket, and bury the blade into the back of the vampyr's neck.
It screams, gurgling around the protrusion in the front of its throat. When the felled caster throws a dismemberment malediction up at me, all I have to do is drop again and let the vampyr take the full force of the spell.
The vampyr falls in pieces to the blood-soaked hallway floor, its blood spraying through the air.
Straightening, I send a brutal kick into the side of the remaining caster's head.
His skull cracks against the wall behind him, and he slumps.
Before I can catch my breath or pull the serrated knife out of what's left of the dead vampyr's neck, acrid magic floods the air, making my eyes glow just as I hear the quiet muttering of an incantation.
Wiping the vampyr's blood off my cheek and ignoring the pounding in my head, I turn to face my target: the necromancer.
There's some kind of ugly-ass tattoo all over the necromancer's head, illuminated by the spell he's already leveling at me. I summon a powerful protective charm just as the death magic slams into me several times in a row.
"How truly arrogant you are, coming here alone," the necromancer snarls.
"Yep. So, what's the deal, Ugly?" I ask, sparing the quickest glance at the room connected to this hallway.
I don't see any other opponents in there, but I do see a well-decorated sitting room with a check on the coffee table.
I bet there's a lot of zeroes on it. "What kind of fucked-up magic snake oil are you selling? "
"Snake oil? Please! What I offer is real and precious. I am blessing the worthy with youth, offering them beauty in a bottle. Can you imagine? A new lifetime, forever free of aging! I grasp their precious, fleeting lives within my hand, reversing their biological clockwork to—" he begins.
I talk over him, not interested in listening to his whole self-aggrandizing zombie-raiser sales pitch since I'm pretty sure the throbbing in my head is trying to develop into a migraine.
"So is it just the extremely illegal age-reversal hexes, or is there some other shit I should know about? Got any Undead puppets? A few skeletons in the closet, maybe? Or should we talk about your cellar full of thralls?”
The necromancer scowls at me and lifts his hands, his next powerful death magic spell crackling in the air around him.
But I'm ready to get this over with and get through all the asinine paperwork bounty hunters have to fill out these days, so I decide to end it here and now.
As soon as his dark magic starts to flood the air with fatal fumes, I summon my holy magic into a suit of armor.
It's my favorite party trick because it makes me pretty damn invincible.
Too bad I didn't have it summoned when that siren got into Jada's head during the Battle of the Citadel. She's tried to apologize for shooting me so many fucking times that I've asked her quintet members to help me change the subject anytime it comes up.
The sorcerer rears back in confusion when I walk through his mist of death with no trouble. The faint white light of Arati's blessing glows around me as I grip the sorcerer by his frail arm, twist him around, and slam his chest into the nearest wall.
He shouts. My eyes glow again as I sense that my touch just triggered an amulet around his neck—a defensive decapitation spell—but it bounces harmlessly off the holy magic still protecting me.
Before the sorcerer can do anything else, I pull out a good old-fashioned elephant tranquilizer and plunge it into his right shoulder muscles.
After a millisecond of struggling, he collapses, out cold.
Tranquilizer darts can kill humans, but I've yet to meet a legacy that they fuck up too badly. And if he does wake up with some shitty side effects, it's no skin off my back. This sleazy fucker is wanted for a reason.
The magic armor around me fades, and as usual, exhaustion quickly sweeps over me, making the ache in my head worsen. Holy magic can be draining. I'm just turning toward the dead vampyr, ready to get my knife back, when I hear something.
Thanks to my one useless ear, it takes me a solid second to identify the sound as the floor creaking from the adjoining room.
Shit.
I turn fast and fling myself aside, just barely avoiding getting sawed in half by an air elemental's deathly sharp wind attack. I'm scrambling to prepare my own exhausted magic as he moves into the hall with me. More of his element stirs around us toward me—
But there's a blur to my left, by the stairs, and suddenly the elemental is on the ground. His shrill scream cuts off immediately, turning into a gurgling, swallowing sound.
It all happened so fucking fast. When my eyes catch up, I stare at the back of Ian Boone's head.
He's already drinking the last of the life out of the air elemental.
Finally, he releases the other legacy's now bloodless, pale corpse and straightens slowly, turning to stare at me with fresh scarlet blood dripping down his chin.