Chapter 19
“Motherfuckingbastardassholes!” Mace bellowed, then added a few more choice expletives as the molten sting of a vampire’s machete sliced through his jacket and nicked his shoulder.
He fell back against a stone wall just as Blade swooped in like a damned superhero and lopped off the vamp’s head in one powerful swing.
Blade landed in a crouch, and as he straightened, he gave Mace a scathing look. “Dumbass.” He wiped his blade clean on the dead vamp’s coat. “We told you not to enter a room without us.”
Just a couple of days ago, Mace would have taken Blade’s insult as friendly banter and would have responded in kind. But shit was different now. Ever since he’d learned what Blade and Scotty had done, Mace had been on edge, his happy-go-lucky personality taking a leave of absence.
“I told you I was going in,” Mace snapped. “You were too busy joking it up with Scotty to hear me.”
Blade wheeled around, his expression stormy. “You were being reckless, as usual—”
Scotty and Dare charged into the room. “Any sign of the hostages?” Scotty asked and then frowned at Mace’s bleeding shoulder. “You okay?”
I’m horribly injured, so maybe you should have sex with me to make it better.
The bitter thought shamed him. A little. And it reminded him that he’d need to inject himself in an hour or so. “I’m fine.”
“Where are we?” Dare poked his head around a darkened corner on the main level of Leap Castle. He’d entered from beneath the building, through a tunnel dug into the restored oubliette.
“We’re in the old keeper’s living quarters.
” Mace glanced down at his comms unit. He’d been checking the thing for nearby signs of life, but so far, he hadn’t seen anything.
This time, though, several little red dots appeared on the screen.
“I got something. Ahead. Looks like they’re coming from inside one of the tunnels.
” He gestured to his team. “I’ll take the lead. ”
Blade stepped in front of him. “Better if I go first.”
“I called it first,” Mace snapped. Why was Blade being such a dick? Showing off for Scotty?
“I can cloak myself in shadows,” Blade shot back. “In the tunnels, I have the element of surprise.”
Okay, sure, that made sense. But Mace didn’t feel like admitting it. “And if we run into trouble, the fact that I can pass as a vamp might help.”
It was a lame argument, given that his only vampire trait was being able to convert blood into energy. He didn’t need it to survive. Plus, vampires would sense his very-alive body.
“Whatever.” Scotty shoved past them and started down the tunnel. “I’ll go. The rest of you, take my six.”
Blade shot Mace an accusatory glance, as if he was responsible for forcing Scotty into the lead.
Not that Scotty couldn’t handle any situation.
She was as strong—if not stronger—than either of them and had the whole immortality thing going for her.
But something kept both Blade and Mace putting themselves in harm’s way instead of putting her there. And it was more than just chivalry.
It was Scotty’s father.
If anything happens to my daughter because you guys fucked up, I’ll make you wish your fathers had been eaten at birth.
Blade said Ares was exaggerating, but Mace took the Horseman’s words to heart. Dude was scary as fuck.
Nothing was going to happen to his little girl on Mace’s watch.
They fell in line behind her, Mace jockeying ahead of Blade and Dare as they started down the dark path.
The tunnels were crude, with deep gouges in the walls, seemingly dug by the vampires’ own hands. The Nosferatu were like moles, preferring to capture their food and store it underground rather than hunt aboveground like normal vamps.
Damned freaks.
As they crept through the tight spaces, an oppressive, tingly sensation would occasionally sift through Mace’s body, announcing the presence of a demon’s soul. So far, he’d counted five. Whatever Medium DART sent in later would have their hands full.
They halted to check out the schematics Decker had provided, but they’d barely launched the 3D map when a bloodcurdling scream echoed through the caverns. Scotty darted ahead with no consideration for her safety. As usual. Which was why he and Blade were always sandwiching her between them.
If anything happens to my daughter because you guys fucked up, I’ll make you wish your fathers had been eaten at birth.
Right. Because of that.
Blade swore under his breath and shoved past Mace. And wouldn’t you know it? Blade wasn’t wearing his fucking backpack.
Wheeling around, Mace swiped the pack off the floor. “Hey.” He hurled it at Blade. “Guess you didn’t learn your lesson in Alaska.”
Snarling, Blade snagged the pack out of the air. “You know—”
“Stop it!” Scotty wheeled around, a spitting kitten with her claws out. “We are not going to blow this mission because you two can’t put shit aside for a couple of hours. We lost the Reaper on the last assignment, and I’m not going to sit in Kynan’s office and get my ass chewed again.”
Shaking his head, Dare slipped by them. “Best special-ops team in DART, my fine ass,” he muttered as he passed. “Fucking clowns.”
Mace was really starting to hate the guy.
“Stay the fuck out of it,” Blade growled.
Dare moved like a wraith, a smoky blur, and got right up in Blade’s face, nose to nose.
His eyes glowed, swirling with orange lava and murder, and Mace casually dropped his hand to the hilt of his favorite battle knife.
Blade might deserve whatever beating Dare dished out, but Mace still wouldn’t let that happen.
“You morons never even asked what my special powers are.” Dare nailed each of them with his accusatory gaze. “You should fucking know every detail about the fucking weapons in your arsenal. Fucking amateurs.”
The fact that he was right only made his words sting more.
Snarling, Blade stepped back and swung, but his fist went through empty air and a wisp of smoke.
Dare materialized at the tunnel entrance, shot Blade the finger, and took off into the darkness.
Blade snorted. “Guy thinks he’s a fucking weapon.”
Scotty rounded on them. “Don’t get stupid, Blade. You, either, Mace.” She jabbed her finger at him, and he gave her his best, what?-I’m-innocent look. “Dare’s right. We fucked up. We’re better than this. Let’s get our shit together and do our jobs.”
Welp, that was a mood buster. Never one to leave a mood in the shitter, Mace popped a salute, mocking her drill-sergeant tone. “Yes, ma’am. Getting our shit together, ma’am. Right, Blade?”
Usually, Blade played along, but now, his jaw was tight, his response even tighter. “Right.”
“Okay.” Scotty held out her fist. “We got this. Team up.”
They did the whole team-up thing, but Mace couldn’t help but feel that they were no longer playing the same game, let alone on the same side.
They caught up with Dare inside a bloodstained dirt chamber littered with rotting piles of human flesh and bones in various states of decay.
He held a finger to his lips in a gesture of silence. “I sense living souls,” he whispered. “Human. We’re getting close.”
Blade glanced around in distaste at the three tunnels leading away from the chamber. The Nosferatu really were like spiny hellrats, living like vermin underground, leaving their waste scattered everywhere.
Blade was getting sick of tunnels. Their next mission had better be aboveground. Fuck this tunnel shit.
Then, out of nowhere, he thought about the time demons had rampaged through an outdoor theme park, killing dozens, including innocent children. Including Chaos.
No, aboveground wasn’t any better. Evil needed to die, no matter where it chose to operate.
Blade glanced over at Dare. “Which direction?”
“I can’t pinpoint it.”
Blade started toward the closest tunnel. “I’ll take this one.”
“We need to stick together,” Mace argued. “It’s almost dusk. The vamps’ll be waking up.”
“Which means we need to hurry,” Dare countered. “We split up to cover more ground.”
“I’m with Dare,” Blade said, hating to side with the asshole, but also wanting to get away from him. And from Mace. “We split up.”
Mace threw up his hands in frustration. “Fine. Go ahead.”
“Thanks. I will.” Cloaking himself in shadows, Blade took off, moving silently along the rough-dug corridor.
He slowed to peek into darkened recesses, most empty, a couple littered with the usual bones and body parts.
A sleeping vamp was sprawled out next to a freshly dead human female inside one of the nooks, and Blade dispatched the monster with a shiv to the heart.
As he slipped out of the shallow cove, the sound of a sob echoed off the earthen walls. Ahead. A chamber.
He came to a stunned halt.
He’d found the humans.
Tied up like animals for slaughter, they were huddled against a wall, some crying, others frozen in terror. One female, who appeared to have been scalped, moaned into the ground, her arms and legs tied behind her back in a way that couldn’t have been done unless the limbs were dislocated or broken.
Fury boiled in Blade’s veins. Yes, he was a demon who had grown up with a slightly different concept—and, frankly, tolerance—of evil than humans.
He didn’t enjoy seeing people hurt, but generally, it didn’t bother him overly much, either.
But he’d also grown up with humans, like his mother, who was a werewolf but still human.
Their father had taken him and his brothers to learn to fight.
Their mother had made them volunteer at animal and homeless shelters, and three weeks out of the year, they’d had to help fundraise for food banks.
“Being human isn’t about what you are,” she always told them. “It’s about who you are.”
“But we’re demons, Mama,” Blade had argued once, when he wanted to play with his friends instead of ladling soup into bowls.
“That makes it even more important to learn empathy for those who aren’t like you,” she’d said and promptly buckled him into the minivan with his brothers for their soup-kitchen extravaganza.
So, yeah, he’d developed empathy, even if he had to keep it tamped down to preserve his sanity. But situations like this, where cruelty was the fucking point, made him lose his shit.
He took a silent step closer to the captives just as the scalped female rolled her head to the side and opened her eyes.
And screamed.
Shit!
Suddenly, there was movement. And sounds. Like a hundred death shrouds rasping across desiccated corpses. Nosferatu crawled from out of the shadows and unfurled from shelflike protrusions above, their gleaming eyes and razor-sharp claws promising a painful death.
They launched at him, sharp-fanged monsters that moved faster than Blade could track.
He spun like a whirlwind, flashing blades that cut into flesh and bone. But for every wound he delivered, he took two. He was badly outnumbered and, potentially, in a lot of trouble.
Retreat!
Fuck. The exit was blocked, and he was surrounded.
He’d been through this scenario a million times, though, in training and in real-life situations.
Quickly, he dropped a holy water bomb, and the vamps scattered, their screams of fury following him as he ducked out of the chamber.
Ahead, the sounds of battle reverberated off the walls, emanating from the direction where he’d left his teammates.
Vampires tore at his back as he bolted through the tunnels and burst into the room where he’d last seen his team. They weren’t there, but a trail of fresh blood led back the way they’d originally come from.
In a near-panic, and with Nosferatu on his heels, he made it to the upper floors of the castle. Now that the sun had dipped below the horizon, the building was dark, the shadows long, and vampires were everywhere.
They were so, so fucked.