Chapter 24 | Sephania #2
Garroway steps onto the railing of our semi-circle balcony and launches across, throwing himself unnaturally far. The assassin lifts his bow and the arrow whistles, disappearing somewhere in Garro’s body as he lands with a crash into the bowman.
My heart jumps to my throat.
“Go,” Vallan orders, standing to break off the arrow protruding from his shoulder.
I blink, turn, and move without thinking, my years of battle experience taking over. My swords find their way to their scabbards. I take the same hawk-like posture on the railing, stepping onto it with both hands and boots clutched on the banister.
There’s no time to judge the gap between balconies. If I mistime it, I’ll plunge thirty feet to the ground in pitch blackness—harmful for a vampire, deadly for a human.
I can hear Garro struggling out of sight with the assassin. They’re hidden from view, wrestling behind the balusters of the balcony, shadows flitting on the white wall behind them.
I push off with a frustrated growl. The world goes weightless as I soar through the air, arms pinwheeling, stomach dropping to my boots.
Landing hard on the rail, I pitch onto the balcony on all fours and lunge like a wolf at the nearest body. Garroway rolls off the vampire just in time and I take his place on top of the assassin, using the only weapons at my immediate disposal: my teeth.
I rip into the vampire’s neck, gushing warm, coppery blood in my mouth. His skin is a rubbery texture, and though it’s disgusting it doesn’t stop me from biting into him again.
The assassin bellows and kicks up with both legs—
I launch at least ten feet into the sky from the sheer strength of the supernatural predator. When I land, many bones will break on the hard concrete. My arms and legs flail—
As I collide with Vallan’s sturdy arms during my descent. He managed to time his jump across the balcony at the perfect moment to redirect my free-fall and catch me. He sets me down without a glance, grabbing his axe.
I’m quicker, drawing my blades as the Mortis assassin leaps from his knees at Garroway.
Garro parries the first blurring strike then grunts as the next one finds his gut and blood spills. He stumbles back, an arrow also protruding from his arm.
I stab into the assassin’s backside, catching his lower spine.
Flopping forward on now-useless legs, the assassin twirls the upper half of his torso so violently the rest of his spine cracks. His boots face one direction, his upper half and head face the opposite direction toward me and Vall.
My eyes widen at the grotesque sight, the assassin willing to wreck his body beyond repair for the sake of inflicting more violence and finishing his job.
A black dagger streams out from his person, launching through the air right at me.
Vallan is close—
Not close enough this time. All I can do is leap to the side and take the dagger in my thigh rather than my chest.
Searing pain lances through my leg. I grit my teeth as I land hard on my shoulder.
“Silverblood!” Vallan roars, breaking all hope of a quiet execution of our counter-assassination mission.
His axe swings in an impossibly wide arc—
And the assassin’s head catapults over the balcony. The rest of the assassin’s body drops, spewing blood on the cobbles and through the balusters.
Garro limps over, holding his bleeding belly. “Are you all right?, Seph”
Grunting, I yank the dagger out of my thigh and fight back the pain. Bile rises in my throat but I force it away. Garro helps me to my feet, Vallan next to him, both of their gazes trained on me, fearful.
“Knew there was a reason for these thick thighs,” I quip, chuckling darkly. “Glad I’m not a skinny waif, eh? Would’ve been a lot worse.”
Garroway, of all people, can’t believe I’m joking at a time like this. It’s all I can do to fend off the agony spreading through my lower half. He opens his mouth—
“I’m fine. I can still fight,” I say. “What about you? That dagger landed straight in your gut.”
Garroway shrugs. “Eating will be a pain for a while, but a gut-shot isn’t a deathwish like it is for a human.” He slips a smile on his tar-covered face.
We move to the balcony, all three of us injured in some way. Trained vampires are beastly in battle—even a solitary one.
Below, battle flickers through the shadows and murky yellow globes of the lampposts. Arrows fly, thudding home and killing without prejudice.
Four of our eighteen are trained archers and came equipped with bows and quivers. I can only hope the damage being done is being done by us and not Alacine Mortis’ specters.
More movement catches our eyes to the east, a street away, where vampires fight in a blurry, bloody conflict across the cobblestone road.
I catch sight of a flash, moving diabolically fast in a deadly dance that’s utterly familiar to me with its elegance and gracefulness. My breath catches in my throat as a wild auburn mane frames the wielder of the muted blade.
“Skar!” I yell.
He’s fighting three vampires at once. Skar controls rising shadows to keep two of them at bay while squaring off with the third. Somehow, the nobleblood bastard always finds ways to put himself in the most danger, despite telling the rest of us to be careful.
“He’s too far for us to reach from here without his shadowwalking,” Vallan growls, punching a chunk of stone out of the banister we’re white-knuckling. “The skirmish will be long over before we can make it the hundred feet to him.”
Right on cue, one of Skar’s opponents ignites in a ball of fire, evidently catching the wicked silver blade of Lord Ashfen’s saber on his flesh. If Skar is harried or pressed, from this distance he doesn’t look like it.
The battle, formerly confined to the shadows until a minute ago, with disparate bouts and stabbings taking place in different pockets of the plaza, now radiates with a white-hot flame erupting like holy fire directly in the center of the widest street.
It pulls all the attention from the shadows right onto Skar and his combatants.
Shadows catch my peripheral. My eyes wheel to one of the crescent bridges.
Past a copse of trees, figures clang swords on the arched bridge in a vicious melee.
They’re about a hundred feet from where Skar fights, equidistant with us but on the surface level.
With the trees in their way, the two groups may not even know the other exists.
I inhale sharply at a figure on that bridge, fighting one of our men. It’s the effortless gait, the stooped posture like a wild animal, so offset from Skar’s upright fencing pose.
Lukain, I breathe, not willing to say his name out loud.
I find myself clutching the rail even harder.
A discordant bell peals from a distance, high atop one of the guardtowers.
“Fuck,” Vallan grumbles.
The clanking of armor fills the night from various sections of roadway behind us.
A second adversary of Skar’s erupts in a wreath of fire. A swift stab from Skartovius transforms the vampire’s head into an orange, flaring globe. The assassin collapses a moment later, a smoldering ember.
Armored blackguards careen into the streets with halberds and spears leveled. They roar with battlerage, falling into a frenzy at any shadow they see.
This was not part of the plan.
Madness ensues below us as the Military Ward’s expert soldiery joins the fray and stabs at anything fucking moving. Vall, Garro, and I have a front-row, high-level view of the carnage.
I watch one of our Manor Marquin vampires catch three spears in rapid succession, pinning him to a wall and lifting his limp form. At least one of them found his heart.
A female Intelligence Ward assassin tries to flee around the corner of a building only to run directly into Barnabac’s soldiers and die from a bevy of polearms thrust into her.
My eyes pop. Barnabac’s soldiers are killing Marquin and Mortis vampires alike. There’s no discrimination here—no alliance between the two Ministries. Just death.
I watch Vallan’s eyes and see him squinting at a figure plodding through the streets toward Trithea Plaza, in no hurry. I’ve never seen the Red Butcher, but this vampire’s black armor, with red veins added as some kind of monstrous accouterments, tells me I’m staring at Overlord Barnabac Craxon.
“We can’t let him join the fight,” Vallan growls.
“How can we stop him?!” Garro pleads.
My eyes swivel from Barnabac—still a distance away—and catch Skar finishing off his final opponent in a flurry of rapid strikes.
Barnabac’s soldiers meticulously, methodically make their way through the streets toward the plaza, leaving no stone unturned from the invaders of their ward. They swarm every inch of the exits around my nobleblood mate.
Luckily, Skar doesn’t need an exit to leave.
A piercing whistle chimes from Skar’s position.
“That’s our cue,” Garro says. “Grab hold, little honey badger.”
I hug the dhampir as planned. He spins us around, lifting us onto the banister, and my eyes swerve over his shoulder and catch the bridge one last time—
To find Lukain Mortis finishing off one of our Manor Marquin rebels and pitching him over the side of the bridge into the canal below. I swear he looks up at our balcony then, even though we’re so far away, nothing but shadows in the dark night.
I can feel his gaze on me.
Lukain vanishes over the side of the bridge just as Barnabac’s soldiers begin to advance into Trithea Plaza to shore up the damage done to their district.
I suck in a sharp gasp as Garro says, “Hold tight, lass.”
My world plummets, my arms wrapped so tightly around Garro’s neck I think I’ll suffocate him.
We land on Garro’s feet, Vall quickly behind us. The dhampir limps fast as he can, holding his belly. Vallan ignores the wound to his shoulder and takes off with us.
I take the lead, my mates not willing to let me be the last one out. Our legs carry us mindlessly through smaller streets, winding away toward our exit point.
We run into Skartovius on the way. He’s covered in blood, soot, and ash. I gasp at the sight of the blood.
“None of it is mine,” he says, answering my question before I can ask it. His gold-flecked gaze trains on me. “But that is your blood, Sephania.”
I cringe, nodding slowly at my wounded leg.
Skar peels his upper lip back in a snarl. “I’ll kill every last one of these motherfu—”
“Not right now you won’t, Master!” Garro urges.
Skar bites back a retort. His lips firm with a begrudging nod.
His hand flicks out, creating tendrils of shadowy walkways our remaining fighters can use along the streets.
He takes my hand, tugs me into him, and leads me into the nearest patch of inky blackness—Skar’s own shadow, plastered against a nearby wall, cast from the moon overhead.
Our quartet disappears just as a dozen Military Ward soldiers spill into the street twenty feet away from us.
We emerge out of the shadow of a corpse—one of Manor Marquin’s own—a hundred yards away, past the bridges and canal.
I give Trithea Plaza one last glance over my shoulder, hoping to never see it again. It’s silent here, but behind us the city is filled with thick smoke, shouting, and weapons clashing.
We came here to ambush the ambushers, who thought we would be meeting with the Red Butcher to form some kind of alliance. Our stratagem was to execute a well-planned trap against Alacine Mortis’ spies and assassins. They expected us in the streets—not behind them in their own damned shadows.
At the same time, we didn’t expect Barnabac Craxon’s footmen to emerge on the battlefield so quickly. Because of their swift arrival, I’m unsure how successful our mission has been. Did we execute it well enough and push the Spymistress as much as we needed to?
It’s almost as if Overlord Barnabac had foreknowledge of what was going to happen here tonight.
Our quartet sprints away, running against the wind as we escape the Military Ward alive.
We have no idea how many of Skar’s court also made it out alive. And, against my better judgment, I can’t stop thinking about how my heart lurched when I spotted Lukain Mortis fighting against us.