Chapter 42 | Garroway
Garroway
I keep a defensive posture, knowing we’re stronger together. My legs skid back, knees bending, and when my heel clicks against Seph’s, it helps to keep my honey badger confident so she doesn’t go charging into danger on her own.
Alacine’s spy-soldiers are not idiots. They don’t charge one by one, but come at us from all sides in a circle, hemming in and charging as one cohesive unit.
Vallan lets out the first roar, his war-cry bouncing off the windows and walls of the buildings around us. I briefly notice heads popping up from behind windows, before scurrying down out of sight at the sign of a violent skirmish taking place on the streets.
The vampire who comes at my left is a thin fellow with beady eyes. His hood ruffles back as he lunges, baring his fangs in the night. The one on my right and Sephania’s left is a woman with stark white hair down to her shoulders, a thin scar stealing her left eye.
I use the vampiress’ lack of depth perception to my advantage, deftly bouncing back and then whirling my daggers at her.
The man on my left is stopped by Vallan, who arches the haft of his axe in a move meant to stun the vampire if it strikes.
He never makes contact, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to stiffen the vampire upright and send him skittering back, which works.
I focus my attention on the vampiress. She snarls at me as our daggers strike together, sending sparks flying. With both of us wielding such short blades, parrying and riposting is out of the question—I’m quickly scored with small nicks across my forearms, and so is she.
Blood spills, the vampires sniff the scented air, and their eyes dilate with hunger. Meanwhile, I hear clanging from behind me, Sephania adopting a similar defensive posture to keep the vampires at bay.
Vallan has no such compunction. He is also a fullblood—faster and stronger than either of us despite his size—and he charges into the fray full-cocked.
His war-axe keeps the assassins dancing back just out of his reach. They eye each other, trying to gauge when to strike the monstrous warrior in the middle of his bloodrage.
I know if it comes to it, my brother can keep these fiends occupied for hours.
Slowly, I inch toward the ladder leading down into the Firehold’s depths, with Sephania lockstep with me.
“Get down there,” Vallan growls to us. “I’ll handle these devils.”
“There’s five of them,” I point out.
“Too bad there’s not ten,” he answers coldly. “They might have a chance.”
I bark a laugh. His words rile the assassins and they come in another wave.
Vallan pushes off his feet, spearing toward the bloodies in front of him, wildly swinging his axe to gain their attention.
The moment the one-eyed bitch and the thin fullblood glimpse over my shoulder in his direction, I dash toward the grate with Sephania right behind me.
I yell, “Best not to keep Vallan waiting, or your mother!”
Seph says nothing, fending off a few more strikes with her blades before kicking out and sending her adversary back a step.
At the grate, with the ladder in front of me and Sephania behind me, I spin and sheathe my daggers at the same time across my hip scabbards. I wrap Seph in a bear-hug, no longer willing to wait for her to get a free moment that might never happen.
With a yelp, the strong, sturdy girl stumbles into me—
And I jump backward into the black hole.
Weightlessness holds me, slowing our descent as air sweeps past us in a rush.
My feet land lightly on the damp ground of the Grimsons’ entrance, and I release Sephania once we’re steady, quickly drawing my daggers.
“You sure he’ll be okay?” she asks, her eyes wide with tenacity and fear.
“He’ll have to be. I’ve learned not to question Vallan’s prowess, lass, and you’d do best to do the same.”
She gives me a firm nod and we spin to hurry down the first hall.
The sounds of battle reverberate through the underground labyrinth. I grit my teeth and spur us on, leading the charge, aiming directly for the old alchemist’s cave dwelling. “There’s a distinct chance we may not be able to save everyone, little honey badger.”
“I’m aware, cub,” she answers through a clenched jaw.
We turn a corner into an antechamber of varying corridors jutting in three directions. I recall my beast-charm and the mouse, where I led it, and instantly place a map of this place in my mind.
Sephania knows where we’re going too because she’s more acquainted with this place than anyone. “Come on,” she says, “I know a shortcut.”
With my girl taking the lead, we continue into the bleak darkness, the ever-present dripping of water trickling maddeningly from above, and the cries and shouts of battle emerging from a distance.
We rush into a room with two vampires keeping watch on Endolf’s cave just beyond. Leaping out of the shadows, I bare down on the assassins and Sephania joins me—
Then she recklessly runs past them once I have their attention, so she can get to her mother at the cave.
“Sephania!” I yell.
The vampires hiss at me and descend. I’m pressed back, spinning from a wall so I won’t be crowded in.
I quickly hear Sephania yelling, but she’s run out of sight past me into another room and I don’t know what she’s fighting. It frustrates me. The clanging of her blades against another’s has my blood burning, my slow-beating heart picking up speed.
It takes everything I have, every skill, to fend off the assassins. Two-on-one never works in favor of a dhampir against fullbloods, but I have to keep fighting, keep my legs churning and my daggers flashing.
I feel the clay pot against my chest, bouncing in my tunic, knowing I have it as a last resort. I’d rather not cause a landslide or cave-in, however, so I fight.
A new figure joins the octagonal room through a different entryway. I recognize his short stature, his close-to-the-ground fighting style, and his shorn hair. The young man has a handsome face twisted in a fierce scowl.
The newcomer plants a silver-tipped dagger into the back of one of my enemies and the vampire instantly ignites in a conflagration that singes my cloak.
My eyes bulge. “Fuck!” I yell, as the warrior whirls his two blades—longsword and dagger—against the remaining vampire.
With the surprised bloodsucker spinning to face the Silverknight, I quickly carve deep wounds into his sides, finishing with a plunge of my daggers into his lungs.
The vampire screams, going rigid—
Giving the Silverknight an opening to thrust his longsword into the vampire’s chest. When he strikes the heart, the vampire gurgles and collapses between us.
I blink at the man named Rirth. He blinks at me.
Then he charges me without a word.
I roar at him, parrying his quick strikes. We have a similar fighting style, and this man has clearly been taught well. He’s a human but he fights like an animal, and he may just be the most skilled human swordsman I’ve met.
It takes everything to keep his blades from sinking into me.
I wholly focus on that wicked silver dagger of his, willing to sacrifice cuts from his longsword to keep that poison-tinged blade from marring my skin.
I won’t ignite like a fireball if the silver hits me .
. . but I’ll become a smoky ruin, and I’d rather keep that from happening.
Feeling the man putting me on the defensive, I yell, “You’re fighting the wrong damn vampires! Sephania is just beyond!”
His face is calm, collected, wholly settled on ending me if I don’t put a stop to him. I know he used to be Seph’s friend before they had a falling out, and I’m hoping to use that to make him see reason.
But he doesn’t. He wants me dead—he wants all undead fully dead, if I had to guess.
“You’re the dhampir Sephania lost to in the shadowgala years ago,” he mutters as his blades blur at me.
I fend them off, just barely, and bare my teeth. My feet kick up dust as I sidestep his next attacks. “I didn’t kill her, ether, if you remember.”
“Only because your lord stopped the bout,” the Silverknight says. “You hated her.”
“And now I love her.” Our faces meet inches apart, arms shaking and vying for the dominant position as our swords connect. “People change, Silverknight. Even half-people.”
He blinks at my remark. Can he tell I’m talking about him? This change of his does none of us any good!
“Now get the fuck off me so I can help my little honey badger,” I shout in his face, kicking him away with a swift boot to the stomach.
He skids back, gathers himself upright, and stares down the hall where we can both hear Sephania’s desperate battle-cries and clanging swords.
I dash in that direction before Rirth can come at me again, breaking out into the next hall and room over. “Go stick that silver pinprick in some gray-cloaked fullbloods, you halfwit!” I shout back.
If he tries to stab me in the back, so be it. I’ll do anything to protect Sephania, and I can see glimpses of her now through the small window of Old Endolf’s cave. She’s fighting someone tooth and nail, using all of her skills against her opponent.
No, I think desperately. There are multiple opponents in there.
I barrel into the cave, throwing caution to the walls, and bury my daggers into the back of the first vampire I see. Scanning the disheveled room, I take a quick appraisal.
Old Endolf, the elderly alchemist, stands in front of Jinneth on the other side of the room. Sephania’s mother appears angry but unharmed as her head whips back and forth from the melee taking place in front of her. Vials, beakers, and liquids are spilled all over the floor.
Besides the vampire I just dropped, there’s another in here—a woman ducking and avoiding every attack Seph throws at her.
She’s casual in her dodging, cruel in her skill.
Her midnight-black hair swishes left and right as the vampiress takes to the shadows, avoiding a thrust from Sephania’s sword—and vanishes.
My eyes grow as I catch a glimpse of the woman’s vanishing act. “Impossible,” I croak.