Chapter 21 | Sephania #2
The Chained Sisters are not combatants. Some of them used to be, perhaps, in a life long gone. Only me and Keffa stand any chance against these five foes, and we currently stand zero chance of survival.
I have no explosives with me from Vallan’s stores. I have no smoke-bombs or shadow portals, no beast-charming or bloodsight to protect me, no unique things to aid us. Only steel and tenacity . . . which won’t be enough.
The nearest vampire crowds in with another, filling the street. I feel claustrophobic as they close in. Their blades whirl and I’m struck again, the pain lancing through my leg as I try to backpedal into a defensive stance.
This isn’t like fighting the younglings in the Firehold sparring room.
These vampires, whoever they were sent by, were sent to kill.
They managed to ambush us right as the sun set, which seems impossible without careful premeditation .
. . perhaps even staying in the building they emerged from during the day, until we crossed this threshold.
Rather than retreating under the overwhelming odds and the pounding despair that runs through me, I advance. If I’m going to die, I’ll die protecting these people I care about—a stark contrast to my mood just an hour ago when I chastised them for no reason.
I summon my courage, the strength of my forebears. I don’t know who the fuck to summon, so I grit my teeth and wade into the battle.
My body winds left, twists right, narrowly missing two life-ending jabs at my throat and chest. I elbow a vampire with little effect, spin before he can react, and gain a quick slice across the heel of another.
Keffa comes in too, panting and sweating and fighting with a sheer confidence that has me shocked. She is no stranger to the blade, and I wonder in her many decades of life where she learned to fight like this.
If we live, I can ask her.
Or, more likely, I’ll be asking her about it in the afterworld.
An assassin leaps against the wall to push off and stab at the top of my head, gaining unreal purchase in the air that has him ten feet overhead.
I look up, trying to time his descent—
As something yanks him back against the wall, pinning him there in black swirls.
My stomach lurches to my throat.
I wheel left, no time to think about the incapacitated vampire or what—
A conflagration of fire and wheezing cries splits the violent night. Flesh burns, clothes sizzle, Chained Sisters scream, as one of the vampires immolates in seconds flat.
I turn again, trying to gain my bearings, wondering what the fuck is happening.
A red-gold cloak flutters into view, stark and bright against the monotone grayscale of Nuhav at dusk. A shadow whips the cloak from Skartovius Ashfen’s body, circling it around an assassin and covering his face and body like a blanket.
The vampire bulges the cloak and stabs through it—
Only to get Skar’s blade rammed into his side, his chest, his belly, over and over again. Blackened blood spurts from the ruins of Skar’s nobleblood cloak, and the vampire blanketed and blinded by it crumples to the ground.
Lukain Pierken moves from the first vampire he torched with his silver saber to the next one in line. This assassin is getting second thoughts when he watches his comrade go up like a dry wreath. Hesitating, he finally charges at Lukain.
The dhampir reels back on his heels, sliding out of range, and rams forward with the tip of his silver sword. It glistens radiantly in the night, not touching flesh but rending through clothes.
Lukain tries again—
Shadowy tendrils wrap around the assassin’s legs and pitches him forward. Keffa is there first, making her job easy on the prone bastard. Jinneth is next, slamming her foot against the vampire’s neck in an enraged battle-cry.
Lukain comes last, elbowing the two older ladies aside to plunge his saber into the vampire’s chest before he can get up.
The assassin spurts blood from his mouth, reaches up, and then becomes covered in orange-blue flames that snap and smolder across his entire frame, burning his clothes before razing his insides.
There’s suddenly only two assassins left, and they turn to flee to fight another day.
Shadows catch them both as Skar’s arms flurry and wave, dragging the shadows from me, the Chained Sisters closest, and any other living thing he can manage.
He pins them, though one of the assassins has a hand free. He reaches into his mouth just as Lukain gets there and bats his hand away. Froth fills the assassin’s mouth and he convulses before collapsing to the ground, twitching, not moving—and then bursting into flames.
Lukain is too late. The assassin chomped on his poisoned, silvered tooth, just like the one in the window who attacked me and Vallan at Tymon’s countryside manor.
The last vampire isn’t so lucky.
Skar gets to him first, keeping the shadows held on his body.
My graceful mate dashes across the road, pins the vampire’s arms with a great struggle, and headbutts the assassin over and over again, until blood spills from both of them.
Nauseous and wobbly where he stands, the assassin looks dumbstruck.
“Who sent you, fiend?” Skartovius demands, baring his fangs.
The assassin spits on his face, a bloody wad. “Suck cocks in hell, nobleblood wretch!”
These vampires have no markings on their cloaks, like Alacine’s assassins did. They wear no broad-brimmed hats like the judgemen do.
Skar roars and bites into the assassin’s neck. He strikes an artery and blood sprays—it’s not a comely bite like when he effortlessly sips on my Loreblood, careful not to break anymore of my flesh than is needed. No, this is a ragged tear, the sound of ripping flesh ringing out in the night.
The assassin wails. “No! Stop it, barbaric scum!”
“I’ll drain you fucking dry,” Skar promises through bubbling blood in his mouth. “I’ll turn you into my bloodless fucking slave just so I can drink from you every night, for eternity. You will suffer forever as my bloodthrall.”
He looks nothing like the regal nobleblood I know, completely losing his composure.
All I can do is stand there, breathless, speechless. My feet can barely hold me up. The Chained Sisters begin to emerge from their hideouts. The audience of commoners in the streets watch everything that’s happening, from the corners, the overturned barrels, the windows, the doors.
Skartovius’ thick auburn mane blows in the heavy breeze. Blood gets in it—blood gets all over him.
The assassin drains before our eyes, his gaunt cheeks getting sunken, his red eyes dimming. He blinks, shaking his head as Skar pulls back for a moment to swallow his essence with blood-drenched lips that spills down his chin. The assassin’s throat is a ragged mess of spurting arterial gore.
“Well?” Skar asks.
“A . . . Aramastun,” the vampire wheezes, knowing it’s the only chance he has of getting Skartovius to stop the insanely seductive mortal wound from continuing.
It’s a pleasureful experience that leads to death, and then turning, and it seems the outcome, in this assassin’s mind, is a fate much worse than death.
Skar nods. “As I suspected.” He steps back to survey the assassin—surely to kill him in the next heartbeat.
But he doesn’t get the chance.
Because as Skartovius tilts his head curiously at the assassin and begins to ask another question, the restrained vampire’s left side separates from his right side.
A great ripping and crunching sound tears the fabric of space and grotesquely cleaves through cartilage and bone and muscle all at once, dismembering the vampire and turning him into two half-vampires.
The tidal wave of blood that explodes from the space between his two vertical halves is like nothing I’ve ever seen, fully drenching Skartovius in an ocean of red pulpy matter.
On the other side of the annihilated assassin stands Vallan Stellos with his axe stuck in the ground where he cleaved through the vampire from head to groin and split him in half in one go. “Fuck,” he grunts, showered in as much gore from the back-blow as Skar is. “I’m late, aren’t I?”
Skar swipes blood from his eyes, sighing. “Yes, you’re fucking late, my prophetic brother. Again.”
I let out a huff that’s a mangled mix of hysterical laugh and traumatic groan, unable to summon any other words or thoughts.
Then I drop my sword on the ground with a heavy thud, pain spearing from my wounds, and collapse to my knees.