Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
In my brief time as an acolyte, I once heard a priestess define legacy. When you think back to the times you met a new soul, she said, is it a good or a bad day? Our goal, as acolytes, is that we might leave every soul we meet in a better place than where we found them.
Back then, I was nobody. To be remembered at all had seemed like a gift. To be remembered fondly? Incomprehensible.
Well, now everyone remembered the day that they met me. It was usually a bad day. Often, even, their worst.
The head hit the ground with a wet, blunt THUMP. The scent of burning suffused the air. A cacophony of curses rang out as half a dozen full-grown men scurried back against the wall like frightened rats.
“I warned him,” I said coolly. “Just like I’m warning you.”
Their eyes, wide and white around drug-dilated pupils, locked onto me—onto my sword, glowing gold-white, clutched in my hands.
The Blade of Retribution. A sword once held by the Goddess of Justice herself, Shiket—one of the six mounted on her back, before she had gifted one to a mortal follower.
Having it made me a little famous.
No, no one ever forgot meeting me now.
{You are not wasting any time, are you?} the sword sniffed disapprovingly.
We don’t all get to stick around for five thousand years, Zefiah.
Zefiah—the sword’s ancient given name.
{If you would like to last to see thirty, you might want to be more cautious.}
I thrust Zefiah at the nearest quivering spectator. He was slack-jawed, apparently too high to have the good sense to crowd against the walls like his comrades.
“You,” I said. “Gaveer Iron. Where? Don’t try to tell me he’s not here.”
The man blinked slowly at me. “You’re the Vindica Ultis,” he breathed, voice trembling.
I smiled. “You’ve heard of me.”
Everyone had heard of me, in one way or another. From the eastern mountains to the southern deserts to the western islands. Everyone knew about the Vindica Ultis.
{Technically,} Zefiah corrected, {I am the one with the reputation.}
And you have the gall to call me arrogant.
{My confidence is earned.}
My chosen target gaped at me instead of providing any useful information.
“Sh-Sh-Shiket is looking for Gaveer?” he said.
“My business is none of yours,” I replied.
The truth was, my search for Gaveer had nothing to do with Shiket.
The one who had demanded his head was actually a warlord three kingdoms away, and he was paying a handsome sum for it.
We were scraping the bottom of our coffers these days.
Shiket had been keeping me busy, which meant not a lot of time for the more lucrative work.
Hence why I was making the—perhaps risky—decision to drag a cultist out of his den right from the belly of their main compound.
But the price was really, really good.
I scanned the room. The house had once been grand.
It had probably belonged to some nobleman or lord in the time before the sun fell.
I could still remember, vaguely, what places like this had once looked like—palaces of glittering gold and crystal and marble, surrounded by sprawling gardens of manicured color.
That’s what I missed most. Color. It was amazing what ten years of darkness could do to sap it all away. No flowers, no leaves. No food that wasn’t brown or grey.
I glanced at the river of blood slithering across the cracked tile floor. Still plenty of red, though.
Anyway, I couldn’t look back on it with too much nostalgia. Yes, this estate had once been a thing of beauty. But it had been run by a legion of, at best, poorly paid servants who were here out of desperation or—more likely—slaves who hadn’t chosen to be here at all.
That part probably hadn’t changed. Through a large arched doorway, I glimpsed metal bars. No doubt holding people within. All that ugliness, so much more visible now than it was before the dark.
The house had now fallen into significant disarray.
Wallpaper peeled, wood rotted. Silver accents that had once served as decoration had been stripped—reworked into bars or chains or weapons to defend against the vampires.
The gates that we’d dismantled to get into the compound had pulsed with an ethereal glow.
Not for beauty, as perhaps they once had, but for protection against fallen ones—blessed by the magic of the White Pantheon.
Still, even at its strongest, the magic couldn’t keep out determined vampires. Nothing could.
I glanced over my shoulder at the once-grand front doors that we had smashed through, glowing metal debris scattered on the ground. Then I eyed the blood spreading over the floor. There would be more by the time we were done.
Only a matter of time before vampires showed up here. Long after we were gone, if we were lucky, but we’d been short on luck lately.
“Gaveer Iron,” I said again, raising my sword, in my most booming, divinely-blessed voice. “In the name of Shiket, Lady of Justice, present him to me. I am the Vindica Ultis. Do not defy me.”
The men stared. They all looked like the illustration of Gaveer that I’d received: scruffy beards, overgrown hair, gaunt cheekbones. He could have been any of them.
Another puddle was spreading now, this one a cloudy pool of urine.
I rolled my eyes. For gods’ sake. Maybe humanity didn’t deserve to survive, if this was the best we had to offer.
“Very well. I suppose I’ll have to—”
“Sh!” One of the cultists raised a finger, blinking hard.
We all stopped.
Listened.
{What a lovely sound,} Zefiah said, ever the bloodthirsty little bitch.
I bit back a curse.
The howls were distant, but unmistakable. The sounds of the soulless were so uniquely horrific, no one would ever mistake them for any other creatures. Not barks or howls, but these terrible, mournful, aching cries. Like they were in constant pain.
Perhaps they were. Some said that the Shadowborn vampires, one of the two Houses that led the vampire goddess Nyaxia’s war against humanity, created the beasts from their own dead.
We were out of time.
I whirled around and, in one smooth movement, sliced off another head with enough force to send it flying against the wall with an unceremonious thump.
“Gaveer,” I said, voice cold and firm. “Give him to me. Or else we lock the doors and let the soulless eat you alive. Surely you know what would happen to you then, hm?”
No one did, actually. Not exactly. But the stories were bad enough that all of them concocted their own pants-shitting horror.
One man’s eyes flicked over my shoulder.
There.
There it was.
I turned and approached the tall, slender man against the wall. The drawing wasn’t even that good. They didn’t get anything but the beard right.
“Gaveer,” I said sweetly. “Someone important is looking for you.”
“I didn’t do anything to offend the Lady of Justice.”
“You did offend Duke Vinwest, though.”
A flicker of confusion, settling to fear. “He’s a prick.”
Vinwest was a prick. But he offered much better compensation than the gods did, and I wasn’t paid to care whether this man was innocent.
“Let’s go,” I said, and raised my sword.
{Watch it!} Zefiah warned, a little too late.
A blunt impact struck me across the back of the head. Stars exploded across my vision.
I spun around to see a scraggly woman with long, fair hair clutching a makeshift club—now stained with my blood. More cultists had gathered in the stairwells, waiting for their chance to strike.
A lot of them. Even for us.
Before I could react, a bolt of silver shot from the rafters, impaling the woman through the throat.
My head snapped up to see a lithe figure balancing on the balcony railing, curly brown hair piled atop her head, a gleaming copper crossbow braced against her shoulder.
Gods fucking damn it, Valentina. She was not supposed to do that.
{I wonder where she learned such impatience?} Zefiah mused.
That, really, was when it all went to shit.
The howls came again, this time louder, squealing and groaning.
Gaveer turned tail and bolted through a back door into the belly of the mansion, at the exact time that the wave of cultists descended upon us.
The men rushed me, apparently all of them getting the same bright idea.
If only they knew how common it was. Men looked at a woman carting around a blessed sword half her size and thought, Hell, how hard could it be to take that thing off her?
The answer was: hard.
I spun, blade drawn, and Zefiah sliced through three bodies like they were made of butter.
God magic. Had to hate it, had to love it.
Another wave of howls. The hair stood on my arms, and an unnatural tremor rippled through my bones.
That was the real danger of the soulless. The fear, radiating from their skin like paralytic poison. Even I was affected by it. My muscles went rigid, heart stuttering in my chest, a wave of adrenaline-fueled panic surging.
Count something. Anything. Four doors on this side. Seven windows. Twelve chairs—
{Kyrene!} Zefiah warned, and I moved just in time to defend myself against yet another man throwing himself at me. Godsdamn it. I needed backup.
“Marko, where the hell are—” I bellowed.
But then I saw a wave of people rushing from the hallways upstairs. Saw one of them lunging for Valentina—
“Val!” I screamed.
Too late.
A teenage boy bearing a clumsy little sword grabbed her. She hadn’t been paying attention. She struggled, ripped away from him, then lost her balance and tumbled from the rail.
My heart stopped.
I dove across the room and barely managed to break her fall with my own body—which, in hindsight, may not have been any better than the ground. We slid across the floor. Zefiah slipped from my grasp. I braced myself over Valentina as the others came for us.
She whispered in my ear, “Left!”
I twitched my head to one side as she slid a copper device from beneath her sleeve and pressed a button on her palm.
FWIP.
A silver streak grazed my right ear.
A spray of blood.
A shriek behind us, as someone fell.
Valentina beamed with pride. I gave her a flat glare that said she’d still be hearing about it later.