Chapter 9 Rael #2
I twisted the blade and pulled it free and the Lucian fell and I felt its death through the network. A gap. A silence where a mind had been. Like a tooth pulled from a jaw. The absence was specific and permanent and painful.
I had killed one of my own people.
The thought registered and was immediately consumed by the battle.
There was no time for it. The remaining Lucian were through the fence and the camp was chaos — gunshots, Vampyren war cries, the shriek of Lucian blades on metal, the screaming of humans who were trying to fight creatures that moved too fast to see.
Crystal was at the weapons rack, shoving rifles into the hands of anyone who could hold one and screaming instructions: "Aim for the body! Center mass! Don't try to track them, just fire where they're going to be!"
Mindy was already firing — controlled, precise bursts from a position behind a supply crate, her face calm with the terrifying composure of a woman who'd learned to shoot under circumstances that would have broken most people.
Each burst found its target, the bullets slamming into Lucian bodies with the same stunning effect I'd observed on the beach.
Danton fought on one leg. His bad knee had him compensating, shifting his weight with every swing, but his blade work was precise and vicious.
He took a Lucian's arm off at the elbow and the creature shrieked and spun and Cassi was there, firing point-blank into its torso, and Danton finished it with a stroke that removed its head.
I felt that death too. And the next one — Alek, moving with the mechanical efficiency of a general who had been killing for centuries, decapitated a Lucian that had been trying to flank Mark's position.
Mark was bleeding from a cut across his chest but still fighting, still moving, still placing himself between the attackers and the direction of the medical tent where Tess was.
I found myself near the eastern perimeter, where two Lucian had circled around the main assault and were approaching from a blind spot. They were heading for the interior. For the medical tents. For the civilians.
For Brecca.
Her pulse reached me through the connection. Rapid. Terrified. She was in the medical tent, treating someone — I could sense the focused, controlled energy of her work even through the fog of battle, the determination to keep doing her job while the world exploded around her.
The two Lucian were fifty yards from her position and closing.
I moved at full combat speed. The world blurred.
I hit the first Lucian from behind, driving the Vampyren blade through its back and out through its chest, and the second one turned on me with a speed that matched my own, its serrated blade singing through the air.
I ducked — felt the wind of it pass over my head — and came up swinging.
The fight lasted eight seconds. At combat speed, eight seconds was an eternity.
The Lucian was good — trained, fast, precise — and it fought with the desperate fury of a creature that knew its target had just killed two of its squad.
I took a cut across my forearm that went to the bone.
Black blood ran down my wrist and dripped from my fingers.
The pain was sharp and bright and I used it, channeled it into the next swing, the next parry, the next strike.
I killed it with a thrust through the throat. The serrated blade I'd taken from its fallen companion — lighter, faster, designed for my kind — did the work. The Lucian dropped. Its silver eyes went blank.
The network screamed. Five minds gone from eight. Five gaps where there had been voices, thoughts, the shared pulse of Lucian consciousness. The remaining three felt the collective death — the accumulated weight of five terminated connections hitting the network like a shockwave — and broke.
They ran. Not a retreat, not a tactical withdrawal — they ran.
Pulling back from the camp's perimeter with the same blinding speed they'd used to attack, vanishing into the darkness of the hills like pale ghosts swallowed by shadow.
The buzzing faded. The shrieking stopped.
The night went quiet except for the groaning of the wounded and the crackling of a tent that had caught fire during the fighting, its canvas curling black against the stars.
It was over.
Loren shouted orders — sweep the perimeter, count the wounded, check every tent.
Alek was already moving, blade still drawn, circling the camp's exterior with the methodical precision of a commander ensuring no threat remained.
Mark limped to the weapons rack and sat down heavily, pressing his hand against the wound on his chest while Crystal materialized beside him with bandages she'd apparently conjured from thin air.
"Don't you dare bleed on my shirt," Crystal told him, already wrapping the wound with quick, efficient hands. Mark caught her wrist and kissed her fingers and she said, "Stop that, I'm working," but she didn't pull away.
I stood in the dirt with black blood on my hands — my own and theirs — and I counted the dead.
Five Lucian. None of them had asked for this.
None of them had wanted to attack a camp full of humans in the middle of the night.
They had come because Tyvor's pain was worse than dying, and now they were dead because I had chosen to be here instead of where I was supposed to be.
The camp was alive with shouting, with the moaning of wounded, with the sharp barking of orders as the defense teams swept the perimeter.
The Vampyren were checking each other for injuries with the rough efficiency of warriors who'd been doing this for centuries.
The humans were doing the same with less grace and more swearing.
I heard Brecca before I saw her.
"—need a tourniquet, get me something to tie this off with, now—"
She was in the medical tent, working. Of course she was working. The battle had barely ended and she was already elbow-deep in someone's wound, saving a life while the blood was still wet on the ground outside.
I walked toward the tent. People saw me coming and moved aside. Whether out of respect or fear, I could not tell. I was covered in blood. Some of it mine. Most of it not.
Brecca looked up when I appeared in the entrance. Her eyes went to the wound on my forearm, then to the blood on my hands, then to the blade I was still holding.
"You killed them," she said. Not a question. Not an accusation. Just a statement. An observation.
"They were going to kill you."
"You killed your own people."
"They were going to kill you."
She looked up at me. Between us, the bond pulsed, steady, warm, undeniable. Her heart rate was slowing as the adrenaline receded, and underneath the fear and the shock and the professional composure, the warmth was still there. Brighter now, if anything.
"Sit down," she said. "Let me look at that arm."
I sat. She bandaged my wound with the same focused precision she applied to every body that came through her tent, her fingers steady against my skin, and neither of us mentioned the fact that I had just killed five members of my own species to protect a camp of humans I had no obligation to defend.
We didn't need to mention it.
The bond said everything.