Chapter Twelve #3
In a move that looked like the wings of a falling angel, a move that was eerily similar to one Ravensport had used in the video, Angie took the head of the first vamp. Severed the sword arm of the second. With magic that sounded to EJ like harps, she raced at her ex-husband.
Asshat popped away. Gone.
“Track,” Angie said. A wyrd. Power shot from her. Latched onto Marrazzo. Following Marrazzo’s trail. Raw magic. Like when she was a child. A symphony of directed notes, trailing her quarry. EJ grabbed her null cloak and her staff from the floor. Shared a glance with Walter that said, Battle magic.
A vamp rushed out of the shadows. EJ shot him. Vamp-killer rounds. The vamp slid closer with pure momentum. EJ took his head with the vamp-killer.
Angie threw three amulets at a vamp and said, “Sruthán!”
The vamp screamed as an amulet struck his shoulder and his clothes erupted in fire. His ululation was a death wail as the flames spread. An instant later, the flames snuffed out. His scorched clothes and burned flesh were coated in ice. He popped away.
Konstantin, in the flesh…Ice witch?
Angie raced after him. She’d never catch the vamp. EJ sped after them. Looked over his shoulder.
Walter was bent over the witch. Faster than EJ could follow, Walter whipped his sword through a cage of death arc. Stabbed his bloody shortsword through her heart.
What the hell. EJ halted his run.
Walter withdrew the silvered steel. Wiped it on her naked body. There was something in his eyes.
Crap. He knew the witch. Knew she was possessed by a succubus.
Walter knelt and tried to remove an emerald ring from her finger, but the fit was too tight. There was no way to get it off. With his tanto, he stabbed down and cut off her finger, a clean thrust that jarred his own hand when it hit the marble flooring below.
What the ever-frickin’—
It would take a year or more for the finger to regrow.
Walter was moving at vamp speed, but EJ, resting in Delta, had time on his side. He stepped back so he could see both Walter and Angie. She was still sprinting out the back doors, onto a covered porch.
Walter tucked the bloody ring into his pocket.
Ripped off her emerald earrings, bells singing as he did, telling EJ they were magical amulets.
Walter placed them in a separate pocket.
He glanced along her body, his eyes clinical.
He touched a spot on her naked hip. It sang a soft note of obfuscation and intent.
Walter stood. Beheaded a vampire speeding at him. Dodged the spray as head and vamp fell with forward momentum. He met EJ’s gaze, his expression creating a ripple in the dark waters of EJ’s soul. He gestured to the outer doors and tapped his ear protectors off mute.
Side by side, they killed three more vamps, EJ shooting them, Walter beheading them. They raced through the enormous room, outside, into the cold. A high-pitched roar filled the snow-laden air. A dozen Jet Skis rumbled into the blackness of Chickamauga Lake.
The vampires. Getting away. Out front, several cars started as others and the humans followed suit. Bugging out.
Angie had her head thrown back, screaming as her track working broke. “Come back, you coward. I challenge Karson Marrazzo to Sangre Duello!”
EJ dashed up beside her and folded Delta into place beneath the surface of his soul. The three of them stood on the stone balcony—one of several—overlooking the lake. Angie ground out a low growl of frustration, her face filled with rage.
Walter said, “The battle is done. You will need to remove the demon from Nyoka before it heals her from the sword strike and she escapes.”
EJ said to Walter, “You know her.”
“Ohhh. Yes. I knew her in every way it is possible to know another.”
EJ looked back to the naked vampire. She was gone. The palillos and null cuffs were on the stone floor. He sprinted back in, following a blood trail that led out the front, into the snow. It stopped where a car had been parked, the surface snow-free in the outline of a vehicle.
He was careful, very careful, not to curse.
Back inside, EJ knelt and picked up the battle castanets, staring at the pool of blood where the woman had lain. “Palillos, not used. She still has the demon in her.”
“This is…not good,” Walter said from beside him.
No shit, EJ wanted to say, as he stood. Instead he settled on, “We will chat. Soon,” his tone hard.
He stared at Walter, telling their bodyguard he knew that things were not right.
Walter stared back placidly as EJ pocketed the castanets and the cuffs.
Shoving away useless recriminations, pressing them into the neat little packet full of failures, a packet he had created while on active duty, EJ said, “More importantly, we need coffee and donuts. Call Alex for all the security cam footage. Tell him to alert the queen.”
Angie’s battle magic dropped away too fast. Out on the porch, her entire body quivered. “You want donuts?” she ground out. “Donuts?” she repeated, pointing into the night with her sword. “They’re getting away!” His sister was pissed.
“They’re gone,” EJ said, shrugging, locking away the failure with so many of the others. “When the shi—poo hits the prop, there’s nothing better than fat, carbs, and sugar.”
“At such times my kind prefer to hunt in the dark and kill, but to each your own,” Walter said. “But be careful giving me orders, Evan Junior. That comes with responsibilities you claim you do not want.”
EJ lifted his eyebrows, his eyes challenging.
Walter chuckled, smooth, musical. If black velvet could laugh it would sound like that.
EJ rejoined Angie on the covered flagstone porch.
The magic of vampires raced across the lake, the harmonics of vamp magic hushed across the cold black water. He wished he had the power to stop the Jet Ski engines and leave the vamps stranded, but that wasn’t going to happen.
He and Walter scrutinized Angie. She may have growled, before tapping her unicom and walking to the balcony’s stone railing.
She stood under heavy clouds, a slow breeze whirling the sleet/snow mixture, flakes and ice falling on her face.
It was freaking cold but maybe Angie was so angry she didn’t notice.
He followed her gaze across the snow-white lawn to the far shore. There were houses, all dark, only faint landscape lighting visible through the falling snow. Humans. Sleeping. In danger. Angie’s unicom called out tones.
Alex answered.
Angie said, “Before you say anything, this is the queen’s business, not mine, and I know you have me on vid. Vamps got away on Jet Skis, across the water at, maybe, a fifteen-degree angle from the porch where I’m standing. Homes on the far side appear to be occupied.”
“Copy that. Helo lifted off four minutes ago from a prearranged rendezvous location carrying a team. Secondary crew for cleanup on the way to your twenty.”
“Maybe the occupants will get lucky,” she said.
If the humans were lucky, it would be because the fangheads had an evac planned and maintained transportation on that side of the lake.
Or maybe they wouldn’t be lucky, and the bloodsuckers would crash through the windows, drink down everyone inside, and steal a car.
Or maybe they’d just cut off the primary driver’s finger and let them all live. All they’d need was the fingerprint.
“If they take a car and leave a finger,” Angie said, as if she read his mind, “make sure it’s reattached and the medical costs are covered by the queen’s coffers. Walter had the standard out.”
“Copy that too,” Alex said. “Your aunt is monitoring everything.”
“Crap,” Angie said. It was the queen’s favorite cuss word.
It almost made EJ laugh. “Nice trick to set Konstantin on fire,” he said.
Angie’s anger whispered away on a sigh. “He put it out,” she said. “And someone took the possessed witch out the front and away in a car.”
“I don’t guess you bothered to tag the cars before you went in, magic blazing?” Alex said, his tone just droll enough to be mildly insulting.
“No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t bring car taggers. I hadn’t known there was a party going on, or a possessed witch-vamp or…”
“And you went in blind,” Alex said gently.
“I screwed up,” she said.
“The hell you did,” EJ said, loud enough to be picked up by the unicom. “We screwed up. We’ll do better next time.” Because there would always be a next time, as long as a child of Prince Oleg still lived. Assuming the queen and their parents didn’t come and take them away by force to safety.
“Mmmm,” Alex said, neither agreement nor disagreement.
EJ heard the faint thudding of a chopper en route.
Angie said, “If the vamps across the lake get away without killing humans, that makes this situation one that has to be handled by EJ and me. Oleg’s scion has to be handled by us.”
“Why so?” Alex asked, the tone of his voice telling EJ the queen’s team was already mulling over that very thing.