Chapter Twenty-Six #3
He raised his sword and sang out the words, “Stadaidh tú!” It was an Irish command for “You will stop.”
Their blades clanged even as he finished the wyrd.
From behind him, Raccoon dropped to one knee. Fired at Ravensport. Three shots. Mid-center.
As if she felt nothing, Ravensport spun her body around EJ. She pierced Raccoon with her weird shortsword. With her longsword, Ravensport blocked EJ’s attack. Cut across his abdomen.
He leaped to the side. Avoided the blade.
Shiloh pivoted to intercept, out of sync with his deadly dance. He slammed into her. Sent her tumbling.
Pulling the sword from Raccoon, Ravensport spun toward Boots.
As he fell, Raccoon shot the vamp again. Three times more.
This time she jerked. Blood spurted from where her cheek used to be.
Boots leaped upward. Landed on an overturned refrigerator. Fired down at the vamp. Two head shots, one knee shot.
Ravensport’s knee buckled.
Her armor was good. Boots’s headshot was better. Or so he thought until she flipped her sword upward and swept high.
The point entered Boots’s thigh at the knee, at the armor seam. Weak spot in all armor.
Ravensport drove the point home. Deep. Cut higher, carving through muscle and flesh. Blood pulsed out.
EJ cut low to high. Sliced Ravensport through the waist. Hit her spine. Severed it.
Raccoon slammed home war-grade X-stat into his own chest wound. Followed it by shoving a crystal into the hole.
Both of Ravensport’s knees buckled. EJ flipped his sword and cut through her throat. The blade caught in her cervical spine. She hit the floor.
Her fall ripped his sword from his hand.
Raccoon fired. Head shots. Both eyes. “Bitch is hard to kill,” the shooter said.
“Hell’s hounds,” Boots said. He’d heard that note before. That I’m dying note.
EJ spun, scanning the room.
Sheathed his sword and caught Boots before she hit the floor face-first.
She wasn’t a small woman. He staggered. Her blood gushed over him.
He managed to get her flat on the floor, faceup. Her lips were going blue. Skin white as fresh snow. About ten seconds from shock and ten more from death. Bleeding out.
Every moment went crystal clear. Sharp. Distinct. Microseconds of battle. Everything happening at once.
Gunshots from the other entrance.
His ear-patch damped the concussive bursts, but let in other sounds.
Walter screaming.
A vampire ululating in a death wail. The notes stretched out in time.
His sister saying something…
The howling of demon magic. Broken, perverse. If torture were music, if medieval dungeons had a sound, it would be this.
Screams. Splintered melody. An entire orchestra playing in different keys, all untuned. Dented cymbals. Shattered crystal. The roar of icebergs calving.
“I’m cover,” Raccoon grunted. He shifted with a pained groan. Changed out magazines. Aimed into the room. Fired one shot. Another. Slow. Careful.
EJ concentrated on Boots. Just Boots. Blocked out everything else. Avulsion. Blade sliced away half her thigh. Hit femoral artery. Entire muscle groups are peeled away.
It was a cut vamps used often.
He applied pressure at her groin. Hard. One-handed.
With his other, he unpocketed a roll of X-stat and opened it by gripping the bag with his teeth.
He shoved the length into the avulsion. Dropped in three trauma-healing amulets.
Not sterile, his mind informed him. Later worries.
He tucked in three of his strongest blood-clotting amulets. Peeled the muscle back over it all.
“You dying?” he asked of Raccoon.
“I could use a beer and a recliner,” the shooter croaked.
EJ took that as, “possibly, but not imminent.” Almost as fast as vamps, he bound the avulsion with sticky wrap and laid an amulet on Boots’s forehead. If she wasn’t unconscious from the trauma, she was asleep now. He lifted both legs and slid a stool under her knees.
Fifteen seconds had passed since the door blew open. Forever in battle.
He looked around. Absorbed every action. Evaluated.
Raccoon had taken care of his own wounds. The melody of the healing crystal proclaimed it was an Everhart quartz. Worth its weight in gold. The shooter changed out magazines.
The amulets EJ had tucked into the flap of muscle in Boots’s thigh had been better than Raccoon’s. They were his. They sang. But the pressure to the groin was paramount. Boots wouldn’t live if he let go. None of them would live if he didn’t let go and fight.
Wordless, seeming to read his mind and knowing he was no longer battle capable, Raccoon scooted over and replaced EJ’s bloody hand with his own. Applied pressure to Boots’s femoral artery. “Go,” he said.
EJ rose to a low squat. Unsheathed his sword. Across the circle, his sister stood, the null-demon-sucking staff outstretched.
A bloody Nyoka stood eight feet from her. A dried-out, desiccated, mummified man was at Nyoka’s feet, along with a small containment vessel. It was about six inches tall, narrow mouthed, broken. A demon—a chort—was twirling from it.
Karson was also moving slowly across the room. Toward Angie. His sword extended.
What the hell had he missed in those fifteen seconds?