Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (31 page)

“Yeah, but I didn’t count on them being up our ass when we got to Inferno,” I told him as I grabbed the sword belt. “I wanted you to just drop me off and drive away. I needed to be inside when they showed up.”

“Yeah, how’s that workin’ for ya?” he said. “Because I don’t think that’s happening.”

One of the Crown Victorias pulled up alongside us on Lucas’ side, and another was sliding up on mine.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed.

“You just need to be inside, right?” Lucas asked. “Because, you know, I’ve already taken a couple of insane risks tonight, so I figure, hey, what’s one more?”

“Luuucaaas!” I yelled as he hit the gas again.

The two Sentinels fell behind as he skidded through the left turn, then yanked the wheel back to the right and gunned it again. We went airborne for the second time that night when he hit the angled entrance, then bounced hard on the asphalt. He stomped on the brakes and yanked the wheel to the left less than twenty feet from the side of the club. I barely had enough time to aim a TK blast at the front window before we slammed into it.

I got fleeting glimpses of tables and chairs flying as we spun across the floor. When the McLaren finally came to a stop, there was a ring of pissed-off vampires in a ragged circle around us. To my left, Lucas had a death grip on the wheel as he took deep breaths. Off to my right, I could see Shade and the boys sprinting across the lot as the blue Crown Vics screeched to a stop outside the hole we’d made. And in front of me, a crowd of vampires were closing in for a snack.

Gone was their human look. Their gray skin was drawn tight against their faces, making the strange jaw structure stand out, and their arms and legs were all bony and misshapen as they took on the appearance of the dead things they really were. The young ones were the most dangerous, because they barely had control of their blood-thirst at the best of times. In a fight, they’d lose control and suck you dry faster than a six year old with a juice box.

Above them I could see the long row of angled floor-to-ceiling windows of an office. Standing in it was a vampire in a business suit. He glared down at me, and his lips curled away from his fangs in a snarl. I wasn’t sure if it was the long hair that brushed his shoulders in perfect curls or the face that was more pretty than handsome that made me sure that this was Etienne. All I was certain of was that he and I were going to see each other up close and personal before the end of the night, and that one of us wasn’t going to walk away. He turned away and slid his jacket off his shoulders, leaving me to face the closing ring of his minions.

My brilliant plan was shot to all Nine Hells. I hadn’t counted on Lucas being inside with me, and I hadn’t counted on the vampires and the Sentinels seeing each other until after I was already inside. It was time to improvise. I tossed the duffel bag to Lucas, then popped the door and climbed to my feet. As the crowd of bloodsucking fiends closed in on me, I pointed to the fourteen blue robed magi gathering at the new door we’d made. Inhuman faces turned to look where I was pointing.

“It’s the Sentinels!” I called out. “They’re here to stop you!”

Surprisingly, a fight broke out.

Chapter 21

~ Fight dirty. Fight to win. ~ TS Cross, Left Hand of Death

There is a reason warlocks fear Sentinels. Mostly, because they’re badasses. Dozens of vampires swarmed fourteen Sentinels. Half of them died before they could get close. The girl with the ponytail brought her hand up, and a red beam lanced from her fingertip. She swept her hand in a narrow arc, and four fiery vampire heads fell to the ground. It was kind of moot, because their bodies burst into flame, too. The biggest Sentinel, Carter, pushed his hand out and knocked several of them sprawling as the boom of magickally compressed air flattened them like a cannon. Another one thrust his hands forward, and an arc of electricity jumped from him to one of the vampires, then to two more before it died out and left three smoking bodies in its wake. Then they were on them, and the Sentinels drew the ankhs from their belts and got down to some serious vampire slaughter.

Lucas and I saw this in the split second before we bolted for the bar. Then we had vampires of our own to deal with. The first one made a flying leap at us from behind the bar, fangs bared and claws out. I nailed him with a wide TK blast and sent him back over the bar. Three more of his buddies hopped up on the bar and crouched for a jump of their own. That was when Lucas got his first licks in.

One of the goodies he’d pulled from the duffel bag was the watergun filled with true blessed-on-consecrated-ground holy water. For younger vampires, it was like getting hosed down with sulfuric acid that was on fire. If they’d been older than a few decades, it might not have worked, but these guys were new enough, they were still wearing this year’s clothes. One of the benefits of having a normal childhood, it seemed, was being pretty damn accurate with a watergun, because Lucas hit all three of them in the face with one steady stream. Hey, if you’re gonna douse someone with flaming acid, that’s the place to light up. As if that wasn’t enough, he arced it back across their torsos, too. They lit up and did the natural thing: they jumped back, away from the deadly stream . . . right into the bottles of flammable liquor. Fire, along with either a stake through the heart or decapitation, was one of best ways to kill a young vampire.

As the bar exploded, I grabbed Lucas and shoved him down under my body until the bits of flaming glass stopped raining down on us.

“Damn!” Lucas said when I let him up.

“Congratulations on your first arson!” I called out over the sound of the fight. “At least this one isn’t all
my
fault!”

I heard the hollow
thunk!
of metal on flesh and bone, and a vampire hit the floor like a wet rag and slid past us. A quick glance over my shoulder let me see Steve, Shade, and the rest of the pack fighting their way toward us. The Sentinels weren’t far behind, but catching me seemed to be further down on their “to-do” list than staying alive.

Through the boiling mass of combat, I saw Deek’s face still at the hole in the wall, outside and watching as my friends fought their way to me.

I pulled the paintball gun, checked to make sure I had the hopper with red tape on it and pointed at the knot of vamps surrounding Shade and Steve. Lucas got the idea and pumped up the water gun, then gave me a nod. I aimed left and pumped a couple of rounds from the Ariakon into two vampires in sport coats and slacks. The red paintballs were supposed to be filled with an incendiary, but when the rounds hit, the two vampires’ chests just disappeared. They fell in two pieces and started to wither. Lucas had doused four more with the holy water, and they were busy writhing in pain on the floor while Steve made short work of the two that were still between us and the pack with a swing from his club that sent them flying for the far wall, and into the group of vampires that had emerged from behind the club’s stage.

“Man, you know how to make an entrance,” Steve said with a grin as he made it to us.

“Yeah, it’s the exit I need to work on,” I said as the rest of the pack joined us.

I turned to head for the door behind the bar, and found another half-dozen vampires coming out of it. Lucas screamed and soaked the first one in holy water, then turned the water gun on the second one. The water gun gave a spurt of mostly air and spat a few drops, then went dry. I hit the second one with a paintball, but the next one landed on me and knocked me flat. The Ariakon and my wand went spinning, and it was all I could do to get my forearm against the vamp’s throat before he ripped mine out. I fumbled with my right hand for the LeMat as he grabbed my shoulders and pulled, trying to overcome leverage with sheer inhuman strength. Just when I thought my arm was going to break or my shoulder was going to pop out of its socket, the pressure on my arm disappeared, and the vamp screamed. Then he got pulled off of me, and I saw Shade hurl his armless body into the group that was running at her.

She leaped on the nearest one as Steve waded into them with his club flying. As she twisted the head off one, Steve knocked the head of another off by sheer force, and I dove for the Ariakon. My wand was nowhere in sight, so I turned the ring on my right hand around and cried out “
Vocare!”

My wand came flying from under the McLaren, drawn to the summoning ring’s quartz setting. I made a note to thank Lucas for all the ideas he’d given me by making me watch all six of the
Star Wars
movies last year as I turned back to the brief fight for the door.

Shade had one by the neck and was busy swinging him into another while Steve drove his club down through the skull of the last of them.

“Who’s next?” he called out.

The door opened and six-and-a-half feet of vampire stepped out in jeans and a black t-shirt. This guy gave him a toothy grin and a ‘Come here’ gesture, and Steve lunged forward. I barely saw the other vamp’s hand move as he slammed it into Steve’s chest and sent him sliding across the floor toward me. Shade hunkered down into a fighting stance and circled him warily. She lunged in with a punch that he blocked with his forearm, then reeled back as he backhanded her. I holstered the Ariakon, drew the LeMat and thumbed the hammer back.

“Hey!” I said as I walked toward him.

Both his and Shade’s heads turned toward me.

“No one hits my girl, asshole,” I growled to keep him off balance.

As he tried to size me up, I pointed the wand at him and hissed “
Ictus!”

The blast knocked him back through the door and into the kitchen behind it. I heard him hit something metal and heavy, then there was a curse. I lifted the LeMat and fired at the empty door. The trick to fighting bad guys with superhuman speed and reflexes, Dr. C had taught me, was thinking ahead. The bullet arrived at the door about the same time the vampire did. After that, it wasn’t very pretty.

I offered Steve a hand up as the vampire in the doorway screamed and writhed on the floor.

“Damn, conservation of ninjitsu works!” he moaned as we made for the door.

“Huh?” I said as he picked up his club.

“It isn’t the hundred ninjas you have to worry about, it’s the one guy who steps up. Only so much badass to go around,” Lucas explained as we went through the stainless steel and white tile maze that was Inferno’s kitchen.

Shade turned to her left and pointed at a wooden door.

“I smell them. They’re back there,” she said. She grabbed my shoulder and kissed me hard for a split second. “For calling me your girl,” she said before she turned to follow the others.

Steve didn’t bother to use the knob to open the door. The vampire on the other side had a split second to be surprised before he was slammed against the brick wall behind it, and skewered by half a dozen shards of wood. One of them must have hit his heart, because he just slid down the wall and started melting.

“I thought they were supposed to . . . you know . . .” Lucas said as we stepped over the spreading pool of goo.

“They all die differently for some reason,” I explained.

We followed Shade and the boys down the steps, letting their noses lead us to where we needed to be. We ended up in the building’s basement, in a room that looked like it used to be bar of its own a long time ago.

Of course, it was a trap.

Vampires vaulted over the bar and dropped from the ceiling. One landed next to Steve and got backhanded away. Another landed on Shade and one of the boys. The one who landed on Shade got flipped over her shoulder, while the one that had vaulted onto Tyler went stiff as Tyler’s fist erupted from his back with its pulped heart oozing in his grip. It burst into bloody chunks a second later, and Tyler rolled over and puked.

Another one landed in front of me, and I reflexively pulled the trigger on the LeMat. It flinched, then we both looked down at the gun, inert in my hand. I’d forgotten to pull the hammer back. Its grey skin pulled back from inch long fangs as it smiled at me hideously.

“Duck!” Donovan yelled, and I hit the floor.

His bat caught the vamp in the chest and flung him across the room. It flattened against the wall for a moment, then slid to the ground. I pulled the hammer back on the LeMat and took aim at its chest as it shook its head, then pulled the trigger as its eyes met mine. Even from across the room, I should have been able to hit it, but the bullet just made a fist sized hole in the wall beside it, and it leaped for me with a grin on its face. Halfway across the room, one of the pack caught it in mid-flight and slammed it against the wall.

I thumbed the hammer back again as another one grabbed me from behind. My first instinct was to put the gun in his face and pull the trigger, but his hand caught the gun by the barrel. I heard him chuckle from behind me and slammed my head back into his face. Fire erupted on my scalp where I hit him, but he let go of the gun and me long enough that I could turn and jam the gun against his chest and pull the trigger. The left side of his chest exploded and I saw one of his buddies take the flaming round just below the ribs. He got a wide-eyed look just before he burst into flames. Then the only sound was the wet
thump
of a vampire’s head being slammed into the wall again and again.

I walked past Shade, heading for the heavy steel door on the far side of the room. Set into the brick wall, it looked like it would hold up against the worst I’d seen Steve and Shade dish out. That was where magick and a little applied physics came in. From the front of the Ariakon’s holster, I pulled a spare hopper, this one marked with a strip of blue and white tape. As I changed it out, Lucas’ phone played Wanda’s ringtone. He pulled it out with a sheepish look and put it to his ear.

“He wants to talk to you,” he said after a few seconds.

I took the phone from him.

“Honey, I told you never to call this phone,” I said, my voice flat.

“I know you’re outside the door,” Darth Fedora’s voice hissed over the line. “If you so much as knock, I’m going to blow her pretty little head off. Her faith may be strong, but it won’t stop a bullet.”

“Hey, little piggy, let me in,” I said as I brought the paintball gun up and pulled the trigger.

The first pellet hit the center of the door. A web of frost covered the surface and I could feel the cold even from fifteen feet away, but it didn’t cover enough of the door. I put another pellet in each of the four corners, and I heard the steel start to groan as it contracted in on itself from the intense cold.

Darth laughed at me as I holstered the gun.

“Or what? Are you gonna huff and puff and blow my house down?” he asked.

I ended the call and gestured for everyone to get back.

“Something like that, asshole,” I muttered as I raised my wand and gripped the touchstone.

I pictured Wanda on the other side of the door, and I remembered that she had been praying to her Goddess for me. She had faith in me, and I was not going to let her down. Darth Fedora and his crew had taken her, and I could imagine what they were trying to do to her. I could almost feel the vampires and servants on the other side of the door, waiting for her faith to fail so they could have their fun with her. I let my own anger build, and felt the touch of the dark Goddess and the horned God’s rage as well. I let it form a core of power inside me, and with the release word of my spell, I delivered the wrath of an angry Goddess.

Extreme cold makes steel very brittle. The door shattered under the impact of the TK bolt I’d just hit it with, and sent Darth Fedora and several of his cronies flying across the room. I stepped into the open doorway, gun and wand in my hands, with Steve and Shade beside me and a pack of angry teen werewolves behind us.

Thirteen kids were chained to the wall on our right, each one in front of a circle of Lemurian glyphs. The blackened metal of the stolen G’Honn fragment sat on a table in the back of the vault. At least a dozen vampires and just as many wanna-bes were picking themselves up off the ground, and thirteen heads were turning our way along the wall. Wanda’s head raised last, and I could see that they’d found a way to hurt her without touching her. Several, from the looks of her swollen eyes and bruised cheeks. Blood ran down her face from her hair, and her lips were swollen and bleeding.

“Chance?” she slurred as she tried to focus on me.

“You prayed to your Goddess with unwavering devotion,” I heard myself saying, “and I am come, your faith rewarded.” The words weren’t mine, even though they came out of my mouth. They sounded right, though. So very right. And even if they weren’t mine, Wanda smiled, and I was grateful they’d been given to me for her sake.