The Damned (20 page)

Aurora’s henchmen allowed a few wounded survivors to stumble back toward the palace. Let Dantalion find out who had been killing off his monsters.

The path cleared; Aurora’s vampires turned their attention to the prize. She smiled as Antonio was too late to counter an attack by three of her fighters. They knocked him unconscious while the Hunter managed a few roundhouse punches and kicks. A vampire aimed a pistol at her, sighted it, then twirled the pistol like a gunslinger, bringing the heavy butt end down on the crown of her head. The girl sprawled in the snow.

The gunslinger kicked the Hunter in the head, while the others tied Antonio up. She lunged forward, grabbing his ankle and toppling him off balance. As he landed, he kicked her again, this time in the face. She grabbed his foot, leaped to her feet, and, moving as fast as a vampire, whipped out a stake to slam through his chest. It didn’t go through the padding.

Aurora guffawed, enjoying the sport. She’d heard about Pamplona, and had been sorry she hadn’t been there. But this more than made up for it.

Four others glommed on to the Hunter, holding her as the slumped Antonio was trussed like a wild boar fresh from the hunt. One of the victorious raised a proud fist in the air, then hefted Antonio’s limp body onto his back like Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame.

The vampire zigzagged back up the incline, sinking up to his thighs in the snow, while the others kept the flailing Hunter from intervening. Once Antonio was safely away, they danced out of the girl’s reach, laughing and taunting her. The Hunter began to give chase, but wobbled, her knees caving beneath her, before toppling face-first to the ground.

“These Salamancans are not so special, are they, Estefan?” Aurora asked.

He blinked.
“Lo siento
, Aurora, what?” he said distractedly.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head. When he felt her eyes on him, he jerked. “I’m not doing anything.”

She was unconvinced. Maybe he was communicating with his little English witch. Maybe he was even warning her.

It was time to go. Not because she feared the rest of the Salamancan team. She simply didn’t want to risk any thing happening to Antonio. And if Estefan was being indiscreet, she needed to put time and distance between the two exes.

The Hunter lay inert in the snow. From that distance Aurora couldn’t tell if the Hunter was dead. Either way, it didn’t matter. She had what she’d come for.

As her troops rejoined her, Aurora led the way back into the woods, where she had a fleet of all-terrain vehicles waiting for them. One eye on Antonio, another on Estefan, she pulled her furs around herself and smiled brilliantly. It was such a fine night to be Aurora Abregon.

He’s so beautiful
, she thought, staring down at Antonio as he was loaded into one of the Humvees.
More beautiful even than Sergio.

Blasphemous thought, but true.

“Vámonos,”
she said happily.

“Where are we going?” Estefan asked her.

She cocked her head. “Where do you think?”

Eriko sobbed in fear and frustration as she tried to push herself out of the snow, but her tortured, twisted limbs gave way. One of the remaining monsters lumbered toward her through the falling snow, and she sucked in her breath and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, her fingers still curled around a stake.

Nothing happened. The world began to drift away. She floated in a haze of pain and cold.

No. Wake up!
she told herself.

Gasping, she forced open her eyes. The creatures and the Cursed Ones were all gone. She sat up slowly, pain sending tears down her cheeks. They had kidnapped Antonio, and she had let them. What would they do with him?

“Jenn,” she croaked in a gravelly voice. She had to catch up to the others, get help.

She tried to stand, but her legs collapsed again.

She wondered how any other Hunters managed to survive the twisting of bone and muscle. Maybe they never reached this point, having been killed within days or weeks of graduation. She was lucky, but lying there in the snow with blood running down her chin, she didn’t feel lucky.

She felt weak, and vulnerable. Two things she had never wanted to be ever again.

I’m failing
, she thought, and then, with sudden clarity:
I’m dying.

CHAPTER NINE

Being a hunter is as much about instinct as anything else. Training, knowledge, can only take you so far. You have to learn to trust yourself, even when you don’t want to. The mind notices thousands of minute details that we don’t even consciously register. This is what people call intuition. Sometimes your gut knows more than you do; you have to pay attention. Sometimes the details you’ve overlooked are miniscule. Sometimes they are glaringly obvious and you just didn’t want to see them. Because you were afraid to.

—from the diary of Jenn Leitner
,
discovered in the ashes

R
USSIA
D
ANTALION

“What the hell?” Dantalion thundered as he watched a dozen ragged hybrids stumble back onto the palace grounds. He stood on his balcony, gentling Rasputin, his Russian wolfhound, and stared down at the terrified
matroyshkas
as they smacked into each other like windup toys. Their vampiric handlers approached cautiously to corral them and drive them back to their cells. The hybrids that still had mouths were shrieking like teakettles, roaring like apes. And Dantalion didn’t see the new one he had sent out with them, Svika, who was supposed to lure his two hunter friends into the palace. Dantalion thought he had thoroughly mesmerized Svika, but maybe he had run away. Maybe they’d killed him.

This can’t be the work of two hunters, can it?

Then Dantalion heard the
rat-tat-tat
of submachinegun fire. The hunters? Dantalion’s own, protecting his borders?

The high, arched windows, fortified with foot-thick unbreakable acrylic, were foggy with a cascade of white. The damned snow. He couldn’t see anything.

Rasputin whined.

“Easy, boy,” Dantalion told him.

He aimed a remote control at a locked, reinforced box. It opened, revealing an enormous bank of readouts. Land mines, check. Electrified perimeter, check. Maybe Svika had been killed. Dantalion had ordered him to find his old friends, then lure them back through a “secret” tunnel. Instead Svika was missing, and the
matroyshkas
he had sent out to back him up were, apparently, being slaughtered.

Time to declare an emergency. He pushed the alarm code. Klaxons whooped. The stupid dog panicked and bolted. His scientists, Cursed Ones and humans alike, poked their heads out of their offices, wondering if they were having a drill.

“
Now
what’s going on?” asked Khrushchev, as he joined Dantalion beside the control box.

“Just go downstairs to the basement,” Dantalion said irritably. “I have the situation under control.”

But just in case, there was another switch on the panel—one that would deliver poison gas into the subterranean labs. All the humans and most of the
matroyshkas
would die. The Cursed Ones like himself could not be poisoned in such a way. So next a bomb would go off, taking care of the rest and eliminating any trace of his experiments.

While he, of course, would be long gone.

Dantalion picked up the red landline phone inside the box and pushed the first button. The connection was made before he even heard a ring.

“Apples are red,” he reported, speaking in Russian.

“The orchards are yellow,” came the correct code, also in Russian. “Situation?”

“Uncertain. I may need you.”

“We’re ready.”

Dantalion hung up and headed for the basement.

R
USSIA
T
EAM
S
ALAMANCA
M
INUS
A
NTONIO AND
E
RIKO;
T
AAMIR,
N
OAH, AND
S
VIKA

At the perimeter of the snow-covered minefield, Jamie turned in slow circles, looking for some sort of target.

“Skye, there is no one here!” Jenn said, as she sliced the air with a stake, while Holgar slashed at nothing with a wicked Israeli special-forces knife Taamir had given him from their cache of weapons. Vampires moved fast enough to seem invisible, but the falling snow would have given them shape if there had been any present. Just in case, Jamie had wanted to shoot off a few rounds with the Uzi he’d grown quite attached to, but he stayed his hand. The fewer combatants Dantalion thought there were out here, the better.

There was silence all round them, save for Skye’s hysteria and Svika’s groaning.

Of the two, Skye was freaking Jamie out worse. And that was saying a lot, considering what Svika was.

“He’s watching us!” Skye said, grabbing Jenn’s arm. “He’s up somewhere high!”

Jamie looked down at the enormous palace. It had once been very grand, but pieces of the gingerbread decorations had fallen off, and slabs of what looked like concrete had been set in their place. “Is this ‘he’ in there?”

“Who
is
he?” Holgar stared into the darkness. For once Jamie was glad to have a werewolf around. Holgar could see things, smell things, that no one else except Antonio could.

Skye kept whimpering.

“Bloody hell, witchy! Spill it!” Jamie shouted at her.

“He’s a witch, like me, only not like me,” Skye said, her voice cracking. “He’s with the Cursed Ones.”

“With Dantalion?” Jamie asked, horrified. “And this is some friend of yours?”

Her eyes widened. “He’s with someone. Jenn, I think it might be Antonio!”

Jenn’s mouth dropped open, and she went green. Typical of her to go all drama queen instead of keeping it together to lead the team.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Jamie demanded. “That some
friend
of yours was here and—”

“He just popped into my head. He
does
that!”

“What?”
Jenn and Jamie said in unison.

“But—but he’s really here. I can feel it.” Skye hugged herself. “And I think he’s gotten hold of Antonio.”

“Where?” Taamir asked, painting the black night with the barrel of his Uzi. Noah kept a boot heel on Svika as he writhed on the ground.

“What about Dantalion?” Jenn asked. “Is he working with him?”

“What about Eriko?” Jamie asked Skye.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.” Skye was shaking. “He’s dangerous, Jenn.”

“So’s Dantalion. Look at that bloke,” Jamie said, gesturing to Svika, “acting the maggot.”

No longer writhing, Svika stared straight ahead, and for a second Jamie thought he had died. That could be good or bad. Jamie pushed past Jenn, knocking her shoulder hard, and pressed the Uzi against the center of Svika’s forehead as Noah kept him pinned. The bugger was losing a lot of blood.

“Dantalion,” Svika whispered.
“Da, ya podchinyus va . . .”
As Svika gasped, he fell silent.

“He’s speaking Russian,” Holgar said. “Talking to someone about obeying.”

“Her friend,” Jamie said, glaring at Skye.

“No, he’s not Russian,” Skye said. Her face was white. “He’s a Spaniard.”

“Bloody hell!” Jamie yelled at her. “All this time we’re living in
Spain
, and you didn’t think to mention it?”

“Keep your voice down,” Jenn said between clenched teeth. “The fighting’s over for now, and—”

“It bloody well is
not
over,” Jamie replied in a cold voice.
“She’s
the one in league with the Cursed Ones, don’t you see? The traitor.”

“No, Jamie. Blimey, I’m not.” Skye held out her hands. “He’s a Dark Witch, and we were together before the academy. I haven’t seen him since.”

“You’re lying,” Jamie flung at her.

“Listen to me,” Jenn said. “They’re going to count heads, and Svika’s still out here.”

Jamie could barely contain himself. “Yeah, and thanks to Skye, it seems our
Hunter
is in there. And perhaps so is your
boyfriend.
Who would make a lovely experiment, now, wouldn’t he?”

Noah frowned at Jamie. “What do you mean?”

“Jamie, shut up,” Holgar said, growling.

“Your
heartthrob
, who knows so much about resistance fighters?” Jamie added. “And if this Dantalion wanker wants to know about
that
, well, then, maybe he’ll stab Antonio in the shoulder. Or drive a nice sharp
stake
—”

Holgar growled and leaped at Jamie, punching him so hard that the Irishman fell backward into the snow. Holgar yanked the Uzi out of Jamie’s arms. Jamie sprawled, sputtering. Holgar loomed over him, bending down, putting his face close to his, imitating the way Jamie had aimed the Uzi at Svika.

“Leave off,” Jamie said between clenched teeth. “I’m only saying what should be said.”

“Dantalion, ya privozhy ich k vam,”
Svika said in a dull flat voice. He was panting hard.

“What’s that mean?” Taamir demanded.

“He says, ‘Dantalion, I’ll bring them to you,’” Holgar informed them, his Uzi still trained on Jamie.

“Ya vash rab.”

“‘I’m your slave,’” Holgar said.

“He’s mesmerized,” Jamie said. “Dandy’s soddin’ puppet. I
told
you, didn’t I? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We should blow his feckin’ head off!”

“But he wasn’t acting like this earlier. And vampires can’t mesmerize you from a distance,” Jenn argued. “Skye, is this witchcraft?”

Jenn moved in front of Holgar and held out her hand to Jamie. Glaring at Jamie, she jabbed it at him.

“Get up,” she said.

“Well, Jenn, what a pair.” Ignoring her hand, he got up on his own.