CROSSING FIRE, page 16
I laughed harder.
“Are you fucking with me?” she finally managed to ask.
“I swear it’s all true.”
She was quiet for a time. “I’ll bet Dom is ecstatic. Holy shit. When could you even have gotten pregnant?”
“Twelve-ish years ago, we think. Did you know we had that long of a gestation period?”
“Nope. I didn’t know we laid eggs either, though it makes enough sense. They kept us as in the dark as possible back in the clan. So you gave birth in dragon form?”
“Yes, and then slept it off. I was gone for months, but to me it felt like days.”
“How big is the egg?”
“He’s like a big watermelon now, but when I laid him I think he was like a small watermelon.”
“Well I suppose childbirth is easier as a dragon and a small egg than with a big baby and a human body, so there’s that.”
“You make a good point,” I said, amused.
“So I’m an aunt now, huh? I wasn’t expecting it, but it makes me happy. Congratulations. Can’t wait to meet him.”
“Thanks. I can’t wait for you to meet him either. He’s still in an egg but already making waves.” I switched gears. “Are you sure you want to go back with Drake? We can fight our way out. Dom and Sven are here with me and Caleb and Christian are only a few miles out. We got this.”
“Not necessary. I can handle him.”
“It doesn’t feel right, leaving here without you.”
“I know, but trust me, this is the way. For now. About that task force. Is it big?”
“Big enough. We have several slayers.”
“Good. When I give you dad’s location, he might not be the only draak you need to slay to get to the eyes.”
“Will there be more than two?”
“I don’t think so, but there’s no way to know for certain.
“Good to know. I’ll brief the team. We should be able to split up and get the job done if we’re prepared for it. Where is he keeping you?”
“It’s not clear. He travels in an… odd way.”
“How will I get your eyes to you once I have them?”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
“I think you’re mixing up sayings there.”
“Maybe, but it’s still accurate.”
“Do you have a number I can call or anything?”
“Not right now, but I’ll have our people work it out.”
“Our people as in Dom and Drake?”
“Probably.”
“I really don’t want to let you go with him.”
“I know,” said Lynn. “But you have to trust me.”
“That I can do.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
INTERESTED, INTERESTED
On the way back I got a call from Corbin. I wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten my number, but I recognized who was calling with the first thing out of his mouth.
“Did you know they brought me a necromancer?” his excited voice asked over the line.
“Henri?” My tone was sardonic. “They brought him just for you, huh?”
“A necromancer is a rare treat for a vampire slayer, as I’m sure you’re well aware. I’m planning to coax him into staying and partnering with me long-term. He says he used to date you. Will you tell me some of his weaknesses so I can use them against him?” He paused. “That sounded bad. I just want to know what tempts him.”
“Did he explain how long ago it was that we dated?”
I felt Dom’s attention, already on me in the limited confines of the car, gain laser focus.
“No. But some things transcend time. You must have some clue about what he likes, about his character. I’m clearly not pretty enough for him if you’re his type, so I need some tricks here. Help me out and I’ll owe you.”
That surprised me, I don’t know why. I hadn’t realized he was interested, interested. I’d thought he was just trying for a working partnership. For some reason it made me more inclined to help him.
I thought about it for a moment while Corbin waited patiently on the other end. “Try working together with him toward a common goal, something that utilizes both of your skills,” I instructed. “If he sees how useful he can be with your powers to complement his, he’ll like that. He likes to be useful. Also, let him paint you. Offer, at least.”
“I doubt he wants to paint me.”
“You have an interesting, expressive face. That’s what draws his inspiration out more than anything, and if you’re his muse, he won’t want to be far from your side. In fact, once you’re his muse it will be hard to shake him.”
“So hard you have to fake your own death,” Dom said ruefully.
I shot him a look. It wasn’t friendly. He just smiled warmly at me. I immediately warmed. That was his power over me.
“What’s he mean by that?” Corbin asked, clearly having heard the other man.
“Nothing important.”
“Did he say you faked your own death? To get away from Henri?”
“That’s a gross exaggeration,” I said and even I thought it sounded unconvincing.”
Corbin had the nerve to laugh richly. “Oh, now some of the unflattering things he’s said about you are starting to make sense.”
Dom took the phone from my hand and put it to his ear. “Tell Henri to keep Jillian’s name out of his mouth or he’ll answer to me. This is his last warning.”
He handed the phone back.
Oookaaay.
“Did you have anything else to ask me?” I asked impatiently. “I’m not going to stay on the line for this.”
“No, I think I’m good,” he said, laughter still in his voice, “I think you gave me enough. Thanks. I owe you.” Without further ado, he hung up.
Huh.
It felt as I had said the words to Corbin that I was setting something in motion, and less than a day later I was proven right in my own hunch. He’d followed my advice with Henri. The two men had worked together and found an abandoned casino full of multiple vampire kisses.
It was at the edge of town, a property scheduled for implosion, though not soon enough.
Necromancers are quite useful, and Henri is a very talented one. I’ve yet to see his equal in the craft. He’d managed to find an area with mass dead bodies, new ones, and from there Corbin had found one of the vampire familiars and used whatever scary vampire hunter skills he had to make the creature talk.
They really did make a good team.
The bodies Henri had sensed weren’t buried or hidden, just strewn about wherever they’d been drained of blood, above ground and inside of the property.
This was particularly fortunate for us as that made the order for execution easy and instant. We could take action that very day, preferably well before sunset.
It was also fortunate because with Henri on hand, those bodies became both weapon and shield as we stormed the bloodsuckers.
We met in the parking lot, as large of a force as the druids could muster on short notice, which was an impressive size indeed. The entire dragon task force was there, as well as a small army of druids and various other supernaturals that could be scrounged up on short notice.
I was surprised to even see a rare dark elf.
The fae are seldom seen on this side of the veil, let alone here and doing something useful. He was shorter than an average human, though with how thin he was he looked taller. He had sharp teeth and red eyes and didn’t speak to anyone. The fae are notoriously wary of outsiders and impossible to trust, but they are very good fighters. I wondered how he’d been talked into joining the battle. They rarely did something for nothing, or for the good of anyone but themselves.
Corbin saw me staring and commented, “Waylen’s half-vampire. He hates them more than anyone, something about avenging his mother, and I always call him when there are vampires to be killed.”
Fair enough.
Dom was a hands-on type of general, so he was striding through the crowd, checking with lieutenants and captains alike to make sure everyone was on the same page.
He’d placed all of the non-druid others in his unit, under his direct command, and I knew that was because of me. He wanted to keep me close and he wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore—one of the downsides/perks of dating a king, depending on how you wanted to look at it.
Caleb and Christian were flanking me, ready to roll and itching for a fight, as usual.
Sven was close, battle axe in hand. I’d never fought with him before, but we’d both been amused when we saw that we favored the same weapon. I tried to trick him into trading with me, but even with a still quiet Torst, Sven seemed to understand that there was something wrong with my weapon and politely but instantly declined.
Oh well, it was worth a shot.
Very few of the druids were using beast-call as they found it less efficient for fighting vamps. The way they needed to be killed was better suited to blades and pointy things.
The plan of attack was simple, though vampires never cooperated with plans.
Henri was the first wave, an entire dedicated platoon protecting him. He would raise a large army of the dead and use it as the frontline while we swarmed the place and killed the masters. There were likely twelve by Corbin’s calculations.
We were in the second wave, Corbin in front. We’d go in and wreak havoc, incapacitating as many as possible as quickly as we could as we carved our way to the masters.
It was the riskiest position, reserved for the stronger druids and supernaturals that could withstand a lot of damage, and we were sure to get the most action. And the most bites.
Sven and I had suggested using dragon fire, but druids hated fire as a rule, and it was decided that to target and stake the master vampires, we’d need more precision and manpower.
A raging, uncontrollable inferno didn’t exactly go hand in hand with precision.
And those masters needed to die today. They were responsible for several hundred recent human deaths that we knew of, and we were here to make them pay.
Wave three was for the more delicate supernaturals, and the weaker druids. They would follow us, a few careful minutes behind, to stake any vamps we downed. Tedious work, but necessary with the bloodsuckers.
Wave four was kind of overkill. They were positioned in a large, loose circle around the building just in case anything escaped, though it was hours from sunset so that was unlikely.
Between having Henri and the sun high in the sky for this battle, I was feeling downright optimistic.
Now let’s see how the universe could prove me wrong.
After we were lined up and ready, just before the charge, Dom halted everything to move in front of me.
I watched him, a little shocked, as he touched one of my battle-braided buns and brought our foreheads together. “Be careful, my love,” he said, his voice not at all quiet, not at all pitched low for my ears alone.
With Dom, I honestly didn’t know if he was just declaring his intention toward me or doing it to countermand his own rule, or both.
Either way, the results were the same.
He was planting the seeds of his abdication, far away as it was, likely years in the future.
Everyone who saw him would believe he was under my spell, a strange other with way too much influence over their throne.
After that he did something to further my suspicions, nodding to Sloan at the last, letting her make the stirring battle speech and command the charge.
He’s really going to do it, I thought in wonder. He’s going to hand the throne to Sloan. I could scarcely believe it—which was foolish.
He’d said as much, and I’d believed him from the start. He wasn’t the liar. That was me.
I was distracted from my musings by Henri. He was up to bat.
He was surrounded by a druid shield, or rather a shield of druids. His skin had gone white, his eyes black, dark veins popping up all along his skin, a black mist surrounding him. Oh yeah and he was floating about two feet off the ground.
He looked less like a hot Jesus now and more like a terrifying Satan.
He began to chant in Latin and some horrifying noises started to seep from the building and to our ears, screeches of pain, mournful cries of sorrow. And fighting, but not with weapons. It was the sound of flesh on flesh combat as the hoard of dead bodies reanimated and became, for the moment, Henri’s pets.
It went on for some time and windows began to break, doors opening as desperate newborn vamps beat the hoard back, so far somewhat ineffectively, since nothing was making it out.
Corbin was vamped out, dripping fangs protruding, face scary. He looked at Dom for his cue.
Finally Dom called it. “Wave two, charge!”
And we were off, running straight into hell.
And it was that. It stank of death in there, old and new, rotting and rich. That alone was enough to give pause, and then there was the noise, overwhelming, blood-curdling screeching.
Fucking vampires.
Henri was more than holding up his end of the bargain, and a good chunk of the wave two dodged past the newborn nasties pretty easily.
I had my axe out, eyes trained on Corbin. He knew where the masters were. He was the man to follow.
I vaguely noted Caleb, Christian, and Sven keeping pace with me, though I’d expected that so it barely registered.
Dom was close too, I felt him like a hot breath on my neck, possibly close to literally.
We were past the first floor of carnage and on a stairwell without even wetting our weapons. Things were going much smoother than we were used to.
I no more had the thought when things went weird in a hurry.
The masters weren’t asleep, which was expected as Henri had been murdering all their babies for a good fifteen minutes.
What wasn’t expected was the protective circle the masters stood in, all twelve of them, a pile of torn up body parts at the center. They were all gaunt and pale, slimy, ugly, and tall. They all wore long black robes that looked suspiciously druid-like.
“That’s a blood druid circle!” Sloan shouted.
“Fall back into formation!” Dom shouted nearly on top of that.
We listened without questioning, druids knew best what to do with master vampires using blood druid circles—what in the ever-loving fuck?
With efficient coordination the druids were setting up their own circle, the rest of us pushed back.
Corbin was the only one that hadn’t backed off. He was right outside of the rogue circle, pacing, eyes on the vamp masters like a predator stalking prey.
“What can they do with that circle?” I asked no one in particular.
“I don’t think anyone knows, but it can’t be something good,” Caleb remarked calmly.
I glanced at Sven. He was looking at the circle like it was a particularly interesting puzzle.
“We’ve broken one before,” I told him, “Christian and I, working together. Though even I’m not sure just why it worked.”
“That circle was more invisible than fortified,” Christian remarked, though by the way he was jumping from foot to foot, I could tell he wanted to try again.
I shrugged. “Can’t hurt to give it a shot,” I said.
Christian grinned at me and it was as carefree and happy as it was bloodthirsty. “Let’s roll.”
But before we could take action the druids were ready with their own, better informed plans. They were nothing if not efficient.
A thick tree sprouted suddenly and violently into the middle of the vampire master circle, throwing the creatures in all directions and breaking their strange stolen spell.
At almost the same moment a group of newborn vampires tore up the stairs behind us. Henri’s corpse army couldn’t last forever. It’d had a good run.
It was a split second judgement which direction to fight in, but as I saw the newborns tear into the back of the group I shot that way, hoping there were enough strong fighters focusing on the masters for the moment.
After that it was a gore fest of a battle. Vampires lived on blood and so were in fact full of it, and each one I caught with my spinning axe effectively exploded blood into the air on contact. It was grisly.
I had to piece it together after the fighting was done, but Sven had joined me taking out the force behind us while almost everyone else went after the masters, which was for the best.
We fought well together for siblings that had been separated for most of their long lives. We’d never even trained with each other but our styles were similar, and I gave the credit for that to our love of a good battle axe.
The newborns coming up the stairs had taken out a few of ours with the element of distraction and surprise on their side, and those bodies combined with the growing pile of undead made for some slippery footing. At one point I just planted my ass down at the top of the stairs and started bonking them on the head as they came up.
They were new and weak but still vampire fast, so I got about a half dozen gnarly bites before the stream of creatures stopped.
At that point Sven helped me up from the floor, and we turned back to the room, assessing who needed help finishing off the masters.
I rushed to help Dom with one, but he was already squeezing its head between his hands until it was flat, casually pulled a stake out of a thigh sheath and drove it through its heart, moving on to the next.
Dom didn’t need my help.
Cam, who I’d barely seen in the melee seemed to be struggling with two of them on him. I came up behind one of the vamps and cleanly sliced its head off and in the same motion took the other one’s head and shoulders clean off.
I was rather impressed with my own moves but Cam just glared at me, the ingrate, and moved to stake them.
When the last master was dead, Dom caught sight of me, his eyes taking inventory, top to bottom.
“None of that’s yours, I hope?” he asked referring to the fact that I was covered in blood.
I waved at the room. Everyone was covered in blood and gore. “I look the same as everyone else.”
“Just answer the question, please,” he asked through his teeth.
