Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) (37 page)

I would not give the bitch the satisfaction.

“No?” Her eyes seemed too big for her face. “How about now?”

The pressure got worse.

I thought my jaw would break, but I wouldn’t say anything.

Not now.

I heard Jason’s muttered curses and the jingling of chains, but he was already too far away.

Suddenly, for the first time, I had second thoughts about walking out of this room alive.

My toes curled and I felt sweat pop up on my forehead as she came closer, breath rancid. I could count the individual lashes around her thickly lined eyes. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”

The pain was going to put me under and once that happened, I would never wake up.

I would die and that would be the end.

Damn it.

A look of something passed in those eyes. Regret? Sympathy? I didn’t understand it. “It’s a shame. You could have been so much more. But this is where it ends. Good-bye, Ran.”

She pulled back her right hand, the nails black from my blood and I watched the hand shoot towards my neck.

Was this the end?

No. No. No.

Could I?

If I could just kill Annabelle…if I could just free Jason from those silver chains…

If only I could.

If only I would.

I let red and black fall over my vision and with the last reserve of strength left in me, I shoved Annabelle’s hand out of the way with my forearm. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep her nails away from my jugular, and her fingers skittered around the edge of my neck, bringing forth blood, but not enough to kill me.

Her eyes opened wide, impossibly wide and I knew I had only moments.

Moments I could not, would not waste.

I grabbed her ankle and twisted sharply to the right.

Something snapped and she went down in a flurry of wet fabric, screaming as the bone splintered and shoved its way out of her thin, narrow ankle.

For added measure, I shoved her ankle back and Annabelle’s screams of pain echoing in my mind like a broken record.

This time, I was the one on top and when my hand touched the slippery hilt of the
jian,
I knew it was over.

Annabelle had time for one more scream, her eyelashes dewy with moisture as I poised the sword point over the hollow of her neck.

“No, please,” she moaned. “It’s not me, it wasn’t me—”

But her time was finished.

I let the blade drop and she spoke no more.

Screamed no more.

Saw no more.

But she was a vampire lord.

I had to make sure.

Breath coming up short, strange sounds coming out of my throat, I let the sword cut down again and again and again until I was drenched in her blood, until her head was no longer attached to her neck.

Slowly, I levered myself up to my feet off her chest, my head feeling like it was going to split open.

But I had to fight the pain.

Had to postpone.

There would be hell to pay when I woke up, but for now, for now, I needed the extra time.

Jason had managed to work one manacle loose, but the damage was clear in the shiny burns on his hands and wrists.

His nostrils flared as I approached him. “Are you…are you…?”

I don’t know how I managed, I smiled. “I’ve come for you.”

He closed his eyes and let out a slow, shuddering sigh. “God…I’m sorry, Ran. I didn’t…I thought…”

The smell of blood laid thick, cloying in my nose as I quickly worked the chains loose and when his arms fell from the wall, it was Jason who supported me as I tried to walk on legs that didn’t seem to want to follow my instructions anymore.

My chest hurt. My face hurt. My arms hurt.

My head hurt.

I was going to go under at any minute now.

But he was safe now.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he muttered and I let him take me in his arms like a little child.

God, how I wanted to be spoiled. “Thank you.”

“Let’s go somewhere far away,” he said, voice a pleasant rumble underneath my fingertips. “Let’s go where no one knows us and—”

“And what?”

A different voice.

It’s not me. It wasn’t me…

Eyes the color of cafe au lait regarded us calmly in the open doorway. “Perhaps I should have not taken so long. What a mess you’ve made…Ailward. I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.’

Jason drew in a quick breath, his arms clenching around me. “Matthias. You son of a bitch.”

He took off his hat and when he took a step into the room that smelled like freshly minted blood, something strange happened.

Something loud echoed in the passageway outside,
pop, pop, pop,
and his body jerked in response to every
pop
that made my head ache even worse.

The ground rushed up in a sudden movement that made my empty stomach twitch and I realized Jason was atop me, protecting me with his bloody, broken body. “Don’t move,” he hissed.

Matthias staggered one step closer, fingers twitching, shaking to touch sudden spots of red that blossomed on his chest.

Bullets.

Inexplicably, his lips rose up in a beautific smile and we watched as he fell heavily to his knees, hand still on his chest.

A river of red flowed out of that mouth and he fell on his face.

Silence reigned.

“Ran!”

Jason slowly, carefully pulled me back upright, although his hands made pain run along my body and I couldn’t stop the small sounds from leaving my lips.

Vincent’s emissary stood over Matthias’s body, her eyes cold and unfeeling.

I had misjudged her.

She ran a hand down Matthias’s back and then kicked him.

He did not move.

Jason stood back up, pulling me up and off the ground as easily as standing on his own feet. “Have to admit, had me a little worried there.”

“How badly hurt is she?” asked Eve as she dropped to her knees next to the corpse.

Jason looked down at me and I licked my dry lips.

“Broken ribs. Possibly a punctured lung. I think my left shoulder is out of joint. Bruises. Cuts,” I managed to say without slurring. “But I’m alive.”

She winced. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

I wanted to stay awake.

I wanted to keep the darkness at bay.

But as I watched Eve took an axe off the wall, the world spun and I could do nothing but close my eyes and let the dark whirlwind take me away.

Epilogue

Through some miracle or another, everyone survived.

Everyone on our side.

Whatever that meant.

I heard later Ryder incapacitated Reiko with the simple act of ramming her face into a brick wall until she stopped moving. She wasn’t dead, although she was currently under the supposed “tender care” of the Council of Vampires that seemed like a collection of master vampires who had taken it onto themselves to reign over the world of vampiric beings. Jason wasn’t sure when she would be allowed freedom; I’m not sure if I wanted her to ever be free.

I was told Matthias had never truly forgiven the Committee for killing the Sanguinate a century ago…the Sanguinate who had turned out to be his own wife. When he heard of Jason, he sought revenge against those who had doomed his lover to the death.

I understood his actions a little better. That didn’t mean I forgave him.

The coup had failed.

The Fellowship never made it past the first basement level of Vincent’s club. Most of them were arresting for unlawful trespassing, but most of them made bail after the first night. They never showed up after that again.

Matthias’s human Renfield confessed to Vincent and suffered a quick and merciful death.

I heard that phrase a lot in the next few days after the underground war that had leveled an entire city block and set fire to the north side of Centennial.

Fenrir had been implicated in the coup although he protested his innocence, saying Annabelle and Matthias had free rein of his home, that he hadn’t the faintest idea they were using his own home as their base. I thought he made a terrible liar, but Vincent and Noir let him live.

They let Jason live, too. For now.

Three days later, I received word from the Fellowship.

My name was on par with Noir’s name on their hit list.

In their eyes, I had suffered a vampire to live and for that crime, I would be hunted until either they died, or I did.

For some reason, this didn’t bother me as much as it should’ve.

I still didn’t know who killed Adrian and tried to kill Elder Chang. Vincent, though his elaborate system of spies and informants, informed me that Elder Chang was still in a coma.

Once Elder Chang awakened, maybe then my name would be cleared.

But my hopes aren’t that high.

Jason has been released to his own estate, although he can’t function as well as he did before. The day is his curse and you can’t run a major pharmaceutical corporation when all the board meetings are during nine and five pm.

He’s thinking of selling it to Johnson and Johnson and taking his billions to his private island in the Philippines.

“Of course, you’ll have to come with me,” he said at my bedside, while I struggled to recover from the worst migraine in the history of mankind. “I must have my Ailward with me.”

Four days after the coup, I felt well enough to stand on my own two feet without falling in a heap and six days later, Ryder took me out.

We went to a planetarium and he bought me three Manhattans at the Black Masque.

I got so drunk that I started dancing and singing and Ryder took me in his arms, laughing so hard I didn’t know who was going to fall over first.

So for now, life is calm. I am more relaxed than ever and I’m starting to learn a life outside of the Fellowship. Vampires have become my friends, my saviors.

But it’s a two-way street and I’ll do my best to keep Jason alive.

Because I am his Ailward.

Because he is my Master.

Because he is mine.

And I am his.

THE END