Night Huntress 07 - This Side of the Grave (37 page)

More gunfire and shouts let me know that the rest of our welcoming party had landed. As much as I wanted to look around and check on Bones, I didn’t, keeping my attention on hacking my way to the ghouls who were now spraying the crowd in an effort to take out the intruders. Flashes of white-hot pain arced into my side, making me roll in defense even as I continued to swing my blades at anyone unlucky enough to be near me. Dammit. I’d been hit.

All the tumbling made my hair come loose from its bun. Dark strands interrupted my vision as I rolled to avoid another barrage of bullets, seeing the grass explode in mini pops where I’d just been. Acting on instinct, I flung my sword, hearing a scream before I jumped up, my side still burning, to see a ghoul fall backward clawing at his face, my sword hilt where his nose used to be.

I ignored the pain and vaulted forward, tackling him before he could raise the gun again. A hard swipe across his neck and he wasn’t moving anymore. Another swipe took out the trigger on the gun. No need leaving it functional so a bystander could pick it up and start shooting away.

Pain exploded in my neck in the next instant, blood filling my mouth. I grabbed the dead ghoul, using his body as a shield, coughing even though I didn’t breathe. That searing matched the pain in my side, but it faded quicker, and the red on my clothes let me know what happened. I’d been shot in the throat.

Somehow, that pissed me off more than the bullets still burning their way deeper into my side. I kept ahold of the corpse, balancing his body in front of me as I charged at the ghoul who continued to fire at me. Those bullets struck his fallen comrade instead, and I had time to let out a savage snarl before I threw the body on him, knocking him over. I followed immediately with my sword, slicing through the arm he raised in defense and then his neck, putting all my pain and anger behind the blow. His head rolled a foot away from his body.

I didn’t stop to celebrate but swung around. Just in time, too. A duo of ghouls bored down on me, one shooting,
one
holding out a knife. I had time to fling myself
upward,
making the bullets intended for me hit empty air instead, before I landed behind them. My sword ripped through both their necks with the momentum from my jump, blood splattering me as they fell, headless, to the ground.

“Kitten!”

My head jerked up just in time to see a flash of silver above me. I flung myself down, the sword that had been about to cleave through my neck catching me in the side of the head instead. At once, my vision went red and agony exploded in my skull. Every inner impulse screamed at me to hunch defensively and
clutch
my wound, but the part of me that remembered all the brutal training Bones put me through knew to strike out instead. I swung my blade where I’d last glimpsed the ghoul’s legs, putting all my strength into the blow. I was rewarded by a scream and a thump, something heavy landing on me. The blood in my vision made it hard to make out specifics, but I kept swinging, knowing from each new scream that I was hitting my mark even if I couldn’t see what that mark was. Sizzling pain erupting along my back had me arching in reflex and redoubling my efforts. The ghoul wasn’t done fighting yet.

After several rapid blinks, my gaze cleared enough to see him. His arm was missing. So were his legs at the calves, but he had a silver knife that he kept stabbing into my back, seeking my heart. Instead of rolling away from him, I lunged forward, head-butting him with all my fury. He jerked back in a dazed way, but the sudden stars in my vision and urge to throw up let me know that my head injury wasn’t done healing yet. With pain crashing through my skull and my side throbbing like I had heat-seeking missiles doing the tango in my guts, I brought my sword down toward his neck.

He kicked me with his stumps at the same time, knocking my aim off. Instead of cleaving through his neck, my sword buried deep in his shoulder. I tugged but it wouldn’t come free. The ghoul let out something like a snarl and a laugh.

“Missed me,” he chortled viciously, raising his gun.

My other arm whipped forward and the ghoul’s laugh died in his throat. He fired, but the bullets went wild, probably because he now had two silver knives in his eye sockets. He should have never taken the time to taunt me before he fired. I had plenty of other weapons aside from my sword.

He reached for the knives—another mistake. I wrenched the gun from his hands and used it to shoot my way right through his neck, letting out a scream of deadly triumph. Then I yanked my sword free, whirling around to defend against the next attack.

None came. Although I still heard spates of gunfire, they were far less frequent than before. The cemetery was littered with bodies, and those still standing looked like they were trying to run more than attempting to fight. For a split second, I was surprised. Yeah, I knew our group was tough, but…

A flash of yellow and black caught my eye, moving with the speed of some sort of cartoon Tasmanian devil. It plowed into two ghouls who had been firing at Ian. In the next blink, there was nothing more than a crimson pile of body parts on the ground, a lithe blonde with two swords standing over them.

Veritas
?
I didn’t have a chance to goggle at her before she was off in another crazily fast blur, heading for an eruption of gunfire over the hill. Within moments, that gunfire stopped.

“Am I the only one who has wood over that little vixen?” Ian asked cheerfully even as he cleaved his sword right through the center of a ghoul. That shook me out of my momentary stupor and I started chasing down the next spate of gunfire I heard. My side still felt like it had been set on fire, but I pushed it back. I didn’t have time to dig the bullets out, and nothing else would make the burning stop.

I continued to run toward the sounds of gunfire, clearing the crest of a small hill. At the bottom was a large memorial fountain, but that’s not what made my body seize with a fresh spurt of adrenaline. It was the sight of the short, expensively clad ghoul backed up against the fountain, three guards surrounding him in protective formation as they fired at the vampires who cut off their escape.

“
Apollyon
!”
I yelled, running down the hill in a straight line toward him. “You remember
me
, don’t you?”

Even with the distance, I saw his eyes widen. “Reaper,” he mouthed. Then louder, in a scream at the ghouls protecting him, “That’s her, that’s the Reaper!”

The gunfire changed direction, but I’d expected that. I dove to my right, all but one bullet missing me. It slammed into my side with the impact of a torpedo, but I kept rolling, knowing the gunfire wouldn’t cease. Unlike the movies, in real life, the bad guys didn’t quit shooting to check and see if you were dead. Those bullets chased me, but I scrambled up and kept moving, headstones exploding around me as those were struck instead of me.

A scream preceded one of the guns going quiet.
Then another one.
Even as I kept running, I smiled. I knew Vlad, Spade, and Gorgon had only needed a few moments of distraction to pounce.
Apollyon
and his guards should have known that, too, and never focused all three of their guns on me.

I whirled around, heading back toward the bottom of the hill. Vlad had one of the gunmen in a merciless grip, flames erupting all over the ghoul. Spade wrestled with another ghoul, but I wasn’t worried about him, because at some point, he’d managed to knock the gun away. That left Ed and Gorgon fighting with two more ghouls who’d joined the battle, but my attention wasn’t focused on them. It was on the stocky ghoul running flat-out for the gate bordering the cemetery. On the other side of that gate was a small business district, mostly deserted this time of night, but with lots of buildings and apartments that
Apollyon
could hide in.

“Oh no you don’t,”
I growled, running faster. That sickening pain increased, the burning in my side feeling like acid eating all through me, but I couldn’t concentrate on that now. I had to focus on the air around me, picturing it as something with form that I could mold and bend to my will.
Bones’s
words echoed in my mind.
You have the ability. You just need to sharpen it.

My feet lifted off the ground, but I didn’t fall. I
flew
, leaning into the air, letting it take me faster than I could run before. Wind rushed through my hair, streaming along my body, lifting me as though it understood my need and wanted to help. The distance between me and
Apollyon
grew shorter, his steps seeming so slow and clumsy in comparison to the way I arced above the ground. I streamlined my body, my hands out in front of me, aiming for the back of his Armani jacket like it was a bull’s-eye and I was an arrow.
Thirty feet.
Twenty.
Ten…

When I barreled into him, my velocity plowing him to the ground hard enough to tear up the dirt, I was smiling even though a fresh deluge of pain blasted through my side. And when I came up, twisting so
Apollyon
was in front of me, relief made me almost immune to the strikes he got in before I had his neck locked in an iron chokehold.

“You move and I’ll rip your head right the fuck off,” I told him, meaning every deadly word.

Apollyon
was either smarter than I gave him credit for, or he really did fear me, because he stopped struggling at once.

“What are you going to do with me?” he hissed, the words garbled from the grip I had around his throat.

I let out a pained laugh.

“I’m so glad you asked.”

By the time we reached the fountain,
Spade had killed the ghoul he fought with, nothing but charred remains were left of the one I’d seen with Vlad, and two headless bodies were on the ground near where Gorgon and Ed stood. I didn’t see Bones, but I knew he was okay. I could feel our connection, strong as ever, his emotions washing over me with intensity and purpose. Now that I had a sufficient amount of vampires close by, I let go of
Apollyon
, giving him a hard shove that had him bracing against the edge of the fountain to keep from falling.

“Let’s talk about what I’m going to do to you,” I said, picking up a sword someone had left discarded on the ground. Movement on the top of the hill drew my attention for a moment, making me pause, but then I continued. “I think I’ll take your idea of celebrating a victory with an execution, only with a small reversal of who loses their head.”

Apollyon
bared his teeth at me. “Even if you kill me, my people will fight yours to the death,” he snarled. “Your victory will be naught but ashes and—”

He stopped at my laughter, his face almost mottled in its fury. I didn’t say anything, but instead, pointed behind him toward the hill.

He turned, his mouth sagging a little at what he saw. Someone, I wasn’t sure who, had rounded up the remaining ghouls and brought them out in a group onto this section of the cemetery. At a rough estimate, there were a little more than twenty of them, and their hands were folded on top of their heads in the universal gesture for surrender.

“Looks like your people know a losing battle when they see one,” I said, relishing the stunned look on the ghoul leader’s face. That quickly changed as he glared at them, his rage palpable in his expression and the harsh scent wafting off him.

“How dare you betray me this way!” he thundered at them.

I tapped him on the shoulder with the tip of my borrowed sword. “Hate to interrupt,” I drew out, “but you and I have still some business to conclude.”

Apollyon
looked at the sword and then at me before glancing back at the surrendered ghouls. I didn’t take my eyes off him or relax my grip on the weapon. I wouldn’t swing until he was ready, but neither would I give him a present of dropping my guard. I already knew
Apollyon
didn’t fight fair or we wouldn’t be here now.

Therefore, I was somewhat taken aback when he spread his arms out, palms open. “Go on, Reaper, strike me down with flames! Or freeze me with your mind. Show my people the power they so recklessly refuse to stem.”

Even his last moments would be filled with hateful rhetoric
, I thought in disgust.

“Give him a sword,” I said to Bones, who’d come out from behind the group of ghouls,
Veritas
at his side. He was blood-spattered and his clothes were torn, yet he moved with a lethal precision that said he could have fought all night. It shouldn’t surprise me at all that he’d think to bring the ghouls out here to witness their leader’s fall.

“I don’t need any unusual power to strike you down,” I told
Apollyon
once Bones thrust a sword into the ground near the ghoul’s feet. “I’ve got silver bullets in my left side and they hurt like damn and wow, but pick up that sword and I’ll
still
beat your ass, I promise you that.”

Apollyon
looked at the blade and then back at me. “No.”

“No?” I repeated in disbelief. “I’m offering you a fair fight, jackass! You’d rather I just hack your head off and call it a day?”

Apollyon
turned toward
Veritas
, dropping down on one knee. “I surrender to the Guardian Council of Vampires.”

“You sniveling little
shite
, pick up that sword before I rip your head off with my bare hands,” Bones thundered at him.