Wayward Devils (Souls of the Road #4)

Chapter 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I have done some stupid things in my life. As a young man, as an earth-bound spirit, and as a man who’d almost-died too many times to count.

(Four. I’d almost died four times. It was countable, but I didn’t like doing it.)

There was no chance I would be fast enough to take Rhianna to safety and get back in time to help Lula.

Even if she had the knife.

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.

I rushed down the hall, desperate for a door I could open, a safe place I could put Rhianna so I could at least get the knife to Lula.

Then a child came around the corner. A girl who looked just like Rhianna.

Hatcher.

Sometimes you have to trust someone untrustable.

I pulled off the bracelet.

He took in the situation and popped something into his mouth. In an instant, he once again looked like the hunter. “I’ll take her.”

I had a slice of a second to make my choice. Did I trust him with the child? Would he hurt her, or would he take her to safety? He could just as easily betray us, betray the witches and Variance.

“I can run faster than you,” he said. “I can get her back to the car.”

“Where’s Variance?”

“At the car. Injured.” Hatcher glanced over my shoulder then back at me. “Badly.”

Had he been the one who injured Variance, or possibly killed him? Had he been the one to tell Dominick we were coming to get the child tonight?

Or was he telling me the truth and he could get Rhianna to safety?

He snarled at my hesitation, then plucked a hair. “Here.” He shoved the hair at me. “Now you have a piece of me. You will return it with my token. Go. Save her.”

I didn’t want to trust him. Everything in me said he was my enemy.

It would be easy to think he was working with Dominick and the vampires. That he wanted to kill Rhianna and send me in to fight the vampire so Lula and I would both be dead.

Trusting him might be foolish, but I could not leave Lula to die.

I tucked the hair in my pocket. Then I knelt, keeping my eyes on Hatcher, Rhianna balanced on my knee. I withdrew the spool of magic thread and tied it to her wrist.

“The Moon Rabbit is on the other end of this,” I said. “If you break it, if you hurt the child, or if she dies, the Moon Rabbit will destroy you.”

Hatcher shrugged. “I want my token, not a dead witch child.”

I stood and handed the girl to the ghoul. She resisted but was too exhausted to put up much of a fight.

Hatcher was surprisingly gentle with her and made soothing noises as he adjusted his grip.

“Good luck, Brogan Gauge.” He ran. Between one breath and the next he was gone.

The entire exchange had taken seconds.

Another explosion rocked the house. I braced my hand on the wall to keep my footing. How many bombs did Lula have? Five? Six? How many explosions had there been?

I slipped the cloaking bracelet on my wrist and lurched back toward the room. The oily perfume of crushed roses weighted the air, overpoweringly strong, burning my lungs.

The doorway that had been open moments before was now blocked by thick, dark vines studded with thorns.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Beyond the vines, I could hear the fight in the room, the labored grunts and thuds, the slap of boots on marble floor, the ringing of blades.

I pulled the vampire-killing knife and started sawing through vines.

With each slice of the magic blade, the vines shivered, cracked, and shattered like great glass icicles falling to the ground.

It took minutes, hours, forever, my thoughts white-out panicked, my breath wheezing as I begged powers that had never listened to me to let her be alive.

Let her still be alive.

Then, finally, I could see them.

Locked in a deadly dance, Lu and Dominick moved so quickly across the room, I could only make out their forms when they paused or caught the other in a hold.

Even with the ring’s speed and the cloaking bracelet, there was no chance in hell I could get close enough to stab the vampire and do any damage.

I reached into my pocket for the spool of thread. I needed to call Abbi, needed her to help me help Lu.

But there was no thread in my pocket because I’d tied it to Rhianna.

There was, however, a single crow feather.

Raven’s feather.

I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up.

“Raven,” I said, breathless, “get your ass over here. If she dies, I’ll kick your shit to hell and back.” I waited, my heart pounding.

Nothing.

“Fuck.”

Dominick and Lula were on this side of the room now, about forty feet away from me.

The vampire backed Lula up until the thorny wall pricked through her shirt.

She was breathing hard, sweat plastering the hair that had come loose from her braid to her face. The cuts on her cheek, forehead, neck, arms, flowed with slow, dark blood.

Dominick had two wounds I could see: a slash down the side of his face that ended just short of his jugular, and a wide gash across his stomach. Neither of the cuts bled freely, even though the wounds were deep.

Vampires were hard to kill. A couple cuts wouldn’t do it. The only reliable way to end them was a stake through the heart or beheading.

“Enough,” Dominick said, the command thick with disappointment, scorn. “You bore me, thrawan .”

Lula bared her teeth, gripping her blood-covered blade. It was not a blade that could kill the vampire.

I had that blade in my hand. I balanced it between my shaking fingers, holding it like a dart. This was a foolish idea. It was stupid to throw a weapon, to bet it all on one wild chance.

The blade was heavy, not meant to be thrown this way.

I was a good shot, but hitting a vampire who could move faster than the eye could see? Those odds were south of nothing.

Dominick shifted his grip and drew back to plunge his knife into Lula’s heart.

I threw the dagger with everything I had.

“Hey!” I yelled, dropping the bracelet so I was visible.

Dominick pivoted, Lula twisted…

…and the dagger I’d thrown stuck, center of the vampire’s chest.

Dominick roared and scrabbled at the dagger, his knife dropping from his fingers.

He turned on Lula, but she had put distance between them, limping out of his reach with her good arm across her stomach, her eyes shocky and wide.

He got his hand on the hilt of the knife in his chest, trying to pull it free. He roared again…

…and hundreds and hundreds of crows filled the room.

The birds dove through the holes in the ceiling, winged in from the hall, from doors that burst open, from cracks in the floor.

Cawing, shrieking, diving with sharp claws, tearing with wicked beaks, the crows surrounded him, a melee of talons and sound, tearing into him as if he had stolen and eaten their young, wanting him shredded and dead.

I was already running to Lula, blinded by black wings. Not a single claw struck me as birds wheeled away, clearing a path.

I caught only glimpses of Lula through the flash of black feathers, like a movie skipping frames.

She was still on her feet and limped forward toward the shrieking mob of birds that covered the vampire.

She held a blade in her fist and inhuman hatred in her eyes.

“Lu!” I yelled, but my voice couldn’t pierce the fury of the crows.

I was almost there, almost close enough to help her.

But Lu didn’t stop. She swung her blade in a tight arc, her whole body rocking with the effort. The blade sliced a path exactly where the vampire’s neck should be.

The birds burst away from Dominick, painfully silent now, just the whispered brush of feathers stroking the air.

They rose upward, a spiral, a black tornado of clever gold eyes and hushed wings funneling out through the broken ceiling, casting into the night as if they had been nothing but smoke. Nothing but dream.

Dominick screamed, a feral beast of a sound, and lurched, arms outstretched.

Lula was too close. Too damn close. He grabbed her by the neck, sharp nails digging in.

She shouted and struggled backward.

Then the vampire’s head rocked sideways and fell off.

Lula shoved at his body with her good hand, and he slumped to the floor.

I crossed the final distance to her, just as she turned toward me.

Her expression was fierce, then worried as she took me in, then relief washed over her.

“Brogan,” she breathed.

I wrapped my arms around her, and she leaned into me, taking all the weight off her left foot, nearly collapsing.

“Love, love,” I babbled, fear and adrenalin making my thoughts too fast and my movements too slow.

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she chanted against my shoulder. “We have to go, we have to go. His blood.”

She withdrew a small vial from her pocket. She pushed away from my hold and tried to bend to get some of the vampire’s thick blood into the vial but gasped in pain.

“Here, here now.” I took the vial from her and knelt by the body.

It was more difficult than I expected to get the blood off the floor, to get it into the glass tube. It was thick and slippery and shifted away from the edge of the glass.

So, I changed tactics and shoved the tube into the mess of vampire flesh. I moved the vial around until the viscous fluid filled the tube, then pulled it out and stuck the stopper in it.

“Are there more vamps?” I asked. The knife I’d thrown was still sticking out of his ruined chest. I retrieved it and sheathed it at my side.

“I don’t know.” She swayed slightly. From the dilation of her pupils, I suspected she had a concussion. “I can’t hear them.”

“Can you walk?”

She nodded, took a step, hissed.

I caught her up, one arm under her legs, the other across her back. “This will be faster.”

She went stiff, resisting, then used her right hand to pull her left arm up into her lap. She rested her head against my shoulder.

I was strong, and Lula, being thrawan , was surprisingly light. I moved as quickly as I could and as quietly, stepping over broken vines and shouldering sideways through the long, sharp thorns.

If Hatcher was telling the truth, there were more vamps around here. Without the magic string, I didn’t know where Abbi was or if she was still looking for the token.

“Can you sense Abbi?” I asked.

Lu lifted her head. “I can’t hear her. I can’t feel her. Rhianna?”

“Hatcher took her to the car. I tied the string to Rhianna. Maybe Abbi followed it and is already with them.”

“I can walk,” she said.

“Once we’re out of the house. Watch my back.”

Lula stared over my shoulder as I stepped out of the room.

The hall was empty, the proportions of the building out of whack, the hallway stretching out endlessly.

Adrenalin was a firehose in my veins. I wanted out of here. I wanted out now. If I could have snapped my fingers and called a god to transport us to the car, I would have done it, no matter the price to pay.

I was trying not to run. I couldn’t be so pushed by fear that I missed a possible danger.

The place might be filled with vampires. Every corner, every door, every room.

Sweat ran down my back. I shifted my grip on Lula. There were no vamps in front of us. There were no vamps behind us.

I paused outside the sitting room.It looked exactly the same as when we’d come through what felt like hours ago. Country music murmured from the speakers, a song about love being a butterfly.

No vamps in sight.

I strode across the room and into the mud room. No one there either.

“Put me down,” Lula said. She held on with her good arm, and I released her legs. She stood, most of her weight on one foot.

“Ready?” I asked, my hand on her hip steadying her.

She nodded, her knife low.

I opened the door. Warm night air peppered with juniper brushed my skin. Still no vampires.

I knew our luck wouldn’t hold. We needed to move fast. I bent to pick her up again.

“Brogan, you don’t have to—”

“I carry you, or you ride on my back. You can’t run, Lula. Not on that foot.”

She scowled, but pointed at my shoulder, then sheathed her knife. “Your back. Your hands will be free.”

I turned and crouched.

She gripped my shoulder and hopped up. She wrapped her legs around my hips, her left arm tucked between us, her right holding on tight.

“Good?” I asked.

“Good.”

I straightened and walked into the night.

The moon hung high and full, silver light shellacking the land around us and washing out all but the strongest of stars.

I started across the field, dust kicking slow-moving eddies around my boots. I was still sweating, but the fear had eased off enough I could hear myself think. It didn’t make sense that there had been no other vamps in the house.

Had Variance and Hatcher drawn them all away? Had they killed them, or injured them enough, they couldn’t come to Dominick’s aid?

“How far?” Lu asked, words slurring.

“Not far.” It was a lie. The meeting point at the car was at least a mile away.

Even with the ring that gave me greater speed, carrying Lu and picking my way between scrub and over broken ground was slowing our progress.

Lu stiffened and tapped my shoulder. I stopped. “Vamps,” she whispered, her lips so near my ear, I felt the word more than heard it.

I released my hold. She slid off my back and pulled her dagger. I drew the vamp knife. “How many?”

She didn’t have time to reply. Dozens and dozens of figures melted out of the darkness, surrounding us.

There wasn’t time to plan. There wasn’t time to strategize. There wasn’t time to call for help or find an escape. The vampires were viper-fast, attacking with teeth and blades, too many, too fast.

Lula fought like wildfire, her blade flashing with moonlight and blood as she parried strike after strike.

I slashed and blocked, stabbing eyes, open mouths, necks, using my bulk and reach to guard her as best I could.

If a vampire fell, another was instantly in its place. We would not win this fight. There were still too many, there had always been too many.

A body slammed into me, carrying me down. I hit the ground, air whooshing out of my lungs, my head bouncing off a stone.

The world swam, and I wanted to puke. My reactions slowed to a snail’s crawl.

The vampire above me was darkness and pain, I lifted one arm to block the bite…and then…then it collapsed on top of me and was still.

Good: I hadn’t been bitten. Bad: I couldn’t move.

I needed to find Lula. I could hear her still fighting but couldn’t see her. I blinked and almost fell deep into that soothing darkness before forcing my eyes open.

The moon was huge, filling the sky. It burned my eyes, bright and brighter, blotting out my vision, so bright it could almost have been the sun.

Then, impossibly, the moon shone even brighter.

The vampires screamed.

“I see you.” A voice—Abbi’s voice—carried the power of her magic. “Beneath my light, you are ash, you are dust. My magic is acid on your skin, it is poison in your veins. I am brighter than the sun. You will not thrive in my light. You will not live.”

She said something else, a stream of syllables I couldn’t understand, and the night grew even more painfully bright, as if a bomb had just gone off.

The screams grew louder.

Then there was silence.

Then there was darkness.

“Lu?” I whispered. The weight holding me down was gone, but I still couldn’t move. I tried lifting my hand, a finger.

Nothing.

A hand cupped the side of my face. Lula. I knew her touch, would always know her touch. Her fingers drifted across my lips.

The lips were the last part of the body that could feel sensation before a person died. I’d read that somewhere. I wondered if it was true.

“I can’t see,” I said.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“I love you,” I told her, as I always would.

“I love you,” she answered, as she always did.

The darkness pulled away as my eyes finally adjusted.

Lula sat above me. There were more cuts on her face, a bruise across her temple. She looked pale and haggard. She was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“I told you I was bright,” Abbi said from behind Lu.

Abbi looked much older, her mouth set in a grim line, her gaze hard and angry. Hado behind her was a massive black cat, prowling, gold eyes burning like flames in the night.

“You weren’t supposed to tie me to Rhianna,” Abbi said. “I could have been here faster. I could have found you faster and burned all the vampires faster.”

I tried to sit, but the world spun. Lu pressed on my chest. I gave up and stayed where I was.

“I knew you’d find us,” I told Abbi. “Because you are magic like that.”

She tipped her head, looking at me through narrowed eyes. “Because we’re family.”

Then there were more hands, as Franny helped me sit. “Here now,” she said, passing me a bottle of water. “Drink slowly.”

Lula stood with her own bottle of water and drank it while keeping an eye on Hatcher.

The hunter moved from body to body, studying their faces, then gathering hair from some of them.

I polished off the water and, ignoring the warning look from Franny, pushed up to my feet. My head hurt, and I’d be feeling aches and pains for days, but I could walk.

“Where are Variance and Rhianna?” I asked Franny.

“I took them home for medical attention. I’m here to take you all back.”

“No one leaves until I get my token,” Hatcher said.

He came closer, still in the shape of the hunter we’d first met. I didn’t know much about ghouls, but he looked just as dirty, tired, and bruised as the rest of us.

“Where’s the book?” Abbi asked.

“Where’s my token?” The hunter looked at her, then at Lula and me.

Abbi opened her palm. In it was a small coin, carved symbols around its edge, and in the center, what looked like a human standing by a fire.

“You don’t want to lie to me,” Abbi said clearly. “I can kill you.”

The hunter met her eyes. He’d just witnessed the power she had called upon to kill the vampires. He had to know she could absolutely back up that threat.

“I buried it,” he said, addressing her, then me and Lula in turn. “In Adrian. The midpoint of the Route. There’s a windmill there. It’s beneath it.”

That was about fifty miles west of here. There were a lot of windmills there. I couldn’t believe it was that close.

“How do we know that’s true?” I asked.

“We’ll keep the token until we have the book,” Lula said.

“That’s not what we agreed on,” he argued.

“It’s what we’re doing,” I said. “We’ll meet you at the windmill in Adrian tomorrow night. Before sunset.”

The hunter wanted to argue, I could see that. But I was feeling better, Lula looked ready for a fight, and Hado loomed over Abbi and snarled.

It was Franny who broke the stalemate.

“You have traded fairly,” she said. “I give you my word and the bond of my coven. We’ll see to it they meet you there before sunset, with your token, which we will guard and keep safe.

“Also,” she said, “if you need medical care, healing, or rest, we will provide it for you. You are welcome to return with us.”

I didn’t think I’d ever seen the real face of the ghoul before.

But for a moment, he was so shocked by that offer, his entire face seemed to shift into something that almost looked like longing.

Then he shook his head as if warding off an annoying gnat.

“Tomorrow,” he snarled. “By sunset. If you betray me, I will hunt you down and feast on your entrails.” He took one step back, two.

Then he was gone, faded into darkness.

Abbi blew out a breath. “Okay,” she said. “We need to go back to the witches now. Right? We’re going back?”

“We’re going back,” I agreed.

Lula put her hand on Abbi’s head, and the Moon Rabbit leaned her face into her side for a minute.

“Thank you,” Lula said. “You did really good.”

“You were bright,” I added. “Like the sun.”

Abbi held still a moment, then tipped her head up.

“I’m getting cookies for this, right?” Her mouth dipped then rose again like she was fighting off tears. “Or ice cream?”

Abbi wasn’t a fighter, wasn’t a killer. She was good at running and hiding. She was good at seeing things and hearing things.

But she’d just taken on a swarm of vampires and melted them down like she was the sun itself.

“You get all the cookies and ice cream you can eat, Pumpkin,” I told her.

And oh, the smile she gave me.