Blade on the Hunt (21 page)

Once that had happened, Brigid slipped back fully, grateful that Rowan had been willing to let her take this kill to honor the Vessel she’d lost. But in the end She hadn’t needed it the way She felt She had for so long.

It was obvious to Her then that Rowan needed to do this. Needed to fully open herself up to her power and truly stretch the limits of her skill and succeed. She was capable of so much more than what she’d been doing and it was integral that she understand it.

Rowan felt the tide of Her power recede enough that Rowan was fully in charge again. “It’s nifty when She does that,” Rowan said as she flowed into the movements, blocking Enyo’s attacks.

“Hunter, welcome back,” Clive called from her left.

“Scion.”

“You must know this is bigger than me and you, you silly girl,” Enyo taunted.

Rowan took that anger and channeled it and she moved just a little bit faster, nearly avoiding the attack entirely. Rather than tumbling to the ground with an ancient Vampire on her chest, she just got tossed to the side. Unfortunately it was in the path of the footboard of the bed. Which she hit at a high rate of speed with a great deal of force. Against the rib that had only healed from being broken a few hours ago and nearly broke again.

It hurt so bad a wave of nausea flooded her and then receded soon after as she righted herself, grinning at Enyo.

“Either I’m faster, or you’re slower because of your unfortunate work-related accident.” Rowan motioned at Enyo’s ruined eye. “I really outdid myself with that. Do you know how much easier it is when I can say,
hey have you seen a really old Vampire with bad taste and one eye?
They know who you are right away. I need to start doing that with all of you. Just mark you so I can locate you when you act up.”

Rowan sliced deeper and the blade sizzled as it cut through Enyo. “Bag of meat indeed.” Then she laughed. “Isn’t that what you’ve been wetting your pants over? That the big bad Hunter Corp. was going to put cameras in every nest and document your every move?”

“Your precious Hunter Corporation who hired sorcerers to
watch
you. Don’t mistake your obedience to them as anything of value to you.”

Some of the other wounds were healing up so Rowan opened new ones. The more Enyo bled, the worse she stank.

“Your blood smells like rotting garbage.” Rowan wrinkled her nose.

“It’s rot. The first cuts were shallow. Now that you’re deeper and she’s healing and having to generate that power, the depth of infection from the magics she’s been using is irreversible.” Warren spoke from the doorway at her back.

When the heck had he arrived? She didn’t have the time to think about that. The moment was right to push Enyo and see what they could find out before Rowan executed her.

“I know Roth was having me watched. And I know those sorcerers were giving you the information they gave him. But I wonder if they gave you everything or if they’re playing you the way they’re playing Roth?” This was what her biggest question was now. Were the sorcerers in league with one of the sides or only with themselves?

“It doesn’t matter.” Enyo was going to die and she’d accepted it but the hate still shone from her eyes. She wasn’t going to tell them anything willingly, the petty, stingy bitch.

Enyo’s smile was edged with malice as she continued. “You’ll be flooded with problems. The chaos of it will be beautiful. Humans, Vampires, magic wielders of all types, at one anothers’ throats, bickering, confused. Humans do get so violent and irrational when they’re confused and afraid. It will weight you, Rowan Summerwaite. Like an anchor around your neck and you will drown in it. You’ll be nothing but bones. In the end, that’s all we are.”

“You won’t even be that.”

Clive spoke up, “Wait. Let me see what I can get from her.”

It had been her impulse to ask him to delve into her head and take her memories, but the way Enyo’s blood smelled was freaking Rowan out. It was an infection of sorts and the last thing she was going to allow was Clive taking that sort of risk of exposure.

“Warren, will whatever she’s become after all that magic infect Clive or otherwise endanger him?” Rowan called out as she kept her eyes on Enyo.

From the doorway at her back Warren answered, “I don’t know. She’s very old. She’s been practicing the darkest of magics for most of that time.”

That’s what she thought. Anger, vengeance, seemed to boil over and pity tempered things once again. Not that she wasn’t going to kill that one eyed twat, but deep inside the Vampire had such a gaping hole of need to feel special and important. That drove her and that was just sad. Regardless of who it was.

Rowan brought the hilt of the blade to her lips as she murmured a blessing and then as Enyo opened her mouth to argue, she spun, striking out with her blade, through Enyo’s chest and then up.

The stench of putrid blood and terrifying nightmares oozed from Enyo, bubbling over the blade and onto the beautiful rug at their feet. She slowly turned to dust around the sword and Rowan leaned in close and whispered, “Die well, Vampire. I hope death brings the peace you could not find in life.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

When Vampire warriors dueled and one was killed in battle, the other said those words as the dying warrior turned to dust. It was a time-honored way to wish your adversary the ease of death.

Clive had seen Rowan give that blessing before, even when she hadn’t liked the Vampire she’d had to execute. He wondered if it wasn’t her way of letting go of the guilt and accepting it was necessary. Though he also believed she bore the weight of those deaths anyway.

It was a mercy to have done it. Even for just the last moments of Enyo’s life it would have been. And his esteem for Rowan only rose.

Clive pushed away from the wall and moved closer. Strolling so it looked casual to those gathered in the doorway behind them.

She allowed her gaze to lock with this for a few moments before she hardened up, her body language broadcasting loud and clear that she needed her space.

This ending had been coming a long while but it took its toll on her. Clive wanted so badly to sweep her away. Once he had her alone, he could take care of her.

But she had to soldier on and he knew she wouldn’t give in to any of her deeper feelings about the fight and the entire hunt until she was finished with all her investigatory work.

He’d let her keep her armor on until he had given her a safe place to let go. And then he’d let her pick a fight and then fuck her. After that he’d bathe her and feed her before tucking her into bed and making her rest.

They hadn’t been able to talk in detail about her situation with Hunter Corp. But he knew her. And he knew she was hurt. Worse, she felt she’d been betrayed and he wasn’t so sure how she would deal with that. He’d support whatever she wanted to do, but if one of the options was separating herself from Hunter Corp. he’d love to throw his lot in with that option.

“Boom. Next item on my to-do list is that you and the others need to go. You have the time to get back and into bed before the sun rises but it needs to be now.”

“I—”

She shook her head. “Don’t waste time. Just do it. I’ll see you when you wake up. We need to be here, need to talk to witnesses.”

“I can be far more effective with witnesses than you can.”

“You can’t steal a sorcerer’s memories. Not without exposing yourself to their rot. That’s what Warren thinks. Go back to the villa. I’ll come to you when I can.” She pushed him toward the door. “Thank you.”

Before he could say anything back and make her appear—as she liked to call it—dumb, she squeezed his hand one last time and turned to face the group now gathered in the hall.

“Where are the sorcerers? I trust we left some of them alive?” Her voice was sharp, taut and people began to snap to attention.

Clive didn’t want to go, but the sun hinted at the farthest edge of the sky. With one last look, he and the others left to rush back to safety.

After his quick shower he just fell onto the mattress, pulled her side of the duvet back so it would be ready for her and let himself sleep.

* * *

“We have one sorcerer alive. He’s in a sort of magical stasis. It won’t last forever so you need to speak to him,” Donna said.

“And then what?” This was her witness; she wanted to know what the hell they thought was going to happen.

“And then we will handle our problem here in Venice,” Donna replied. “We have a Vampire too but we’re going to have to work fast or wait until sundown.”

Rowan wiped her hands the best she could on a wet cloth David handed her. “Let’s go see this Vampire and I’ll make my decision after that.”

“He’s in the light tight room down the hall,” Donna said.

Rowan hadn’t argued with her about the sorcerer. She wasn’t so sure she would. First though, she had to see the Vampire.

When she walked into the room a few doors down from where she’d just finally separated that cow from her life, she made a nearly comical halt when she saw who was inside.

With a muttered curse, Rowan rushed back out and dialed Nadir. The Five wouldn’t go down to rest until the sun was up completely. They’d be sure Theo was going to stay in place first. But she was cutting it really close.

While she waited, Rowan asked Donna, “Who took this one prisoner? Did another Vampire see him?”

Donna pointed at the other guy she’d met earlier.

He came forward and spoke, “I knocked the Vampire out. First I dropped a rock on his head from a balcony and then I hit him with a spell. We brought him inside a few minutes ago. I don’t know if any of the Vampires you were with saw him. I don’t think so. We were in separate places. This Vamp was with the sorcerers. Protection while they were working.”

“Are you going to tell us who this is?” Donna asked.

Rowan shrugged. “I will if you tell me what the hell kind of magic they were doing.”

Donna nodded after thinking it over a bit.

“All right. This is one of the guards from the Keep. He serves The First. As had his family for generations. I need to—”

Nadir answered and Rowan turned her attention there. “You have a problem. Giancarlo is working with the Blood Front.” She gave a quick rundown. “I have about five minutes before he loses consciousness so I need to go.”

“I will deal with that immediately. Keep me updated.” Nadir disconnected.

Rowan went back into the room where the Vampire was being held. She shook her head as she took in a face quite familiar to her. “By now you’ve probably guessed I’m not going to kill you. Yet anyway. You’re going to be unconscious shortly and you’ll be my prisoner. Before that I’d like you to know I am really beyond sick of this whole situation with you and this dime store knock off of an idea J.K. Rowling did like a billion times better. So, you better wake up eager to enlighten me. You’ll tell me either way. It’s really up to you how the script goes. I’m quite vexed that someone who has held such a position of trust and honor would choose to use it in this way.”

She stood, moving to David. “Make sure this room is light tight and then strap him to the bed with that rope in your pack. It’s got silver just under a fine surface dusting that protects unless the Vampire struggles and wears it away.” This she made sure to say loud enough for Giancarlo to hear. She wanted him alive and he seemed willing to stay that way.

What happened after she found what she needed to know was another story.

Donna then took Rowan to the main salon where they’d been keeping the sorcerer in magical stasis. Whatever that meant.

Before they went inside though, Rowan halted the practitioners she was with.

“You said you were going to tell me about what kind of magic fuckery Enyo and her little gang of castaways were up to?”

Donna came over. “There are, as you know, many ways to access magical power. There are methods I find ridiculous, some I find disgusting, even reprehensible. But we have a few things we simply don’t do. Not any of us.”

“And so one of those things is what Enyo did, which is why you all got together and kicked these sorcerers’ asses.”

Donna nodded. “I ask that you keep what I’m going to tell you from as many people as possible. We know you might have to share this information, but please be careful with it.”

Rowan nodded, indicating she agreed.

“Do you know what a shade is?”

A chill worked over the surface of her skin. Brigid stirred in the pit of her belly. “Basically. It’s sort of like a ghost.”

“It’s what happens when a soul is torn away from a living being. The body will die a short while later, but there’s no
transition
for that being. A shade is a restless, voracious ghost, empty, searching, in pain and misery. It is the worst sort of dishonor to create such creatures.”

Rowan blew out a long breath. “So, she’s making them to get power? Or to use in her bidding? What?”

“The kind of power a practitioner would gain from such an act would be tremendous. All that life force would have made Enyo and her group strong. Or the sorcerers strong. She can’t command a shade. No one can. They’re not sentient that way. Just suffering.”

“Is this an Enyo deal, or a sorcerer deal? Can you tell? It’s a problem either way, but the source affects how I’ll go about correcting it.” Though she hoped it was the former, Rowan had been around the block enough times to know it rarely worked out that way.

“That I don’t know. It’s not like this type of magic is performed even rarely. It’s not done! The knowledge of how to do these workings isn’t readily available. When we combed through the other villa we came across things I’d never even seen before. We had to consult with some elders to get more information.”

“I imagine if you were a super old Vampire you probably had the connections. All sorts of weird stuff happened every day when Enyo was young so perhaps it was easier back in her day to get in on the ground floor and she’s been doing it over the centuries maybe?”

“Given the state of her when you killed her she’d been working with and around that magic for a very long time so that’s likely.”

Rowan stretched a bit, popping her shoulder and cracking her neck, feeling better immediately. “Well, seems like the only way we can know is to talk to this joker and see what he’s going to share. So what’s the protocol? How does this work?”

* * *

Turns out magical stasis was pretty much like a medically induced coma. When they went into the room, the sorcerer was laying on a table, strapped down. Several very large men watched on warily.

One of the practitioners slowly brought the prisoner to consciousness and Rowan sat across from where he’d been restrained.

“I’m not going to waste time pretending to be your friend.” Rowan shrugged. “I’m not. You know it. So, you can talk to me, or not. But I’m going to recommend the telling me option. The other one is a lot more painful and I’ll still get the information I need.”

His features remained impassive.

“It’s cool, you’d be surprised at how many people manage to continue to be brave at this point in the discussion. Bear with me. I’m going to start with what I know. Share information, so to speak. I know someone at Hunter Corp. engaged your services to watch me. But you little fuckers have been doing a lot more than watching. I don’t know about you, but repeatedly being attacked and nearly killed makes me cranky.” Rowan growled his way and he flinched, which cheered her.

She sat back a little, taking his measure. “Sorry, got sidetracked. Like I said, I know about the connection to Hunter Corp. But I also know you’re working both sides of the fence.”

He might have had some admirable physical control at keeping his facial features pretty blank, but his eyes told Rowan more than his face would have anyway. He was a liar-liar-pants-on-fire.

“Now, what I’m wondering is what shape your problem is.” She cocked her head.

He didn’t know where she was going but there was the dawn of some genuine fear in his gaze.

At least he was smart on some level.

“I’m now going to ask you questions. You’re then going to answer them. I have all day before the Vampires will awaken. No one is coming for you for fifteen hours or so. At the earliest. Lest you think your compatriots will make some heroic attempt to free you, they won’t. You’re the only one left alive.”

Rowan stood, looking to the practitioners in the room. “If you’re squeamish I suggest you get out now because he’s going to make me prove just how serious I am before he starts talking.”

A few left, taking up positions in the hall, at the ready if she called, but out of sight.

The dude stayed, as did the two who’d already been in the room. Donna shifted to see better, but kept her distance.

Rowan shut the door and removed the jacket she’d been wearing, draping it over the back of a nearby chair. She left her blade at her back as she circled the table and came to a halt at his feet. She wanted him to have to strain to see her. Wanted him to know how helpless he was. And she wanted him to believe she would hurt him for hours and hours and hours if she had to.

Mostly the ones like this sorcerer made her give them an example.

She let her hair down and then rebraided it, keeping it tight against her head and neck, tucking the end into her shirt.

“That’s better. Have you seen
Pulp Fiction?
What’s your name, by the way?”

He remained silent so she shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to call you Ernesto. You look like you could be an Ernesto. Have you seen the movie?” When he didn’t respond she continued. “You really should. Anyway, there’s this part where Samuel L. Jackson is getting ready to kill someone and he’s got this great bible verse he says to be spooky. While I’ve done that a few times to see how it fit, I ended up with a basic script. A disclaimer, if you will.

“I know you’re thinking that you can take whatever I’m going to do to you. And you think that because you have no idea what I’m going to do to you. None of you ever do. I warn you every time and most of you make the wrong choice. But I’m giving it to you anyway, because that’s how I roll. This is fate and choice and chance and all that big cosmic stuff. Make your choice knowingly.”

Just as she thought, he said nothing.

She didn’t bother with something in the low end of the pain spectrum. The lesson had to be swift, furious and resolute. Most of them learned after that.

She buried the small knife she kept in her boot in his side, narrowly missing anything vital. Close enough to be very painful. She pulled it out as she chopped him in the throat with the edge of her hand.

He cried out and then choked, shuddering from the impact. Rowan got close enough to nearly touch his nose and dug the knife back into the wound. “Do we understand one another now?”

He screamed and then started nodding furiously as tears streamed from his eyes.

David handed her a warm, wet hand towel and took the knife, cleaning it as she got rid of the worst of the blood off her hands and wrists.

“If you can behave yourself and not try any magical bullshit, I’ll let someone staunch that wound. Otherwise you’ll probably stop bleeding soon. Probably. Or you’ll bleed out and die. Either way you’re going to be feeling pretty faint once the adrenaline wears off from this round of questioning.”