Killing Time (28 page)

This should be fun, I sighed to myself. Tilting my head, I lifted an arch brow, not bothering to make my expression pleasant.

Ahanu stopped a few feet away, contempt radiating from him. “If you genuinely care for Koda, you must ask yourself what being with you will cost him.”

Only the greatest self-control kept me from flinching. But despite my resolve, something must have shown in my eyes.

“You’ve thought of this already,” Ahanu guessed.

Grudgingly, I nodded.

An ugly light sparked in his eyes. “So if you have the capacity to care, do you also have the capacity to act honorably?”

Stung, I got my chin up. “You question my honor?”

“Absolutely.” His jaw tightened. “I love my brother, and as impossible as it seems, you appear to as well. But do you care enough to do what’s best for
him?
Enough to leave him? Because being with you is an affront to everything he and our people stand for. It will make him an outcast. He will lose all that he holds dear.”

Wounded, I did what I always did when attacked—I retaliated in kind. “Looks like you’d be the first to turn your back.” Glaring icily, I sniffed. “Just what kind of brother are you?”

Ahanu recoiled and I let him see my pleasure at having scored.

With obvious effort, he regained his composure. Barely. “You’ll get over Koda. Find another.” Gesturing toward Onas, Ahanu said, “That male, for example. He’s interested in you.”

Startled both by the new topic and by his observation, I glanced at the bittern. Now that I was paying attention, Onas did seem a little too aware of me. Even more than battles for rank and our current war footing would account for.

“You’re so focused on my brother, you hadn’t even noticed,” Ahanu marveled, a statement not a question.

Trembling with anger, I stared scornfully at him. “You think so little of Koda? That he could be so easily replaced? I ask again—what kind of brother are you?”

Clenching his hands into white-knuckled fists, Ahanu nonetheless refused to rise to the bait. As if I hadn’t spoken, he said, “It doesn’t matter if you’ve noticed the male’s interest. I guarantee Koda has. So all you have to do is reciprocate. My brother is noble. If you convince him you care about that creature, he will do the right thing and withdraw.”

I coiled, livid. “You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

Ahanu studied my face, his eyes cold and hard. “Love isn’t selfish, female. Forget yourself and what you want. What’s best for
Koda?
”

Rage, hurt and guilt clashed violently inside me. With perfect clarity, I knew I either walked away now or I’d probably kill Ahanu.

After a long, painful moment, I found the control to turn and get my feet moving. The skin on my face felt brittle, like it was stretched way too thin over my skull. I could draw only a trickle of air into my lungs and there was an odd roaring sound filling my ears that had nothing to do with the night’s supernatural insanity or the sirens’ shrieking.

I became exquisitely aware of Koda’s sudden tension as he noticed me walking away from Ahanu. Noticed the bastard’s gloating intensity—something I could feel between my shoulderblades like the crosshair of a rifle. Alarm tightened the line of Koda’s jaw and he strode in our direction.

Barking a command to the bitterns, I got the three of us running. While I had no answer for the impossibility of Koda and me, there was at least one thing I knew with utter certainty. That it involved rampant violence felt both right…and capable of shredding my heart.

As I ran, head held high—no matter what, I would never bow—the bells in what had to be every church in New Orleans began to toll the alarm.

I figured if we kept going in the direction the human herd had gone, we were bound to find the center of all the craziness. Like a massive spider’s web, I had no doubt that Philippe would be in its center. I was also counting on bullets flying, cops in SWAT uniforms and slayers staking vampires being big freaking clues we’d found the right place.

Koda caught up before we’d gone thirty yards. From the corner of my eye, I saw the fear and anger in his face, but refused to look at him.

“What did Ahanu say to you?” he asked in a strained voice.

I shook my head, not wanting to talk about it. Not
able
to talk about it.

“Dammit, Sephti, what did he say?” Koda’s hand on my arm drew me, unwilling, to a stop. When I wouldn’t meet his gaze, he swore long and loud. “I’ll kick his ass.”

Shaking my head, I jerked my arm free. Onas came up on my side, eyeing the way Koda and I were squared off. “Resume your position,” I snarled at the bittern, blasting him so hard with my will that he staggered.

Koda reached to touch my cheek and I flinched, finally getting my feet moving again as I backed away from him. “What he said…” My voice was faint, hollow. Unable to continue, I spun on my heel and took off, tears blinding me to my surroundings. Scrubbing the back of my wrist across my eyes and catching sight of Koda’s green sweater, the one I still wore, got the tears flowing faster.

His standing and watching me go set off a veritable waterfall.

Which was when I cursed myself for an idiot. Crying and self-pity wouldn’t resolve anything, with the possible exception that the emotional distraction might get me killed, and dead people pretty much don’t feel anything. They’re just dead.

The heartbreak’s enormity filled every space within me. I couldn’t comprehend a time when it wouldn’t. Tomorrow…I sucked air into my lungs, staving off fresh tears. Tomorrow, I’d think about what Ahanu said. Think about what I should do. But for right now, I’d damn well better focus.

Snuffling and ruthlessly getting the weeping under control, I took note of the landscape we ran through. The closer we got to the violence’s epicenter, the more surreal things became. Burning cars lay on their sides, some with the blackened husks of their former inhabitants still upright in the driver’s seat. Violated corpses were strewn everywhere and I could only hope the atrocities committed on them occurred after death. Lights were on in every house and the sounds of humans in mortal terror filled the brief spaces between the sirens’ ululating wails and the churchbells’ incessant bonging. One street over came the roar of a shotgun, followed by the guttural snarls of a bodach pack. A little closer, the crash of breaking glass preceded an all-too-human shriek of unspeakable agony that went on and on before it was mercifully silenced. Layering over everything and scorching my awareness like sizzling grease was the metaphysical inferno of Dark Fae and vampires letting their power surge free.

My head and senses and awareness were so overloaded by the sensory barrage, I could barely think straight. And with my intellect under assault, my instincts rose to the fore, demanding I either withdraw or allow the frenzy.

If I was struggling, Onas and Târre were seconds away from losing it. The last thing I needed was for them to take off on a homicidal, mindless berserker rage. Calling a halt, I turned to study the bitterns, my gaze lighting on the bindings Koda had woven. With nothing to lose, I imagined an impenetrable wall between the bitterns and their rising frenzies. Singing Koda’s lullaby, I wove its haunting melody into the necklaces banding Onas and Târre. The effect was gratifyingly immediate. The wildness left their silver eyes, they unbent their coiled postures and the violent energy sizzling and crackling around them disappeared.

I let the song fade, running a weary hand through my hair and idly noting that we three were going to need several pounds of jelly beans at the rate we were burning through energy tonight. Swearing, I remembered that everything I had was in the truck. Which was in the garage. Which was in the wrong freaking direction.

Onas drew a deep breath and briefly met my gaze before dropping his in deference. “You can…you can give us peace from the frenzies?” Wonder filled his tone.

Târre flicked a hopeful look at me. When she saw me notice, she bowed her head. Lifting her fists to chin level, pressing the knuckles together in a warrior’s salute, she whispered, “
Nish’ttalos, yeamu—
”

Even as I commanded her to stop, movement drew my eyes. Koda stood a few yards away, watching us. I saw from his expression that he remembered when I’d offered the same abject apology to him. The memory of my animalistic behavior at the hotel was cruel reinforcement of Ahanu’s hateful words.

Koda called, “Where are you headed, Coyote?”

I swung away, breaking into a jog when I heard him keeping pace. That he’d obviously wanted me to hear spoke volumes about his frame of mind—communicating a clear intent that he would not be left behind.

Torn by this knowledge, I concentrated on keeping my feet moving and on scanning the night around us. My senses were pinging like crazy from all the supernaturals infiltrating the city. It was becoming impossible to differentiate one from another without visual contact. Like a pilot trying to fly through an immense cloud bank must feel, I was running blind.

A shadow detached itself from the ornate gate of a cemetery just ahead and hurtled across the street. Two more raced to join it, and as our group closed with theirs, I dodged three more dark forms streaking across the pavement.

“Sephti, look up,” Koda said, sprinting by my side.

Overhead, at least four different species of raptors were wheeling into formations reminiscent of fighter jets on maneuvers. As I watched the growing phalanx of birds, I realized it was their shadows, cast by the bright full moon, that I’d dodged.

“The city’s defenders are taking to the skies,” Koda said.

“Birds? But they’ll be slaughtered.”

“I already warned off the natural animals and most of them have fled the city. These are morphs. Shape-changers. That’s why their shadows have so much substance they fooled even your extraordinary senses.”

Too flustered to react to the compliment, I kept the large raptors in sight as we sped down the street. A hawk near the front of the arrowhead-shaped formation shrieked and four birds peeled off, folding their wings and diving at incredible speed. A grove of trees blocked them from view just before a muffled curse turned into a scream. The profanity was in Fae and when the tortured sound abruptly cut off, I grinned savagely.

We rounded a corner just in time to see four black horses tear into a pack of bodach, too late for the humans the creatures were feasting on. As black fur and the viscous crap that passes for bodach blood began to flow, the equines’ red eyes and carnivores’ teeth drew a curse from Koda. “What the hell are those things?”

“Aughisky,” I said.

As the bodach fell, child-sized forms bearing baseball bats, golf clubs and—absurdly—an ironing board, descended on them. Screeching all manner of obscenities, the wizened figures pounded and pummeled the furry shapes into squishy blobs.

Before Koda could ask, I explained, “Tomte and domovoi guard hearth and home. And they take great exception to supernatural threats to either.”

“I can see that,” he murmured, stunned.

As we ran past, the lead aughisky lifted its head to watch us go. I called a warrior’s greeting to it and grinned as it arched its neck and growled a full-throated greeting back.

Beneath the sirens’ wailing and the rolling
bong-bong, bong-bong
of church bells all over the city, a ghastly grating sound drew closer, punctuated by the fast, rhythmic clopping of hooves on pavement. Plunging toward the intersection ahead of us, a two-mule team fled, white-eyed with terror, from the burning carriage they were harnessed to. The back left wheel had shattered and it was the broken axle’s scraping across concrete that we’d heard as the animals struggled to drag the heavy, listing buggy. There was no sign of the driver or passengers—a good thing, since the entire thing was engulfed in flames.

“Sephti, wait!” Koda tossed at me over his shoulder before splitting off and sprinting after the mules. From the back of the carriage a long garland of flowers trailed, along with an already smoldering sign. I couldn’t figure out why a bunch of shoes and cans had been tied to it. Just one more example of human strangeness.

Pouring on speed, Koda suddenly appeared between the panicked animals, grabbing one’s bridle and dragging it to a stop. He caught the second one’s reins and held on, the muscles in his shoulders and chest swelling with the effort. But it worked—the huge mules couldn’t shake him loose.

“Hurry!” he called to me. Keeping the plunging animals in place meant he couldn’t free them.

Braying with fear, the mules thrashed and reared in their harnesses, rolling their eyes at the inferno directly behind them. I caught up then, drawing my daggers in one fluid move and slicing through the traces that bound the animals to the bonfire.

“Let go!” I yelled to Koda, holding my breath as he leaped clear and the mules surged forward in their mad effort to escape.

Resheathing my daggers, the sound of claws on metal spun me around to face one of the largest hunters in the supernatural world.

A white hound stood on the hood of a minivan forty yards away, its red eyes tracking the escaping mules as its tongue lolled past its gleaming teeth. It growled at us, but its heart wasn’t in it—just the usual predator-to-predator warning.

“Cu sith. A free one,” I told Koda, releasing the breath I’d been holding. I didn’t want to get tangled up in a fight when the real battle still lay ahead at Philippe’s. Like the bodach, the hounds tended to leave bitterns alone. Those enslaved by the Hunt were another thing entirely.

“Have all the European supernaturals invaded this continent?” Koda ranted.

I gave him a sympathetic look.

With a snarl, the hound leaped off the hood onto the back of what looked like a Doberman-sized rat, except it was covered in feathers and had a snake’s tail. Menace poured off the thing in waves, setting off my instincts and marking it as a definite threat.

“What the hell?” I gasped, hands going to my daggers’ hilts.

“That one’s a native.” When the cu sith ripped the nasty creature’s head off, Koda’s eyes lit with pleasure. “It’s a colocolo.”

“
That’s
what Ahanu called me?” My voice climbed an octave in outrage. “That ugly thing?”

Koda was saved from answering by a fleet of police cars screaming down the street parallel to the one we were running along. A second later, a helicopter roared by, its rhythmic
whup whup whup
temporarily blocking the still-shrieking tornado sirens’ monotonous wailing.

“We have to hurry!” I called, pouring on the speed.

Three blocks and a right turn later, we arrived at what had to be Philippe’s mansion. My first clue being the dead vampires, bodachs and humans littering the grounds. But as many corpses as there were, at least three times that number of beings was locked in battle. The cacophony of roars, shrieks, snarls and
cracks
of automatic weapons was brutal on my hyper-acute senses and I had to quell the urge to cover my ears with both hands.

Police had formed a barricade all around the block, the whirling red-and-blue dome lights splashing color on the darkened mansions up and down the street. Somewhere, someone bellowed an order through a megaphone, but his voice was so distorted by terror, I didn’t have a clue what he said.

A pained cry drew my attention to the mansion’s broad front yard and a knot of humans holding off four bodach. Cops and gang members fought side by side, their common supernatural enemies making them unlikely allies. As I watched, a gangbanger went down beneath a furry body. The closest officer shot the ravening bodach point-blank in the back of its skull, but the man beneath it was already a skeleton, his flesh melting from the creature’s venom-laced talons.

Trying to make sense of the insanity and how we could help, Koda and I stood frozen. The bitterns trembled with the need to fight, but so far their bindings were still holding off the frenzy. A good thing, too, since this let me focus on keeping myself under control.

My overworked senses flared a warning as power was expended somewhere nearby, then the north wing of Philippe’s mansion burst into flames. The fire grew at an impossibly fast pace, its pale-blue tinge indicating it had been set by a Fire Kith.

“What the hell?” I whispered. It was fast becoming tonight’s mantra.

Dumbfounded, Koda just shook his head. “Is it possible there’s a fae faction that also resists Reiden?”

“It’s too much to hope for.” I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “And even if there was, never assume that would make them our allies.”

He gave me a
duh
look. “I know better. But I like the idea that Reiden might be under siege from all sides.” Koda didn’t say the rest, but it was there in his eyes—that maybe somebody else would get to the king first. Which would preempt my trying to do so.

A squad of black-armored SWAT formed up and stormed the sidewalk leading to the mansion’s immense front porch. They’d almost made it when more than twenty bodach burst from cover and converged on the humans, easily shredding their Kevlar to get at the tender skin underneath. In an appallingly brief span of seconds, it was over. Shredded uniforms draped disintegrating flesh to reveal stark, white bone through the rends and tears.

A slim figure whose dark-purple flak jacket bore the insignia of crossed golden daggers bellowed her rage. Snapping rapid-fire commands into a walkie-talkie she held by her mouth, she charged, firing a handgun point-blank into the feasting bodach. Instantly, half a dozen figures joined her.

“Slayers,” Koda murmured.

In seconds, the tide of battle had changed for the furry creatures and it looked like this new group of humans would prevail. Then the sense of incredibly fast motion brought my head whipping around as two vampires tore through the purple-clad mortals, leaving torn throats and gaping corpses in their wake.