The Damned (46 page)

His father licked at the blood.

Unchanged in body but wolfed in mind, Holgar leaped forward, closing the gap in bounds, eager to rip his father’s throat out. But Holgar was a man, and he couldn’t accomplish that. He’d have to be happy with breaking his neck.

A roar went up as the others on the field joined the battle. Eriko sprinted past Holgar and made a beeline for Aurora.

The vampires and werewolves surged forward. Holgar staked one vampire . . . and then he faced his father.

“Where is my sister?” Jenn shrieked, as she leaped forward and threw holy water into the face of an approaching vampire. The creature fell, clawing at his eyes. Beside her Taamir grabbed a piece of wood and staked the abomination.

“Noah!” Taamir shouted.

Jenn turned. A wolf had pinned Noah and was ripping into him with its muzzle.

Silver through the heart killed a werewolf, but Jenn had nothing silver. She threw herself forward and leaped on the creature’s back, striking it time and again with the same piece of wood. Taamir kicked wildly at its face. The creature finally turned on them, and Noah reached up and yanked his large silver Star of David pendant from his neck. He slashed at the creature, and the silver evidently burned, because it roared and turned its attention back to Noah, who jammed a point of the star into the beast’s eye.

The werewolf arced backward in pain. Jenn leaped out of the way, but Taamir was slower. It landed hard on top of him. Taamir flailed, trying to get out from underneath it.

“Taamir!” Jenn cried, throwing her arms around the wolf’s massive head. Noah tried to drive the Star of David farther into its eye. Instead it came free in his hand.

“Jenn, Noah, go,” Taamir said, gasping.

With a howl the wolf brought up a mighty paw and laid open Taamir’s stomach with one swipe.

“Taamir!” Jenn cried.

Taamir reached out for the Star of David, and Noah thrust it into his hand. And then Noah handed him the same knife Taamir had given him in Russia, when he had been left alone with Svika. Jenn hadn’t known he’d had it all this time.

Taamir angled the knife upward underneath the creature’s rib cage, slicing it open. As the creature roared and bled, Taamir pushed his hand through the wound.

“Go for the heart!” Holgar shouted.

Slowly, with his waning strength, Taamir pushed his hand more deeply inside. The wolf howled and thrashed. The pack howled.

“Have it.”

The wolf chomped at Taamir with its massive jaws. It panted and struggled.

“Allah . . . ,” Taamir murmured. Blood coated his arm.

With a final howl the wolf collapsed on top of him.

“Ah,” Taamir breathed. Then he went slack, and his eyes became glassy, and vacant.

“Taamir,” Noah said, his voice strangled. “Taamir, no!”

“Jenn!” shouted a voice.

It was Antonio.

Skye choked on her own terror as Estefan approached her. She kept trying to engage vampires, but they shied away from her, as if they knew that she was marked as his. Dark hair, eyes blacker than black, he smiled a smile that was easy and mean.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she told him, raising her hands to ward off his magicks.

He sighed. “You might not want to,
borachín
, but you’re going to.”

He lobbed a fireball at her, and she extinguished it in midair.

“Very good,” he said with a smile. “But is that all?”

He raised his hands toward her, and fireballs rolled off his fingertips with the speed of bullets from a machine gun.

Skye cried out and threw up a shield. The first ten dissolved against it, but her shield shimmered in the air, weakening, and the next three fireballs burrowed into it, lodging for a moment before dissolving. She desperately tried to repair her protective shield, but the next fireball came right through, buzzing her head and setting one of her Rasta braids on fire.

As she slapped it out, Estefan approached. “You know, Skye, if you won’t fight me, I can only conclude that you still love me. You want me.”

“That’s a bloody lie.”

She didn’t love him anymore. She hated him. But her vows to harm none prevented her from hurting even him. And all her magick was defensive.
But he’s attacking me. I should be able to defend myself
, she thought.

She glanced over at Holgar, hoping that he would see her distress and come to her aid. Maybe he would kill Estefan, and she would be free. But Holgar was battling a werewolf, his bare hands against the creature’s fangs and claws. And even though he was in human form, Holgar was biting back, snapping his jaws so hard she could hear the sound carrying through the air.

“Ay
, Skye,” Estefan said.

He was grinning from ear to ear; suddenly he moved super fast, and he was standing next to her.

“Miss me?” he whispered in her ear as he clamped a wet rag over her mouth. Panic surged through her as she realized he was drugging her. His face melted like wax. Then, a moment later, the world went black.

“Jenn,” Antonio said, fighting his way toward her. The moon ranged over his features and hair, slapping him with shadow, flooding him with light. Then he became a blur as he moved faster than her eyes could track him. When she saw him again, a vampire was disintegrating into a shower of dust in front of him. “Heather is safe.”

“Antonio,” she said, tears and sweat flying. “God, God, what’s happening?”

Antonio blurred again; she tried to fight her way toward Aurora, but Cursed Ones blocked her at every turn. Safety in numbers; they were cocky but she just kept moving, spinning, twisting, stakes flying off the ends of her fingers.

The combatants were all moving closer together as the survivors kept pushing forward to find the next adversary. Jenn tried to keep Aurora and Eriko in her sights, but like Antonio the pair was moving at staggering speed, no more than a blur of motion.

Still Jenn kept moving, working her way toward them. She would see Aurora dead if it was the last thing she did.

Antonio had brought Heather to Father Juan, who was saying last rites on the chapel steps for a dying student. She had been unconscious, and Antonio had told him that she should remain that way. Father Juan had put a blanket over her and left her there, taking up stakes and holy water to join the battle. Next thing Father Juan knew, he saw her fleeing the scene of destruction at the university heading in the opposite direction, into the rocky hills outside the school.

“Heather!” he shouted. He gave chase, but she had too much of a head start. Then she waved her hands over her head, and the darkness devoured her.

“Father,” Holgar cried, despairing, as he threw his father’s body off himself.

Then someone rammed into his back and bit him with human teeth, ripping out a chunk of flesh. He yelped and spun, seeing only a flash of long blond hair as he drove a stake into the chest of the person who had attacked him.

It wasn’t a vampire; it was a werewolf in human form. And as she fell to the ground, blood gushing from her chest, Holgar recognized Kirstinne. His heart stuttered as he saw her face contorted in pain and surprise. He dropped to his knees beside her.

“Why?” he whispered. “Why did you do this?”

She stared up at him. “You’re my enemy,” she said, blood bubbling on her lips.

“I’m your pack mate. We were promised to each other.”

“Not anymore.”

Her head fell to the side, and the light left her eyes. He heard a roar of rage and grief behind him, and in his heart he knew it came from Kirstinne’s mate.

The man slammed into him from behind, flipping him head over heels, tearing at him with teeth and nails as he tumbled. Holgar came down on all fours and turned, snarling and snapping his jaws together.

Kirstinne’s scent was all over the other as they circled one another, looking for an opening. Holgar wished he could shift; everything in him wanted to tear the other man’s throat out.

And then he realized he didn’t have to be a wolf to do that.

He lunged forward, diving downward as if he were going to try and break the other’s arm. The man swiped at him with a hand, nails drawing blood against Holgar’s cheek. And then Holgar contorted his body, pushing off from the ground, and locked his teeth into the other man’s throat—his teeth, which were sharper than a human’s, slicing through skin until they punctured the jugular vein.

Blood spilled over both of them. The other jerked backward, tearing his throat more in the process. He whimpered once, twice, and then collapsed on top of Kirstinne. Joined in death as in life.

Holgar spat into the dirt and wiped his mouth on what was left of his shirt. He stood slowly, limbs shaking, wondering who had seen what he had done. The others were engaged in their own life-and-death struggles and weren’t paying attention to him.

He threw back his head and howled. He had killed his father. And he had killed the wolf he had loved.

Holgar staggered, punch-drunk with grief. He would have given in to it, would have lost himself in remorse, until his heart began to pound even harder than it had when he’d killed Kirstinne.

Where was his hunting partner?

Where was Skye?

Jamie staked another Curser. His eyes flashed to Eriko. Six vamps stood between Jamie and her. Eriko was still fighting Aurora, and Jamie, Antonio, and Jenn were pounding through the suckers to close in on them. Jamie registered briefly that Antonio appeared to be fighting on the proper side again.

Eriko thrust a stake at Aurora’s heavy chestpiece, but the vampire blocked it with ease and knocked it to the ground.

Quick as thought, Eriko pulled out another stake and brandished it before her, feinting left and right. Aurora rushed forward, knocking her off her feet, and Jamie screamed as he saw Aurora sink her fangs into Eriko’s neck.

He ran forward, kicking someone’s leg out of his way. Then that someone’s hand grabbed Jamie’s ankle, which sent him sprawling on the ground. It was a Curser. He gave the feckin’ bastard a pounding until the fanger let go, then staked him good. Wiping vampire dust out of his eyes, Jamie picked himself up and saw Eriko and Aurora grappling together, rolling back and forth as each strove for the upper hand.

Eriko threw Aurora off and jumped to her feet. Her quiver was empty, and with a warning shout Jamie prepared to toss her a stake. But she was moving so fast that Jamie couldn’t see her. Calculating her trajectory, he flung the stake into the air; Eriko reappeared as she plucked it out of the air and leaped after Aurora, who lay sprawled flat on her back.

As though in slow motion he watched Aurora’s hand wrap around one of the fallen stakes on the ground and bring it up, just as Eriko closed on her.

“No!” he yelled. “God, Eri, no!”

Too late.

Time dragged to a near standstill. His shout echoed in his mind.

Aurora sank her stake into Eriko’s chest. Eriko grunted, dropped her stake, and collapsed.

Time stopped.

It stopped.

It bleedin’ stopped.

“Eri,” he whispered, hurtling through the air.

Aurora pushed Eriko off like a feather and raced for the high wall surrounding what had once been the university. In a flash she stood on top of the wall, laughing hysterically.

Jamie slammed against the ground. He crawled to Eriko. The blood was pumping out around the stake embedded in Eriko’s chest. Her chest rose. She was
alive.

“Skye! We need you
now!”
Jamie shouted.

“Skye?” Jenn echoed, falling to her knees beside Jamie. “Skye?”

Jenn grabbed Eriko’s hand. To the fallen Hunter she said, “Eriko, listen to me; you can deal with this. Just concentrate and let your body heal.”

“Bloody hell, Eri, damn you, don’t you leave me,” Jamie bellowed.

Eriko smiled—actually smiled. She never did that. She looked up at both of them and gazed with something that could have been love, had there been more time, at Jamie.

“Hai.”

And then she was gone.

“Sergio?” Aurora called. “
¿Mi amor?
Time to go, don’t you think?”

“He’s dead!” Antonio yelled at her, shoving and staking his way through vampires and leaping over freshly killed werewolves. Holgar was howling. Jenn and Jamie were crouched over someone on the ground. Skye, where was she? And Heather?

“He’s dead!” Antonio shouted again, gaining on Aurora. Kicking, punching, staking. Vampire after vampire fell in his wake. He had never fought so hard nor so savagely. Antonio’s mind raced backward in time to Madrid, when he and Sergio had brutalized the humans, their death-dealing an evil whirling dervish of destruction. He moved that way again, everything inside him focused on one goal—to kill Aurora.

Aurora stopped laughing. She gaped at him. “
¡Mentira!”
she finally shouted. Lie.

“I killed him myself,” Antonio said. “And I’m going to kill you!”

The expression on her face spurred him on. She was genuinely frightened. “Estefan!” she shouted. Then she looked past him to the grounds, to her left and right. “Louis!”

Something hit Antonio on the back of his head. He was undeterred, whipping his arm around and flinging a stake into the chest of a vampire, then crawling toward Aurora, bloodlust washing over him in waves. He would rip her apart. He would drink her filthy blood and grind her to dust.

“No!” she shrieked. “Keep him away! My sire! My sire! Help me!”

His hands dug into the dirt as he dragged himself forward. He brought up his legs, preparing to spring—

“Lucifer!”
she screamed.

A wall of flames shot between the two of them. It was the basement all over again, except this time the fire separated him from his target. He felt the heat licking at him; his skin prickled, then ached; the pain intensified to a nearly unbearable level as he kept moving forward, kept going. Through the flames he could see her bewilderment.

“Kill. You,” he managed, and then the fire took him over. He was ablaze. He thought of Jenn; he was failing her. God, he was burning.

“Antonio, Antonio, stop,” Jenn said. Fire raged around him. Burned him. He cried out for it to stop.