Blood Debt (Judah Black Novels Book 2) (33 page)

“What do you mean?” I asked as I watched Abe take a few steps to the side. Crux turned and took a swing at him. If Abe had been wearing his coat, it would have a good sized slash in it.

“Every battle happens first in the mind and then with the body. The two of them already know the outcome of the fight. Now, they just go through the motions.”

“Who’s going to win?” I expected he would know. After all, the guy carried around a katana. He would know a thing or two about swords and sword fighting.

“Only they know. We will know soon enough.”

I turned my full attention back to the duel. Crux made a strong vertical strike at Abe’s head, but it left his midsection exposed. Abe blocked the downward blow and then raised a foot to deliver a kick to Crux’s gut. Crux stumbled back but didn’t stay there for long. He came back with a forward lunge. Abe smacked it aside and then, in one long step, Abe closed the distance to slam the hilt of his sword against Crux’s nose. Pale blood spurted out, and Crux’s hand went to his nose, coming away covered in pinkish blood. When he lifted his eyes to Abe, who had taken a step back and placed himself on guard for a retaliation strike, they were filled with spite.

The tone of the fight changed drastically. Crux came forward with a furious flurry of blows, all at a speed so fast I could barely perceive them. The force of the strikes drove Abe back until he was flat against the banister of the stairs leading up to the entry. Crux gave a decisive swing of the sword and it found a mark even as Abe tried to move away. The curve of the blade drew across Abe on the outside of his sword arm. From where I stood, it was impossible to tell how deep the cut was or how badly he was injured, but I knew he wasn’t going to be swinging a sword around with his arm anymore, not effectively.

Instead, Abe lowered his head and charged into Crux, knocking both of them to the ground. When Crux’s shoulder hit, the loud, unmistakable crack of bone breaking echoed through the room. Crux’s sword skittered across the floor and away from his useless arm. Abe drew his left hand back in a fist and pummeled Crux in the face, abandoning his sword in favor of fists.

I didn’t realize anything was wrong until Abe drew back his fist a second time and paused, a shockwave of movement reverberating through his whole body. I broke into a run, circling the barricade to get a better look at Abe. He was on top of Crux, frozen, fist balled, blood gushing down his other arm, eyes unfocused. Crux had a fist pressed against Abe’s chest, dead center. When I looked really hard, I could see there was a silver grip in his hand, the blade attached to it buried somewhere in Abe’s chest. With a jerk, the vampire twisted the blade. Abe blinked once and then, with a small shove from Crux, fell to the side, limp and unblinking on the floor.

The room was silent. Cold air prickled at the back of my neck and the hairs on my arms stood on end as Crux fought to untangle himself from Abe’s long limbs. He’d lost. Abe had lost. The good guys aren’t supposed to lose. Abe may have been a fanged prick but he was still a good guy, which meant he was supposed to win, didn’t it? What now?

I swallowed and closed my eyes. There was a backup plan in place. Several, in fact. But the giant hadn’t made an appearance as I had suspected it would, and neither had Creven’s Unseelie necromancer. Those two had been my backup. I’d bet at least one of them would have made an appearance. Now that Abe was down, there was nothing stopping Crux from killing Mara.

Nothing
, I realized,
except the truth.

As Crux pulled out a handkerchief and began cleaning a few spots of blood on his suit with his remaining good arm, I vaulted over the barrier of overturned tables and knelt by Abe. His eyes were open, his breathing shallow. Blood poured out from his wounds, forming a halo around his head. But he wasn’t dead, not yet.

“Now, you will honor our deal,” said Crux, tossing the handkerchief to the floor.

I stood slowly. “No.”

“No?” said Crux, his voice high and nasal. “What do you mean
no
?”

I turned. “You let Mara go.”

“The girl owes me a blood debt.”

“She didn’t kill Harry,” I shouted, anger filling my chest like a hot balloon. Then, I pointed at Sven. “He did.”

A wicked smile spread over Crux’s face. “I know.”

My brain stopped working. My lungs froze, waiting for things to reboot, and my heart skipped a beat. For just a second, as something icy slipped down into my chest, I knew exactly how Abe had felt when Crux stabbed him. But, being as eloquent as I am, all I could manage to say was a confused, “What?”

Crux’s smile shifted effortlessly into a sneer. “I know!” he screamed, swiping his good arm through the air. “Of course I know that stupid oaf murdered my cousin. But I can’t very well kill him for it. He’s got half a brain. Where’s the satisfaction in that? No, he did it for this little cunt.” He pointed at Mara.

“Don’t say that,” said Sven, standing from the seat he’d been sitting in inside his barrier. “That’s mean.”

Crux ignored him, preferring to address Mara. “Do you still think you’re better than us? Too good for the Stryx? Now that we’ve had our fun I bet you don’t. No one rejects a Stryx and goes on to speak about it.”

I stepped between Crux and Mara, breaking his stare. “If you think I’m handing her over for you to kill, deal or no deal, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“There are other ways of collecting on a debt. I know the value of something when I see it, and a girl who can call up the dead and let them speak through her…” He shook his head, pacing back and forth like a panther stalking a rabbit. “That’s valuable. Perhaps not to me but there were plenty of interested buyers. Didn’t your elf friend tell you how useful she’d be to my partner?”

“Your…partner?”

“Seamus’d never work with the likes of you,” said Creven. He appeared in a shimmer from nowhere, using the same trick he’d used at Kim’s estate to hide himself. This time, though, he showed up right behind Crux, swinging his staff like a club. The bulbous end of it struck Crux in the head, sending him sprawling out on the floor. Crux scrambled away and stood as Creven lowered the staff, adding, “He can’t be a strong candidate for king if he can’t protect his own people. Word gets out you’re selling fae behind his back, bleedin’ them dry for profit, how d’ya think he’ll feel about his
partner
? It’ll look like Seamus’ hands are just as bloody as yours. He’d lose the few supporters he so desperately needs to stake his claim.”

“That’s an unrelated business transaction,” stammered Crux, backing away from Creven. “It doesn’t concern him.”

Creven closed on Crux. “He didn’t seem to think that was the case when last we spoke, Seamus and I.”

“You lie!”

“Do I?”

Crux kept backing up, stopping only when he felt the cold steel of my gun pressed against the back of his head. Then, he raised his one functional arm. “You would shoot me in the back of the head, agent? What about Stryx retaliation? Do you know what my father could do to your precious little town?”

“That fact is the only reason you’re still alive,” I said and kicked him in the back of the knees. “Get on your knees, you scheming ass monkey.”

Crux went down. I unhooked a pair of silver handcuffs from my belt. There wasn’t much I could hold him on, not for long, anyway. BSI would insist he be released and return to his home country. I could, however, keep him from hurting Mara so long as he was in custody. As for Sven, I could deal with him later. After everything I’d seen, I was sure I could make a convincing argument Crux had no right to his property. It looked like there was a way to salvage the situation after all. “Creven, you can lower the barriers now. I think we’re done here.”

As I gripped Crux’s limp arm and brought it around to cuff it to the other one, there was a loud bang upstairs. All eyes went to the empty balcony.

“Was that a gunshot?” asked Ed from behind me.

“No,” I answered.

Gunshots have a distinct sound. Once you’ve heard it once, you never forget what it sounds like. This noise wasn’t from a gun. It was a very different kind of thundering boom, but it was one I’d heard before. I finished putting the cuffs on Crux, making sure they were extra tight. The loud, thundering noise happened again, this time, close enough to shake the floor.

Creven came to stand beside me.

“Is that who I think it is?” I asked him.

“Aye,” he said and then glanced behind him at Abe’s still body. “Looks like the giant finally decided to join the party.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“So, what’s the plan, lass?”

“Why’s it even here?” I turned to check on Mara. She looked like she’d passed out at some point. With as many blows as it looked like she’d taken, I wasn’t surprised. She needed medical attention and soon. “Mara’s not even in danger.”

As soon as I turned, Crux found his feet and stumbled away and over to where Sven was waiting. Sven grabbed his master and, with a mighty yank, jerked the cuffs apart, freeing Crux’s hands. Then, the vampire turned and pointed at me. “Kill Agent Black,” he ordered. “And then kill yourself.”

Something in Sven’s face changed and his whole body stiffened before he lumbered out toward me. In a blur of supernaturally fast movement, Crux sped across the room, gabbed an unconscious Mara and jerked her away from the table, dragging her toward the exit. Several bikers stepped in his way, but I didn’t have time to stand and watch as they brandished weapons in their attempt to stop the vampire from cutting out early. I had to deal with Sven.

Like a charging bull, Sven came across the dance floor, head tucked and low, strangely fast for such a big guy. He barreled into both Creven and I, taking us down with a tackle before either of us could get a spell off. When my back hit the floor, all the air went out of me. My field of vision shrank to a pinprick where a whole army of stars danced. When my sense finally came back, I realized the stars were splinters of wood and Creven’s staff had broken when he threw it over my face, protecting me from a skull shattering punch. But, now that it was broken, there was nothing stopping Sven’s fist as it got bigger and bigger, closing in on my face.

Out of instinct, I threw a hand up and pumped what I like to call panic magick into it. Panic magick isn’t anything particularly sophisticated. It’s crude, the source often an intense fear of dying. When magick comes from primal instinct, it’s often more powerful but also more unpredictable.

I caught Sven’s fist just inches from my nose. The shockwave of impact reverberated up my arm in an aching wave and broke my concentration on the spell. My strength gave way. Sven must have been surprised because he didn’t try to pull any of the weight from behind the punch. When my arm gave way, his went crashing down and him with it. He would have landed on me full force if I someone hadn’t yanked me back. And it was a good thing, too, because a big foot came crashing down on beside where Sven landed. I found myself scooting away from the backside of a giant.

Creven jerked me back further. “I’m bloody worthless without a focus,” he complained, lifting up the broken end of his staff. “So I hope you’ve got a plan for dealing with this, lass.”

“Kill it!” Crux screamed at Sven. The vampire was standing in a circle, held there by Bran, Sal and Istaqua. Not a place I’d want to be, for sure. The three of them looked like they could do some damage, but they were smart enough not to start punching Crux as long as he was using Mara as a human shield.

Sven pushed himself off of the ground and tried to trade punches with the giant. The giant smacked Sven aside and turned his eyes on Crux. I cursed and shouted for Sal and the others to back away, but they didn’t hear me in time. The giant brought his club sweeping toward them only to be knocked back by a sudden explosion at his feet.

Something round like a marble and red like a candy came down from the viewing balcony above and landed at the giant’s feet, causing another explosion. I looked up to see Robbie balancing on a rail, tossing those things—whatever they were—down in small handfuls. As soon as they hit the ground, they exploded, leaving behind tiny flame and black powder. It didn’t seem like much to me, even though I was sure it would hurt if one hit me. But to the giant, it was anti-matter. When one hit an exposed toe, the whole toe burst into flames and melted into nothingness in the space of seconds.

Now enraged, the giant swung his club and bashed it hard against the floor three times, shaking the whole building. Robbie tumbled down and landed with a loud thump. Frost crawled up the walls and ice spread out from the holes the giant’s club left in the floor, sliding across the floor in a frosty fog. When the fog hit the nearest thing, which just so happened to be a table, the whole thing froze as if it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen only to explode half a beat later.

We all scrambled for higher ground. No one even stopped Crux as he fought his way up to the balcony, not until he tried to go out the door. Then, he found Bran’s katana blocking his exit. I found a spot several stairs up on the crowded stairway and stood there, trying to figure out what to do. Robbie and Abe were still down there.

Sven was still under Crux’s compulsion to attack me, though, and he fought his way through the bikers, mowing through them like a football player. He punched the one who had been celebrating at the table earlier and wrestled a knife away from him before charging at me. I backed up, trapped between him and the fog.

“Stop,” Mara screamed above us and Sven froze. I watched the battle in his face, the fight between doing as he was compelled and what he wanted.

“What are you waiting for?” Crux shouted. “KILL HER!”

I inched back down the stairs, the cold making my ankles go numb. The frost hadn’t reached me yet, but it would soon.

Sven’s eyes went to the knife and he gritted his teeth so tight I heard them strain. “I…I…” He stammered.

Then, with a loud cry, he let the knife clatter to the floor and threw himself at me. I ducked, bracing for the impact that would push me to my death, but it never came. Sven charged down the stairs and past me into the fog.