Breaker (Ondine Quartet Book 4) (62 page)

Come and get it.

I buried my dagger through its ribs and pierced its heart. I tore out the blade, spun, and drove it into the Origin.
 

Blood spilled, spattering my face, and saturating the ground.
 

The world narrowed to the next movement, the next target.

Dodge. Thrust. Punch. Pivot. Kick.

The screams of battle blended into the background and details sharpened.

The salty, metallic stench of blood, sweat, and the ocean. Snapping jaws and eyes burning bright with violence.
Kouperets
streaking intricate golden lines and curves in the dark.

But above all, there was sheer savage delight as my body came alive.
 

Magic flooded my veins, the current rich with the ripe emotions fueling it. My biceps stretched, the familiar sensation preceding the sting of my fist connecting with a target.

The crunch of my abs, the muscles rolling across my back as I drove my blade through skin.
 
The rotation of my hip, the power of my thighs propelling a kick.

All were mine. My life. My choice.
 

My blade flashed, one, two, three.

I danced across the ground, light on my feet, arms and shoulders relaxed and quick.

The melody of the blade sang bright and vivid as it cleaved the night. The guttural yell of death colored the harmony. The strong, mesmerizing rhythm of blood and magic pulsed beneath it all.

They wove together into the music of war, an endless song with no beginning or end.

I leaped, my feet ramming into a demon’s ribs. I pounced up, jammed my hand into its nose. Cartilege crunched. My right leg whipped out, hammering its knee.

It dropped, broken and twisted.

Behind him, two figures struggled on the ground. Gabe lay on his back, his left arm caught between himself and the Aquidae atop him.
 

The demon bellowed, skewered on the blade embedded in his stomach. He shoved his arm against Gabe’s throat, squirming to free himself.
 

Gabe managed to lift his right hand, his face a mottled red.

My father’s
kouperet
staked the Origin. He pushed the corpse off and rolled to his side, coughing as he struggled to get in more oxygen.

Another demon barreled toward his prone figure from the right.

Oh, no you don’t.

In one fluid motion, I reached into the pouch by my side, pivoted, and threw.

The star pierced the demon’s throat. It stumbled back, desperately trying to pull the weapon out.

A chevalier killed him from behind.

Gabe glanced at me. I nodded.

Screams and the sharp rattle of gunfire cleaved through the night.

The Academy.

We dashed toward the Quad. Tristan tore ahead of me, his body rippling with lethal power.
 

Shots rang out. Helene. Lucas. Maybe another ondine.

I pumped my arms, willing my legs to move faster.

We rounded the corner of the Training Center.
 

Four Aquidae ran down to greet us. I yanked the knife from my wrist sheath and hurled it. It lodged in the first demon’s throat.
 

A sharp twang cut through the night. The bolt from a crossbow pierced the second demon’s back. It stumbled. Tristan swung his machete and decapitated it.

The head rolled toward me and I leaped over it.

Two Aquidae bolted away, heading for the ondine dorm entrance.
 

Gabe aimed and fired twice. Both shots found their targets.

More shots from the roof of the dorm. They weren’t aiming for the demons.

Instead, they seemed to be herding the Aquidae into a contained square area between the dorms and classrooms. Jeeves stood before Patrice in a protective stance, driving another two Aquidae back.

A current of magic raced through the night. The air suddenly dried, turning instantaneously into arid, desert air.

The ground beneath the Aquidae liquified. One moment it was solid dirt and grass. The next, it was a muddy quicksand.

The demons rapidly sank, the mud rising to their knees. Another surge of magic and the air returned to normal.

The sludge around the Aquidae hardened, sealing them into the ground.

Jeeves launched forward, efficiently staking the frozen demons. One body after another dropped with a thump. His gaze met Patrice, face glowing with something close to pride.

Patrice’s familiar dark blue eyes lit up with triumphant pleasure. She smiled.

A shadow shifted. An Aquidae charged from her right.

I was already in motion.
 

“Patrice!” Jeeves shouted.

The demon’s hand tore through her delicate neck. A chunk of flesh ripped away, leaving behind a jagged crimson wound.

She fell.

Jeeves howled, a sound of pure anguish and regret.
 

The Aquidae whipped back. Tall and thin, she had dark hair and a sharp face, all angles and lines.
 

Her mouth stretched into a smile completely devoid of any humanity.

I charged. She raced toward me, arms raised to attack. I sliced across her stomach.

She gasped. Innards leaked between the bloody smile.
 

I smashed my dagger hilt into her wrists. Bones broke with a satisfying crunch.

She slumped to her knees, the regeneration process already knitting her back together.

“She’s mine.”

Jeeves strode toward her, his face iced over into a hard, flat mask.
 

I stepped back.

His
kouperet
flashed. The blade jammed through the Aquidae’s left eye. She screamed.

Jeeves moved, a whirlwind of energy and power.

Every strike was precise, elegant. A slice here. A slash there.

Each cut a regret he’d accumulated over the years, a display of rage that the possibility of rectifying those regrets had been taken away.

Every inflicted wound maximized pain with the clear intent of drawing out death for as long as possible.

He wanted to make it hurt.

A tendon severed in her arm. A piece of flesh shaved off her cheekbone. Then an ear. A finger.

Until the bloody mess collapsed on to the ground.
 

Jeeves stood over the hunk of meat and waited. Viscous blood dripped off the tip of his
kouperet
like ink drops.

He’d waited twenty-three years for Patrice to accept him.

Waiting until the demon regenerated was nothing. He would do it again and again for the pleasure of chop it down again, piece by piece.

Around me bodies fell, the Quad where students had laughed and studied and planned their social calendars, now saturated with blood. Near the Training Center, Gabe and Cam fought off four Aquidae attempting to storm the facility.
 

Dax and Tristan stood before the administrative building. By the light of the streetlamp, the brothers looked achingly familiar.

Moonlight illuminated Helene, Lucas, and Tara on the roof of the ondine dorms, their silhouettes small and fragile against the expanse of the sky.

It was too late to turn back and change the course we were on. All we could do was see this through.

I had to end this.

“Aub.” My voice was rough. “Tell me you have him.”

A short burst of static. “I can’t find him, Kendra.” Frustration tightened her voice. “I’m looking everywhere but he’s a ghost.”

I felt him.

He was in Haverleau, conducting his army through his blood, a snake hiding until the moment was right.

 
Where are you?

“Kendra.” Holden’s voice suddenly broke in. “We got a situation here. They’ve entered the complex and took over the courtyard.”

“What?” Waves of Aquidae continued to enter Haverleau, but for now it seemed as if we were keeping them at bay. “How did they get in? Where’s the breach?”

A pause. “Nowhere. The perimeter is holding. They’re coming in from somewhere else. I can’t see anything, though. One minute they weren’t there. And the next, they were swarming the courtyard.”
 

That didn’t make sense. We had every opening covered. They didn’t enter the courtyard by breaching our perimeter.

It was as if they sprung up within the Governing Complex. But that was impossible unless they were coming from some secret underground…shit.

“The tunnels.”

Tristan and Gabe drew up beside me. Blood marked his golden skin, appearing like dark stains in the moonlight. “What happened?”

“Aquidae are coming through the underwater tunnels into the Council Chamber.”

“We need to hold the line here,” Gabe said. “It’s weakening.”
 

The snipers on the roof helped, but the Academy had too many vulnerable targets, buildings and facilities Aquidae could gain control of. We needed to keep Lumiere safe.

“Gather up the others and have teams guard each building.”

Gabe nodded. “Tristan, we can take the southern —”

“No,” I said sharply. “He’s with me.”

I wasn’t going to waste a single moment, even if that moment was in battle, away from him.

Gabe’s gaze flickered between us. Something indefinable flashed through his eyes.

But he silently nodded and left to talk to Cam.

I walled up my emotions. This wasn’t the time for regret or emotion.

It was about protecting them. I could only do that by ending this.

Clouds drifted over the moon. Darkness drenched Haverleau, dripping over its beautiful veneer like blood.

Tristan and I dove into the night.
 

***

We sprinted up the hill toward the Governing Complex. Wind carried the cries and screams of battle, the sounds growing louder, more desperate,
 
as we neared the row of street lamps bordering the facility. Pale light flowed across the cluster of imposing buildings, casting stark, ghostly silhouettes against the sky.
 

A massacre awaited us.

Bodies littered the cobblestones, some broken, others torn to pieces. The ground was stained an indecipherable dark. Chevaliers battled demons, their feet sliding across blood and crunching on bones.

Royal Gardinels engaged with several dozen Aquidae before the grand steps of the Governing House. The large ebony doors remained in tact.
 

An Aquidae pounced. I sliced its throat like a blade through silk. It tumbled forward, lips curled back, eyes lit with feral violence. I drove my dagger into the Origin. The demon landed against me, its weight pushing me off-balance.

Pain hammered my knee. Gritting my teeth, I shoved the corpse off and stumbled over a body at my feet.

Glassy eyes stared blankly at me, the neck so twisted, a white shard of bone had pierced through the skin. Fujio.

A few feet away, a crushed ruby pedaillon rested against the torn chest of a young selkie with black hair. Dax’s friend, Renard.
 

Beside him, an ondine sprawled on the ground, her stomach a bloody mess, a throwing star still in her hand. Even in death, her face retained a hint of that pinched haughtiness I’d seen when she asked me if I ever missed.
 

She looked so very, very young. A child.
 

I recognized others, their bodies strewn in the bloodbath, some so disfigured they were identifiable only by other traits.

A particular shade of hair, the way it stood untamed at the crown. The scar on a hand. The
kouperet
lying uselessly by their side.

The stench of death choked me, my mind recoiling from the carnage, unable to reconcile this depravity within our pristine, hallowed institutional buildings of power.
 

A demon lunged. Tristan struck it down before it could reach me. Cold fury burned in his dark eyes, the same grief I felt reflected in the hard lines of his face.

Later. Process later.
 

The remaining chevaliers and gardinels wouldn’t be able to hold off the Aquidae much longer. We couldn’t let the Governing House fall.

Empath pressed forward sensing a large cluster of Aquidae in the Council Chamber.

I was right. They were coming in from the tunnels.

“The Chamber,” I murmured.

Tristan and I tore forward, cut our way through the courtyard, and barreled into the amphitheater where Council members had conducted their petty bickering for years.
 

Noise punched through my eardrums and sent me reeling.
 

Tristan jerked, grimacing at the assault on his selkie senses. The Chamber’s acoustics were specially designed to be sensitive to the slightest degree.

Blades smashing against bone, the screams and cries of pain, and demonic roars all blended into a deafening cacophony. It was as if microphones broadcast a battlefield through gigantic speakers set at the highest volume.

Tristan shook his head and launched into a group of Aquidae, his body a hard wall of corded muscle and power.
 

Chevaliers fought to hold back the tide of demons, but one Aquidae after another arose from the Summoning Pool. A familiar dark head moved through the chaos and relief flickered through me.

Julian fought off two Aquidae, his face sharp with concentration.

A movement came from the first tier of seating. Nexa raced between rows, her tiny form appearing even smaller against the large, ornate chairs. She occasionally stopped to survey the floor below. What was she doing?

She noticed me. Her mouth moved but I couldn’t hear anything above the clamor.

She pointed to the back of the chamber, to the wall behind the Summoning Pool. Her mouth moved in the same pattern.

Two syllables. What…

Realization dawned.
 

Lever.

When Nexa first brought me here, she’d pulled a lever to open the stones covering the Summoning Pool. If we could get to it, we could close the opening and prevent any more demons from getting in.

I leaped onto the Council table. Julian and three chevaliers had taken position near the exit, trying to prevent more demons from entering the courtyard.