Incubus Moon (32 page)

When an assailant rushed Elsa, she spun around to deliver a powerful kick, driving a stiletto heel into her attacker’s heart. The masked figure cried out, a torrent of blood and silver mist spewing out of the hole she’d made in his chest. The scene reminded me of a mini atomic blast, the vampire exploding outward from within a bloated cloud of light, until all the bits and pieces of his body drew back in toward the center. Once the light faded, he was gone.

Now I knew how a vampire could die.

I rushed to get Niko out of the line of fire and was knocked to my ass by another attacker. Attempting to stand, I had to duck to avoid a second lethal kick by Elsa, her leg whizzing past me in a great whoosh and connecting with the jaw of my assailant. Seconds later, I felt the heat blast against my back from his incinerated body.

Niko helped me up, and we both scooted back against the wall of the
Fallen Angel
. I was eager to join the fight, but didn’t dare leave him unprotected.

Adrian, the burly vampire, seized Kassandra from behind and put her in a chokehold. She struggled against him and he wrapped one leg around hers for stability, bending her backwards at a painful angle in order for Dimitri to deliver the killing blow.

She was too quick, though, and thrust her dagger backwards into his gut.

Twisting in his grip, she jerked the knife blade up and into his heart. The bloody explosion of heat and light propelled her into Dimitri and they both hit the pavement in a tangle of arms and legs. Here was my chance to crush Kassandra with my own brand of supernatural mojo.

I focused all my concentration on re-summoning my newest trick, which was when I felt Niko yanked out from behind me.

Elsa scrambled away from the imploding remains of another of Kassandra’s henchmen, leapt into the air to grab hold of the awning above the door to the
Fallen Angel
, twisted her body sideways, and then used both deadly stilettos to drive home her message to Niko’s abductor—one to the eye, the other to his heart.

Niko and I dropped to the sidewalk and covered our heads to avoid the scorching discharge from the immolating vampire. Once the air cooled, I glanced up but was too late to get out a warning to Elsa. Jace and two others had descended upon her.

I wanted to help her, but that meant leaving Niko vulnerable to attack.

“How can you do this to us?” Elsa demanded as she fought to free herself.

Jace approached her and cradled her face in both hands. “I’d ask the same of you, luv.”

She parted her lips to speak and he rotated her head violently. It twisted clean away from her body in a spray of dark, shiny liquid that spewed from the severed stump of her neck and rained down her chest onto the leather skirt. Her decapitated remains slumped to the pavement in a flash of red chromium light.

There was no time to mourn her loss. Jace and the two assassins had surrounded us.

The punk vampire lifted into the air with such speed that even I could scarcely follow his trajectory. It was just the distraction his cohorts needed to tear Niko from my arms.

Time slowed to a crawl. I could either sit there and die or fucking react to save Niko’s life and, with any luck, my own in the process.

Then the vamps did something foolish and so very human. They pummeled me to the pavement and began kicking and beating me. They wanted to make my suffering last.

So I curled into a tight ball and called upon that same new energy I’d used earlier.

It answered me in the form of a body-shuddering cry that sent a shockwave of energy radiating outward from my core. It collided with my assailants and hurtled them up and backwards into the night air. The force was so great that it triggered car alarms and shattered windows in the neighboring buildings, the falling glass a lethal downpour.

I half-dove, half-rolled into the doorway of the
Fallen Angel
in time to avoid a large pane that shattered several feet away. Smaller fragments struck my exposed skin but didn’t penetrate too deeply. My attackers weren’t so lucky.

One of them had nearly been bisected at the waist and lolled on the ground like a turtle trapped on its back, a sea of glittering red glass strewn around him. The second henchman was in almost as dire a state, his severed arm twitching beside him while blood gushed up from a nasty gash in his upper thigh.

I’d missed an opportunity to kill Jace. No way in hell was I about to let this one escape me.

I reached over and snatched up one of Elsa’s silver-tipped stilettos from the pavement. Pushing up to my feet, I stalked over to the bisected vampire with steely resolve.

The bloodsucker glared up at me in a pathetic and useless attempt at retaliation. I offered him an icy smile in response, letting him both see and feel the full weight of my hatred for him and how very much I was going to enjoy ending his life.

His injured cohort tried to claw at my ankle with his remaining hand, but I kicked it away.

I crouched down next to the first vamp and raised the stiletto high above my head. His indignation quickly transformed to all out fear, which was when I drove the shoe’s silver tip down onto the monster’s chest and felt the lethal sliver of metal pierce his heart.

The vampire’s high-pitched wail fused with an eruption of light from his open mouth and gaping wounds, which mushroomed into a shimmering vapor cloud that expanded around him in all directions before imploding, leaving nothing in its wake but the glass-strewn asphalt.

Then I spun around to mete out similar justice to the second vamp.

Once he was dead, my very next thought turned to Niko. During the chaos of the fight he’d been pulled away from me.

I whipped my head right and left in search of him in the dark street that had suddenly come alive with the sound of distant sirens and shouting humans. I couldn’t see Niko anywhere.

More and more lights began to punctuate the darkness within neighboring high-rise apartment buildings, as tenants approached their shattered window openings to peer across at one another, and then ultimately down to where I was standing in the middle of the street.

The sirens were getting closer, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I could find Niko. He was alive and close by. I could hear him calling to me inside my head—and he wasn’t alone.

That was when I spotted Dimitri and his sister clambering back up to their feet. Kassandra appeared to have suffered her own share of injuries from the shockwave I’d generated.

Regardless of the degree of pain she was experiencing, it didn’t keep her from trying to run her brother through with her fallen sword.

Dimitri blocked her attempt with his own sword and shouted over to me. “Go after Niko!”

I turned in the direction he’d indicated to find Jace dragging him away.

Another wave of fury detonated inside me. I didn’t give a damn that the sirens were mere blocks away now. That Cockney bastard was going to burn for hurting my lover.

No sooner did the thought form in my mind than Jace howled in agony and released Niko. He staggered toward me in the middle of the street, arms outstretched, his lean body engulfed in red and gold flames.

Several female screams echoed down from the adjacent buildings, and I was vaguely aware of the sound of multiple feet pounding the asphalt to my left, as I ran past Jace to get to Niko.

Despite my rush to ensure that he was unharmed, I couldn’t help but savor the vampire’s misery. Because what was pouring off of Jace wasn’t exactly flame. It was light; and it pushed and stretched away from his body as though something wanted out.

Then the vampire gave one final cry before the night swallowed him forever.

I reached Niko and fell to my knees, turning him over with care and praying that the gash across his cheek wasn’t as bad as it looked.

He opened his eyes and smiled up at me to the sound of more sirens and screeching car tires. Multiple doors opened and slammed shut and men were barking out orders in Greek. Then Niko’s smile vanished and his eyes grew wide with terror.

The cracking blow to the back of my head silenced the human chaos around us, as cool night air rushed in to fill my head.

CHAPTER 33

The cold dampness from the floor I was sprawled across had seeped into my aching muscles and bones. All I could see from my limited vantage of lying face down was an arched opening in a rock and mortar wall consisting of metal bars and incorporating a narrow iron door. An irregular glow came from a bare bulb dangling from a wire in the far corner, which did little to illuminate the darkness beyond the cell. I could also hear the faint sputtering of a generator.

Memory flashes of the ambush began filtering back to me: the fighting, the lethal shards of flying glass, vampires dying in bursts of vivid light, and the look of horror on Niko’s face just before everything went black.

Not only had I been captured
again
, both times due to my own infuriating stubbornness, but I’d failed in my promise to keep Niko safe.

I pushed off the floor with a groan and rested back on tender knees. Supernatural constitution aside, I was nursing a whopper of a headache.

The cell I’d been locked in couldn’t have been more than fifteen-by-twenty feet. The row of iron bars encased in the thick wall of stones above and below would effectively keep a human from escaping, but not a demon who could probably lift the front end of his car off the ground.

As for the prospect of guards,
Bring’em on!

“Austin?”

I rushed the bars. “Niko, did they hurt you?”

“No! You must not—”

Pain exploded behind my eyes the instant I touched the metal. I pitched sideways, landing on all fours and quickly scrambled away from what was probably my sole means of escape. Taking in several deep breaths to push back the nausea, I waited for the jackhammer inside my head to relent. When I made another attempt to re-approach the exit that jackhammer turned into a wrecking ball.

“I can’t get close to the bars without getting sick.”

“I tried to warn you,” Niko said in a hoarse whisper. “They used witchcraft to bespell them when they brought us down here.”

Great. Where’s a powerful witch to undo a spell when you need her?
Oh right, back in the safety of her vampire lover’s island sanctuary that we never should have left in the first place.

Except that Dimitri had been in Athens and fought to save us. That he’d failed…

“Buddy?”

This new voice elicited more than a crack of emotion in my own. “Mark!”

I rushed the bars again and paid the price. Stumbling backwards, I attempted to focus on the spot from which his voice had emanated and, once my non-spinning vision returned, made out two shadowy forms in the cell opposite my own.

“Christie?”

A third, indistinct shape joined the others. “Please tell me you have a plan to get us all out of here?” Her voice was weak and unsteady.

Thank God! My friends were still alive—for now.

“What the hell are they?” Mark demanded.

“You know what they are,” Christie said. “That police detective told you. It’s what they want from us that terrifies me.”

A cold chuckle issued from the shadows. “Are you so eager to find out?”

The monster hiding in the darkness emerged and approached my cell. He peered in at me with black, soulless eyes, his porcelain face all sharp angles and aquiline nose. He regarded me as though I were nothing more than a curious zoo creature.

I willed my thundering heartbeat to slow, while Haemon worked to insinuate himself into my mind, the way he had in Prague, testing the psychic shields I’d brought down around myself.

His gaze hardened. “Did Dimitri teach you that little trick?”

“Dimitri taught me a lot of things,” I lied.

Haemon smirked and unlocked the cell door. “I’ve a few tricks to show you myself.”

He stepped inside, leaving the door wide open behind him. He was that confident I couldn’t escape. “Raping me in Prague wasn’t enough for you?”

I heard a gasp from the other cell just as Haemon descended on me, shoving me so hard into the wall behind me that some of the stones cracked from the impact. The gash in my scalp reopened and a bead of blood trickled into my right eye.

“Get the fuck off him!” Mark shouted.

Haemon ignored the outburst. “
Supplex pro mihi!
”

My shields collapsed and I fell to my knees, immobile and unable to speak.

How had he done this? Dimitri didn’t possess this kind of power, and he sure as hell hadn’t warned me that another vampire might.

Haemon crouched beside me. “I imagine there is a great deal that our Dimitri has not shared with you.” He cast an amused glance over his shoulder into the gloom and a light flickered on in the other cell, revealing the appalling condition of the three people I cared
about most. “With this,” he whispered, extracting an ancient-looking medallion from the neckline of his tailored shirt which he twirled in his pale fingertips so that the green stone at its center winked back at me, “I can make you do whatever I choose. Even kill one of them…if it pleases me.”

Horrified, I struggled to move, but couldn’t.

Haemon stood up to leave, turning at the cell door to offer me a chilling smile before securing it behind him. He then unlocked the door to the neighboring cell and stepped inside.

Mark barricaded the others with his body and shot me a conflicted glance, but I was powerless to stop whatever the fiend had in store for them.

That was when my best friend did something equally fearless and reckless. He rushed the vampire.

Haemon retaliated with lightning swiftness, seizing Mark in a chokehold. It didn’t matter that Haemon was shorter by nearly half a foot, the vampire easily bent Mark backwards at a painful angle, his tattered and filthy T-shirt lifting to expose the bruised and abraded skin of his lean stomach, over which the vampire ran an excited hand.

“Perhaps the stallion would enjoy what I did to you at Alcatraz.”

Niko held Christie, who’d covered her eyes and begun to sob.

Screw the damned amulet! My friends need me!
Summoning every ounce of incubus power in me, I was rewarded by what felt like a thousand red-hot knives stabbing into me all at once.