Obsidian Wings (18 page)

But when it came down to it, Rune hesitated. She knew better
than to trust the birds—especially Cree. But the bird could get her to Horner a
lot faster than she could drive or even run there.

She also needed to save her reserves for the battle—unless
she fed. But there was no time. No time.

“Shift then, and get me to the mountain,” she said. She
didn’t bother threatening Cree with death if the bird lied to her. That would
have been a waste of breath.

Rune backed away as Cree shifted, then took a deep breath
before climbing onto the bird’s back. It was like riding a horse with wings,
only not as comfortable.

Or maybe like riding a dragon.

She leaned forward and dug her hands into whatever she could
grab on to. She hoped like hell she wouldn’t fall off.

Somehow, riding the bird was more alarming than being held
in those huge talons.

“Giddy-up, horsey,” she said, then her breath wheezed from
her tight throat as Cree obeyed.

She couldn’t see anything below as she lay with the side of
her face against the bird’s flesh and her eyes screwed shut, and maybe that was
just as well. Cree’s vast wings cut through the air in a heavy, dreamy way, but
propelled them onward with an unimaginable speed.

Smooth, silent, surreal.

When Cree had splintered her and delivered her to Horner,
it’d been different. Her mind had been dark and filled with pain and fog.

Now…

She sat up, her breath leaving her as she surveyed the world
around, ahead, and below her.

It was spectacular.

“God,” she whispered, but only to herself. The wind snatched
the breath from her lungs and whipped her eyes, ran cold fingers through her
growing hair, and slapped her face with icy disregard.

But the world was serene, the sky was quiet, and she was
flying.

It was
spectacular.

Cree’s zooming freefall was as unexpected as it was exhilarating.
Maybe Cree meant to scare her, to make her cry out and beg for mercy, but Rune
slapped the bird’s back and laughed with unbridled elation.

All too quickly the ride was over. Cree dumped her
unceremoniously on the ground, then shifted to her human form.

She stood with her hands on her hips, grinning as Rune
struggled to reacquaint herself with her legs.

“Enjoy the ride?” Cree asked, her voice mocking, her stare
was full of arrogance.

“I did,” Rune said, jubilant. “It was almost as good as
feeding.” She giggled.

“You’re fucking
high,
” Cree said, lowering her hands
to her sides.

Rune stood, finally, and shrugged. She wanted to grin, but
forced herself to calm down. There were demons to fight. “Let’s find Horner.
Where exactly is he?”

“I have to find Fin,” Cree said. “But after I do we’ll come
help you fight.”

Rune shook her head. “There’s no time. Until Fin joins us,
I’ll have to settle for you.”

“So very flattering.
That’ll
get you what you want.”

“You want to live, don’t you? If Horner has his way, the
Others,
all
Others, will be annihilated as soon as possible. You have to
know that.”

“He can’t defeat the birds,” Cree said, looking down her
nose.

“His demon can.”

And even the arrogant Cree knew that was the truth. “Fine.
Somebody has to save the world. It might as well be me.”

Rune curled her lip and bit back words of derision as she
walked beside the bird. “How’d you know he’d be here?”

“Stuff I heard. Once he told the scepters that everything
about Spikemoss was magical—enchanted, something like that. That was when he
first began negotiations about some attached land COS owns.”

“The scepters actually thought he’d stick to his word and
give them the land?”

“Not give, sell. And cheaply. The birds aren’t rich, you
know. And we…” She frowned, hesitating over her choice of words, before
continuing. “
They
already got the land. There were lawyers on both sides
involved from the very beginning. The scepters wouldn’t have agreed otherwise.
We trust no one.”

“Do you know the COS attorney’s name?”

“No.”

From far below came the faint sounds of the battles between
River County and COS. She shivered as an image of her crew flashed through her
mind. They were down there, fighting, getting wounded almost certainly, trying
to save the county from the church. She should have been with them, but there
was no help for it. She’d just have to trust in their abilities.

They were Shiv Crew, and they could take out fucking COS, no
matter how large the church’s numbers.

They could.

“Where the cages are,” Cree said, interrupting her thoughts.
“There’s a trail behind them that leads to a clearing. There’s a pond, a circle
of weeping willow trees, and a depression in the ground. It’s like a shallow
bowl, about six feet in diameter. I think that’s where he’ll be.”

Rune nodded. “I can find it. I’m going to run.” She looked
at the bird. “Meet me there, Cree. Do not take off.”

Cree’s eyes glittered in the moonlight. She said nothing.

“Cree.”

The bird rubbed her arms. “I can kick a lot of ass, but I can’t
defeat all my people. If they see me here, no matter who I’m fighting, they’ll
kill me.”

“That’s a chance I’ll have to take.”

“Fuck you.” But her words were halfhearted. “Fin can’t take
another attack, not so soon after his last one. He won’t come.”

“If the fucking demon is called, the birds are going to be
too preoccupied with it to mess with you. I need you to take out as many
slayers as you can. But I have to keep Horner alive.”

Cree remained silent. Her hesitancy was uncharacteristic and
Rune was quite sure the bird was going to shift and run for cover. Cree was
afraid—not of COS, not even of the demon—but of the birds.

“I’ll protect you,” she promised. “You can’t back out of
this.”

Cree snorted. “You can’t protect me from the birds.” Then
she sighed. “I’ll give it a try.”

“You’re an asshole. If I see you when this is all over, I
might hurt you for the shit you’ve pulled. But thanks. Thanks for braving the
birds to help me kick COS ass.”

Cree threw her a tight smile. “I’m doing it because helping
you might be the only way Strad will forgive me.”

Rune shrugged. “As long as the job gets done.” And she
tensed her body to run.

“It may,” came a voice from the shadows, “but not if you
don’t get Alexis Love up here to take on the demon.” The new master Simon Kelic
stepped into their path, his children at his back. “The church is calling the
demon as we speak. And it is answering.”

She shot her claws out and dropped her fangs, startled by
his silent approach.

One of his vampires stepped up beside him and put his hands
on his hips. “Don’t you hiss at my master, girl. He came to help your sorry
ass.”

“Hush, Iker,” Simon said.

Iker had been around twenty or so when he’d turned. His skin
was as smooth and rich as dark chocolate. His hair hung in wild, colorful
dreadlocks—red, purple, green, and yellow. Every inch of exposed skin appeared
either tattooed, pierced, or both, and his darkly lined eyes were light green,
standing out like sparkling jewels in his intriguing face.

Rune tore her stare away from the fascinating vampire and
eyed the master. “Lead the way, Kelic. I need to stop Horner.”

“Pay attention,” Iker said. “You can’t do this without your
little girl demon.”

“Iker,” Kelic snapped. He turned his head and scowled at the
young vampire.

Iker licked his lips, swallowed hard, and then stepped back.

“He’s right,” Simon said. “You’ll need your own demon to
send the church’s demon back to hell.”

“Lex isn’t a demon, Kelic. I told you that.”

“You’re wrong.” He didn’t look quite as harmless or young as
he’d looked when she’d first met him. “Question is, are you going to waste time
arguing about it, or are you going to take a chance that maybe, just maybe, I
know what I’m talking about and get Alexis Love up here?”

Rune waved her claws in the air. “Fuck me! Cree—”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll go fetch your demon bitch.”

She started to turn away, but Rune had her claws at Cree’s
delicate throat before she could move. “Do not fuck this up,
bitch
. I
will kill you if you hurt her.”

Cree glared and shoved Rune’s hand away, though Rune could
easily have slid her claws through Cree’s thin skin. Cree might have been a
motherfucking selfish piece of entitled shit, but she wasn’t a coward.

Then she ran, jumped, and shifted, the air from her huge
wings fanning Rune’s face as the bird shot through the darkness.

“Let’s go,” Rune said to the vampires.

Kelic nodded, and without another word, took off.

She was right behind him. He was fast, fast as a vampire
should be, but so was she. Faster. But she didn’t pull ahead of him—instead ran
side by side as the lesser vampires were sucked along in their wake.

Her feet skimmed the ground, flying over rocks and holes and
debris, her strong legs carrying her closer and closer to the demon, to Horner.

“Ravine coming up,” Simon said, his voice carried by the
wind to slide into her ears, into her mind. “Jump.”

She jumped without question, glancing once to see the dark
emptiness below her, wondering what bodies had been lost to the chasm that
yawned without warning like a great, gaping wound.

Wondering, as well, why Cree hadn’t bothered to warn her
about that abyss.

Then her feet hit earth and she was once more rocketing over
ground turned silver and black by a watching moon.

Simon stopped so abruptly she was a few feet past him before
she realized he was no longer running.

She jogged back to him. “What are you doing?”

“The ones you want are just ahead. Will you charge in or
tiptoe?”

She blew out a hard breath. “Let’s go in heavy and kill
anything that moves.”

His smile was wide and happy. “My kind of attack. Ready?”

She tilted her head. “Do you know any special way to kill a
demon—or to send it back to wherever it came from?”

“No. No, I don’t. The demon I had contact with was not dealt
with by me, I’m sorry to say.”

“Then we’ll have to wing it,” she said.

“Ms. Alexander…”

“Yeah?”

He glanced at her top. “You’re bleeding.”

Shit. She shoved her palm against her chest. “Nothing I can
do about it right now. Let’s go.” And she released the claws she’d retracted
before running, dropping her fangs so fast they cut her lip.

No more talking, no more delays. It was time to leap blindly
into the fierce battle waiting around the corner. When it was over…

They’d find that out soon enough.

She closed her eyes, drawing the faces of her crew to her,
whispering silently the name of the man whose image lingered when the others
faded away.

Berserker.

She was running almost before she realized it, her claws
out, her body hurtling through space toward the chants, the fire, the slayers.

The demon.

She and the vampires burst onto a tableau that wasn’t
totally unexpected, but still bizarre enough to give her pause.

The slayers stood around a fire in the bowl-like depression,
their backs to the flames as they guarded Horner.

Horner was on his knees before a bench on which a bloody
victim lay. A black blade protruded from the corpse’s chest.

The fire shot high into the night, competing with the moon
to light the area. Sparks dropped from the flames that licked the darkness with
eager blue tongues, and the sharp scents of fresh blood and fear hung in the
air.

More slayers poured from behind the trees surrounding the
pit, guns up and ready. COS went to work, methodically cutting down vampires
with silver bullets to keep them from reaching Horner.

It took the vampires a few precious seconds to regroup and
target the ones protecting the ceremony, but the guns were lethal and the
vampires were not many.

Still, the vampires
were
vampires and they would use their insane speeds and extraordinary strength to
take care of business.

And Rune had one job—to stop the demon’s entrance into the
world.

She ignored the battle going on around her and went for the
inner circle. She went for Bach Horner.

If she ever needed her monster, it was then.

The air was changing, growing heavy with expectation, thick
with an insidious presence that waited just beyond an invisible veil. Rune
could feel the demon looming. Her heart beat impossibly fast, fear and dread
choking her with something too vast and horrible to comprehend.

The demon was coming.

She leaped over the heads of the slayers circling Horner’s
fire, tumbling through the air, grunting as bullets ripped through her flesh.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion and she could see
and feel and
smell
the world with an overwhelming clarity. The colors of
the night were too intense, the sounds painfully loud, the scents pungent and
somehow sinister.

But her body was almost numb. She didn’t feel any pain, and
she knew she should have. The slayers targeted her as the biggest threat, and
their aims, for the most part, were true.

Horner was waiting for her. He was expecting her.

She landed hard enough to slam her teeth together and bruise
her bones, but was up before he could even acknowledge that she was there.

He glanced at her, and then, as though she was of no
consequence at all, turned back to his fire and his sacrifice.

Empty vials that had once held her and the twins’ blood lay
atop the body, a corpse that had been donated to the demon, a man who had most
likely been force fed her blood.

All Horner had needed once he lost the twins was the blood
and a human to contain them. He’d found that.

The body on the altar began to undulate forcefully. She drew
back her hand and leaped at Horner, poised to take off his head.

But she was snatched from the ground and dragged through the
air, talons piercing her skin as they took hold.

It happened with shocking, perplexing quickness—one second
she was leaping at Horner, sure for a moment that yes, it really
would
be that easy. The next she was flying with uncomprehending powerlessness
through the air, dangling a mile above the ground, caught in a bird’s claws.

“Cree,” she groaned. “Why?”

But she knew why.

The birds were for sale, with their blank, black minds and
their hard, greedy hearts. They were for sale.

COS had lined their pockets, whispered promises in their
ears, and swore they’d rule side by side with the church. COS had bought them.

And no matter that she’d been exiled, that her convocation
had tried to kill Fin and would surely try to kill her, Cree had allowed COS to
buy her, as well.

It was only when Rune saw another bird flying through the
sky, a familiar figure sitting atop feathers as shiny as fish scales, that she
realized she’d gotten it all wrong.

Cree hadn’t sold herself to COS.

Fin
had.