Radiance (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #3) (2 page)

We collided and this time, we both fell down. I crawled closer and stabbed and stabbed her coat but my silver blade didn’t penetrate.

I yelled so loud that it echoed in the forest and snow fell from nearby boughs.

Delilah shrieked a mournful, haunting cry and moved her tongue in a trilled, sharp series of ululations that gave me a chill down my spine.
Was it a death cry? Was she calling other vampires to her aid?

“
What the heck is that sound?” Corbin said, pelting her anew with snowballs. He even threw a boulder, but she dodged it—it almost hit me, but I rolled out of the way, just in time.

“
No more bowling, Corbin. You stink at it!” I shouted.

“
Sorry,” he yelled. He jumped on the vampire’s back and pounded his fists on her. She cast him away with a shrug. He went rolling into a short pine tree and yelped when he got jabbed who knows where by its needles.

Delilah continued her bizarre ululations. I had never heard such a chilling sound in my life and it echoed, mournful and terrible, in the still forest. Corbin finally put his hands over his ears, unable to bear the horrific sounds. From the woods, the cowering wolves howled back and the air was so still that I heard the eerie Doppler effect of their cries as they retreated far away from the unholy sounds of the vampire.

As I rushed her again, Delilah elbowed me aside and I went flying into a tree, which knocked the wind out of my lungs, not to mention it knocked the silver blade from my hand. I scrambled through the snow to get it.

When I had it in my hand again, I turned back for more combat. Even if it meant my death, there was no way I would run from this fight. It was about honor, and family, and yes,
revenge
.

She sifted her hands through the snow, found and picked up her cut-off ear and pressed it against the side of her head. I was stunned as it healed before my eyes.
That
gave me momentary pause. I geared up for the final charge. I just needed to catch my breath, which wasn’t easy with a broken nose and breathing hard through my mouth. I was actually about to pass out from hyperventilation and extreme pain.

She took my pause as hesitation on my part to kill her. She started talking fast. “I
was
with Nero that day in Griffith Park. Your brother had been spying on our vampire lairs and had killed some of us. Nero wanted to retaliate against the Brotherhood of the Blade.”

Shit, she even knew what we called ourselves!

With a roar, and blurry vision, I charged her. Even though she saw me coming at her with sharp silver in each hand, she quickly said, “When he saw your brother all alone, Nero came up from what we now call the carousel nest. He told Vlad and me to—”

That was all I could bear to hear and I closed my ears to the rest. Vlad’s name threw me into an even greater fury. I could hear nothing else as the pain hit my broken nose with a slamming burst of what felt like fire—my ears roared with a high-pitched whine, and blood ran into my eye from a split in my right eyebrow.

With an animal-like roar that drowned her out, and more hatred than I had ever unleashed on anyone or anything, I pushed up against her and went insane with my silver blade, jabbing and jabbing as fast as I could and finally, I broke through the gold-chain fastenings of the horrific coat. It fell away from her shoulders into the bloody snow.

“
No!” she cried, and it was then that I saw her coat was lined with Kevlar. Damn these ancient vampires and their high-tech body armor!

“
You say no, but when my brother said no, did you stop?” I shouted with murder in my heart.

“
Rand!” She clipped me on the jaw with an open palm. It was almost half-hearted, but she was so strong that I reeled aside. I caught my balance before I hit the ground.

“
There is no forgiveness! You killed my flesh and blood!” I raged.

“
I didn’t want to!”

“
But you did!”

“
Yes! I helped kill him! Is that what you want me to admit?”

I realized that I had never actually fought a female vampire. For one thing, they talked while they fought to distract their opponents. I tried not to think of how wrong it was to hit a woman. But she wasn’t just a woman. She was a very powerful, ancient vampire.

“Argh!” I growled, just because it was so painful and I needed to scream.

“
Nero compelled—” she said.

“
That doesn’t save you. Die, vampire bitch! Die!” I countered.

As I came up under her, I once again grabbed her dreadlocks and this time, pulled myself up with them against her body. She wore a long red sweater dress made of some sort of rough wool. A white cross was embroidered on its bodice. I aimed my blade for that cross, using it as a handy target.

Delilah shook her head furiously and put up her palms to stop me—my blade went through her hands and pinned them to her chest.

She spewed, “You don’t understand!”

“You killed my brother. That’s all I need to understand!”

Without any more hesitation, I rammed my blade home where I imagined her heart was and then pulled it upward under her ribs, giving it an extra twist for good measure.

She flinched and her hands tore through the blade that had pinned them to her chest—she pin-wheeled the cut-up hands in the air in a futile protest that was more defensive than offensive. I pushed my blade further, up to the hilt and she fell into the snow without a sound. Her pale face registered shock, pain and horror.

“
This is from my brother, you vampire bitch from darkest hell,” I said, and spit in her face.

“
R-R-Rand,” she said weakly, choking out my name. A purplish bubble of blood came out of her mouth.

“
Got any last words?” I asked.

“
I have Kristin!” she whispered as her eyes fluttered closed, her mouth fell open and she…
died.

Chapter Two

“No! Noooo!
Nooooooo!
” I stood in the snow screaming until blood came out of my throat, and my voice was hoarse.

Corbin came out from behind a bush, shivering, his feet already turning blue.

“Be quiet, Rand,” he said, not unkindly. “I want to listen and see if Kristin is here.”

He approached me and pinched the hollows in the inner corners of my eyes near the tear ducts.

“Oww!” I yelled. “What are you doing?”

“
Let me stop this nosebleed or you’ll die.”

With his other hand, he pressed a point at the back of my skull. “Steady. Just trust me.”

I bit my lip and quelled my agony so my werewolf nemesis could listen to the forest and also save my dumb ass from bleeding to death.
Who knew that Corbin was such a multi-tasker? And friend?

Corbin closed his eyes for a couple of minutes. I tried to breathe quietly through my mouth and not hurl on him. When he opened his eyes, he said, “She’s not here. I’m so sorry…look, the bleeding stopped. Clean off your face with snow.”

I bent over and smooshed clean snow over my face. It stung like bees and fell away stained with red. Finally, I stood up. “Ugh, how bad is it?”

“
Nasty. Your girlfriend will not be happy with your new look.”

“
Gee, thanks.”

Corbin looked at Delilah lying motionless in the snow. “Was she an ancient?”

“Yes, from Biblical times.”

“
She p-pre-dates me by quite a bit.” His teeth were chattering.

“
It’s over for Delilah. Next up, Nero.” I finally pulled my blade out of Delilah’s chest, cleaned it off in the snow and slid it back in the scabbard inside my right boot. Corbin gathered up my three silver darts and handed them to me. I stuck them in my left boot in the built-in quiver.

Corbin gave her body a kick for good measure, though not where she had kicked me.

“Hey, she’s dead already.”

“
Just checking,” he said.

I had my standards and they did not include inflicting violence on the dead…not even on my worst enemy, which she was.

I turned my eyes to Corbin. Every day, he ran with wolves or skied with Ambra. His corded arms and legs were enviable. I handed him my watch cap and he hung it on his privates.

I laughed at his gesture and said, “You throw the best snowballs I’ve ever seen.”

“Ambra taught me. The bad-ass Swiss girl is the local snowball fight queen. When there used to be a lot more of us, we had hellacious snowball fights. Ambra was team captain and she let me play on the girls’ side—Sisterhood of the Scythe versus Brotherhood of the Blade. It was great fun to be on the winning side.”

“
You’re going to lose your feet,” I said. “We gotta get you back to the castle.”

“
My balls are going blue, too. I can’t even feel my feet.”

I shucked my coat and a sweater. “Put on my sweater upside down on your legs and pull it up to your waist. Put my coat on and zip it.”

“You need those things,” he said.

“
Shut up and do it. I’ve got on lots of clothes and long underwear, too. And what the hell, Corbin? Were you trying to commit suicide by vampire because Ambra didn’t want you to turn her?”

“
No! Delilah grabbed me when I was the werewolf and tried to choke the life out of me.”

“
How did she get close to you?”

“
She was fast! I knew she was pursuing us, and I tried to run away with my wolf pack, but she seized me and held me up in the air by my neck.”

“
In front of the whole pack? Pretty damn bold.”

“
She was! She was about to asphyxiate me when the moon set and I transformed back into a man. She didn’t
know
, Rand. She thought I was a wolf. She was going to bite me and suck my blood. Saliva was dripping from her mouth.”

“
Eww.”

“
You should have seen her face when I changed into a man!”

“
She really had no clue?”

“
I’m betting she had never seen a werewolf or even knew we existed. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with me, though her grip on my throat did not let up.”

“
Then what?”

“
She held me tight as I struggled and she was trying to make some sort of decision about whether to drink my blood or not. Then you came and fought her and killed her.”

“
You helped me.”

“
It all happened very fast,” he said. “I’m pretty sure that you did most of the fighting.”

Suddenly, the enormity of what I’d done started to hit me. “Oh, my God, Corbin. I killed the vampire who said she had Kristin. Maybe the only vampire who knows where Kristin is hidden is now dead.”

“That could have been a lie,” Corbin said, “to stop you from killing her. Vampires do lie, right?”

“
Sure they do. But if it wasn’t a lie…Corbin, what have I
done
?”

“
You killed one of the ancients who killed your kin. Isn’t that the official mission of the Brotherhood of the Blade?”

“
Yes, and unofficially, as you know, we do have our revenge missions, as well as other vampire-hunting assignments.” I took a deep shuddering breath and let it out. “You heard what she said…I will need to remember it and write it all down.”

“
There were clues, to be sure. I heard every word. My werewolf hearing is acute, much more so when I am the werewolf than when I am the human, but it’s still better than yours…any day.”

I nodded. “The fact remains that I might have killed the one person…if you can call her that…who could have led me to my daughter.” I paused, hearing my pulse roar in my ears. “What if Kristen’s locked up somewhere and can’t get out? What if she’s all alone, waiting for her vampire jailer to give her water, or food, or even air?”

“Don’t go there in your head, Rand. I…I want to help find your little girl,” Corbin said. “We’ve got to get her away from these unholy creatures.”

A sob escaped me and Corbin squeezed my shoulder. “I can’t possibly know the depths of your anguish, but I do know that my werewolf ears and nose could help find Kristin. Just get me in the proximity of her and I will find her for you. And when I am healed from tonight’s various debacles, I’ll guard your back like the loyal werewolf I am.”

“Is this your way of apologizing to me for almost turning Ambra into a werewolf?”

“
No, though I owe you my profound regret for my actions last night. This is how I thank you for saving my life. And more.”

“
What’s the more?”

“
Until now, I could not even fathom the evilness of vampires. But when one is about to have you for dinner, and you struggle helplessly in her claw-like hands—and she looks at you with the most ravenous, diabolical gaze—only then do you know the fear that you will die within seconds and that you are about to meet your Maker.”