“I thought you had this one,” Ned said, nudging the unconscious wolf with a toe.
“Yeah, well,” I muttered. We weren’t fighters, just stubborn.
The battle continued down the hill. Caleb was the only human figure among the swarm of battling wolves. More had arrived since we turned away. Growls rumbled; I could feel them through the ground, as well as the impacts of dense bodies slamming into each other. Teeth ripped at flesh; fur, spit, and blood flew. A couple of wolf bodies lay abandoned—one panted, bleeding from a gash in his side. The smell of it was thick, sour. Caleb crouched near this one, snarling, slashing with clawed hands to drive off enemies who came too close.
“What a mess,” Ned said with a sigh, marching down the hill and into the swarm. One of the wolves turned toward his approach, dark eyes gleaming, and let out a sharp bark. A couple of the others who were still standing looked up, and they all ran at the vampire, ignoring the attackers slashing at their heels.
This wasn’t a general attack; it was a suicide mission aimed at Ned. Not that he seemed concerned. When the lead wolf jumped at him, he sidestepped in a blur and punched the animal in the gut. Yelping, the wolf toppled. Ned kicked him for good measure.
I was about to run and help—or at least try to help—when Ben gripped my arm.
“We’re missing something,” he said.
Michael had told us he’d spotted both vampires and werewolves. So where were the vampires?
“Where are they?” I said, panicked. He shook his head, scanning the park on all sides.
The vampires had sent the wolves to scatter us, soften us up, before they came in to clean up the mess. Antony and Marid were out there somewhere—surely they’d heard the warning? Couldn’t they take care of it?
“Wait a minute,” Ben said, and nodded to one of the paths beyond a stand of trees. “Smell that?”
I had a hard time smelling anything apart from the slaughter, the sweat and adrenaline of the battle nearby. But I tipped my nose up and the air brought me a touch of cold, of death.
“I can smell them but I can’t find them,” Ben said.
“Let’s go.” I tugged him forward and we set off to find the trail.
The first of them hid among the trees, surveying the battle. I recognized him from the convocation the other evening—not one of the delegates seated at the table, but one of the henchmen standing guard. That meant he wasn’t ancient, which meant we might have a chance of taking him out.
We wouldn’t be able to sneak up on him, but if we attacked as fast and hard as we could, we might get lucky. We had a few tricks on our side.
Ben pointed, and I nodded. Circling around, I approached from the front. Ben continued on, softly, stake in hand.
Yelling, I ran straight for the vampire. Head down, I reached with my hands, curling my fingers as if they were claws, charging as a werewolf might attack. The vampire didn’t even look surprised. He merely narrowed his gaze and twitched a smile.
Then his eyes widened as Ben drove the stake into his back.
The vampire had time to cough and clutch at his chest. The point hadn’t gone all the way through, and he craned his neck to try to look over his shoulder, but Ben remained hidden. The vampire dropped to his knees. He didn’t decay, didn’t turn to ash and dust. Instead, he slumped over as his skin dried out and turned gray, leathery, drawing taut over sharp bones. He hadn’t been old at all—a few decades at most.
I’d pulled my attack short to watch. Ben stood before me, holding the stake, staring at the shrunken vampire, looking about as surprised as the vampire had.
“We did it,” he said, blinking.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I said. “Maybe we can do it again.”
Ben fell backward, yanked by a shadow into the trees, the stake knocked out of his hand by his attacker. Growling, I sprang after him.
The vampire loomed over Ben’s prone form. Tall, broad, dressed in a T-shirt and slacks, he was another of the bodyguards from the convocation. So where were the leaders, the guys in charge? I wanted to find them.
Teeth bared, he hissed at me. Gripping Ben’s throat, he pressed down—Ben slashed at his chest with fingers that were becoming claws, ripping at the fabric. I charged, making no attempt at an elegant attack. This was all about momentum.
The vampire was ready for me when I crashed into him, hands up, taking hold of my shoulders and turning, so that we tumbled together, scrabbling to be the one on top of the pile. I didn’t know what I could do next, but it didn’t matter, because the vampire had let Ben go.
The guy looked big and powerful; I expected him to be strong. I didn’t expect him to feel like a block of lead settling on me. That vampire strength pressed down, and I couldn’t seem to get the leverage to slip away from him. Reaching for Ben’s dropped stake seemed unlikely, but I tried. Meanwhile, that open mouth and those vicious sharp teeth sank closer to my neck.
I wouldn’t panic. He couldn’t kill me by biting me and taking my blood. Not unless he took it all.
The vampire grunted, an instinctive burst of surprise in a creature who didn’t have to breathe. Ben was hanging off him, arm braced around his neck, trying to pry him off me. Nice thought, but strangling him wasn’t going to do any good. It did give me a chance to knee him in the gut. It felt a little like kneeing a wall.
Without a stake, or holy water, or something, we weren’t going to get out of this fix. Ben still hung on, strong enough to stay with the vampire if not strong enough to rip his head off bare-handed. His face was flush with effort.
I reached for his eyes, an act of desperation; if I could claw them, scratch them, blind him—hurt him, even a little bit, as unlikely as that seemed—we’d be able to regroup and try the next thing. I couldn’t get a grip. The vampire twisted his head, snapped his teeth, and when he caught the skin of my forearm, he tore. Blood streamed down to my elbow; a length of skin hung loose.
Snarling, I punched at him, or tried to. Ben, his own growl burring in his throat, had done the same from the opposite direction, which only served to mildly rattle the vampire.
“Ms. Norville, Mr. O’Farrell, move aside,” a newcomer commanded.
I’d have liked to. It was easier said than done. Then, once again, Ben fell, yanked back by a shape in the darkness. He let out a bark.
A cane swung above me, striking the vampire’s head, sounding like a beat on a hollow melon. The vampire fell, and I scrambled away. If I had hit the vampire like that, even with werewolf strength, the guy probably wouldn’t have noticed.
But Marid was holding the cane.
The guy was on his back now, and Marid didn’t give him a chance to recover enough to sit up, much less stand. Moving next to him, he stepped a booted foot across his neck. Then Marid set the sharpened tip of the wooden cane on the other vampire’s chest and leaned.
“No, no, no—!” the prone vampire managed to gasp before the cane’s point broke through skin, then through ribs. The vampire arced, muscles contracting at once, and flailed like a bug on a pin before going limp, his skin turning gray and desiccated, leaving an aged corpse stuck to Marid’s cane.
Marid stepped on the dried-out chest and used the leverage to yank out the cane. A puff of ash rose up. Marid didn’t glance back.
“Ben?” I asked, looking.
He was picking himself up, brushing himself off, and his scowl hinted at a foul mood. “I hate vampires.”
“Present company excepted, I’m sure,” Marid said, donning a crooked smile.
Ben huffed, and asked, “You okay?”
I was frowning at the gash in my arm. “Nothing a little time won’t heal.”
“Jesus,” he muttered, coming at me and holding my arm up to study it. He pulled me close and dropped a kiss on my cheek. A big chunk of tension drained away at that, and I breathed in Ben’s scent.
Marid leaned on his cane, regarding us with amusement.
“Thanks,” I said, over Ben’s shoulder. Marid waved me away with a tip of h
is hand.
“How are we doing otherwise?” Ben said, keeping hold of my hand.
I listened and couldn’t hear anything that sounded like fighting. When I tipped my nose to the air, the only blood I smelled was my own.
“Almost finished,” Marid said. “We’re cleaning up now. We managed to drive them off.”
“How many did we lose?” I asked.
“Two of Caleb’s pack, and one of Ned’s Family,” the vampire answered. “Not bad, all in all.”
“But not good,” I said, and he shrugged. I hoped Caleb was okay. I wanted to find him, to see if I could do anything to help.
The three of us went back to the path, and from there to the hill where we’d started. We let Marid walk on ahead.
“I’m glad Cormac wasn’t here,” Ben said softly.
“He’d have been okay.” I wasn’t sure how convincing I sounded.
“I worry about the day he isn’t,” he said.
“Well, that’s what family does.” It wouldn’t matter if Cormac was a corporate drone or a firefighter. We’d still worry.
“If he ever gets bitten, if a werewolf ever infects him, he’ll kill himself. You know that, right? If it had been him instead of me who’d been bitten that night, he’d have just shot himself.” Many years of worry strained his voice. Cormac had been hunting werewolves a long time.
“That was before Amelia,” I said. “You think maybe she could change his mind?”
“Or drive him even more crazy.”
The others had gathered at the top of the hill. The meeting might have been going on, uninterrupted, if there hadn’t been so much blood and sour sweat on the air, smells of death and fear. Bodies—naked, human—lay on the sloping lawn. A wolf with a human companion—another werewolf—moved around the area in a patrol.
Ned watched the tableau. He was holding his left arm with his right, and I had to study him a moment to figure out why. His sleeve hung in tatters, and the arm inside was likewise shredded. A wound like that, there should have been more blood, but the shirt still shone white, and the flesh underneath was strangely clean. Vampires didn’t have much to bleed. Still, the skin and muscle hung in ribbons, pale and pink, torn away from the shoulder, rent in jagged tears by claws and teeth. An ivory gleam of bone, the round joint of the shoulder, shone through. A wolf hadn’t just attacked, it had hung on and gnawed. Ned seemed strangely unconcerned.
Antony and a pair of vampires from Ned’s Family also stood nearby, keeping watch.
“Are you all right?” I said to Ned.
“This is nothing,” he said. “What about you? I could smell you coming fifty yards away.”
I looked at my own arm, which in contrast to his was red and dripping. The swathe of pain throbbed in time with my pulse.
Ben unbuttoned and pulled off his shirt. Taking my arm, he used the shirt as a makeshift bandage, tying off the wound and mopping up blood. The pressure settled the pain to a dull roar.
Caleb stood a few yards away from us; his eyes shone dull gold. Rage contained. He cupped a cell phone in his hand, pressed to his head. “I’ve got a cleanup,” he said. Then, after listening a moment, “More of theirs than ours.” He clicked the phone off and shoved it in a pocket.
“I have people who can take care of that,” Ned said.
“This is my territory, vampire, I can handle it.”
“I think there’s enough mess for both of you to clean up,” I said. Even I thought I sounded tired.
“You two all right?” the alpha werewolf asked. He didn’t seem tired at all; rather, he seemed ready to go another round.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Anyone who isn’t needed here should get indoors,” Caleb said. “Ned, you, too. Get that fixed.” He gestured at the injured arm.
“I can help—”
“We’re supposed to be working together. Isn’t that what this is all about? We work together, I trust you, you trust me. Try to keep blowups like this from happening. Keep the buggers out of our city.” He shook his head. “I’ll be at your place in twenty minutes.”
“All right, then,” Ned said.
Ben touched my arm and nodded down the path; I caught the scent just before they appeared—a new group of werewolves, burly, broad shoulders built up from manual labor, five-o’clock shadows from being up all night. Caleb approached them, and they ducked their gazes in submissive greetings. In moments, they went for the bodies, slinging them over their shoulders. The visual—these strong and silent men carrying off naked, bloodied bodies—was surreal, definitely criminal.
“He’s right,” Marid said, after we’d watched a moment. “We should go.”
Chapter 16
THE GROUP of us trooped back up the path in the other direction, to Ned’s town house. Before we left the park and the blackout area created by the disabled CCTV cameras, Ned adjusted his coat to hide his ravaged arm. To anyone watching, via camera or otherwise, we’d look like a group of acquaintances walking home after a night out. Actually, Marid, Ned, and Antony probably wouldn’t show up on the cameras at all. I stuck close to Ben.
Back at the town house, Emma came running into the hallway from the parlor.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Before I could answer, Ned closed and locked the door and shrugged off his coat so that she had an excellent view of the injured arm. Emma gasped, bringing her hand to her mouth. A very human gesture.
Recovering quickly, she pointed vaguely to the back of the house. “I’ll go get something for that.”
“That would be lovely,” Ned said, a weak smile shifting his beard. “You might find some bandages for Ms. Norville as well.”
“I think I’m just about healed,” I said, unwrapping Ben’s shirt from my forearm. The wad of torn fabric had become a crusty mess. I frowned at it, then frowned at my arm. Sure enough, a fresh scab colored an angry, healing pink ran down the skin. When I flexed the muscle, it hurt, but not as much as it had before. Go go super healing.
“I’ll just throw that away for you,” Emma said. I handed the bloody shirt to her, and she ran back down the hall and disappeared around a corner.
“What exactly does one do to fix something like that?” I said to Ned, nodding at his own injury. Then I remembered. “Wait a minute, you’re not going to ask me to help with the first aid, are you?”
“One would think you’d been in such situations before,” Ned said amiably.
“You mean have I had injured vampires beg a pint off me? Yeah.”
Ben looked at me. “Wait a minute, what?”
Ned narrowed his gaze. “I can fend for myself, never fear. Let’s retire to the library, shall we?”
Infuriatingly, Antony was chuckling. “She’s a bit jumpy,” he said to Ned, leaning in to whisper. As if I couldn’t hear him.
“You can hardly blame her.”
“I hate vampires. Did I mention that?” Ben whispered at me.
I patted his arm. “Several times.”
He frowned. “I’m going to find a new shirt. I go through more shirts on these trips…”
Before he left to go upstairs, he leaned in for a kiss, which I gave him. His lips were warm, comforting, and sent a flush to my toes. I wanted to curl up with him right now—best way to heal. Soon …
When Ned settled into a big armchair by the fireplace, he actually winced and sighed. So he was in pain. I hadn’t been able to tell. He arranged his arm so it didn’t have pressure on it, ripping away the last of the sleeve and baring most of his torso. He had the body of a middle-aged man—a healthy middle-aged man in good shape, but the sparse hair on his chest was gray, and the skin was loose. Ben returned wearing a clean white T-shirt at about the same time one of the human staff brought a tray with tea and finger food, some kind of breaded meat pies. I wanted to dump the whole plate of them into my mouth. It made me think Ned was used to entertaining tired, injured werewolves.
Emma returned, carrying a pint glass in both hands, stepping carefully because
it was filled almost to the rim with dark, viscous blood. She knelt by the chair, hovering, concerned, and Ned took the glass from her without spilling a drop.
Giving the rest of us a glance, he said, “Pardon me,” then tipped the glass to his lips. He drained it in a single go, throat working as he swallowed, not needing to stop for a breath. He kept the glass upturned for what seemed a long time, letting the last of the blood drain into his mouth. The tangy, heady odor of the liquid permeated the room. My nose wrinkled, and my shoulders tensed.
I hadn’t noticed how pale Ned had turned until the infusion endowed him with a flush that started in his face and moved downward. Drops of blood began to seep from the wound at his shoulder. Where blood had poured from my wound, the liquid seemed to coalesce along Ned’s. Clotting along the skin and muscle, it built up, took on shape, faded in color, melded into the jagged skin at the edge of the wound. The healing seemed to happen both very slowly, and all at once, like watching plants grow on a time-lapse film.
He closed his eyes and relaxed against the back of the chair. Flexing his hand, new muscles tensed and released. The arm was almost back to normal, only a fine web of pink scars revealing the injury.
“That never gets old,” Marid said. “It’s marvelous.”
“Hell of a cure-all,” Ben said. He offered me a meat-thing. “Hors d’oeuvre?”
I scowled at him. I couldn’t decide if I was starving, or if I’d lost my appetite completely.
A banging sounded from the door to the courtyard. The noise was slow, loud, steady, like someone was trying to break in.
“That will be Caleb,” Ned said. “Emma, will you let him in?”
She frowned. “He’d be happier if you met him.”
“He’ll see me soon enough. This isn’t the time for status and posturing. He can put up with an underling showing him in.” He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You’re not an underling, you’re a protégé. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t understand that.”
She pressed her lips and returned to the hallway.