Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Read online

  Rick dropped the tub with a crash that was muffled beneath the keening and screaming the Summanus on the stairs were doing. He came toward Marcus, scowling. “This is not open to debate.”

  “Exactly,” Marcus said and reached for the spare clip in his pocket.

  Rick hit him with the sharp point of his elbow, just under the ear. Marcus slumped, his knees no longer holding him up, as his head buzzed and thoughts jumbled and fragmented. He couldn’t speak. Even his vision was fading.

  “I’m sorry,” Rick said gently. “Your relentless courage is one of the things I love most about you, but it will only get you killed right now. You’re going to have to trust me.”

  He was hauling Marcus back toward the tub. Marcus tried to struggle. Nothing was working properly. He couldn’t even make a fist.

  Rick lowered him to the floor. Marcus could see grit right in front of his nose. Ilaria would be mad about the mess they were making.

  Rick pushed his knees up closer to his chest. Then the tub squealed as it scraped over the floor.

  The last thing Marcus saw was Rick’s face. His black eyes and the tiny smile he used just for Marcus and Ilaria, the one that said he was thinking about how much he loved them and how fortunate that made him.

  “I’ll see you later,” Rick told him.

  The tub was lowered over the top of Marcus, cutting out the light. Marcus tried to scream in protest, but the lack of light was stealing his thoughts.

  Then there was nothing.

  * * * * *

  Rick stuffed the drain hole with a wet towel. That would stop smoke from entering. He propped one edge of the tub up a quarter of an inch, sitting it on a toothbrush he thought might be Ilaria’s. The crack at floor level would let in fresh air for as long as the air remained free of smoke, which rose to the ceiling first and would, with luck, vent out through the cellar door before filling the basement itself.

  Rick rested his hand on the bare iron shell for a moment. Marcus would be angry for a week over this. It was better he be alive and angry, than dead, though.

  Then Rick pulled out his gun once more, reloaded it and ran for the passage and scooped up the two Pyrrhus bombs in his spare arm.

  Three Summanus were negotiating the stairs. Rick shot them all, then waited for them to roll to a halt before climbing the stairs himself, keeping one eye on the door as he went.

  Another Summani showed as he reached the top. Rick’s shot sent it staggering backward, screaming.

  He burst through the door and looked around for targets. The tiny hallway held four of them and there were more in the living room, trying to squeeze into the hallway, trying to reach Marcus.

  Rick shot the four in the hallway. He barely had to aim for they were crammed into the space like sardines. They would have dropped to the floor, except there was no room. They jigged and squirmed, held on their feet. They were no longer interested in Rick.

  He put one of the bombs down between his feet and swung the other, judging his throw. He was naturally left-handed, except that when he had been a child, left-handedness had been the mark of the devil and he had been forced to use his right hand for everything. He still shot with his left hand although now, after so long, his right hand was just as dexterous. He swung the bottle one last time, in a gentle, underarm swing. The bottle arched up over the heads of the four Summanus in the hallway, sliding through the gap between them. It just cleared the door lintel and kept arching up into the air of the living room beyond where even more of the Summanus milled.

  As the bottle began to drop, Rick took careful aim and shot it.

  The explosion ripped apart the living room. Rick could see what was left of the windows blow out like horizontal geysers.

  The shock wave slammed into the inner walls, making them groan. This old place had stood for centuries, though. A little explosion wasn’t going to knock it off its feet.

  The building remained standing, while fire bellowed in the front room. Those Summanus who had survived the explosion surged away from the fire, panicked. That pushed more of them through the hallway door. Others would be tearing through the kitchen door, too. The ones shoving their way into the hall, away from the fire, rammed the wounded ones forward.

  Rick bent and grabbed the neck of the other bottle and lunged for the stairs. Up was the only way out. From the turn in the stairs, he could throw the other bottle.

  One of the falling wounded landed against his back and he shoved himself through the air, out of the way.

  Sharp pain speared the back of his thigh. The hot agony that grabbed at his leg told him one of the falling Summanus had scraped him with their claws or their elbow hook.

  Summanus toxin was just as disabling for vampires as it was for humans. Rick fell forward, his knees connecting sharply with the edge of the first stair. More pain exploded through him, pushing a hard breath out of him.

  His vampire healing set to work to fix the damage to his knees but it couldn’t overcome the Summanus toxin. Not straight away. He grabbed the knee of his useless leg and dragged it forward, then lifted himself up onto the next step.

  More pain, this time just to the right of his spine, on his lower back. He could tell by the force of the blow that it was no falling body. A live Summani was behind him.

  Rick twisted around onto his back, breathing hard. The Summani was standing over him, taking its time. It knew he was helpless. Rick had watched the fuckers toy with humans the way cats did with mice, once they had them at their mercy.

  Behind the Summani, roaring flame licked at the door lintel with white tongues and bright red hearts. Pyrrhus fire burned hotter than anything else. Nothing could survive that conflagration. Except there were too many Summanus standing in the hall, out of reach of the fire. He had to deal with them separately.

  Rick pulled the bottle out from under him and held it up. “Checkmate, asshole.” With the gun in his other hand, he fired at the bottle. This close, there was no way he could miss, even with pain making his vision swim.

  He didn’t miss. He felt the fire bloom in his hands.

  In his thoughts, Rick reached out for Marcus and Ilaria and held them.

  Then he felt nothing more.

  Chapter Three

  There was nothing to distinguish the office building on Crocker Street in downtown Los Angeles from any other building around it, except for the Marines guarding the doors and the thorough screening everyone who wanted to enter the building went through.

  There was no signage to indicate the building hosted the unofficial headquarters of the American effort to defeat the Summanus. In the last year, the offices had become the busy junction point for the US military, the civilian hunter coordinators and vampires. Non-human species were lumped together under the title of “others” as there were fewer of them than the first three groups, although between the Curandero and oddities like Dominic with his telepathy, they were not a token group.

  Nial was a frequent visitor to the building, although he didn’t like downtown L.A. and found dealing with the military a strain. Today, none of that registered. He barely noticed the heat, which at this extreme could be draining. He could only keep half his attention on the uniformed Colonel talking at the end of the fold-up table they were sitting around.

  “The loss of Singapore is making most of south east Asia uneasy,” Colonel Kurtz said, “and they were reluctant to cooperate in the first place. How long before they decide that China had the right idea and carpet bomb the islands from India to Papua New Guinea and everything in between?”

  China’s solution to the Summanus problem had been to build a wall the size of the Great Wall across the Shanghai promontory, then destroy all Summanus inside the wall. For a week, they dropped napalm on the rest of the city lying outside the walls, regardless of the civilians there. The residents living behind the wall were now operating under siege conditions, killing anyone who tried to enter without the proper authority.

  No one had dared to count how many humans
had been killed in the razing of Shanghai. It was still too enormous a loss to understand. Now other cities in China were building their own walls, or fortifying whole islands on the coast.

  Nial nodded sympathetically.

  The Air Force general, Price, stirred. “Bombing doesn’t do a damn thing, anyway,” he said. “Our fighters are just burning jet juice up there.”

  “They provide valuable reconnaissance,” the Colonel pointed out. “The Summanus show up nicely on thermal imaging.”

  The general snorted. “The civilian hunters are doing better with their guerilla units. Maybe I should get your people in to train mine, hey, Ford?”

  Lucas Ford had emerged in the last few months as a coordinator for all human hunter groups along the west coast, right up to and including British Columbia. He had become the informal general of the hunters. He nodded now, his gray hair glinting in the overhead strip lights. “Thank you, General,” he said gravely, his normally cynical smile absent. He knew how to deal with the military, how to speak their language, as he was former military himself. He had become a useful go-between for Nial, too. He was good with military strategy, yet often missed the big picture.

  Colonel Kurtz pulled down on the bottom of his shirt. It was his way of changing subjects. “Nathanial, I heard you lost one of your own yesterday. My condolences.”

  Nial breathed in and let it out, controlling his reaction. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said, borrowing Ford’s pleasant tone.

  Ford frowned. “Damn, Nial. That’s too bad. All that knowledge, that history…. Sorry, man.” Ford seemed to have a better understanding of vampires than any of the military did. He, at least, realized just how much was lost when a vampire died.

  “Someone key to your efforts?” General Price asked.

  Irritation touched Nial. It was the first real feeling he’d experienced since Marcus had phoned and given him the news with a strained , harshly controlled voice. “Cyneric Pæga was born in the early ninth century. He survived countless wars and battles. He was a strategist and thinker, better than anyone the world has ever seen. More than that, Rick was a friend. The blow to ‘our efforts’ is terrible. Only he wasn’t just ours, General. The entire world and everyone on it will feel the draft left by his absence and it might yet prove to be fatal for us all.”

  He made himself stop there, even though more hot words and anger were pushing at him, looking for a way to get out. He could hear Winter in his mind, telling him to breathe, to meditate through the moment. Relations with the US military were strained enough without him having a hissy fit because he had lost someone he hadn’t realized he would even miss, until now when Rick was gone. Everyone was losing loved ones, every day. It wasn’t even unusual, anymore.

  Both military officers were staring at him. Ford, though, just looked grim, empathy in his eyes. He lived with the same equations Nial did, every single night, while the military persisted with traditional methods, that were wasted on an enemy who didn’t think as humans did. They couldn’t adapt.

  The need to go home and find Sebastian and see the life in his eyes was almost overwhelming. Nial made himself sit still, though. “Sorry, General. Colonel.”

  “We’ve seen it all before, Nathanial,” Kurtz said gruffly. “It happens in war time.”

  The General nodded agreement.

  Ford leaned back in his chair. “Maybe we should get on with this.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Kurtz said easily. “Do you want to go next?”

  Ford nodded. “It’s been a quiet week. Only the outer suburbs in most of the cities are working as steadily as we all were a year ago. No losses to report, either. We were wondering if it was some sort of lull before the storm. The hatching season is soon.” His gaze flickered toward Nial.

  “It might be,” Nial said carefully. “We had barely seen our first Summani when the larva hatched last year, so there is no way to tell for certain if they do go quiet before the hatching.”

  “We are all still gathering intelligence about the enemy,” Kurtz added. He hesitated. “We had our first Elah ask to join up this week.”

  “Did you recruit them?” Ford asked curiously.

  “We’re still assessing. They’re faster than humans in reaction speed and across land, but they’re not as strong.” He rubbed the back of his head. “First it was women, then gays, now a whole other species we might have to integrate. When I was a green recruit, I thought my sergeant was the biggest challenge I would ever face.”

  The general gave a snorting laugh. “If they’re that fast, they could be good at infiltration.”

  “That is a thought we’re toying with,” Kurtz admitted. “It’s the idea of handing them a AK47 that bothers the hell out of me and not just because I don’t know what they’ll do with it. They came out of the same box as the Summanus. I can’t forget that.”

  “They were in the Blood Stone only because they were the enemy the Summanus used humans to defeat,” Nial reminded him. “The Ĉiela, too, but they will not survive their re-emergence. The Elah are doing their best to adapt to a human-dominant world. I admire them for it.”

  “Maybe they are an intelligence source we’ve overlooked?” the General said, interest building in his voice.

  Nial got to his feet. “Unfortunately, one of only two human contacts with access to the Elah’s leader is somewhere in Russia right now, at the beck and call of the GRU, who are showing signs they want to roll up the drawbridge the same way China did. We’ve lost contact with him.”

  “One of two?” Kurtz said. “What about the other one, then?”

  Nial looked at him, cold gripping his belly. “When Marcus has recovered from Cyneric’s passing, I will ask him. Not a moment before.”

  Kurtz had the grace to look uncomfortable. It didn’t help much, either.

  Nial excused himself and left the room, even though the meeting could and often did wind on for hours yet. Week after week, they debated strategies and tactics that might defeat the Summanus, while the lack of understanding about the Summanus stopped them from settling on anything resembling a plan.

  The General was right. The civilian hunters were more effective than any military, anywhere. They didn’t concern themselves with knowing the enemy. They just killed it. They were getting very good at it, too.

  Nial would head out with Patrick’s troop tonight and burn up some of the useless, acid-bearing energy swirling through him by killing as many of the Summanus as he could.

  He stepped out onto the pavement and took in another sharp breath, this time as the heat seemed to swirl up and slap him in the face. He pulled out his sunglasses and put them on quickly. The light was overwhelming. He could feel the heat stroking his bare forearms, making the skin tighten.

  Vampires couldn’t sweat in reaction to heat or exertion. He had to get out of this and fast.

  He turned and headed for the garage where he had left his car, moving quickly while keeping himself to human speeds. As he walked, his phone vibrated against his chest. He kept moving. The heat seemed to blast up from the sidewalk itself, as well as pulse down from the sun. He wanted to get out of it.

  The garage was shaded because it was in a basement, yet the heat seemed to be even worse. Moist air was trapped inside the concrete walls, making the heat a fetid thing that gripped his throat and clung with damp fingers.

  Nial almost threw himself in the car, started it and turned the air conditioning up to maximum. As the cold air bathed his face and body, he relaxed back in the drivers’ seat and closed his eyes.

  Rick’s death was part of what was wrong with him today. Nial was old enough and wise enough to know he was reacting badly. It wasn’t just the loss of a master tactician to the war effort, either, or the passing of another great vampire and friend. Something else was at work that had yet to make itself known. He knew better than to try digging it up, though. That would bury it even deeper.

  Besides, he was too busy to stop for psycho-analysis just because once more he had proved
he didn’t know himself any better than the average human understood their own psyche. For a fifteen hundred year old vampire, it was pathetic.

  Then he remembered the alert on his phone and reached for it, pleased to have a distraction. The text from Sebastian was typically short, full of hacker idiom and to the point.

  Rory R. e’d u. Wants in. I say Y.

  Rory Rafferty had emailed him. As Nial hadn’t received the email on his phone, she had used one of his old message drops, which made sense. He hadn’t spoken to Rory for a long time. She had been in Scandinavia, the last he had heard about her, passing as human as they all had been, honing her winter sports skills. The old email address she had used was still viable, although only vampires knew of it. She was reaching out via the vampire backdoor, rather than the public contact a human would have. That tended to prove she was who she said she was.

  She apparently wanted to help. Of course Sebastian would be enthusiastic about that. Rory Rafferty always left a trail of stumbling, stuttering men in her wake. Even Sebastian had been caught by her charm and he was close to being in the same caliber as her when it came to connecting with others. Winter had related more than one story about watching Sebastian walk into a room full of lovely people and take his pick. Rory was his female equivalent and even Sebastian had not been immune to her effect.

  Nial smiled as he rested his head back on the headrest once more. Sebastian’s endorsement of her offer to help had clear motivations. Nial, though, valued her for more than her midnight blue eyes and clear white skin.

  Rick’s loss really was incalculable. Rory, though, might just help bridge that yawning chasm. She was a different sort of expert and maybe even the one they needed, now.

  Nial put the car in gear and headed for home, feeling the stirring of something in his heart. It was far too small and too early to call it hope. Yet it did feel like the appearance of a single star upon a velvet black night sky with nothing else in it but impenetrable darkness.