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He drew the battle out, wanting the practice, wanting to sustain the chemicals now racing in his blood and feeding his brain with a whole lot of feel-good.
With a flurry the death vamp came at him, a roar in his throat. Kerrick caught his sword in an upswing, threw his arm in a circle in order to catch his opponent’s arm, then flipped the sword out of the death vamp’s grasp. The force of the blow and the sudden lack of sword weight sent his opponent flipping over twice before his wings caught air.
But it was too late.
Kerrick flew at him, drew his knees up, then planted both feet on the death vamp’s chest, thrusting him backward toward the ground. He drew his wings in close, all the way to half mount, following fast as he locked stares. His adversary’s wings slowed him but gravity pulled Kerrick in tight. He lifted his arms then plunged. His sword pierced his enemy’s abdomen just below the sternum. A cry filled the air.
Half a second before the pretty-boy hit the asphalt Kerrick spread his wings and eased the last few feet back to earth.
Breathing hard, he paused to draw in his wings swiftly through his wing-locks. Once he was settled, his muscles thinning to normal, he retrieved his dagger still stuck in the flesh of the second opponent. He wiped the blade, two swipes on the kilt. He folded the dagger, another quick dematerialization this time of steel, back to his weapons locker.
He finished the job quickly, severing the rest of those beautiful heads. Dying blood altered even the features, enabling every death vamp to lull the next mortal into a sense of awe and therefore safety before the fangs took the jugular. The skin, with its hint of blue, was … exquisite, especially at night—and that was exactly the point, to stun the victim with unnatural beauty.
He scouted the area for more sign of the enemy, but nothing returned to him except the distant rumble of a Harley engine. As he started to regain his breath, he folded his sword back to the locker.
He spread more mist far and wide, drew his phone from his pocket, then thumbed it once. He took another deep breath and stood upright. Sweat poured. He could smell the blood of his adversaries on his skin and on the leather of his weapons harness and kilt. Looking down, blood spattered even his sandals and bare toes.
“Central.”
“Hey, Jeannie,” he said, catching his breath. “Four to pick up. Make it quick.”
“It’s not even a quarter after six, barely dark.”
“No shit.”
She sighed. “I guess this is going to be one of those nights and it isn’t even a full moon. Okay. Locked on. Cover your peepers.” Kerrick closed his eyes. A flash of bright light took away the bodies, the debris, even the blood on the ground.
He made his way to the top of the alley and felt his chest tighten. This was the part of his job he loathed. Drained and dead mortals always gave him the shakes. The T of the alley dead-ended about fifty feet to his left. Decrepit apartments sat opposite in a low-slung row, bars across all the first-story windows.
He moved fast until he saw who had been chosen to feed the death vamps’ addiction and what had been done to them. Then his feet slowed as though he slogged through mud.
Only one adult among them. Christ. He’d had a whole lot of years to get used to the carnage, but this was off the rails.
He swallowed bile.
A mother lay at an awkward angle, drained, her back broken. Two young boys to her left, necks ravaged from the feeding. However, the worst was on her right, a young teenage girl with her small skirt pushed up around her waist and her legs split wide, her white thighs covered in blood. He fell to his knees, lifted his face and arms to the darkening sky, then let out a roar.
A familiar agony swamped his chest, a misery that lived in him now, dictating the progress of each night, tearing up his soul. He drew the girl’s legs together and pulled her skirt down. “You have been avenged,” he whispered. “May your journey to the arms of the Creator be swift, and may you know peace.”
Peace.
What would that be like? He never slept through the night. None of the warriors did. He awoke to terrible images, and these would likely torture him more than once in the coming weeks.
He withdrew his phone again, thumbed, ordered the uptake. He closed his eyes and saw the flash of light.
Once the job was done, he spoke into his phone. “Jeannie, fold me back to the basement. Now.”
“You got it.”
He felt the vibration.
Once in his dwelling, in the dark cavernous room below his house, he dropped prone to the cement floor then stretched his arms straight out. He had no outlet for the pain he felt, for the fury. All he could do was this: take a moment to grieve, then reaffirm his vows of continual vengeance, of living his solitary existence, of devoted service to Endelle as a Guardian of Ascension.
Why take a vow,
When all vows are broken?
—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth
Chapter 2
Alison stared at her fingers, still held in an upward claw-like position. She kept testing the pull on her arm. She wasn’t even certain how long she’d been standing there, mystified by what she had done.
Sweet Jesus.
A pocket of time.
Surely she had just passed all the bounds of nature now.
So what did that make her? Like she didn’t know—a freak, a one-woman sideshow.
She glanced at the shattered window, at the shards of glass, lit up by the nearby parking-lot light standard, a glittering glass rain suspended two stories above the earth. So exactly how long had she been standing here, frozen in place, stunned by the enormity of what she had done, of what she was still doing?
She looked once more at all the splintered glass, just sparkling away, unmoving, a visual poem suspended in time.
A lump formed in her throat about the size of her car, and not the little Nova, but the super-sized Hummer. Her eyes felt chili pepper hot all over again. She just didn’t understand who she was. How could she be doing this, standing in her empty-shelved office, her hand outstretched, her fingers cupped, a piece of time held within? Where did all this preternatural ability come from? And what possible purpose could it ever serve?
The unity family hung by the sheer strength of her powers just three feet or so beyond the windowsill, heads aimed at the asphalt parking lot as though diving into a pool.
She drew her arm back slowly and felt the hard pull on her muscles. Time retreated for her, a lethargic reversal. The statue came back to her followed by the glass fragments, all returned in perfect accord to re-form an unblemished window. She had never tried out any of these skills before, stasis of objects, retrieval of time pockets.
