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Three seconds later, multiple bullets hit him from every direction, and the little geek’s glamor shattered to show an odd-looking woman: a species I couldn’t ever remember seeing before. More bullets hit her, and she fell to the ground. I had to assume our people would finish her off, because Marco needed help — he was gravely injured, and I needed to keep Leonardo away from him long enough for Marco to heal himself.
I levitated up to Marco and pulled my sword. As a true ruling couple, I could fight Leonardo without undermining Marco, and that’s what I did. I was nowhere near as good at sword-fighting as the ancient vampire, but I was pissed, and focused, and it’s possible some of Marco’s skill came to me, because I was suddenly better than I’d ever been before.
Marco went to the ground, and I could feel him working to mend his heart, which had been ripped apart by silver, but I couldn’t focus on him. One of Leonardo’s arms was gone, which meant he was down to a single sword, rather than two, and that’s probably the only reason I managed to keep him away from Marco while my vampire healed.
Yes, I could’ve shot the bastard, but politically speaking, it would mean more if I finished him off as part of the same fight he’d been having with Marco. I had a gun I could pull, and I would absolutely do so if it came to it, but I was holding my own, so I kept at it with the sword.
And then, suddenly, Leonardo wasn’t as powerful, and Kirsten was gone. Both things happened at the same time, so I had to assume Kirsten had taken someone to another realm, but I kept my focus on the vampire in front of me, who looked stricken. I took the opportunity to grab a throwing knife and catapult it towards the space between the chest armor and the arm armor, assuming he’d lost the other arm when Marco had managed to get his sword into that spot on the other side.
And then I focused the kind of energy Kirsten often handed me into the sword I was holding, and it was suddenly lit up. I had no idea how long I could hold onto it, so I stabbed it towards the vampire’s heart. The fiery blade sank in, melting through the armor and into his chest, but he was still standing so I ripped it out and aimed to take his head off, but he moved before the second swipe could get to him. I did something of half a figure eight, swinging my sword in a huge arc, hoping to take the ancient vampire’s head off on the return trip with the sword, but he swung at me and I pushed backwards so he only disemboweled me and didn’t cut me in half, and I stood with my guts hanging from me, pooling around my naked ankles. In a flash, I went from my human form back to my warrior form, grasping the sword the entire time, which was now just a sword and no longer lit with power. Marco swooped in with his two swords and took Leonardo’s head off at the chin with one while he stabbed the other into the vampire’s heart through the hole I’d made in his armor. I’d made it into the motherfucker’s chest, but how was I to know a Neanderthal’s heart wasn’t as off-center as a modern-day human’s heart?
I felt Kirsten return to the realm, and I told her, Burn him. He’s mostly headless, so he’s legally dead, even if he isn’t actually dead. It’s still our kill, you’re just coming along after the fact and doing away with the body.
I landed on the ground beside the ancient vampire’s body, and Kirsten flashed to me from across the field holding a sword she’d made of a screaming ruby red, violent and dangerous. She touched my shoulder, offered me the sword, and I put mine into the scabbard at my hip, stepped forward, and put the light sword into Leonardo’s chest. The eyes in his head, forty yards away, flew open, and Kirsten shot a stream of red from her fingertips into his head. While she did this, the two of us focused energy inside his head, and a few seconds later, brains leaked out the large hole at the bottom. When we do that to an intact head, it explodes. I walked to the head and used the sword to tilt it up so I could swipe the sword around inside the skull from below, until the scent of burnt flesh and brains made me want to puke.
Marco stepped beside me with a sledgehammer, and he hit the skull until the bones were in a thousand pieces. We walked back to the body to find Etta ripping his chest open and removing what was left of his heart. Kirsten sent more of her red laser to it, and seconds later, only a small pile of ashes was left.
I dug around the bottom part of his skull with the light sword, and then the top part of his neck, still on his body, making sure the brainstem was burnt up, along with the top four vertebrae of his spine. It stank to high heaven, but I kept at it until I was certain the bastard wasn’t going to find a piece of brainstem he could come back from.
“The rest of the body needs to be destroyed as well, and then the ashes put into a whole bunch of different rivers,” I said when I was satisfied the heart and brainstem were nothing but ashes. “I don’t trust this bastard not to have a horcrux in his big toe.”
Kirsten laughed, kissed me on the lips, and then turned and burned the rest of the body. "As far as I know those don't actually exist, but I get what you mean, and I agree."
And then she did the same with the body of the lion Nathan had defeated. It’d been a close call right up to the end, but when the lion’s Master Vampire had been slain, he’d died as well. I knew from Marco’s mind that this lion had to be thousands of years old, a companion to Leonardo, who’d kept him away from the public until something interested him enough to want to take a powerful territory over.
I didn’t have to ask Marco if he was okay because I knew exactly how he was without asking — weak and still injured, but able to make a good show of being okay for another ten to fifteen minutes before he needed blood.
I needed a meal after the multiple changes, but I was fine, otherwise, and I tilted my head to give him access. “Drink, and then we’ll thank our people and see to their injuries.”
With me offering like this, it wasn’t a sign of weakness for him to stop long enough to recharge. It was the opposite, having a warrior shapeshifter as strong as me offering sustenance in this manner was proof of his power.
He took a lot, but he did it quickly, downing thirty ounces from me in the time most vampires would drink eight to ten ounces, and then he was in the air again with me at his side because he grabbed my hand and flew both of us back to the boulder, where he told our people, “Our enemy is dead!”
I looked around the space and saw that many of our people were in bad shape. Venom was missing an arm, an ear, and he had some nasty gashes on his left leg and left hip. Augustus and Blaze were bloody, but I only saw a few injuries on each, with no actual missing body parts. Kane, our lion friend from Atlanta, was still in human form despite the fact one arm was gone below the elbow, and he had some scary stab wounds leaking blood in his torso. I saw a lot of lions and wolves in their animal form, and I figured they’d been forced to change and heal.
While Marco talked to our people, thanking them, I telepathed Etta. Please tell me you still have people you can scare the fuck out of. We need to power this crowd up again, but I’m not sure how many of them are up to sex.
Of course I do. I’ve killed all but two of those scheduled for death, and we still have two dozen shapeshifters we can torture. One of those we were only supposed to torture was rescued by one of Leonardo’s people, and I killed both rescuer and rescuee, but we’ll deal with that later.
He went from protected prisoner to combatant, I told her. His death won’t be on your head. Give us what you can, please.
Becca and Kendrick had been between the torturers and the sex, since they opted to power both Marco and Etta up by using sexual torture that created lust and fear, and I sensed them jumping back into action the second Etta must’ve given the command for the people under her control to begin again.
I also sensed people in the crowd in front of us taking part. Venom pulled one of the prey shapeshifter men from under the stage and licked the young man’s neck, no doubt telepathing him about how bad his bite was about to hurt. Razor bent one of the gay bottoms over and crammed four fingers up his ass, and I somehow knew, from two hundred yards away, Razor was telling the young man he was about to be fisted without lube while he ordered the owl shifter to jack himself off.
Others in the crowd understood what we needed — fear and lust, and more Tops began little scenes with bottoms they knew could be flipped into full-on-lust spiced with fear by issuing a few orders and delivering varying degrees of pain.
The power and energy came to us up on the boulder, and this time, Marco and I funneled it back out to the most injured of our people, and our people’s people. Fifteen minutes later, limbs were restored and all the stabs and gouges were smoothed over, and the crowd was having sex again. Another great big orgy, a celebration of life and victory, until our entire combined territory glowed with power. Interestingly enough, we powered all of Florida as well this time, my wolves and Kendric’s vampires, likely because Kendric was here, but we’d need to have a discussion about that at some point in the future, since I owned Florida and Marco did not. Nor did he want to take it from Kendric.
Chapter 28
Marco
The Monkey King had made an appearance, watching Kirsten fight while standing off to the side in his traditional garb, which meant he intended for people to know he’d been present. I knew he’d acted as something of a guide or teacher while Kirsten was learning a new skill, long before she’d become the Harlequin, but I was under the impression he hadn’t remained in her life once she left China.
The other members of the divinity were still here, and were currently fucking either each other, or super-strong shapeshifters, and it felt as if they were focusing on aiming as much energy at me as possible.
I’d thought this was about healing our people, but now I worried they knew something else was coming. I aimed my thoughts at Mordecai and tried to ask a question without actually asking it.
