Diana's Hound: Bloodhounds, Book 4 (17 page)

“Killed by vampires who wanted him to build his
secret weapon
,” Nate replied. The heat of the sun couldn’t compete with the ice running through his veins. “Vampires whose plans to kidnap me the Guild was made privy to far enough in advance to secure my safety. Was Thaddeus Lowe meant to kill me before he got greedy?”

“It was a calculated risk. We didn’t expect—”

“Satira,” he interrupted. No, they wouldn’t have expected a girl to ride neck and neck straight into danger with one of their men. Surely they couldn’t have anticipated Wilder transferring his loyalty to her. Without Satira, Nate would have died in Thaddeus Lowe’s lair, in all likelihood at Wilder’s own hands. Nate might have considered it a mercy.

The man slipped his hand into his pocket. “So now you see. It’s been a series of lamentable misadventures.”

All with the aim of cutting loose those who might protest the next stage of the Guild’s evolution. Those like Archer and Wilder and Nate himself, which could only mean that men like Emmett would not be far behind.

And Diana… Nate could still feel her. Fighting. Close. The Guild might not kill her at all, not at first. They’d take her, cut her into pieces to see what made her tick, to see how she existed at all.

The very thought stirred his ice-cold rage into action.

He didn’t realize he’d decided to shoot Vance until the bullet slammed into the bloodhound’s shoulder, and even then his only thought was that one of the final two needed to go into his heart.

Grimacing, Vance threw something to the ground at Nate’s feet. It exploded with a hiss, blooming smoke that seared Nate’s throat and stung his eyes. One of his own inventions—of course—the same little clever twists of thin paper that he’d pressed on Diana. Some silver fulminate—a fraction of a milligram, so little it should have been good for nothing more dangerous than a novelty—but the explosion was only the first part of a clever chemical reaction.

The smoke wouldn’t kill him, but it blurred his vision too much to waste the final two bullets. Stumbling back, Nate scrubbed the sleeve of his coat over his eyes, but Vance had vanished. Footsteps echoed a block over, and Nate started after them but stopped dead when something in his chest tugged him in the opposite direction.

He spun, and found himself facing a brick wall. But beyond it—

Diana.

Coughing away the last of the smoke, Nate broke into a run.

Chapter Ten

When the rogue hound had knocked the first knife out of her hand, Diana rallied. When the second went sliding across the stone and into a gutter, she had to admit she might be in trouble.

He was sliced and bleeding from a dozen wounds, but the madness lurking in his eyes had broken free. He laughed as he feinted to the right before slicing toward her side.

She jerked out of reach of the arcing blade, and he doubled back, slamming her with a fist to the gut. Hard—but not as hard as Hunter could hit.

She struck back, crashing her elbow into his temple.

He wheeled backwards, eyes unfocused for one fatal second. She pressed her advantage, knocking into him, and the heel of his boot slipped on a slick cobblestone. He tumbled back, and Diana after him, down a short flight of wide steps at the end of the alley.

He hit the wall at the bottom, and Diana scrabbled on top of him, levering all of her weight down on her arm across his throat. His heels scrabbled against the cobblestones as he smacked at her sides and legs. When that didn’t dislodge her, he bucked and twisted, the breathless curses slipping from his lips growing fainter and fainter. She held tight, not daring to loosen her grip for a moment.

She wanted to know exactly what had happened to her husband. She wanted to know
why
. But she couldn’t afford the luxury of questioning, not when she could so easily lose the upper hand. So she pressed on, harder, as the hound’s face reddened and his eyes bulged.

“Diana.” It was Nate’s voice, soft and wary and coming from somewhere off to her right.

“Not yet,” she ground out, relief warring with shame. Relief that he was all right, and shame to know he had to see her like this, with very personal murder in her eyes and at her hands.

“He deserves to die. For what he did to your husband, for what he did to you—but quickly, unless we’re to die with him.”

She couldn’t look at him, but she couldn’t look at the hound, either. She stared at a crack in the stone beside his head as his struggles continued. “I need my knife.”

Nate’s hand fell to her shoulder and slid down to her free hand. He pressed the revolver against her palm. “If you want me to do it…”

“I need my—” Her voice broke. “I need my
knife
.”

After another moment, Nate tugged at her arm, trying to pull her up. “Come on, love. It’s done. We need to run.”

The hound had fallen still, his eyes half open and staring sightlessly. Her stomach flipped over on itself, and she scuttled back until she slammed into the opposite wall. “Oh Christ.”

“Diana.” Nate filled her field of vision, and he pressed the comfortable, familiar weapons into her shaking hands. “Look at me. I need you to get us out of here. We have seven blocks to the airships, and if we make it five before ghouls start chasing us, it’ll be a miracle. I need my bloodhound to hold them off while I find a ship we can take.”

She focused on the cadence of his voice first, the movement of his mouth. Then the words. Get to safety, and hold the ghouls at bay. Simple goals, clear and precise.

She shook herself and nodded. “I can do it.”

Nate folded her fingers around the hilts of her knives. “I know you can.”

“I can.” He trusted her. She felt it somehow—the trust throbbing in her head the way his thoughts had before, a headache without pain—and she sheathed her knives.

It took her a moment to orient herself after the confusion of the fight, but she got her bearings and tugged Nate toward the airdock. They passed windows on their way through the narrow streets and alleyways, curious, pale faces pressed to the glass. How much did they know already? And how many blood-bound ghouls did they command?

She got her answer as they rounded the corner where the bloodhounds had confronted them to begin with. That same bridge stood before them, this time teeming with ghouls.

Nate drew up sharply, his eyes taking on a distant look. “More are coming from behind us,” he whispered. “I can almost—I think I can
hear
them. Not the ghouls, but the commands the vampires are giving them.”

“Wonderful.” She drew her knives and walked faster. “We’ll have to plow through them.”

He drew a steady breath and pulled a knife of his own from his boot. “Get me to the other side of that bridge, and I’ll get us into the air.”

“It’s a deal.” This was the kind of fight she knew, the mercy of freeing a ghoul from his thrall, from the prison of his own shambling body.

Mercy, and she fell into it, meeting the first few ghouls with a wide sweep of her arm. In the first instant they drew back, some instinct in the shells that were left fighting against the vampires controlling them like puppets. But rebellion only lasted a moment. In the next they surged around her, constricting in a tight knot with her at their center.

She poured everything out, every protective instinct that had led her to throw herself on that damned grenade. Not a mindless impulse, but a necessity. An imperative.

Guard. Shelter. Defend at any cost. She knew now what it meant, how
much
.

The ghouls fell, not because she fought well, but because she fought for Nate’s life.

And he fought for hers. She caught sight of him when she turned, his teeth bared in a furious snarl as he sank his knife into a ghoul only to lose it when the creature toppled backwards off the side of the bridge.

It didn’t stop him. He took down the next ghoul with his bare hands, wrestling until he could get a firm enough grip to snap the thing’s neck. Another ghoul surged up behind Nate, a blade raised to sink into his unprotected back.

No.
Diana slammed into the ghoul, pitching him into two others, and put her back squarely against Nate’s just as another ghoul rushed her. She dispatched it with a quick stab and a kick that sent it tumbling down the angled surface of the bridge.

“Almost there,” Nate grated out, taking a careful step forward. “We can’t manage most of those ships on our own, but the one on the west side—the one that’s already in the air but tethered—I can fly that, if you can keep them off us long enough to climb that ladder.”

Almost. Another ghoul—new, judging by his lack of pallor, and
big
—charged them, and Diana had to break away.

“Go,” Diana told Nate. “Get up the stairs and ready the ship. I’m right behind you.”

The ghoul fought hard, every movement a study in coordination, meaning that somewhere out there, a vampire had focused the entirety of his attention on this one being. The creature dodged and feinted, half wide-eyed terror and half deadly determination. It landed a lucky blow to her left shoulder, almost knocking the knife from her hand, and Diana kicked as she spun through the pain.

She pinned the ghoul against the rough stone railing and quickly drew her blade across its throat. But even as blood gurgled from the wound, an eerie whisper emanated from its lips, a taunt from its vampire master. “Running won’t help. You’ll see me in Washington soon.”

Diana didn’t have time to entertain threats. She whirled, searching for Nate. She spotted him halfway up the steep, open stairs winding up the side of the airdock and hurried to follow. Her boots clanged on the metal as she took the steps two and three at a time, eager to get the hell away from Eternity.

As she reached the top landing, the click of a revolver’s hammer being cocked dropped her heart into her stomach. She cleared the roofline and saw the hound from the canal, the one with the crossbow, holding a gun to Nate’s forehead.

Too far to stop it. Too far to do anything but draw in a harsh, shaky breath in the unnatural silence.

The hound stared at Nate, his gaze unwavering. “You didn’t kill me. Why?”

Nate didn’t flinch, didn’t give any sign of fear. “You’re a bloodhound. My life’s work has been keeping the lot of you alive.”

The man’s arm shook. “You’re working against the Guild. I saw you down there, fighting Vance. Heard the shots.”

“I’m working against the vampires,” Nate countered. “If the Guild’s working with them now…then I guess I’m working against the Guild too. But for all that’s happened to me,
I’m
not the one who’s changed. They have.”

Another interminable, breathless moment passed before the hound disengaged the hammer and lowered the gun. “Iron Creek. It’s safe for now, but they’ll come for you all soon enough. I recommend you find another base of operations.”

Nate exhaled. “We’ll do that. What’s your name, son?”

“Cade Sexton.” His gaze swept over Diana. He seemed to understand that she needed more space between him and Nate, because he took a step back, then another. “You didn’t shoot me in the back of the head, so I owe you. This ship’s fueled and ready to fly, and that makes us square. I don’t want to see either of you again.”

Nate hopped on to the deck of the ship before reaching out to Diana. “I hope to see you again, Cade Sexton. I’ll make sure our people know what you did today. You’ll have a place with us, if that day comes.”

“Bite your goddamned tongue,” Sexton growled. “I’ll have a hard enough time explaining this.”

Diana couldn’t hold back her relief, or the smile that rose at his disgruntled tone. “Tell them we coldcocked you and stole the ship. You’ve got the bump to prove it.”

The ship tilted, the deck railing obscuring the rude gesture he flashed in response.

Nate had already disappeared toward the back of the deck, where a three-sided captain’s cabin sat in the shadow of the smaller of two massive balloons holding the craft aloft. Behind it, two large silver turbines spun lazily. Nate fiddled with the controls and brought both spinning to life before shouting to her. “Cut the ropes!”

Both had already pulled taut, and the craft jerked as she sliced through one, then the other. “What else do I need to do?”

He jerked his thumb toward a ladder leading into the hold of the ship. “Stoke the boiler. We need to burn hot to get a head start.”

It didn’t seem complicated until she started shoveling coal into the furnace. It was
sweltering
, almost unbearable. She soldiered on, focusing her attention not only on the task at hand, but on sorting through everything that had happened.

The Guild was dealing with vampires. Was it the sort of thing Doc could have predicted? Did he know his former Guild was capable of such? She’d always assumed he had kept her existence a secret for her safety, because the Guild scientists would have taken her apart bit by bit in their quest for knowledge.

But perhaps he’d held even darker secrets than Nate knew. The possibility made Diana shiver despite the heat of the boiler, and she worked faster, eager to rejoin Nate. Not to be alone with such thoughts any longer.

So many things unsure, undone. Jonah Knight and his consort, Iris—would they be safe? He’d seemed so certain he’d make out all right, even if things went bad, but he also hadn’t known about Vance and the Guild’s shadowed business dealings.