Killing Time (27 page)

Not bothering to answer him, I crossed the yard and headed toward the garage. Ignoring the furious exchange between Koda and his brother, I flung open the side door and went to the truck. The bitterns were still unconscious, oblivious to everything around them.

Remembering that Koda had woven strands of my hair into the bindings, I figured this gave me some influence over how they worked. Turned out, I was right, because the bitterns roused the moment I told them to.

As they came alert, I ordered them out of the truck. The sound of breaking glass carried to us from outside, and somewhere down the street, a woman’s sudden scream was cut off mid-breath. This brought the bitterns’ heads up, their eyes taking on a murderous sheen.

Keeping them in my periphery, I dug the truck’s keys from my pocket and opened the glovebox. Holding their daggers, I turned to face the suddenly wary bitterns—our kind never reacted calmly to naked weapons.

“We are at war,” I told them, “with enemies on all sides. Onas, you are my Second and will stay on my right flank. Târre, you will cover Onas’s side. Neither of you will engage anyone without my command. Understood?”

“As you will it,” they responded, quivering with excitement when I handed them their daggers.

A glowering Koda came into the garage with Ahanu on his heels.

“You woke them.” Koda eyed the bitterns.

“Nomad-
shakti,
may we engage?” Onas asked, his awareness hard on the brothers.

“No!” I flinched at being called
shakti
—weapon—but let it pass since it was intended as an honorific. No matter that the reminder that bitterns were intended as living weapons,
khul shaktis,
set my teeth on edge. “These are allies.”

“What did he say?” Koda asked, not having missed the threat implicit in Onas’s face.

“He asked if he could kill Ahanu and I told him I was thinking about it,” I said, just to screw with the arrogant jackass.

“Really not helping,” Koda muttered, although I caught the glint of amusement in his eyes.

“Mmm. But ever so enjoyable.” Subtly putting myself between him and Onas, I crossed my arms. “I woke the bitterns because we need more fighters.”

“Which would be why you armed them.” Koda’s tone made clear how bad an idea he thought that was.

“When we’re in a state of war, all urges to battle for rank are put aside. Until the war footing changes, their homicidal instincts will be focused on protecting those the alpha designates as
ours
and killing everybody else.”

A humorless grin lifted one side of Koda’s mouth. “So they won’t try to gut us as long as somebody else is trying to. Is that it?”

I barked a laugh. “That’s about right. Nobody ever said the fae were stupid. The last thing they’d want when they were under siege is for their bioengineered creations to turn on them.”

Ahanu had followed the exchange with growing consternation. “You mean you’re not even a real being? You were spliced together in a test tube?”

Koda spun on his brother, rage distorting his features as he got in his face. This triggered the bitterns’ readiness to fight and they fixed on Ahanu.

“Everybody calm down,” I muttered, catching Koda’s arm and tugging him back from his furious brother. Given his incredible strength, I had no doubt Koda moved only because he chose to. Ordering Onas to stand down, I drew breath to speak when the sound of a lot of people headed our way drew us outside.

“Now what?” I grumbled. I didn’t have to look to know that Onas and Târre instantly formed up in the positions I’d commanded them to take.

Rounding the corner that Koda and I had turned less than an hour earlier came about eighty humans. They ran together in a bunch, so tightly packed they barely had enough room to stride without tripping each other. Their expressions masks of terror, the mortals came in all shapes, sizes and colors, including five strippers and three elderly men in motorized wheelchairs. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing, why they were staying bunched up like that, until I noticed the blurs of motion at their perimeter, harrying anyone who stumbled or slowed.

“Vampires,” Ahanu cursed.

I counted four immortals herding the humans down the center of the street, and now that I was looking for them, saw how they reveled in their victims’ extreme fear. “Where are they taking them?”

Koda stirred. “Philippe’s house. I’d bet on it.”

“It will be a slaughter.”

“Isn’t that the point?” Ahanu muttered.

I rolled my eyes. “I meant they’ll be caught in the crossfire when the task force attacks.”

“Either way, the human creatures will die,” Onas surprised me by saying. It was the first time he’d ventured an opinion.

“Not tonight, they won’t.” In Fae, I told him, “Those immortals are our enemies. I want them dead.”

His eyes glinted. “By your will, Nomad-
shakti.
”

“Sephti, what—?” Koda began, but the bitterns and I were already in motion.

As one, we shaded and hurtled across the yellow house’s lawn, meeting the unsuspecting vampires in a whirling blur of ehrlindriel daggers. Our attack came as a total shock to the immortals, and happily it was over so fast, there was never a danger that the bitterns would succumb to the frenzy.

The humans continued farther down the street, gradually realizing their keepers were no longer with them when no one harassed the stragglers. In ones and twos, they broke away from the group. Then the rest of the “herd” realized they were free and scattered in all directions, clambering over cars and setting off their alarms, pounding on the doors of houses farther down the street, shrieking and crying their terror.

Ahanu stared at me. “What did you do?”

“Killed four vampires,” I said in my best droll tone, wiping my twin daggers on the jacket of a dead immortal at my feet.

“But they’re almost impossible to kill.”

I allowed a smirk. “For you, maybe.”

He rocked back on his heels. “What did the fae make when they made you?”

Not having an answer, I disguised my flinch by sheathing my blades. Looking at Onas and Târre, color high in their cheeks, I told them, “Well done.”

“Nomad-
shakti,
” Onas responded as they both bowed, triumph enriching his tone.

“Zihna’s at Tulane.” Ahanu spoke to Koda like no one else was present. “I’m going to get her the hell out of town until whatever’s going on blows over.”

I lifted a brow in disbelief. “You would flee?”

His black eyes flashed with fury. “I would keep my fiancée safe.”

Koda put a staying hand on my arm. “Ahanu is a healer, Sephti.”

Uncertain, I backed off. “But you’re brothers. You’re a warrior.”

“I am. And while all of us could fight well enough, each of the seven brothers was given a different strength. Ahanu’s is to heal. Mine is to kill.”

Koda’s sharing something about himself—his past and his family—brought me up short. Touched, I reached a gentle hand to his cheek. He gave me a soft smile and turned his face to kiss my palm.

Ignoring Ahanu’s muttered curse, I asked, “How far is Philippe’s place?”

“About ten blocks that way.” Koda nodded toward the east—not coincidentally, the direction the humans had been headed. “We should leave the truck. We’ll get closer on foot without them hearing us.”

The sound of an engine pushed to its limits roared closer, bringing us around to face the new potential threat. Tires squealed as an old station wagon careened down the street, its frantic driver over-correcting and sideswiping parked cars on both sides. Crashing through a row of full garbage cans, the resulting explosion of old newspapers, half-full drinks and refuse covered the windshield, blinding the woman at the wheel. She slammed on the brakes; the old car’s heavy back-end swung wide and the vehicle began to slide. The front bumper struck a light post, sending the station wagon in the other direction before a back tire blew. When the car rocked to a stop, the things chasing her caught up.

“Sluagh,” I rasped, dry-mouthed. “I can’t believe Reiden would release them from the Underworld.”

“
Churrashme!
” Onas swore, his hand going to his dagger’s hilt. Târre sidled closer to him, her face blanching.

Koda flicked an irritated glance at the bitterns before meeting my horrified gaze. “The only thing that surprises me is that
you’re
surprised by anything Reiden does.”

A graveyard stench saturated the air, overriding the acrid sting of melting rubber and smoke permeating New Orleans. The sluagh came, riding the wind, their forms tearing and blurring as they flocked like a demented group of lethal birds. Now they were black carrion crows; their cruel beady eyes hungrily fastened on the car’s sole occupant; their sharp, daggerlike beaks clacking together as they flew. Now they were a riotous swirl of rotting leaves, black and leprous with mold, churning inside the agitated cyclone. Now the sluagh were smudges of sooty smoke. Now desiccated flesh and feathers and fungus-coated bone. Now an amorphous, roiling black cloud of dead dreams, of hope crumbling and dying in the unrelenting maelstrom of cold rage and corrosive hatred the sluagh bore for all things living.

The bitterns’ trainer had droned on and on about sluagh, about their tactics and strategies, about their hivelike mentality. That they were thought to be what was left after the death of creatures so evil, even the earth would not accept their remains. That they flocked together, bound by their shared cruelty and hatred, driven by black rage to annihilate every living thing they came across.

If Philippe and his bloodthirsty vampires were the equivalent of supernatural weapons of mass destruction, then the sluagh were a combination of bio-and chemical warfare—indiscriminate in who they killed, horrific in the way they killed and impervious to all known weapons. It was why the Light Faes’ last effort before Reiden exiled them was to condemn the sluagh to a hellish plane called the Underworld.

I fervently hoped Reiden had released only one flock. Given a fraction of a chance, the creatures would wipe every living thing off the face of the planet.

I had no idea how to stop them.

Freezing wind tore at my hair and clothes, making me squint against the airborne sticks, dirt and leaves battering us even as the sluagh’s black essence tore at my awareness.

Reinforcing my mental shields, I struggled against terror, something I’d never known when facing a threat. I couldn’t hide any of us by shading—the psychic onslaught battering my mental shields would be unendurable. Nor could I fight these creatures. I didn’t know of a species that could. Even the Dark king couldn’t control them—he’d simply opened the dimensional gate and set them free.

In training, we’d been taught that the best way to survive an attack was to get yourself elsewhere as fast as possible and hope you weren’t the slowest one in the group. In our current situation, this meant the terrified woman, screaming and sobbing in her car. Yet I was strangely reluctant to abandon her. The idea was actually…repellent.

It became moot when Koda bellowed and charged to intercept the flock. After a moment’s shocked stupor—nobody
ever
attacked sluagh!—I flung myself after him, ignoring my instinct’s gibbering panic. Interestingly, Onas and Târre were a step behind me, their faces white and eyes wide with fear.

“What are you doing?” I yelled to Koda, his incredible speed getting him to the car twenty feet ahead of me.

“Stay back!” he snarled, casting a furious glance at me before lifting his glittering black eyes skyward. As he flung his arms out at shoulder height, I sensed him drawing upon his will. And I had the distinct feeling I was about to see what the astonishing power that filled every space Koda inhabited could do.

Determined to back him up, I pulled my daggers. When they cleared their sheathes, a blazing-white glow limned the blades’ lethal edges and I had to squint against their brilliance. I hadn’t known the fae metal would do that. Of course, I’d never faced sluagh before tonight, either.

I was still in motion, still hurtling toward Koda, when something slammed into me like an enormous fist, almost driving me to my knees. Staggering, I caught my balance and looked up, wondering what the hell the sluagh had done…

Which is when I saw what was left of the flock. Little black tatters sailed in all directions on the dissipating wind they’d ridden, looking like the flaky black ashes of a long-cold fire.

My daggers flickered and returned to their normal flat sheen and the bitterns and I stumbled to a stop. “What just happened?” I asked, bewildered.

A smug Koda glanced my way. “It’s a bad night to be a sluagh.” Looking toward Ahanu, he called, “The driver is injured.”

The healer jogged over, bending at the waist to talk with the terrified woman, calming her enough that she opened the door and let him see to her wounds.

As black flakes fluttered down all around us, I stared at Koda. “You did that?”

He nodded.

“To sluagh? You did that to sluagh?”

“Yes, Sephti.” Koda looked amused.

“But…how?”

“I cancel out dark energy.”

I looked at the flakes fluttering down the street, harried by the breeze. “They exploded?”

“Close enough.”

I’d figured Koda could do something amazing—power like what I sensed in him was never just for show. But…wow.
Sluagh.
“You blew them up? Just by wanting to?”

“Yeah.”

“Very freaking cool,” I whispered. “What about other supe species? Can you blow them up, too?”

Blushing a little, he shrugged. “A couple. Some, like wendigoes, my presence just slows down. Makes them easier to kill, though.” He changed the subject. “The task force rolls in thirty minutes. We have just enough time to get into place.”

I grinned. “Then it’s my turn.”

Koda withheld comment, but his expression spoke volumes. He strode off to make sure that none of the ashy pieces were trying to reconnect—not likely, given their current condition—but I approved of his thoroughness.

“Female,” Ahanu called to me, slanting a sideways glance at Koda. Which told me the jerk wanted to make sure his brother was occupied and not paying attention.