Vesik 04 - This Broken World (31 page)

My eyes swept up to the other fairy on top of the trolls. Beneath the blood and viscera staining his wings, I could make out Foster’s sharp features. He pointed to the southwest. “At least a dozen more trolls. Something else is moving in the woods with them. I can’t see it clearly. Looks big.”

“More knights?” Sam asked, hopping up beside the fairy.

Foster shook his head before he casually beheaded one of the smaller Fae who’d made the terrible decision to play king of the hill. Between the gaps in the corpses I could see a small pack of Unseelie Fae retreating.

“Where’s Jasper?” I asked, projecting my voice so Sam could hear me over the chaos around us.

“He went out with Happy and Vicky. They’re surveying the western front.”

I nodded. Seemed like a good idea.

“It was you,” Zola said.

I turned to meet her gaze and she was staring at me. “You saved us.”

“Aeros told you?” I asked. I wondered if we’d permanently broken time or some such thing, but I wasn’t too worried about it considered the thunder of the battle still raging nearby.

“Do you understand?” Zola asked. “You saved us all. Alan, Philip, everyone.”

I frowned and then I realized what she was saying. “The boy.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Philip went back for Alan when he was shot.”

Something screamed above us and I turned to find one of the winged Fae, one of the knights, leaping toward us from the dome. Aeros swung his torso in a near half circle. His fist connected with the Fae’s armor, which collapsed with a horrific crunch.

The attacker’s inertia completely reversed, and he flew backwards into the monument. Blood splattered against the pale stone and the fairy fell to the earth dead. I didn’t watch as the ley lines absorbed him and the corpse began screaming.

“Talk later,” I said to Zola.

She squeezed my arm and nodded.

“The Court will come behind the knights,” Aeros said. “It will not be long before we know who our true enemies are in Faerie.”

“Vampires!” Foster roared from the top of the trolls. They were on us in moments.

Cornelius slashed his own arms open and the blood began to drip. The first two vampires closed on him. The voice that echoed from Cornelius’s mouth was not his own. It was like the roar of a bear, distorted and amplified a dozen times.

The air shook around him. A sickly red light shot from his hands and pierced both of his attackers. They fell to the ground unmoving, but Cornelius fell to his knees too. The man was killing himself bit by bit, every time he attacked. Part of me admired the blood mage, and another part thought he was completely fucking nuts.

“Damian, left!” I didn’t stop to think about Foster’s words. I just turned to the left, raised my pepperbox, and unloaded six barrels into a vampire’s surprised face. Half his head was gone, but his body was still twitching on the ground.

Something golden and impossibly fast ripped the remnants of the downed vampire’s head off. I reached for a speedloader, but another vampire was already closing behind the first.

The vampire leapt.

My aura flared as my necromancy flashed forward and caught him in mid-air.

Benedict Anderson. I knew him like he was a brother, and I screamed at the darkness flowing from his soul. He tortured the neighbor’s dog when he was four. He stabbed a babysitter with scissors when he was ten. His first murder was at seventeen when he ran down a pedestrian and never looked back. By thirty he found his calling as a gun for hire. He met his fate at forty-five when he was contracted to kill a vampire lord named Vassili. Now his mission was to wipe out Zola Adannaya and Samantha—

I lost my fucking mind. I saw the orders come down from Vassili. He’d ordered us killed. That mother fucker had played us from day one. My scream was beyond rage. The vampire’s body came apart at the cellular level. The rain of gore was enough to stop the rest of his men in their tracks. Foster and Aideen quickly reduced three of them to portable piles of dead flesh.

“It’s Vassili!”
I screamed. I could hear the betrayal in my own voice. “He sent them to kill us!”

“Fucking hell,” Ward spat. “Why can you never trust the god damned vampires?” I turned to find a group of Unseelie Fae swarming over the troll wall.

I needed to reload the pepperbox. I was still shaking from using my necromancy, never mind the revelation I’d just borne witness to. Even with a speedloader, the Fae would be able to kill me before I could reload.

“Damian, we’re here.”

I didn’t have to see Carter to know his voice. I stepped back, set my right foot, and waited. The closest Fae came at me like a striking snake. He pulled his arm back and swung his sword with abandon.

I stepped into the attack. A small shield flashed up around my left arm as I deflected the sword in a crackle of electric blue power. The Fae’s eyes went wide as my hand came up beneath his chin.

“Modus Ignatto!”

The ley lines burned through my aura as a small volcano of flame bathed the area in an orange glow. The Fae’s helmet was so much slag as his body fell to the ground.

I clenched my left hand into a fist as I pulled as much power as I could into the pack marks on my left forearm. It flowed into the Ghost Pack effortlessly. Golden werewolves flashed into existence all across the battlefield. There were shouts from both lines as confusion took hold. The Ghost Pack wasn’t confused at all. They routed the Unseelie forces with a terrible precision.

“Caroline and the Irish Brigade are coming,” Carter said. He eyed the carnage around us. “They were tied up with the Pit.”

I nodded. If the wolves and the vampires were on their way, it wouldn’t take them long to join the battle. “Do they know about the ghosts?”

“Yes,” Carter said. “Caroline lost a wolf to a point blank cannon shot. There … there wasn’t much left.”

“What did you say about Vassili?” Sam asked. Her voice was quiet in the thunder of the fighting.

“He set us up,” I said. “Those vampires were sent here to kill us. To kill Zola, me, and you.”

Zola spewed a string of curses that almost made me blush, but I knew exactly how she felt. Sam just looked sad, and it broke my heart. Sam pulled a phone out of her breast pocket and her fingers blurred across the screen.

She looked up and met my eyes. “I just told Frank. He’ll tell the others.”

I nodded.

“Foster,” Zola said. “Can you take Cornelius behind the lines?”

“Fine … I’m fine,” Cornelius said, but he swayed on his knees.

“Come on,” Aideen said. “If we both carry him it will be faster.” There was no more talk as the two fairies picked up Cornelius and hauled ass down the western line. I watched them go, surprised at how much of an opening there was in the battlefield.

“We’ve broken their entire western line.” Carter was filled with a golden light as he stepped through the dead trolls. “We need to tighten the noose. Bring the vampires around behind their lines.”

Sam climbed back up onto the trolls to keep watch. Aeros’s gaze watched our backs.

Ward rubbed his left shoulder. “Can we trust any of the vampires?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and then I thought back to everything I’d been through with some of them. I counted them among my friends, and even my family. “Yes, I trust Vik, and Dominic.”

Zola nodded in agreement. “Ah can always check their motives. A little touch of necromancy is the best truth serum.”

“Vassili,” Aeros said. “I am disappointed. I truly thought he’d come to support Camazotz.”

“All he’s going to support now is a funeral pyre,” I said.

“More vampires,” Sam said, her voice flat.

“Anyone we know?” I asked, and the fact I had to ask it made me sick.

“No, but they’re … fast. They’re almost here. Get a shield up!”

Sam leapt backwards off the trolls and I caught her as Zola finished dragging her cane in a wide circle.

“Orbis Tego!”
Zola said. The glassy dome snapped into existence as the first vampires leapt completely over the troll wall. They smashed themselves against the dome of force, breaking their bodies. The dome shimmered as more and more vampires joined them.

I stared at the mass, and my Sight showed me absolute horror.

“They’re all zombies,” I whispered. “They’re all zombies!”

The pile grew. Aeros hammered away as many as he could, sending blood and pieces in every imaginable direction, but he wasn’t fast enough. Electric blue lightning flew away from the shield as it decayed. In my own terror, I sent my aura flashing out across the battlefield, and I screamed one, desperate, word.

“Happy!”

The shield fell.

The bear materialized, and hell came with him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

H
appy hit the collapsing wall of vampiric zombies like a wrecking ball. Vicky rode through the portal behind him. Her hair trailed out behind her, and soulswords blazed from both her hands. She tucked herself into a ball and spun. The resulting carnage as those unstoppable swords struck through the vampires was beyond words. Entrails and organs and limbs flashed through the air in a thunderstorm of blood. Vicky unfolded and slid to a graceful stop, her soulswords at the ready against a rain of gore.

The avalanche of vampires was diverted, but we were still surrounded. Zola fired off a ten-foot wall of flame that took out the northeastern line of zombies. Ward was on his knees, frantically carving something into the open wood on my staff. I stepped in front of him and bashed one of the vampires away with a lucky strike from a small shield. I could see Foster and Aideen rushing back to us, but something else saw them coming too. Four of the zombies peeled off and streaked toward the fairies.

Carter locked in with one of the vampiric zombies. The thing struck over and over as Carter snarled and bit and clawed.

I recognized Sam’s scream in the blur of motion around us. I couldn’t see her, and it scared the hell out of me. Happy bounded into the fray, and his jaws made short work of one of the zombies. There were still twenty or more left. They were distracted by the bear and Vicky and Sam.

Aeros was covered in the damn things. They pummeled and kicked and clawed at his rocky form and I only hoped they couldn’t hurt him.

Ward stood and grabbed the end of my staff like a baseball bat. Electric blue fire ran through the intricate inlays of Magrasnetto as he planted his foot and swung at the nearest vampire. There was a grunt, and then the zombie collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

Sam screamed again, and this time I could see her through the carnage. She limped toward me, her left arm motionless at her side. Two of the vampiric zombies closed in on her, and I was too far away to do anything.

Everything was happening too fast. I could barely track the vampiric zombies attacking me, much less the swarm attacking everyone else.

Vicky rammed a soulsword through the head of my closest assailant and then set her back against me. “Zola’s hurt, Sam too.”

“Zola?” I said.

Vicky nodded. “Carter is with her. Jasper is coming,” and then she leapt back into the fray.

I drew the focus and added my own soulsword into our defenses. I slammed another vampire to the ground and removed its head, but another clipped my ankle from behind. I went down hard. I didn’t need to look to know it was shattered.

“Damian!”

Foster’s voice pierced the screams and snarls of my allies. Blood sprayed across my face as the zombie’s head bounced across the ground in front of me. I screamed as Aideen’s healing spell came from nowhere and knit the bone.

I charged forward, carving a bloody path to Sam. One of the vampiric zombies was above her on the troll wall. It leapt, and I watched helplessly as it reached out for my sister. Nothing I had could hit it without killing Sam. I couldn’t touch it with my necromancy because its aura was buried beneath its skin. I screamed Sam’s name as time slowed to a hideous crawl.

Sam threw herself to the side. I didn’t think she’d gotten out of range.

Jasper hit the vampiric zombie so hard it blew apart the troll corpse behind it as he drove them both into the ground. The dragon’s roar was deafening. His spiked tail whipped forward and impaled two more vampiric zombies before it swung back around and turned them to mush on top of another zombie. In the same motion, his jaws snapped forward, splitting a stunned Fae in two.

I ran to Sam and scooped her up, running as fast as I could through the opening Jasper had created. My ankle hurt like hell, but I knew my brain just wasn’t registering the fact it was already healed. Zola was on the ground, dragging herself up against the monument as Carter eviscerated a vampire beside her.

“Put me down,” Sam said, irritation plain in her voice. “I just need a minute.”

 I set Sam down beside Zola.

“You okay?” I asked, and my voice sounded muffled to my own ears.

“Ah’ll live,” Zola said. “For now.”

Happy had a head in his mouth and dropped it at my feet, panting.

“Thank you,” I said. “Watch over them?”

The bear chortled and began pacing between Sam and Zola.

“Jasper,” Sam said, flexing her broken arm. “I thought I was dead.”

“You are dead.” I ruffled her hair and turned back to the battle.

Foster and Aideen danced through the field of death, a ballet of blood and blades. The flow of vampiric zombies seemed to have slowed and they went down effortlessly. Ward struck at the stragglers as Foster and Aideen engaged the front.

Foster leapt into the air, and as his attacker’s eyes tracked him, Aideen removed the vampire’s upper torso in one brutal strike. Foster laughed as viscera poured out of their foe, and he came down on another zombie, splitting its crown with his sword and lodging the weapon firmly in its gut.

The earth shook as Aeros fell backwards and collapsed onto the bloody field. My heart skipped a beat until the Old God began to drag himself up again. He smacked his fist against his chest and vampiric zombies exploded with the impact. He was still overwhelmed.

Jasper oozed over the remnants of the troll wall, his limbs moving in a blur as he closed on Aeros. His neck flexed, and his jaws opened wide. A tremendous blue cone of fire engulfed Aeros. The vampires fell away into so much ash. Aeros rose to a knee and nodded at Jasper. The dragon made two quick leaps back to Sam before he stood sentinel.