Blood Born (50 page)

They’d fought tougher battles than this one.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Chloe muttered as they hurried down the stairs, but she didn’t hesitate, didn’t drop down and hide her face in her hands and wail. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to stop and kiss her until she was breathless. She had no idea how brave she was. He’d tell her so, when this fight was over.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. This was no cluttered, utilitarian basement. It was cut into hallways and rooms and was larger than most homes. Though he didn’t see Sorin or any others waiting for him, he knew they were close by. He sensed their presence, and probably at least a few of them sensed his. He wouldn’t remain undetected for very long, so he might as well not even try to hide.

He lifted his sword into position, drawn back and ready to swing. It was perfect for taking heads, which was what he intended to do. He wasn’t even going to give the traitor a chance at a fair fight, he was going to take her out as if she were a rabid wolf. The uprising depended on her. With her dead, it would roll to a stop. With the revolution halted there would be no reason for the warriors to come in at all, and therefore no reason
for Chloe to be hunted. That alone was reason enough to fight.

    Sorin was furious; furious with Regina, with Nevada, with himself. He’d believed in the cause, fought for it, killed for it many times over. But lately he’d been having nagging doubts, inexplicable moments of weakness: first Phillip Stargel, now Nevada. Dammit all to hell, all humans were
not
created equal. Some deserved protection. Some were good for nothing but serving as a source of food. Did they have to protect all in order to save some?

When Nevada had touched his face and said “remember,” he had. He didn’t know if she’d cast a spell on him or if it was simply the scent so similar to his daughter’s that had brought the memories flooding back. It was more than the face of a child he’d adored, more than memories of his human life, good and bad. He remembered love. He recalled intensely how it felt, how it flooded his being and made everything else seem unimportant.

He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he couldn’t go on this way. Maybe he could get Nevada to a safe place, then simply disappear. He was through with Regina, with this war, but he wasn’t a soldier who would desert in the middle of battle.

He found Regina in Jonas’s prison cell, as he’d thought he would. With warriors coming in and more and more conduits being awakened, Jonas’s job had become even more important than before.

“Warriors?” she snapped as soon as she saw Sorin.

“Luca,” he said. “And others, including the conduit he’s taken up with.”

Regina whirled and glared at Jonas. “You didn’t tell me there was a conduit in my own house!”

“My senses are overwhelmed,” Jonas said, shrugging
his thin shoulders. Sorin could hear the deep weariness that was so pronounced tonight. Jonas didn’t have a lot more to give; he was all but spent.

Regina looked at the maps around her, and Sorin did the same. But for one, all the pins in the maps were white and black, representing conduits killed and warriors who’d arrived. The one green pin was stuck in D.C., and though the map wasn’t detailed enough to indicate it, he knew the conduit represented by that green pin was in this very house.

Her face twisted with rage. Her movements so quick they were a blur, Regina whipped a long, narrow-bladed knife from the sheath that hung against her hip, and buried it deep in Jonas’s heart. She pulled it out, stabbed it deep again, then again.

“You’re no good to me if you can’t keep up when things get tough,” she said viciously. “You’re useless if you can’t tell me when traitors are at my door!”

Jonas hung there for a moment, his gaze dulling even as he looked at Sorin—not for help, it was too late for that—but with a deeply sad expression of pleading in his eyes.
Stop her
. Then he went to dust.

Sorin looked down at the pitiful heap of empty clothes. This was the end of the line for him, and he knew it. If Regina would so easily kill someone who was still useful, someone who had, as far as she knew, served her well and faithfully, then no one was safe, not him, not anyone. Her eyes glittered red as she kicked at what was left of Jonas, that small pile of clothes and dust. No one was safe from her.

And he’d helped her get to this point. He’d commanded her army, killed conduits, and been instrumental in planning the attacks that were still to come. He’d taken Nevada and her family, cajoled and bullied his little witch into doing what was necessary. He’d set aside the fact that she smelled and looked like the
daughter he’d left behind when he’d been turned, the daughter he’d watched from afar for as long as he’d dared.

Some humans—like Phillip Stargel, like Nevada … like Diera—deserved to be preserved and protected. Regina, self-named queen, would preserve no one if she had her way, he could see that now. To her, everyone was expendable.

“I have to join the fight,” he said, and as the words left his mouth they took on new meaning. Could he take her here and now? She still held the knife, and she was stronger than she appeared to be. She was older than he, and she was blood born. It might be worth the risk, but if he died here, in an unarmed and unplanned attempt to kill her, who would get Nevada out of the house? Diera had grown up without the protection of her father; he wouldn’t leave Nevada that vulnerable.

He didn’t have to fight against the revolution; he just had to walk away. Luca or a warrior would take care of the queen, sooner or later.

Sorin gave Regina a crisp bow and left the room. He walked down a short hallway and stopped, listening; there was a fight taking place ahead of him. He couldn’t reach the stairway without taking this hall, and the way was blocked by an ongoing battle. He hesitated, then shrugged. What the hell.

He rounded the corner, paused to take in the situation. Luca Ambrus fought three rebel vampires; he was armed to the teeth, but he didn’t need weapons to be lethal. Luca was all but washed in blood and dust. He’d killed a lot of vampires in a very short period of time and he wore the evidence all over him.

The conduit Chloe Fallon also held a weapon, though she was obviously unskilled with it. The blood of the kindred had splattered across her clothing, here
and there, but it was obvious Luca had been placing himself between her and danger.

Why had he brought her here? Was he trying to get her killed? At the moment Luca was keeping himself solidly between the rebels and the conduit, but more soldiers were headed this way, so he couldn’t keep it up indefinitely. She had her back to a wall, but there were pockets of opportunity that a rebel was sure to take advantage of sooner or later.

One soldier managed to slip around Luca, and the Fallon woman pointed a flashlight at his face and turned it on. The vampire screamed, dropped his knife, and lifted his hands to cover his eyes as he spun away, useless in the fight for the moment. Not a normal flashlight then, and a fairly effective defensive tool.

Nevada could use one of those …

The blinded soldier drifted too far to one side and was wounded by the wildly swinging blade of another rebel. When he floundered and stumbled into a dangerous path, Luca took his head.

But in the space of a heartbeat, reinforcements had arrived. Luca now fought four, and others would soon be here. An expertly wielded blade slashed close and Luca dodged to the side; another soldier took advantage and shifted, moving closer to Chloe, his blade aimed at a vulnerable spot. She didn’t even see him; her attention was focused on Luca.

Almost without thinking, Sorin surged forward. The rebel soldier wasn’t even alarmed to see Sorin coming, thinking that his commander was joining the fight. That was true enough, just not the way the vampire assumed. In one smooth move Sorin made his hand into a claw and rammed it into the soldier’s chest, ripping the heart from his body and plucking the sword from a hand that was in the process of going from flesh to dust.

Luca’s head whipped around. The conduit had turned at the last second, and saw what had happened. Their eyes met; he saw both fear and relief in hers. He could not even begin to imagine what she saw in his.

Sorin used the sword he’d taken from the rebel to sever another head, and then another. He shifted so his back was to the conduit, his body placed so that, between him and Luca, she was guarded. The tide quickly turned; it took only a few moments for the rebels to grasp the fact that their leader was against them. Almost as one, those who were still alive turned and fled.

And Luca turned to Sorin, sword raised.

“No!” the conduit shouted, shoving against him. “He—I don’t know why, but he’s fighting
with
us.”

“I know,” Luca said. “I just don’t understand why.”

Sorin lowered his sword, taking the chance that he wouldn’t soon be a pile of dust, like the others. “Hell, Luca, neither do I.”

    For the moment Isaac and Duncan were holding their own upstairs—she knew because no one else had come down the stairs—and the vampires in the basement had backed off. They weren’t gone, though. Even Chloe, totally untrained in battle, knew that much.

The basement was like a maze, with crisscrossing hallways and closed doors and echoing noises she couldn’t quite place. With Luca on one side and Sorin on the other, she was as safe as could be, all things considered. She never would’ve thought to trust Sorin, but he’d saved her life tonight, more than once.

“Why did you bring her along?” Sorin demanded angrily as they worked their way down a hallway. The two men worked in concert, making sure each room was clear before they let her walk past the door. They
were moving deeper into the basement, searching for Regina.

“Where could I leave her? Jonas knows where she is every minute. She isn’t safe anywhere, unless I can stop this madness.”

“Jonas is dead. She killed him.”

Luca’s eyes went as cold and gray as frost.

“The sanctuary spell is broken,” Sorin continued.

“Already? It’s done?” Luca asked.

“Yes.”

Chloe felt as if her insides were being ripped apart. No one was safe now. Not her parents, not her friends … no one. They were too late.

Luca cleared another room, moved past the door. “What changed your mind?” he asked.

Sorin slanted an inscrutable look at Chloe as he mirrored Luca’s movements. “Some humans are worth saving,” he finally said. He gave her a wicked grin. “They’re too yummy to let anything happen to them.”

Chloe edged closer to Luca.
Yummy?
She tightened her grip on the flashlight, which so far had proved to be much handier than the short sword.

“They deserve to live,” Luca said, without arguing about the yummy part.

“
Some of them
deserve to live,” Sorin clarified, and then he sighed. “The problem is, how do you decide which ones?”

They reached an intersecting hallway. Luca halted, his head tilted a little, then he shot out a muscular arm and shoved Chloe behind him. The next instant a half dozen vampires exploded from the shadows toward them. Someone fired a gun, the sound deafening in the close confines of the basement. Sorin jolted, then grinned and launched himself forward, not even slowed down by the bullet he’d taken. If the shooter wasn’t accurate, a gun wasn’t much good against a vampire.

Another shot blasted her ears, and Chloe instinctively fell back. Maybe those bullets wouldn’t do much damage to the vampires, but they’d kill her.

Luca and Sorin took up a back-to-back position in the hallway, and between them they blocked any of the attacking vampires from getting past. She backed up a little more, out of reach of those long, slashing blades. Blood arced, and choking dust filled the air. These vampires were better fighters than the first wave had been; reinforcements had arrived. Luca and Sorin were holding their own, but were harder pressed. Sorin shifted in her direction and she backed up a few feet, out of his way. She felt stupidly helpless. All she could do was watch and pray and try not to trip them up—

Maybe not. Maybe there was something she could do to help.

Chloe leaned her sword against the wall, close at hand if she needed it, but even though it was short it was heavy, and she knew she didn’t have a chance against a vampire in any kind of a sword fight. The flashlight was heavy, too; she almost needed both hands to lift it. She steadied it, aimed it, and turned it on. The powerful beam hit one of the rebel vampires, touched his neck and cheek, and instantly blistered his skin. Before she could adjust her aim to shine it into his eyes, the rebel whirled and kicked the flashlight out of her hands. It went flying across the concrete floor, rolling away, and the light went out.

Chloe grabbed for her sword, but even as she did she knew she wasn’t fast enough. The vampire she’d burned with the light was coming for her.

Luca spun, already swinging his sword, and took the vampire’s head.

Chloe dove for the flashlight. Maybe it wasn’t broken. Maybe the battery had just been jarred loose, and she could get it working again.

“Call me!”
The Warrior’s voice came more crisp and clear than ever. There had been a time when that voice had terrified Chloe, but now it was a strange comfort.
“You need me.”

“Promise me!”
Chloe silently demanded. She grabbed the flashlight, leaned against the wall as she shook it, turned off the switch, then turned it on again. Nothing.

Swearing under her breath, she unscrewed the cap, then retightened it. Her knees were shaking, she trembled down to every bone. The flashlight flickered, then went out again. The din of battle was deafening in the hallway, blood was everywhere, dust clogged the air. Oh God, she was breathing secondhand vampire.

“Call me!”

“You have to promise. Luca is
mine
! He saved me, he’s fighting for us!”
She loved him, too, but that wasn’t an argument likely to sway a warrior.
“You’ll need him.”

For a moment there was silence from the Warrior in the other world. Then, reluctantly, she said.
“I promise. Call me
, now
!”