Into Death's Arms (18 page)

    
I ran up the stairs
,
tak
ing them
two by two. I wanted the sword
Laurna had given me. My father used a claymore
. I
t was way too big for me. She’d gotten me a gladius.

   
Gla
dius, yeah, it was perfect for me.
Short,
dual-
bladed, I could hack stuff up if I want
ed. T
he handle was rough and pleasant in my grip. The blade weighted eno
ugh but not so much it tipped me
over. I admired the short re
ctangular blade. Hell yeah! That’
s what I was
talking about the blade flared. My symbol wove its way down the blade white etching against t
he steel.
I smiled again. Power is a heady thing. Briefly, I considered marching on Tamcorp.

   
Fortunately, sanity reasserted itself.
I had to get Tameron out of my head
. I
f I didn’t
,
he was going to find me
.
I wa
s making it to easy for him. Oh,
God
. W
hat if he knew I’d th
ought about him, well, sexually?
I could
n’t
bear it
. P
lease
,
I prayed
,
don’t let the scary ass
Vamp
ire
know I thought h
e was sexy. I hated not knowing
what he’d gotten from my mind
a
lmost as much as I hated the thought of him knowing.

  
Since,
I felt
like I needed to do something,
I changed out of my
p.j.’s, grabbed my sword, and headed down town.
It was a Monday night,
traffic wasn’t too bad. I pulled in to the mall parking lot and open
ed my senses. I could feel the
Vamp
ires
at Deception
,
but I didn’t want to get a visit from Tameron
.
I ignored them.
Besides there was something like fifteen of them
.
I didn’t think I was up to fighting fifteen of them even if Tameron was not home.

      I wasn’t feeling anything else. I got out of the car and paced a bit.
Then I felt it.
A
Dream-walker
about six blocks away.
I climbed back in,
turned on the jeep
,
and
flew toward the sce
ne. I parked half a block away in an empty parking lot. It probably wasn’t the safest place to stick my car
,
but
hey,
I had a gun and a sword
.
I was thinking go ahead try
and steal my car
. T
hat’s what GPS
is for I would just lojack their asses.

   
I wanted to run head
on
to where the creature was
,
but I had been trained better than
that.
I moved slowly. I concealed myself in the shadows.
I fought back a good amount of fear when
I saw him. I thought about going back home and hiding in my room, but I knew it was time to stop being scared or at least do something about the monsters that scared me.

   
He stood on one of those old rusty
fire escapes
. His skin was black as the night.
I mean like
oil
black. He wore black jeans and a black t-shirt to go along with his shadowy look.
I once again wondered what was up with the whole
Shadow-born
wardrobe?
If I ever took
the
time to talk to one of
them
I was going to ask.
His blood red hair blew in the wind
,
trailing around the railway.
It was long enough that it brushed the backs of his knees.

     
He didn’t have any other colors showing through the red
. T
hat was good
. I
t meant he wasn’t very powerful. They started off with black hair
. A
s they got older
,
their hair would slowly change color
it would turn red, then green, then blue,
until it
finally turned a
pure silver.
With each change of color that black grew back in so their hair would start out black then the top would fade to red if the red was on the bottom and top was red the Dreamwalker was going to turn again soon.
To my knowledg
e, there were no living silver D
ream
-
walkers. They were all extinct.
Thank God for small favors. Silver
Dream-walkers
could rival Tameron for power.
At least that was what I’d
read.

    
I
hoped my knowledge was correct.
I seemed to be wrong a lot lately
. I
t wasn’t good for
a
girl
’
s self-confidence.
This particular Dream-walker
was bent over a window covered in grim
e
. His
red
eyes ri
veted on his victim sleeping in
side.
I started to climb the stairs. The stairs were so rusty I could smell the metal
decay;
it clung to the inside of my nose
, m
aking
the very air
I took into my lungs taste of iron. I just hoped the stairs
would hold my weight. It would be just my luck to survive ascension only to fall to my death do to poor building maintenance.

   
I decided i
t’s
hard to be stealthy on a
rusty fire escape
. F
ortunately
for me
my prey was very intent on his victim
. I reached him before he looked up and
slid my blade into his back. I could have shot him
,
but I didn’t want to wake t
hose sleeping inside
. W
e were to
o
close to the building.
I wrenched the blade hard to the right, trying to sever the spinal column before he
got
a chance to fight back. It didn’t work.
Sawing through his flesh was a hell of a lot tougher than I thought it would be.
He half turned and backhanded me so hard I flipped the
railing and was hurtling toward
the
concrete
below
.
See what
I said
about falling to my death, just my luck.

   
I caught the railing about two stories down and pulled myself back onto the fire escape. The
Dream-walker
hopped down
to where
I was now crouched trying to remember when my last
tetanus
shot had been.

   
He apparently had no worries about the structural integrity of the emergency stairs.
His blood red hair blew in the wind behind him
. I
t looked like it was reaching back out toward the window he’d been gazing through. It was striking to watch.
He turned his head to the side
slightly studying me.
I wondered for the millionth time why evil got to be
so
pretty.

   
It just didn’t seem right. His eyes were
completely red
with
no white or pupil
, spooky as hell. He held out his hand and attempted to draw out my fears. It felt
a little like
someone pulling on your skin
,
not painful
,
just tight.

    “I don’t do fear
,
demon,
” I spat at him. Inside I thought liar, liar, pants on fir
e. For a
moment,
I
saw Tameron standing above me blood on his mouth, his eyes glowing into the night
. Wow, he was good. I knew Tameron scared me more than any other
Shadow-born
.
I wondered how he figured it out.
Technically
Dream-walkers
are one of the easiest
Shadow-born
to kill. They
have no
fangs
, just superhuman strength
, claws
, and
the
ability to scare you to death, o
h yeah and that pesky regeneration. He was all healed up from my original strike. Damn.

    
The beasty narrowed those red
eyes at me. “AoD,
”
it growled
like it was a question
.
I nodded
vehemently
as I approached him
.
Then lunged
,
swinging the blade
,
but
he moved at the last minute and made the angle
all wrong
.
I caught his
clavicle
instead of his neck
. Silver blood splattered me and
the blade was stuck. He grabbed
and
the blade I could hear the sizzle of his flesh as it came
in contact with the light
. I
couldn’t
pull it free. I jerked
it hard again
,
and
he hit me with his fr
ee hand, close fisted this time, g
ood God that hurt.
I was just happy I hadn’t let go.
My feet flew out beneath me and I would have toppled over the railing again if I hadn’t had such a good grip.
I didn’t need
to
fall again. I was going to have that falling nightmare tonight as it was.
I jerked again.

    
He struck out toward me
with his big
sharp
claws
. I moved just as
he
would have connected with my stomach.
His claws sizzled the white light around me burning him. Well at least he’d think twice about grappling
with
me.
I did
n’t want to get claw
ed in my stomach.
I needed to end this before
he
killed me. I let go of
the sword. Damn thing was stuck tight anyway and wasn’t doing me any good.

    
He wobbled a little caught off guard by the fact that he no longer had to brace himself as I tugged at h
is shoulder blade. He fell back,
pulled the sword out
,
and tossed
it over the railing.
His shoulder was healing up before my eyes and only oozed his bizarre silv
er blood now.
Crap
,
I was in trouble. I stepped back and brought out my gun
.
I didn’t want to wake th
e people in the house but I
want
ed
to die a whole hell of a
lot
less.
  

   I took aim. He threw himself at me and pinned my right arm, leaving the question of shooting him purely
academic. “What do you f
ear AoD?
” H
e hissed
with
his voice holding a hypnotic quality. Images of Tameron began to dance through my head again.
He was definitely not wearing his human suit. His eyes glowed, his fangs dripped menacingly.
Again,
I got the image of Tameron leaning over me instead of the Dream-walker his mouth sliding against my throat just as it had that night at Deception. I shuddered.

    I shoved the bastard off
me
,
but in doing so
I
managed to toss myself off the balcony we’d been vying for. I caught myself again.
Unfortunately,
I lost the grip on my
Sig
.
This so wasn’t
going my way.  H
e moved with reptilian grace down the stairs toward me. I didn’t wait for him to get to me. The alleyway was only about two flights down now.
My sword was down there. He had reached the same
flight as me. “Time to die, AoD,
”
h
e hissed again as he clawed at me. I scooted back. He grabbed my ankle and dragged me toward him.
He
dug in his claws and
I could smell his flesh burning
,
but
he didn’t let
go.
I caught one of the old rails and held on for dear life. It held for about a second then snapped.  Shit, he yanked me toward him. I hit him with the rail. What the hell, I didn’t have anything else to strike at him with. He howled and let go. I threw myself over the rail. I hurtled toward the earth and not incidentally my sword.
I landed on my hands and knees.
Ouch, I crawled toward my sword. The
Dream-walker
landed lightly behind me. My ha
n
d closed around the sword as he grabbed my ankle again,
pulled
me toward him, and raked his
claws along my back. I
screamed
and
kicked at
him;
I tried
to dislodge him from
my leg. He jerked hard and
drew
me toward him. I spun
and brought
the sword around with me. I
hit him in the ne
ck this time. It sliced through;
h
e grabbed the blade with both hands and pushed it in the opposite direction
,
trying to stop me from making
any
progress.
At least
he wasn’t trying to claw me anymore.
Finally,
I punched through the sp
inal cord. Regeneration stopped and
h
is eyes went wide
.
I kept shoving the blade through until I finally managed to severe his head. It fell from his shoulders and
landed by my feet. His eyes wide with surprise, that black skin looked pearlescent in the light of the street lamps. Blah, to say it smelled bad would be the understatement of the year.
But
I had done it.
I killed the monster.