Leviathan (Fist of Light Series) (17 page)

Andros raised a clenched hand and pointed it at the offending interruption. “Imbecile!” Jas' red-tinged vision caught the flaring of a sigil on the vampire’s neck before the dark being exploded in a shower of gore. “Does anyone else wish to intrude?” Silence. “Good. I shall deal with my
little
brother
. Do not question my methods, or you risk angering me.”

More and more, I was trying to connect with Jas somehow, communicate my presence or help in some way. But every attempt was met with failure. I was being blocked. Even the tendrils of Air had vanished. My gut told me it had something to do with his peculiar state, and that, I knew, wasn't good at all.

“Brother?” Jas managed to croak.

“Half-brother, really. Dearest mother birthed me
properly
before she broke the most sacred of our vows and consorted with the Were. She was banished, but that didn't deter her. She could have come back to raise me if she’d thrown herself on the mercy of the Pantheon, but she wanted nothing more than her scum husband. That's why she couldn't be allowed to live, you understand. It is against every custom we uphold; it undermined the most ancient of laws. And now, here we are, a drop in the eternal bucket later. You're all grown up, brother. Eighteen is a very special year for us Royalty. Your every instinct calls for blood, sings for it.” Andros brushed a hand outwards, towards Noah, and Jas' body contorted as it fought the compulsion.

“Boys,” he demanded, and immediately Jas’ will was subsumed by multiple others. “It is too bad you came alone, there might have been a chance, however slim, if an army was at your back. There aren't that many of us who were given the honor of staying behind.”

“
Fight it, Jas,”
I urged, melding my strength with his own.

“Jas,” Noah's strangled voice reached us, and we locked in on his presence.

Our heartbeat pounded, battered in time to those seeking entrance past our defenses. An insatiable hunger clawed its way to the surface, seeking satisfaction. We could feel that it would only be sated by complete and utter dominion of another's life force. Our mouth radiated with bone-deep pain before the fangs made their appearance. The extended canines were sharper than any blade. Our vision went completely red, our mind lost to a bloodlust so comprehensive it was all-consuming. The depths of our morality were drained by deep pits of hunger that consumed everything except a singular goal- sating our bottomless thirst.

“All those years and I never suspected your mother’s past. She had many secrets. Don't let your hunger consume you, son. It will be a constant battle, fighting your nature. But remember, you are more than that. You have the blood of the Were flowing through you.”

The man was before us now, a helpless individual unable to flee from our superior power. Cocking our head to one side, we listened to the inner whispers that cautioned against the action we were taking, but they were brushed aside like wispy cobwebs, a minor nuisance.

“The first kill is the sweetest.” Andros nodded in approval. “The taste is unlike anything, unmatched by any other sensation. Like liquid ambrosia, the nectar of the gods. Under its power, all weakness retreats and wounds knit themselves back together. Our abilities are multiplied ten times more on live than that disgusting aftermarket bagged blood. Go ahead, taste it. You wait much longer and your body will waste away. Blood sustains us, drives our very essence like a preternatural bellows. Without it, our very being unravels. Although, with it, you'll still fall to pieces. There's a reason why there aren't more of your blasphemous kind running around.”

Noah's manacled arm reached out to caress Jas. “I've always loved you, Son. Never forget that. This is no fault of yours. It’s out of your control. Don't blame yourself.”

“Ah, how sweet, our sacrificial lamb has made peace with his death.” Laughter spread through the crowd. “Have you nothing to say to your father, Jason? No? Ah, oh well. I hardly think you'll survive the transformation, let alone the following days. The blood of a Were is toxic to our kind. I'm surprised your own tainted blood hasn't killed you already. You can go to the grave knowing you brought this little play to a close. Now, the dark shadow hanging over our family will be expunged.”

Even as we pierced the soft skin of the jugular and greedily drained Noah of his blood supply, whatever had bound our minds together fractured. Instantly, like the rebounding of a tennis ball against a wall, I found myself back in my own body. Rocketing up and gasping for breath, I searched frantically for the collection of bloodsuckers. The human body could only withstand losing a third of its blood before it went into homeostatic shock. I could only assume the same was true for Were. From what had been alluded to by Andros, the transformation was a deadly one for the victim. Worse, if what Andros had said was true, Jas would die if he drank the blood of another Were.

“C
aleb! What's wrong?” the question flowed from Kathryne's mouth, and from her tone it was clear she was done with being discreet.

“Weapon,” I commanded, envisioning my kusarigama’s sickle blades on each end of a length of gleaming chain in my mind’s eye.

I gazed down at the shining blades and brilliant length of chain in my hands. Lightning crackled down its length, spitting and hissing, gearing up for a fight. I had sensed the change when Jas sucked down that first drop of blood. My body felt like it was on fire. The bond had altered the fabric of my being, moved around my cells into a different pattern.

“That's new,” Kathryne said while dragging me to a standing position.

“We've got to help Jas.” I politely shrugged off the help and fed the embers of my anger, stoking it into a roaring fire.

Wiping the remnants of my breakfast and lunch from my mouth and spitting more onto the cavern floor, I prepared my weary, beaten body for action. I began a laborious sprint, augmenting my speed with purple strands of air, pushing myself faster and faster. The distance separating me and my target closed in mere moments, and I attacked mercilessly, not bothering to announce my presence. Positioning my hands and propelling one bladed end forward, I swung the other in a circular motion at my side. A head tumbled lifelessly from a vamp’s shoulders, and I landed another successful strike before anyone noticed my arrival. The chirping of a thousand metallic birds accompanied my movements as I waded into the bloodsuckers, taking no prisoners. Lightning spat when it came in contact with stolen blood, making my cuts all the more potent.

“
Target the Royals. Without their masters’ guiding hands, their clutches will become maddened beasts,”
Jeeves relayed.

Only a small group of vampires had stayed behind for this spectacle, which worked to our advantage. “There aren't as many as I'd expected there to be.” Where the rest were I had no idea, I just hoped they were too far away to come running when everything went to hell for their brethren.

No one had expected reinforcements to show up at the last hour, and their numbers were too few to stand against my fury. That had been a mistake on their part, a miscalculation that Andros and his scheming pals had failed to plan for. What's more, the whole lot of them were drunk on the massive quantities of blood they had sucked down, making them that much more vulnerable. Weapons were few and far between, and I was able to disarm them easily before they came within range, disabling the weapon with one sickle while striking with the other. It was a deadly combination and a bloody battle. After a few minutes, I was certain Kathryne fought beside me, but I knew she could take care of herself. My entire being was bent into cutting down the opposition and those arrayed me fell like wheat to the sickle in my hands.

My spinning blades slashed opened new holes in the immortal beings before me, spilling their life source to the ground. Their heads tumbled lifelessly from shoulders and cries of anguish by the human captives were replaced with cries of hope. All that more motivated, I caught a dagger with one blade and flicked it into the air, slicing at the jugular of a Royal with the other. Blood squirted out of the open wound, and it made me realize how much more vulnerable to the grasping hands of death these vampires were. Although they might be possessed of superior power, their beating hearts were their downfall. Because of it, they could die from mortal wounds just as easily as a human if they didn't heal themselves in time.

More and more, it was evident that these
superior
vampires had no stomach for open battle. They were creatures of shadow and strife, striking in the night at the unwary. This time, they were the ones to feel sharp steel spilling their precious supply of blood. Wary vampires broke off in ever increasing numbers, until all those before me had fled for safety. No more wished to face the uncompromising bite of electric steel or confront the physical force of my anger. A feral grin stretched my face into the parody of a smile as I went about the task of ridding the world of a few more vampires. As I did so, the severing of connection between master and servitor guaranteed the death of many more underlings as they ripped each other to shreds.

As my blade began to swing down on the gorging form of yet another Royal, the weapon slipped through my fingers and disappeared. “Jas?” I called hesitantly and his sights fell on me, his chest and arms dripping bright red with blood. “Everything's going to be all right.” I used my patented talking-a psycho-down-from-a-ledge voice.

Kathryne appeared at my side, hunched down while cleaning her blades. “They'll be back. There wasn't an entire brood here and they weren't prepared for our intervention, but this is their stronghold. They've got something up their sleeve.” Her eyes narrowed, green irises sparking slightly, then a gasp escaped her. “Jas! What— there's so much blood! Are you okay?”

I looked away from her eyes, feeling that failing to do so would amount to an unwholesome intrusion. My efforts were focused back on the scene. I couldn't look over at Jas. Whatever he was going through, there wasn't much I could do to help him through it from the outside. He would have to fight this battle himself for now. If my suspicions were correct, it would be one hell of an internal struggle.

“He's been through hell and he came out a changed man,” I spoke the statement grimly.

“Are those fangs?” She reached for her weapons instinctively.

Intercepting the movement, I grabbed her hand lightly but purposefully. “This was a long time coming, apparently. He was always meant to come here, though it looks like they weren't counting on us showing up. I need you to keep one eye on him and another out for Herk, wherever he's gone off to.”

Kathryne nodded, although she still seemed uncomfortable. The chained mass of flesh and bone attached to the stake was immediately visible and I rushed over to it frantically. Noah was a wreck, a body put through every kind of physical and emotional torture. From what had been said, this had been a planned operation, botched as it was by insufficient strategizing.

Almost automatically, I felt for the faint stirrings of a pulse on the underside of the wrist, unwilling to bring myself to search for the carotid in the bloody mess of his neck. My heart leapt up into my throat when I applied pressure, but after a brief, infinite moment, a faint beat could be felt. An exhalation of tension flew from my lungs, something I didn't know was there until it had escaped me. Noah had become such an integral part of all our lives that we had come to think of him as an adopted father.

“I'm going to get you out of here.” I patted his hand reassuringly, but things looked grim if he didn't get to a hospital pronto. “You're going to be all right. I don't know what possessed you, running off like that and not taking backup.”

He had lost a lot of blood and the only solution was to stop the bleeding and get a transfusion. Unless there were some O negative blood bags and an IV lying around somewhere, that meant we needed to get to the emergency room, stat. This would be a likely place for blood bags to be kept, but we didn't have time to ransack the place. Much more blood loss would cause brain damage and eventually massive cell death. If we managed to save him at that point, Noah wouldn't be much more than a vegetable, kept from the dark gates of death by life support, but never truly alive. Even the restorative healing powers of the Were might not be enough to save him.

Noah tried to stutter out a response, but I shushed him. “Save your strength.” Looking around for something to stop the bleeding, I became frustrated and tore off sections of my shirt, tying them around his bloody neck.

That done, I worked to tap the well of power inside me before seizing the metal links in my hands and concentrating on splitting the lengths. That small feat took more power than it should have, though it was to be expected, considering my limited skill in Metal. I repeated the process with the other links. When the deed was done, I sat back on my heels and breathed deeply before putting my arms under Noah's torso and lifting. To say the least, Noah had never been a lightweight. Groaning, I shouldered the burden and hobbled over to Jas and Kathryne.