Prince of Shadows (9 page)

“Gabriella!”

She jerked her head around, spinning on the balls of her feet toward the sound of Jacob's voice. A hundred yards distant came Jacob and Bennett, their pace frantic but stunted as they half-dragged, half-carried Aaron between them. Aaron gritted his teeth, but he couldn't hold back the grunts and moans of agony as the two men dragged him along.

Gabby sucked in a breath, her gaze dragging over his wounds. His favored gray T-shirt and cargo pants had been singed until they looked like the equivalent of charred Swiss cheese, each gaping hole exposing glistening red flesh. The burns ran up the side of his thigh, stretching across his torso and the entire right side of his face. He looked like something out of a Batman comic—or a war zone.

“Aaron…” She shook her head, choking back the keen of misery that rose. Just as sharply fury followed. No one harmed what was hers. Yeah, she might have wanted to rough up the idiot more times than she could count, but that was her right as his friend and mentor.

“Who did this?” she demanded, rushing over to them.

“Bloody pyros…” Bennett shook his head as he made to shrug out from under Aaron's armpit. “Here, help get him home. I need to go back.”

Her gut clenched. Bennett wasn't like her. He was more of a practical sort and didn't appear to buy into petty things like revenge. So the only reason she could think of for him to be going back was…“Valin?”

He nodded. “He stayed behind to protect our retreat.”

Against a pyrotechnic merker, and Lucifer knew what else. “Oh god, no…”

Ignorant of Bennett's swearing, she bolted down the street.

Valin dodged another fireball, feeling the curl of the hair on the back of his calf as he dove behind a jacked-up van missing all four tires. Protected from sight, he immediately shifted into a formless shadow and, taking advantage of a gust of wind and the scattering of leaves it kicked up, made his retreat to a nearby Dumpster. The van, already coated with graffiti, inherited another coat of dark char as the pyrotechnic merker worked to ensure that Valin wouldn't be coming out of there alive again. Amazingly enough, the van didn't blow, showing that tires weren't the only thing to be lifted by the locals, but gasoline too.

“Sorry, buddy, no boom-boom today,” Valin muttered from a safe distance of a couple dozen yards away and settled down to wait.

Damn, that had been close, though not as close as the previous round they'd played. If he wasn't careful he wasn't going to make it out of here at all. Not that getting out of here was his goal at the moment, but ultimately it would be nice.

He flexed his elbow, wincing at the pull of pain that came from stretching the burnt skin and muscle. Damn if it might actually scar. Though he should be thankful it wasn't his face. Poor fucking kid. As much as Valin didn't like puppy dog's attitude, he didn't harbor Aaron any real harm. But because Valin had screwed up and lost his focus, the kid was going to go through life with a messed-up face…assuming he lived that long.

He'll live, but only if you keep these fuckers off their
asses.
Speaking of which, where were they? He and the pyro had been playing cat and mouse for the last five minutes, which given the extent of Aaron's injuries was probably another five short of long enough for Bennett and Jacob to drag the invalid far enough away that these merkers wouldn't give chase.

Valin's stalling techniques had consisted of the classic strategy of pissing them off (slitting two of their throats in quick succession would do that). He'd stuck around long enough to finish the job on one with a good carving session with his pretty knife to both head and heart, but had to skip off into the shade before finishing off the merker's temporarily immobilized buddy for fear of getting fried. After that the game had really started. With one down, one recovering, and the last out for blood—his, to be precise—Valin had made a game of wagging his naked jangles in the universal taunt of the ages…then hiding and ghosting in time to avoid becoming a crispy critter. At least mostly un-crispy. More like the original recipe perhaps. But levels of doneness aside, this time his pyromaniac buddy didn't appear to be seeking, which was simply not acceptable.

If he thought he could ghost in close enough to sneak up behind the bastard and take him out, this would all be much easier. Unfortunately his options were vastly limited, given that he'd had to ditch his knife the moment he'd first shifted into the shade.

A longing glance at the inert knife on the sidewalk halfway down the street showed the other merker staggering to his knees, one hand clamped tight to his throat, the other pressed hard against the nearby lamppost. Aaaannnnnd so much for almost-even odds. If the merker was up, it wouldn't be more than a minute or so before he was running too. Too bad it wouldn't be away.

Taking a deep breath, Valin took stock of his options, which yielded about the same amount of return as his recent investment in the stock market—far less than stellar. If he thought he could ghost over there, grab his knife, and do a little slice and dice before the pyro could join the round, he'd go for the kill. But he didn't trust the pyro's scruples enough to not indulge in a little friendly fire if it meant taking out his intended target, which, um, yeah, would be Valin.

He had just about come to the conclusion that making like Speedy Gonzales and vamoosing in hopes they'd follow was his only option, when a guttural cry erupted from the cross street. Who the hell?

Risking exposure, he ducked his head back out, then sucked in a breath. That was Gabby, knife drawn, and running all out at the pyro.

Fuck. No…

“Gabby!” He leapt up from his hiding spot, then cursed and ducked as his own knife sailed toward his head.

That was just so wrong: a merker using a Paladin blade against him. He hoped the cost had been a nice burn on the fucker's hand at least.

Valin was torn between ghosting to where the pyro was patiently waiting for Gabby to get close enough and grabbing for his knife, but his decision was made when the second merker simply disappeared, only to immediately reappear directly in front of him.

Fuckingcraptastic. A teleporter? Boy, was Senior going to be pissed to find out Karissa wasn't the only one with those skills.

Knowing the merker would simply be on top of him again the moment he reformed from the shade, Valin dove for his knife, simultaneously tossing out a warning to Gabby.
<>

He hoped to hell she heard, prayed even harder that she'd actually fucking listen to him and get the hell out of here, but he didn't have the time to make sure as his hand had barely closed around the blade when the second merker was on top of him, its iron-heavy fists pummeling into him like goddamn battering rams.

He rolled away, ignoring a sharp crack from his lowest rib as one of the blows grazed his side just right, and scrambled to his feet, quickly putting some distance between them. He'd barely had time to settle his grip on his blade when the merker flashed in directly in front of him. Luckily Valin had anticipated that and got in a good stab to the merker's midsection. The merker roared, immediately flashing. Only the stupid fuck forgot that anything touching him went with him, which meant both Valin's knife and Valin went with Star Trek boy too. A split second and a disorienting fifty feet later, Valin and the merker staggered away from each other, each clutching at their most recent wounds.

“Wanna try that again?” Valin asked, stalling as much for a chance to clear his head as anything else.

“Want to die so soon?” The merker sneered back, then, rude bastard that he was, charged before Valin could retort with his own quippy comeback.

Probably
not
a
bad
thing; would have been pretty lame anyway.

Valin crouched, readying for the impact, only at the last second the merker flashed out. Instinct had Valin spinning, his blade rising in a defensive arc. Good thing too, as the merker reappeared a couple feet in the air behind and above him. Because of his quick thinking, gravity turned into his friend and the merker received another hole in his body, this one a deep gash across his thigh as Valin continued to spin out from under him.

With the merker howling obscenities, Valin risked a glance toward Gabby, then wished he hadn't as his heart came to an abrupt halt in his chest. As he watched, she leapt onto a car, pushed off, her body twisting, feet flying out like a fucking ballerina as she whizzed over the pyro's head, the arc of flame chasing her through the air. One of those feet connected, the audible crack of bones fragmenting a welcome sound in the pandemonium of the dual fight. Sensing the second merker bearing down on him, Valin rolled out from under another attack. Valin barely caught the movement of the pyro slumping out of the corner of his eye.

Still, he needed to end this.

On a gamble, Valin heaved his knife into the air, the sharp blade all but disappearing from sight as it sailed up, up, up into the darkness. It was hard to miss the merker's what-the-fuck expression. For a split second pure shock rooted his feet to the spot as it tried to decipher why Valin would toss away his only weapon.

“So I can kill you, fuckwad,” Valin muttered. He knew he had to time this right. The knife reached the pinnacle of its arc a good dozen stories up and began to fall. He waited. The one thing that could screw up this plan would be if the merker looked back his way, but the stupid shit never took his eyes off the knife to see Valin shift. If Valin had enough substance to shake his head, he would have as he watched the switch from confusion to determination cross the merker's face as he prepared to teleport. Valin thrust his essence across the expanse toward the knife. The next part was tricky and he had to concentrate hard to twist just enough of his ghostly substance back into semi-solid mass. The knife settled into the shadowy form of his outstretched hand.

Pulling deep from his own energy stores, he kept the blade aloft, thrusting the knife forward before releasing the agonizing hold he had on the rest of his substance that wanted to follow his hand's example and reform. It all took but a split second. Just long enough to drain the hell out of him, but long enough for the ultimate payoff. The merker popped back in. But because Valin had shoved the knife's trajectory that foot and a half forward before fully reforming, the merker's hand didn't grasp onto the knife, but rather Valin's arm—which, what do you know, happened to be attached to the blade now lodged deep in the merker's chest.

“Sayonara, A-hole.” Valin smiled, calling forth the light that had been infused within the heavenly forged blade. Like lightning, it shot down the sharp-edged metal into flesh. The merker roared, his iron hands clamping down around Valin's forearms. Within its chest the blade continued to burn away at the merker's blackened heart. Unfortunately, like all things wonderful in Valin's life, this moment of joyous fuck-you was rudely interrupted too—by the hard-ass smack of reality called gravity.

Oh yeah, hitting the ground from that far up was a bitch. He tried to take away some of the shock by absorbing the impact by bending his knees, but that didn't stop the blast of you-stupid-fuck agony from shooting up his legs and driving a railroad spike of crap-that-hurts through his back and into the base of his brain. The only good news was it seemed to have a similar effect on his half-incapacitated buddy. The merker crumbled, his grip falling from Valin's arms and his body slipping from the blade as he fell ass backwards, his skull cracking most satisfyingly as it struck the asphalt. And yeah, minus the fact that his entire body was still cursing him out, things didn't get much better than this.

Valin smiled, straddling the merker, who was sprawled like an offering before him. Lots of practice made short work of the next step, and seconds later the merker's smoking skull lay detached from its body, the creature's soul obliterated with His light.

Damn, that had taken way too long.

Heart thudding, Valin spun, his gaze immediately searching out the dark shadows where the pyro had fallen. It was still there, only shit, so was Gabby, her slim body sprawled over the crumpled form of the unconscious merker.

“Gabby!” he choked out. Had she been hit by that last blast of fire? Images of her charred body flashed through his brain, pumping adrenaline through his system so that all pain and exhaustion were forgotten. The jolt allowed him to sprint across the expanse as fast, if not faster, than he could have in ghost form.

Scared to death of what he might find, he grabbed onto her shoulders and pulled, only to meet resistance.

“Gabby?” He tugged again, then recoiled as she snapped her head around and hissed at him. Wild eyes, blood-drenched fangs. Holy fucking hell, was she feeding from that thing? His question was immediately answered as she turned back to her meal, fangs flashing as she lunged at the merker's already gaping throat and sank in. The shock had him standing there like a dumb-ass, not moving, hardly breathing, just watching. He wasn't even aware of time passing until the world started to spin and he had to consciously draw in a long pull of air.

Way
to
go. Why don't I just pass out while she's vulnerable to any backup that happens to be on the way?

His oxygen-sucking routine must have startled Gabby because she leapt off the merker and staggered a few yards away.

Still feeling like the world was off-kilter, Valin stepped forward with his knife. Only, crap, the merker looked damn dead already. He squatted down, fingers fumbling at the merker's torn throat as he searched for a pulse. Not finding any, he reached out with his senses, but all he could feel from the merker was a fading stain of evil, not the pulsing taint of dark energy he'd expect from a live creature.

“What the fuck?” He stared at the blank eyes of the merker, his grip tight on the hilt of his knife. Any second now the creature was going to blink and pull one of its walking dead reanimation routines. Only it wasn't; it just laid there in a pool of its own blood, its dead eyes staring at nothing.

Holy crap. She'd killed a fucking merker! Drained it of not only its blood but its life energy.

There was a scrape from behind him, like boots scuffing on pavement. He spun on his heels, half-expecting to see one of those backup merkers he'd feared coming up behind them, but met, instead, with the vision of Gabby's backside as she half-ran, half-staggered down the street. Like she was, holy fucking hell, running away from him again.

He didn't even think. Dissolving into the shade, his knife clattered back to the ground as he sent the particles of shadow that held his essence after her. He reformed behind her, his frustration and anger propelling him forward so that his grab for her shoulder turned more into a tackle. She hissed, a sharp elbow digging deep into his already screaming rib cage as he tried to twist midair so as to take the brunt of the fall. Bad idea. The combo of her hit and the sharp smack of the hard pavement sent the air right out of him and his grip slipped. She rolled off him, her boots smacking pavement by his head as she bolted once more.

Goddamnit!

Valin rolled over, sucking air as he watched her crouch, all that compact strength pulling in as she sighted and locked on to her intended escape route: a narrow three-story brick building pinned between two taller cement monsters. Having seen Roland in action, he wasn't surprised she'd look to the rooftops to elude him, though he was a bit insulted that she thought it might work.