I released the stake. Continuing the arc of my momentum. Bringing up the vamp-killer.
I cut once, a single hard slash across his throat, severing tendons, muscles, and blood vessels. His head fell back, his blood pulsed out. Human warm. In a gush over me. The silvered blade caught in his spine with a dull thud that jarred up my arm and through my frame. It changed my trajectory, shoving us both around in a twisting spiral. His blood pumped again, showering me, burning like acid. De Allyon dropped, pulling me with him.
Faster than my eyes could follow, the vamps facing me vamped out and attacked.
Leo screamed and charged past me. Bruiser pulled weapons and started firing.
I rode de Allyon down, my blade trapped in the crevices of his spine. I landed on top of him, one leg to either side. De Allyon was watching me, his eyes still open. The flesh around the blade began to reknit, the restorative powers of the Naturaleza healing him. I yanked up on the knife, jerking it back and forth until it released from the spine’s bony processes, then pressed, cutting the healing tissues. Slicing deep. “You killed my people,” I whispered as I cut. “You killed my people. I am the hand of God tonight, because you killed my people.”
The battle raged around me as I cut. I smelled Leo’s blood. Smelled Bruiser’s, and felt the heat from his body on either side of me. He had straddled de Allyon and me, his weapons firing with steady precision. I smelled Rick nearby, injured. I scented human blood on the awful wind, and heard gunshots from near the cars, the drivers fighting. Heard other cars roaring up. More humans coming.
Sabina’s power was a barbed icy meat hook pulling on my blood-chilled skin. I rose and cut down, putting my weight into the knife blade.
I had killed a Naturaleza before, and I knew how hard it was to bring one true death. I sawed at his spine, the bones catching and grinding on the silvered blade. De Allyon’s blood pumped again, burning, pooling beneath us.
I severed his head. The blade hit the flooring beneath and rang like a bell, scoring deeply into the floor. Lucas de Allyon’s head rolled to the side and swiveled, as if looking at me. The remainder of his blood gushed out. I grabbed the hair of his head and pulled my legs beneath me. Pushed against his chest, steadying myself on his body. Bruiser stepped aside from me, spinning the twin short swords I had given him. Both blades were bloodied. I chuckled, and he slid his eyes to me, seeing my blood-drenched state and the head in my hands. A grim smile hardened his features. I held the head aloft and shouted, “De Allyon’s blood-feud is over!”
Sabina shouted, far louder than I had, “Enough!” Her power shot through the room like frozen lightning. Everything stopped. All the vamps, all the humans near the cars.
“This is finished,” she said more quietly. “De Allyon’s territory and hunting grounds are forfeit to Pellissier.” De Allyon’s heir and spare started forward, vamped out and bloody, but seemed to lose the ability to walk. Both settled slowly to the floor in ungainly heaps, the priestess’ cool gaze following them down. All de Allyon’s other vamps went still, immobilized by her power. They looked at the priestess with something akin to awe.
Sabina said, “Any practicing Naturaleza who is tainted with Sanguine pestis will be held captive until such time as a cure is found. Any Naturaleza not tainted with Sanguine pestis will put aside the evil and practice Fame Vexatum or suffer the penalty of the council and my wrath. All of de Allyon’s scions and loyal subjects who still adhere to the ways of the BloodCross will be accepted into Pellissier’s clans under his authority. So do I rule, and so shall I be obeyed.”
The icy wind dropped and disappeared. I searched out Leo in the crowd. He was standing with Koun, his back against a pillar at the edge of the Peristyle. At his feet were three dead vamps, staked and bloody. He watched as I walked to him, holding the head of my enemy out in front of me, his blood dribbling from the severed stump. The words that came from my mouth were stilted and formal, and sounded nothing like me at all, yet they were perhaps more like me than any words I had ever uttered. “Lucas de Allyon killed my people. He killed the Tsalagiyi—the Cherokee.” The people my kind had sworn to protect. “He enslaved us, killed us, and drank us down. He destroyed us. Despite the fact that you betrayed me and forced a binding, I am in your debt for the favor of his death at my hands.”
Leo took the head by the hair, accepting the gift. “In recompense of your debt and in honor of your service, you may choose a gift from among mine. Choose wisely,” he said.
I shrugged my acceptance. The Peristyle was a bloody battleground. Five vamps were lying dead, three of them Leo’s—Kabisa and Karimu, sworn to Grégoire and Clan Arceneau, had died fighting back to back. Koun was kneeling over the body of Hildebert, a German vamp whose name meant “bright battle,” and who had died fighting, still wielding a blade as his head hit the floor. Hildebert and Koun were the warriors of Clan Pellissier, and Koun bent his head low over Hildebert’s chest, bloody tears dripping, to run across his friend’s body.