I was reminded of my roommate, Lochlyn, who was part Cait Sidhe. Thank Oberon, she hardly ever made cat sounds. But being also part Baen Sidhe, or banshee, she could scream to make a person go insane. Whenever she brought a guy home, I did my best to find another place to be.
I turned a corner onto a block away from the main strip that was lined with pubs. This street was empty. I frowned, a tingle of apprehension spiraling up my spine. Just as something in the air seemed to shift, I drew Mort and whirled around, shifting my weight to my toes and taking a fighting stance.
But no one was there.
Thin violet flames of magic ignited, activating the spellblade to extend the reach of its damage, but it was a mere wisp of what I could usually do. My temples throbbed with blinding pain from drawing magic, and I nearly reeled with nausea. Compared to my usual power, I was weak as a lamb from my session with Morven.
I glanced up, remembering the ninja attackers. While my gaze was averted, the wraith attacked.
Even if I’d been looking right at it, I probably wouldn’t have seen it coming. Wraiths could sometimes be sighted out of the corners of your eyes, but they were as elusive as smoke. As in the netherwhere, a dozen appendages seemed to wrap around me—neck, shoulders, waist—pinning my arms to my sides. They looked like something in between old bone and rotted wood. I could smell its deathly rotting breath wafting over my left shoulder. It squeezed with vise-like strength, forcing the air from my lungs.
It aimed to make me lose consciousness, so it could then use one of its needle-sharp appendages to pierce my skull and drink the fluid from my brain. There’d been no corporeal skull to jab in the netherwhere, but here I was in real danger. The thing had somehow been imbued with cold iron, and the burn was starting to set in. She must have had a human helping her. Or maybe the vamp.
Stars began to dance around in my vision. I couldn’t pass out. I groaned and drew more magic to form rock armor around my torso to keep the creature from squeezing more air from my body. Pain ripped over my skin where the armor plates sprang forth, but I had just enough juice to keep them in place.
Mort was useless in such close combat, but I held the grip hard to keep my sword in my hand. I’d need it in a second.
The wraith had to take solid form to hold me like this, which meant it was vulnerable. I flexed the bicep of my sword arm and felt the wraith’s appendage give just a little. It was strong, but so was I. Clenching my teeth, I forced a flash of magic around my arm, forming a layer of stone. The sudden change broke the wraith’s hold, and it squealed in protest. My sword arm was free.
I jerked Mort up and back over my left shoulder and felt the blade hit something hard but brittle. It gave way with the sickening crack of a bone breaking. An other-worldly scream filled the night, and all the limbs holding me went limp. I kicked back with one heel and spun away, using my momentum to pull Mort free.
Lightning fast, I whirled and stabbed at what appeared to be a hollow-eyed hooded face carved of rotted wood. There were cracks radiating from one of the eye sockets, indicating where my first hit had landed. My second stab was straight into the thing’s awful yawning mouth, through greasy-looking strands of some unknown substance that strung between top and bottom jaws.
The wraith’s scream rose in pitch until I thought my eardrums might implode. I held Mort’s grip with both hands and sharply shoved the blade several inches deeper into the creature’s throat.
Like something out of a horror film, long, bony branch appendages that sprouted from its shoulders began to curl up and shrivel. A moment later, the wraith exploded into a decay-scented puff of ashy dust.
I stood there gripping Mort, my chest heaving as if I’d just sprinted a mile. Magic drained away, and as it did the pain in my head and where my armor had been intensified so swiftly my limbs lost strength. The new iron burns screamed. Mort slipped from my hand, and I went heavily down to one knee.
I needed to stand, to be ready for whomever had sent the wraith, but I was on the edge of losing consciousness. If not for Morven sucking out some of my magic and leaving me weakened, I could have ended that wraith and a dozen more in three seconds flat.
Grimacing, I felt around for Mort and shifted so I was sitting on the cool cobblestones. Just as the spots in my vision cleared, the dark alcove of a nearby shop entrance began to shift. Out of the shadows stepped Van Zant.
My brain tried to command my muscles to pick me up off the ground, but my limbs weren’t interested.
The vampire came forward to loom over me, and there was just enough light to see his upper incisors extending.
“Oh, shit,” I groaned.
Chapter 9
I WISHED I could look around for Van Zant’s Fae companion, Bryna, who’d been driving the wraith. I wouldn’t have minded introducing her to Mort. But alas, I had to avoid the fangs bearing down on me.
Van Zant sprang at me in that creepy, animal way that vamps move. I rolled to my back and kicked out with my feet, nailing him in the stomach with one boot and the groin with the other. The blows catapulted him over me. He landed with a grunt and skidded along the ground.
He must have been high on his own power and adrenaline because he sprang to his feet almost immediately, and seemed none the worse for wear from the crotch kick.
I forced myself to rise and mirror his crouch. I growled, not because of amped-up aggression but because I felt like a reheated carcass that had already taken all the abuse it could handle for one twenty-four-hour period, and I was pissed. Van Zant and I had started circling each other, and he kept flicking glances at Mort. I was pretty sure my sword was the only thing keeping the vamp at bay. I reached for magic, and searing pain and sparks exploded through my head.
“Damn it to Maeve,” I muttered.
All I needed was sufficient magic to incapacitate Van Zant long enough to flash the bounty card in his face, and he’d be magically identified and cuffed. Then I could haul him in, and there’d be one less vamp hazard on the loose, and the fat payday would be mine. But vamps were preternaturally strong, and this one clearly wanted to end me.
My quads were shaking with the effort of holding the crouched ready stance, and my sword arm was already aching. If he came at me, I was done. I sneered, trying to look menacing enough to disguise the fact that I was about to keel over.
“Come at me, bloodsucker,” I snarled, changing my grip so I held Mort in both hands.
I really didn’t want to kill him. The assignment was to bring him in alive so he could stand trial. A dead mark only paid out ten percent of a full live capture—the Guild’s way of discouraging mercs from becoming legal paid assassins. Plus, the thought of the paperwork that ensued from a kill on the job sent fresh nausea spinning through me. Oberon’s balls, the damn paperwork. It would bury me for a week.