“Edmund,” my primo said distinctly. “Not. Eddie.”
I grinned but had the good sense to hide it. Bruiser gestured with our clasped hands inside the warehouse, through the garage door, which now stood all the way open.
Still squatted down, I swiveled around until my back was to the truck’s oversized wheel, and watched the wonder boy, Grégoire, with his toys. And his sire.
Sleet shushed down all around us, peppering onto the layer already deposited on the asphalt. The events inside were personally disturbing on multiple levels: visually, scentwise, and emotionally.
Le Batard’s clothing was sliced and ripped and falling in shreds, exposing bloody flesh beneath. His face was slashed, one amputated ear on the ground at his feet. His swords were up and circling in the Spanish Circle fighting form, but he was gasping, sounding all too human. He reeked of blood, fear, fury, and desperation.
Grégoire stood with only one sword, against his sire’s two. Leo’s secundo heir was bleeding only slightly and not breathing at all so far as I could see. Even with only one sword, Grégoire was winning. His face was frozen in a rictus of horrible delight as his sword circled and circled, in La Destreza. Sword flashing, steel clashing, he stepped inside and then away, performed a swivel motion, and one of Le Batard’s weapons went flying. Grégoire cut his sire twice more. They were using dueling flat-bladed swords, lighter than vamp-killers, faster, but more brittle. He’d never be able to behead an opponent with it. But that wasn’t the purpose of this fight.
Silently, slowly, Grégoire administered death to his sire, a death sentence that I knew. The hairs on my pelted body lifted in alarm. My hands began to ache as my claws extruded. I began to pant. Fear whispered through me.
“Jane?” Bruiser murmured, catching my scent change.
I shook my head. Grégoire was passing judgment on his sire. The punishment of a thousand cuts. It was exactly as it sounded, La Destreza taken to dark heights, bloody, painful, and because the sword was silvered, a slow and certain death unless help came. It never would. Eli walked up carrying a small subgun in the crook of one arm and an automatic rifle over the other shoulder. He took up position, ready to fire should more EuroVamps appear. No one was stopping this fight. It would end only when Grégoire ended it. As it had ended for me, when my grandmother had chosen so.
I had a flash vision of my fist, holding the cross-hatched bone hilt, blood dripping down the blade, covering my small hand. In memory, I looked down at the blood splattered over my dress. Over my feet. Ground into the mud beneath where I stood, my feet cold and bare and filthy. I blinked and the memory vanished.
Grégoire slashed. Le Batard lost his other ear.
His nose.
All the fingers of his right hand. Le Batard switched the sword to his left.
Grégoire took his left eye.
Delivered a series of slashes to Le Batard’s forehead, blinding him with his own blood.
Sabina appeared at the opening to the brick room and stopped in the doorway. Gee DiMercy stood at her side. Both were bloodied, faces cold as they watched the slow methodical dismemberment of an ancient enemy.
On the battleground, Le Batard whimpered. Grégoire laughed, the sound pitiless as death. I looked down at Bruiser’s hand in mine. His flesh was too pale against my golden Cherokee glow, far cooler than normal. But Bruiser was alive. We were alive. His hand tightened on mine again. I looked at him from the corner of my eye to find him watching me, a look so tender, so gentle, that without even knowing why he felt so, tears gathered in my eyes. “What?” I murmured.
“Only that you still feel sympathy, mercy. If it were you who fought him, you would show forgiveness. Kindness. You would let him live.”
I tilted my head farther away from the slow slaughter. “I killed a man with a death of a thousand cuts. Killed him for killing my father. I was five years old. You know that. How can you believe that I would show mercy to a serial rapist, sexual predator, Naturaleza blood drinker, and murderer for centuries?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Because you carry guilt in such great measure that you would do most anything to assuage it.”
“But setting a predator free is not the way to assuage guilt.” As the words left my mouth, I realized the truth of them. A mini revelation in the middle of battle and a sleet storm. “Has he begged?” I asked. “Asked for mercy that you say I would give?”
“No.”
I nodded. “Good.” I turned on my cell, set it to video, and handed it to him. “We’ll need a witness. An official record.” In one lithe motion I rose to my feet and pulled a vamp-killer, the blade fourteen inches of steel, silver-plated. Walking to the side, so the camera view was unobstructed, I crossed through the sleet to the entrance of the warehouse and up to the fight. Pulled on Beast-speed and caught Le Batard’s sword in mine. Whipped it away. It spun, catching the lights in the torture room. Still moving fast, I blocked Grégoire’s blade as it fell. It clanged onto mine. Grégoire slid his eyes from his tormentor, slowly to me. There was emptiness and confusion in his gaze. A blankness that went soul deep.
I drew on all the training in suckhead politics, stuff I hated, and discarded all insulting names, like Blondie, which totally would not do in this moment. I said, “Grégoire, Blood Master of Clan Arceneau, of the court of Charles the Wise, fifth of his line, of the Valois Dynasty. You have challenged your sire, Fran?ois Le Batard, for control of his body, his house, and his line. Blood Challenge, Duel Sang, has been fought. You have won the challenge. Do you wish to dispatch your opponent or do you wish me to do so for you?”
At my side, Le Batard sank to the floor, a languid, boneless motion, like a dance move.
Grégoire blinked, his blue eyes still empty except for the tears that gathered there. He looked down at his sire, his eyes raking Batard from his slashed head to his boots, all bloody and torn and broken. A sound like a sob broke from Grégoire, so shattered, so torn, it might have been a scream. Or laughter. Or all three. It sliced into the memory of my hand, holding the knife, covered with blood. He shifted his gaze to me. “This is my right.”
I swallowed against rising gorge. “Yes.” I flipped the vamp-killer to him, hilt first. Extended my empty hand for his sword. Gingerly, hesitantly, Grégoire placed his weapon into my hand. The hilt was colder than the frigid air. He accepted the vamp-killer. Stared at his hand on the unfamiliar, warm hilt. I stepped back.
“Your reign is ended,” I said to Batard.