Feeling Eli’s eyes on my retreating form, I turned and leaped back over the fence. Sheathed and harnessed my weapons. Stalked back to the SUV.
Koun’s armored butt was against the SUV’s grill, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. He was in armor. Yeah, I should have paid closer attention to that. Koun fought naked, more or less. Or he used to. Everything was changing. I stopped near him, taking in the armor, which I had thought was camo but was matte black, swirled with midnight blue dye in the colors and patterns of his tattoos. Nifty. He was alone; Tex, Kojo, Thema, and the humans were elsewhere. Koun was studying the area on satellite maps, his expression back to its usual hauteur.
“My Queen,” he said by way of greeting. But he didn’t look up and he didn’t sound happy. In fact he sounded really ticked off. “My Queen,” he said again, “hurdled an eight-foot fence alone, without backup or intel.”
“I’m armed and armored. Bruiser and Shaddock won. There were humans inside. They’re okay.”
“How many of our enemies are dead?” Koun asked.
I thought back to the bodies as I opened a bottle of water, put it to my mouth and crushed it, the contents shooting into the back of my throat, and swallowed it all down. “Three vamps. One is still alive.”
“And how many humans did they hold captive?”
“I dunno. Maybe forty?”
Koun tilted his head to me and pocketed the tablet. “And My Queen did not find the numbers disproportionate?”
My half-form nose caught a scent. I pulled in air over my tongue and into the scent sacs in the roof of my mouth with a loud sucking breath. Inside me, Beast growled and so did I, smelling vamps approaching in the night. Six? Eight? More? “Vamps.”
Koun’s weapons were instantly in his hands. He leaped to the hood of the SUV and searched the night.
“This was a trap,” I said. “They were waiting for me.”
Koun sniffed the air and scowled, his pupils widening slightly, beginning to bleed black. “You should not have come.”
“Gloat later.”
Koun touched his comms. “Alex. Bring Eli and the others onto this channel.”
“Done.”
Identifying himself, he said, “Koun, speaking to the Consort, Shaddock, and the Youngers. Vampires approach by stealth. Six from upwind. Likely more from downwind. Our people will engage from outside the fence.”
I added to Koun’s summary, “I smell Monique Giovanni, the senza onore. They want Bruiser and me both.”
“Keep Jane safe,” Bruiser ground out.
Koun vamped out, faster than a heartbeat, eyes going from almost human-looking to solid black pupils in rings of scarlet sclera, his jaw unhinging, fangs clicking down in a fraction of a second. “You will wait here,” he demanded of me. He stepped forward.
Beast does not wait, my cat thought. She took over our body and rammed her power into me/us.
I/we raced forward, cat silent, redrawing my weapons, silvered vamp-killer blade in my left hand, Benelli in my right. A vamp in black, his face covered, leaped from behind a tree.
Battlefield awareness kicked in hard. Time slowed, everything around me glowed crystalline green and silver in Beast’s vision. As if I had all the time in the world, I swung the blade back and leaped to the right. Arm out, long and horizontal, swinging low to high, I spun my body. Rotating forward and away from my opponent. Whipping my spine. Putting momentum and weight behind the swing. Aiming midline, transverse cut. The blade sliced through flesh. Starting just below the waist. Hit the vamp’s spine and stuck there. Jarring up my arm. My body continued the spin. Pulling on my shoulder. Pulling the enemy revolving after me. Blood gushed everywhere.
Still in the air, I hit the vamp in the face with my fist, holding the Benelli. His head snapped back and my vamp-killer came free.
The body began to fall.
I landed and danced back on my toes. Still spinning.
Fired the Benelli point-blank into the torso of a vamp racing in to attack.
Danced to the left. Fired the Benelli again. Missed. Whirled and took off a vamp’s arm. She screamed that piercing ululation of a vampire dying.
I was fifteen feet from the fence when Koun hissed a soft sound near me, a sword in each hand. He took off the shot vamp’s head, then the one-armed vamp’s head. Then the head of the one with the navel cut, though I was pretty sure that one was dead anyway.
“You left their heads,” Koun snarled at me.
“I wasn’t finished,” I snarled back.
More gunfire sounded. Flashed bright in the night. Near and distant, upwind and down. Shotguns and small arms fire.
Monique Giovanni was just ahead. I could smell her, could make out her form in the darkness, her honey-colored hair shining in the low lights.
“There. Her,” I said to Koun.
My warrior at my side, I raced toward her. She vanished through a gate I hadn’t seen into the backyard. She was going after Bruiser.
Again, I leaped the fence. Koun said something in a language I didn’t understand and one-handed his body up and over, after me. As I landed, I swung the bloody blade and took down an enemy vamp.
Eli said, “Jane.” Battlefield tone.
I gyrated on my toes and saw him. He was shoving the humans toward the house, toward safety. Several were wounded. Two on the ground. They were in the line of fire. Eli was in the line of fire. He’d never take cover and leave them.
So many humans. So much collateral damage. Eli. A vamp raced toward him.
Lincoln Shaddock flew in the air from out of the night and beheaded the vamp. Landed. Whirled to strike another. He was using two dueling swords. A dervish in the dark. Poetry with bloody blades. Racing to another target, Lincoln said to me, “Get to George,” and darted into the dark.
Koun took on more vamps at my side and behind me. With him there, I was safe. Had time to reconnoiter. Eyes darting and scanning. I spotted Kojo, Thema’s mate, and several more of our best warriors. Most injured.
Weapons out, I turned in a circle. Searching.
Koun said, “There.” He slung the blood from his swords, pointing.
Bruiser was in a death stare with the senza onore who once worked with the Flayer of Mithrans.
Koun said, “You were correct. This was a trap, ready to be sprung with or without you.”
“And without us, our people would have lost.”
Koun made a soft sound of agreement.
Gunfire sounded. Comms crackled. “We got encom inside the house,” Eli said, warrior-speak for enemy combatants. “Take out all the staked vamps.”