The Beloved, page 37
Not even close. He was protecting his female.
Zsadist glanced at the barn he knew his daughter was in.
Indeed, something had changed inside of that fighter, something fundamental, and it had woken Nate up to the world. And wasn’t that a path Z himself had walked once, a lifetime ago—
With a war cry, Nate threw himself from his porch, pumping off rounds not in a willy-nilly, but like he was picking cans from a fence rail, not a single bullet wasted as he seemed to be able to shoot in both directions and hit targets at the same time.
The lesser response was exactly what it always was. Swift and coordinated.
Even as slayers were hit, they returned fire, and Nate was struck, his torso jerking back, not that it slowed him down.
But the kid didn’t have to fight alone.
The brothers and fighters advanced out of the tree line immediately, and they focused on pressing outward from the barn to give Z some time to get Nalla off the property.
Prepared to act fast, he turned to the—
The roar that started up was so loud, he wondered what the hell it was. And then came a screeching sound that rattled the roof of the outbuilding.
After that, there was a tremendous explosion out in front, and Zsadist ducked for cover—
Only to see a gigantic truck with tires the size of boulders blast through the double doors.
“Fuck!” He fucking knew who was behind that wheel. “Nalla! You’re going to get yourself killed!”
Sure enough, instead of heading out for the country road and trying to get away to safety—not that that fucking thing was going to fit on anything narrower than a soccer stadium—she bore down on the fighting, bullets pinging off the front panels and the windshield.
Nalla mowed down those lessers like she was bowling for bitches, and as she came back around for another pass, kicking up snow and throwing up slayer bodies like confetti, he caught a very clear visual of her fury behind the wheel.
“Motherfucker,” he yelled. “What are you doing!”
But come on, she got that shit from him.
And Zsadist’s only response, like hers, was the reason he’d been born: He got his black daggers out and ran to join the fight.
He engaged with the first lesser he came to, a female who already had a horrible head wound. She still had the strength of ten human men, and the pair of them traded gunshots—hers—and stabs—his. Which was a deadly dance being repeated all around the landscape—
The bullet went through his side, spinning him around.
Goddamn it, he hadn’t controlled the barrel of her weapon—
A sudden uncontrollable loginess overtook him, and the next thing he knew, the lesser had him flat on his back—and his own black dagger in her hand. Looking up, he told his arms and legs to move.
They didn’t listen all that well—and it was as he tried to lift his left hand that he saw the problem was not the bullet wound in his side.
He’d somehow been stabbed in the forearm.
And he’d sustained a critical venous puncture.
Red blood was flowing out of him at an alarming rate.
At which point he saw that the lesser had knives in both her hands. So she’d pulled out a second one from somewhere, the silver blade marking it as hers.
The expression on her face was rapt, her eyes wide with an aggression that bordered on absolute mania.
She put her own blade away.
And double-fisted his black dagger, lifting it over her head.
* * *
Nate had started the fight as he meant to go on with it: As soon as Nalla had gone into his escape tunnel, he’d strapped on his weapons and gone up his set of stairs. He’d been standing on his own threshold as the lessers started coming out of the fucking trees, and he’d had a moment of pause only because he hadn’t been sure that Nalla was off the property yet.
Being unsure of her whereabouts had made him antsy.
But then he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. Busting out of his front door, he started picking off the enemy with bullets, dropping them like flies in the forest—except as a strange sense tingled at the nape of his neck, he glanced back.
He immediately shit himself because surely it was more lessers.
Except no, it was not the enemy.
It was the Brotherhood. And they had come to fight.
Nalla must have called her sire—and Z must have not let her down.
Like the good father he was.
As Nate continued to engage, he totally did not hate the backup. Before he’d been with Nalla, he would have gotten his dick in a crack, but with her on his land? He was grateful for the help, especially because he knew, going by the pain in his shoulder and his side, that he’d been plugged at least twice—
A lesser jumped out in his path and started rushing for him—and all he could think was: You want to dance? Let’s fucking dance.
Meeting the undead chest to chest, he shoved his barrel into its face, and discharged a pair of bullets to blow the back of the skull out. Then he let the slayer drop to the snow. The thing wouldn’t be dead until someone stabbed it back to Lash, but there’d be time for that later.
On to the next one. And the next.
As he worked, he smelled his own blood mixing with the stink of the enemy, felt the sweat from his body’s efforts, knew the strength that came from doing what he was best at as he controlled his guns and heard the pop!s not just of his own weapon, but those around him. The fighting was dangerous. It required a level head. It consumed all of his attention, except for that wedge of his consciousness that would always be with Nalla now.
But in a weird, fucked-up way, he was reminded of how much he loved his job with the Brothers—
Except then everything changed.
When there was an explosion at his barn.
Jerking to face the loud, unexpected sound, Nate stopped dead in mid-stride… because he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
His monster fucking truck, the one that he hadn’t fired up since the fall, that had sat in an unheated shed, that should have been drained of oil and gas and all fluids—and why the fuck hadn’t he done that!—was blasting out of the barn, the doors splintering apart.
There was only one person who could be behind the wheel.
Nalla was all fury and pedal-to-the-metal as she plowed into the ground game. How she managed to only go bowling for lessers, he didn’t know. But somehow, she didn’t target the Brothers. Only the white, soulless killers who had come on the attack—
“Fuck!” he hollered as he was struck by a bullet.
Turning to the lesser with the point-blank aim, he ducked into a roll, and came up shooting on bended knee. The slayer wasn’t prepared, that pasty-ass face registering all kinds of what-the-fuck! as twelve pounds of lead was pumped into him.
As Nate jumped back to his feet, he intended to go after Nalla—yeah, and do what? flag her down and issue her a self-preservation ticket?—when he saw something out of the corner of his eye:
A black dagger in the hand of a female slayer.
And as she lifted it over her head, the incapacitated fighter she was about to kill came into sharp focus.
“Nooooooooooooooo!” Nate screamed.
Throwing all his strength into his legs, he surged forward, racing through the hail of bullets, zeroing in on that blade to the point where he didn’t see Nalla’s father on the ground or the hatred in the slayer’s face. Just the blade.
Just that one blade… that seemed to hold everything that was important to him in balance.
Nate leapt into the air a good ten feet away because if he kept running, he wasn’t going to get there in time. But fuck, his superpower was immortality, not being able to fly.
He wasn’t fast enough to grab the blade.
But he sure as hell got under it.
Just as the black steel point reached terminal velocity, he somehow managed to slide his body in between the weapon and Zsadist’s chest so that his back was what got stabbed.
And then shit was fucking on.
In spite of the blazing pain, Nate rolled over and took control while on top of the Brother. Swinging his fist, he punched the slayer in the head, where a raw wound was showing parts of her brain. Then he incapacitated her instantly by pushing his fingers into a gaping hole in her throat.
Just as he grabbed a silver blade from her belt.
“That’s my fucking father-in-law, bitch!”
With a single, vicious movement, he plunged the knife into that empty-ass chest cavity.
The pop! was loud, the blast of light was bright, and the smell was a sting in the nose that he relished.
But he was also crushing the injured male beneath him.
Pitching himself off of Zsadist, Nate was breathing hard and bleeding badly, but adrenaline was a great thing, it really was.
“Holy… fuck,” the Brother wheezed. “That was some kinda timing.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
No, not at all, Nate thought as he measured the male’s wounds.
The one in that arm was bleeding so badly, it had turned the white ground into a fucking cherry sno-cone.
As gunshots rang out, and his fucking truck—why couldn’t he have just owned a Kia, why?!—made wide swaths through the middle of the fighting, he knew if he was going to get Nalla’s father to safety, he had to move fast.
Shoving his arms under the Brother, he picked Zsadist up and started running across the field of combat. Dodging both friendly fire and lesser bullets, jumping over downed slayers—and staying out of the path of the monster truck that the love of his life insisted on weaponizing—Nate got Z into the cabin, over to the set of stairs, and down into the earth.
There was no time to lock things up.
He needed to get a tourniquet on that arm immediately. Putting the Brother on the bed, he turned away and grabbed his first aid kit from a shelf—
“Can I have my dagger back?”
Nate froze. Then looked over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, what?”
Zsadist’s half-mast eyes were yellow as he crooked his finger. “C’mere. No, don’t turn around, just lean back.”
As Nate did what he’d been told, there was a blaze of pain in his upper shoulder, and when he pivoted around again, the Brother had a black dagger in his palm.
“These things can’t be wasted. V gets cranky if you lose ’em.”
And then the male passed out.
“Fuck.” Nate ignored his own pain and started riffling through the white box with the red cross on the top. “Where is—got it.”
His hands were shaking, but he got the thing in place over the sleeve of the leather jacket because there was no time to strip the outerwear off: The red tide streaming out of the stab wound was like a garden hose running into a fucking flower bed.
As he cinched the tourniquet so tight it nearly amputated his own fingers, he knew it was a miracle the Brother was even still alive.
With shaking hands, he took out his phone and started making a call.
The answer was quick, thank Lassiter. “This is Manny—”
“It’s Nate on a burner. I’m here with Zsadist, out at my place. You need to get Bella here as soon as the fighting’s over. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Nate?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” He glanced over to the stairs and wished he’d closed them all the way down. “I’m going to give him synthetic units until she can get here, but let her know that she needs to be ready to come quick.”
“Okay, okay, all right. Good move—and I’ll send Jane out—”
“No, it’s too hot right now. And I’m not going to let him die. Tourniquet’s in place, just like he taught me.”
Hanging up, he reached under the bed and pulled out a sealed plastic bag of the synthetic stuff. Puncturing the top, he pushed the self-pack straw into the container, and put the business end to the male’s pale lips.
“Wake up, Z. Drink. You gotta drink. You can’t die on me, I’m in love with your daughter, and even though you hate me, she needs you, now more than ever—”
The sense that someone had come down the steps brought his head up, and at first, what he saw made no sense.
“Evan?” he blurted.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
As soon as Evan bottomed out at the stairwell, he had the satisfaction of being right. Across the way, the enforcer he’d come for was putting a straw into the mouth of an enormous vampire who had a tourniquet on one arm and a puddle of blood underneath him on the bed.
And what do you know, he recognized the injured male. It was the one with the facial scar he’d first seen in that office building, who’d later tracked him the other night to Bathe.
And then the enforcer looked up and did a double take. “Evan?”
Evan could understand the surprise. He’d felt it, too, when he’d put everything together.
“You’re one of the enemy,” he said to the enforcer. “I never suspected. Then again, until now, I had no idea vampires and lessers were real.”
“What the fuck, Evan.” The vampire straightened slowly. “What happened to you?”
I don’t know, he answered to himself.
“I have to kill you.” He shook his head. “It’s just where we are, where you and I ended up. Kinda strange, huh.”
And funny, this was so much less climactic than he’d thought it would be.
Then again, maybe it was because this male had known him from before—and he was suddenly thinking about his mother, instead of killing his uncle.
“This isn’t you,” the vampire said. “You’ve never been like this.”
“I’m not like myself anymore, though.” Tears came to his eyes. “I didn’t mean for all this to happen, but I went to the trainer and he… wasn’t a trainer after all.”
“Lash.”
“You know him? But I guess that’s stupid. Of course you do. He… bit me and forced this vile shit down my throat and ever since then, I’ve been… evolving.”
The vampire shook his own head. “I know you, Evan. You’re not a killer.”
He thought of the woman tied to the chair at Mickey’s, saw her eyes bugging as he covered her face with that pillow, heard the splash as her body landed in the quarry’s cold waters.
“Yes, I am. I’ve killed now.”
“Oh, Evan. You need to get out of this. You’re in so deep, you don’t even know it.”
“How—” He put his gun back up, having missed the fact that it had lowered itself. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Can you live with what you’re doing? Ask yourself that.”
“How about yourself. How many murders have you committed?”
“But your kind are killing innocents. Who should be allowed to live their lives in peace. You’re hunting those who would otherwise leave you alone because your master is a sociopath who’s using you.”
After a moment, Evan said forlornly, “He lied to me.”
“Of course he did. That’s what he does to get people like you lined up. And when you find out you’re trapped, and you can’t get out—”
“I know it’s too late for me—that’s what they’ve told me.”
“I can help you, though. It’s not too late—”
All of a sudden, the vampire’s eyes shifted up and to the left, and though that expression barely changed, Evan looked back over his shoulder.
A female with multi-colored hair stopped in mid-descent on the steps.
“Evan, don’t look at her. Look at me.” Nathaniel was talking fast now. “I’m the one you want. I’m the one you came for—right? You were out here with Mickey that night, that’s how you knew where to find me now. You’re the only one in the Lessening Society who knew where I lived.”
Refocusing on the enforcer, Evan felt a lancing pain in his chest. “I did bring them here.”
“Listen to me, you need to ask yourself if you can live with what you’re doing. You still have a conscience and you were cheated by your master—and I can end your suffering. You’re lying to yourself if you think you can handle what the future is going to be like for you. You’re not built for this and you know it. You’re not like Mickey, you’re not like Uncle. You are not your family and they shit all over you because of it.”
That was exactly the truth as Evan had lived it, but somehow, spelled out as it was by someone else, he felt a vital part of him collapse.
“How can you help me?” he whispered.
“I can end the suffering for you.”
“That’s not possible.”
Except then he remembered the warning that female lesser had given him… about steel blades and chest cavities.
“You’re better than this life, Evan. You’re better than all those assholes who’ve disrespected you. This is not who you are.”
Evan wasn’t sure precisely when he made the decision to lower the gun. But like so many of his actions since that night he had taken the elevator down into that black-oily basement, his movements were not conscious.
Only this time, it was another, sepaate part of him, not some groupthink that came from what had been done to him, that took control.
He nodded. “You’re right.”
And that was when the enforcer moved.
The vampire reached down and took a dagger with a black blade from out of the lax hand of the injured male. Then he stepped around the foot of the bed and came forward.
“I wanted them to be proud of me,” Evan said in a haunted voice. “That’s all I ever wanted.”
The enforcer’s voice was curiously gentle: “It’s better to be true to you and proud of yourself. Some evolutions aren’t worth the cost of pleasing others, and in the end, only your conscience, which truly knows right from wrong, can save you.”
As if he were putting down a heavy load, Evan exhaled long and slow. “Is this going to hurt?”
“Not any more than the pain you’re already in.”
Evan closed his eyes and leaned back on his hips, dropping the gun to the floor. The thump of impact was loud in his ears, and he was aware that he was starting to pant in preparation for what was coming.
