Ilona Andrews - Dark and Stormy Knights

The Thirst screamed as he hit the Thing with a bone-crunching thud. Fell, his head clipping the tiled counter, and the gun tracked the Thing as it loomed over him, snarling. Five bullets, their sound blurring into and over one another. The UV slashed across Chisholm’s face. Smoke burst free.

He looked again into the face of the Thing that had made him, and its mad blue gaze dug into the inside of his skull. It bent down, its snarl ripping across violated air, and he saw a thick, broken wooden dowel protruding from its chest.

I didn’t do that. Confusion fought with the Thirst, and instinct jerked his hand with the UV up again. Smoke boiled through the kitchen, bubbling black flesh rising. At night, when they dropped their shield of humanity, the light hurt them. During the day, they never dropped that mask. Maybe it was a survival mechanism—

“I wondered what happened to you.” Chisholm’s voice, a rich baritone. He reached up, plucked the wood from his flesh with clawed fingers. The mask of humanity was back over the face of the Thing that glutted itself on suffering, and if not for the stripes of bubbling black tissue across his chiseled features, you wouldn’t guess he was a terror as ancient as darkness itself. “Baited a little trap, did we, Rook?” Chisholm dropped the sharpened dowel. It clattered on the floor.

Rookwood raised the gun, the Thirst screaming inside his veins. Kill kill kill! it yelled, pushed, screeched. Kill it, kill it now!

“How’s Fann?” he croaked through a dry-burning throat. “Legs grown back yet?”

Amelia King moaned shapelessly. Rookwood forced himself to stare up at Chisholm. Steady. Pick your shot. Four bullets left . Didn’t hit him, worse fucking luck.

“Your ridiculous little crusade.” Chisholm sighed. He was popular in a courtroom, in a nightclub, with the ladies. Courtly, even.

But the ones who wouldn’t be missed knew what he really was. The trouble was, they didn’t know until too late—and they couldn’t tell anyone from beyond the grave.

Nobody except Rookwood.

Rookwood’s hand tightened. Chisholm smiled. It was a gentle, paternal smile, the fangs curving down to dimple his chin, the black-charred stripe across his face tingeing with red at the edges as it healed. Fann was the oldest, Briggs was the most adept at using people—but Chisholm was the most dangerous. And now Rookwood had him right in his sights.

“It’s not too late to belong to the night, Jeremy.” Again that soft, paternal tone. Patient. Loving. “All can be forgiven. I marked you because you’re one of us, deep down. You know it.”

He’s afraid. Of me. It was like a bath of ice water. “Fuck you,” Rookwood snarled, and squeezed the trigger.

The gun spoke. Chisholm moved with the inhuman speed of the damned—but not fast enough. The bullet tore into his chest, mushrooming, and a huge black blotch appeared.

The Thing’s scream shattered glass, and Rookwood fired again, hit it again . It scrabbled away, still screaming, and smashed through the ruin of the French doors, more glass shivering free.

Got him! Savage joy filled his chest. He struggled to his feet. The Thirst burned, plucked at him. Go now. Hunt him down. He’s bleeding bad.

He glanced over. Amelia King lay slumped against the wall, her glossy hair tangled and matted with bright blood. She was crumpled like a doll thrown carelessly by a child.

Go! Go and get him! He’ll go to ground, you can mark the spot and wait for dawn. Then you can put a stake through his fucking heart and cut off his head and be free.

Six months of training, three of lying in wait for just this chance. He’d just flushed the monster out of hiding, and now here he was hesitating.

Amelia King surprised him again. Her eyes opened. Her throat was smeared with blood, and she blinked, dazed.

Oh, goddammit. He bit her. I’d bet money on it. Probably not for the first time, either. But that dowel in his chest . . .

Rookwood surprised himself this time by reaching down. His hand closed around her shoulder—why had he dropped the gun? That was a fool’s move. “It’s okay.” The words cut through the Thirst. “You’re safe.”

She scrabbled back from his touch. Drywall dust puffed down, snowdust in her hair and over her blood-spattered blue T-shirt. The blood was amazingly red, and his fangs slid free. The bones in his jaw crackled as he wrestled down the Thirst.

She gulped. “Bait.” It was the voice of a child caught in a nightmare. “You used me as bait .”

“I’m sorry.” Pale words for the guilt that twisted inside his ribs, tearing at tender tissue. “Amelia—”

“Molstein’s dead.” Sense came back into her eyes. She scrabbled back even farther, pressing herself against the wall, and clapped a hand to her bleeding neck. “They killed him. Last week before I came to you. I was bait for you, too. ”

“I knew that,” he heard himself say. “Don’t worry about it.” It was too much to hope for, that one betrayal would balance the other. “Just stay here. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She closed her eyes. Her throat worked as she swallowed. He supposed they should both be grateful she was bitten and halfway there. If she’d been safe and uncontaminated, she’d be broken inside. Bleeding to death internally. As it was, her pulse was strong and she looked all right. Pale, but all right.

“You tried to stake him.” Rookwood’s fingers fell away from her shoulder. “Right?”

“Dowels from the hardware store. Didn’t work.” She coughed, a lonely, tired sound.

Get after him. If he gets to a safe place, he’ll come back tomorrow night and kill her. He rose, scooping up his gun, and she sighed.

“Good fucking deal.” His tone was harsher than it needed to be, with the Thirst burning in his throat, spreading down his chest. “Next time use hawthorn. It’s the only thing that works well enough to immobilize them. Stay here, I’ll be back.”

He reloaded as he stepped out into the night. Wet wind slapped him in the face. Chisholm’s passage was a drift of reek against the damp, and Rookwood gathered himself. The last flask of red stuff burned against his lips; he swallowed as he ran. It scorched all the way down, and the Thirst snarled. It wanted him to go back and sink his teeth in the bleeding woman, put his mark on her throat instead of the other bleeding hole of contamination.

And there were other things he thought he’d left behind wanting to be done, too. No time for them, either. But maybe . . .

He finished gulping and stuffed the flask back in his pocket. The UV was out, and the gun, and he pulled on every inch of more-than-human speed he could gather.

Out here in suburbia, there were even parks. In the city, it would have been a chase across rooftops and through alleys, dodging crowds and sliding across neon. Here there were fences, covered swimming pools—in this wet, cold part of the country, they were ridiculous status symbols—and the freeway like a giant artery.

The reek was flagging by the time he got to the park. He had to double back twice, cutting across fences, struggling through wet underbrush, and cursing. If this were his part of city, he’d know every back alley and sight line, every potential hiding place.

As it was, he almost stepped straight across the little depression in a soccer field. The Thirst jerked him back just in time, avoiding the clawed hand that shot up out of the wet turf.

Brought to bay at last, Chisholm dropped all pretense of humanity. Gone was the smooth courtroom baritone, the neatly combed shock of glossy white hair, the waxen, charming smile. This was the Thing without its daylight mask, its canines long and razor sharp, black sludge dribbling down its chin, and the sodden rags of its expensive suit flapping as it climbed out of its death hole.