J. Ward - Lover Avenged

There was a collective nod and…holy shit, they were on the move, out in the open, jogging across the snow.

As Ehlena headed for the barn, the boots she’d been given crunched over the ground, her palms sweated in her gloves, and the backpack full of medical supplies she wore grabbed at her shoulders. She did not arm herself, having agreed not to draw her gun unless there was a good reason to. Made sense. You wouldn’t want an amateur manning an emergency room; there was no reason to complicate the situation with her trying to pretend she was as comfortable at the trigger as Xhex and the Brothers so clearly were.

The barn was a good-size one, with a pair of front doors that slid back on well-oiled runners. Xhex didn’t take the obvious way in, though, leading them around the side to a squat door instead.

Just before they filed into the lofty, empty space, Ehlena glanced back at the farmhouse.

The blond male was squared off at a circle of Brothers, the guy as calm and cool as someone at a cocktail party might be, his smug smile suggesting big trouble, in Ehlena’s opinion: Only somebody with a lot of weapons at his disposal looked like that when he was confronting a wall of muscle.

“Hurry up,” Xhex said.

Ehlena ducked inside and shivered, even though she was out of the wind. Man…this was all wrong. Like the farmhouse, there was something off about everything: no hay, no feed, no harness or tack. There was no horse in the stall, either. Natch.

The urge to flee choked her, and she clawed at the collar of her parka.

Zsadist put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s their equivalent of mhis. Just breathe. It’s an illusion that stains the very air, but what you’re feeling is not real.”

She swallowed and looked up into the Brother’s scarred face, drawing strength from how steady he was. “Okay. Okay…I’m all right.”

“Good girl.”

“Over here,” Xhex said as she headed for the stall and opened its two-part door.

The floor inside was concrete and marked with an odd geometric pattern.

“Open sesame.” Xhex bent down and lifted what turned out to be a slab of stone, the Brothers coming forward to help her with the weight.

The staircase that was revealed was lit with a soft red glow.

“I feel like I’m walking down into a porn movie,” V muttered as they took the steps with care.

“Wouldn’t that require more black candles for you,” Zsadist cracked.

At the bottom of the landing, they looked left and right down a corridor carved out of stone, seeing nothing but row after row of…black candles with ruby-colored flames.

“I take that back,” Z said, eyeing the display.

“We start hearing chick-a-wow-wow shit,” V cut in, “can I start calling you Z-packed?”

“Not if you want to keep breathing.”

Ehlena turned to the right, overwhelmed by a sense of urgency. “He’s down here. I can feel him.”

Without waiting for the others, she took off at a jog.

Of all the miracles that could have been granted on the planet, of all the, OMG, you’re alive!s, or, Thank you, Scribe Virgin, he’s cured!s, the resurrection John was staring at was a total nut-buster.

Lash was standing in front of a Martha Stewart white colonial, dressed in slick clothes, looking like he was not only perfectly alive and as impressed with himself as ever, but as if he’d been turbocharged somehow: He smelled like a lesser, but as he stared down from the porch it was as if he were the Omega itself-nothing but evil power that was unimpressed by any mortal displays of strength.

“Hey, John-boy,” Lash drawled. “I can’t tell you how great it is to see your pansy-ass face again. Almost as good as my rebirth.”

Jesus…Christ. Why couldn’t Wellsie have been the recipient of this kind of gift? But no…psychotic ass-wipe with the narcissistic disorder got fingered to do the Lazarus shuffle.

The irony was that John had prayed for this. Shit, immediately after Qhuinn had sliced the guy’s throat, John had prayed that somehow Lash would live through the massive blood loss. He could remember getting down onto the wet tile in the training center’s shower and trying to plug up the wound with his shirt. He’d begged God, the Scribe Virgin, whoever would listen, to somehow fix the situation.

Lash’s becoming the vampire equivalent of the Antichrist was not exactly what he’d been going for, however.

As snow started to ease down from the cloudy sky, some words were exchanged between Rhage and Lash, but the buzzing in John’s head drowned most of them out.

What he did hear clearly was Qhuinn’s voice right behind him: “Well, look at it this way. At least we get to kill him again.”

Then the world exploded. Literally.

From out of nowhere, a meteor formed in Lash’s palm and went flying, coming straight at John and the Brothers, a metaphysical bowling ball from hell. As it made contact, its glowing shock waves knocked all of them off their feet, a full strike.

Flat on his back with the others, John struggled to catch his breath as flakes settled softly on his cheeks and lips. The next blast was coming. Had to be.

Either that or something worse.

The roar that lit off across the landscape originated from in front of him, and at first he assumed Lash had transmogrified into some kind of five-headed horror that was going to eat them all alive.

Except…well, it was a beast, but as purple scales flashed and a barbed tail swept through the air, John was relieved. It was their Godzilla, not the Omega’s: Rhage’s alter ego had come out of him, and the massive dragon was good and pissed off.

Even Lash seemed a little surprised.

The dragon inhaled with a great dragging pull on the night air, and then it stretched its neck forward and let out a burst of fire that was so intense the skin on John’s face tightened like shrink-wrap-even though he was well out of range.

When the flames dissipated, Lash was standing between porch supports that were singed, his clothes steaming, his body otherwise unharmed.

Great. Fucker was flame-retardant.

And ready to serve up another round of H-bomb. Like something out of a video game, he palmed up another serving of hot-and-heavy and sent the energy rolling right at the beast.

Who took it like a man. Rhage’s other half stayed strong against the onslaught and gave the rest of them the break they needed to get on their feet and be ready to shoot. It was a bold, sweet move-but then again, when you could spit out a bonfire, you had to be able to stand the heat or your burps were going to immolate your ass.

John started shooting, as did the others, even though he suspected that they were going to need more than bullets to take down the new and improved Lash.

He was slipping another clip in when two carloads of lessers showed up.

Xhex was willing to follow Ehlena directionally, but she didn’t feel comfortable having the female in the lead as they hotfooted along. In a burst of speed, she overtook Rehv’s mate.

“You tell me if we take a wrong turn, ’kay?” As Ehlena nodded, the Brothers fell in behind her to guard against a rear ambush.

As they went down the rock corridor, Xhex didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. She couldn’t sense Rehv at all, which from a vampire standpoint was not surprising-Ehlena had been the last female he’d fed from, so her blood superceded Xhex’s. The problem was that symphath to symphath she couldn’t get a bead on him. In fact, she was unable to pinpoint where he or anyone else in the colony was. It didn’t compute. Symphaths could pick up on anything with emotions, anywhere. So she should have been finding all kinds of grids.

She glanced at the wall as she hurried along. When she’d been here last, it had all been rough-cut stone, but now it had a smooth surface. Guess they’d improved things over the decades.