Night's Honor

EIGHTEEN

“Oh, my God,” Tess said. Her face blanched.

Dark figures swarmed out of the garbage truck ahead of him.

Xavier grabbed her, yanking her sideways and down, away from the windshield.

“Keep your head down,” he told her.

At the same time he snapped off his seat belt, opened the glove compartment and grabbed the Glock that was stored inside.

Gunfire sprayed the outside of the SUV. All of his vehicles had run-flat tires, bullet-resistant glass and layers of armored plate inserted into the body panels, but those precautions wouldn’t hold up under a concentrated, sustained attack. All they would do was buy a little bit of time.

Xavier glanced in the backseat. Still swearing, Diego had unbuckled too, slammed part of the backseat flat and was climbing into the back, where a stash of weapons and body armor was stored in a compartment underneath the floor.

More dark figures came up from behind the SUV.

Nobody would have tried such an attack if Xavier had been alone, because it wouldn’t have worked. He could have fought his way out, or climbed the side of a building. But traveling with both Tess and Diego, this type of assault was brutally effective at pinning them in place.

He couldn’t pull both of them out or take them up the side of the building, and he would never leave them.

He said, “I count fifteen.”

“Got it.” Diego threw a Kevlar vest at him.

He caught it and spread it open over Tess. He told her, “Put this on.”

She snapped off her seat belt, pushed her seat back as far as it could go and wriggled into the vest. Diego threw a second vest at him, and he twisted to put it on in the confined space.

More gunfire sounded. Webs of fractures starred the front and back windshields, but they held for now.

“I need guns,” Tess snapped. “Lots and lots of guns.”

Folded into the small space between the front seat and the dashboard, she looked terrified and sounded furious. In spite of the urgency of their situation, Xavier almost smiled. He bent over her, tilted up her face and whispered, “Tell me it’s okay to fall in love with you.”

She gave him a wide-eyed, cranky stare. Her lips were bloodless. “You’d better. I’m not falling in love all by myself.”

He gave her a swift, hard kiss. Something hard nudged his shoulder. It was Diego, poking him with the butt of an assault rifle.

He took it, slammed open his car door and rolled out to lay a blanket of gunfire down either end of the alley. He hit some of their attackers, while others dove for cover. The ones he had hit sprawled to the ground then scrambled to get away.

Their attackers were all Vampyres. Unless he struck any of them in the head, the gunshot wounds would be painful and debilitating, but they weren’t lethal.

He said to the other man, “Stay in the car, under cover as long as you can.”

“Yeah, okay.” Diego looked pretty sick, himself, as he crawled from the back. He handed Tess a handgun and another rifle. “Xavier, this is all my fault. I am so profoundly sorry.”

He paused only for a fraction of a second. “You’ll have to explain that to me later when we have time.”

“What are you doing?” Tess said to Xavier. She flung out one hand, reaching out to him. “Get your ass back in here.”

“That’s not how we’re going to get out of this,” Xavier told her. He shoved his cell phone into her hand. “Call Raoul and Julian.”

Her fingers closed over the phone.

“Cover me,” he said to Diego. The younger man nodded, his face tense.

It was time to get to work.

After wrapping her unsteady fingers around his cell phone, Tess watched Xavier turn toward their attackers, and his expression changed.

All of the light he carried inside of him, the gentle sensuality, warmth and laughter, disappeared entirely, and what came in its place made her shake all the harder.

She had always thought death was a massively indifferent, inescapable juggernaut, for sooner or later it came to every living thing. Through accidents, acts of war and sometimes illness, it even eventually struck down the long-lived creatures of the Elder Races.

But the kind of death Xavier embodied was a fiery, passionate blaze.

The death in his eyes cared far too much to stand idly by and watch an injustice being done. It cared about the thinking that went behind each action, and the reasons for war.

It would never rest, never stop, until either harm had been averted or balance had been restored.

Her limited human eyes couldn’t track what happened next. He simply left her behind on this heavy, solid Earth and went somewhere else, shooting through the air like God’s arrow.

That was when the screaming began.

More gunfire sounded in short staccato bursts. From the backseat, Diego shoved open a door on the driver’s side and angled his body out to shoot at the group of attackers behind them.

Keeping her head down, she punched through the commands on the phone that took her to Xavier’s list of favorites. Locating Raoul’s number, she dialed it.

He answered immediately. “Have you heard anything?”

“It’s Tess,” she told him. “We’re in the city. We’re pinned in an alley and under attack. Marc’s dead. They cut off his head! Whoever they are.”

Raoul’s voice changed. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only been to San Francisco once.” As she watched, Diego sagged against the side of the vehicle. He brought the muzzle of his rifle back up almost immediately, but she knew he’d been shot. She said rapidly, “We came across the Golden Gate, we were headed toward the Four Seasons Hotel and now we’re in an alley. Figure it out.”

“Keep this phone on,” Raoul said. “I’ll track you, Tess. Do you hear me? I’ll track you.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” she said between her teeth.

Of course he wouldn’t make it in time. Even if she called Julian and he sent people from Evenfall, or from within the city itself, nobody would make it in time. She disconnected, shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans and scrambled over the seat to the driver’s side of the vehicle where Xavier had left the door open.

With both of the SUV doors open, she had cover, of sorts, on both sides.

Diego had given her another Glock, like the one that had been stored in the glove compartment. It was her favorite of the handguns she’d practiced with, so far. She checked over the assault rifle. It was a SCAR, a special forces combat assault rifle, like the one he’d handed Xavier. While she didn’t care for them, she did know how to use it.

“Here’s where you get to show off everything you’ve learned in class,” Diego said, from the other side of the open rear door. He sounded breathless, and his rifle had slumped to his side again. “Look up, chica. Move fast.”

Using the car door as a shield, she angled out her head and checked the rooflines of the neighboring buildings.

Nearby, a muzzle of a rocket launcher aimed at the SUV, the figure of the shooter hunched over it.

She didn’t give herself time to think.

Snapping up the SCAR, she shot. The figure holding the rocket launcher jerked and disappeared.

If that was a Vampyre, he was going to reappear in a few moments and try again. “We can’t stay here,” she told Diego. “How badly are you hit?”

“You know, I’ve seen better days,” said Diego. “Go for. The doorway. Fifteen yards. Back. Take. Cover inside.”

She didn’t move. Instead, she watched the rooftop for the rocket launcher to reappear. “You don’t sound so good.”

The tip of the launcher reappeared. Her heart kicked. She sighted down the SCAR and sprayed it. To her immense surprise, it exploded. A ball of fiery light lit up the night, and she swore.

Diego laughed and went into a spasm of harsh coughing. She could hear his breathing hitching from where she crouched. Daring to peer around the edge of the door, she saw that the immediate area around their SUV was deserted.

Near the garbage truck blocking them at the rear, a vicious, whirlwind fight was taking place. She couldn’t track all that happened—they all moved too fast—but she could tell there were several figures involved.

Even as she watched, two of the figures dissolved into dust. Oh, God.

But the fight continued, so she knew Xavier had to be alive.

“Come on, Diego,” she said. “We’re going to get to that doorway together.”

“Sorry. No can do.” His voice was noticeably weaker. “I want you to tell Xavier . . . I want you to tell him . . .”

Furious, horrified tears filled her eyes, and she swiped them back. She couldn’t afford to cry. She needed to see.

Down the alley, opposite the fight, two figures crept around the edge of the garbage truck. She took careful aim and pulled off a shot, and one of them blew into a cloud of dust. As the other darted back to cover, she leaped up and scooted around the edge of the rear door to Diego.

He sat on the ground, his back propped against the running board of the car. As she knelt beside him, he lifted his head to look at her. Propping the SCAR beside him, she ran her fingers over his chest. He’d had time to put on a vest, just like she and Xavier had. Where had he been hit?

He took one of her hands and laid it against his shoulder, and she saw it then—dark blood seeping around the border of the vest, near his underarm. He wheezed, “Freak shot. Just my fucking luck. Bastard went in sideways. Lung.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one end of the garbage truck behind the SUV lift into the air. With a gigantic screech of metal, it sailed toward the fighting Vampyres, who scattered. The truck slammed into the edge of the building.

Holy shit, someone just picked up that truck and threw it.

It was a troll, massive and stone-colored. It stomped toward one Vampyre—belatedly she recognized Xavier—who leaped, not away, but toward it.

Dear God, did he have no fear whatsoever? With impossible-looking grace and speed, he landed on the troll’s massive shoulder, put his Glock to its eye and shot it. As it began to topple, he leaped away.

She turned her attention back to Diego, who had watched the encounter too. He looked up at her with a crooked smile and said telepathically, He’s a little like Armageddon, isn’t he? Tell him . . . I’m sorry. I was supposed to get him into the city . . . With Justine in Evenfall, I thought she was going to try something there, a coup against Julian . . .

She stared. “You’re working with Justine? Since when?”

When she came to stay with Melisande. She made me an offer . . . His head sagged. I thought she wanted Xavier out of the way . . . Wouldn’t have done it if I’d known . . .

“For God’s sake, why?”

In the semidark, she couldn’t see his infinitesimal shrug. She would never have known about it, if she hadn’t felt him move underneath her fingertips.

Thousand bucks monthly stipend, chica. No matter how much you save, it isn’t enough to retire on.

The wry voice in her head went silent, and his eyes closed.

Tears spilled out the corners of her eyes. She whispered, “You stupid, greedy son of a bitch.”

A hand came down on her shoulder. An involuntary cry broke out of her. She flinched and twisted to one side, as she brought up her Glock. . . .

Taking hold of her wrist, Xavier jerked her hand away. Even though he pointed the muzzle of the Glock toward the side of the building, she managed not to pull the trigger. Pulling her arm free, she clicked on the safety and tucked the gun in the waist of her jeans, at the small of her back.

Coming down on one knee beside her, Xavier gave Diego a long, grim look. Xavier was covered in blood, his vest pocked with marks. He’d been shot at multiple times. Maybe knifed. She was so desperately glad to see him, she lunged forward to throw her arms around his neck and grip him tight.

Slipping an arm around her waist, he eased back until he connected with the wall of the nearby building and slid to a sitting position.

“What are you doing?” she said between her teeth. “You can’t sit. We’ve got to keep moving, in case they come back and attack us again.”

“They’re not going to. They did what they came to do.”

“What do you mean?” Loosening her hold around his neck, she pulled back to search his face.

He opened his free hand to show her an empty syringe.

She had been scared so much over the last few days, but the sight of what he held in his broad palm outdid all of it, sending a pure bolt of terror through her.

“More than one of them tagged me,” he told her. “I don’t know how many doses I took.”

She heard Raoul’s voice in her head, as if he had just spoken the words to her all over again.

There’s more than one way to kill a Vampyre.

Brodifacoum. A highly lethal anticoagulant poison.

They bleed to death. I’ve seen it, and it’s a grim way to die.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said.

“I’m sorry, Tess.” He wiped his face with the back of one hand. A trickle of blood oozed from the corner of one of his eyes, and Raoul’s clinical voice continued in her head.

First it attacks a Vampyre’s small blood vessels then it leads to internal bleeding, shock, convulsions, unconsciousness and eventually death.

“You’re not going to die.” She turned very calm. “I won’t let you. Raoul told me about this. We have to drain you and get you a massive infusion of untainted blood as fast as we can. I need a knife.”

While she might have sounded calm, her hands were frantic as she patted his pockets. No knife. She whirled on her knees to search Diego’s body.

Come on. Come on. It couldn’t have been all flying bullets and trolls flinging garbage trucks. After the carnage tonight, there had to be a sharp object, somewhere.

Sirens sounded in the distance. With a dim sense of incredulity, she realized the entire confrontation couldn’t have taken ten minutes, and had probably taken much less time.

“Check the back of the SUV, in the weapons storage compartment.” Xavier sounded calm too, and he looked it, despite the blood leaking out of his eyes. “There will be a couple of knives, or at least a short sword.”

She sprang to the backseat and lunged for the back. Diego had left the compartment open and knives had been Velcroed to the inside of the lid. Snatching one, she scrambled back to Xavier. “How do you want me to do this?”

“We have to work fast. The poison’s been in my system for a few minutes already.” He held out his arms, palms up. “Cut both wrists. Go deep.”

Hesitating, she asked, “What about your tendons?”

He told her, “Don’t worry about it. If I make it, I’ll heal.”

“You’re going to make it,” she snapped. The terror hadn’t eased up, not in the slightest. It drove her on, like a devil riding her back, whipping her to the next thing, and the next.

She used the terror to strike with the knife. As the point drove deep into his flesh, he stiffened and sucked in a breath. Blood flowed out from the cut, in a shockingly plentiful river.

He held out his other wrist to her. “Again.”

She almost couldn’t see what she was doing, which was when she realized she was crying. Once more, she cut him deep, and his blood flowed freely, and there wasn’t going to be enough liquor in the world, or enough therapy, to get over the sight of him hunched in pain and drenched in his own blood.

His face twisted, and he doubled up and fell to his side.

She went down with him to the ground and embraced all of it, every last gory, wonderful inch of him.

“Don’t you dare give up. You’re not done yet.” Lifting him slightly, she took his head and guided him to the crook in her neck. “Come on, bite.”

Tess. His lips moved.

He had kissed her. Even with all the pain she could tell he was feeling, as it strained his strong body, he still kissed her.

She sobbed, “Xavier, if you don’t bite me, I will pummel you. No, I won’t, I’ll take the fucking knife to my own neck. I refuse to let you go. Do you think it matters in the slightest to me anymore? DO IT.”

A brief, sharp pain stabbed her skin, then warmth where his mouth rested on her. She felt the flow of her own blood and how he drank it. Despite the discomfort of sprawling on the ground, and the fear that after everything, she might still lose him, nourishing him felt so good. So good.

Thou fairest among women, he whispered in her head. My beloved is mine, and I am hers.

Ignoring the flashing lights that appeared at either end of the alley, she cradled him as close as she could.

Even though the time they had been together could be counted in hours, not days, they had already been through too much for it to just end.

It was too strong, surprising and beautiful.

Too necessary.