Page 3 of Jagged Souls

HIM

It’s time.

After a month of RECON, planning, and training with Aleric’s men in the dark of the night, my brothers and I are gearing up to go after Antonio. We are in a warehouse on the west side of town, waiting for the vampires to phase in to join us. Micha and Krypto are safe at home with Mother, but all my brothers are here.

“Do you think,” Aleric asks as he suddenly appears and tosses a sheathed knife to Maddox, “that if I took a Rick, I could fuck one of those super werewolves without dying?”

Six other vampires phase in, all carrying the weapons Cara poisoned for us.

“What?” Leno asks, and everyone groans over the fact that he took the bait and asked a stupid question.

“Their cum’s poisonous to us,” Aleric says. “But if I take a Rick, then it’s not my dick, is it? Which means it’s not vampire dick.”

“I think it’s still your dick,” Leno says, actually giving thought to it.

Aleric waves him off, then pulls out a red vial from his jacket pocket. “Maddox, let me drink this and then you tell me –”

“I’m not studying your dick, bruh.”

He tosses the potion to my brother. “Then study yours and let me know.” He pats his pocket. “I’ve brought extras with me.”

“Does everyone have their weapons?” I cut in before my brother can decide he’s curious about that now too. With a grin, he slips the Rick into his pocket for later. I’ve been handed a machete in a leather sheath and a strap, and I slide it onto my back.

Everyone nods.

“Do you have the silver?” Vlad asks, and I head over to the box we’ve brought with us. The amount of silver we got through the portal was only enough to make a net and a couple of chains. We would have struggled to bind Antonio with just that. But it turns out Zara wasn’t Ryker’s daughter at all. She took advantage of the fact that we didn’t know her home tongue and none of her men knew English. She was nothing more than a pathological liar. Luckily, Lou is fluent in Geish (as well as seven other languages) and was able to communicate with them. No one, it seems, liked Zara. They just fought back because they thought we were going to kill them all.

So now we have two nets, half a dozen chains, and some powder to throw in their faces. There are also twelve small balls for the twins to use with their telekinesis. If they can bury one inside a werewolf, it’s game up for the wolf until they can dig it out.

Enoch and Ezriel take a net and six balls each. Then each of my brothers suck two chains into their shadows. Leno sprays us with a potion that smells like alligator musk so the wolves won’t be able to smell us as we wait.

“Let’s goooo!” Aleric sings. Grabbing my arm, he phases us across town.

We appear inside one of the alligator pens, only a few feet away from a massive reptile. The creature scurries into the water where it feels more comfortable. I stumble away from Aleric as my body shakes, and my stomach churns. Phasing isn’t easy on the body if it isn’t built to do it.

Rudy and Vlad soon appear beside us. Their bodies are tense, and they part quickly. Rudy drops to his knees as he heaves. I help him up. He nods his thanks before he casts an invisibility spell around the four of us, and then we wait.

I smell him before I see him. My eyes track to the start of the boardwalk. It takes a few seconds before he appears, but then there he is – the fucker who hurt my wife and caused me to hurt her even more. He will not be leaving here alive.

He steps onto the boardwalk on his own, leaving behind his guard of six women and two men. Aleric stills beside me, and for the first time, I truly see him for the beast he is. My blood chills as I glance at the hunger in his face.

A crocodile moves near the middle of the boardwalk, and I wonder if that’s where Maddox and Khalid are. My little brother needs to be within a few feet of his target to be able to shapeshift into them. We might have been robbed of our main stash of alexandrite, but we still have enough to craft three more soul dolls, and we only need one of them to kill Antonio.

With luck, it’ll be that quick and easy, and I can go home and tell Micha the threat to our child is over. But only a fool relies on one plan when they only have one shot to pull it off. So the rest of us are here as Plan B. Cara is infecting his car’s AC unit as Plan C. It won’t be as effective, and it will take a lot out of her to keep it alive without a host, but if he drives for more than thirty minutes with it on, then it will weaken him considerably. We might get another chance to kill him then, if we can figure out which safe house he’s recovering at.

I tense, my muscles ready to explode into action as I watch him cross the boardwalk. There is a collective weight in the air, an electric current of anticipation. My eyes dart back to where I hope my two brothers are. I can’t see them under the cloak of magic, but that means he can’t either.

Antonio walks without hesitation, but he isn’t fast. He moves leisurely, his head down, lost in his memories. He suddenly looks up to peer around the watering hole full of crocs and gators.

There’s something wrong.

Aleric phases away just as Antonio stops. The werewolf drops to his hands and knees, shifting in an instant. He’s a second too slow. Aleric appears on his back, his hands going around the werewolf’s face, gouging into his eyes as his teeth aim for his neck.

The eight soldiers Antonio brought as guards all start to shift, their bones cracking, their skin splitting. Vlad and the other vampires phase to their locations, working in pairs to kill three of our foes by ripping their heads from their bodies. Plants shoot forth out of the nearby shrubbery and grabs hold of a fourth werewolf mid-change. They haul her towards the water. Until her change is complete, she can’t control her limbs. The crocodiles will tear her apart.

As Enoch and Ezriel cast a ward around the entire area to keep our fight secret from humans, Maddox rushes under the boardwalk towards Antonio. He’s in the form of a six-foot croc. All he needs is a few minutes – minutes Rudy is keen to buy as he focuses his magic on the alpha, bringing his fears to the surface.

A woman screams, and I snap my head to the left, for an instant thinking it’s Micha. It sounds exactly like she did when she was strapped to that chair. My pulse skips a beat as I look for her, but then it settles as I watch half a woman, her body missing from the waist down, drag herself across the boardwalk towards Antonio. Her intestines trail a line behind her, and there are wails coming from it. High-pitched. Child-like. And I realize I’m staring at Siome – at the twisted memory Antonio has of her death.