Page 7

LUCIAN

“ T o your left, you great baboon!” I screamed before deflecting the flash of sharp fangs from the idiotic fledgling coming directly for my throat.

How, by the wisdom of Athena herself, was it possible for a man to be blind enough to miss the big, great chasm created by one of the dozen artifacts flying around the room? Which one, I wasn’t sure yet.

Gideon’s great frame wobbled right over the fissure leading to the end of the bloody planet or another world—I didn’t know, and refused to find out.

The vampires themselves weren’t much of a problem.

They were fast, yes, and there were many of them in the cramped, abandoned townhouse—apparently no one told them vamps weren’t video-game zombies—but none of them seemed to understand their own power.

The biggest issue was keeping them in the house; we couldn’t let them escape and risk creating another infestation of ferals, hence why we approached during the day, when they’d be trapped inside.

Still, there was a chance they’d make a dash for it if we let them.

But the artifacts they’d kept around the place?

That was another story. Traps worthy of an Egyptian tomb, mimics, cursed blades, arrows with poisoned tips like those of Hercules himself—perhaps those of Hercules, come to think of it.

There were coffers positively filled with treasures as dangerous as they were priceless in every room.

However dumb they might have been, the moment they’d understood we were more interested in the treasures than them, the vamps had started throwing around whatever items they could get their hands on as distractions, not caring it was mostly killing their peers.

And idiots like Gideon, if I didn’t do something .

He was all the way at the end of the dilapidated space that must have once been a dining room, teetering at the edge of whatever the hell that was . Too far to reach. Too heavy and unbalanced to get himself out of there, and I could already spot a feral sprinting towards him.

Oh, damn it to all the hells.

I couldn’t afford to get rid of my one dagger—those vamps were everywhere, and I was not getting bitten by a goddamned feral.

My mother would kill me, for one, and I also didn’t fancy spending the entire weekend vomiting bile.

Which was far, far less that what might have happened to a regular person infected by their saliva; I was in no danger from turning into one of them.

I retrieved the feather-tipped pen in the inner pocket of my jacket and barely took half a second to morph it into something larger before taking aim.

The gold tip pierced Gideon’s shoulder. It served him right.

At least he’d get a chance to maybe— maybe —learn something today.

The speed of the impact propelled him backward, enough to regain his footing just in time for him to shove his boots at the coming vamp.

Then the goddamned idiot laughed .

Today was my last day with Gideon. And a great thing too. Another moment with him would give me gray hair. I preferred sticking to platinum, thank you very much.

“That’s another drink I owe you tonight,” he said, joining me across the dining room, and heading into another hallway.

Empty, except for a still-closed wooden coffer with iron latches.

“If I accepted all the life debts you owe me in the form of shots, I’d die of alcohol poisoning. And you owe me a pen, by the way.”

Pressing the tip of my blade to the lock, I sent a pulse of sheer power through it.

It wasn’t wise. There was always the possibility of the box rebounding my energy, or whatever was inside responding by attacking.

But we were having a long morning, and whatever we were dealing with, I would rather face head-on than waste time pussyfooting around it.

Damn, was Gideon rubbing off me?

I didn’t die. Inside, there were another dozen priceless treasures.

I could tell at first glance. An ancient, bow, helm, crown, all gleaming and resplendent, like they’d been polished just yesterday.

The vampire master who used to live here must have been old, to collect all these treasures.

But dumb enough to die and leave us with this mess.

"Nothing’s trying to bite my face. I say, let’s pack it up.”

“How are we bringing all this back to Highvale? I mean, it’s hardly the first haul of this scale we’ve seen, but we didn’t prepare a damn plane to cart it all back,” Gideon groaned.

We had another dozen chests at a minimum.

It wasn’t a simple matter of hiring a private jet, either.

Magical objects could bend space and time, send pulses of power that could majorly fuck with regular human technology.

The Guard had one jet, lined with a silver, lead, and iron mix, reinforced with a thin layer of spells.

It had to be booked ahead to guarantee no one else was using it.

Hearing a footstep, I lifted the blade in the direction of the sound.

“Apple pie!” someone shouted before one of our colleagues, Parker, appeared, sweating and panting. “Damn, we need a better keyword next time. I’m dying for pie now.”

“That, my friend, was the plan.” Gideon grinned. “After we’re done, we’re all going for pie, mate. I know a place.”

Parker shook his head. “No can do. It’s Rupert. Got a nasty chomp from one of the fuckers. We need to get him out.”

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“Downstairs. Lawrence and Towers are carrying him out. It’s all clear—your floor was the last I checked.”

I stormed past him before he’d finished, jumping the stairs two at a time. “Wait!”

Between Selena Lawrence and Oliver Towers, Rupert Samuels was limp, occasionally twitching, the bite on his neck already showing a network of nasty bruises and black veins.

“Take him back to Highvale like that and he’s dead,” I told his friends.

Outside, the sun was shining—uncharacteristic of London in October, so that was likely just to fuck with me.

“Yeah. That’s what happens when feral vamps bite you. You turn. He wouldn’t want that. We’ll take him to his family so they can say goodbye, and?—”

Gods, they were idiots.

“You can start composing your eulogy, or you can bring him back here and let me help.”

The two protectors looked at each other, dumbstruck. By that time, Gideon and Parker had joined us.

“What can you possibly do?” Lawrence pushed.

“Bring Rupert out of the light, Selena. That’s an order.”

I turned to my partner. Gideon didn’t usually pull rank. He also didn’t usually look serious. He was technically the leader, though he seldom acted like it. He did today, a steady glare set on the pair until they finally complied.

I ignored all four protectors standing around me as best I could, laying the poor guy down on the floor.

First, I pressed my hand to his heart and stopped it. Each moment it pumped blood through his body spread the infection faster.

“Dude. Did you just kill him?”

I ignored whoever had spoken, focusing on the task at hand.

As a kid, my power was impossible to control.

I just sucked in the energy around me indiscriminately, unable to choose a target, unable to stop.

These days, I was ninety-nine percent in control.

I didn’t let myself forget the one percent.

But there was a chance I could do this, and if I didn’t, Rupert was dead anyway.

Ignoring all the enticing, delicious strands of life, I focused on the violent, brutal energy straining to make its way through the guy’s body as fast as possible, infecting every possible cell.

It felt extremely different from his actual vital pulse.

It wasn’t what I wanted. It smelled like rotten eggs and petroleum.

It would be so much sweeter to suck on his own life, like a budding flower, making it my own.

Pushing down those instincts, I took in the damn rot, letting it transfer to me.

“By the gods,” someone whispered, the darkness not receding, but flowing from Rupert’s mangled shoulder into my hand, coloring my nails first, then the tips of my fingers, my palm, wrist.

My own energy pulsed, fighting the foreign infection.

In the end, it wasn’t different to fighting off a flu. A vampire fiend, descendent of a descendent of someone human infected by a godly disease, had no chance against me.

It wouldn’t be pleasant. So much for not throwing up over the weekend. But I’d spend a couple of days with a headache, whereas the poor guy passed out on the floor would have died.

I restarted his heart and stood up.

“His shoulder needs tending,” I told his friends.

With the infection gone, his blood gushed out of the nasty bite. I wasn’t about to ruin my shirt on top of everything else.

Rupert’s partner, Lawrence, rushed to put pressure on the wound while Parker retrieved the healing kit.

“You saved him,” Towers said in surprise verging on shock. “You took the disease and just—ate it up. Did you know you could do that?”

Feeling a little worse for the wear, I stood nonetheless, brushing my sleeve. “No, Towers. I just risked my precious life for some guy I met twice.” Each word dripped with sarcasm.

The protector grumbled, “It would have been nice to know you could do that before getting into a den of vamps.”

“Right. So you could relax and all get chomped on,” Gideon joked, rolling his eyes.

The moment Towers was out of earshot, he hissed, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you had that mojo up your sleeve?”

“Because,” I drawled, “you would have gotten bitten. For fun.”

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t it be cool to know how it feels?”

“You’re going to die the moment I’m no longer your partner, aren’t you?”

Gideon laughed. “Nah. I’m careful if no one has my back.”

I could honestly not imagine his name ever associated with the word “careful” so I doubted it.

“Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. Your report is going to suck ass,” he told me.

I grinned. “Or I’ll keep it minimal and let you deal with your bosses next week.”

His face fell, crestfallen. “What? Man, you can’t do that to me. How can I explain the shit you have going on? Please, please , write a proper report. My mom would chew me out!”

It was my turn to laugh.

I retrieved my sunglasses from where I left them in the entryway, put them on, and walked into the bright day.

After six months, I was almost used to it.

“Good luck sorting out the shipment, boss . Call me when the jet’s here.”

I was in London, and it wasn’t even eleven in the morning. Might as well get some shopping done.