Burn (Drift Book 3) (8 page)

Knowing that speed was the key here
, I needed to get my attention back on the twins, but I wasn’t fast enough this time. Sierra had leaped back into the stadium and kicked me square in the back, which caused me to hit the ground face first and slide into the arena wall. The crowd screamed in approval.

I managed to hang on to the
Demon Dagger and rolled off my stomach. Sierra charged at me with the speed that only a vampire possesses and was on me in a second, trying to yank the dagger out of my hand. Molina was still dazed in the background and barely able to get back on her feet.

She did her best to pull the dagger from my grip, but she wasn’t strong enough. I grabbed her by the wrist and broke it. Sierra let out a blood cur
dling scream as her bones shattered. I took the dagger and placed it in my belt before whipping around her, putting her in a strangle hold, and cranking her neck. It cracked and crunched, and before I knew it, she was looking at me…from her backside. I released her and she fell to the arena floor. Shimmer screamed in defiance at me as I stalked the unsteady Molina.

When I got to her, I picked her up with almost no retaliation
out of her and slammed her hip over my knee. It was if the crowd could feel her pain. They called out in the same manner Molina did when she buckled. Then, I looked up to the furious Shimmer and started breaking his mistresses’ legs, slowly and methodically. I concluded that if I couldn’t figure out how to take their hearts out yet, I might as well bust some bones to buy me more time before they healed again.

When I
dragged the broken body of Molina over to her battered sister to do more damage, I took my eyes off Shimmer momentarily. The next thing I knew I felt a hand slide around my front side, pulling the Demon Dagger out of my belt. I turned to defend myself against a potential stab. When I turned, there was Shimmer. I blocked his wrist with my arm as he went to stab me through my back. Unsuccessful with his sneak attack, he kicked me squarely in the chest. That was one of the strongest kicks I’ve ever felt. It had so much force that it knocked me up a few rows into the wild crowd. The nervous vampire spectators scurried to get out of my way when I landed. They remained nowhere near me.

“Enough!” Shimmer called out to the crowd and his fallen queens
, who were now starting to heal as their bones straightened out. “Leave this field of honor, you’ve disgraced me. Head back to my castle.” The twins bowed and leaped up to the section with their thrones and exited behind them. There must have been a door somewhere behind there.

“
The time for games is over. This traitor must fall…now.” The mass cheered at his proclamation, well, those that weren’t anywhere near me did, anyway.

I got to my feet and soared back into the arena.

“Now my friends, you get to see the fall of a traitor. Justice…has…come for the demon!” Shimmer raised both of his arms in the air, still sporting the Demon Dagger in one hand as if he’d already defeated me. Lightning struck in the clouds above us as he held his arms up, almost as if he was controlling the skies himself.

The vampire mass
went into hysterics as they were about to witness their King go into battle.

“Then, after I crush the love-struck demon, right here, in front of you all…I will take the girl for my own! Ushering
in the reign of another Queen! A new Queen!” The crowd exploded in excitement.

“
Everyone is invited to the Ball of the Dead afterward to honor my beautiful bride…Shade Lewis!” He pointed over to my near lifeless, soaking wet girlfriend. The vampire horde cheered on.

“But first…” Shimmer looked
at me through the fat rain drops. His long wet hair nearly covered his face, but those blood red eyes peered at me menacingly. When the lightning struck above us, it lit up his face momentarily. I watched as he lowered the Demon Dagger, tucking it in through
his
belt loop, then he grinned. For the first time in awhile, I felt real fear.

H
e was on me in a blur. I had never seen punches thrown as fast as those he landed on me. I’d try to block one, only to get pounded somewhere else on my body twice. He struck me from every angle. I couldn’t keep up with his speed. There was no way to train for such lightning quick movement. I was able to block a blow here and there, but overall, he was landing pretty much everything he threw.

The crowd was worked into a
frenzy as they could see Shimmer was dominating me. I thought to myself in all the madness that he could just pull out the dagger in one of the blows he was throwing and I may not be able to even see it coming. I mean, I was doing the best I could. When I tried to counter, I was too slow and he would move out of the way with minimal effort.

He was beating me to a pulp. He whipped me as I stood, then when I would fall, he would beat me some more. I tried to retaliate with my wing cocoon maneuver
but he was so fast and accurate that he was able to strike me enough through it that when I tried to thrust my wings out to blow him backwards, it just didn’t have much force behind it. He kept picking me up with one hand and throwing me into sections of the arena. I crashed into the wall.

Every time
he tossed me around like junk, he’d play to the crowd, holding up his arms in triumph. After he’d get his recognition, he’d stalk me. I’d do everything in my power to counter attack, but he’d just dart around me in that blur and dodge everything I slung at him. He’d pummel me more, and the cycle continued.

I was getting exhausted. It was getting to the point where he could stab me with the Demon Dagger at any point, but the arrogant showman in him continued to appease the jubilant crowd. It fed his ego and he loved it
, so he kept toying with me. I took that as his only weakness.

I figured I’
d try to use my speed to get some distance between him and I, then fly out of the arena. I knew I wasn’t faster than him, but maybe I was quick enough to get him out of the Cavity so I could potentially level the playing field by using the elements of the landscape outside of the arena to my advantage.

W
hen I got a second to breathe from the beating while he riled up the masses, with all the strength I had left in my body, I blasted onto my feet and ran with everything I had. Shimmer stood in place and watched as I ran to the opposite end of the stadium, stretched out my wings, and went into flight.

I looked back
to find him and couldn’t believe my eyes. Shimmer literally jumped into the air, bouncing and leaping from seat to seat, deck to deck among the spectators, higher and higher in mere seconds until he jumped off the top of the arena, and tackled me in mid-air before I could completely clear the arena itself, I was still within the depths of the mountain the Cavity sat in. I was high and angled enough to curve over the top of the arena, causing us to slam into the side of Devil’s Tooth Mountain. I clung to the rocky terrain and did my best to shield myself from his blows.

Shimmer hung on to the mountain
with one hand as he pulled back and gut punched me over and over again with the other. Then he leaned back from the mountainside and raised his fist to the falling rain. The lightning kept striking just a couple miles above us. The crowd looked up and roared in approval. I took this moment to shoot out in front of him, freeing myself from being pinned between him and the side of the mountain.

I rocketed myself as fast as I could, looking back the whole time now that I was aware how nimble and quick Shimmer
actually was. The Vampire Lord glared up at me and leaped and crawled up the side of Devil’s Tooth after me like a scurrying spider. He caught me as soon as I got to the outside edge of the cavern, tackling me again. I reached down and pulled out the Demon Dagger from his waist and released it. It fell through the air and disappeared back down into the arena below.

Shimmer scolded me
on what I thought was a brilliant maneuver.

“You think that will save you, hero?
You’ve only delayed the inevitable and prolonged your suffering.” He crashed me onto the outer edge of Devil’s Tooth and we began to roll, still fighting one another, down the steep decline of the mountainside. Only the sounds of us struggling and rolling could be heard as we fell out of range of the noise bubble coming from the vampire crowd inside the mountain.

We must have rolled about halfway down the muddy mountain before
we came to a stop. I was nearly out of gas and feeling every bit of our fight. I was weak from the beating. The fall took something out of Shimmer as well because he stumbled to his feet, sucking in air as he hunched over to address me.

“Why do you persist, Leo? Why pursue what you cannot have?” The storm flashed and roared around us as the rain kept falling.

I positioned one leg under me before the other and barely got to my feet to answer him. “I push forward because I have no other choice…what is it exactly that I cannot have?” I wiped away the raindrops that streamed down my face.

“Your freedom…the girl…your quest is in vain, Leo, surely you must know
that.”

“Must know what?”

“That your thirst for Diccittidel will only end in your death…it is futile to continue.”

“I
f I’m already dead, what else do I have to lose?” I spoke sarcastically. I knew what he meant, my permanent death…total extinction, but I wanted to stall to gather back some lost strength.

“You’re a damn fool! Give up this
futile endeavor and you and I can take over the world. Push out Christian. Together we can do this. Be what you are, Leo Cutler.”

His offer might have been tempting for any other demon, but I’ve dealt with Shimmer enough now to know he
can’t be trusted in any deal. There was no way I would take him up on his offer, but I needed to buy more time for recovery and humored him.

“How do
you propose we do that?” Shimmer smiled and approached me.

“I have a plan, but I need a demon…a demon of strength, like you, Leo.”

“Christian would crush us both, Shimmer.”

“Then by your own admission you see that your task of Dicci
ttidel will be to no avail. You admit that he can demolish you…you know you will die if you confront him…hell, you’re about to die now.”

I have to admit, he was making some sense but I still wasn’t falling for his sales pitch. He could see I was deep in thought, but not about his offer. I was trying to figure out how to beat him.

“Stop torturing yourself, Leo. Do what is in your nature to do…become greater than you could have ever imagined…join me.” He bent down, picked up a sharp rock, opened his palm and cut it; then he extended it to me. He was offering me the blood seal, like I was offered in the past by one of his cronies. Just like before, I knew he would eventually find a loophole to screw me over.

I looked away from him and
then turned back to him. “But you’re still going to take Shade as your own…aren’t you?”

Shimmer recoiled his hand back just a bit and smiled
. “C’mon, Leo, even you know having a human around is a liability. You’re smarter than that. Look at all the trouble she’s already gotten you into. Don’t be an idiot…you don’t need her.”

“And you do?
She’s not a liability for you?”

He grinned again
and lowered his hand. “Unlike you, I’m still partly mortal and have…mortal urges. She’ll still be alive, boy. Isn’t that what you want…her safety? She will always be safe with me.” He chuckled.

I sported a cynical half smile and looked away again.

“If you can answer me this question honestly…I’ll join you, and together we can take out Christian.”

A huge smile came across his face
. “Continue.”

“Would you have taken the same deal from
Geoffrey Lonecrow if he’d offered it to you for Temperance?”

A look of shock came over his face and he stepped away from me.

“How the hell do you know about that?”

“Answer the question, Shimmer. Would you?”

Shimmer snarled and slammed into me in a rage. He was holding me in a bear hug as he raced back up the side of the mountain. I couldn’t use my wings because he had them in his vise-like grip. Before I knew it we were back at the top of Devil’s Tooth, about to go over the edge back into the Cavity arena.

He leaped into the crevice and gripped me even tighter. The pressure from his arms and the strength within them felt like my head was going to pop off my shoulders. My back was heading down th
e mountain, aimed dead center for the arena floor. This was going to be the body slam of a lifetime if I didn’t think of something quick.

Then something came to me, I could hear Elysia’s voice in my head when she told me to look to the talents I possess but have yet to use.
Here was a weapon that I used all the time but never in battle. I’d been told once by Christian that I couldn’t use this particular gift in a fight against high ranking good and evil entities because it wouldn’t work. What did I have to lose by trying?

Right before we struck the ground, I changed into
a black shadow like I had done so many times before; just not in battle. Shimmer struck the ground face first with great force as I disappeared within his arms. I realized what Christian told me about my gifts, at least one of them, was a lie.