Night Huntress 07 - This Side of the Grave (38 page)

Apollyon’s
expression was twisted with a crazed sort of triumph. “You can’t kill me if I surrender to a Guardian. None of you can!”

I regarded him with amazement.
This
was the person who’d been responsible for bringing vampires and ghouls to the brink of war in the fourteen hundreds? And who’d made a damn credible effort to do it again in the twenty-first century?

I’d seen a lot of villainous instigators in their final moments, but while none of them had relished their own deaths, few had ever groveled as much as
Apollyon
was doing now. He even edged closer to
Veritas
in a sort of hop-crawl, until he was clutching the blond Guardian’s red-stained pants. I couldn’t believe a person who’d devoted so much of his life to the pursuit of mass genocide could be so spineless in the face of his own defeat. It reminded me of history’s accounts of Hitler’s final hours.
Looked like both of them were cowards at heart.

“This is who you were following?” Vlad asked the other ghouls, voicing my own inner scorn. “I’d kill myself in shame if I were you.”

Veritas
looked at
Apollyon
, her ridiculously youthful features hardened into an expression of pure contempt.

“You think to find mercy from me?”

She snatched at
Apollyon’s
single long piece of hair, ripping it away from his bald spot and using it as a lever to tug his head back. I almost lost it right there, because damn, that was
cold
.

“You repeatedly seek to destroy my people, and you think I will grant you asylum?” she all but growled.

“You must,”
Apollyon
said, his voice cracking at the last word.

Veritas
straightened to her full five feet six inches, but with her sizzling power and imperial presence, she might as well have been nine feet tall.

“
Malcolme
Untare
, you who have renamed yourself
Apollyon
, for inciting others in your species to murder and insurrection, you are hereby sentenced to death.”

He let out a shriek that
Veritas
ignored. She leaned in until her mouth brushed his ear, and only my close proximity let me hear what she whispered.

“You miserable worm.
Jeanne
d’Arc
was my friend.”

Then she kicked him, avoiding his grasping hands to stride away with a “Die on your knees or take the fight she offered you. I care not which,” thrown over her shoulder.

My mouth gaped at this tidbit about my famous half-breed predecessor, but I snapped it shut.
Note to self: Don’t get on
Veritas’s
bad side. She holds a grudge for
centuries.

Then I looked down at the ghoul, feeling my former hatred ebb. For all the lives he’d been responsible for ending and his blind, centuries-long quest for power, in the end,
Apollyon
proved to be too pathetic to hate. He wasn’t even worth killing, but if I let him live, my current and future enemies wouldn’t see it as mercy. They’d see it as a weakness they could exploit. With a clarity I’d lacked before, I understood why Bones did what he did with my father, and why Vlad let his ruthlessness be seen more readily than his finer qualities. It wasn’t out of sadistic enjoyment or to pick fights. It was to prevent them.

“Pick up that sword,” I said to
Apollyon
, enunciating each word. “Or I’ll kill you where you kneel.”

I wouldn’t take any enjoyment out of it, but I’d do it because it had to be done.
Veritas
had already sentenced him to death on behalf of the vampire ruling body. If I walked away, it wouldn’t save his life. She or someone else would just kill him.

“No,”
Apollyon
said, almost a whimper. Then he scrambled forward and tried to run.

I caught him before he’d made it even a dozen feet, letting him hit me with all the power in his stocky body. He only had his hands, and I still had a really long blade.

“
Apollyon
had all of you getting your hate on because of a lie that I’d become a half vampire, half ghoul,” I called out to the ghouls who watched us with grim enthrallment.
“Because if someone’s unusual, then you should be afraid of them, right?”

Apollyon
tried to tackle me to the ground, but for all the years he had on me, he obviously hadn’t spent them learning how to fight—and I’d had one hell of a teacher. Despite the pain still arcing down my side, I swiveled at the last moment, leaping onto his back when his momentum still had him charging forward. Then I brought my sword against his neck.

“You all want to know why I have abilities other new vampires don’t?” I said, digging that blade in. “Because I don’t feed from humans; I drink vampire blood.”

And then I yanked it toward my body, cutting my hand to grip the naked edge for maximum balance, feeling more satisfaction from that public admission than I did seeing
Apollyon’s
head separate from his neck. All my life, I’d had to hide what I was.
First as a child when I didn’t even know why other kids weren’t like me, then when I hunted vampires in my late teens and mid-twenties, and finally, my oddities this past year as a full vampire.
Well, I was done hiding, hating, or apologizing for the parts of me I hadn’t chosen and couldn’t change. If some people had a problem with my differences, that was just too fucking bad for them.

“That’s right, I eat
vampires
,” I said again, louder this time. I pushed his body away and stood, shaking the blood off my sword as I faced the remaining group of ghouls.

“World’s freakiest bloodsucker, right here,” I went on. “And you know what?
If that makes some of you uncomfortable, too bad.
If it makes some of you so uncomfortable you want to start shit with me about it, step right up and see if I don’t eat the hell out of you next!”

I’d meant that last part as a threat, but somewhere in my impassioned declaration of independence from hiding what I was, I’d neglected to think through my phrasing. I saw Bones raise a brow, a muffled snicker broke out from Ian, and then Vlad laughed loud and hearty.

“With that sort of invitation, Reaper, you might want to suggest the line form to your right.”

“That’s not… I meant eat them in a
bad
way,” I sputtered.

“I think you made your point,
luv
,” Bones responded, his face carefully blank even thought I caught a faint twitch to his mouth. Then his expression hardened as he looked at
Veritas
, who’d turned around to watch me behead
Apollyon
. “And I second it,” he said, all traces of humor gone from his voice.

The Law Guardian stared at me. I didn’t regret a moment of my public declaration—aside from perhaps my wording—but I knew her response carried more weight than my vampire audience or the score of surrendered ghouls. She also spoke for the highest ruling body over vampires.

At last,
Veritas
shrugged. “That does make you the world’s freakiest bloodsucker, but there’s no law against a vampire feeding from other vampires.” And then she turned away.

I let out a laugh that died in my throat as movement at the back of the gate caught my eye.

Marie
Laveau
walked slowly into the cemetery.

I didn’t blink as I stared at Marie. To
anyone who didn’t know better, the sight of one lone ghoul strolling up shouldn’t have looked frightening at all. But I knew that Marie could summon a wall of Remnants to fight for her before I could even whisper, “Oh shit.” Could I raise my own army of them fast enough to counter such an attack from her? Or should I focus my energy on trying to control the ones she raised, if it came to that? I’d assumed Marie gave me her power so that, in a roundabout way, she could help me defeat
Apollyon
, but had she been on his side all along? Had everything I thought about her been wrong?

“Why have you come here?”
Veritas
hissed at her.

I held up my hand, ignoring the incredulous look the Law Guardian gave me as I shushed her.

“Majestic, so nice of you to come by,” I said, sounding a lot calmer than I felt. “I hope you found the place because of your ghost
friends telling you about what was
going down. Not because you’re just showing up late to the hate rally.”

Her deep brown eyes met mine, face absolutely expressionless. She walked forward, gaze flitting around the cemetery to look at the fallen bodies of the ghouls around her. Those still living who’d crouched back in fear minutes before now began to edge toward her.

“
Apollyon
is dead?” Marie
asked,
no hint of what she was thinking in her buttery smooth voice.

“Very,” I replied before
Veritas
could speak. “Most of his top lieutenants are dead, too.”

Marie was now ahead of all the other ghouls, only a few dozen feet of headstones separating her from the line of Master vampires.

“And your plans for the others?”

I glanced behind her again, anticipating a seething mass of Remnants appearing at any second. We hadn’t had a chance to formally discuss among ourselves what we were doing with the surrendered ghouls, but I didn’t wait to consult anyone before I answered.

“We’re letting them go.”

“You have
no
authority to make those decisions,”
Veritas
snapped.

“What a shame.” Marie’s voice sliced across the air, that sweet Southern twang gone and filled with the echoing tenor of the dead instead. “If Cat were correct, then I would have no cause to attack you to protect my people. I want peace. Don’t force me to war.”

Veritas
stared at Marie, her pretty, deceptively young-looking features hard. I only hoped she’d had run-ins with Marie in the past to know that the voodoo queen’s new spooky voice was a warning that she was about to unleash all kinds of pain. If not, I didn’t have time to convince
Veritas
about how ferocious Remnants were. I’d only have time to try to raise my own, or this would turn into a bloodbath with the casualties heavily on our side this time. Marie had her hands clasped in front of her in a deceptively casual gesture, but I knew that just meant the sharp point in her ring was pressed to her flesh.

Only Mencheres’s power could be fast enough to stop her from drawing her blood to summon the Remnants. Even though I saw him walk up out of the corner of my eye, relieved to see Denise and Kira were also with him, I didn’t dare look over at Mencheres for fear any gesture would antagonize Marie into acting. Plus, if Mencheres froze her, he’d better kill her, too. She’d never let such a thing slide, especially with witnesses. And if we wiped out
Apollyon
, his lieutenants,
and
Marie
Laveau
all in the same night, we’d start the war ourselves.

“Cat has no authority to make those decisions,”
Veritas
repeated. Beside me, Bones tensed even as I mentally braced to start counter defenses against a horde of diaphanous killers. “But she is correct nonetheless,”
Veritas
finished.

It took everything in me not to let out a loud whoop of relief. Some of the tension leaking off Bones into my emotions lessened as well, even though not a fraction of his posture eased.

“They’ll make us slaves,” one of the ghouls called out bitterly, to a chorus of grim sounds of agreement.

“No they won’t,”
Marie said, managing to sound both strident and comforting at the same time. “Peace does not mean vampires will ever rule over us. They are not strong enough to do so. As long as I live, the ghoul nation will
always
be equal to vampires in strength.”

I didn’t see Marie’s fingers move, but I felt the snap of power in the air right before the Remnants appeared behind her, looking like a transparent version of hell’s army. Their numbers were staggering, their energy moving over me like icy waves along my skin. My bullet holes had long ago closed, so some part of me roared that I needed to draw my own blood, now, if I had any hope of holding them off. But Marie didn’t send the Remnants after anyone. She had them pile behind her instead, building up into a wall that rose higher than the trees and widened to reach the far side of the cemetery, easily five times the number I’d raised with Vlad.

If this was a dick-measuring contest
, I found myself thinking numbly,
then I was Pee Wee and she was John Holmes.

“Hail to our queen!” one of the ghouls called out, echoed almost at once by another cry of “Hail!” More ghouls repeated the salutation, until all of them practically trembled with their shouted allegiance.

Marie bowed her head at the acknowledgments, and then the wall of Remnants collapsed, disappearing into the ground. This time, I saw the flick of her finger that preceded her drawing the necessary blood to send the lethal apparitions back to their graves.

I quit looking at Marie to glance at Bones. He shook his head in a cynical way that mirrored my own thoughts. By getting rid of
Apollyon
and his top henchmen, we’d cleared the way for Marie to step in as queen of not just New Orleans, but the entire ghoul nation, judging from this reaction. If she’d taken on
Apollyon
herself, she might indeed have weakened their species through civil war as his supporters battled hers. But with him gone, she was now her people’s loyal savior and protector.