Radiance (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #3) (19 page)

“Anybody get bitten?” Ambra asked.

“
No!” was the unanimous answer.

Mikhail was counting the vampire bodies when I heard a thump—like a kick to flesh—and a pained yelp from below.

“Corbin, get up here!” I yelled. Then I heard a strangling sound.

“
Oh, hell no, you don’t!” I shouted. Why the hell did vampires always try to strangle Corbin? Oh yeah,
his teeth.

Feet first, I leaped into the pit of the vampires’ lair to save Corbin from the one vampire I knew who was not accounted for in the corpses above us.

I landed hard on an old wooden ladder and broke it to pieces. It hurt so much that I gasped but, luckily, I didn’t think I had broken anything in my body. I scrambled out of the ladder rungs and landed on the dirt floor of the vampire’s bunker. It seemed to be one room and there were buckets to sit on. It was a true hideout.

I saw the vampire Nero. There was a candle burning on a crate between us. In the dim light, I recognized his distinctive face from the coins he had left at the murder scenes of my brother and my wife.

“Nero!” I shouted and tried to jab at him with my silver blade, but he kept moving Corbin’s wolf body, and the crate, between us.

“
We finally meet, Rand Sebastian.”

“
Where’s my daughter, Nero?”

Nero laughed evilly. “You’re a fool! I’ll never tell you. Because if I did, you’d just kill me.” With one hand, he held poor Corbin’s throat in his vise grip and with the other, calm as you please, he sipped something from a glass. I thought maybe it was brandy. He certainly reeked of alcohol, death and unwashed feet.

“I’ll kill you anyway. I’ve had enough of you!” I said.

Ambra leaped down in the hole and with her scythe, she sliced off the hand holding Corbin—the werewolf ran to a corner, panting, and took a big dump.

Nero’s mouth fell open as he held up the bloody stump of his forearm and bared his fangs. “You dare!” He took a sip of the brandy and I jabbed at him but I only managed to stick his throat and then he pulled back.

“
Where is Kristin?” Ambra demanded.

Nero blew the brandy in his mouth right through the candle flame. The tiny flame turned into something that looked like a flamethrower and it burned Ambra!

She screamed and threw herself to the dirt floor, rolling and putting out the fire on her clothes while I slammed Aurora, my silver blade, through two layers of Kevlar vests, and straight into Nero’s cold, dark heart.

He fell next to his separated hand and he was still.

Our werewolf crawled to Nero’s body, sniffed it and sat down, satisfied that Nero was really dead.

As I withdrew my silver blade from Nero’s heart, Ambra plunged her scythe into him.

“That was just for good measure,” she said and pulled it out.

I cut off the vampire’s head and wrapped it in his filthy cape.

“
Eww!
What are you going to do with that, Rand?”

“
I thought I might feed the fish in Castaic Lake.”

“
Men are so gross sometimes.”

“
Yes, we are.”

Ambra, burned and hurt, fell to her knees and threw her arms around the werewolf. “You are the bravest one of us all.” To my shock, she kissed him, right on the muzzle.

“Finally, you forgive Corbin and trust him?” I asked.

“
It was time,” Ambra said.

I looked overhead at the moonlight and the faces of our friends peered down into the hole.

“You all right?” Griff asked.

“
I busted up their ladder with my legs when I jumped down here and I’m bruised, but not broken. Ambra got burned by Nero spitting flames on her clothes. She caught on fire.”

“
Damn, that guy was nasty!” Griff said. “Let me get out my medical kit.”

“
Hey! A rope, please?” I called upward. “It really stinks down here in this bunker.”

Corbin tucked his bushy wolf tail between his legs and ducked his head.

“Don’t worry, Corbin,” I said softly. “We’ll just blame that poop smell on the vampires.”

“
Works for me,” Ambra said.

After we made a sling out of my shirt and got Corbin lifted out of there, Ambra climbed up the rope. And then, I climbed up and put my shirt on again. It smelled like a werewolf, but I didn’t mind. There were worse smells in the world, like old-man vampire body odor.

Griff did some first aid on Ambra’s burns while she gasped. He looked at me and said, “This needs more than gauze and burn ointment. She needs a trip to the ER.”

“
Not yet,” Ambra said. “We still have more to do here. I’m not leaving Griffith Park without Kristin! She’s got to be here.”

My heart leaped with her loyalty and her dedication to the mission.

I asked our Corbin to sniff the toy carousel. “This was my daughter’s. A long time ago, she used to sleep with it and play with it every day. I know it’s been out in the weather, but maybe you can sniff it.”

He gave it a good sniff and even licked the hand crank. Then Corbin put his snout up into the prevailing winds of the night. I got the other plastic records out from the storage compartment in the toy and let him smell those, too.

“Getting anything? Do you smell Kristin?” I asked hopefully.

Corbin lowered his body to the ground, put his huge shaggy head sorrowfully between his paws and closed his eyes tightly.

“He can smell for miles,” Griff said gently. “I think he’s trying to tell us she’s not in the park.”

I wept.

Ambra said, “Even though Corbin can’t smell her, let’s go check that utility shed that Samantha Moon told us about.”

Without much hope, we walked toward the big red and white merry-go-round and went behind it to the utility shed. There was no lock on it. I opened the door carefully into the small space. There was food garbage in there, some dirty blankets and a homeless guy lying on the floor drinking a bottle of MD 20-20, raspberry flavor.

“This is my place!” He sat up drunkenly and brandished a string of garlic tied to a big wooden cross. He reeked of alcohol, vomit and armpits, and smelled far worse than a vampire.

“
Sorry. I was looking for a little girl,” I said.

“
You sick bastard!” the drunk said. “What is the world coming to?”

“
Cool your jets,” I said to the guy. “I’m looking for my missing daughter, a little blond girl. Did you see her here with…a vampire?”

“
No, this place was empty when I moved in. Aren’t
you
a vampire? You look like one.”

“
No, I’m a vampire hunter.”

“
Okay then. Carry on. Those things are everywhere in Griffith Park.”

“
Just so you know, garlic and crosses won’t save you. Only silver to the heart kills them,” I said.

“
Do I look like I have any silver?” the guy slurred.

Nariko shined her flashlight on the walls. “Look, Rand!”

Drawn on the wall in crayon was a tessellation artwork of penguins, another of my daughter’s favorite animals.

“
Kristin
was
here! Just like Sam thought! She was watching this place but she had to leave to go get her kids from school and things like that. She must have missed Kristin by perhaps minutes or hours.”

I ran my fingers over it, as if I could figure out where she was by touching something she had made.

“Nobody’s here but me. Out!” said the homeless guy.

Ambra said, “Come on, everyone. Nothing more to see here.”

We left the utility shed and walked back toward the vehicle. No one was celebrating our victory over Nero. I swung Nero’s head back and forth in his dirty blood-soaked cape as I walked at the end of our group with Ambra next to me and Corbin, who trotted quietly behind us and occasionally sniffed the bushes as we walked past. Ambra was quiet and I could tell she was in a lot of pain from being burned.

“
I’m taking you to a hospital, like Griff said,” I told her.

“
Merci
.”

We entered the pedestrian bridge to again cross the freeway and the Los Angeles River to get back to the van.

When we got to the van, I realized that Corbin was freaking enormous—almost the size of a Shetland pony—and took up a whole bench seat by himself. The rest of us squeezed in as best we could. I rolled down all of the windows and our werewolf stuck his head out and thumped his tail.

“
No dog jokes anyone,” I said. “Because he knows what we’re saying.”

Corbin howled magnificently.

I drove to the hospital, via a long detour that went by Castaic Lake.

I parked in a secluded spot. Taking Nero’s head out of the cape, I held it by the dark curly hair to get a last look at his classic Roman face that matched the one on the coins. I wrapped the head again, really tight this time. I spun my body around and around like I did in college when I was a shot put athlete. I hurled Nero’s head as far as I could over the lake and finally, there was a satisfying splash.

Chapter Twenty

There was no way we could leave Corbin the werewolf in the vehicle while we went into the hospital. Every month when he transformed on the full moon, he would stay that way for about twelve hours. If he was on a mission with us, we would have to deal with it. Hey, at least our werewolf didn’t bite us.

Jade and Nariko got Corbin’s clothes from Ambra’s backpack and volunteered to stay with him until he changed back to a man at moonset, which would be at 6:52 a.m., hours from now.

I stopped at a convenience store and got some rope for a leash and some plastic bags if the inevitable took place. I also got bottles of water, a big bowl and packages of beef jerky, in case he wanted a snack.

I dropped off the girls at a big park across the street from the hospital and then headed for the ER. By this time, Ambra was lying on the floor of the van and Griff was applying cold compresses to her burns while she cried out in pain. It was killing me to hear her in that kind of agony.

After a couple of hours in the ER, Ambra was admitted to the hospital.

The nurse finally let me into Ambra’s hospital room.

She looked pale and distraught. “Rand, I
am
glad to see you, but my only escape from pain is to sleep.”

“
I’m sorry, sweetheart. You want me to leave and come back in the morning?”

“
Please.”

“
I feel like I should stay and guard the door. At least that.”

“
Go! You need rest, too.”

“
I’m tired but too wired from fighting vampires to sleep. Anyway, I’m used to being awake all night.”

“
I’ll be fine.”

“
I don’t want to leave you,
ma cherie amour
.”

She grinned at my French, which I had swiped from a Stevie Wonder song. I was pretty sure she knew that. “You heard the doctors. The burns are minor. They gave me something to sleep. They just have me on this antibiotic drip for twenty-four hours, to make sure nothing gets infected.”

“They’re being careful. That’s good.”

“
Oui
.”

“
Are you in a lot of pain?”

“
Some. Not as bad as the many times I hurt myself doing parkour or skiing like a madwoman.” She yawned. “The drugs are kicking in whether I like it or not. No vampires are coming here. We kicked their asses. Or their existences, I should say.” Her blue eyes were half-closing, but she was fighting it.

“
They should be afraid of ass kickings by Ambra Von Arx, the queen of bad-ass.”

“
You’re pretty bad-ass yourself, Rand Sebastian.” She closed her eyes.

I leaned down and gently pressed my lips on hers.

She grabbed me by my long hair and held me there.

“
Mmm, sexy hair-pulling,” I teased. “
Encore
.”

She laughed softly and let go. Her eyes opened and looked intently into mine. “I want to take a leave of absence from the Sisterhood of the Scythe. From field work.”

I was taken aback, but carefully said, “I don’t blame you. That was pretty scary today, with Nero trying to torch you and partially succeeding.”

“
I’m not scared of vampires. Okay, sometimes I’m scared of them, but the fear factor only motivates me to kill them faster.”

I could see her eyes darting wildly around the room.

“What are you scared of?” I asked. “Look at me.”