Warrior Rising (16 page)

The new place wasn’t as posh as the big house in Potomac, but it would do. “Not too shabby,” she said as she dropped the small duffle bag containing a few toiletries and a couple changes of clothes. “I’m here of my own free will and that makes all the difference.” She’d expected a house, and that’s what she’d gotten. An old, three story, historic red-brick building in a once fine neighborhood. Someone important had lived here a couple hundred years ago. Maybe even fifty years ago. She didn’t have the details because she hadn’t stopped to read the plaque that was posted on the small, only slightly overgrown front lawn.

But the house wasn’t a home, not anymore. It was a library. A
public
library. Not the main one, of course, but a neighborhood branch on the west side of town. It would do. There was a kitchen/break room downstairs, and big spaces that had once been bedrooms and parlors that had been converted into offices and specialized rooms with shelves and shelves of books. Oh — the books!

“This room will suit you?”

“Of course.”

Her new room was on the second floor in what looked to be the office of someone important. Main librarian or manager, she supposed. This was the logical choice for her. The vampires would prefer the interior rooms on the ground floor, or else the attic. Her room had a wide window that overlooked the street. Too much light for the vamps among them to be comfortable. The humans in their army were probably taking over the other spaces with windows. Maybe Warriors, too. Not that they’d spend much time in them.

There was big desk made of fine dark wood, basically smack dab in the middle of the room. Several of Nevada’s own books, carried here by conduits and Warriors, were stacked on one end. There was an insanely tall pile of other magical books on the floor beside the desk. No bed, but the couch pushed against the window looked comfortable enough to sleep on.

Rurik walked to a narrow door — which she’d assumed was a closet — and pushed it open. “You have your own bathroom, but as this is one of only two showers in the building you will have to share.”

“Not a problem.” Rurik could use her shower any time. A picture flashed in her mind. A very fine picture. Rurik naked. In the shower, naked, soaped up. And as she’d already thought — naked. She glanced inside the small white-tiled bathroom. The shower was an ancient hand-held metal device over an even more ancient claw foot bathtub. Left over from when this house was lived in, she supposed, and too cumbersome to move when the building had been converted. Lucky for her.

Another appealing picture popped into her mind. Bubble bath!

“First things first,” she said, turning her mind to business. “I need to cast a protection spell over this building.” After all, the library had once been public, so there was nothing to keep out the vamps who were trying to take over D.C., and beyond.

She was good with protection spells. That had been the first thing she’d learned to do well, and it was now all but second nature.

Rurik didn’t leave, as she’d expected he would. He sat on the couch. Afternoon sunlight fell over him, and again Nevada’s mind went to…

No, she needed to be thinking of the spell she needed to cast, not shared showers and bubble baths that would probably never happen.

Nevada didn’t need a book for this spell, not anymore. She knew it, in her mind, in her bones. She stood behind the desk, simply because it was a familiar position for her. Different room, different desk, same mindset. She placed her fingertips on the desk and closed her eyes, as she whispered words in an ancient language she had only recently discovered. She felt as if she were floating, though at the same time she could feel her feet firmly against the floor. Yes, her feet were on the floor, but her mind, her soul, they were elsewhere. They were a part of the universe, a part of the whole. There was darkness here, but she remained in the light. Always the light.

As soon as the spell took hold, she knew it. She felt it, deep down, and when she opened her eyes she saw that the air in the room was green and sparkly and fantabulous. The sparkly faded, but the protection spell did not.

“I’ll have to invite the vamps who are on our side in tonight,” she said, smiling at Rurik.

“Sadly, that number is small.”

Nevada nodded, expecting Rurik to stand and head for the door and whatever battle plans or fight was on his agenda for this afternoon.

She didn’t need a constant guard anymore. With the spell in place it wasn’t like an uninvited vampire could sneak in. Marie and her ghouls couldn’t sneak up on her here. She felt safer than she had in a long while, which was weird, all things considered. At the mansion, Rurik had had a habit of napping just outside her door.

He probably wouldn’t do that anymore. Too bad.

Rurik didn’t stand, didn’t rush to leave her alone.

“If a person wasn’t evil in life, why would they be evil when they’re turned?” Nevada asked. Maybe Rurik would stay a while longer if they were having a conversation. She wasn’t ready to be alone. “Chloe doesn’t seem evil, and neither does Luca. Who I can remember now, by the way. Yay me!” She didn’t give Rurik a chance to respond. “Sorin used to be pretty bad, maybe even evil, but now he’s on our side.” She had to admit, he was a confusing dude. She hadn’t spent a lot of time around the others here, so she couldn’t say she had a ton of experience with vampires. Still, she’d seen more than most. “Why aren’t there more with us?”

“I do not know.” Rurik didn’t seem to be at all bothered by that lack of knowledge.

“Logically, you’d think there would be more decent vampires. Vamps who would fight with us instead of the psycho. They have to be out there, but how do we find them?”

Rurik did stand, then, slowly unfolding and rising to his full height of six foot plus. Damn, he was impressive.

“I will not stop to interview the vampires I fight tonight,” he said. “My job is simple. Kill them. Protect the humans.” He walked to her, and — in an unexpected move — lifted one big hand to cup her cheek.

Nevada stopped breathing.

“Protect you,” he said, his voice lower than before.

And then he dropped his hand and walked away.

Nevada continued to hold her breath until she
had
to breathe again. It was breathe or faint!

She felt safer here, in this new place with a strong protection spell of her own making. And Rurik. Safe, yes, but she could not allow herself to get comfortable. She couldn’t relax. It was time for her to step up. She was a damned powerful witch, and she could do something to help the war effort. She knew it.

More than anything, she wanted to make Marie sorry she’d ever heard the name Nevada Sheldon.

Sorin had done battle often in his long lifetime, but it had been a long while since he’d participated in war. He’d killed; he’d planned for victory; he’d known battle was coming.

He had not expected to be on this side of it.

If he thought about where he was and what he was doing, it would slow him down. So he fought, as any good soldier would, with everything he had. He swung his sword and took the heads of frantic vampires, one after another. Most of them were not skilled soldiers. They had expected to face only humans on this night, and all the nights to come. His presence surprised them.

They would be more prepared tomorrow, if they survived that long.

The Warrior woman who fought with him was impressive, in oh, so many ways. Indikaiya swung her sword as if it were light as a feather. It was not. She was fierce, and strong, and beautiful. No dancer who’d ever lived possessed such grace.

The vampires fought with swords and daggers and teeth. A few carried firearms, but not many. The humans carried guns and flamethrowers, for the most part. The sword was a weapon of days gone by, and very few of them were skilled with a blade of any kind. They were definitely not comfortable enough with them to face a physically superior enemy.

After facing strangers all night, Sorin finally found himself face to face with one of Marie’s soldiers he knew. Edmund wasn’t the brightest or the strongest of Marie’s men, but he was loyal to a fault.

And so here he was.

“You!” Edmund shouted when he looked into Sorin’s face. “Traitor!” He swung his own sword wildly. His weapon had a thin but razor sharp blade. Sorin easily danced out of its path.

“She is wrong, Edmund,” Sorin said as he moved in closer. "Walk away.” He did not want to kill this man he had once fought alongside. A man he had seen laugh. They had flown together, once, a long time ago.

Edmund did not walk away. He came toward Sorin again, blade singing, eyes blazing. Again, Sorin danced out of the way, but not before the tip of the blade sliced through his leather coat. They fought with no more words, their movements fast, their blades deadly. Edmund was more skilled than Sorin had recalled.

Soon enough, Edmund began to tire. Instead of continuing on, he turned and ran. Not away from the battle, as Sorin had suggested earlier, but directly toward Indikaiya, who was engaged in her own fight.

She did not see or hear Edmund coming.

Sorin flew, rising up in the air and coming down with his sword raised. He took Edmund’s head when the vampire was no more than ten feet away from Indikaiya.

As Edmund went to dust, Indikaiya managed to take the head of her opponent. Only then did she turn and see Sorin standing there. Their eyes met, for a second, and then more opponents came at them and they raised their swords once more.

Indikaiya wished for a concise battle plan; she wanted the lines of this war to be clearly delineated. She was finally — if reluctantly — coming to accept that this was not that kind of war.

Battles small and large were being fought in this city, as they were almost certainly being waged in cities and towns around the world. If she thought about that too much she’d be distracted from this fight, and that would not be wise. For now, at least, her war was here, in this city under siege. Warriors and humans — and yes, a handful of vampires — were fighting a series of small battles against the vampires who wished to publicly and permanently take their place at the top of the food chain. These armies would likely never face off as they did in the battles of old. Instead they fought where they could, when they could, and won — or lost — one skirmish at a time.

For a while she had watched Sorin, half-expecting him to be a spy for Marie.

She’d seen him kill too many of his own kind to believe that to be true. She’d watched as he saved one human after another. At times it seemed he did so with some reluctance, but he was a good soldier. Perhaps even a good man.

Women, young and old, loved him, and she found that annoying. Not that she should care. Sorin was handsome and strong. It was only natural that weak females who didn’t know any better might find him appealing.

Watching him fight even she found him appealing, for brief periods of time, and she was anything but weak.

The sun would soon rise. They had battled two small factions of vampires in a part of this large city that Sorin called Georgetown. In both instances, they had been joined by humans. Brave humans, who armed themselves and set out to protect their own lives, their own species. Some of them died, but many more survived to fight another day. To a man, they were initially reluctant to fight with Sorin, but once they saw him fight and kill, they changed their minds. He was impressive in battle, she had to admit. Effective. Sharp. Deadly.

In a war like this one, the humans would need every weapon at their disposal. Even Sorin.

Indikaiya had thought their night to be done. She needed sleep and food. Sorin needed… well, she didn’t know or care what he needed, but even he seemed weary.

“If we hurry we can reach my place before the sun comes up.”

“Your place? You have a place?”

Sorin shrugged. “I keep a small hideout, not far from here. An apartment. We were not close enough last night to make it before full daylight, but we have moved closer tonight. There’s only one bed, but…” He glanced her way, and for a split second his eyes flashed that unnatural bright blue. “I’m willing to share if you are.”

She glanced away from him, unwilling to allow him to see any reaction, no matter how small it might be. “As I am not restricted by the sun, I can continue on and join the others.”

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, held out a strong hand to stop her, as well. Surely he was not going to argue about sharing a bed with her! No. That wasn’t it. It took a moment, but soon she heard what he did.

A disturbance in the air.

The two vampires dropped down on either side of Indikaiya and Sorin. Instantly she realized these two were not like the others. They were older, more powerful. Physically stronger than any they had faced thus far. Many of the vampires they’d been fighting on this night were new, or fairly new. These two males were dressed in dark hooded robes that indicated they were not only
not
new, they had not adjusted to modern times in any way. They both had long hair, dark and unkempt, and their fangs were extended and frighteningly enormous. Their faces were not handsome, but were rough and angry, with large flat noses and small eyes. They looked enough alike to have been brothers in their human lives.

Back to back, she and Sorin drew their swords in a unified, clean motion. The creatures they faced were not afraid.

Indikaiya swung her sword, but her opponent was strong and fast. She caught a hint of a smile on a pug-like face before the attacking vampire spun away. It was the gleam of a streetlamp on steel that warned her that her new opponent was carrying a sword. She moved out of the way just in time, and spun around to see that Sorin was engaged in a similar battle.

For the first time since joining this war, Indikaiya was wounded. The sharp blade wielded by a monster sliced her arm, then her thigh. Neither wound was a killing one, and she had the strength to keep fighting. She got in her own strikes, but the creature she fought healed before her eyes.

It was well fed, ancient, and eager to take its place in the new world.

Sorin was suffering, too. He did have an amazing healing power, but he had started this battle exhausted and he hadn’t taken his fill of the girls. He bled. His injuries were not healing at the rate their opponents’ were.