Page 177 of Dragon Slayer

His first swing, with all his strength behind it, severed an arm. The shock of blade-on-bone moved up his arms like a thunderclap, one he absorbed as he prepared for another swing, ears filled with screams.

Another strike. Sharp smell of blood that wasn’t his own.

He was aware of other sounds beyond his personal fight: Cicero snarling, men grunting, cursing. A door opened, flung back on his hinges, and he smelled his people: Fen, and Mother, and Malik, and Stephen.

He took off the last assassin’s head with two forceful strikes, and the thump of it hitting the cobbles was the last note of the fight.

Vlad shifted his pilfered sword to his good hand and brought the wounded one up to his face. In the moonlight, he could see shiny blood glimmering over bone. He put his tongue to the wound and lapped it thoroughly.

Cicero shifted back to his two-legged form, clothes settling around him with the customary puff of vapor; it was old magic, stuff Vlad didn’t really understand, but had accepted all his life.

Stephen, white-faced in the moonlight, jumped and yelped, still not used to the sight of a wolf becoming a man.

Malik knelt and pulled the hood back from the face of one of the assassins. “Not Turks,” he said, frowning.

“No,” Vlad agreed, swallowing a last mouthful of his own blood. “Hunyadi’s this time.”

Eira went from corpse to corpse, searching through their pockets for letters, coins, anything of value to them.

Helga lingered at the open door, hand worrying the neckline of her dress.

Fen bent down and picked up the decapitated head by its dark hair, standing to hold it up to the moon, scowling at it. “You should have left one alive so we could question him.”

“I was trying to stay alive, Fen,” Vlad said, breathless. Damn, he was tired, the exhaustion only now setting in. He hadn’t fed in two days, and he needed to rectify that, as Cicero was always insisting.

As if summoned, his Familiar stepped in front of him, scowling, the effect no less sinister with only one eye.

Vlad turned away–

And Cicero caught his chin in his hand.

“Bold,” Vlad said.

“You’re tired,” his wolf said. “You need todrink, Vlad.”

Fenrir threw the head at the wall, and it bounced off with a nasty, meaty splat. “Bah!” he shouted. “Let them come! I’ll kill them all!”

“Fen!” Mother and Helga said together.

“What?” he demanded, turning to them with open arms.

“Vlad–” Cicero started again.

He inhaled. Smell of more men. Many more.

The immortals turned as a unit, facing the mouth of the alley. Faint lick of torchlight against the wall, moving closer.Manytorches.

“More,” Vlad said, and licked his lips. Why feed from his Familiar when he could feast on men?

But Cicero grabbed his arm.

Mother said, “We have to leave.Now.”

And still he fled. Always fleeing.

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