Page 275 of Golden Eagle

The head went sailing back into the crowd of vampires, and the body fell like a tree.

“Thanks,” Nikita panted, and turned to face the next one.

~*~

Now was not the time to remember a parapet atop a Theodosian wall. Not the time to remember banners snapping in the wind, the clatter of spears on shields, the twang of bowstrings as arrows were loosed. To remember the stink of gunpowder, and the deafening, wavelike crash of humanity down below. Not the time to remember a white stallion, and the man sitting astride it, looking down at the endless devastation that battered their walls again, and again, and again.

Now was not the time to remember it, but Val remembered it anyway.

Numbers mattered in warfare. Numbers had mattered at the fall of Constantinople. Sometimes, he thought, as he took the arm from one of the Absent Ones, and sent it staggering into his fellows, it wasn’t about who was the superior warrior, but about the way nothing could stand up forever, when the enemy was endless, and kept coming, and coming, and coming.

They weren’t there yet. But. He thought of Constantine, and his fallen city, all the same.

He stabbed one in the chest, and chopped halfway through a neck on the next. One got under his guard on his side, and put a hand around his throat. He threw out an elbow, couldn’t dislodge it, and had to swing all the way around with his sword. It took out an eye on the way, and then the blade cleaved his attacker’s skull.

Val was only distantly aware of the burn of exertion in all his muscles; of the way his breath heaved and snagged; of the need to feed, growing greater all the time. One of the things on the ground, one of its legs gone, bit him in the thigh, and blood ran hot from the wound. He stabbed that one through the eye, and another was on top of him, bearing him back to the wall. He got his sword up in time, gripped its blade with his other hand – the steel bit into his palm and fingers, the bleeding was bad – and shoved the sword into the creature’s mouth…and back and back until the whole top of his head was gone, and he fell amongst the growing pile of bodies on the floor.

There were too many of them, and he was out of practice.

Blood was on his face, and he tasted his uncle’s awful taint every time he wet his lips. Every limb he severed, every neck he notched – all of it was one more strike against Romulus.

Against the uncle who’d facilitated the stealing of his childhood, of his father, of his brother, of his virginity and his innocence.

How about that, Uncle, as he drove his sword through a ribcage.How about that, as he spilled a belly to the tile.

He didn’t think of Mia, or of his freedom, or of the dazzling glitter of New York City.

Only of blood. Of killing.

Of being Valerian Dracula. Vlad’s brother who’d slain a dragon.

And who’d set designs on more.

~*~

Lanny shoved the muzzle of his AK into the mouth of the vampire in front of him and pulled the trigger. He’d hit the brain stem, and the thing fell backward, spasming violently, but no longer able to stand.

Even that had been a risk. He couldn’t afford to use the gun in tight quarters like this, with Sasha up ahead, and Val just over there, and all of them tangled up like dancers in a mosh pit.

With most of those dancers on PCP and trying to tear his throat out.

He had a knife, but no sword. Still, he pulled the knife, and held it in his left hand. The right he balled up, and when the next one came at him – because the fuckers never stopped – he punched it.

He was used to opponents dodged and blocking, shielding their faces. This thing didn’t do that. It dove for him, grabbing for his throat, and his punch, a strong right hook, connected with the vampire’s nose square-on. He’d broken noses before, but this hit, with all his vampiric strength behind it, shoved the nose up, into the creature’s brain. Its arms dropped, and it stood there, stunned, head tilting side-to-side unnaturally, growling, drooling.

He slit its throat with the knife, and shoved it over against the wall, where it slid slowly down, leaving a smear of blood behind.

He heard a scream to his left – the high scream of a child –and turned on instinct. The vamps had broken through their line, there were just too many of them to hold back, and two were bearing down on the mages. It was the little one who’d screamed, clutching his older brother’s hand.

Lanny headed that way.

But as he did, the older one – he’d said his name was Twelve – lifted a hand, palm facing the vampires, and, brow furrowed with concentration, sent a swell of fire at them.

It wasn’t anything like the giant plumes of fire that Severin had dealt at the warehouse, but it was enough. There was so much grease on the vamp’s hair and clothes that they caught instantly, and the hall filled with the stink of burning hair.

The vampire recoiled. In pain? Will said they didn’t feel that.

The fire spread fast, licking at skin, burning hair and clothes to cinders.

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