Into the Fire

Moments later, another car appeared, this one heading toward us. Ian honked twice when he passed it, but he didn’t slow down. When the other vehicle got close enough, I saw that it was Mencheres. The real one. When he finally parked and got out, he looked at the headless body on the ground with more exasperation than concern.

“Now what did I miss?”

Vlad’s emotions breached his walls, and the flashes I felt made me realize another shocking truth: Ian, Marty, and I hadn’t been the only ones he’d kept in the dark.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” I whispered.

A flash of ice-cold ruthlessness brushed my emotions, as quick as a bolt of lightning and as grim as the grave. That, combined with Vlad choosing to answer me this way instead of out loud, told me another shocking truth. He hadn’t told Mencheres in case he had to kill him for real in order to save my life.

And he didn’t want anyone to know that, especially Mencheres.

“No time to fill you in now,” Vlad replied, his emotions closing off again. “I’ll tell you while we’re on our way to Bavaria.”

Chapter 45

Winds tossed the falling snowflakes back up in the air, making the church they swirled around look like a snow globe someone had shaken up. The lone white building sat on top of a rocky outcrop of the quartz-rich mountain, making it tower over the surrounding landscape and town. A blanket of white bathed the flatter terrain below it before dappling the bare trees and landing in heavier dollops on the evergreens.

If we weren’t here for a fight to the death, I would have been charmed by the lovely winter scenery. It reminded me that Christmas was only a week away, if we survived to see it.

As it was, I surveyed the church and its surrounding landscape with only tactical appreciation. The late hour and freezing temperatures, combined with Pleystein being a sparsely populated town, meant that we didn’t have to worry about a lot of bystanders. That was good because the necromancers wouldn’t care about collateral damage, and while we might care, Vlad still wouldn’t be pulling any of his punches.

Neither would I. This was our one chance to end this before anyone else we cared about got hurt or worse. Vlad had uploaded his truncated video to the Internet before we left Minsk, telling his people to spread it among all their allies so it would eventually reach Mircea’s captors. I didn’t think that would take long. Shockwaves would go through the undead world at the supposed sight of Vlad blowing the head off one of the most powerful vampires in existence.

Wait until Mencheres sees it! my inner voice taunted. Then you’ll really be in for it.

I’d wanted Vlad to tell Mencheres what he’d done on the flight over to Pleystein, yet he hadn’t. He’d brushed off explaining who the dead man was with a muttered “later” and also glossed over exactly how Ian had had the power to get Mircea’s location from our now-dead hostage.

I, however, snuck a text to Ian that I hoped he bothered to read. I couldn’t let Mencheres’s wife think that he’d been killed. That would be too cruel.

Besides, Mencheres would doubtless be more inclined to get over Vlad’s ruse and the reasons behind it if he knew that Kira hadn’t been harmed by it. Vlad had said himself that he wouldn’t forgive someone for hurting his wife even if he were the forgiving sort. Mencheres was probably the same.

Of course, once these necromancers realized who was attacking them, the jig would be up. They’d probably kill Mircea first thing in retaliation, which would be curtains for me, too. That’s why we couldn’t attack with a large force. No, we had to be stealthy above all, so Vlad had only called in one additional person, and I’d been stunned when he said it was a Law Guardian.

“Haven’t we been avoiding Law Guardians because we’ve been breaking magical laws left and right?” I’d argued. “We just used more magic an hour ago to get my hair to grow back!”

“That is trivial compared to the prize of uncovering an old, illegal nest of powerful necromancers,” Vlad had countered. “It’s also the point. We deliver these necromancers to the Law Guardian with the understanding that her judgment will be immediate execution. She gets a feather in her cap for ending such flagrant abuse of vampire law, and in exchange, we get immunity for any minor infractions we committed to do this.”

Like a video showing you using glamour to dupe the world into thinking that you murdered Mencheres, I had realized. Vlad was covering all his bases with the same brutality, ruthlessness, and cunning that he was famous for.

That’s how we ended up crouched below a rocky ledge about a mile from the church we were going to attack. This was where we were meeting our Law Guardian backup. I didn’t hear any noise and nothing disturbed the air around us, yet Mencheres suddenly said, “Veritas” in a low voice.

I looked behind us, surprised to see a slender form clothed in white ski wear no more than twenty yards away from us.

“Imagine,” Mencheres went on, an undercurrent of humor now in his voice. “The last time you, me, and Vlad met under clandestine circumstances, you were threatening to arrest me.”

Huh? Then I got a closer look at the person who was moving in a crouch so she wouldn’t stand out against the background beyond her. Wait a minute. This sunny-haired, caramel-skinned, lithe young beauty could not be our only backup.

“The Law Guardian’s a frigging teenager?” I blurted out.

Ocean-colored eyes met mine, and I instantly realized my mistake. Her gaze had a strange weight to it that I’d only seen before from really old vampires, and the undetectable aura she’d given off suddenly flared. Instead of filling the space around us, hers somehow managed to direct itself into a thin, laserlike line that drilled me right in the midsection. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">