Dark Harvest (Darkling Mage 2)

Prudence appeared next, burning like an azure torch in the artificial darkness. “I don’t care who you people are. We have no issue with you. Let us take what we came for, and we’ll leave you well enough alone.” She reached out a hand. “Give us the boy.”

“What?” I threw my hands up. “You wanted the sword, and now you want the boy, too?”

“That’s right,” she said, her eyes narrowing as they settled on my face. “Give us the boy. And give us the sword.”

Wordlessly, Gil hurled himself at Prudence with supernatural speed. He threw the first punch, talons bursting out of his hand mid-swing. Prudence barely ducked in time to dodge getting her face raked off.

“Hiya,” Gil said. “Remember me?”

“I remember kicking your ass the last time,” Prudence said, parrying another slash by blocking with her forearm, then returning with a kick to Gil’s gut that sent him stumbling backwards across the lawn. He growled, gathered his bearings, then charged again.

Bastion seemed to be sizing up the rest of us, his gaze flitting between myself and Carver, somehow having written Asher off as a threat. Something twitched in the corner of his mouth, and he raised his hand, gesturing at the veranda. He closed his fist.

I knew what was coming before it happened. The veranda exploded into dozens of splinters. Bastion flicked his wrist, and the broken shards of wood zinged in flight, each powered with enough arcane strength and velocity to tear the human body apart several times over.

He really wasn’t fucking around this time. I threw myself to the ground, entering the shadow on the grass as I went, repositioning myself so that I had Bastion between myself and Carver. Maybe we stood a better chance of neutralizing him if we flanked him. Asher was huddled on the grass, his duffle bag held feebly over his head as a shield.

“Oh please,” Carver muttered softly. I really should have known that he wouldn’t need any help at all. He flicked his wrist. The wooden shards and splinters turned into sawdust mid-flight, about as lethal as a puff of talcum powder.

“Interesting,” Bastion said, eyes and teeth gleaming as he grinned. I wondered, briefly, why he hadn’t brought any backup, but I knew deep inside myself that this was a matter of pride for him. He’d been beaten once before, by Sterling, specifically, and the true victory lay in getting his revenge by crushing the vampire into so much quivering mulch.

And dishonorable it may be but I knew that the best way to gain the upper hand was to attack him while he had his attention focused on Carver. It was intense watching the two of them duel it out, tossing lawn furniture and ripping up the earth in an extended stalemate. I needed to tip the scales.

Somewhere off to the side of the house, flashes of blue light accompanied the grunts and groans of Gil and Prudence’s melee. It stung a little to realize that I was probably seen as the least threatening target, which was why nobody was really paying attention to me. That was mitigated by the small benefit of knowing that I wasn’t immediately at risk of total obliteration.

Fuck it. I had the key to ending this and enabling Carver to send us all home. I opened my backpack and drew Vanitas, completely forgetting that he was back to his animated self outside of Amaterasu’s domain.

“The hell are you doing?” Vanitas said. “Let me go.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry. Don’t kill anyone, okay? Just rough ’em up.”

“Ugh,” Vanitas groaned, the disappointment thick in his voice. It had been a while since he’d been blooded, I knew. I hadn’t realized just how much he enjoyed laying a smackdown, and I was starting to believe that, like Sterling, the sword would need its stipend of blood to keep fighting.

“Okay,” I thought to him. “A cut here or there if you must. But no severed limbs or fingers. None of that shit.”

“Say no more,” Vanitas said, exploding into action, scabbard and sword both assaulting what appeared to be their favored target.

Bastion’s eyes went wide as he caught the streak of green and gold, but he raised a hand and erected a shield just in time. Sparks flew as Vanitas collided with the shield with enough momentum to send Bastion skidding across the ground.

“Not this shit again,” Bastion shouted. “Prudence, you seeing this? Fuck, man.”

“Shut up,” Prudence said, narrowly missing Gil’s head with a whiffed roundhouse. “Shut the fuck up and hold the dome.”

Things were going about as well as they could. Bastion’s cockiness had finally gotten the best of him. I considered picking up a rock and smashing him in the back of the head with it, but I still felt bad about how he’d been knocked out during our last encounter, and frankly, I wasn’t too keen on what he had in store for me if his greeting for Sterling was death by Corolla.

Screw it. I had to end this before anyone got seriously injured. Both Gil and Prudence had taken some near-fatal swipes at each other, their equivalent skill probably the only thing preventing anyone from getting their head exploded.

Plus I was confident that Bastion was going to start running out of things to use as projectiles, or to shield himself from Vanitas and Carver. I didn’t want him to turn to using the unconscious bodies of the Viridian Dawn as meat shields and cannonballs.

I picked up a fallen beer bottle and gripped it firmly in one hand, careful to creep on the periphery of the fight so Bastion wouldn’t spot me. We should have all been so lucky for his arrogance, honestly. I still couldn’t believe that Prudence even agreed for the two of them to attack our group alone.

Sure, there was the distinct possibility that they were doing this incognito, that maybe they had reasons for not letting the Lorica’s higher-ups know that they were going out on their own little excursion. But even then, they would have needed an Eye to tell them where to find us.

An Eye. Oh. Oh shit.

There was a third. And I knew who it was.

Chapter 18