Blue Moon (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 8)

Damian moved back a step, then stopped. "You ask why Asher is content to remain with Jean-Claude when he could go elsewhere and be his own master. Maybe he is tired as I am tired of the struggle. The in-fighting. The fucking politics. Jean-Claude ransomed me from my master. I am not a master vampire, nor will I ever be. I have no special powers. Yet, Jean-Claude bargained for me. I serve him not out of fear but out of gratitude."

"You make Jean-Claude sound weak. The Council does not fear weaklings, yet they fear him," Colin said.

"Compassion is not weakness," Richard said. "Only those without compassion think otherwise."

I glanced at him, but he was looking at the vampires, not me. The fact that I felt it was a personal remark to me was just me being overly sensitive.

"Compassion." Colin shook his head. He threw back his head and laughed. It was sort of unnerving. I kept my attention on the outer darkness and the waiting vamps, but it was hard not to watch the laughing vampire. Hard not to ask what was so funny.

"Compassion," Colin said again. "Now that is not a word I would have used for Jean-Claude. Has he fallen in love with his human servant? I do not think love is the path to Jean-Claude's heart. Is it sex?" He raised his voice and called to me. "Is that it, Miss Blake? Has the seducer finally been seduced? Are you that good a piece of ass, Miss Blake?"

That made my shoulders hunch. But I kept my eye on the other vampires, the machine gun held in both hands. "A lady doesn't kiss and tell, Colin."

That made him laugh again. "Jean-Claude would never forgive me if I killed the best piece of ass he's found in centuries. I say again, give me Asher, and the blond wolf. Asher's life and the wolf's fear at Barnaby's hands. That is the price for safe passage through my lands."

It was my turn to laugh, a soft, harsh sound. "Fuck you."

"I take it that is a no," he said.

"No," I said. I watched the vampires out in the dark. They hadn't moved, but somehow there was a sense of movement, an increased energy. It was nothing I could start shooting about, but I didn't like it.

"Does Miss Blake speak for all of you?" Colin asked.

"You can't have Jason to torture," Richard said.

"I would not willingly give up my life," Asher said.

"The human servant speaking for all. How very strange. But if the answer is no, then the answer is no."

Asher yelled, "Anita!"

I started to rotate the gun back towards them, but something slashed down my face, over one eye. It made me hesitate, one hand going over my eye, holding it. I had time to think, stupid, and start to lower my hand, start to raise the gun back up, and a vampire slammed into me, taking us both to the ground.

I was flat on my back with a woman on top of me, mouth wide, fangs snapping at my face like a dog. I pulled the trigger with the muzzle pressed to her body. The bullets exploded out her back in a rain of blood and thicker bits. Her body danced on top of mine, twitching, jerking. I had to push her body off of me, and when I could sit up, it was too late. The vampires were inside the lupanar and the fighting was joined.

I couldn't see out of my right eye. It was too full of blood, and more kept pouring down. A figure appeared in front of me and I fired up the length of its body until the bullets exploded its head in a burst of splattering rain. I closed my right eye and did my best to ignore it. Nursing the wound was going to get me killed.

I looked around for the others. Verne tore the head off a vampire and sent it spinning into the dark. Richard was at the center of a mob, almost lost to sight with bodies hanging off him. Asher was covered in blood, facing Colin. There were werewolves everywhere in wolf or manwolf form. Two vamps came for me and sight-seeing was over.

One of them was rotting down to bones, the other was solid. I shot the solid one first because he, I was sure, I could kill. Rotting vamps don't also die from bullets. The solid one fell to his knees in a spray of blood, face split in half like a ripe melon.

The rotting vamp jumped me in a blur of speed and we went tumbling across the ground as I tried to bring the gun up. The mouth stretched above my face, naked tendons straining between the bones of his cheeks, fangs came for my face. I fired into the body, but the gun was at a bad angle and missed anything vital. All I got for my troubles was the scream of a wolf, and I knew that I'd shot someone that was on our side. Shit.

I turned my head and the fangs sank through the leather jacket into my shoulder. I screamed, my hand fumbling for the jacket pocket and my backup cross. A rotted hand caressed my face, sliding over the wound above my eye. The leather jacket acted as a sort of armor, keeping the fangs from getting a good lock on my shoulder. The mouth worried at my shoulder like a dog with a bone, trying to dig through the thick leather into the flesh beyond. It hurt, but not as much as it was going to hurt if I didn't do something.

The cross flared to life like a captive star, but the vamp had its face buried in the leather. It couldn't see the cross. I swung the cross by the chain into its bare skull. Smoke rose from the bone, and the vampire jerked its face back from me, naked teeth opened in a scream. I shoved the cross in its face, and those teeth snapped at it like a dog telling you to stay away. But those teeth caught the chain, and bit through it. There was a moment where even without most of the flesh left on the skull I could see surprise on its face. I flung my arms across my face and heard the dull explosion, the spatter of debris. There was a sharp pain in my hand, and when I could look, I had a bone shard in my left hand. I pulled the shard out, and only then did I bleed.

The vampire was just so much mess scattered around me. The cross lay on the ground still glowing, smoke rising off its surface as if the metal had been freshly made and quenched in the blood of the vampire. I started to pick it up by the chain, and Nikki, Colin's human servant, was standing over me. I caught the dull flash of her knife and rolled away, coming to one knee with the Browning in one hand. She was right above me waiting for an underhand strike, but I wasn't standing, and she didn't have time to change her strike. I started to pull the trigger and a werewolf barreled into her, took them both off into the dark. Shit. What was I supposed to do, yell "mine" like in a volleyball game?

I heard Jason yelling. He was standing only about a yard away with both arms stuck through the chest of a rotting vampire. He was pulling desperately on his arms, but they seemed trapped, caught on the ribs. The vampire didn't seem to mind. It licked his face, and he screamed. Another rotter was on his back, riding him, head back for a strike. I sighted down my arm at the head and fired. The head jerked back, and brains spilled out a hole on the other side in a dark gush, but the vampire turned its head slowly and looked at me. I fired into that calm face three more times in a tight cluster before the head collapsed in upon itself like an empty eggshell. The vampire fell away from Jason.

I walked towards Jason and the other vampire. Now it was the vampire who was struggling to get free of Jason, but they were entwined like bumpers after a car wreck. I put the gun barrel under the vampire's chin, my other hand over Jason's eyes to protect them, and fired. It took three shots for the brain to be destroyed and the body to go limp.

I moved my hand from Jason's eyes, and he looked past me, eyes widening. I was already turning before he could yell, "Behind you!"

The blow came before I'd finished the turn. My shoulder and arm went numb. My hand opened and the Browning slipped out while I was still trying to see what had hit me. I dived for the ground, rolling on my good shoulder and came up to my knee to see Nikki holding a very big stick. I was lucky she'd lost the knife somewhere.

I started to draw the big knife down my back, but I was using my left hand, because my right still wasn't working. Left-handed I was slower, and Nikki was unbelievably fast. She moved in a blur of motion that was beyond human. She was on me, slashing the air with the club, and I gave up trying to draw a knife, and worked just at not being hit. The attack was so quick, so savage, that I didn't have time to stand. All I could do was roll on the ground barely ahead of each blow.

The jagged end of the branch sank into the ground next to my face. She struggled for a second to free it, and I kicked her in the knee. It made her stagger, but didn't dislocate it, or she'd have screamed. It did force her back from the club. I rolled away, trying to get to my feet. She grabbed me, and lifted me over her head like she was bench-pressing me. The next thing I knew I was airborne. I hit the ground just short of the oak, falling into the bones beneath the tree hard enough that some of them shattered. The jolt of power that ran through me from hands to knees drove what air I had left from my body. I lay there half-stunned, not just from being thrown across the clearing, but from the power roaring across my body from the bones. It was death magic, and though different from mine, it recognized me, recognized my power. I knew as I lay in the bones that I could bring the circle to life? But what would happen when the wards flared to life? This pack worshipped Odin. If I set the circle of power would it count as a holy place? Would it suddenly be like standing inside a church? It had possibilities if I could warn Asher and Damian.

I got painfully to my knees and found that we were losing. Everywhere I looked our people were buried under piles of vampires. Asher and Damain were still standing free, but both were bleeding and Colin and Barnaby were pressing the attack. Richard was completely lost to sight except for one arm gone long with claws. Verne was standing with another werewolf in human form. It was a woman shorter than I was with short dark hair that touched her shoulders, dressed in a thigh-long T-shirt and pants. She looked small beside Verne, but she was the only one of his people still standing. The others were dead or dying on the ground.

My right hand was working again, just stunned not dislocated. Lucky me. I drew a knife from one of the wrist sheaths. It wasn't a blade consecrated to ritual, but it would have to do.

I wanted to whisper to Asher and Damian for them to fly, but it was too far away to whisper, and I didn't know how to talk directly to either of their minds. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled. I yelled, "Asher, Damian!"

They turned startled faces to me.

I raised the knife so they could see it, and screamed, "Fly, damn it, fly!"

Nikki was almost to the bone circle. I screamed, "Fly!" Asher grabbed Damian's wrist, and I had to turn away before I could see them safe. I had moments to try and make this work. Nikki had a power similar to mine. If she figured out what I was trying to do she'd stop me if she could.

I pressed my hands to the tree trunk and the power breathed through me. It was magic that had been built with death, and that was my speciality. The moment I touched the tree I knew that it wasn't human sacrifice, but that this was where their munin gathered. The spirits of their dead were here in the bones, the tree, the ground. They filled the air with a whispering, tittering, noise that only I could hear.

The lukoi consume their dead, at least part of them, and the eating of their flesh puts them into some sort of ancestral memory. Munin they call them after Odin's raven, Memory. They aren't ghosts, but they are the spirits of the dead, and I was a necromancer. The munin liked me. They eased around me like a cool caress of wind, entwining like phantom cats. I could channel the munin, sort of like a medium at a seance, but more, and worse. The only munin I'd ever channeled had been Raina, the wicked bitch of the east. But when she came, it was like a battering ram. Standing there in the middle of hundreds, thousands of munin, I knew I could open to them. But it would be like opening a door, an invitation. I could wallow in the past, live other lives. It was a whisper of seduction. Raina came like a rapist, an overwhelming force. Not a sharing, but a taking.

However they'd tied their munin to this place it was blood magic, death magic. I cut the palm of my hand and pressed it to the tree. I prayed, and sprinkled blood on the bones at my feet. The circle of power snapped into place with a rush that raised my skin as if it would crawl off my flesh. I invoked the circle. I called the wards. I worshipped, and it was enough.

Shrieks, screams filled the night. The vampires went up in flames. They ran, burning, for the edge of the ward and all who made it across exploded in a rain of burning bits and pieces.

I felt Damian above me, and Asher. None of the vampires left behind tried to do anything but run. Most fell into burning heaps on the ground without taking another step. Anyone under a hundred died where they stood.

The Indian woman had come to stand on the edge of the bone circle. She stared at me while the vampires screamed and died, and the stink of burning flesh and hair was thick enough to choke. Her face showed nothing. She'd rescued the club.

Finally she said, "I should kill you."

I nodded. "Yes, you should, but your allies are dead and your master has flown away. I'd get out while the getting's good, if I were you."

She nodded and threw the club to the ground. "Colin and Barnaby live, and we will see you again, Anita."

"I look forward to it," I said. I was hoping that she wouldn't notice that my back was pressed against the tree, because I wasn't sure I could stand on my own.

Nikki nodded, and started to walk away into the dark, past the tree and the bones. She spoke something then stepped through the ward. When she stepped through, the magic quenched, swallowed back into the earth.

She looked at me from the dark on the other side of the quieted circle. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I knew that if we met again she would kill me if she could. She was Colin's human servant. It was her job.

I slid down the tree until I was sitting in the bones. My legs were too weak to hold me and a fine trembling had started in my hands. I gazed out into the lupanar, gazed out over my handiwork. Some of the bodies still burned, but no vampire moved within the circle. The vampires were dead. All of them.