Count Santiago Cavallero's estate was perched on two-hundred acres of land and nestled into the cradle of the San Ignacio countryside.
It was probably very beautiful in the daytime. Belize was a lush paradise, with white sand, blue skies, and rolling green patches of countryside to explore between cities. I had sometimes idly wondered if this was what the original Eden had looked like. It hadn't, according to Lasciel, but I didn't ask for a peek at that memory. I wanted to keep my little illusion. That I'd somehow found and reclaimed a patch of paradise in the midst of my hell.
The grand four-story Colonial-style building had been built by the Baymen in the 18th century. It'd been claimed by the Red Court sometime later and used as a base for at least one of its nobles ever since. There was no moon out tonight, so exterior lights had to be turned on for human and half-human guards to have enough light to roam by. It elevated the stark white siding of the fortress so that it appeared to float above the surrounding landscape.
The wind blew hard, tossing the dark grasses all around me. It gave me the odd sensation that I'd entered the eighth circle of the Inferno, where the barrators were immersed in a lake of boiling pitch.
Fitting, because I planned to burn this place to ash to get Anna and Salem back.
After moving Hannah away from the carnage and calling first responders, I'd fled the scene with the promise I'd be back for her. We both heard the unspoken, "If I survive what's next."
Everything I had was packed into Nixon's Humvee. A staggering amount of automatic weaponry. Six Vespel firebombs. Three gravity-altering casings. One very faulty thermobaric spell. My sword. And Lasciel. I had her there too. And I was willing to do something I hadn't since leaving Chicago. I'd take her battle form. Storm the gates and out myself to the whole world. Anything, so long as I could get Anna and Salem back.
Whatever I could conceivably carry was on my person. The rest would be waiting on the off-chance that I could return to reload. I wasn't counting on it, though. Retrieving it meant very little to me. I had one objective tonight.
I was going to deliver them safely home, come hell or high water.
"Prepare yourself, my host," Lasciel said grimly. "Tonight we march as to war."
The smile that answered her pronouncement was just as grim, a slash of cynical humor barely reflected in the rearview mirror.
"Onward Christian Soldiers," I muttered, and then gunned the throttle.
We went rocketing up the path that'd been cut through the grass. I knew from the Fellowship's intelligence that it was the only safe path to the gates. All the other avenues of approach had been booby-trapped, rigged with mines to explode should someone try a sneaky sneaky to assassinate the Count. Which meant that anyone trying to storm the place would have to come straight at the Count's considerable defense force to try it. It would take someone suicidally foolish.
And I was that fool.
We ate up ground in seconds, barreling straight for the front gates and the crowd of guards gathered there. They just sort of stared at our approach for second or two, stunned into immobility by the sheer idiocy of what I was attempting. Then they moved into action, swifter than they had any right to be. Half-vampires, most likely.
The Up-Armored Humvee was built to withstand standard arms fire. The bullets ricocheting off the vehicle only concerned me because they'd raise an alert for those inside. The Count would know he was under attack.
With Lasciel sharpening the acuity of my night vision I saw the half-vampire assume a position and fire the rocket launcher with seconds to spare. I turned the wheel sharply, threw up a shield bolstered with hellfire, and the Humvee juked just in time to avoid the blast. Enormous heat and thunderous sound buffeted me from the left, shedding off the shield seconds later. The half-vampire got off a second shot, which also narrowly missed. He didn't get off a third.
Pedal flattened to the floor, we burst through the gates, bits of wooden shrapnel ricocheting off the shield and into the coming troops. The infected shrugged it off, shrieking their challenge. Purely human security took it with less grace. One went down with a shard about the size of my thumb jutting from his eye. I spun the Humvee to a stop, kicking up as much dust as I could before I was stationary, using the brief cover to climb out of the Humvee and assume a firing position.
Nixon's Mini-Uzi thrummed beneath my hand as I fired, unloading clip after clip into this first layer of defense. They dropped with astonishing speed, most of them hit. Many dead. I stepped over those still moving and pelted toward the water fountain that had been set up in the middle of the compound. The uzi had taken a couple of chunks from the weeping angel's wings, but it was still intact.
Using the lip as a springboard I activated the spells in the soles and went rocketing up, catching myself on one of the railings to the second-floor balcony and used my momentum to swing up. I landed painfully on my feet and kept going, dropping the Uzi and reaching for my sword instead.
It cleared the scabbard just in time to be thrust into the belly of the flabby Red that rushed me. I scored the sack open, let the blood gush out before moving on to the next one in line.
The Count seemed to have an endless supply of grunts. I gutted or decapitated about ten before the hall was emptied and I knew there would be more on the next two levels. I'd seen neither hide nor hair of the Count. I tried the doors in the hall anyway, on the off chance that Salem and Anna were being chained somewhere to be used as snacks later.
No sign of either, but the rooms were filled with humans. The first three were almost entirely filled with children. The white-knuckled grip I was keeping on my rage threatened to snap me in two. Children, just like Salem had been. The Reds were a leprous taint on the world. Someone needed to scrub them out.
The crowd of children buzzing around my legs did put a crimp in the plans. It wasn't as if I could leave them in their prisons. But nor could I have them trailing behind me like a Conga line of little hostages either. Maybe I could find a safe alcove for them to shelter in before my return.
The fourth room contained fifteen adults, all of them in fairly bad shape. Almost of them were dressed in robes, the sort you see wizards wear in movies but that look sort of ridiculous in real life. The garments were all stiff with blood and less pleasant substances. They'd been wearing ornamental stoles, sashes, and braided cords around their necks at some point, but the fabric had since been used to staunch bloody wounds in their necks, elbows, or wrists. One of the female prisoners actually had hers tied around her thigh to cover a bite mark. I shuddered to think what else might have been done to her.
"Wizards," Lasciel remarked in surprise. "White Council. It looks as if they were stolen from a formal meeting."
"What?" I said, balking in the doorway. These were the fabled White Council?
"Members of it, yes. But they are not Wardens. Do you see the sashes and sigils?"
I paid attention, matched up the ornamentation on the ones I could spy. The short, balding wizard with a gash in his cheek had the braided silver chord of a master alchemist. The woman with the bites in her thigh had the gold stitched caduceus of a master healer. Every single one of them appeared to have some sort of skill. Probably something that the Reds wanted. I had learned from unpleasant experience that wizards turned vampires were some of the worst foes to face in battle.
I almost backed out of the room, instinctive revulsion rising in my chest. The White Council had been trying to kill me since they'd learned of my existence. My selfish, gut reaction was to leave them to their fate. But that impulse faded quickly. There was still a vampire to find and kill, and these children needed to be escorted out. Two birds, one stone.
It took minutes I didn't really have to spare to free them all. The manacles were faerie made and designed to keep wizards from using their magic. I was eventually able to saw through them with the Ontario MK3 Navy Knife I'd stolen from Thorn's collection before coming. The female wizard actually hugged me, eyes wide and filled with tears.
"Thank you, Warden," she choked. "Thank you."
Warden? Oh hell. They'd seen the sword and they thought...well, no helping it now. I just nodded and pushed her off of me gingerly, jabbing a finger at the children.
"There's a vehicle in the courtyard. Get them to safety. Don't veer off the main road, unless you want to be blown sky-high by the mines. Take these."
I removed the remaining automatic weapons I had on my person and passed them out to the wizards who didn't look ready to keel over from exhaustion or blood loss. That was a distressingly low number.
It still left me with the sword, the Vespel, the shells, and the will-it-or-won't it thermobaric. And Lasciel. When all else failed, I always had Lasciel. Still, fortune favored the armed.
The whole thing had probably lasted about three minutes tops, but it was enough for new Reds to filter down from the floors above. Twenty-six if the count was right. Yanking my wand from the wrist sheath I'd prepared for them, I jabbed the end at the nearest Red and the first verse of For Whom the Bell Tolls blasted into his dark, bat-like face, the vibration pushing the rubbery skin back like he'd entered a wind tunnel.
It wasn't like fighting the transmogrified humans with Nicodemus and Deidre months back. I couldn't frighten them into submission, make them pause long enough for me to kill them. But I could turn all that Red-Court advantage against them. In the rave spell, superior sight and hearing were useless. They were rendered just as deaf as your average bear under the onslaught.
Which meant that I could pull an old standby.
I threw up a veil and tossed them an illusion of a full-frontal assault, my sword flashing as I brought it down on the nearest swath of them, lashing out with deadly fire magic.
It cleared a swath of them and they realized too late what I'd done as I rocketed up the stairs past them, toward the last levels, now mostly empty of Reds.
Screaming. I could hear screaming now. A familiar voice, crying for help. Anna. She was here. She was alive. The wail was a siren call, lashing at my self-control. I was going to kill whatever was hurting her. Just as soon as she was safely out.
I turned a corner and hit a patch of something slick. The momentum from the spell actually sent me tumbling and I did several very painful cartwheels before I came to a stop before the door. My rave spell cut off abruptly. I craned my neck painfully, trying to see what I'd slipped on. And then I threw up for the second time in a day.
Salem's body was sprawled in the hallway, an enormous pool of blood spread out beneath her. Still warm. The stuff on my skin and soaking into my clothes was still warm. I'd been too late. Again. If I hadn't stopped to save the Wizards, would I have been able to save her instead?
I'd torture myself with the question later. For the moment, there was still Anna. I got my feet beneath me, put all my strength into one shoulder, and slammed bodily into the door. It hurt but the door did explode open.
The room beyond was spacious. It might have been elegant at one point too. But now the white area rugs that concealed most of the hardwood were stained with blood. Only one red occupied the room. Seated on a couch in the back was a deceptively handsome man in his late forties to early fifties. And situated like a doll on his lap was Anna. She sat straight-backed and wide-eyed, tremors rocking her entire body.
"Anna-" I began.
What was I going to say? Anna, I'm sorry I didn't come sooner? Sorry that I dragged you into this? Sorry that I frightened you? Sorry that I never told you what you meant to me?
I could have said any of those things. Maybe she would have heard them. Or...maybe not. I'd never know. Because the next instant Count Cavallero's head snapped forward and he sank his teeth into Anna's throat and tore it open.
Anna bucked once, let out a choked gurgle and began to flop weakly as blood spurted out of her. A hole about the size of a plum had been torn from her neck. There was no chance. Not even if I'd had paramedics on hand or a spell at the ready. Too much damage, not enough time.
Something inside of me simply shattered. The fine control that had kept my worst impulses in check was gone, and now fury reigned in my head. I sort of checked out for a bit. Might have thrust control over to Lasciel to keep moving my body forward. But when I came to again, the Count was bloodied, tied to a chair in the middle of his courtyard with the dead piled all around him. She'd strapped him with all of the Vespel weapons and gagged him.
Anna was still cradled in my arms. Her blood was thick and warm against my skin, soaking through my clothes. I clutched her tight as I could. I should have been screaming. But I was beyond years. Beyond words. Beyond fury. I was...undone.
"What's the number of the day, Count?" I asked the night air flatly when we were a safe distance away. "Six. Six Vespel firebombs, ah, ah, ah."
Then I extended my will. The Vespel broke. Fire ate the night. And I finally screamed.