Dark Need

Page 37

They found the broken body of Faryl's victim in the doorway of a tourist shop. The glass of the door had been shattered. Lucan looked through the space between the shop and the next building to see Rafael and his men covering the rear exit.
"What are you doing?" he heard Samantha say. "Is that man dead?"
Somehow Samantha had blundered past Rafael, or perhaps his seneschal had been overwhelmed by the number of humans on the street. Whatever the case, Samantha could obviously see everything that was happening.
"Get back to the club." Lucan scanned the front of the shop before turning to find her just behind him. "Do as I say, woman!"
"You don't have the authority to go in there." She drew her weapon. "I do."
He reached over and kept her from going into the shop by grabbing the back of her jacket. "This is not something your law covers. Mine does. Get out of here before you get hurt."
"I'm not that easy to hurt, and you're being a lousy partner. Is he armed? Is he alone?" The sound of the metal being torn apart drew her attention back to the shop. "What was that?"
Lucan seized her and pulled her against his chest, covering her head with his arms as the front window of the shop exploded out on them.
Sam wasn't sure what had happened. She had hurried out of the club straight into a light so intense that it had virtually blinded her. She froze, but after a few seconds her eyes grew accustomed to it, and by squinting she was able to walk out of it. She saw Lucan running with his men and went after him.
Now he was giving her orders and treating her like some helpless female. Didn't he understand that she was the cop, and he was the private citizen? Just as she was about to slap the cuffs on him, he pulled her into a bear hug. She realized why as the enormous plate-glass window in front of them shattered outward, pelting them both with cutting shards. Along with the shower of glass came an aluminum-and-Formica table that flew out, bounced onto the sidewalk, and came apart.
As Lucan dragged her backward, three men came running down toward them from the nightclub.
As men went, they were rather ordinary, if one overlooked the brown bathrobes. They were shouting in some foreign language that sounded vaguely like Spanish, and were armed with some kind of spears. And, it appeared, they were serious.
"The hell." She stared. The spears had big ax heads and dagger-shaped spikes on one end. "Are those… are those battle-axes?"
"Halberds." Lucan moved, putting himself between her and the men. "Run, Samantha. Obey me. Run."
She almost did. Almost. But whatever weird hypnotism he was using on her faded away in the next moment, and she regained control.
"I am a police officer," she called out in a loud, clear voice to the men. "Stop where you are and put down those weapons." They kept running, and in another block, the men would be on top of them. She repeated her order in Spanish, and when the men didn't slow down, she bent and picked up a broken table leg made of aluminum pipe.
"T'ta a facc', arruso!" one shouted as he charged forward at Lucan.
It might have been choreographed, the way Sam went right and Lucan went left. Simultaneously they both ducked the slash of the halberd. As she slammed the assailant in the back of the kneecap with her pipe, Lucan caught the shaft of the halberd and wrenched it out of the man's hands. She didn't see what happened after that, but their attacker let out a horrendous scream before he toppled over, clutching his chest.
Lucan turned his head in her direction. "Behind you!"
Sam pivoted around and without thinking swiped up the pipe in her hand in time to parry the ax coming at her face. Metal screeched and sparks flew. Her arms absorbed the jolt, but only just. It got her close enough to see the man's face and the fury in his eyes.
He hauled the ax backward and swung again. "Donnicciola!"
Sam ducked and dodged, but lie reversed the swing and caught the side of her head with the blunt end of the halberd's staff. Stars burst in front of her eyes, but before the blade descended, incredibly it shattered in midair. She came around and blindly used the pipe like a baseball bat, driving it into his spine from behind.
The ax man roared and arched, but Sam tottered back two steps and kicked him squarely between his legs. The ax fell to the road and he went down, short-squealing and clutching his crotch.
"Next time," she panted, "put down the damn weapon when I tell you to."
Lucan appeared, clamping his hand on the back of the man's neck. The man convulsed, went stiff, and hit the asphalt like a sack of rotten tomatoes. Lucan stepped over him to get to Sam. "Are you injured?"
She rubbed her head and checked her hand for blood. "I'm all right. Where's the third…" She saw another body in the gutter. "Is he dead?"
Instead of answering her, Lucan turned as louder crashing sounds came from inside the shop. "Samantha, don't shoot what comes out of there."
"Why not?"
He pushed her behind him. "It won't stop him. It will only make him angrier."
What came out of the shop wasn't human, exactly. It had the vague shape of a man, and arms and legs, but that was where everything human stopped and something else took over. Its neck was as long as Sam's forearm, and had huge, bulging tendons on either side that ran up and formed a ridge around an oblong-shaped, hairless head. It had yellow, lidless eyes the size of lemons, and its mouth was a lipless, blunted snout.
Sam could see it, but she couldn't believe it.
The thing's barrel-shaped torso tapered down into ridges that disappeared under a ragged pair of trousers. Between its legs, a long, thick tail dragged on the ground behind it. Instead of skin, mottled green, brown, and yellow rectangular scales covered its entire body. The slitted eyes shifted from side to side. A thin, forked pink tongue flickered out to taste the air.
"It's a…" For a minute Sam thought her eyes would pop out of her head. "Snake-man?"
It heard Sam's voice, drew its head back, and hissed, displaying enormous, curved white fangs.
"Faryl, stop," Lucan said. "No one else needs to suffer this night."
Sam turned to stare at him. "You know this thing?"
"He was my friend once." Lucan moved forward, holding his empty hands out in front of him. "You came here to me, Faryl; do you not remember? I will help you, brother, I promise. But for me to do that, you must control yourself."
For a moment the snake-man seemed mesmerized by Lucan's voice, and swayed a little.
"My lord!" someone shouted, and a short arrow flew past Lucan's head and buried itself in the snake-man's right arm.
Faryl screamed in a horribly distorted human voice and lunged for Lucan. They went down on the ground, grappling.
Sam couldn't fire her weapon, not with them wrestling each other, and if her gun was useless, as Lucan had said, then shooting it wouldn't help. She snatched up one of the halberds and waited, and then brought the ax down on the snake-man's tail, cleanly cutting off the end.
Faryl screamed again and rolled away from Lucan before pushing himself to his feet and running off into the night. Four of Lucan's guards went after him.
Sam went to Lucan, who had deep puncture wounds from Faryl's fangs in his shoulder and a diagonal slash wound across his face. "Don't move." She straddled him, tearing off her jacket and covering his chest with it to keep him warm. "I'll get an ambulance." She fumbled for her mobile.
His pale silver eyes opened and he wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve casually, as if there weren't a two-inch-deep gash bisecting it. "That will not be necessary, Detective."
Sam started to argue, and then her eyes widened as she saw the gash filling in and the edges drawing together. "Your face."
"No, watch it, Samantha." He yanked on his gloves and caught her hips as she tried to rise, holding her in place. "This should be more convincing than my dents acérées."
"Your what?" she whispered, completely enthralled by the sight of his wound closing and shrinking.
"My fangs."
When it was over—and it took only twenty seconds or less—the wound was gone, and there was no scar on Lucan's face. He appeared as if he'd never been slashed. She looked down at the bloody, ragged holes in his shirt, but where there had been fist-sized puncture wounds, now only smooth skin showed through. Sam took hold of his shirt and ripped it, looking for the injuries—and found nothing.
She took in a deep, slow breath and released it. "So your friend is a snake-man, and you're… ?"
"Darkyn." He put an arm around her waist and sat up so that she straddled his lap. "Something like a vampire."
"'Something like a vampire." She nodded as if it all made sense. Not that it ever would.
Men surrounded them, and Lucan stood, holding Samantha with one arm until she found the ground with her feet. "What of Faryl?"
"He beheaded Reyes and escaped by water, my lord," one of them replied. "However, your woman wounded him, and we have his scent now."
"He will go into the swamp to feed and heal. Track him, but do not try to corner or capture him," Lucan said. "Locate his lair and report back to me."
"Yes, my lord."
Sam heard distant sirens wailing and drawing closer. For a moment she considered staying on the scene and reporting to the responding units what had happened. Then she saw that the three men who had attacked them had vanished—along with the section of tail she had chopped off Faryl.
"How do I write up an incident report involving a snake-man and a vampire?" she muttered. Her mouth felt dry, and her head was starting to spin.
"You don't." Lucan looked down at her, and his mouth twisted. "If only I had Cyprien's talent."
Sam didn't know what that was, but she had a good idea why she couldn't feel her legs, and the reason her vision was dwindling down to something small and insignificant at the end of a long, black tunnel. As the ground tilted, she asked, "Can you catch?"