Then it exploded.
A giant, invisible hand pushed her and Max along, wheeling and tumbling, and the oily biter-streaks collecting in their wake vanished into an expanding edge of shimmering white flame. High, desperate screams burst diamond-bright through the roaring. The world was a madly whirling kaleidoscope, pushing and pulling in random directions as he flew between flame-bolts, through caustic, eye-blurring smoke-veils, breaking through bands of relative coolness. Smoke scraped her lungs, and she coughed rackingly against his shoulder.
Through the smoke-mask she smelled him—a mix of brunet musk, sharp peppery determination, and copper, a deep restful scent with a strange mixed-in floral tang somehow sayingLaylaas well asMax, biter, male, old. The mental images made little sense, but the smell reached through the confusion, and the relief flooding her was so intense she could have cried.
Why is that? What the hell?
Sudden stop, nearly jolting all her innards free. Set gently on her feet, Layla had the strange sensation of wanting to stagger, but her body wouldn’t let her.
Max cast a quick glance over one brawny shoulder. Tiny spark-dots clung to his clothing—biter dust, she realized, each particle sending up minuscule threads of vapor as it finished cooking. He looked down at her again, the wet crimson light in his eyes snuffed—they were dark, human holes in his face now. “Stay hidden, stay still,” he said, quietly but clearly. “Unless you sense a sanguinant approach, then run. If you are caught,do not resist. Stay alive. I will find you.”
You got it.Another harsh flurry of coughing strangled any reply she could make but he was gone anyway, a puff of smoke-scent and a burst of that comforting, calming cologne.
That ain’t aftershave, honey. That’s him.She was shivering despite the sticky air, Layla realized, as well as hugging herself. Tiny prickles bloomed where her lengthening nails poked through the sweater’s flopping, sloppily folded cuffs. Her hair felt crispy, her skin shiny, the fire’s breath a terrible clinging haze.
She was, she realized, plonked smack-dab in the middle of a greenbelt at the edge of a residential district. Dusty, indifferently watered backyards faded into this fringe, before the landscape turned into a long slope leading to the oilfield. Tract houses built on a choice of six-or-so plans—Meemaw had often taken little Layla driving through similar neighborhoods at Christmastime, looking at the lights—all extended their cracked driveway tongues, cars with dusty hoods and windshields reflecting streetlamp glow. Behind her, the rumble took a deep breath and ballooned, sending a hot breeze through rustling branches.
Max had gone back into that inferno.
The sky was a solid dish of cloud swirling with packed-together dots of light; somehow, Layla realized she was seeing starsthroughthe heavy overcast. A short sigh of wonder cracked on another cough; she was placed just at the edge of a smoke-smell rivulet. It was probably to shield her from being sniffed out, like a rabbit in a shallow hole.
When her chin tipped back down, a tingle at her nape whisperingdanger, sanguinant shadows streaked through the neighborhood.
Oh, hell. Layla’s legs folded instinctively. She crouched behind a thin, rustling screen of leaves and prayed none of the biters would notice little ol’ her.
CHAPTER 22
An Archon could bathein open flame without hurt, it was said. Perhaps they were indeed sanguinant evolved past the summa of daywalking, others averred they were some other demimonde species, though they were said to feed as the children of the Blood did.
He had never met one, and in any case it did not matter.
Half a fractional miscalculation amid the plumes of burning spelled a bright, terrible moment of consumption for a sanguinant elder, no matter how mighty; even the shimmering flows of heated air could tumble a fledgling to the ground and lodge a single spark in eminently flammable skin, hair, clothes. To move in such conditions required care and experience.
To fight while doing so required skill, age, defiance, and a healthy dose of luck.
Twisting, turning, looping, driving a group of elder sanguinant into a wall of flame and veering aside at the last moment, a fledgling’s head separating from its neck with acrackunheard in the roaring of a burn-beast fed from the veins of earth itself, predicting the likely escape routes of those who decided a leman could not possibly be found in such a hellscape,arriving just in time to send his fellow children of the Blood to whatever underworld awaited their kind—his concentration was a still single point, the rest of him whirling about the memory of grey-blue eyes, wide and soft.
Nobody needs me. There was much to achieve, not least discovering why precisely she would say something so outlandish, but to do so he must needs be alive by dawn.
And every other sanguinant in the city dead, including Antinous. The soldier now knew beyond a doubt that his Maker was aware of the prize, for among the score of elders and as many fledglings roaming the burning wasteland were familiar faces, recognized battle-patterns.
No doubt many were intelligent enough to realize their patriarch was using them against each other. Yet the lure of a leman was overwhelming, a gamble well worth the risk even for fledglings barely past first glut.
For those in Antinous’s many territories who thought leman a mere phantasy, the chance to say one had slain Nemesis—whether in a group, after he had been weakened by other combat, or even as a lie—was attractive enough. Now, with the clarity granted by his nymph’s shining presence, Maximus could imagine how much he was hated by those the patriarch ruled so stringently.
Some few might even privately think themselves as soldiers capable of killing an Emperor, and witnessing the latter’s unequivocal defeat would allow for their own fiefdoms to expand without fear of reprisal.
If, that was, Maximus allowed even a single sanguinant to escape catastrophe.
Quintus, Mure, Eli the Swift, both Roses, Manuel and Pelle, Aries, Silvya Ariste, Dagon and Taika and more, each an elder he had trained and fought beside. They all fell in fiery battle, alongside fledglings they had made.
Others would be roaming the avenues leading from this place. Now that Nemesis had shown himself all would converge, assuming his leman held safely below seal in the outpost. If she by some miracle eluded capture—a nymph given winged feet, indeed—the soldier still knew where Antinous would be resting once dawn threatened.
There was, after all, no need to waste what the former owner of this territory had built.
If she were caught, as was overwhelmingly likely, escalating combat would quickly draw the patriarch’s attention. Antinous would be monitoring events closely indeed, listening to the night’s subtle whispers, hardly needing spies and runners positioned throughout the city’s arteries and organs—dogsbodies and catspaws, mortals aware or unaware of their true master.
None of this mattered at the moment. All he could do was note who he had already slain, anticipate those likely to be creeping elsewhere.
