The bald one sees me glance toward the street. His smile widens.
"Looking for your friends?" He laughs. "They're a little busy right now. Konstantin sent a welcoming party for them, too."
How did they know about Julian's team? How did they know any of this?
A kick catches me in the back, sends me stumbling forward into a fist that connects with my jaw hard enough to blur my vision.
No. Not like this.
I plant my feet, channel everything into one massive strike that catches the nearest attacker in the chest. I feel his ribs give way under my fist, feel the shock travel up my arm, hear his grunt of surprise and pain as he folds.
Three down. Three left. But I'm slowing now, the damage accumulating faster than I can compensate.
The bald one comes at me again, and this time I can't dodge fast enough. His fist catches my wounded side, and the pain is so intense that my vision goes white for a second. I hit the ground hard, asphalt scraping my palms, and I'm rolling before I can think, pure instinct saving me from the boot that comes down where my head was.
I get my feet under me, but barely. My left arm isn't working right, something grinding in my shoulder that shouldn't be grinding. Blood is dripping into my eye from a cut I don't remember getting.
Three of them left. All of them fresh. All of them between me and any escape.
"Enough," the bald one says. "You've made your point. Now stop making this harder than it needs to be."
I spit blood onto the pavement. "I'm just getting started."
It's a lie. We both know it's a lie. But I'll die before I kneel to Konstantin's people. I'll die standing, fighting, proving that I'm not the vulnerability they think I am.
I'll die like a warrior.
The bald one sighs. "Have it your way."
They come at me together this time, coordinated, no gaps to exploit. I take one more down with a strike to the knee that shatters bone, but then they're on me, too many hands grabbing, too much weight bearing down.
I fight. God, I fight. Every dirty trick I learned in the underground. Every technique Maximus and Marcellus drilled into me.I break fingers, gouge eyes, bite down on an arm until I taste someone else's blood.
But there are still two of them, and I can barely stand. The bald one has my throat now, lifting me off the ground with casual strength, and his smile has turned ugly.
"Konstantin wanted you alive," he says. "But he didn't say anything about undamaged."
His fist draws back, and I brace for impact.
The blow never lands.
One moment he's there, solid and sneering and triumphant. The next, he's simply gone, ripped away from me with such force that I collapse to the ground, my legs unable to hold me.
I hear screaming. Not mine. Someone else, high and terrified, cut short by a sound like wet fabric tearing.
I blink blood out of my eyes and try to make sense of what I'm seeing.
Maximus.
He's not fighting. Fighting implies effort, contest, some question about the outcome. What he's doing is executing. The remaining attacker doesn't even have time to raise his hands before Maximus tears his throat out with his bare fingers.
The silence that follows is absolute.
Maximus stands in the middle of the carnage, surrounded by bodies, his chest heaving with unnecessary breaths. Blood covers his hands, his shirt, his face. His eyes are black, completely black, and there's nothing human left in his expression.
For the first time since I became a vampire, I understand why humans are afraid of us.
Then his gaze finds me, crumpled on the ground, and something shifts. The blackness recedes. The monster retreats. What's left is something almost worse: naked terror.
