Warrior (Relentless #4)(192)

I leapt over a couch and severed one of the grasping hands with my sword. It was enough for Brock to yank free and fight off the second one.

“Will,” Chris shouted from the stairs.

My eyes found Will’s unconscious form slung over the shoulder of a big vampire who was carrying him to the closed front door.

A growl burst from my lips, and I let my knife fly as I sped toward them. The blade sank into the back of the vampire’s head, and he dropped like a stone.

I caught Will just before his head made contact with the hard tile floor.

There wasn’t much I could do for the warrior, except ensure he was still breathing. I dragged him behind a large chair where he was mostly hidden from sight. Then I turned back to the fight.

The punch came out of nowhere. My head snapped back, and I barely had time to recover and block the kick that came next.

I dropped my sword, grabbed the foot inches from my face, and twisted. Instead of the bone breaking, the body attached to the foot spun in the air to strike out at me with its other foot. I released the vampire to protect my head, and he hit the floor on all fours like a cat before he came back to his feet.

I faced my opponent and immediately knew he was the leader of this ambush. Tall and muscular with short-cropped hair, the vampire had been in his mid-twenties when he was made. Judging by the speed with which he moved, that had happened at least fifty years ago. He wore camouflage pants and a black T-shirt, and on his bicep I saw a Semper Fi tattoo common among Marines.

We took several seconds to size each other up, and then he struck. His fists blurred as they came at my face and throat.

I blocked them and caught his arm, spinning him toward me. I grasped his shoulders and pushed him down as my knee came up and met his face with a sickening crunch.

Blood sprayed from his broken nose as he grabbed my leg and threw me on my back. In a second, I was on my feet, facing him again.

An arm wrapped around my throat from behind. Instead of trying to pull free, I gripped the arm and flung the vampire over my head. He crashed into the Marine, who batted him away irritably and grinned at me through bloody teeth.

I smiled back.

We began trading strike for strike, kick for kick. He was fast, strong, and he knew how to fight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d fought hand-to-hand with a vampire who could hold their own against me. He even managed to land a few hits, including a kick that most likely bruised a rib or two.

“Nikolas,” Chris bellowed over the shouts and screams. “Could use some help when you’ve finished your fun.”

The vampire used the brief distraction to kick out and hook behind my knee to throw me off balance.

I rolled onto my side and bounced up behind him. Grabbing his arm, I yanked it behind his back until I heard his shoulder pop. My other hand pulled my second knife free. I drove the blade between his shoulder blades, straight into his heart.

He jerked and sagged against me. I released him, and he slid to the floor. During our entire fight and his death, he’d never uttered a sound.

I surveyed the room. Two of the Vancouver guys were down but alive. Vampire bodies lay everywhere, but the living ones still outnumbered us two-to-one.

The front door opened, and I saw six vampires file outside as if the pied piper was out there calling to them.

I didn’t have time to wonder what they were up to. Chris was at the bottom of the stairs, fighting off three vampires at once. I grabbed my sword off the floor and ran to help him just as two more flew down the stairs.

The two of us fought back-to-back as we’d done a hundred times. All around us, warriors battled with everything they had in them. If we made it through this…

Not if. When. I thought about Sara and the way we’d left things. Nothing was going to stop me from getting back to her.

A vampire sped out of a doorway on my left, and this one was not young. He didn’t have the fighting skills of the Marine, but he made up for that in sheer speed and strength. It took all my concentration to battle him in the confined space. Unfortunately, that left Chris to handle the others on his own.

A flash of pale gold caught my eye as a blonde female ran past the second floor landing. Madeline.

Son of a bitch. She was making a run for it, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

The vampire must have seen her too. He broke away from me and ran out the open back door into the night.

Before I could give chase, another jumped in to take his place. Goddamnit. Where the hell were they coming from?

“I’m down,” Brock shouted weakly.

“Hold on,” I called back.

My sword came down, severing the head of my opponent. I made my way over to Brock through the sea of bodies, killing two vampires that got in my way.

Brock was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and a hand over the side of his neck. Blood seeped through his fingers, but it was flowing too slowly to be a major artery. I yanked a throw off the back of a chair and pressed it against the wound to staunch the flow of blood.

“Hold this here until we can triage,” I told him.

He did as I ordered and gave me a thumbs-up with his free hand.

I took up his sword and went to help the others finish off the bastards. The last one ran past me and out the back door. I gave chase and caught him as he hit the night air. My blade sliced easily through his neck, taking his head from his body.

A second vampire fled through a window and tried to run past me. My sword impaled him before he took two steps.