Violin was a thing born from rape, torn from a tortured mother by a monster of a father, raised in a culture of rage and humiliation. If it was possible for the concept of vengeance to be embodied in one form, then that’s what I was seeing.
The Upierczi did not understand the nature of their death. I could see that on their faces. They saw a woman-something that to them represented a thing to be taken and used and discarded-and they attacked her with the arrogance of habitual users. They expected her to fall. They expected her to be weak.
Then she spoke to them, a snarled challenge filled with hate. I don’t know what she said, or what language it was, but I caught three words. Grigor. Lilith. And Dhampyr.
The Upierczi recoiled in terror, and then she was among them, and strong as they were they fell before the precise and unstoppable fury of this daughter of Lilith.
She killed and killed and killed.
And yet, with all of that, I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There were at least a hundred of the Upierczi in the chamber. More of them were seeded through the staff of the refinery. There were a handful of us.
We were going to lose this fight.
In my earbud I heard John Smith say, “Mother of God.”
And then I heard him scream.
I raised my gun, searching the catwalks for Smith. I saw him.
I saw what was left of him fall.
Grigor, bloody, torn, perhaps dying, stood on the catwalk fifty yards away. His mouth was bright with fresh blood.
John Smith struck the hard stone floor in a broken sprawl. His throat was completely torn away.
“ No! ”
I heard that scream of denial fill the air. From Bunny’s throat, from Lydia’s and Khalid’s. From my own.
Before I knew what I was doing I was running with my gun held in both hands, firing, firing. Bullets pinged and whanged off the steel pipes of the catwalk, but Grigor ducked away and fled out through an open doorway.
I raced toward the stairway, but Khalid was closer and he bolted up the metal steps in hot pursuit. Seven Upierczi saw what was happening and they leapt like apes onto the pipes and climbed upward. I emptied my magazine at them. One fell away. By the time I reached the foot of the stairs I had the magazines swapped out and I ran upward. I was still hurt, still bleeding. Maybe inside, too. My chest was a furnace and it felt like it was consuming me, but I didn’t care.
As I reached the top deck, the last of the Upierczi turned and blocked my way.
I put three rounds through his face and kicked his body out of my way.
Behind me there was another massive explosion, and I lingered at the doorway, knowing that the blast signature didn’t match our fragmentation grenades. I was right.
Smoke and fire billowed out of one of the tunnels and Upierczi bodies were flung backward. Then a wave of new figures flooded in. Thirty of them. Women.
Arklight. The Mothers of the Fallen come for justice. Of a kind.
The battle below became a bloodbath.
I turned away and ran after Khalid, the Upierczi, and Grigor.
Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Three
Aghajari Oil Refinery
Iran
June 16, 6:37 a.m.
The corridor ran straight for a hundred feet and then jagged right, and I could hear shouts and gunfire. A Upier lay dead in the hall, his face shot away. A second limped toward the fight. I put a bullet in the back of his head and leapt over him as he fell. At the corner I skidded to a stop and whipped my gun around.
Four of the Upierczi surrounded Grigor in a defensive circle. They had muscled past Khalid somehow. They were bleeding. Grigor looked bad, but not as bad as I’d hoped. Maybe Ghost hadn’t done as much damage as I thought, or maybe drinking John Smith’s life had given his system a boost. Goddamn it.
Khalid had his gun on them, but he was seated on the floor in a lake of blood. He tried to fire his pistol, but the weapon toppled from his hand. He was alive, but they’d torn him to rags.
“Cap…” he tried to say, but blood dribbled from between his lips. His eyes were unfocused as he slumped against the wall.
I ran past him and emptied the Beretta into the crowd. The Upierczi huddled up to protect Grigor and my bullets tore pieces out of them. One went down, two, and then the slide locked back on my pistol. I don’t remember firing that many shots, but I was badly hurt and my brain was full of broken glass.
I tried to swap out the mags, but Grigor shoved one of the monsters at me. The Upier staggered in surprise, but he corrected his motion and dove at me. I drove the unloaded gun into his throat and heard the cartilage snap. His momentum carried me back, but I turned to shrug him off. I was clumsy with pain and my gun slipped from my bloody fingers.
There were two Upierczi left on their feet, but both were wounded. We all were. Bleeding and panting. They looked at me, at my empty hands, and smiled, showing me the jagged weapons that would tear the life out of me.
I whipped out the rapid-release knife and showed them my fang.
They rushed me.
In my mind was the image of Violin with her two knives, moving like a ballet dancer, elegant and balanced and wickedly fast. It was nice, but that wasn’t something I was capable of. Not at that moment.
When I rushed them it was awkward and dirty; it was rage with no finesse. But my blade was coated with garlic and that gave me my first real advantage. I slashed and chopped at them, cutting tendons, taking their eyes, punching holes in their throats. I used my elbows to knock their teeth out. I kicked their kneecaps off and stamped on their faces when they fell.
Not pretty, but it would do.
Grigor backed away from me. He was missing the pinky and ring finger from his left hand, and there were long gashes on his arms and chest and face. Ghost had tried his best.
He flicked a look over his shoulder. The exit door was fifteen feet behind him. If he made it into the refinery I had no chance to catch him. He had backup there, I didn’t. Even hurt, he could outrun me.
He should have run.
Instead he pointed at me.
“I saw you pick up the code scrambler,” he said. “Thank you for bringing it to me.”
“You want it, asshole,” I said, shifting my weight to run or fight, “come and take it.”
He really should have run. He would have won. Vox was still out there. Vox could give him another trigger device.
But Grigor’s hate was too intense. In that one way, we were alike. In that way, in that moment, hate mattered more to us than anything.
He rushed at me, once more swatting the knife from my hand with shocking speed. He punched me in the face. I tried to duck under it but the blow caught me on the forehead. The shock ruptured something in my neck and broke a bomb inside my skull. The air was filled with red fireworks that burst and did not fade.
I staggered backward, suddenly blind in one eye. Blood poured from my nose and I could feel it in my ears. Grigor came at me again, clamping his mangled hands around my throat. Even with fingers missing he was immensely powerful.
And yet… it was the wrong thing to do.
I dropped my chin as hard as I could, pinning his thumbs against my sternum. It wasn’t enough to stop him-he was way too strong for that-but it was enough to slow him down, to buy me maybe ten seconds more life. My heart was banging around all wrong, so I figured ten seconds was probably all I had left.