Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,94
their head, breaking their neck with a crack as they hit the hard ground at an angle. This probably meant that the Master wanted to take all three of them back alive.
Over his dead and disintegrated body.
Stay behind me, he commanded Sophia, and heard her move to obey.
A giant of a vampire chose that moment to swing a long axe at his head, so much for his assumption that the Master’s orders were to debilitate but not kill.
He ducked and rolled, slicing one of the half-moon blades across the front of the assassin’s shins, turned, and sliced the other blade across the back of his calves.
The giant toppled with a gurgled grunt when normal men would have screamed in agony at having their legs cut out from under them.
But these were not normal soldiers. They were completely mind-controlled to ignore pain. They felt it, just as Dalair felt it when he’d been the same, but their brains were wired to fight on until their bodies completely gave out.
Pain didn’t slow them down. They felt no fear. And they never disobeyed orders.
Which was why, instead of ignoring the fallen soldier who was incapacitated but not dead, Dalair sliced his blades in a cross-wise stroke and severed the vampire’s head from his body. He couldn’t afford to leave loose ends.
As the torso turned to ashes, he picked up the discarded long axe and flung it in a sideways arc at a soldier to the right, who was getting closer to where Sophia and the boy stood.
The axe struck the soldier in the chest, deep enough to embed in his heart. After a few full-bodied twitches, he slowly disintegrated into stardust, showing that his original base form had been Pure.
Dalair was already leaping toward the next two assassins, who came at him in concert.
Dark or Pure, it didn’t matter. Turned to obey Medusa’s, and now the new Master’s bidding, what used to be men were now machines. Emotionless. Conscience-less.
Soulless.
After dispatching a dozen soldiers, Dalair was starting to breathe more heavily, his heart thundering to pump more blood into his muscles, to keep up his strength.
These weren’t human men, after all, but well-trained, ancient, immortal warriors. Medusa only recruited the best of the best, second only to the Chosen and Elite warriors who guarded the leaders of their Kinds, of which Dalair used to be a member. As such, his fighting skills had an edge over the others. But only a slight edge.
When it was over twenty-to-one odds, all he had was disadvantage. And if enemies swarmed them from other directions, he wouldn’t be able to protect his rear. Sophia and the boy would be exposed.
He tried to always pick off the nearest opponent first, tried to hamper others’ advancement with dagger, knife and even sword and axe tosses. But there were too many of them. He’d judged two dozen at first, but there must be more.
And they kept on coming.
He’d faced worse odds before. He fought and killed ninety-eight warriors in one night when he’d been human, defending Kira to his last breath. But those had been human warriors, and he had fought them one at a time.
Dalair was on autopilot by this point, barely thinking as he sliced and plowed his way through the enemy forces with deadly, instinctive precision. His body kept moving despite the descending numbness of his mind.
He had only one thought: to protect Sophia and the boy.
It was as if history was repeating itself in this moment, in this forest. He was fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds, his strength steadily depleting, bleeding out with the blood from his countless wounds.
He didn’t need to look behind him to know that Sophia was staring at him, frozen in horror and fear, as he dispatched their enemies one by one. He could feel her eyes on his skin, smell her fear and something else—the burgeoning scent of violence and vengeance.
A shiver of ice chased down his spine in warning.
He did flick a glance toward her, then, and almost stumbled in his fight before righting himself and slicing across the jugular of an enemy soldier with a last-second twist.
He’d never seen her like this before. Sophia looked like a completely different being. Eyes opaque black with blood-red centers. Veins zig-zagging across all visible skin. Her hair lifted in waves around her face, though there was no breeze to stir it. Fangs sharper than he’d ever seen them descended over her lower lip as her mouth pulled apart in a silent hiss.