Sweep of the Blade (Innkeeper Chronicles #4) - Ilona Andrews Page 0,45
because I paid the blood debt I owed to my husband’s killers.”
Erast perked up. “Do you have any proof of that, my lady?”
“Would you hand me my crest?”
Erast picked up her breastplate. His eyes widened at the mess of red. He offered it to her, and she pulled the crest off. She’d transferred all of her recordings to it as soon as Arland gave it to her.
“Play all files tagged Melizard’s Death in chronological order,” she said.
The crest lit with red, projecting onto a wall. She knew every frame of the recording by heart. It played in her head for months. The view of a fortified town from a dusty hilltop. A crowd dragging Melizard through the street, faces contorted with fury and glee, rabid. Melizard’s bloody face as they took turns punching him, while he stumbled, caught in the ring of striking arms and legs. Him crawling on the ground while they kicked him. The stone bench they dragged out of the nearest house. The flash of a rising axe. Melizard’s head rolling as they cut him apart. The greasy smoke rising from his burned body. Melizard’s head on a pike rising above the gates, his empty dead eyes staring into the distance.
Silence claimed the room.
A light ring singled out a face in the crowd and zoomed in. A huge dark-haired male vampire with a scar across his face. A caption appeared. Rumbolt of House Gyr.
The recording zoomed in on his face, turning dark, then blossoming into bright daylight, filmed by a camera attached to her shoulder. Rumbolt’s face, skewed by rage, as he swung a blood mace at her. One, two, three blows, all whistling past her. Her own stab, fast and precise as it slid into his throat and opened a second bloody mouth across his neck. Rumbolt collapsing on his knees then face down into the dirt, his blood spilling onto the dust. Her blade again as she sliced across his neck and kicked his head across the dusty street, sending it rolling and bouncing off the hard dirt.
The recording blinked and a woman resembling Rumbolt stared up at her as Maud smashed her face with a rock. A caption popped up. Erline of House Gyr.
“His sister,” she explained. “The relatives came after me at first, but they stopped after the first few kills.”
The freeze frame of the crowd gripping Melizard flashed again. The light circle picked out a new face, a woman with gray hair, screeching, her fangs bared. The caption read Kirlin the Gray.
The recording zoomed in, turned dark, and then a vampire in heavy scarred armor was coming at her, her neck and face hidden by a full helmet.
“Is that an antique space-rated unit?” Karat asked.
“Yes. She preferred to fight in it. It made her slow, but the armor is so thick, the blood weapons can’t penetrate.”
On the recording, Maud dodged the swings of Kirlin’s blade and thrust herself against the woman. Kirlin’s arm came up, then the recording shook and rocked as Maud reeled away after taking the blow. Kirlin raised her sword, about to charge. A small dot of crimson flared on her neck. It blinked and Kirlin’s throat exploded in a gush of gore, taking the head with it.
“Mining charge.” Maud smiled.
The image of the crowd appeared again, singling out a new target. Zoom, darkness, then a lean vampire backing away up the hill from the wild swings of Maud’s mace, moving closer and closer to the drop. She kept hammering at him, her voice a guttural snarl echoing every blow. He planted himself, aware he was almost out of ground, and slashed at her with his sword. She dropped her mace, spun out of the way of his blade, and kicked him. It was a front kick, driven not up, but down, almost a stomp. She’d sunk all of the power of her body into it. Her heel landed on the vampire’s leading knee. His leg gave out and he dropped down to compensate. She punched him in the face and rammed her shoulder into his chest. He sailed off the cliff. She bent down, and the camera caught his body impaled on spikes below. The recording blinked, and a second body joined the first. Then a third. And a fourth.
“He had three brothers,” she explained. “They kept coming after me, so I told them that if they tried to fight me, they would die in the same spot their brother did, and they followed me to the cliff.