Midnight`s Daughter Page 0,109

sinking the knife deep between its ribs, angled upward. I felt the resistance as the knife cleaved the heart in two, heard the great muscle stagger and begin to fail; then the creature spasmed and fell, almost crushing me beneath it. I pulled out the knife and jumped back, just in time to meet my new attacker. How the hell many of these things were there?

This one was larger than the others, so big that its huge wings were useless appendages; it had had to wait for prey to fall to the ground. Prey like me. We slowly circled the huge rib cage of the dying creature, its torso heaving with shuddering breaths. The knife was so slick with blood and the now-pounding rain that it kept threatening to slip through my fingers. Even worse, this creature seemed smarter than the others. It didn’t have the human eyes that had so disturbed me on the leader, but it watched me with calculation nonetheless, waiting for me to make a mistake. I had the feeling one would be all it took.

The electricity had come back on when the wards had failed, causing the landscape lighting to click on. The co-ziness of the golden light was in stark contrast with the angry silver streaking through the sky. It cast odd patterns of brightness into the gloom, allowing me to see other assorted horrors slinking past, giving us a wide berth as they moved toward the house. Louis-Cesare’s face stared down at me, a pale oval against the darkness, and called out something. But his voice was swallowed by the downpour, and I didn’t have time to worry about it because the creature attacked.

It was like facing three opponents instead of one. Leathery wings batted me in the face with the force of solid punches, claws ripped at my skin, and that vicious beak tore into the ground right beside me, carving a furrow in the earth where I’d been standing a half second before. I lashed out, but it moved with liquid speed, vampire quick, and my knife only bit into a small section of wing. It flexed its talons and its long, whipping tail, a piercing scream of defiance issuing from its throat.

I quickly realized that it was faster than I was. It seemed impossible—only master vampires could usually make that claim—but there was no doubt about it. I got a hand on it once, but the rain and the slick texture of its flesh made it as slippery as oiled glass and I couldn’t keep hold. Within seconds, it became a moot point as I was forced to give up all thoughts of attack. It took everything I could do to avoid being shredded by those ferocious claws or impaled by that razor-sharp beak.

My predicament wasn’t helped by the fact that the creature’s clawed feet churned up the dirt of Radu’s once-manicured yard, mixing with the rain to create a slippery, treacherous surface. Its greater weight gave it an advantage in keeping balance, one I didn’t have, especially not in bare feet. I swerved out of the way of a darting claw and slid in the mud, ending up right beneath its underbelly. Its tail snaked out, coils whipping around my neck, immovable as granite.

I took the only chance I had and slashed upward, hitting what felt like a bulging wineskin—a leathery exterior over a soft center. A flood of blood and ropy intestines drenched me in a sticky, sickening mass. I tried to fight my way free, but the creature wasn’t dead yet, and it intended to take me with it—the coils of that deadly tail tightened until I couldn’t breathe at all.

I slashed at it with the knife, finally managing to hack the tail in two and to draw a shaky breath when the coils slipped off. But although I was free, there was nowhere to go. The only way to avoid that deadly beak was to stay out of its way, and there was only one chance to do that.

The huge body had sagged over me. I widened the slit and crawled inside the split cavity, burrowing upward. I couldn’t see, and trying to breathe was once more impossible. I fought blindly, the knife going ahead of me, ripping through everything in its path. I felt it in my arms when I hit bone, and pushed upward in a single heave. Ribs popped, flesh parted and the creature fell, its writhing jostling me this way and that,