from the pain and arched, but didn't let go of Vlad's throat, reveling in triumph as his silver-saturated blood began to incinerate any appendage that molested him.
"How you like me now, bitch?" Carlos said through his teeth as Vlad scrabbled at his throat. "Go ahead, put your thumbs in my eyes, open up a jugular with your fangs, get all up in my silver shit and watch your ass get neutered one appendage at a time!"
Battle-length fangs filled Carlos's mouth as he turned Vlad's head to the side to deliver the ultimate vampire indignity-dethroated by an adversary with longer fangs.
"After I rip out your throat, Count, your head by the Neteru blade is mine."
The chime of his sword filled the air at the same time Carlos released his right hand to have the searing heat of the weapon fill it. Injured and exhausted from the battle and chase, Vlad struggled-buta millisecond movement of his eyes made Carlos drop him, spin away, and allow Elizabeth to gore him with a black blade.
A black charge hit both Vlad and Elizabeth, hurtling them backward before Carlos could think. It was instinct sparked by fury. Nuit opened a section of night with Lucrezia and quickly dragged the injured couple through it. However, before he could completely shut the dark portal, Carlos sent several combined mortars into it.
The earth belched out huge international messenger demons with barrel chests, straight from the Vampire Council on Level Six. Blade swinging, crazier than crazy, Carlos took the rush as he took heads, the new onslaught actually giving him energy rather than depleting it.
But the sudden urge to feed from the gore sobered him. He was getting lost in the memory, had to follow the fast-moving red-glowing pulse point on the ground. Carlos spun and took off, his eyes on the ground as his body again became a blur with scythe-wielding messenger demons in hot pursuit. Suddenly he was in a tunnel, underground, but not in Hell. Disoriented he slowed, looked around, and to his horror he was in an underground mall beneath the city of Toronto!
Humans were everywhere. The potential for catastrophic losses made him surface, breathing hard, dirty, sweating, injured, and gore-stained. Carlos turned and simply looked at the few straggling demons that had chased him this far, incinerating them, and finally began to feel the deep stabs to his shoulders along with the kidney injury.
His palm went to the wound site on his back, and came away with thick, silvery-red warmth. But the beacon had stopped.
Carlos smiled and stared up at the massive building. He was standing in front of CGE's Toronto headquarters . . . a gorgeous modern glass structure that he was so tempted to implode, were it not for the very real loss of human life that would occur. Instead, with his last ounce of energy and before Nuit's forces rallied to attack, he simply white lighted it from the roof down to the gas mains beneath the street, chuckling as demons fried while bailing out of windows . . . then dropped from sheer exhaustion.
Damali opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp, toppling Marlene and Berkfield. "I have to go get him!"
"He said-"
"He's in an enemy hot-zone, Marlene! I don't care what he said!"
"You were just out for twenty frickin' minutes, D," Berkfield argued. "And in your condition-"
Damali pointed at Berkfield to say no more, but didn't speak. Her eyes said everything. She took a breath and composed herself. "I'm going to get him."
"No need," Carlos said, staggering into the sanctuary, "Seth and Abel gave me a lift."
"You look terrible!" Damali said quickly, going to him. "What happened?"
"I'm all right," Carlos replied, weaving a bit and catchinghimself against a pew. "Better questionis, what happened to you?" He looked at her hard, studying her eyes and then let his voice drop to a tone of gentle concern. "Tell me you're all right, boo?"
"She is," Marlene said, jerking Carlos's focus to her. "Open a channel to me while Berkfield works on you-you look like Hell."
Carlos nodded and half fell, half sat on a pew. Berkfield simply shook his head as he studied the wounds for a moment. But when Damali came close, Carlos yelled at her with a wince.
"Back up-you know better than that! I don't even want the Caduceus near me if you're touching it."
"But you've got a serious kidney wound, Carlos," Damali shot back. "You broke team protocol, left out on a suicide mission-what if you'd been gored out there