"Don't worry. I can handle myself."
"By the way," Talon said. "Eric is with Tabitha. He said she's loose in the Quarter, hunting Desiderius, too."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"I wish. Ash was tailing her in the Garden District, but had to let her go when he spotted a group of Daimons after tourists."
Kyrian hung up at the same time his tracker hummed. It signaled that there were Daimons nearby. Grabbing his tracker from his coat pocket, he trailed their neural activity to a side alley a block away.
He entered the darkened area to find six Daimons attacking four humans.
"Hey!" Kyrian called, distracting them from their victims. He smoothed back the edge of his coat and pulled out his retractable sword. Pressing the stone on the hilt, he extended it out to its full five-foot length.
"Tell me," Kyrian said to the Daimons as he twirled it around himself, "have you ever seen a pissed-off ancient Greek general?"
The Daimons passed a wary look among themselves.
Kyrian fell into his crouch with his sword held in both hands as he sized them up. "It's not a pretty sight. Really."
"Get him!" the leader called and at once they rushed him.
Kyrian caught the first one with a parry that caused him to explode into powder. He twisted around like a graceful cat and caught a second one with an upper cut to the middle. The Daimon gasped and vaporized.
Before Kyrian could rebound from that attack, one of the Daimons caught his sore arm and clawed the sword from his grasp. Kyrian twisted and caught him with the toe of his boot. He too evaporated.
Another one caught him about the waist and rammed him back against the wall.
The other two closed in.
He kicked at the one on his waist at the same time the two approaching him vaporized.
He saw Tabitha standing on unsteady legs. "Eat steel, you vampire dogs," she said as she tossed a throwing star at Kyrian.
Stunned by the fact she had tossed it to him as protection and not to harm him, he caught it in his hand and used it to kill the last Daimon.
By the time he reached Tabitha, she was kneeling on the ground. Her neck was bleeding steadily, her face pale. Kyrian tore part of his shirt to make a compress, then dialed for an ambulance.
"Eric?" she asked, her voice strained as she tried to see into the darkness where the other victims lay. "Is he dead?"
"I'm right here, baby."
Eric staggered over to where they were. He fell down beside Tabitha and gathered her into his arms.
"She's not going to die," Kyrian assured him.
Eric nodded. "I tried to tell her not to come out tonight. That it was going to be bad. She doesn't listen."
"It runs in the family."
Tabitha touched Kyrian's arm while he gave directions to 911. After he finished, she stared at him, her brow dark with disbelief. "Why did you save me?"
"It's what Kyrian does, Tabby," Eric whispered.
While Eric held her, Kyrian checked on the other two people on the ground. They were the same ones who had attacked him in Esmeralda's house. Unfortunately, they weren't as lucky as Eric and Tabitha.
"Eric," he said, returning to them, "what happened?"
Eric shrugged. "One minute we had them and the next, they turned on us."