Billy the Kid & the Vampyres of Vegas (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel #5.5) (6 page)

The Shadow’s right hand shot forward and up, the heel of her palm catching the cucubuth under the jaw. His teeth clicked together and his head snapped back. The force of the blow lifted the cucubuth’s feet off the floor; he was unconscious before he hit the thick carpet. Scathach stepped over the body, shaking her head. She must be losing it; she hadn’t even smelled the creature. And then she stopped and returned to the beast and bent low, nostrils flaring. Scathach blinked in surprise. A cucubuth who showered; now, there was a first.

16.

“You wouldn’t hit a woman, would you?” the vampyre snarled, landing on her feet directly in front of Billy the Kid.

He smiled. “You’re right. I wouldn’t.” He whipped his wrist and the tonfa spun around on its short handle. He snapped it out and struck the creature on the side of the head. “You’re not a woman.”

They swarmed him then, hissing and snarling like cats, long nails clawing, razor-sharp teeth snapping at him. Billy was fast, always had been. Speed had kept him alive in the Old West, and the past century had only honed his skills. The tonfa blurred about him as he turned, the heavy polycarbonate baton striking and blocking, while his right hand punched, shoved, slapped and chopped. He kept moving, moving, moving. One of the first lessons he’d learned from an old gunfighter was never to present a still target.

A dozen more vampyres swarmed into the building. There were so many of the vampyres that they got in each other’s way in their eagerness to reach him. A male vampyre in hospital scrubs struck out at him. Billy ducked and the creature’s talons scored long gouges in the wall over his head. He cracked the tonfa into the vampyre’s kneecap and the creature fell to the ground, howling. He turned, and another leapt onto his back, nails tearing at his chest, teeth dangerously close to his throat. Billy reached behind him and rammed the handle of the black stick into its mouth and then lunged backward, slamming the creature into a wall. Two of the cucubuths lumbered toward him, shoving the vampyres aside. They were enormous beasts, with the bodies of wolves but the heads and hands of men. Billy rapped the tonfa on the skull of the nearer one. His weapon bounced away.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” the cucubuth growled.

Billy spun, gripped one of the ornate golden statues and used all his weight to push it at the creature. The heavy stone likeness of a Greek goddess carrying a bow shivered on its pedestal and then toppled toward the cucubuth, which simply reached up and caught it in both hands. “You’ll have to do better than that, too,” the creature growled.

“Will this do?” Billy lifted a foot and stamped—hard—on the cucubuth’s bare toes. The creature bellowed and released its grip on the statue, which thumped onto its head, knocking it to the floor.

The second monster leapt at him. Billy sidestepped at the last moment and the beast crashed headfirst into the gold mural of King Midas. The cucubuth staggered back, flakes of gold paint stuck to its forehead, and Billy swung his stick, connecting with the base of the cucubuth’s skull.

The room was littered with groaning and injured vampyres. He had hurt more than a dozen, but there were at least twice that number remaining. And Billy was starting to tire. The creatures were strong and fast, and his shirt and jeans were in shreds from their nails. He was bleeding from a score of scrapes and cuts, and his tonfa was scored with deep claw marks. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could last.

The vampyres circled Billy warily. He knew that if they all rushed him at once, it would be over. But the best form of defense, he’d been told, was offense. With a scream of defiance, he launched himself at the nearest vampyre, a huge man in a casino security officer’s uniform. Billy swung the black tonfa up, but the creature blocked it with his own baton, twisted, and sent the immortal’s weapon spinning from his hand. The vampyre wrapped a clawed hand around Billy’s throat and squeezed, but the Kid brought both hands in a ringing clap over the creature’s ears. It hissed and staggered back and Billy wrenched the vampyre’s stick from its hands. “I’ll take that. Thank you kindly.…”

But the remaining vampyres were on top of him now, catching him, holding him, tearing at him. He felt claws in his flesh, in his hair.

And then Billy the Kid went down.

17.

Scathach stopped five floors below the penthouse. She had run up twenty-five flights of stairs and had encountered no one, but now she could smell the guards on the floors above. Vampyre. The metallic odor of old blood and rotten meat.

The Shadow padded silently down a corridor and chose a door at random. It was unlocked. The room it led into was even larger than the one below, and even more opulently decorated. As she crossed the floor, she counted eight television sets. Sliding open the patio door, she stepped out onto the balcony. The view across Las Vegas was spectacular. Although it was still night overhead, the sky to the east had turned salmon and mauve and she knew it was only minutes until sunrise. The lights on that side of the city had faded and turned tawdry. Ignoring the Do Not Stand On This Railing sign, she climbed up and balanced on the railing. Turning her back to the city, she reached up and found a handhold. It was only five floors to the penthouse.

She could hear vampyres and cucubuths moving restlessly on each of the next four floors, and she caught fragments of a dozen conversations in languages no longer spoken on the Earth Shadowrealm. The creatures were worried; some even sounded frightened. They knew the Shadow was coming. Scathach grinned, showing her own vampire teeth: it was nice to know that she still inspired fear in the blood drinkers.

Catching the rail of the final floor, she heaved herself up onto the penthouse balcony. She stood outside the glass door and peered in to assess the situation. In the center of the huge space was a wooden kitchen chair, and tied to the chair, facing the door, with his back to her, was the man she had come to rescue.

Scathach’s instincts were to charge in and untie him, but over the centuries she had learned to temper her first reactions with caution. Tilting her head to one side, she closed her eyes and allowed her other senses to expand.

Blocking out the acrid, sickly smells of the city, the blood and copper of the vampyre and the paint and plaster of the room, she smelled the man. It was an odor she had not smelled in millennia, strong and heady: honey and wet grass, a hint of sea salt, the muskiness of wet bog land, the tang of peat smoke.

Scathach breathed in deeply, indulging herself for the last time, remembering the man, remembering the time when she had been in love. She had been happy then.

There was only his scent. He was alone in the room. And that was wrong. If he was a prisoner—then where were his guards?

Scathach breathed deeply again, and there, right at the edge of her consciousness, was a second odor. Faint and bitter: the chalkiness of crushed eggshells, the musty ammonia of a fouled nest: the Morrigan. The Crow Goddess had been here.

All this had to be a trap.

Scathach turned and scanned the lightening skies, but there was no sign of the Morrigan. She unsheathed her two short swords, caught the edge of the door, flung it open and launched herself into the room. Rolling across the floor, she came up behind the figure tied to the chair and her left-hand sword flashed, slicing through the thick ropes in one smooth movement.

The man surged out of the chair and spun to face her.

And even though she knew who it was, Scathach felt as if she had been struck a hammer blow.

He was as she remembered him: short, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, with eyes the color of wet stone and fine golden hair hanging to his shoulders. He had been born with seven fingers on each hand.

“I knew you would come for me,” he said in the language of ancient Ireland.

“Cuchulain,” she breathed. The only man she had ever loved.

18.

“I’ve gone back to my original name. I’m called Setanta.” He rubbed his wrists, smiling broadly at her. “You’ve not changed in the slightest.” His eyes sparkled. “Except for the hair. Short. I like it.”

“The—the last time I saw you …,” Scathach stammered.

“I was dead.”

The Shadow nodded. Her lips moved before she could find the breath to say the words. “Dead. Aoife and I came for you, but the Morrigan was already carrying your body away.”

“You should have come sooner,” Setanta said quietly. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped past her to look at the rising sun. A thin bar of amber was creeping across the ceiling. “I needed you, Shadow. But you were not there.”

“We came … Aoife and I …” There were bloodred tears on her face now. “We put aside our differences and came for you.”

“Do you know how long it took for me to die on that hillside?” His voice had changed; there was a streak of anger running through it. He walked slowly around the stricken Shadow. “Behind me, my entire army lay ensorcelled and asleep, and before me lay the horde of the Witch Queen. I was left to stand alone against the Queen’s army.”

“And you got what you always wanted: that day you became a legend,” Scathach said quietly. “The stories say that you tied yourself to a stone and that none of the Queen’s army dared approach you until a raven landed on your shoulder. Only then did they know you were dead.”

“I died because you were not there,” Cuchulain whispered, walking close to Scathach, pointing an accusing finger. The anger was now almost palpable in every word. “You are as responsible as they are for my death.” He was behind her now, and as he spoke, he lifted a huge broadsword from behind a pillar, gripped it in both hands and swung.

Lost in her grief, the Shadow smelled the metal only at the very last moment. She heard it part the air. Instinct sent her forward and down, and the razor-sharp blade took just the tips of her spiked hair. She rolled to her feet, bringing her swords up as Cuchulain attacked.

“I blame you, Shadow. You. You. You.” He hacked and slashed, the ferocity of his attack driving her back across the room.

Scathach defended herself but made no move to attack.

Cuchulain slashed at her with the huge broadsword. “The Morrigan rescued me before I breathed my last and brought me to the Tir na nOg Shadowrealm. The Elder Crom Cruach made me immortal, but in return I was bound to him for a millennium of servitude. A thousand years in the service of that monster. You have no idea of the things he made me do, and for every world I’ve destroyed, I blamed you.” He swung again, the heavy blade striking sparks off Scathach’s swords. “For every death I’ve caused, I cursed your name.” He cut again, and the Shadow jerked her head back. She actually felt the whisper of air as the edge keened past her throat.

“Cuchulain,” she breathed.

“Setanta!” he roared. “Cuchulain died on that Irish mountainside when you betrayed me.”

A surge of anger roused Scathach. “I never betrayed you. Because of you, my sister and I haven’t spoken in centuries. I loved you. I have always loved you. I still love you,” she added in a raw whisper.

“I don’t love you.” He thrust with the sword. Scathach sidestepped and the blade punched straight through what was meant to be shatterproof glass. When he jerked the sword free, the entire window dissolved into glass pebbles.

Cuchulain pressed home his attack, hacking and cutting. He had been trained by the best—Scathach herself—and she struggled to parry and block. It was like fighting her mirror image. The force of the blows almost drove her to her knees, and the edges of her own swords were chipping and denting.

“I took you into my home, Cuchulain,” Scathach said sadly. “I trained you to be the finest warrior in the known world. And I broke my own vow—never to fall in love with a human. I loved you, Cuchulain, with all my heart. There was nothing you couldn’t do. Nothing couldn’t do. But you betrayed and fell in love with my sister,” she added bitterly, and her anger flowed through her sword. Suddenly she attacked in a blur of metal. Cuchulain’s sword was ripped from his grasp and went clattering across the room.

Scathach sheathed her swords and turned to face the broken window, breathing in the crisp morning air. “The phone call was nothing more than a ruse to get me here, I take it?” she asked coolly.

“You’re the one who taught me to bring my enemies to my ground, to fight them on my terms. I’ve been hunting you for a thousand years.”

“I did teach you that.” Gripping the window frame, the Shadow looked out over the wakening city. She could hear car horns now, and the first white contrails from the early-morning flights were visible in the skies over Nevada. “Did I ever mean anything to you?” she asked.

Setanta hesitated a fraction before responding. “Once, perhaps, when I was young and knew no better.”

“And now?”

“Now, you mean nothing to me,” he said cruelly.

“I don’t believe that,” she said wistfully.

“It’s true, Shadow. You failed me and I became an immortal slave to a monster. In time, I too became a monster, a master of blood drinkers and flesh eaters.”

“You became what you were meant to be,” Scathach murmured. “You fulfilled your destiny.”

“And now it’s time to fulfill yours—it is time to die, Shadow.”

Scathach turned.

Setanta was standing in the center of the room, holding a spear as tall as he was. The head of the spear was a pyramid-shaped wedge of barbed and hooked metal. The shaft was a pale white bone. “Recognize this?” he asked.

“The Gáe Bolga,” she whispered. The Death Spear. She hadn’t seen the legendary weapon in millennia. Any wound from this weapon—no matter how minor—was fatal. “I gave that to you a long time ago.” She turned back to the window as if unconcerned. “What will you do when you kill me, Cuchulain?”

“I am Setanta,” he insisted. “There is a war coming, Shadow. The Elders will reclaim this Shadowrealm. I have been told to build a vampyre army, to create legions of cucubuths and hold them in readiness to unleash them on San Francisco and Los Angeles. When the war is over, I will control the entire West Coast of America.”