Page 110 of Close Quarter
He didn't even know how to use the damn thing. Swing it like a bat? Right. He resisted the urge to sigh.
All he had was the knowledge that he was quicker and, at the moment, stronger than Silas.
And they knew Anaxandros wanted them. Would stop at nothing to have them.
Rhys glanced at his watch and stretched his back. Four in the morning. The vampire should have come by now. Standing here was pointless, and his legs hurt. He sheathed his sword into the Aether and slipped out onto the path.
Silas turned on the ball of his foot, unsheathing his sword from the air. His expression slid from wary to annoyed. "What are you doing?"
"Sitting down." He made his way toward the bench. Or would have, had Silas's look not morphed into fear.
Shit.
Rhys dived for the floor as stinging fire raked across the back of his neck. The blow hurt more than bouncing off the pavers. He rolled away.
From where he had been came an unnatural screech of metal sliding against metal--swords colliding--then silence. That was broken by Anaxandros's soft, dark laugh. Something warm and wet ran down Rhys's neck. As he scrambled to his feet, he rubbed at the liquid. The stinging bloomed into a throb of stabbing heat. His hand came away sticky and red.
Blood. His. So not good. Neither was the scene before him.
Silas stood, one hand clutching the back of the bench, the other holding his sword in front of his body.
The vampire lingered just out of Silas's reach, his black blade pointing down. Anaxandros bared his teeth. "So you can use that thing after all."
Silas straightened and let go of the bench but said nothing.
"Pity you're spent. I would have liked to test you in your prime."
The laugh Silas gave was nearly as dark as the vampire's. "No, you wouldn't have. But you were never one for fair and equal."
"Fair?" Anaxandros raised his sword.
"Equal? From the lips of a fae?" He leaped forward.
Rhys didn't see the series of blows that came crashing down on Silas, or Silas parrying, only the blur of black and silver and that same horrible scrape as before. He reached into the Aether, ran into the fray, and swung his sword at the vampire's head like a batter after a fastball.
His sword whiffed air. He never was very good at hitting the fast ones either. The swing took him too close and set him off balance. But it stopped Anaxandros from attacking Silas.
The vampire's claws ripped through Rhys's shirt and raked bloody lines down his chest. Ice stung his veins and chilled his lungs. A flash of silver slid through Anaxandros's wrist, and the air around Rhys filled with the smell of burned flesh.
The clawed hand convulsed before it fell and burst into flame.
Rhys sucked in air through his teeth and tried not to scream as he fell backward, away from the vampire. It felt like bees had replaced his blood. A spasm racked his arm, and his sword slipped from his hand. The clatter of the blade on the stone path was drowned out by a howl of fury so powerful Rhys felt the hate deep in his bones. He scrambled to his feet.
Anaxandros rained blow after blow down on Silas, his dark blade ringing against Silas's sword like a blacksmith's hammer. Silas fell to his knees under the onslaught.
And then the silver sword in Silas's hand shattered into countless pieces.
No!He threw himself at Anaxandros. It was all he could do, all he had left. The next blow would kill Silas.
Finally some use for those years of football.
A well-placed shoulder into the vampire's hip kept the thing from cleaving Silas in two. It should have knocked the vampire over.
It didn't.
Anaxandros growled a single word Rhys was sure was a curse. Dark liquid oozed from the stump of the vampire's arm as the vampire straightened and eyed Rhys.
"You will lose this dance, Quarter." The black blade swam in Rhys's vision, the edge wavering and twisting as if it were alive. His own sword lay a good fifteen feet away.
