Page 88 of Meeting Her Mate
Would this deluge never end?
More soldiers flanked me on this roof from all sides than had ever appeared anywhere below. I stood against them, one werewolf against an endless barrage of soldiers.
I shifted back, knowing that there was no way I was going to take on so many soldiers all by myself.
“You know what, Blair?” I called out.
“I’m sorry. I can’t hear you over the sound of you dying,” Blair called back. But it worked. He was no longer hiding. He came down from the helipad, armored like a gladiator, and walked past the soldiers till he came face to face with me.
“After tonight, everyone’s going to know that it took you an army to take me down,” I said. “Once this night ends, people will find out how big of a coward you are, hiding behind your hired guns and your shiny armor,” I said.
“If this is you begging, then you’re doing a horrible job of it,” Blair said. His voice came back garbled from behind the mask. It made his voice mechanical. The visor of his helmet was made of reflective glass, making it impossible for me to look into his eyes. The grooves of the armor accentuated muscles that weren’t really there, creating a faux image of someone strong and resilient. I knew the man under the armor all too well. He was gaunt, self-doubting, and contemptuous.
“Your soldiers and Ralph’s vampires haven’t been able to stop me thus far. What makes you think I will let you escape with the Wolf’s Bane on your helicopter?” I asked.
Ralph began cackling from behind, joined by Maurice. Somehow, Maurice had made it to the roof. He looked disheveled, but since he was a werewolf, he had healed quite quickly. Blair laughed the loudest.
“What makes you think there’s a helicopter? Do you think we’re going to escape? And miss the show? In case it didn’t make it through your thick skull, allow me to put it into terms that you’ll understand. The helicopter was a ruse meant to drive you up here. You’re stranded here, Mr. Wilhelm Grimm, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, and there’s nowhere for you to go,” Blair said.
Now it was my turn to laugh. I threw my head back and let a howl escape me. “If there’s no chopper, then you’re just as trapped here with me as I am with you. What makes you think I’m going to let you go free? I already defeated so many of your men. These are merely a handful more.”
“Talk is cheap,” Blair said, turning his back to me. “Talk to me when you’ve made it through the last step of the gauntlet. But know this, hell awaits you in the end.”
With that, Blair, Ralph, and Maurice headed back to the helipad. Now that I knew that there was no helicopter incoming, their standing at the top of the helipad seemed kind of pointless.
Behind me, Alexis ascended the stairs and came to my side, the two of us standing side by side in our human forms. She slid her hand next to mine and held it firmly.
“Oh, would you look at that? Star-crossed lovers, fated mates, other sappy shit…cry me a river,” Blair said from the top of the helipad. “You two are the trespassers, the perpetrators. You’re the ones in the wrong.”
“Takes a conceited asshole to talk about who is in the wrong and who is not,” Alexis said. “You kidnapped me first. Ralph had my parents killed. Maurice has been corrupting this town for decades. Don’t put this on us. You’re the ones who have been making life a living hell for everyone. No one stood up to you until now.”
“Neither of you has what it takes to kill any of us,” Maurice said. Impressively, his wounds all looked healed, but his state was still disheveled from all the torn and bloodied clothes. “If you possessed what it took to kill us, you would have done it already instead of this verbal jousting. But we’re men of means, men who understand how the world works, and to us, you’re nothing more than vermin that need to be wiped out.”
While they were talking, I was busy counting guns and soldiers. Ninety soldiers wielding ninety rifles. The odds were not in our favor.
Do you have any more of those grenades?I asked Alexis.
I don’t, but I don’t think that grenades are going to work here. I count upwards of eighty soldiers,she said.
Ninety, to be exact,I said.
If there’s no way ahead, there’s always a way behind. I reckon we’ve taken down more than a hundred soldiers and vampires combined in the past hour or so. On my count, we’re going to fall back down and make use of the roof’s mazelike structure to our advantage, she said.
Divide and conquer?
That’s right.
“Hey, Blair!” I called from across the roof. “You never got to hear your father’s last words, did you? Of course, you didn’t. I killed him. I had the privilege. Do you want to know what your father said before I took his heart out?”
“You son of a fucking bitch,” Blair said. I had hit him in the jugular. He took off his helmet, revealing a scorned face underneath. Scowling eyes, lips contorted with anger, and cheeks swelled red. “You dare talk of my father?”
“Talk of him? I killed him. You take a man’s life; the least you can do is carry it with you. Don’t talk to me about not possessing what it takes to take someone’s life. I killed your father, but only after he told me your mother was a two-bit streetwalker!” Of course, his father had not said anything of the sort, but Blair did not know, and I was counting on his ignorance and his unresolved emotions to drive him into a rage. If there was one thing I knew, it was the destructive power of rage. It was impossible to control yourself when you were angry.
And just as I had wanted, Blair did something that I was counting on, something so devoid of rationality that everyone present on the roof was startled.
“Fuck you, Wilhelm Grimm!” Blair yelled as he lifted a rocket launcher from behind and hoisted it over his shoulder. Just as he pulled the trigger and released the rocket, I grabbed Alexis and threw ourselves off the topmost level of the roof.
Chapter 33: Alexis