Xcor didn’t yell or curse them or even growl. He lunged into a run with the scythe, the weapon balancing evenly between his two hands as his powerful thighs ate up the distance. One look at him and those humans skidded in their boots, arms bowing out for balance like the flapping wings of ducks landing on water.
Time slowed down as he fell upon them, his favored weapon striking in a great circle, catching them both at neck level.
Their heads were severed upon a single, clean sweep, those surprised faces flashing and disappearing as what had been liberated went nose over forehead, blood spooling out to speckle upon Xcor’s chest. In the absence of their cranial crowns, the bottom body halves fell to the ground with curious, liquid grace, landing inanimate in a twist of limbs.
Now he yelled.
Wheeling about, Xcor planted his leather boots in the mud, drew in a great breath and released it on a bellow as he worked his scythe in front of him, the crimsoned steel hungry for more. Though his prey had been mere humans, the rush of the kill was better than an orgasm, the sense that he had taken life and left corpses behind streaming through him like mead.
Whistling through his teeth, he called forth his stallion, which bolted to him at the command. One leap and he was up into the saddle, his scythe aloft in his right hand as he handled the reins with his left. Spurring hard, he threw his steed into a gallop, shot down a narrow, dirt vantage way, and emerged into the thick of the battle.
His fellow bastards were in full fight mode, swords clashing and shouts peppering the night as fiend met foe. And just as Xcor had predicted, half a dozen more lessers came barreling forth upon well-bred stallions, lions flushed to defend their territory.
Xcor fell upon the advancing cadre of the enemy, securing his reins on his pommel, and brandishing his scythe as his stallion rushed for the other horses with teeth bared. Black blood and body parts flew as he carved up his adversaries, he and his horse working as a single unit in their attack.
As he caught yet another slayer with his steel and sliced it in half at chest level, he knew that this was what he was born to do, the highest and best use of his time on the earth. He was a killer, not a defender.
He fought not for his race . . . but for himself.
It was over all too soon, the night mist swirling around the fallen lessers that writhed in puddles of their oil-black blood. The injuries were few among his band. Throe had a gash on his shoulder, rendered in his flesh by a blade of some sort. And Zypher was limping, a red stain running down the outside of his leg to coat his boot. Neither was slowed or concerned in the slightest.
Xcor pulled up on his horse, dismounted, and returned his scythe to its holster. As he drew his steel dagger and began his stabbing rounds of the slayers, he mourned the process of sending the enemy back to their maker. He wanted more to fight, not fewer—
A pealing scream drew his head around. The human woman in the nightgown was tearing down the village’s packed dirt road, her pale body in a full bolt, as if she had been flushed out of a hiding place. Tight on her heels, Xcor’s father was astride his stallion and riding hard, the Bloodletter’s massive body hanging sideways off his saddle as he came upon her. Verily, it was no race a’tall, and as he flanked her, he caught her with his arm and threw her over his lap.
There was no stop, nor even a slowing after the capture, but there was a marking: With his stallion at a full gallop and the human flopping about, Xcor’s father still managed to strike her slender throat with his fangs, locking on to the woman’s neck as if to hold her in place by the canines.
And she would have died. Surely she would have died.
If the Bloodletter hadn’t first.
From out of the swirling fog, a ghostly figure appeared as if it had been formed of the filaments of moisture that rode upon the air. And the moment Xcor saw the specter, he narrowed his eyes, and relied upon his keen nose.
It seemed to be a female. Of his kind. Dressed in a white robe.
And her scent reminded him of something that he couldn’t quite place.
She was directly in the path of his father, but she seemed utterly unconcerned about the horse or the sadistic warrior that was soon to come upon her. His sire was entranced with her, however. The instant he took notice of her, he dropped the human woman as if she were naught but a lamb bone he’d already chewed the meat off of.
This was wrong, Xcor thought. Verily, he was a male of action and power, and hardly one to shy away from a member of the weaker sex . . . but everything in his body warned him that this ethereal entity was dangerous. Deadly.
“Oy! Father!” he called out. “Turn about!”
Xcor whistled for his stallion, who came on command. Bolting into his saddle, he spurred his stallion ’s flanks, pitching himself headlong so that he could intersect his father’s path, a strange panic driving him.
He was too late. His father was upon the female, who had slowly crouched down.
Fates, she was going to leap up onto the—
In a coordinated rush, she went airborne and caught his father’s leg, using it as a way to vault onto the horse. Then, latching onto the Bloodletter’s solid chest, she sprang off to the far side and took that male with her as one unto the ground, the mighty lunge defying both her sex and her wraithlike nature.
So she was no ghost, but flesh and blood.
Which meant she could be killed.
Whilst Xcor prepared himself to plow his stallion right into them, the female let out a yell that was not feminine at all: More along the lines of his own war cry, the bellow cut through the thundering hooves beneath him and the sounds of his band of bastards gathering themselves to counter this unexpected attack.
There was no immediate need to intercede, however.