The Stone Warriors: Damian Read online

  He stepped down from the pedestal that had been his home, turning just in time to see the woman drop over the back of the building. He took two steps in her direction and heard her cry of pain, a sound even louder to his ears than the thumping of his own heart. He ran to the edge of the roof, shedding stone with every step, leaning over to peer downward just in time to hear her defiant snarl. He’d seen her break the glass across the street, seen her leave a smear of her blood. But her ploy had failed. The hellhounds raced to the Kalman, creeping in shadow along the side of the building, waiting for her as she climbed out of the big metal bin. The two beasts crouched, one on either side of her, their gruesome mouths dripping saliva while their eyes gleamed with the fire of hell itself. She drew her weapon, but he could see the pain it cost her.

  He didn’t know what cause she fought for so determinedly, but she was going to die if he didn’t help her. He lifted his blade, exulting in the weight of it after so long. Anticipation raced through his bloodstream, energizing his muscles, shattering the last of the stone that surrounded him. Leaning over, he grabbed the rope she’d left behind and leapt off the roof after her.

  CASEY BIT BACK her cry as knives of agony stabbed through her wounded shoulder, seeming to travel in waves down her arm and over her back, tightening her muscles into spasms that only added to her pain. She struggled to breathe through the dust and dirt that filled the air of the overflowing dumpster after her fall, waiting for the throbbing to ease up enough for her to think. But the nightmare that had become her life tonight wasn’t going to grant her even that.

  Grabbing the edge of the metal container, she rolled out onto the hard asphalt only to find the nightmare hiding in the shadows, waiting for her. Damn, but they’d figured that misdirect out quickly. Note to self—hellhounds weren’t totally stupid.

  She put the dumpster at her back and drew the Glock with her left hand, still gripping the strap of the backpack with her right, grateful for the rough weave that soaked up the blood without getting slick and unmanageable. She huffed a silent breath, thinking that this was what her life had come to, gratitude for a blood-soaked strap that still worked.

  A soft growl had her spinning in a crouch to find one of the hounds eyeing her hungrily. She’d no sooner clocked his position than the other one showed himself, prowling out of the darkness, lips pulled back in a snarl that bared terrifying fangs below a pair of red-drenched eyes.

  She waited for them to come to her. The blood leaking from her shoulder should be drawing them like a magnet, sending a signal to their tiny brains that their prey was wounded, vulnerable. But they didn’t move from their watchful crouches, and Casey realized something. Every instinct was telling them to attack and kill, but whoever was running them was holding them back. It was because of the Talisman. It was not only valuable, but unstable.

  She didn’t know what would set it off, and she’d bet her enemies didn’t either. It could be triggered by something as ordinary as a stray bullet or a deep graze from a hound’s fang. And once triggered, it would emit an electronic pulse that could wreak havoc on today’s technological society. The death and destruction could be terrible. And it would take a power much greater than she possessed to shut it down.

  Its potentially disastrous nature was why she’d been sent to retrieve the thing. Her boss, Nick Katsaros, ran a team that was funded by the FBI and existed solely to find and retrieve the various magical artifacts scattered throughout the world. Magic and the FBI might seem an odd fit, but it frequently made her life a lot easier. Like when she needed to slip weapons through customs or reassure the local law enforcement that it was perfectly okay for her to engage in the breaking and entering of a private home or institution, or even the occasional gunfight, like tonight.

  Casey was only one of Nick’s hunters, but she’d been with him long enough and had proved herself often enough, that he trusted her to go after the really significant pieces. Especially the ones with unknown magic. But someone had dropped the ball on this mission, because the background information they had on the collector was simply wrong. Shit. Hellhounds?

  And now she was crouched in an alley, with the deadly artifact that she’d stolen suddenly acting as her best defense against the very people she’d stolen it from. How fucked up was that?

  Her pursuers came into view behind the hounds, nothing but flashes of movement as they kept to the shadows and doorways, mindful of her weapon. Casey scooted back a few feet until she was mostly hidden behind the dumpster. They might not want to shoot, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Especially if one of them thought he was a sharpshooter and decided to go for a headshot. She leaned out from the dumpster’s cover and sighted down the alley, waiting for one of her enemies to show his face. They couldn’t shoot her, for fear of hitting the Talisman, but she sure as hell could shoot them.

  Someone moved out of the shadows, scurrying for the next cover. Casey quickly lined up her shot with both hands, and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded like a bloody melon, and he dropped to the ground. It was always best to go for a headshot when dealing with magic users. Too many of them could recover from even the most severe wound to their body. But no one could survive a hollow point to the brain, and she was a very good shot.

  Down the alley, one of her pursuers swore violently. “Just slide over the pack with the device,” a voice called. “We don’t care about you.”

  Casey didn’t waste the energy it would take to voice her skepticism. They probably wouldn’t shoot her once she got rid of the backpack—they’d loose the hounds. The two beasts remained totally focused on her, snarling non-stop, their powerful muscles bunched as they fought their handler’s control, waiting for the release they knew instinctively would come. The freedom to attack and kill their prey. Oh, yeah, and then feed.

  Someone else scurried down the alley, and she fired off another shot, hitting the brick wall where her target had been only seconds earlier. Damn. She couldn’t afford to waste ammo. Although, for a moment, she actually wondered why not. She didn’t see any resolution of this stand-off that didn’t include her dead body. She might as well take as many of them with her as she could.

  That didn’t include the hounds, unfortunately. To some, they might seem the obvious target. They weren’t protected, weren’t hiding in the shadows, or huddling behind a filthy garbage dumpster. The problem was that the hounds hunted in pairs, and she could only shoot one at a time. And once she shot the first one—assuming she managed a kill shot, which was no guarantee, since their skulls were like rock—the other would go a little nuts, breaking whatever hold his handler had on him, and freeing him to kill whoever struck his fancy. As the one who’d killed his partner, she’d be the first target. She wouldn’t be the only one, which she might have taken some comfort in, if she’d really thought there was no hope of survival. But she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet.

  The scrape of a boot had her turning to discover two of her pursuers rappelling down the side of the building behind her. Their ropes weren’t twelve feet short, either. She caught movement in the corner of her eye and spun back around to find the ones in front had moved up while she was distracted. She couldn’t win this. She was one, and they were many. Damn, maybe she was going to die tonight.

  “Fuck,” she swore, not caring who heard. Fucking Nick Katsaros. This was all his fault. Instead of running around Kansas, consorting with vampires, he should have been verifying the intel that sent her after the damn Talisman in the first place. He’d have caught the inconsistencies, the tells that would have warned that something wasn’t quite right about this job. He had a real gift for it, a knowledge that exceeded her own, and she was a fucking expert. But it was too late. The only thing he could do for her now was to attend her damn funeral.

  A sudden scream had her jerking back around, just in time to see one of her pursuers seemingly plucked off the wall and sent flyin
g through the air to hit the opposite building with a sickening crunch.

  What the hell?

  A huge blond man stepped out of the alley between the two buildings and walked over to the injured man who lay on the ground groaning. Picking him up by his obviously broken arm, the blond giant held him for only a second before running him through with a big-ass sword, stabbing in below his arm to avoid the ballistic vest and right into his heart. Yep, that was another thing no magic user could survive, having his heart sliced in two. The second climber jumped to the ground and spun to fire his weapon at the newcomer, but the blond held the body-armor-wearing dead guy in front of him to absorb the gunfire as he advanced, then threw the body at the shooter, grabbed his weapon, and turned it on him, shooting him expertly three times. Once in the head, twice in the heart.

  Casey stared. A triple tap. Who was this guy? But then she heard curses from the enemies still in front of her and decided it didn’t matter. Whoever he was, he was on her side—at least for the time being—and she might survive this night, after all.

  Bullets whizzed past her position as her enemies started firing at her erstwhile ally. Casey ducked back farther into the protection of the dumpster, taking advantage of the fact that they seemed to have forgotten about her. Slipping the backpack off her shoulder, she tucked it between the dumpster and the wall, then shuffled to the other end of the container, until her enemies were in sight. They weren’t paying much attention to her anymore; they were totally focused on taking out the blond, stepping into the open to gain a better vantage, overwhelming him three to one. She waited until they were just past her position, then crept out of hiding behind them and picked them off one, two, three. Did she have a problem with shooting them in the back? Why no, she didn’t.

  As soon as they were down, she raced out of cover and over to where they lay on the ground, finishing each of them off with a bullet to the head. No telling who among them was a magic user.

  She was breathing hard, standing over the last dead body, when a deep, rumbling growl reminded her of something she shouldn’t have forgotten. The damn hellhounds were now unbound. One of these dead men had been their handler. Every instinct was screaming at her to back away, to run, but her brain was telling her that would be a mistake. She had to stand her ground, establish her dominance. Or at least try to. Logically, she knew that wouldn’t last, but her only weapon was her Glock and there were those thick skulls to contend with.

  One of the beasts took a threatening step closer. She jerked and instinctively started to step back.

  “Stand your ground,” a deep voice commanded.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder to find her new ally striding up the alley toward her, bloody sword in one hand, a HK MP 5 submachine gun in the other.

  “Eyes on the hound, woman, unless you want to die.”

  Casey’s eyes narrowed in irritation. He might be her rescuer, but that didn’t mean she had to put up with his macho bullshit. She’d kept herself alive this far . . . and okay, maybe there’d been a little help from him. She spun back around in time to see one of the hounds creeping close enough to reach her with a single leap. Damn. She raised her Glock. Maybe she couldn’t kill it, but she could hurt it, slow it down. The other beast leapt suddenly, powerful hind legs propelling the creature ten feet to where she stood. She swung her Glock up and fired, watching the bullets hit its massive chest and knowing it wasn’t going to be enough. She’d braced herself for impact, crouching down and protecting her face, ready to grab the beast and toss him through the air . . . when metal flashed in the dim light and a huge, fucking sword swung right over her head, slicing effortlessly through the hound’s thick skin and taking off his head.

  Casey screamed. Not in fear, but in disgust and anger as hot blood sprayed all over her, and the hound’s head rolled to her feet. “Shit,” she hissed, but kept her eye on the remaining beast. She wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

  “Shall I kill that one for you also?” The same rumbling voice asked the question with a definite snarky edge.

  “Would you?” she asked sweetly. “I’d be ever so grateful.”

  The blond snorted and lifted his blade, but the second hound growled loudly and backed away. He might be without a handler, but he wasn’t without a brain, no matter how tiny. He’d seen what that blade had done to his partner.

  “I can—” Casey lifted her Glock, intending to offer her assistance in dealing with the beast, something that involved shooting the creature as a distraction, if nothing else, but the arrogant ass cut her off.

  “Your gun is useless,” he said dismissively, then, using his left hand, he pulled a wicked knife from its sheath on his hip and threw it at the hellhound, hitting the creature in the neck. Casey opened her mouth to warn him that that wouldn’t be enough, but the man was already moving. He was on the hound almost before the blade struck, reaching out to grab the animal by the scruff as he shifted his grip on his sword, and efficiently removed its head.

  Casey saw it coming this time and stepped away, smirking when she saw the creature’s blood spurting all over the blond . . . when the thought suddenly struck her. Her pursuers were dead, the hounds were dead, and she was still alive. It was over, and she still had. . . . Shit! The Talisman. She rushed back to her hiding place behind the dumpster. No backpack. Heart sinking, she got down on hands and knees to peer underneath the filthy container, but it was gone. One of the bad guys must have snuck in and grabbed it, someone she hadn’t even noticed was there. She climbed back to her feet, gasping as her wounded shoulder reminded her she’d been shot.

  She felt awful. It wasn’t the pain, or the exhaustion, or even the stinking hound’s blood that coated her. She’d lost the fucking Talisman. She’d been searching for that damn thing for months, and she’d had it in her hand. She’d fought and clawed her way this far, and now it was gone again. She leaned bonelessly against the rough brick wall, eyes closed as she tried to find the strength to start all over.

  “Your enemies are vanquished, woman,” that deep voice growled. “The blood debt is paid.”

  Casey opened her eyes and found herself the target of an intense black stare. Her tired mind struggled to parse what he was saying. Blood debt? What was he talking about? And who was this guy anyway? She studied him closely for the first time. He was tall, a good five inches over her own nearly six feet, and he was big. Huge shoulders, beautifully defined arms, thick thighs, and that face. It was the face of a god from the old paintings, handsome but fierce, with a smoothly defined jaw and sensuous lips, those dark eyes seeming out of place with the blond hair that hung loose to his shoulders. Altogether, an extremely good-looking man, for all that he seemed to take the idea of cosplay to a whole new level.

  He jammed the knife back into its sheath, then raised his sword and shook the blood away with a practiced flick of his wrist. Casey frowned. Apart from the ease with which he handled the heavy weapon, there simply weren’t many people around anymore who understood blades well enough to know, much less execute, that maneuver. She studied his clothing, or rather his absence of clothing. He had no shirt on at all, and while the view was nice, when combined with leather pants and soft-soled boots, it didn’t exactly scream modern soldier. She blinked, taking in the whole picture once more. And suddenly, it hit her. He glowed. Not like a light bulb, nothing an ordinary person would see, but to her eyes, and more importantly, to that part of her brain that registered magical force, he definitely glowed.

  Put it all together . . . the magic, the clothes, the big-ass sword. She looked at her hand, turning it over as she stared at it, seeing her own blood soaked into the lines of her palm where it had dripped from her shoulder wound. A blood debt, he’d said. Her gaze traveled up the side of the Kalman building, but she couldn’t see the front, couldn’t see the Kalman Guardian, the statue which had stood watch for so many years . . . and who looked just
like her new ally.

  “Who are you?” she whispered, staring at him in disbelief. She’d worked for Nick for three years now, and there was only one order he gave to all of his hunters, sort of the prime directive of working for Nick Katsaros. And that was to be always on the lookout for certain statues. His “stone warriors,” he called them. Was it possible that the Kalman Guardian was one of those statues? She hadn’t felt even a twinge of magic from the thing. Was that how it had managed to sit under their noses this entire time, and they’d never known it? If so, then the big, blond lug was coming with her whether he wanted to or not. She needed to call Nick, but first she needed to convince the giant warrior to go along with her.

  Currently, the giant warrior in question was giving her an irritated look, obviously waiting for her to absolve him of this supposed blood debt. But he drew himself up and answered her question anyway. “Damian Stephanos, in the service of my lord Nicodemus. And your name?”

  Shit. She was nearly hyperventilating. She couldn’t believe it. Nick, Nicodemus . . . they were practically the same thing. Had Nicodemus been one of Nick’s ancestors? Was that why he was so interested in the statues? That had to be it. Nick must have had some many times great-grandfather who’d created a few ensorcelled statues, and he wanted them back. And, oh my God, now she really needed to call him!