Chapter 18: The Fall of Gerard

Bastian shoved me behind him and caught the first hunter by the wrist.

He broke it.

The man screamed and dropped his rifle, and Bastian kicked it across the floor to Merrick.

"Down!" Merrick shouted.

I dropped behind the throne and pulled Eileen down with me.

The Archivist sat on the dais steps with his thin hands folded and did not flinch.

Nine hunters came at the dais from three sides.

I had seen Bastian fight once, on the lake, wounded, and I had thought that was how he fought.

I had been wrong.

He moved low and fast, and where he moved a man went down.

Merrick took two of them at the foot of the steps with his knife and a chair.

A third hunter swung a rifle butt at Bastian's head, and Bastian ducked under it and drove an elbow into his throat.

The man folded and did not get up.

"He's mortal!" Gerard screamed from the dais. "He bleeds! Shoot him!"

A silver bullet whined past my ear and buried itself in the throne.

Bastian looked down at his own sleeve.

It was torn and wet.

The graze across his forearm ran red.

He looked up at his cousin, and he smiled.

"It stings," he said. "I'd forgotten that."

Then he leaped.

I have seen that move in my sleep since.

He took the dais in two strides and hit Gerard in the chest with both hands, and they went down together onto the marble.

Gerard had a silver knife in his coat.

I saw it come out and I saw it flash.

"Bastian!"

Bastian caught the blade in his bare hand.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Vampires Can't Have Children, So I Left Carrying the King's Triplets from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.