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Nadia glimpsed Harmiston somewhere above them. Then he was gone, and the vampire was in control again. It had used its powers of levitation to push both itself and her down the street. Nadia desperately tried hitting its neck again. The incredibly strong movements of the hybrid made it impossible for her to aim properly.
She heard yelling that came closer. Harmiston. She couldn’t let this thing hurt him.
She needn’t have worried. A force of powers slammed into the vamp so hard it reverberated through her too. Still, she could think and move the second it was over, unlike the vamp who was then hit with Harmiston’s freezing spell. Nadia didn’t hesitate, and plunged her knife into the vamp’s chest, straight into its heart. The hybrid screeched again, the ear-piercing cry of the vampires. Then it sank back over Nadia and died. As she’d seen with other hybrids, it didn’t turn to smoldering embers but remained in the form it had died in.
Nadia breathed heavily, her pulse speeding so fast it was hard to think straight. The threat was eliminated. That was all her mind allowed. She fell back on the cold ground and stared up at the darkened sky. She realized she could hear her own ragged breaths coming arrhythmically with someone else’s. Harmiston had lost control of his shielding spell.
“N-Nadia?”
She blinked and then her years of training kicked in. Usually, she was faster than this. More in control, but this was a hybrid, and the adrenaline raging in her system wouldn’t let her forget it. Still, she raised her neck enough to see Harmiston, standing at the beast’s feet, looking at her in horror. He was even less used to fighting hybrids.
“Are—are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded and tried pushing the creature off and he grabbed a waxy hand, made a grimace, and pulled to help free her from the surprising weight of the smaller side of the hybrid’s inner monsters.
“Harm,” she said, out of breath, and got to her feet. “Thanks.”
“Are you joking? Wait, I forgot. Ghosts don’t joke. That thing would have killed us.”
Nadia nodded and checked him over to see that he wasn’t injured and simply ignorant of it due to his adrenaline spike. Then she focused on their situation. “We need to leave. There’s no telling who heard all that, and I don’t want to find out.”
“You’ll hear no argument from me.”
Nadia glanced over at the thief who was still there. He hadn’t run away but remained close to the wall where he’d been flung, bloodied knife still in his shaking hand. Nadia fought the tremors that threatened to overtake her too. She approached the boy.
“What are you doing? Didn’t you say we needed to leave?” Harmiston asked.
“Not without him,” she told him and went over to the thief.
“I don’t think a sneaky, yet petty theft is that important anymore.”
“It’s not,” Nadia said. She bent down and retrieved her sword on the way, but sheathed both it and the knife before she approached the thief, hands up in a peaceful gesture. She truly meant him no harm. He remained frozen and backed up against the wall, eying her from under his hood. She had no way of telling what look he gave her.
“Then what? He’s alive. Let him be,” Harmiston said while he came along with her, throwing worried glances over his shoulder.
“Yes,” Nadia said, and reached out, aware of the thief’s knife which he didn’t use against her. Carefully, she took the hood hiding his face in shadow, and moved it back from his head. As she’d thought, it was a young boy, dark-haired, pale, and wide-eyed, despite an otherwise neutral look on his young face. He could be no more than fourteen. “I would leave him be, except he’s a Bolt Wraith, and that’s exactly who I’ve been tasked with finding.”
Chapter 5
The Bolt met Nadia’s gaze, and she saw a calm fall over him. He mentally pulled himself together and lowered his knife, hiding his shaking hand within the folds of his dark coat. Nadia was pleased to see it. At his age, young as he was, he had already learned to master the various skills of self-control the Wraiths had to learn in their training.
“We’ve been looking for you, Shadow,” he said and then frowned, taking in her attire of dark blue, visible in the bad lighting. “Or Sentinel,” he added. “We weren’t sure.”
“It’s Sentinel,” she confirmed and straightened up, and took a step back to allow him some space. “And who arewe, exactly?”
“I’ll tell you everything, Sentinel, but …” He bent sideways to see behind her, his eyes snagging on the dead hybrid with an unspoken question in his eyes.
Nadia turned and caught Harmiston’s gaze. He seemed to share the same concerns as the Bolt. They’d made a lot of noise when fighting that hybrid. That one solitary hybrid. They’d barely stood a chance against it. If more were on their way, drawn by the noise, they would be dead.
“I smell the blood on myself and both of you,” Nadia said. “Harm, the bland asphodel?”
He nodded and retrieved a bag from his pocket before dividing its contents among the three of them. “I guess you don’t have yours anymore,” he told the Bolt, who didn’t react in any visible way. Nadia could hear his heart thundering inside him, but that was more due to adrenaline and the dead beast behind them than any shame at a simple theft. They all doused themselves with a doze of the crushed-up dried flower. Harmiston conjured his shield anew, the golden sigils floating above them before it vanished from view but not from existence.
“What’s your name, Bolt?” she asked him.
“Jurnek, Sentinel.”
“All right, Jurnek. Lead the way?”
