Chapter 31: Vengeance - The Night Market

Quinn Cavendish stood in the firelight as it bathed her, composed, and unnervingly quiet. Her eyes glowed with heat. She moved like a lioness before the pounce, pacing slowly in the flickering light of the wreckage, each step smooth and full of dangerous intent.

Horus watched her, the shimmering orange dancing off the blade in his hand. He didn’t flinch. But there was a subtle shift in the way he stood that suggested that this was something to be wary of.

‘Well now,’ he said, almost admiringly. ‘I’m surprised you’re still breathing! Gave you enough booze to drown a rhino back at the bar, but here you are.’

Quinn said nothing. She continued circling, gaze shifting from Horus to Laik, still collapsed, blood smeared across his throat. Was he dead? She couldn’t tell. Her expression tightened at the sight of him – her fury sharpened into a weapon poised to be drawn.

Horus turned with her as she moved, amused. His own boots sank into the soft grass. ‘You don’t spook me, girl. I don’t shiver at your Family name.’

‘You may find yourself unable to fear the Family,’ she said softly, her voice low, every syllable coiled in threat. ‘But you have every God-given reason to fear me.’

As the words left her lips, every streetlamp in view exploded in a cascade of glass confetti, one by one, swallowed by the void. The night folded in on itself. Darkness grew thicker, collapsing in from the edges of the street. No depth. No distance. The fire behind her was now the only light left, casting monstrous shadows that danced and contorted along the buildings until they too faded into nothing.

Horus paused.

The knife still hung in his hand, but the confidence in his grip faltered. His gaze flicked sideways, then over his shoulder. The skyline, the surroundings had been erased – no stars, no sky. Nothing but black. The city was gone.

There was just the void, the fire and them.

Horus didn’t smile this time. He straightened slightly. ‘Cute trick. But I’m also not scared of the dark.’

‘Nobody fears the dark. They’re only ever afraid of the things hiding in it. And I have no intention of doing that.’ Quinn stopped her pacing, baring fangs.

‘This one is mine,’ she said, eyes flicking to Laik. ‘I had plans. You had no right to lay a finger on him.’

‘I’ve been hunting him a long time, little miss,’ Horus said. ‘Way before you ever came into the picture.’

‘And yet, you will still be leaving here empty-handed,’ Quinn vowed, each syllable dipped in venom.

The burning car behind relinquished its fire. The blaze responded like a loyal pet – stretching along the tarmac, slithering onto the verge like liquid amber, coiling toward her heels. Horus stepped forward with care now, eyes narrowing.

‘Do you really think I’d hesitate to kill a Cavendish brat? Even with these tricks?’ he asked.

‘Hesitate? No. Not at all.’ Quinn cocked her head. ‘I just don’t think you’ve got the balls to get down to it.’

He surged forward, knife raised—

—but hit nothing. Quinn was no longer there. Just empty space. Like her form was made of smoke, or she hadn’t stood there at all. She reappeared to his left, hair fluttering from motion, one hand raised.

‘Missed me,’ she said.

He turned and slashed, again nothing.

‘Missed again.’

He kept this up, convinced a strike would land, attempting to predict where she would be next, slashing and slashing in the void, over and over, until her voice whispered at his neck.

‘My turn.’

In an instant, flame leaped from the ground like a summoned beast, curling around her arm, licking her skin without consequence. She flicked her wrist, and a tendril snapped toward Horus like a whip. He spun to face her, but not fast enough. A puff of embers erupted from his scorched jacket as he staggered back, putting his arms up. A second strike caught him across the side, this time burning right through. Embers burst outward in a puff of heat. The flame swam and crawled over Quinn, who had no intention of holding back.

They moved in a blur – Horus lunging, Quinn evading, fire trailing behind her like an interchangeable extension of her body. Quinn was everywhere and nowhere. An illusion in the smoke. Her onslaught was ravenous, lashing again and again and again, putting Horus on the back foot each time. His counters met nothing, his dips and dodges were horrendously quick after centuries of honing them, but even these were only partially successful.

She lashed again, striking his hand. The knife spun from his grip, clattering onto the tarmac. The blaze sauntered up an arm and perched on her shoulder, waiting. Quinn dragged fingers back and forth through its form as if rubbing it in comfort.

Sweat beaded on Horus’s brow. Oddly, he laughed, low and grim.

‘Never been a fan of tricks like this. Not the first time I’ve seen them,’ he muttered.

Then he opened his mouth and spoke a language that tasted of salt and spoil – ancient, twisted, wrong. Something that vampires rarely acknowledged, let alone shared. The fire quivered, recoiled, like it had been slapped. Quinn reeled and doubled over, clutching her ears, teeth gritted, as Horus finished the chant. A torrent of heat slid from its host, weakly pooling around her feet.

‘When you’ve lived as long as I have, walked all the corners of the globe, you see many things,’ Horus hissed, stepping close, ‘and as a result, nothing surprises you anymore. I learned that no matter the situation, it always pays to be prepared. Especially when it comes to a Witch . . .’

He bent and reclaimed the knife, standing over the shaking woman. The weapon was taken in both hands and driven down upon her.

But Quinn’s eyes flew open, blazing. She had whispered the same tongue back, rising to a shout – only cleaner, richer, a ringing chord to his amateurish incantation. Flame surged from beneath her and slammed into his chest, sending him flying backward like a leaf caught in a gale. By the time he stopped tumbling onto the hard ground, he had regained his equilibrium to stand, but his coat was now in tatters, lapel smouldering, his shirt scorched with holes. But Quinn’s efforts bore a price, and the squall of flame evaporated into nothing.

‘You speak that language like you own it?’ she growled as if he had committed an atrocity. ‘Boy, I was there when it was written!’

Only darkness remained. No street, no sky, no world. Just Quinn and Horus, standing on nothing but scorched tarmac and steaming damp grass.

Horus coughed, face smeared with ash. ‘What even are you?’

Quinn raised her hands, shifting into a fighting stance, toes light on soft mud. The way her weight shifted was precise and undoubtedly deadly.

‘I thought you knew already,’ she said, a smirk curling one corner of her mouth. ‘I’m Cavendish.’

A shock ran down his spine. Instead of heeding its warning, he screamed and charged.

Quinn vanished.

Then came a flurry of attacks. She reappeared with clawed fingers, raking his cheek. She disappeared. Reappeared again through the murk to gouge at the thigh. The shoulder. To score a cheek.

The realisation that Quinn was actively toying with him shattered Horus’s tempered assault into something wild and unpredictable. He slashed blindly at every approaching breath and feel of breeze until – success! The edge of the knife provided resistance. Quinn stumbled, gripping the wrist of a hand that sported a cut across the palm. She recoiled, surprised.

And that was all it took.

Horus advanced, knife glittering. Quinn backed up, blinking fast now, slower to vanish. She misjudged once, barely avoiding a stab that could have sunk into her shoulder. Twice he almost landed in her gut. She danced backward, sweat now lining her brow, the ghost of panic in her face.

‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you!’ Horus roared, his thrusts gaining speed, sending her this way and that, sensing blood in the water. ‘I’VE GOT YOU!’

She was a breath too slow, half a second imperfect in her reappearance, Horus had sensed it. His final lunge was powerful and precise, as Quinn threw her hands skyward and took a step backwards.

And then the world shifted.

The stars exploded into being above him. The buildings rushed back into place like a panoramic photo of the street being thrust into his face. Air and cold and noise flooded his senses as the veil dropped, and he stepped off the kerb and into the road.

A rapid flare of headlights. A shriek of tyres.

The black car slammed Horus over its bonnet with such force its windscreen cratered as it catapulted him up. The vehicle was just inches from Quinn who felt its speed by the horrendous sucking of the air between them. By the time Horus had landed, the car’s brakes had screamed, dragging it sliding to a stop.

But it wasn’t alone. A convoy of cars all came to a dramatic halt. Doors slammed. Enforcers in sleek dark coats fanned out into the street. Dozens of boots pounded the ground. Firearms drawn.

Horus groaned, coughed blood, but made no move. Weapons were already trained on him, their owners warning him not to move else they would end him right there and then. He pretended to go for something in his coat so they would make good on their threat, but, instead, was knocked out with the butt of a rifle.

Quinn stared at the development, breathing hard, eyes wet. She didn’t show any signs of emotion on her face. Reese approached, muttering into her earpiece to confirm that the culprit was in their custody and, more importantly, the esteemed daughter of the Cavendish Family was unharmed. Mostly.

‘Miss? Quinn? We’re here to take you back. You good?’ Reese asked.

Quinn blinked back to reality and made a staggered exhale.

‘Um . . . wow, yeah, I . . . I guess so.’ She looked about the Enforcers busying themselves with the injured. Swan and Laik were already being checked over, the Enforcers buzzing with new orders to carry them to the cars, something Quinn watched with her thoughts absent.

‘Are you sure?’ Reese asked, lowering her pistol. ‘What about your hand?’

Quinn absently turned her palm over, acknowledging the red running from a clean cut across the surface.

‘Would you look at that?’ She twisted it before her, then gave it a single patient lick, examining it as if detached from her own bodily sensations.

‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘I don’t know,’ Quinn said, eyes distant. ‘Funny thing, the night . . . It holds such wild secrets, doesn’t it?’

Quinn Cavendish turned to the blackened remains of the vehicle crumpled around the tree, coughing tracings of smoke but void of actual flame. Her eyes narrowed as if she were trying to remember something, something deeply important, but the details escaped her and she thought nothing more of it as she was escorted to a waiting car.

But while doing so, she looked to the Enforcers surrounding someone on the damp grass. Pepper, who, whilst receiving help, clutched her arm and matched Quinn’s uneasy glassy gaze with her own.

Her reward was a playful wink.

Pepper, who, from her place on the ground, had witnessed everything.