Marguerite said, “She has to get that sheath sliced, Leto. It’s her power. It’s trying to break through. Better do it soon.”
“Understood.”
Leto couldn’t just leave Grace in so much pain, but he had his teams to lead. He stood up and looked at Endelle. “I need to get my warriors down to Peru now. Can you help Grace?”
Endelle smiled. “Leave her to me, Warrior. Get your men to Nazca.” When Endelle drew her phone into her hand and a moment later started barking orders at Alison, telling her to get her ass down to the Seattle Colony, Leto knew he could trust the situation.
He turned and headed to the landing platform. He wasn’t surprised that Thorne, Jean-Pierre, and Arthur followed him. Diallo was waiting for him and Leto filled him in.
Diallo frowned. “The Nazca Colony only has a population of four hundred and you say several hundred death vampires will be attacking?”
“Yes.”
“It would be a slaughter.”
“Not if we can help it. I’m sending the squadrons now.” He glanced at the top of the ramp. Gideon stood there awaiting orders. Leto placed a call to the colony’s Militia HQ and folding coordinates were laid in within seconds.
Leto met Gideon’s gaze and let the orders fly. “To Nazca. Now.”
The squads began to fold in brisk succession, eight at a time. Within one minute a hundred warriors had folded to Peru, and the second hundred began folding equally as fast.
Leto nodded to Diallo. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Alison was already with Grace.
He turned and ran up the ramp with what he now thought of as his own squad. Once he reached the top, he, Thorne, Jean-Pierre, and Arthur folded to Nazca. Gideon would remain behind to keep the warriors en route to the battle zone until at least a thousand Militia Warriors were doing battle.
Once Leto touched down, and thanks to long training, he moved swiftly away from the landing site, mounted his wings, folded his sword into his hand, and took to the night skies.
Out in the desert, the moon lit up the skies like a beacon. It was so bright that the ground seemed to be covered in snow.
His warriors, male and female, battled death vampires all over the sky, but it was to the colony that Leto headed. He knew that any colonists attacked by death vampires would die within seconds. No mercy would be shown.
He pulled his wings in tight, dipped and corrected to miss battling squadrons. He aimed for the now visible world of the colony. There was a main street and low simple buildings made of stone blocks, carved out of the land.
He could hear screams coming from houses and alleys between. Once he reached the ground, however, he retracted his wings and entered the first house he came to. There was a lot of blood and too many bodies. He raced through and found a death vampire in the back room with a teen ascender, drinking her down, raping her.
He threw a dagger into his kidney, which brought the death vamp arching back and off the young woman. Leto moved swiftly and with his sword took the bastard’s head.
The girl pushed away from the monster, then crawled to the other side of the room. He didn’t want to leave her, but he had to go. “Hide,” he said.
She held her neck and nodded. She slid quickly beneath the bed.
He left by way of the window, jumping out.
His night progressed in exactly that way. He went from house to house hunting for evil, finding it, striking it down.
He came upon four death vamps in a house on a hill near a small dry streambed. These pretty-boys were huge, and he recognized them for what they were. They belonged to a group of recruits brought from Third Earth, something Greaves had been doing for the past year. No one knew exactly how he’d been doing it, but Greaves was a vampire with many tricks.
Leto knew he wasn’t a match for these vamps in his current state. When three of them turned and stared at him indifferently, while the other continued drinking a woman to death, Leto felt the vibration go down his left leg, then his right.
For the first time, he did exactly what Brynna had been encouraging him to do all along: He let his beast take over. At the same moment he mentally adjusted the belt of his kilt as well as the buckles of his shin guards and battle sandals. He got rid of his weapons harness altogether.
“Motherfucker” came out of one of the oversized death vamps. “Where the hell did you learn to do that, traitor?”
Leto smiled. Now, there was one of the great ironies of his life—that a death vampire would call him traitor.
His sword almost felt small in his beast-sized hand. “What’s the matter, pretty-boy? You afraid of me?”
“Just because you can morph like a Third Earth warrior? Hell, no. There are still four of us and only one of you.”