by Holly Hook
I went over the info in my head for a split second, mainly because we were ready for a fight. My nerves wanted it. Revenge screamed at me to take it. This monster had ruined my life.
"So it's not a gene?" I asked.
"No," Bathory said. "Why do you think scientists cannot find it? Apparently, I transfused my blood into one of your ancestors on your father's side of the family. It only takes a simple bite to awaken it."
"That's nice," I said. I contemplated my first move, but Thorne always said that it was unwise to make the first move and I knew that advice was sound here. She wanted me to attack. I could see it in her reddish eyes. Xavier kept the light up and George was silent. This was different than the unprepared ATC agents George had met at the airport. We were up against a Dark Council member who had taken out twelve people with guns.
And as the first vampire, she must also be the most powerful one.
"I'm glad I'm not actually related to you," I said. "Things are already gross. Who are we going to meet next? Dracula?"
Bathory stepped to the side, her thin black skirt brushing the floor. She was careful not to get any blood on it, I noticed. She was neat. For a second, I wondered if she was Death's sister. They had similar tastes in fashion. "Dracula was a Normal," she said. "I only met him once. Anyway, I was not expecting to see you here, Alyssa. Do you want the portal? My work of waking up my blood inside of you is already done and has been for fourteen years. There is nothing more I can do to complete the Dark Pentagram."
She was good at knowing what I was thinking. I imagined she was great buds with Thoreau. They had a lot in common.
"Of course I do," I said. "You're not going to make it easy, are you?"
She seemed to think for a moment. "Of course not," she said, taking a bold step forward. Bathory eyed Xavier like he was a steak covered in delicious sauce.
"Stay away from him," I ordered. "Aren't you full already? I mean, crap. Look at all the bodies on the floor."
But she wasn't listening. Instead, she kept her gaze locked on Xavier.
He dropped his hands next to his sides and the magenta light he was maintaining died. He stepped forward, slowly, moving towards Bathory with a clueless look on his face.
She was transfixing him.
The stereotype people gave to vampires was true after all. This one could do it.
"Don't touch him!" I shouted, lunging and attacking.
I stabbed for her heart, willing my fire magic to work, but she blurred and moved. My sword stabbed air and Xavier grunted, coming out of it.
Where was she?
"Alyssa!" George shouted.
An arm wrapped around my throat from behind and Bathory pulled me back. I barely kept a grip on my sword, she was squeezing my throat so tight. I couldn't make a sound. My windpipe was closed. I didn't feel out of breath yet--I wouldn't for minutes--but it would happen if she didn't let go.
"Alyssa," she said, teasing. "Did you forget who I am?"
I struggled to speak, but nothing came out. I kept still, conserving my energy while Xavier and George stood there, not sure what to do.
"I don't think she did," Xavier said, panic creeping into his voice. "If you're friends with Thoreau, you won't kill Alyssa or me. He needs us." Poor Xavier was grasping at straws.
I really wished he wouldn't.
I wondered if Bathory would try to feed on me. She was disgusting enough. My blood would have no taste. Maybe seeing it would be enough, but she made no signs of wanting to do it. I felt no fingernails on my neck, ready to cut. Her veil brushed my cheek but came no closer. She would have to lift it to feed.
"I can feed without killing, if I need to," she said. "I know how valuable you are. That's why I'm keeping Alyssa with me. Again, I wasn't expecting any of you. I was only here to secure The Pit for Thoreau and his new alliance."
I struggled to speak again as what she said sunk in. The alliance between him and Beatrix was real. Thoreau was building his force.
"If you want a bit of my blood, you can have it," Xavier said with desperation. "Just let Alyssa go."
To my shock, Bathory did.
By throwing me at Xavier.
We crashed into each other and went flying into the bar, which was thankfully free of bodies. Xavier let out a grunt of pain and I heard a joint in his leg pop. Something was sprained. I managed to catch myself and we stopped, facing each other, bodies touching.
"I'm afraid the three of you aren't going to do much against me," Bathory said. "Unless you can become more powerful, that is. Perhaps there is a way or two I can help Thoreau out here."
I turned and stepped away from Xavier, who was seething in pain and reaching down for his knee. It was going to be a problem in the short term. He faced me and shook his head. He knew this fight was rigged.
But we had killed Thoreau once.
We had to be able to kill the monster he had helped create. This stone age beast couldn't be as strong as the demon mayor, right?
She reached out towards George. Even he wasn't fast enough to back away. She seized his arm and pulled him closer. A growl erupted from George's throat. He was close to transforming. His pupils turned to slits. Bathory didn't seem concerned and maintained the scary calm on her face. She must have faced every creature out there and a werewolf was probably common to her.
And George wasn't an expert one by any means. He tried to avoid the whole thing.
She held George in front of her with little effort. George growled again and thrashed in her grasp, but maintained his human form. Bathory seemed to be stopping him from changing.
"Your friend is helpless in my grasp," she said. "I will let him go if you bite your battle partner, Alyssa."
She knew all about the plan. It was clear that George didn't.
"What's the importance of that?" he asked. His eyes were fully back to human now. She was doing something to keep his transformation back. Maybe simply being trapped stopped it. I knew little about werewolves.
"You don't want to know," I said, terror squeezing my heart.
"Don't do it," Xavier whispered to me. He moved away, driving a wedge in between us.
Bathory lifted her fingernail to George's throat. It was sharp. Everything about her was sharp, perfect and deadly. Even though my gray vision had returned, her eyes still looked red and full of blood.
"I will spill his life all over the floor," she threatened, holding her nail very close to his throat. I could see his skin pulsing with his quickened heartbeat. "All blood is beautiful. Surely you must agree, Alyssa?" She smiled and I could see her fangs.
George had nothing to say. I could see the death in his eyes, the dread and the terror but also the resignation. Death herself might also be hovering nearby, waiting to oversee his passing. She would not interfere one way or the other. Death was a spectator, there to make sure things kept changing for the better or the worse.
"No," I said. "I don't." I never enjoyed the sight of it, that was for sure. There was too much shame in it for me. It was torture because I needed it, torture because it often smelled so good.
She drew her fingernail closer to George's throat, brushing it a bit. George grimaced. It was clear from the look on his face that he knew he wouldn't recover from such blood loss. This was different than the bullets he'd taken at the airport. I still held my sword and Xavier looked at me again. I wasn't sure what it meant, but we couldn't let Janine's cousin perish here. I felt responsible for the guy.
But if I threw my sword, not only would it hurt George, but it might make him burn from the inside out. It might not matter that he was in human form. He was still a werewolf and I knew now that my fire magic worked on them.
Then again, the one I slashed in the sewer had done a good job of resisting it, though that was just a surface injury. What I would do to George to get to Bathory would be worse. I might doom him to a death worse than bleeding out.
But we had to stop Bathory and the end of the world.
This might be yet ano
ther sacrifice.
Xavier reacted before I could. Another charge blazed to life around his hands and he threw it, but Bathory was faster, zipping out of the way and letting it strike a booth where several half-filled glasses of blood and booze were forgotten. The charge exploded, filling the room with light and igniting the liquid inside of each with purple fire.
I took the diversion and threw my sword.
Time seemed to slow. I watched my weapon spiral through the air towards Bathory, who was still eyeing the purple fire. George cried out as my blade sliced through his side and into the evil countess.
She dropped George, who staggered to the floor and fell. There was already blood pouring out of his wound. I had punctured vital organs for sure. He groaned and curled up into a ball, cradling his injury. An explosion of guilt washed through me.
My color vision had returned in the light. The booze and the blood continued to burn in the glasses, making strange candles of violet. My sword had fallen to the floor but I'd made a good cut in Bathory's side. She stood there and turned her gaze down to her wound, then to the weapon that was now wet with the blood of two Abnormals.
Her wound was burning. My fire magic affected her after all. The orange glow inside her cut began to spread under her skin like fiery spider legs.
She parted the black fabric of her dress to inspect the wound and gasped. This was something she'd never seen before.
I seized my weapon and went to stab again, but Bathory leapt out of the way and bolted for the stairs that led down to the portal. I knew what she had in mind. The water. She'd put the fire out. I almost chased after her to finish the job, but George groaned on the floor.
His wound was worse. The fire had spread through the entire cut on his side and he growled in pain in a voice caught somewhere between man and wolf. It was the most horrific sound of agony ever.
"Xavier!" I shouted. "We have to start the sprinkler system!"
Soon George would burn from the inside out. The cut was glowing brighter. It was deep, probably somewhere in his liver or kidneys. My sword had gone almost through his whole side. I tossed my sword back down as if that could undo anything. George might die because of me.
Xavier dug into his pockets and produced a lighter. He flicked it and a flame came to life, adding more light to the dying magenta fires. He turned in a circle, looking for something to burn, as George groaned in anguish again. Fiery veins formed. We were running out of time. The flame wasn't spreading from his wound yet since it wasn't as deep as Bathory's, but it would. Xavier touched his lighter to the cloth backing of the booth and smoke curled up towards the ceiling. The sprinkler system had to work, right? It was a safety thing. Beatrix must have installed them with demons coming here all the time.
Xavier lit another part of the booth, then another. Then he spotted a curtain hanging nearby and lit that, too.
"It's burning!" George shouted. He grabbed his side and his features closed in pain. "It's burning! What did you do?"
I did the hardest thing I could have done and leaned down towards him. "Get your hand off your side," I shouted. "We're going to put it out. Hurry!"
But George didn't listen. He kept his eyes shut, hand on the wound. The orange glow was spreading. I pulled his hand off his wound and he swatted at me. It took all my strength to not get knocked back. George was strong, especially when in pain.
Fire danced on the curtains.
An alarm beeped and a second later, glorious water rained down.
George's wound sizzled as the orange glow went out. The fiery veins pulsed again, then died. George kept his eyes shut, not realizing at first that he was going to be okay so long as he healed. I screamed at him to get up, that Bathory was still down here, but he didn't at first. At last, George stopped seething and opened his eyes, moving his hand to his wound.
It was closing. Werewolves had healing powers that rivaled mine, even in human form.
"Did that work?" Xavier asked as the flames on the curtains behind him died. He stepped over a body and grimaced. "Oh. It did."
George stood and pulled his shirt down over his wound. "I don't know what that was," he said, "but I never want to experience that again. I feel better now."
"We need to go," I said, facing the stairs that led down to the portal. I heard splashing. Bathory was inside, trying to put out her wounds in the not-working portal. She seethed in pain. I thought again of going down and finishing the job, of putting my sword through her heart while she was distracted, but it might be too much of a risk. Bathory was far stronger than me. She had thrown me around with no issue, almost as if I were a Normal.
At least the sprinkler system was washing some of the blood away. I realized what had happened. Thoreau had allowed some of his own ATC people to come down here for her amusement. He was already betraying his own servants. I wondered if these people were the ones with the worst performance reviews. Expendable.
I felt sick.
Bathory seethed again from below the spiral stairwell. I nodded to Xavier and George in the dimming light. "Time to go."
"We need to check Beatrix's office," Xavier said, turning and running up the metal stairs to the next level. "See if she has demon blood."
I picked up my sword and then I had no choice but to follow. Bathory splashed again from down below. She was still licking her wounds and might take some time to heal. We had precious few minutes.
George staggered up the steps behind us as the sprinklers continued to rain on us. Xavier yanked open Beatrix's office door and tried to flip on the light, but it was no use. He staggered around in the dark as my gray vision came back, showing me Beatrix's desk and her leather chair. The room smelled faintly of sewage. She'd been here so much that her scent would never leave.
I pulled open drawers, more to satisfy Xavier than to look through things. "We can't linger on this," I said. "She's going to come back up here and I don't know if I can handle her again."
Several vials filled with black liquid rolled in the drawer.
Demon blood.
The vials were glass, each one capped off with a cork. The blood inside was fresh and sealed tight. It looked like ink. The vials gave off no scent--this blood was probably dead--but it was liquid. If it wasn't usable, Beatrix wouldn't have kept it stored.
I snatched all five of the vials and stuffed them into my pocket, gross as the thought was. Xavier and George stood there, unable to see in the pure dark. "I've got some useful stuff," I said. "Let's go."
We made our way back to the storage room and closed the door behind us. By now, Bathory's footsteps were slowly coming up the stairs, barely audible to even me. We had to move. A foe like her wasn't a risk I was about to take. I wanted to return Janine's cousin to her in one piece.
The blood smell was slightly less in here, but I didn't stop. I let George climb up the ladder first. He scrambled around until he found it in the dark. Xavier went next and I came up in the back.
"Alyssa," Bathory called from the direction of the bar. She was calm. Confident.
I scrambled up the ladder, sure she would yank open the door and drag me back down. Xavier wouldn't leave me. He'd come down, too, and then she would try to make me bite him. With those vile eyes of hers, she might be able to. Would her hypnotic powers work on me, too?
But she didn't open the door. I didn't understand it. She had to know how we were escaping. A being that ancient couldn't be stupid if she had lived for so long.
At last, George climbed into the dying light above and into the produce market. Xavier and I followed and the three of us went to work pushing Beatrix's checkout counter over the trapdoor, which was no easy feat as Beatrix had it bolted to the floor. It took George and I everything we had to move it over. At last, we had the door covered, but Xavier shifted leg to leg.
"She might come up the other way," he pointed out. "Alyssa, grab your coat."
I glanced outside, remembering that I'd left it in the apple room. The sun was setting and the sky was just beg
inning to turn purple.
"I don't need to," I said. I had thrown it down somewhere in the apple room. Besides, it would take precious seconds to grab it. I pushed open the front door and bells rang as I did. The air was cooling and the sun didn't bother at me at this point in the day. "Come on."
Xavier and George and I didn't stop until we made it down the corner. Even here, I felt too close to the market where Bathory was hiding. She was loose in Cumberland. The ATC had actually been right to go after her. Despite my hatred for them, I didn't wish for any more of them to be killed.
I hadn't even killed any ATC people.
George leaned against a building and faced the sky, checking for what was no doubt the moon phase. The moon wasn't even visible yet, but George showed no signs of changing. I eyed the produce market for any signs of movement, inside the building or the alley.
All was silent.
I thought she was letting us get away too easily.
"What was that?" George asked, lifting his shirt to look at his side. It was healed, with smooth brown skin over his ribs.
If we hadn't had access to water, he wouldn't be.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I know I say that a lot, but Bathory was going to kill you if I hadn't thrown my sword. You see, I make some Abnormals burn from the inside out. I'm still working out who it works against. Thankfully, it doesn't work on Normals or any type of human."
"But your death magic does," Xavier said. "Soon, you might have a type of magic for every monster out there, Normal or otherwise."
"Don't talk like that," I said. "I don't want to get any more magic. No offense."
A look of hurt came over Xavier's face but I didn't have time to deal with that. He'd made it clear that we had to keep this professional, anyway. There would be no more kissing, no more hand holding and skipping through the mall, no more anything. It had to be that way so long as Thoreau lived.
Which made me want to kill him more than ever.
George peeled himself from the building when his phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed it to me. It was Janine's number.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I took the phone as we walked further and further away from the produce market. I wanted to hear from her more than ever. But when I answered, it was Liliana on the phone.