Taken by the Others

by Jess Haines

  I was not concerned. My eyes were all for Peter.

  A few vampires got between me and my prize but I barely noticed them, throwing any obstacles out of my way. Later, I came to realize I wasn’t being too particular whose side they were on either. All that mattered was that there were obstacles in my way and I needed them gone.

  I followed Peter up the stairs, giving chase, tightening my fingers around the stake as I closed the distance between us. He was fast, but I was lighter on my feet.

  When we reached the landing of the second floor, he unexpectedly turned and stiff-armed me. My own momentum sent me crashing down on my back, breath knocked painfully out of my chest. I held on to the gun, but the stake was so slick with blood, despite the leather grip, it slid out of my fingers.

  He caught my arms and straddled my waist, pinning my wrists to the floor. His fingers dug in until I dropped the gun, too.

  Grinning down at me, he bared his fangs in triumph. “You are one tough little bitch. Not tough enough for me, though. Didn’t you learn that last time?”

  “Fuck you,” I spat up at him, trying to twist free of his grasp. He laughed at my efforts.

  “This seems familiar somehow. What do you think, would Max have a problem with me having another taste?”

  I faltered, an involuntary shudder threading through me. Even knowing I was stronger now, armored against that brand of attack, it didn’t prevent a sudden, phobic reaction. We might as well have been back in that strange house in the woods. When he leaned in, I panicked, a hoarse scream passing my lips. I twisted and struggled, screeching denial as I fought his grip.

  This couldn’t happen to me, not again!

  I could hear the tips of his fangs raking against the slick material of the turtleneck, preventing him from piercing anything vital, but I felt like my heart might just explode from straining against the steel bands of terror wrapped so tightly around it.

  He laughed, low and pleased with my reaction, trailing his way up to my lips. He swallowed any further screams, covering my mouth with his own. His fingers tightened on my wrists as he slanted his mouth over mine. Then his fangs pierced my lower lip, drawing a few drops of blood.

  I bucked against his hold. I wasn’t handcuffed or hindered by frail human muscle this time. Now I had what it took, including the power and the engrained knowledge of how to leverage my body to flip him off me and reverse our positions. In the process, one of his fangs caught on my lip, not just pulling but tearing it.

  The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, more of it running down my chin. This wasn’t the electrifying experience of Friday night. This was just painful, plain and simple. It fucking hurt.

  “Thon of a bith!” I cried, digging my nails into his wrists hard enough to startle a yowl of pain out of him. “You ath-hole!”

  It didn’t take long for him to recover from the bite of my nails. He had the sheer gall to laugh at me, amused by the lisp caused by my split lip.

  With a howl of fury, I surged back to sock him across the jaw with everything I had. As soon as I let go of his arm, his fingers shot up to encircle my throat, squeezing chokingly tight. His grip faltered when I hit him, his head rocking back so hard the wooden floor cracked and splintered.

  That blind rage was back, consuming me. How dare he frighten me? How dare he touch me?

  How dare he fight back?

  I don’t know how many times I hit him. At one point, I let go of his other arm to pound with both fists, alternating as smoothly as a metronome. If he’d been human, one blow would have shattered his skull. As it was, I’d bruised and bloodied his face, split his lips on his own fangs, and broken his nose.

  My knuckles were red and raw when I stopped, my chest heaving. Only then did I realize his fingers had fallen from my throat. There was something innately satisfying about having him lying there so limply, maybe not even what passed among vampires as alive anymore. I took a few seconds to admire my handiwork, pleased rather than disgusted with the mess I’d made of him. Some part of me was rejoicing at the blood, the violence, but not satisfied with the damage. It wanted more.

  It drowned out the little part of me that wanted to have hysterics and run screaming from the room.

  As I gathered my legs under me to rise, one of Peter’s ham-fisted hands reached up and tangled in my hair. He yanked me back down as he screamed in wordless rage and pain right into my face, brown eyes gone feral with bloodlust.

  My next move wasn’t particularly thought out. I snagged another stake from my belt and drove it deep into his chest. He continued screaming, his fingers tightening even more on my hair. I must have missed the heart.

  Peter’s rage called to my own, leaving me warring between terror, fury, and exultation. I pulled the stake out and struck him with it again, then a third time. On the fourth and last time, I shoved it into his chest, up between the ribs, gritting my teeth as tears rolled down my cheeks. He clawed at my back, gasping for air as I straddled him, pushing the metal spike as deep as it would go.

  “Die, you thon of a bith! Juth die already!”

  With a last, fading cry, he obliged me.

  Chapter 32

  I remained draped on top of the body long after Peter stopped struggling beneath me, the hellish light having faded from his eyes one final time. It felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes of me leaning as hard as I could into the stake, fighting against the resistance of the wooden floor beneath him.

  The sounds of battle penetrated my stupor. There was more I had to do up here. I slowly staggered up to my feet. Not because I was hurt or tired, but because I was shocked at what I had just done.

  If someone had tried to tell me before tonight I was capable of this level of violence, I never would have believed it. When I saw the gaping holes left in Peter’s chest, the handle of the stake protruding between his ribs and the pulpy mess I’d made of his face, I realized that I–not Royce, not Chaz, but me, Shiarra Waynest, human being and private investigator–had viciously murdered an (un)living being just a few moments ago. I had to force myself to twist away so I’d throw up on the floor instead of the body.

  I came shakily back to myself a few minutes later, rubbing the back of my hand along my mouth. The taste of bile was strong in my throat as I cautiously avoided looking at the corpse and the spreading pool of blood on the floor. I hurried back to the stairs, stopping along the way to pick up the gun I’d dropped. At this juncture, I wasn’t interested in retrieving the stake. It would take a hell of a lot more than a desire to keep a matching set of stakes on my belt to make me touch that body again.

  I didn’t want to go back downstairs without backup. Maybe I could free Mouse and the others. The captives were safer up here than in the basement, but I was sure they’d appreciate the help. There was no telling what Max’s flunkies would do to them if they thought Royce was winning the battle in the basement.

  With each step I took up to the next floor, more confidence returned. The fine trembling in my hands tapered off surprisingly quickly considering the physical reaction I’d had to what I’d done. I was admirably succeeding at not thinking about Peter’s remains lying strewn on the floor behind me.

  ‘You’ll have plenty of time to beat yourself up over it later. Enjoy the afterglow of success. You’re alive, he’s not,’ the belt said. I found myself hating it very much just then because I realized it was the reason I wasn’t wallowing in guilt or shock anymore. ‘Besides, there’s more to do tonight. Finish this fight before the sun rises. After that I can’t help you anymore. There isn’t much time.’

  Damn the thing three ways to Sunday, it was right. It had been hours since we’d been to the club. I didn’t know how much time was left until sunrise. Rather than think on it too heavily, I moved faster, keeping as quiet as I could. If I hurried and was lucky, maybe I’d pull off this rescue with time to take a crack at John.

  I paused in my tracks at that last thought. That wasn’t me. It was the belt, insinuating I coul
d do more awful things I didn’t want to think about. I’d have to reassess using this thing in the future if it was going to make me so bloody-minded. The pleasant haze to my thoughts concerning violence made me distinctly worried about how I’d feel once the sun rose and the belt’s influence faded.

  The door at the top of the stairs was closed. I’d be at a severe disadvantage this way, but I didn’t want to leave the others trapped up here. I had to do something to save them. Something to atone for the god-awful thing I had just done.

  I stood there for a long moment, indecisive, when a ridiculous idea occurred to me. If I wasn’t so worried about being found out, I might have laughed. The idea was so stupid, it had to work.

  I knocked on the door, making it light, tentative.

  “Yeah?” came the muffled voice of one of the guards. Bill.

  “Macth athked me to come get you,” I said, affecting a frightened quaver to hide the lisp. I aimed my guns square at the middle of the door. “He needth everyone down-thtairth.”

  “What?” the vamp said, opening the door. “Why the fuck would Max send–”

  That was as far as he got. One bullet took him in the heart, the other in the right eye. He soundlessly staggered backward, the other vampire barely having time to get past his shock and lift his gun before I did the same to him. I peripherally noticed everyone else in the room surging to their feet, calling out questions, but I didn’t want to chance that the bullets were enough to keep the henchmen down.

  I swiftly tucked the guns away and pulled out a stake. I was startled when my fingers brushed three handles, and frowned in puzzlement. All of the stakes were there. Frowning hurt, so I grimaced instead. That hurt even more. Ignoring the pain, spitting out some of the new blood trickling into my mouth from the tear in my lip, I knelt down by the first body as the belt explained.

  ‘We are all parts of a cohesive whole. Once used, a stake will remain embedded in flesh either for a couple of minutes after the Other is truly dead, or once it has gone beyond a certain range of its housing,’ it said while I methodically staked the two vampires lying on the floor at my feet. One of them twitched slightly, but otherwise they didn’t move as I did my dirty work. ‘You can count on always having a weapon on you when wearing me as long as you remember those limitations.’

  Listening to the belt made it easier to go through the motions of staking the downed vamps without going into a jitter fit. When I looked up, the others in the room were watching me with wide, frightened eyes. All except for Mouse; I couldn’t read her expression.

  “All right,” I said, slowly rising to my feet. A couple of the vamps sidled back, and one of the women hid her face against the chest of one of the guys. Were they that scared of me? “Royth ith here. I need your help downthtairth. Thtay here if you can’t fight. Everyone elth wif me.”

  Mouse quickly moved to join me, but no one else came to my side until she gestured impatiently at the others. I was disappointed to see only two more were willing to back me up, the guy with the seawater eyes and another man who was tall and rail thin, but had a determined look in his eye at odds with the wariness with which he regarded me. I stepped over the body of the guard who’d opened the door and quickly took the stairs, keeping a hand on the stakes in case we met with another bad guy on the way down.

  Mouse put a restraining hand on my shoulder when we got to the first floor, pointing to the room where she’d fought with Max. We stopped in the apartment so she could grab two swords. I wasn’t totally sure how she planned on using both at the same time. Fancy work like that was for the movies, not a real battle.

  The other two vamps also selected blades from the walls, lifting them from their brackets with such practiced ease I had to wonder how often they used those things. The weapons were obviously more than eccentric decorations. I’d figured that much out as soon as Mouse battled Max. Were they here specifically for the purpose of driving off intruders in a less-than-conventional way?

  Whatever. I didn’t ponder it too long, once more taking the lead as we rushed to the stairwell. There were still sounds of fighting coming from below, but not as loud or as frantic as they had been before. I couldn’t see more than flickering shadows and a splash of blood on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Wait here a few thecondth before following me, okay? Come down one at a time.”

  “Sure,” the guy with the seawater eyes agreed, regarding me thoughtfully. “Don’t worry too much about us, we’ll be okay. I’m more worried about you. Are you sure you want to go first?”

  “Yeth, I’m thure,” I replied, grinning ruefully. Ugh, smiling hurt. “I’m tougher than I look, and I’m thure I’ll draw attention off the thtairth long enough for you guyth to make it down thafely.”

  The others nodded and stepped back as I drew my weapons. Taking a stake in one hand and a gun in the other, I rushed straight down. Rather than risk being shot or tackled as soon as I came into view, I employed some of the unearthly speed granted by the belt. I took in as much of the scene as I could at a glance while I made for the open door on the far wall.

  There were dead and injured people sprawled everywhere. Some were moaning, clutching at their injuries, or clawing their way to the far corners of the room to get out of the fray. Most were obviously dead, sightless eyes staring, accusing. The grossest things in sight were the corpses clearly savaged by Weres. Some were missing limbs. Others had their guts spilled out on the cement. None of it bore too much scrutiny. My stomach was already queasy from the attack on Peter. The unspeakable reek in the room from spilled innards wasn’t helping.

  One of the first bodies I spotted on the ground was the crazy mage, Nicolas. Well, half of him. I didn’t want to know where his legs and the lower portion of his torso went.

  I was alarmed to see one of the Weres down on the ground, savage bite wounds visible through his thick brown pelt. He lay panting by the stairs, bleeding heavily. It wasn’t Chaz, but I couldn’t tell whether it was Dillon, Simon, or Vincent. I hadn’t seen them shifted too often, so I didn’t know one from the other in their full-Were forms. Even as I watched, the uneven, heaving breaths slowed to a halt, furred chest not rising again.

  I didn’t have time to grieve. There were too many combatants on their feet to wade my way to safety or concealment. A yelp was startled out of me as a bullet whined by my head. Ducking, I rushed to take cover in the nearest tunnel, but not before I saw John taking aim at me again and Chaz bowling right into him, knocking him off his feet.

  Since there wasn’t much I could do to help Chaz, I tried to spot my other friends, hoping everyone else was okay. Tiny was wrestling with a vampire who was snarling into his face, snapping fangs at him like a rabid dog. I didn’t envy the vampire. Tiny dwarfed him, so I wasn’t too worried the vamp would win, even with the benefit of his supernatural strength.

  Devon was crumpled on the floor across the room. I was afraid he might be dead, but there were too many bad guys between us for me to risk going to check. Dawn was nowhere in sight.

  Max and Royce were still fighting. They weren’t moving too fast for me to follow their actions anymore, though each time they exchanged blows it was a blur. Royce had picked up a metal pipe from somewhere, using that to counter Max’s sword. He was covered in shallow wounds, his clothes torn in too many places for me to count. That he was still bleeding, not healing the wounds, was a bad sign. To Royce’s credit, Max was also bleeding in a couple of places and looked far more battered. However, more of Max’s men were still fighting than ours. I was getting a bad feeling about our odds of winning this fight without more losses.

  I need not have worried because just then Mouse flew down the stairs with astonishing speed. She waded into the fight like a pro, her moves fluid, graceful, dancing with the blades between one group of enemies and the next. They slashed and whirled, her bloodstained skirt swirling around her ankles as she thrust and parried and cut down anyone in her path. It was dizzyingly fast, and once again, I found myself
grateful she was on our side.

  She was cutting a path to Royce, tossing him one of the two swords without faltering in her own fighting, shifting smoothly from two swords to one. It was like watching Zorro, if Zorro wore a skirt and didn’t mind slicing his opponents to bits instead of slashing his trademark on their clothes.

  When he caught the sword, a new, predatory grin curved Royce’s lips. Max went on the defensive, falling back, and I was alarmed to notice they were coming right toward my hiding place. Rather than get drawn into their fight, I ran out to find an enemy to engage.

  More gunshots were followed by a high-pitched yark-type sound. John was shakily standing up, shoving Chaz off him. My baby collapsed on his side and was panting around the wounds in his chest; no silver, or the shots would’ve killed him. Instead, it would take him a few very painful minutes to recover. John would pay for that.

  The vamp didn’t have time to get his balance. This time I tackled him to the floor, snarling deeply enough to do a Were proud.

  “Ath-hole!” I shouted, reaching for a stake.

  Startled, he gaped up at me, having the good sense to drop his gun to grab my wrist to keep me from impaling his heart. His strength was sufficient to slow me down, though I had the advantage of leverage over his bad angle. My efforts were winning out. The stake was slowly plunging toward his chest.

  “Damn you,” he gasped up at me, hatred and frustration twisting his features while we warred over where the stake would land. “Everything would’ve worked if you’d just stayed out of this, you meddling trollop!”

  I hissed down at him, some of my own blood trickling down my chin to splatter on his cheek as I put all my weight on the stake. “Jutht lay down and die already, you backthtabbing little thit!”