“Run, Elizabeth!” Sebastian yelled. “Run!”
The little girl spun on her toes, one way and then the next. Natasha collided with Serenity, knocking her to the ground, and Elizabeth ran.
The blonde hit Serenity like a brick wall and Serenity flew backward. She smacked against the floor, the air bursting from her lungs, and the vampire landed on top of her. The blonde’s face was chalk-white, her eyes burning yellow with hatred. Her jaw had lengthened and thickened, her fangs protruding from her mouth. She snarled in hatred and lunged for Serenity’s throat.
Serenity squeezed her eyes shut, preparing herself for the pain of razor-sharp teeth piercing her skin. But the teeth snapped shut, missing her throat, and then Natasha was dragged off her.
Sebastian, she thought with relief. She rolled to her side to find Sebastian still bent over, his hand clutched over the rapidly healing wound in his chest. Bright blood covered his pale fingers—a terrifying amount of blood.
Confused, she looked to find Natasha grappling with Vincent. Though the two vampires couldn’t inflict a mortal injury to each other, they could still fight and the sounds of their clash echoed around the large room. They were a similar age so, despite Vincent’s obvious advantage in size, their strengths were evenly matched. Vincent took hold of Natasha’s throat and pushed her backward, her feet dragging along the floor as he used his momentum to crash her against a wall. Natasha tore his hands from her throat and flipped him over so he landed on his back while she held him down.
Bridget stood with a hand over her mouth and wide, worried eyes. Clearly she was still terrified for her son’s safety, despite Natasha not being able to kill her vampire sibling.
Serenity risked a few seconds to look around.
Where was Elizabeth?
For once, she didn’t have time to think about her daughter. This might be the only chance she’d get to put an end to this once and for all. All she wanted was for them to be able to live in peace. If Demitri survived, that could never happen.
Demitri’s face bubbled, his eyes milky and blind. He thrashed around the room, his hands clawed above his face, as though he wanted to tear his own skin from his skull. All of his vampire’s grace had left him as he staggered around, his head whipping from side to side.
The table leg, still coated in Sebastian’s blood, lay on the floor a couple of feet away from Serenity. She got to her hands and knees and crawled toward it. Her hand wrapped around the thick post, but it was too heavy to lift one handed. She got to her feet, crouched, and used two hands to hoist it up.
Serenity lifted her head to find Sebastian watching. He could play no part in this, but he gave her the briefest of nods before turning his face.
Serenity channeled all her energy, all her anger, and lifted the splintered end of the table leg. Natasha and Vincent continued to snap at each other, so she took advantage of their being distracted.
With a yell of fury, she ran across the room. Demitri seemed to sense her coming and spun as though to attack. The sharp end of the leg drove directly into Demitri’s chest. Serenity felt the initial resistance, then the ‘pop’ of his skin, followed by the crunch of rib-bones and, finally, the soft, sickening suck into his heart.
For a moment, everything stood still.
As though in slow motion, Demitri fell backward. He hit the ground with a crack. It sounded as though a slab of marble had hit the floor instead of something that used to be human.
As he lay there with the huge table leg protruding from his chest, what looked like a gray moss crept over his face and hands, crawling up his arms. His long, black hair turned to spider webs, as fine as spun candy.
Their fight forgotten, Natasha left Vincent and rushed to Demitri’s side. She dropped to the floor beside him.
“Oh no, Demitri, my love.”
She reached out and touched his now gray cheek. The moment her fingers made contact with what had once been his skin, Demitri crumbled to dust. The table leg fell to the floor with a clatter.
With blazing eyes, Natasha straightened, her gaze focused on Serenity.
“You fucking bitch,” the vampire spat.
Sebastian appeared between Natasha and Serenity. The hole in his shoulder had now almost completely closed over, though through the tear in his shirt, the skin still looked pink and twisted with scarring.
“Back off, Natasha. Demitri is gone. Either you get out of here, or you’ll be the one locked in the basement with the door chained in silver.”
Her eyes flicked between Demitri’s remains and Sebastian.
“I won’t let you get away with this,” she hissed. “You haven’t seen the last of me.”
Sebastian tilted his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, sure. You could at least leave with an original line.”
Not waiting any longer, Natasha vanished through the door, slamming it in her wake.
Serenity looked around the room. “Elizabeth! Where the hell is Elizabeth?”
Chapter Twenty-four
Blind with panic, Elizabeth ran.
The corridors felt like a never-ending maze. She ran down their length and came to a t-junction. She took one turn and the next, with no idea whether she was heading in the right direction. She ran past the storeroom where she’d been kept, seeing the small pile of blankets and cushions on the hard, concrete floor. Briefly, she wondered if she should stop, curl up on the cushions, and wait for Sebastian and her mommy to come and find her. But then she remembered Sebastian’s instructions to run. She’d risked their lives before by not listening to what Sebastian had told her to do and she didn’t want to put any of them in that situation again.
Elizabeth kept going, air whistling in and out of her lungs. The air smelled damp and seemed devoid of the oxygen she needed.
Past the storeroom, she found another door. She pulled on the metal handle. At first she thought the door was too heavy for her to open, but finally it gave way and opened onto a stairwell. The music, which had always been faint in the background, blasted louder.
Elizabeth followed the sound and raced up the stairs. She kept one thing in mind: music meant people and people meant help.
Her small legs pumped up the stairs, her thigh muscles burning. She rounded one flight, and then a second before another big, heavy door blocked her way.
She took hold of the handle, the metal cool and smooth beneath her palm. She gave it a yank and again the door resisted. Relief filled her as it opened on the second pull.
Music, voices and hot air blasted at her. She darted through the door and into darkness, flashing lights and loud music. Half-naked bodies were crammed into every space, but they seemed to move as one, in time with the loud, pounding music. Elizabeth pushed past their legs, grabbing at arms, trying to get someone’s attention.
“Help me, help me,” she cried. “Someone’s trying to hurt my family.”
But the music was too loud and she received only confused glances from jaded, glazed faces. She still wore her pajamas—the same ones Demitri had snatched her in—and the sight of a barefoot child in her nightclothes didn’t fit in with the party-goers normal reality. A few people stopped and nudged their friends, nodding at the small child suddenly among them, but no one offered her any help.
Elizabeth pushed through the bodies, her slight frame slipping between legs—women in short skirts and high-heeled shoes, men in jeans and sneakers. The air was hot and thick, tinged with a mixture of body odor, perfume, and the same stale scent that had been so overpowering in the storeroom where she’d slept.
She reached the shiny, silver railings that separated the balcony from the dance floor below. Three horizontal bars, each with a couple of feet between them, divided the upstairs clubbers from those below. The railings were easily high enough to prevent any adults from falling over the top, but allowed plenty of space for a six-year-old to crawl between them.
Elizabeth leaned against the second bar and looked out over the sea of writhing, dancing bodies. The dan
cers held their hands aloft, punching the air in time with the thump of the song.
In the crowd, she spotted Sebastian, turning a slow circle, his hand knotted in his hair.
“Sebastian!” she yelled, leaning out over the crowd. “Sebastian! I’m up here!”
But the music was too loud. Even though Sebastian had hypersensitive hearing, the power of the sound system drowned out any ability to pick out individual voices.
Wanting him to notice her, Elizabeth climbed up onto the lowest bar. The metal felt cold against the bare soles of her feet. The second bar pressed against her ribcage and she leaned out as far as she dared, waving her hands to catch his attention. Her daddy didn’t only have great hearing, his eyesight was sharp as well. If she could only get him to notice her, he would come up and take her away from all of this.
But then she saw the familiar blonde head of Natasha in the crowd, standing only feet from where her father searched for her. Caught up in his mission to locate his daughter, he’d missed the presence of the other vampire.
“Sebastian!” she yelled again, stretching out just a little further. “Watch out!”
Her foot slipped on the silver rail and she teetered forward, barely balanced on the edge. Her heart lurched into her throat as she thought she was about to fall head first, but then she regained her equilibrium. She lifted her hand once again to wave and someone knocked into her from behind.
Elizabeth tilted over the edge, her hands grappling for the bars.
And fell.
Movement caught Sebastian’s attention and he looked up in time to see Elizabeth’s body plummeting through the air. He ran with a burst of speed, but something collided with him. He barely registered who had stolen those precious moments from him—Natasha!—before he threw her away. The younger vampire had done no more than interrupted his run, but it had made all the difference. Natasha glared at him with fierce yellow eyes and disappeared back into the crowd.
Only a foot ahead, Elizabeth made contact with the dance floor, her body hitting with a sharp crack that sickened him to his core.
All around, people screamed and backed away from the small child lying on the ground. Though Elizabeth’s eyes were open, her neck was kinked at a horrific angle, the bones of her vertebrate creating sharp lumps just beneath the skin. One of her legs was disjointed at the knee, the lower leg sticking out at what should have been an impossible angle. Her left arm was trapped beneath her body, but her right arm lay beside her head, her hand curled up and her fingers twitching.
Someone switched off the sound system and the crowd’s cries of shock echoed around the room.
Sebastian fell to his knees beside her.
“Oh God, Elizabeth. My sweet girl.”
She blinked at him. “Daddy?”
“Everything is okay, sweetheart. I’m here. You’re safe.”
A small spasm of shock wracked through her small frame. “I fell,” she said, her voice weak.
He forced a smile. “I know you did, silly.”
From behind, a scream louder than everyone else’s cut through the room.
“Elizabeth!”
Serenity pushed her way through the crowd. The clubbers parted for her, allowing her through. The party atmosphere had vanished, replaced by one of tense anxiety.
Her eyes widened when she caught sight of her daughter lying on the floor, so badly hurt. All the color drained from her face and her hands covered her mouth. She ran to Elizabeth’s side and dropped to the floor, opposite Sebastian.
“Oh God, what happened?”
“She fell, Serenity. From up there.”
They both looked upward to the massive drop between the balustrade and the dance floor, and then back down at their daughter. They both knew what the huge drop meant.
No one could survive it.
Serenity felt as though someone had reached inside her chest with clawed hands and ripped her heart in two.
A thin, keening noise emitted from her throat and she hovered over Elizabeth, wanting to pull her into her arms, but terrified of making her injuries worse.
It doesn’t matter, a little voice spoke inside her head. Her neck is probably broken.
She rocked over her daughter, her hands fluttering to cup Elizabeth’s cheeks. Her skin felt cold to the touch—too cold.
“No, no, no. Oh, my baby, my poor little baby.”
Please, God, this can’t be happening, it wasn’t real. Take it back, take it back. Please don’t let this be real.
Anguish and a desperate sense of denial tore her in one direction and then the next. She wanted to not believe her own eyes, to hope and pray this was a horrific nightmare she’d wake from at any minute. But she knew it wasn’t. Unrealistically, she willed for them to take a step back in time, to unravel the last few minutes and start again. Just a couple of minutes, that’s all they’d need. Long enough for her to have made a different choice and run up to the next level or for Sebastian to have caught Elizabeth.
A bubble of blood bloomed between Elizabeth’s lips and burst, splattering her pale skin with flecks of bright red.
“Mommy…”
“Everything’s okay, baby. I’m here. You’re going to be fine.”
“It hurts, Mommy.” She gave a couple of thick coughs and winced at the pain.
Serenity felt Elizabeth’s pain so viscerally it was like her own. She’d give anything to switch places with her daughter; to take away the suffering and make her well again.
Elizabeth’s short life flashed through Serenity’s head: Elizabeth as a tiny baby, so helpless but still an individual, changing every day. Elizabeth as a chubby toddler, taking her first steps, arms extended, confident her mother would be there for her if she fell. Elizabeth as a preschooler, creating her own pictures for the first time, always so proud to show Serenity what she’d achieved.
Serenity thought of the years she had missed. Years she’d never get back. Years she’d now never be able to make up for.
She couldn’t take this. She refused to take this. One thing had healed her when she’d been at the brink of losing who she was forever. Surely the same thing would help their daughter now.
Serenity forced herself to lift her gaze from her daughter’s horrific injuries and pain-stricken face, and focused on Sebastian.
“Feed her your blood! It helped me, so it might heal her as well.”
He looked up at her, aghast. “You want me to feed her vampire blood? She’s so close to death; what if she turns?”
“I don’t care!” Suddenly she was filled with fury toward him, rage that he’d even hesitate. “I don’t care what she is. I just want her to be with us. Why are you even arguing this with me? Would you rather watch her die?
“A child vampire, Serenity. That’s what you’re asking of me.”
“I don’t care!” Her voice was a screech of hysteria. “I want my baby girl. If she dies, I’ll die with her, I swear I will.”
“It’s okay,” a voice came from behind.
They both turned to find Bridget stood behind them, her face pale and strained, visibly shaking. “She’s a Dhampyre—she’s already part vampire—she can never be turned by vampire blood. She’ll always be just what she is.”
Vincent appeared behind her and placed a hand on Bridget’s shoulder. Whatever Bridget had done to them, however she betrayed them, she still obviously cared for Elizabeth and seeing the little girl so badly hurt had shaken her to the core.
“Do it, Sebastian,” she encouraged. “She’s dying. What do you have to lose?”
Sebastian’s head tilted back, lifting his chin. When he lowered his head again, his jaw shape had changed, his fangs—long and sharp—protruded from beneath his curled upper lip. The vampire’s eyes burned in the flashing strobe lights.
Around them, nervous mutters rose from the crowds of onlookers. People began to back away, widening the circle. The already tense atmosphere became even more charged, prickling with nervous energy.
Sebastian lifted
his wrist to his mouth and bit, deep and hard.
Screams and shouts of ‘what the fuck, man’ broke from the crowd. People turned away and pushed at each other in their efforts to get away. Panic spread from one person to the next, picked up like a communicable disease. Before some people even knew what they were running from, the clubbers began to pour through the exits, pushing and shoving each other.
Serenity barely noticed the chaos around them. All her attention was focused on her daughter and the vampire who needed to save her.
Elizabeth’s eyelids fluttered. They open briefly, but only to reveal her eyes rolling back in her head, flashing bloodshot whites.
“Oh God, Elizabeth,” Serenity cried, her voice breaking with a sob. “Do it, Sebastian!”
He held his wrist to Elizabeth’s pale lips. Blood dripped from the gash—he’d needed to bite deep. Elizabeth didn’t have the strength or ability to suck and he couldn’t risk the wound healing before she had taken what she needed.
Drops spattered. Elizabeth’s eyelids fluttered again and her tongue snuck out, catching the droplets. The moment the first drop slid down Elizabeth’s throat, color bloomed in her cheeks. She gasped and her eyes shot open. With renewed strength, she managed to lift her head, her mouth seeking sustenance.
Sebastian lowered his wrist and Elizabeth’s mouth locked around the wound.
As she fed, her bones knitted back into place, the horrific lumps in her neck popping back into place with short, jerking movements. Her leg twisted back around, locking back into place. The blood melted away from her skin and her hair curled into ringlets.
The wound in Sebastian’s wrist healed and he pulled his arm away.
Elizabeth stared up at them, her dark eyes clear and fresh with wonder.
“Mommy?” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. “What happened?”
Serenity burst into tears and grabbed her daughter, pulling her into her arms.
“Oh, my baby girl. I thought I’d lost you. My sweet, sweet baby.”
“Mommy!” she said in an exasperated tone. “I’m not a baby.”
The Serenity Series: Box Set: Books 1-3 Page 64