Holidays Bite: A Limited Edition Collection of Holiday Vampire Tales
Page 99
“Then let’s do this.” I piled toilet paper around the bottom of the heavy drapes. Delilah knelt down to light the fire, and we both stood back near the doorway to see what happened.
“Did you see anything from the balcony?” I asked. “A way to get out of here? Anything at all?”
Delilah shook her head no.
“Okay. Let’s get out of here and let that smolder for a while. With any luck, we’ll be long gone.”
Chapter 14
Quietly, we tiptoed out of the bathroom and toward the back of the enormous house. As soon as we were out of view of the stairs, we began running. Soon, we found ourselves in a long corridor, alone, with no sign of anybody. We kept running until we came to a dead end.
A short sob escaped Delilah. “Shit, what do we do now?”
“Start feeling the wall for a secret door.”
“This isn’t the movies, Lizzie.”
“Trust me on this. There’s a hidden passageway.” I didn’t know how I knew it, but I was sure. I started feeling for cracks. Delilah followed my example and began feeling the walls. Within seconds, my hand ran across a small indentation.
“I think I found something.” I ran my fingers up and down until a clicking sound proved me right. “I told you so,” I told Delilah, who rolled her eyes.
I pulled open the crack to reveal a dark stairway leading down. “Servants’ stairs, I think.” I led us into the passageway. When I shut the door behind us, it was completely dark.
We felt our way down, quietly.
I could still hear some screams, distant and horrible.
When we came to the bottom of the staircase, we found ourselves in a stainless-steel kitchen.
There was a fire alarm and a gas stove.
“So which one, Batman? The alarm or stove? I say we burn this place down.”
“No, just pull the alarm, Delilah. I don’t want innocent people to die.”
“They’re going to die at the hands of those monsters regardless.”
“No. We can save them.” I reached over to pull the alarm. Delilah ran after me to stop me but instead knocked me over—along with some pots and pans, causing the stove to turn on.
And I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s start a fire.”
Within seconds, we were tossing everything flammable we could find at the stove. Before we knew it, the kitchen was burning.
Flames licked the floor and crawled up one wall.
“We need something to make a torch,” Delilah suggested.
I shook my head. “I don’t see anything.”
“Me either.”
“Let’s see if we can save anyone at all.” I grabbed Delilah and found another door. I opened it carefully, only to find it led back in the main hallway outside of the ballroom.
“Shit, how do we get out of here?” I asked.
“There is no escape,” a raspy voice behind us replied.
We spun around. A tall, dark, Italian vampire stood in our way between a window and the ballroom.
And right next to him was a decorative wall-sword.
My instincts kicked in. “Stand back!” I shouted to Delilah.
She moved as I opened the kitchen door.
Fed by the oxygen, fire roared out the door. The vampire cringed back, and I jumped forward to grab the sword.
It was definitely sharp enough to take down the vampire.
I know that for sure because I aimed for his head. It was a long shot, but I swung it and it sliced through his neck, killing him instantly.
Power slipped into me, rolling through me like a wave, leaving me dizzy and uncertain. But only for a second.
The fortune-teller’s words echoed in my head.
You are fated to kill the dark ones.
It hadn’t felt like that was my destiny.
Of course, that was before I ended up in the Venetian Christmas Ball from Hell.
Before I realized vampires were real.
Shit, is it true? Are these the dark ones I’m destined to kill?
Chapter 15
Delilah stared at me with wide eyes for a long moment before she shook off her reaction to my sudden prowess with a sword. “Okay. Yeah, that was kick-ass, but we need to hightail it out of here before we die. Before we get burned alive. Or eaten.”
“We have to save him.”
“Save who?” Delilah asked.
“Mr. Darcy, that’s who.”
“Who is Mr. Darcy? Are the fumes getting to you? I thought I was the one who was supposed to be high.”
“The man who brought us here.”
“Dude. You’re kidding me? You named your hero Mr. Darcy?”
“Yeah, so let’s do this. I swear destiny brought us together. I felt something when we kissed.”
“That would be your hormones, sweet pea.”
“So what about when we had sex?”
Delilah squealed. “You had sex? Oh my God!”
“See? I couldn’t live with myself if he was killed by vampires or the fire.”
“Fine, but you owe me.”
I dashed through the hall toward the ballroom, sword in hand, praying I wouldn’t be too late.
I wasn’t too late.
I was just in time.
Just in time to see him embracing Jane, the woman who’d given us our tickets. He dropped her lifeless body to the ground, where it stared at me with unseeing eyes.
Fuck.
He’s a vampire.
I stalked toward him. “I won’t let you kill me.”
“I would never kill you, my love. We belong together for eternity. Instead of death, I can offer you unlimited power.”
I remembered the way his hot breath on my skin and his words had mesmerized me.
I could have that forever.
I don’t want to be a slayer, but I don’t want all these innocent people to die.
Then come be with me, my love. His voice echoes in my mind.
The sword slipped from my hand onto the floor.
That’s it. You’ll never have bad dreams. Never miss your family. Never take sleeping pills to sleep.
His voice penetrated my fog.
It was meant to lull me, to soothe me.
But it’s the voice of a killer. One who had invaded my dreams.
One I let take my body.
A shudder of revulsion ran through me just as the clatter of my sword rang out through the room.
And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw another vampire grab Delilah.
My Delilah, grabbed by a vampire.
Eaten. Sucked dry. Killed.
Fuck. That. Shit.
The metallic taste of adrenaline coated my mouth.
I can do this.
In one motion, I swept up my sword and lunged toward him.
“You, sir, are no Mr. Darcy!” With one single swing, I brought the sword around to slice through his neck.
I don’t know what it is about vampires and severing their heads, but there’s something about it that seems like it’s easier than it ought to be. Like maybe their heads are not as well attached to their necks as humans’ heads are?
Anyway, swinging that sword felt like the easiest, most natural thing to do. And it seemed to go on longer than it actually did. As the fake Mr. Darcy’s head tumbled to the floor, I had enough time to wonder how long it took a vampire’s brain to realize that it had been killed. Did he see me spinning past him? Did he know oh that he had been killed by the woman he had seduced earlier?
Part of me kind of hope so. Especially for the girl who’d given us our ticket. The one who hadn’t been willing to heed the fortune-teller’s warnings. The one he had killed in front of me.
I redoubled my grip on the sword, ready to fight our way out this horror scene.
But as Mr. Darcy’s head came apart from his shoulders, all of vampires in the room dropped like puppets with their strings cut. I didn’t know how or why their life forces were connected to hi
s, but it made my life easier right then.
Especially since I was hit with another wave of power.
It crashed into me like a wave of water—but this water had a hellacious undertow. It pulled me under, bashing me against the shore of its strength. It filled my mouth, my nose, my lungs. I choked on it. I drowned in it.
But once I gave into it—once I stopped fighting it—it flowed around me like peace.
I came to consciousness to find Delilah standing over me, begging me to stand up.
And when I did, I knew nothing would ever be the same.
But only once we got out of here.
We spent a few moments gathering up the relatively few human survivors, checking to see who was okay and who might need medical help.
But as soon as we started hearing sirens, I decided it was time for us to get the hell out of there.
I took a moment to glance around, then wiped the sword on Mr. Fake-Darcy’s shirt. I wiped the hilt down, too, planning to leave it behind and hoping to eliminate fingerprints.
But after a few moments, I changed my mind.
What the hell. I like this sword.
So instead, I ran upstairs and came back downstairs with it wrapped it in the black cocktail dress I’d worn into the party.
As I had suspected, there were keys in Mr. Darcy’s pants. I took them out, found the one that unlocked the front door, and ushered the remaining humans out. They poured into the walkway, waiting for help.
Then I let myself out the side door, taking Delilah with me.
“Are we going to stick around, tell the cops what we saw?”
“No way in hell.” I looked at Delilah disbelievingly. “Don’t you ever watch cop shows? I don’t want to get stuck here and end up in Italian jail.”
I waited until no one was watching, then pulled Delilah passed all the officials who were dealing with survivors running out into the lanes, screaming in Italian.
With any luck, no one would ever know we had been there.
Chapter 16
The next morning, Delilah and I sat drinking coffee in the small dining room of our hotel and listening to the people around us gossiping about the hallucinogenic gas that had killed some people during the Christmas Ball.
“Yeah, right,” I muttered.
Delilah nodded, frowning.
Back in our room half an hour later, I suddenly started snickering.
“What?” Delilah asked.
“I can’t quit changing a line from Pride and Prejudice to fit my life right now.”
“That book again? Okay, fine. Hit me with it, Batman.”
I took a deep breath, then said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single vampire in possession of a great power, must be in want of a slayer.”
After a pause, we both burst into hysterical laughter.
But I couldn’t help but wonder what else is out there waiting for me.
Dear God, are there other vampires I’ll have to kill and other people I’ll have to save?
But one thing was for sure. I was done with teaching. I couldn’t go back to teaching and put my students' lives at risk.
One other thing?
I am done with Mr. Darcy.
And that feels like a happily ever after to me.
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Also be sure to pick up Most Ardently: An Austen Inspired Christmas Collection, available on Amazon this holiday season.
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Margo and Sheena also have stories in Once Upon a Fairy Tale Night (A Fairy Tale Retellings Box Set) and Hearts of Darkness: A Valentine’s Day Bully Romance Collection.
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About the Authors
USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between “hanged” and “hung,” turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)
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Sheena Austin is the author of The Spirit of Mr. Darcy which is featured in Most Ardently: An Austen-Inspired Christmas Collection, The Trouble with Demons, Journey of the Heart, and Memoirs of a Disillusioned Heart. A lover of all romance and fantasy, a cat whisperer, and Kermit-obsessed, the author currently lives in Virginia with her boyfriend and two cats.
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Margo Bond Collins writing as Ivy Hearne
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Most Ardently: An Austen-Inspired Christmas Collection
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