by Jack Knight
There wasn’t exactly a fully stocked spell pantry anywhere in the room, but I couldn’t let my arm die. I needed a healing spell, quick. Although, maybe using more magic right now wouldn’t actually fix anything.
What else could I do?
I desperately looked around the room, and my eyes fell on Matt. If he could heal from a broken neck, his blood could probably heal me from a little thing like my entire arm dying, right?
Moving across the floor was insanely difficult. I couldn’t stand, I had to push myself forward with my feet and drag myself across the concrete with my one good arm. The entire time, I could feel my arm dying, like razor blades were slicing through my muscles, my arm was deflating, and it was being filled with ice, all at the same time.
When I reached Matt, I prayed this would work, and I stabbed his arm with my knife. Not the most polite thing in the world, but I could feel that I was running out of time.
When I pulled the weapon free, blood started seeping from Matt’s wound. I quickly clamped my mouth over it, falling awkwardly to the ground as I did.
I was lying on the floor, sucking someone’s blood from their unconscious body, and praying my arm didn’t need to be chopped off. This was not my best day.
The blood tasted strange, like metal and popcorn butter, sickly sweet and with a strong bite that I did not find appealing. It didn’t matter, though, I kept drinking until the blood flow stopped. I pulled my head back and saw Matt’s wound was gone, his forearm covered in blood and saliva.
I let myself fall onto my back and waited. I didn’t know how much blood I would need to become a ghoul, I just knew that a little bit could heal wounds. Hopefully, it could also heal my arm, because otherwise, I was fucked.
Slowly, the pain in my arm subsided. I was terrified it was because all my nerves had finally died, but when I forced my head up, I saw my arm looked perfectly normal again. Lifting my head had been easier, too. I was recharged and ready to go.
Unfortunately, I was still locked in a room.
After a deep breath, I forced myself to stand and look around the room.
Torn hadn’t spoken in a while. Maybe he wasn’t watching anymore. Part of me hoped he was.
I knelt down, threw one of Matt’s arms over my shoulder, and hefted all of his dead weight up.
“Come on, Matt,” I grunted. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”
Chapter 27
AFTER GETTING OUT OF the room, which was surprisingly easy after I remembered the spell Gen had used to open the wizard’s front door, the problem was trying to find a way out of the building.
Carrying Matt meant I had to go slow, and the door that I used to get out of the room I had been trapped in wasn’t the same one that I had first gone through, so I was lost.
I came out in another hallway full of jail cells, but most of these were empty. It was fine, at first. No noise, no cameras that I could see, I had time to figure it out.
I made my way through the hall, hefting Matt’s weight the entire way. The vamp blood had healed me, but I was still tired from everything that had happened. Apparently, healing wasn’t enough. The fact that I felt like I needed a nap was great, though. It meant I hadn’t drunk enough of Matt’s blood to become a ghoul.
Once I made it down the first hallway, I reached an intersection. Left and right both looked exactly the same, so it was a coin flip. My best guess was to walk as far away from the room I left the dead vamps in as possible, so I turned right. Everything seemed to be going pretty well, for a few minutes.
That was, until a horde of vampires rounded the corner in front of me.
I couldn’t run and carry Matt, but they were approaching fast, even for vampires. I scrambled, looking around for anything that could help me, but I was surrounded by empty cells.
Cells meant to keep vampires in.
“This fucking sucks,” I groaned as I awkwardly pulled one of the cells open and dropped Matt to the floor inside.
When I closed the door behind me, I held onto a bar and leaned back with all my weight. With my free hand, I pulled out my knife and made a cut through the Speed Sigil I had drawn before, the sigil was useless now anyway.
“Sero,” I said.
I heard a clink, that I hoped meant the cell had locked itself, and then the vampires slammed against the cell.
Immediately, I let go of the door and fell back, right as a dozen vampires shoved their arms through the bars.
It was like a scene from a zombie movie. They were all slamming up against the cell, trying to reach through, shaking the bars to open the cage I had locked myself in, but they couldn’t get inside. If the cell could keep vampires in, it also meant it would keep them out.
Solved one problem and landed myself in another. As I sat on the ground, next to Matt’s limp body, I realized just how screwed I was. There were vampires right outside the cell, so I couldn’t leave. When Matt healed, he’d still be starving, so I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t exactly kill them all with magic, I had learned my lesson on that. So, I was out of options.
Mostly for something to do, I grabbed Matt and threw him onto the empty bed against the back wall of the cell. The screams and curses from the vampires outside were starting to freak me out, so I did my best to ignore them and just watch Matt for signs of waking up while I tried to figure a way out.
“I’ll suck you dry, you stupid bitch!” one of the vampires screeched.
“Charming,” I muttered to myself.
Out of nowhere, Matt’s eyes burst open and he gasped like he just came out of a pool after way too long under water. He looked around the room, didn’t seem to mind the vampires trying to break in, and then looked at me with a mixture of shock and horror.
“Get... away...” he choked out.
Well, chances were I was going to get sucked dry by a vampire anyway, might as well let the one that I didn’t want to murder do it.
I held out my still bleeding arm and pointed my knife at Matt.
“Drink, but if you bite me, I stab you in the heart,” I commanded.
Matt clenched his jaw and looked me dead in the eye. He still looked scared out of his mind, but he nodded slowly and took my arm.
I looked away, because drinking blood was super gross, and watched the vampires try to get in as Matt put his lips against my skin. Hopefully, the little blood that he could get from an open wound would be enough, because I would have no problem killing him if he bit me.
“Better,” Matt groaned a few minutes later.
I looked at him, searching for a sign that he was lying. His voice sounded less hoarse, and his eyes less wild, but that couldn’t be true. He had been starving, he couldn’t have gotten enough from one little cut.
“What all did I miss?” he asked as he glanced at the horde of vampires trying to break into our prison of protection.
I smirked. “I killed you. Now, we’re trapped in here and I can’t figure out what to do.”
“Oh, good, so just like old times.”
My smirk disappeared. “Fuck you.”
I would have said more, but right then, the screams of the vampires changed. They went from angry and frustrated to howls of pain and fear.
Matt and I looked up at the same time to see, one after another, the vampires burst into flame. Some of them tried to run, but the fire spread across them so quickly that most only made it a few steps before their blackened corpses crashed to the floor.
“What the hell is happening?” Matt demanded as he tried to press himself against the wall beside the bed.
I stood and held up my knife, waiting for whatever was going on to make sense. Torn wouldn’t kill the vampires he spent so long building an army out of. Someone else was here. After everything that had happened, I didn’t really trust anyone, even if they currently happened to be saving my life.
Not until the last of the vampires’ screams died did I hear or see anything else. Pounding footsteps, like several people running toward the cell I was locked in, echoed through the
silent hall for several seconds, and then Asher, Gen, and Magnus appeared in front of the cell, each of them leaping over the crispy and smoldering corpses of the vampires.
“Heya, how’s it going?” Asher asked.
Gen leapt forward to open the cell door, and looked at me with a sour expression when she realized it was locked.
“Seriously?” Gen demanded.
“I’m sorry,” I growled, “there was a vampire or two I didn’t feel like dealing with.”
“You found your Hunter friend,” Magnus noted, nodding toward Matt. He didn’t sound upset, I honestly couldn’t tell what he was feeling.
None of that mattered, though. Gen aimed her palm at the lock on the door, and I realized what was about to happen. All of this seemed a little too good to be true.
“Unlock the cage,” I warned, “and I’m killing as many of you as I can.”
All three of them raised their eyes to me, looking confused. Gen even seemed a little hurt, but I didn’t care.
“Torn was the one making the vampires,” I said, looking between each of their faces. “Atasha was helping him. How do I know that you aren’t all in on it?”
Asher looked completely bewildered. Magnus’s eyes narrowed, like he was trying to work through the information I had just given them. Gen rebounded more quickly than the others.
“Because, you’re locked in a cell, and you’re brand new to magic. Any one of us could kill you in a second, and instead we’re letting you out,” she snapped. “Now, I’m unlocking the cage. If you try to attack us, I’ll burn you to cinders before you can say ‘ow’.”
Those were some very good points. I wasn’t completely convinced, but I did return my knife to its sheath.
“Hang on, we can’t leave,” Matt said from behind me.
I heard a click as the cell unlocked and the squeak of the door opening as I turned to look at Matt, who had stood up. He had a determined expression on his face, which didn’t seem like good news for me.
“Why is that?” Magnus asked.
Matt made eye contact with me, and then raised his gaze to answer Magnus. “All the vampires that are still locked up, they’re just normal vampires. That guy, Torn, isn’t making them into... whatever he’s doing until after they swear their allegiance to him. It’s part of the spell. Everyone that’s still locked up is innocent, if we leave them here...”
I groaned and faced the Reapers again. “Okay, we run through the building and let all the vampires free, then we go after Torn, deal?”
Asher shook his head. “Oh, no, no no. We’re not going after anyone. This place has more of those things,” he pointed to the ground, littered with bodies of dead vampires.
I wanted to argue, but it didn’t seem like the best idea. We found Torn once, we could do it again.
“Fine, whatever, let’s just go!”
The five of us raced down the hall, leaving the smell of burning flesh behind. Apparently, the Reapers had passed several halls of caged vampires already, and knew the layout of the building well enough. We all raced through the building, unlocking every cell we could find, and telling the vampires to get out as quickly as they could.
I had no idea where Torn was during all of this, but nothing showed up to stop us, which didn’t seem like a good thing. There had to be more super-vamps than the ones the Reapers had killed, where were they?
Finally, when we were pretty sure we had freed everyone, and every jail cell we could find was empty, Magnus led the way to the nearest exit.
“I’d call this a success,” Asher chuckled as we sprinted down a hallway, toward the same door I had first entered the building through.
“There will be time to celebrate when we are out of the building,” Magnus chuckled back.
Right in front of the door the Reapers said would lead outside, when we had maybe ten feet left to go, the air rippled like waves in a lake. Then, out of nowhere, Atasha formed from nothing.
“Actually, you’ll be staying. It is imperative that nobody stops us,” Atasha said with a fierce smile.
All of us stopped running. I pulled my knife out again, the Reapers drew their little letter openers, and Matt moved himself so he was just a little closer to Atasha than I was.
“Let us leave, Atasha,” Magnus said in a deep, commanding voice.
Atasha shook her head, her smile still firmly in place. “The Hunters need to die. Torn is already moving all his valuable materials out of the building. He’ll set up shop somewhere else and start over. You, however, will not be allowed to interrupt him again.”
“We don’t wanna hurt you, Tasha,” Gen warned. I feel like it came off more adorable than she had meant it to, but I may have been the only one who noticed.
“You won’t be hurting anyone,” Atasha said, as her smile finally faded.
Everything happened so fast, I could barely keep up.
Magnus threw his hand out and fire shot toward Atasha. She ducked and said something that almost sounded like “glue”. Before I could blink, Magnus was frozen in a huge block of ice, like he had been turned into a statue.
Asher lunged forward, but Atasha just waved her hand and he was thrown into one of the concrete walls. He fell to the ground and didn’t move again.
Gen and Matt ran at Atasha at the same time, but I could see how this was going, they weren’t going to get her.
I drew my knife across my palm as Atasha slapped Gen’s head and she fell right to the ground.
When Atasha’s hand burst into flame, I knew Matt was about to be burned alive, the same way the vampires outside the jail cell had been, and I had to act right then or watch my old partner die.
“Traho!” I shouted, as the tingle of magic ran through me.
Right before Atasha could make contact with Matt, she flew toward me, like she had been tugged by an invisible rope. Her feet left the ground, and I knew I had one shot. If she could have even a second to think, we were all dead.
Right before she reached me, I jumped in the air, grabbed one of her arms, and gripped her hair as tightly as I could. We fell to the ground together, and I put all of my weight onto her head.
We collided with the ground as a sickening crack echoed through the empty hall. Blood pooled around us quickly, but Atasha let out a slow, pained moan.
She wasn’t dead, but I doubted she was going to last very long. There was a lot of blood gushing from her head. She wouldn’t hurt anyone else.
I let myself fall off of her, and then slowly stood up, looking around at the unconscious and frozen people around me.
Matt looked at me appraisingly before he muttered, “Not bad.”
I shook my head and snapped, “Help me wake them up. We’re going after Torn.”
Matt’s eyebrows furrowed together. “I thought you agreed—”
I interrupted him before he could finish. “That was before we knew he was running away. We’re killing him. Now.”
Chapter 28
“MADDI, WE NEED TO GET out of here as soon as possible,” Magnus insisted again.
Waking Gen and Asher had been easy, Magnus had been a lot more difficult. It took Asher and Gen several minutes of precious time to thaw the ice that was holding him captive, and almost ten minute before they were sure he wasn’t going to die of frostbite. When he finally woke up, he spent all his time trying to convince us that my plan was terrible.
“Shut up, I’m trying to think,” I snapped as we made our way back through the building.
It was a little harder to remember where everything was than I thought it would be. I knew it was a straight shot from the entrance of the building to Torn’s altar room, unfortunately, the building had several entrances. Everything looked exactly the same, so I couldn’t actually figure out where we were.
“I’m just surprised you took down Atasha all by yourself,” Asher chuckled. He seemed to be completely at ease with our incredibly difficult and dangerous mission.
While we were running through the building, I had explaine
d everything that they had missed. The phone call I overheard, Atasha lying to us on purpose, all of it. Gen returned the favor by explaining that, once the other buildings were searched, she suspected that Atasha had lied about this “hospital”. The other Reapers were waiting outside, in case we needed back up.
“She didn’t,” Matt replied. “She just waited until she was distracted taking you guys out and trying to kill me and then got in a cheap shot.”
For a moment, I was distracted.
I turned around and pointed my knife at Matt, who was giving me a devilish smile, like he had pissed me off on purpose.
“I had no choice, if I didn’t kill her, she was going to kill all of us,” I snapped.
“Whatever you have to tell yourself,” Matt teased.
I gave him a quick glare and then returned to searching through the building.
“We’ve been here already,” Gen chided a few seconds later, when we reached a four way intersection of hallways.
How could she tell? Everything looked exactly the same. We had been running around for at least five minutes, it was amazing we hadn’t seen the entire building by now.
“Okay, genius, we’re probably too late, but if you think you can find a place you haven’t been to yet, go for it,” I growled, frustrated more by my inability to find my way to Torn than Gen’s words.
“Gladly,” Gen answered as she jogged ahead of the group. “There are nice ways to talk to people, you know,” she called back as we all hurried after her.
Torn was probably gone by now, we had wasted way too much time. If he really had escaped, we would never find him again. Doing everything I possibly could to find this one guy had taken almost two weeks, and that was when he was in the same city as me. If he left, he could disappear completely, and I would never find him.
“That the staircase?” Gen asked a few minutes later.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered to myself. “How the hell did you do that?” I asked in astonishment was we all sprinted toward the same metal stairs I had walked up with Atasha.
“You explained what happened before we got here. Based on your description of the building when you entered, the basic layout of the building itself, the wandering around we did—”