She turned, her eyes widening in surprise as she saw Geoffrey. She smiled when he reached her. “I thought you considered this plan too foolish.”
“I do,” he assured her as he took her hands into his. “But I can’t let you go alone. Emma, you’re the only person in this world I’ll be foolish for.”
She smiled at him. “Well, I’m glad you changed your mind.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re both adorable,” Erik said. “Now can we go?”
Geoffrey nodded. “Do we have a plan at all?”
“Yeah,” Erik answered easily. “Don’t die.”
—
Theron chuckled as his body slammed face-first into the old, brick wall. He turned his face, his cheek pressing hard against the wall, so that he could see Kallias out of the corner of his eye. “It took you long enough,” he taunted. “I was beginning to wonder if you even cared enough to try to save her.”
Kallias growled as several vampires pulled him off of Theron, restraining the furious vampire as well as they could. “I’ll kill you. I will rip you apart.”
Theron turned around and straightened his clothes, raising an eyebrow at Kallias’s arms that were being held tightly by six vampires. “I am not sure you’re in any position to be threatening me,” he laughed. Kallias growled lowly as Theron stepped toward him. “I bet you were frightened when you felt her pain.”
Kallias didn’t even look like himself. His entire body shook with violent rage, and his eyes looked wild and feral. “Where is she?” he snarled.
Theron’s lips curved into a sick, sadistic smile. “Take him to her.”
The vampires led him downstairs. When they reached the basement and Kallias finally saw Rose’s crumpled, bleeding form, the color faded from his face, his enraged expression morphing into an expression of fear and horror. “Rose?”
Rose didn’t even lift her head. She just lay there, curled forward in her chair. Kallias called her name again and again, desperate to wake her.
“I doubt she will wake,” Theron laughed. “She has lost a lot of blood.”
“How could you do this to her?” Kallias breathed.
Theron snorted at the ridiculous question and the despair that he heard in Kallias’s voice. “How could I do this? You sound so pitiful,” he sneered, rolling his eyes. “I did it for the same reason that I did it to you. Because I enjoy it.”
Kallias looked at Theron, pain twisting at his face. “You will pay for this.”
Theron glanced at Kallias’s restrained arms and scoffed, “I doubt it.”
Kallias glanced back at Rose, another jolt of fear traveling through his veins as he listened to her slow, weak heartbeat. “Let me heal her,” he said quietly.
Theron raised an eyebrow. “Why would I do that?”
“Because she’s dying,” Kallias said. “Let her go, and you can kill me.”
“No,” he answered. “That’s not good enough. I want to kill you both.”
Kallias suddenly twisted and swept his leg under the feet of the nearest vampire, managing to knock one of the vampires that held him off of his feet.
After he’d allowed them to drag him down the stairs so easily, the sudden fight took the vampires by surprise, and he managed to get the upper hand fairly quickly, kicking one of them in the stomach and slinging another vampire across the room. He used the brief break to remove his dagger from its sheath.
He heard a flurry of movement behind him and spun just in time to swing his blade, beheading the approaching vampire in one, clean sweep.
A short, male vampire tried to grab Kallias from behind, but Kallias elbowed him and twisted to shove his dagger into the vampire’s chest.
With no time to dislodge the blade, he spun around and shoved his hand into another approaching vampire’s chest, ripping out the vampire’s heart.
By now, every vampire in the room had joined the attack, more vampires than he could count. He no longer saw the vampires as they attacked him or considered his next move. There was no time for that. He acted on instinct, on ages of experience and training, killing everything that approached him. He didn’t notice the spray of blood that seemed suspended in the air, or the shallow wounds that he obtained as he fought. He simply fought and killed all who attacked him.
The battle continued for just a matter of minutes, in which Kallias managed to kill more than half of the vampires that engaged him, but it all came to an end when Theron decided Kallias had killed too many of his followers.
Kallias swung a sword that he’d acquired after disarming one of the other vampires and beheaded the tall, broad-shouldered, mountain of a vampire approaching him, and before he could turn toward the next vampire, he felt his body pulled back as someone placed a cold blade against his neck. He froze as he realized that fighting now could result in losing his head. Literally.
He heard Theron’s low chuckle in his ear. “You may be stronger than every other vampire in the room, but you will never be stronger than me.”
“I suppose that’s easy to say when you have a blade against my throat,” Kallias said. “Put it down, and we’ll find out which of us is actually stronger.”
“I don’t need to prove anything to you,” Theron muttered.
Kallias wanted to respond with the retort Theron’s cowardice deserved, but he couldn’t. Because as the surviving vampires gathered their composure and returned to their places around the room, he saw Rose’s wounded body again. His breath caught in his throat as he realized that she could die at any moment.
He stared at the dark crimson blood that saturated her white T-shirt, the holes that opened around gruesome stab wounds. He heard the slow, weak beating of her heart. Theron was right. She would never wake up in this state, not without being healed by vampire blood first. She would remain unconscious until her heart stopped, and it would stop soon. She’d been almost fully bled out.
“Give up, Kallias. There are too many of us here for you to fight. You might as well accept her fate,” Theron told him. “She is dying as we speak.”
“I will never accept that,” Kallias said in a broken voice.
Theron laughed. “Well, you will have no choice soon enough.”
Kallias closed his eyes and concentrated as much as possible. It was difficult because all he could think about was Rose. He wanted to focus on every aspect of her, her slow, labored breaths, her weakened heartbeat. He needed to focus on her to make sure that she was still alive. But as the rage built inside of him, he concentrated intensely until his mind was clear of everything else.
Theron suddenly collapsed onto his knees, the blade sliding across the floor as he dropped it, as his hands went immediately to his head. He began to scream in agony. As soon as the dagger left his throat, Kallias ran toward Rose.
While many of the vampires were shifting and glancing around nervously, not sure whether or not to go after Kallias and not sure what was happening to Theron, one, a stout, blonde male vampire, narrowed his eyes at Kallias and raced toward him. Before Kallias reached Rose, the vampire reached him and stabbed him from behind, shoving a sword in the center of his back.
The tip of the blade protruded from Kallias’s chest, the rest of the sword still buried in his heart. The vampire jerked the sword out of his chest, and Kallias fell to his knees, gasping as blood poured rapidly from his heart.
The pain of the injury was too much. He lost his concentration.
Theron stopped screaming as the agonizing pain in his head suddenly disappeared, as if it had never been there. Still gasping, he glanced at Kallias in shock and then at the vampire that had stabbed him. “What just happened?”
The blonde vampire moved to the other side of Kallias so that he could stare down at him. His amber eyes narrowed with suspicion. “He did that to you. I know because I have seen it done before. It is something that Alana does.”
Kallias glanced up at the vampire, frowning suspiciously at the vampire’s use of present tense, rather than past tense, in reference to Erik�
�s dead lover.
“Alana?” Theron repeated, still gasping for air. “The telepath?”
“Yes, sir.” The vampire spoke with an obvious Norwegian accent. “Telepaths can make you feel pain, or they make you think you feel it, at least.”
“How do you know Alana?” Kallias asked, his voice weaker now.
“Ex-lover,” the vampire answered with a shrug.
Kallias exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the pain that throbbed in his chest as his pulse began to slow from blood loss. “She had a lot of those, apparently.”
“I did her dirty work for a while,” the vampire bragged.
“And now you’ve moved on to Theron?” Kallias chuckled. “Pathetic.”
He narrowed his eyes at Kallias. “I will stab you again, you…”
“York!” Theron yelled, glaring murderously at the vampire.
The vampire scowled at Theron. “It’s Bjorn, not York. My name is Bjorn.”
“Do not change the subject,” Theron snapped. “You agreed to follow my commands. I am in charge here, not you. Do you understand?”
Bjorn sighed, “Yes, sir.”
“I will be the one to kill him, not any of you,” Theron muttered.
“Yes, sir,” Bjorn repeated again, still glaring at Kallias.
Theron came to stand beside Bjorn. “So, how did he do that to me?”
Bjorn turned toward Theron, his eyebrows lifting at the ridiculous question. “Well, obviously, he is a telepath, like Alana,” he pointed out.
Theron narrowed his eyes at the vampire. “Unless you want to end up in the same shape as he is, I would suggest you watch that attitude.”
Bjorn cowered, ducking his head. “I apologize.”
“Pathetic,” Kallias repeated, taunting the vampire.
Bjorn glared at him again, tightly gripping the hilt of the sword.
“Kallias isn’t a telepath,” Theron insisted. “I would know if he were.”
“Because you’re such a genius, right?” Kallias scoffed, smirking.
Theron growled at Kallias and took a threatening step toward him, but Kallias didn’t even flinch. He just stared at Theron, daring him to come closer.
“He didn’t even touch you, and yet, he somehow caused you pain. The only explanation is that he is a telepath, just like Alana,” Bjorn insisted. “He’s not dangerous right now because he’s too injured to use his abilities, but still, maintaining a safe distance from him is probably a good idea, just in case.”
Theron narrowed his eyes at the vampire. “Did I ask for your opinion?”
“I was just trying to help,” Bjorn sputtered.
“No, you were trying to sound smarter than me,” Theron growled. He pulled out his blade and shoved it into Bjorn’s stomach. The vampire fell to his knees in front of him, as Theron snarled, “Next time, keep your mouth shut.”
“And you should also probably consider not helping psychotic killers, for once,” Kallias added as he scowled at the injured vampire kneeling beside him.
Kallias sucked in a harsh, shaky breath as he glanced down at the chest wound that continued to bleed profusely. He could feel himself growing tired and weak, and he knew that it wouldn’t be long before he lost consciousness.
Theron knelt in front of him. “See? You’re harmless, aren’t you?”
Kallias made eye contact with him. “Let me heal Rose.”
Theron blinked. “Uh, yeah, okay. Why not?”
Kallias sighed, relieved that his abilities had actually worked, despite his injuries. He couldn’t stand or walk, so he had no choice but to crawl toward Rose.
The rest of the vampires began to shift and mutter under their breath.
One woman stepped forward. “Um…Theron? I thought… It’s just…you said you wanted them both dead,” she stammered, her hands shaking.
Theron spun toward her and growled, “Are you questioning me?”
Her eyes widened. “No. No. It’s not… I just…”
A man spoke up. “Uh…you did say you would kill them tonight.”
Theron glared murderously at him. “Excuse me?”
Still holding his hand over the wound, Bjorn looked back and forth between Theron and Kallias. Just before Kallias could reach Rose, Bjorn lunged at him, knocking him to the ground. Bjorn crawled on top of him and shoved his sword into his chest, twisting upward to ensure that he was too injured to move. Already too weak and injured to fight back, Kallias yelled out as the sword ripped through his chest. His skin grew pale as the blood drained out of him.
Theron just stood there, gaping at them. “What…what just happened?”
“He was controlling your mind,” Bjorn said in a pained voice. “I had to stop him before he healed her. His concentration should be broken now.”
Theron ran a hand through his short, black, hair, and glanced around at the other vampires, furious that Kallias had fooled him so easily.
Bjorn fell over to the side, wincing in pain as he did.
Theron noticed that Kallias was losing consciousness. He looked at the two vampires that had questioned him. “You two, take him over to the opposite wall and restrain him. It shouldn’t take much. He’ll be dead soon,” He glanced at Bjorn. “And I have decided to forgive your faults just this once. Go feed.”
Bjorn nodded. He climbed to his feet and staggered toward the stairs.
Once Kallias was restrained, Theron walked over to him, careful to keep a safe distance. “Your girlfriend seemed to think that you knew better than to walk into a trap. Too bad she will never wake up to find out that she was wrong.”
Kallias’s eyes fluttered opened, his breathing sharp and unsteady as he struggled to stay conscious, despite his fatal injuries. “I did know better,” he said hoarsely. “But I couldn’t just leave her to die. I had to try to save her.”
“Well, you definitely tried,” Theron laughed, “but you failed.”
Kallias looked again at Rose, desperately wishing he could save her.
—
Erik, Geoffrey, and Emma stopped just short of the abandoned morgue as they realized that they were not alone in that dark alleyway. They peered toward the darker end of the alley, at the man and woman pressed up against the wall.
“I recognize that scent,” Erik muttered under his breath.
Geoffrey stepped forward, preparing to attack the man, but as the man stepped back to look at them and the woman collapsed onto the ground, he realized they’d arrived too late. The woman’s heart was no longer beating.
The man wiped the blood from his mouth as he walked toward them. Blood soaked his blue button-down shirt, and the large, ripped hole in the middle of his shirt indicated the reason for all of the blood. He’d been injured recently, but the wound was already healing. The man brushed his long blonde hair out of his eyes as he stared at Erik, his amber eyes wide with shock. “Erik Olafsson?”
“Bjorn,” Erik responded. “It’s been a while.”
“I’d say so,” Bjorn laughed. “What has it been? A thousand years?”
“Longer than that,” Erik corrected. “Twelve hundred, at least.”
He nodded. He veered off toward the left, beginning to circle the three vampires. His bloodstained lips curved into a smirk. “I know why you’re here.”
“Oh, do you?” Erik said with a raised eyebrow.
“Your friend is inside, isn’t he?” Bjorn asked in an amused tone.
“Wrong,” Erik said. “Both of my friends are inside.”
Bjorn laughed, his eyes widening in surprise. “The human? You’re siding with humans now? What would Alana think of her precious lover-boy now?”
“You were with her once, too, you know,” Erik muttered.
Bjorn narrowed his eyes. “But I was never her favorite,” he sneered bitterly, the jealousy so thick that it tainted his voice. “She always picked you over me, no matter what I did. You and that stupid, lesbian whore. You’re the only ones she ever loved.”
Erik winced. “Her name is Kara. An
d I’d watch it with the sexist and homophobic remarks. She’ll come across the world and kick both of our asses.”
“I’m not afraid of her,” Bjorn snarled.
“Then you’re an idiot,” Erik muttered. “Kara’s a badass by anyone’s standards. I am not ashamed to admit that she scares the hell out of me.”
Geoffrey and Emma just stood there awkwardly, not exactly sure why they were talking, instead of fighting. “What are we doing?” Geoffrey asked Erik.
Erik turned toward him and grinned. “This is the part where we talk before we fight because we’re both waiting for the other to let his guard down.”
Bjorn chose that moment to attack. He lunged at Erik, shoving him into the block wall of the building. Erik winced as pain spread across his back, but he didn’t hesitate to counterattack. He turned and slammed Bjorn against the wall, but then, Bjorn managed to reverse their position with surprising ease.
Bjorn pulled a sword from the sheath on his belt and placed the tip of the blade against Erik’s neck. “You’re much weaker than you used to be.”
Erik grimaced and leaned his head back against the wall, putting space between the blade and his neck. “I wish I could say the same about you.”
Bjorn laughed, “How long has it been since you fed?”
Erik suddenly grasped Bjorn’s hand, ready to use his empathic abilities, but Bjorn quickly shifted away from him and held his sword out at arms-length.
“I remember how your abilities work,” Bjorn reminded him.
Erik smirked. “What’s wrong? Afraid I’ll make you cry again?”
Bjorn stood his ground, his feet squared off with his shoulders, prepared to withstand Erik’s next attack. Erik, on the other hand, leaned lazily against the wall, wearing a cocky smirk, as if this were some kind of game, rather than a battle to the death. Of course, to Erik, the two were one in the same.
Just as Bjorn stepped forward with his sword, Erik leapt to the side, dodging the attack. Erik moved to stand where Bjorn had stood moments ago.
Bjorn growled and ran toward him again, but Erik dodged him just as he’d done before. Erik laughed at him. “What’s wrong? Can’t keep up?”
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 78