Result of kicking the toothpick? Pretty much the same. The bone snapped like dry spaghetti, and my feet burst through the eardrum.
For a moment I lay there, gooey with earwax, my legs dangling out the other side of the drum.
Then Lilith gasped in agony.
GASPS ARE SHARP INHALATIONS
And there’s a channel called the eustachian tube, connecting the esophagus to the inner ear. When you sneeze, you feel the pressure from your lungs push against the inside of your eardrums. If you inhale sharply, it creates a suction in the same region. When there happens to be a featherlight object in the vicinity …
Yeah. I was sucked feetfirst through the hole in the eardrum and down into Lilith’s throat.
I SAW BLOODRED LIGHT BENEATH ME
I was heading for Lilith’s larynx—the source of those awful red bolts that were battering Miranda. It looked like a chamber of magma, and me, I was barreling down into the volcano.
Luckily, the red light was only afterglow. Lilith was no longer shouting, “KNEEL!” She was screeching, “Ow, Jesus, fuck!” and clutching her ear.
The air power of her screech sent me shooting back up her throat. Then she sucked in another breath. More cursing, more gasps. I tumbled ass over teakettle up and down her windpipe, caught in the hurricane from her lungs.
Instinctively, I tried to stop myself. I grabbed at her windpipe’s wall as I caromed off. But stress is force over area, and my fingers were thumbtack points. As I dug them into Lilith’s flesh, I simply gouged out fistfuls of esophagus, like filling my hands with hamburger. At least it wasn’t bloody—most vampire tissues have no blood. But bone-dry burger is its own kind of gross.
Apparently, Lilith could feel the damage. I imagine a hot tearing rasp in her throat.
She coughed hard. Up I came on a bronchial gale.
I WAS SPAT OUT LIKE AN ANCHOVY ON A WAVE OF SALIVA, MUCUS, AND YOU-REALLY-DON’T-WANT-TO-KNOW-WHAT-ELSE-IS-IN-A-VAMPIRE’S-THROAT
As usual, air resistance slowed me, but I still shot a heroic distance out of Lilith’s mouth, thanks to the supernatural strength of her lungs.
That worked out well. I was clear of the blast zone when Miranda finally returned fire.
A VOLLEY OF GOLDEN SOUND THUNDERED OUT OF MIRANDA’S MOUTH
Quite the night for oral emissions.
Miranda sang an angry boom that knocked Lilith clean off her feet. Lilith hit the pavement ass-first and slid scraping backward for several meters. It must have given her a major case of road rash.
I flapped away hard, expecting more fireworks. They didn’t arrive. Lilith lay on her back, eyes open but body unmoving. Miranda had doubled over, hands on her knees and panting heavily. Her blood-pocked force field was gone; she must have put every drop of her power into that single thunderous shot. Now, she had no strength to deliver a coup de grâce.
Still panting, Miranda said, “Can we … stop fighting … now? Maybe just … talk?”
“No,” Lilith replied. Her voice was a whisper—I must have damaged her throat. I felt guilty, but also relieved: She couldn’t use the Voice again. The Voice might be a spell rather than a sound, but magic is bound by rules. If Lilith’s physical voice stopped working, so did her magical one.
Or so I hoped. And so it seemed.
But Lilith had one trick left, even more extreme than the Voice. She flared with red brilliance, like lava bursting in a fountain straight out of Mount Etna.
I’D READ ABOUT THIS: THE BLOOD BURN
Also known as the Inferno or the Pyre. They were different names for the same phenomenon: a vampire igniting all the blood in her body.
Like a poker player going all in, Lilith had converted all her stolen corpuscles into arcane energy. She would burn through that boost in about sixty seconds. In the meantime, however, her speed and strength would be amped to the max.
She wouldn’t think. She wouldn’t feel pain. She’d reduced her world to a single goal: feeding.
Like a missile that’s spent all its fuel, Lilith was simply a payload plunging straight toward her target. She’d crash into a coma unless she drank blood right away. She’d stop at nothing to get it, and precious little on Earth was strong enough to hold her off.
LILITH’S FANGS STABBED OUT OF HER MOUTH
This wasn’t the creepy arousal I’d seen before. This was full throat-ripping extension.
Lilith spun her legs gymnastically, helicoptering so fast that the momentum pulled her up to her feet. I’d never seen anyone move so quickly. Few mortals had, and almost none had survived.
Lilith charged toward Miranda. This wasn’t the burst phenomenon that vampires are famous for—Lilith was too feral to remember she could do that. But she was so cranked, she didn’t need fancy tricks.
Lilith shot toward Miranda like a bolt from a crossbow. That’s not poetry; it’s just the literal truth.
MIRANDA’S REFLEXES WERE SUPERFAST
I’d already seen how quick Miranda had become. Even so, she barely had a heartbeat to react. As Lilith streaked along the alley in a blaze of bloodred fire, Miranda leaned toward the pavement and sang a single golden note. It lifted her off her feet like a rocket’s blast. She soared straight up into the air.
Even so, she barely escaped. Lilith launched herself too, her fingertips turned to claws. They raked out and gouged, catching the edge of Miranda’s coat as she rose. The coat was a ski jacket filled with eiderdown; feathers exploded in a cloud of white that filled Lilith’s face and blinded her. She hissed and clawed at the down, scratching her cheeks in the process. By the time Lilith could see again, Miranda was flying well out of reach—no longer singing to stay aloft, simply glowing as golden as the sun.
LILITH BEGAN TO FALL
She gave Miranda a last furious hiss. Then she looked downward, to the bodies of Jools, Richard, and Shar lying on the ground. Lilith bared her fangs in anticipation of a feast.
Miranda noticed, and switched from escape mode to attack. She followed Lilith down, singing shot after shot of focused sound. But the golden power of those blasts was as pale as diluted lemonade, and I couldn’t hear their echoes at all. Miranda was running on empty.
Lilith wasn’t fazed by the puppy-weak blasts raining down on her. Her blood-maddened attention was fixed on the targets below.
I HAD NO PLAN, BUT I FLEW TOWARD HER
Without thinking, I’d grown to the size of a wasp. It seemed to be the sweet spot that let me fly fastest, given all the trade-offs between weight, air resistance, and coattail propulsion. By the time Lilith hit the pavement, I’d caught up with her.
I could have killed her on the spot; I just had to enter her ear, then grow. End of story. Not even a vampire can survive having her brain squished out of her skull. In fact, I realized I could be an unstoppable assassin. Shrunk to a pinpoint, I could slip past any sensors. Unseen, I could sneak into anyone’s body and wreak havoc: heart attacks, strokes, aneurysms. Then I could escape microscopically. With practice, I could make my kills look like natural causes … maybe even create delayed effects by starting little bleeds in the brain that wouldn’t cause death until I was somewhere else for an alibi.
I could murder anyone, anywhere, anytime. I could take down world leaders during televised speeches; I could dispatch any Darkling or Spark, hero or villain; if I wanted, I could casually kill innocents on the street.
The prospect made me sick to my stomach. I could be far worse than Lilith with her simple thirst for blood. It would be trivial to kill her, but then what? Where would it stop?
So don’t judge me for letting her live, or for any other monster I haven’t slaughtered. Do you think I don’t realize how much tragedy I could prevent? Leaving maniacs alive is a promise of horrors to come.
But.
When I shift my vision to look at myself, I see a perfectly normal person who happens to have powers. I don’t see the apex predator of this entire plane of existence.
I cling to that. I have to.
I COULDN’T KILL
LILITH IN COLD BLOOD
But I couldn’t let her kill anyone else either. I darted at her eyes, hoping I’d distract her like an irritating gnat. If I could hold her attention long enough, her blood boost would burn out. She’d collapse. Problem solved.
So I whisked in front of her like a kamikaze bug. I planned to shrink out of sight a heartbeat later, before Lilith could grab me.
Lilith’s hand shot out so fast I could barely see it. She snatched me out of the air and squeezed. Hard.
If I’d been a real insect, I’d be nothing but squashed guts. Surprise: All of Lilith’s amplified strength couldn’t pulp me. I felt nothing but the coldness of Lilith’s undead skin. She might as well have tried crushing a diamond in her bare hands.
Two seconds of squeezing. Two seconds of Blood Burn wasted. Then she threw me away in disgust.
She hurled me toward the van. I smashed headfirst through the back window like a pellet of buckshot. I sailed the full length of the van and bounced off the front windshield, making a collision star in the glass.
I FELL ONTO THE DASHBOARD, AMAZED I WAS STILL ALIVE
I hurt; I expected bruises. But as far as I could tell, I had no major injuries, despite the equivalent of a high-speed car crash without wearing a seat belt.
Still not believing it, I turned my vision on myself: the first time I’d seriously looked at Kim 2.0.
My skin wasn’t skin; it was rock.
The rock looked much like my normal skin, which was why it hadn’t caught my attention. But the color was a little more sandy, and its sheen appreciably more glossy. In geology speak, my luster was vitreous to adamantine. When I zoomed my vision in close, I could see that every exposed surface of my body had changed into small flat crystal faces, like the facets of a well-cut gem.
Whoa.
Some Sparks are only a teeny bit super: able to breathe underwater or change color like a chameleon. Me, I’d hit the jackpot. Perception, shrinking, and stone-skin armor.
Part of my brain started asking, What kind of stone? What hardness? What mineral formula? But another part realized that was only my mind’s way to avoid dealing with Lilith.
Grimacing, I sent my vision to see what she was doing.
LILITH WAS ABOUT TO SINK HER FANGS INTO RICHARD
She held him high, his feet barely touching the ground. Lilith had lost her human intelligence, but she was Darkling enough to pause and savor her victory. She flared her fangs … aimed for Richard’s throat …
… and got bodychecked by Jools.
A blood-amped vampire is hellishly strong. A normal human might simply bounce off, like hitting a wall. But even before Jools became a Spark, she could deliver a body check that worked. Now she was even better: more strength, speed, and accuracy, plus an instinct for using leverage in her favor. She struck Lilith perfectly, knocking the vampire off her feet and making her drop Richard in surprise.
That was the good news. The bad news was that Jools didn’t have nearly enough raw muscle to stop Lilith for more than a heartbeat. Jools could distract her by using surprise, but that advantage ended instantly.
Lilith whipped back onto her feet in a fraction of a second. Hissing with rage, she threw herself at Jools, all fangs and claws and fury.
JOOLS WAS PREPARED
Take the world’s great martial arts: kung fu, Brazilian jujitsu, boxing, whatever. Add every technique from bar brawls, combat zones, and those underworld arenas where people fight to the death. Whatever punch, kick, or elbow smash you can think of, Jools could do it as well as any human ever. That was her gift—not to be super, but human max in everything.
(From time to time, I catch myself saying, “Poor Jools didn’t get real superpowers.” Then I contemplate how astounding Jools’s brain must be. Not just because she can pluck textbook facts out of nowhere, but because she can survey seven billion possible responses to a given situation and choose the very best. And her brain does it fast enough that Jools still moves at top human speed.)
It was still a close call. Lilith lunged so inhumanly fast, she almost caught Jools in her claws. But as Lilith charged forward, Jools twisted sideways just enough to evade Lilith’s outstretched arms. Jools grabbed one of those arms and pulled, accelerating Lilith that much more.
Jools tripped her as she sped past. Lilith lost her balance and fell, landing nose down several paces away. She skidded, grinding her face along the pavement for a meter before she came to a stop.
“Go home, Vampirella,” Jools said. “You’re drunk.”
Howling, Lilith scrambled to her feet. Her face looked as if it had been buffed by a cheese grater. But a blood-amped vampire doesn’t feel pain. She came back at Jools even faster than before, and this time Jools didn’t dodge quite quickly enough. She tried for the same kind of grab-trip-throw, and succeeded in making Lilith do another face-plant; in the process, however, one of Lilith’s claws caught Jools on the cheek, ripping a bloody gash from Jools’s ear down across her lips.
Jools’s flesh sagged below the cut. A chunk of face hung off like stripped wallpaper.
The smell of blood drove Lilith mad. She leapt to her feet with her eyes set to “bugfuck.”
LILITH WAS CLOSE TO RICHARD’S PRONE BODY
She jumped over him, frantic to get at Jools and her welling blood. As Lilith passed Richard, my attention was caught by the dart in his thigh.
Ooo. Idea.
FLAP-FLAP WITH THE COATTAILS
I bat-out-of-hell’d through the van back toward the window where I’d come in. I was nearly there when I realized how precise I had to be in order to exit through my entrance hole. Robin Hood splitting the arrow—the hole was exactly my size, and here I was flying at high speed, imagining I could thread the needle perfectly.
Being made of rock, I wouldn’t get hurt hitting the glass. But I was still leaping before I looked: not the safe, strategic person I’d been since Kimmi died.
Of course, when I got to the hole, I just shrank a little and passed through easily. The new Kim was good at this stuff, even if the old Kim was slow to figure that out.
I SPED TO THE END OF THE ALLEY
Lilith had dropped her tranq gun when she went Voicy-berserk. It lay beside a box containing ten darts filled with sedative, plus two spare canisters of pressurized gas propellant.
I grew back to normal size, then picked up the rifle. It wasn’t identical to the guns the park rangers had shown me, but it wasn’t too different. I ejected the gas canister that was already in the rifle, since I didn’t know how much charge it had left. I loaded up one of the spares, then put a new dart into the gun’s chamber.
BY THE TIME I’D READIED THE RIFLE, JOOLS’S LUCK HAD TURNED SOUR
No human can beat a blood-amped vampire forever, especially not when bleeding profusely. Lilith had somehow grabbed Jools in a face-to-face bear hug. Jools had one arm trapped in Lilith’s grip, but the other was free. Jools had jammed the free arm against Lilith’s throat and was just barely holding Lilith’s head out of biting range.
Lilith snapped, her fangs protruding as far as they would go. Jools’s face continued to bleed; Lilith’s tongue extended hungrily, trying to lap blood like a dog drinking from a bowl.
Lilith’s arms wrapped so tightly around Jools’s spine, Jools was bent back in a V. Some of Jools’s ribs must have been broken; maybe vertebrae too. Moment by moment, Lilith tightened her clench, threatening to crush Jools into two separate pieces. Blood gushed from Jools’s face like toothpaste squeezed from a tube.
As for Miranda, she had landed and taken up a position behind Jools. She sang over Jools’s shoulder, full force into Lilith’s face. The sonic barrage helped push back Lilith’s head, keeping her a finger’s width away from Jools’s blood.
But the strength of Miranda’s blasts and Jools’s arms weren’t enough: little by little, Lilith was closing the gap. She couldn’t have much time left—another few seconds and she’d use up the boost from going Inferno. But if she got even a drop of new blood, she
wouldn’t collapse. She’d return to normal, strong enough to keep fighting.
That would be bad.
I LIFTED THE TRANQ GUN AND LOOKED DOWN THE BARREL
My lovely Spark-o-Vision showed me a new trick: a zoom with crosshairs.
Mind. Blown.
My sphere of perception collapsed down flat, showing a close-up of Lilith with a white + sign on top of her—exactly like first-person-shooter games where the screen shows where you’re aiming. Richard once called such visual aids “annoying cheats for n00bs”: even if a real weapon had telescopic sights, a targeting laser, and all the rest, nothing could guarantee you’d hit where the crosshairs indicated. They were a lie. They weren’t real life.
Well, Richard, I thought, I’m not real life either. I’m a gorram Spark.
I CENTERED MY N00B CROSSHAIRS ON LILITH
Everything slowed, like the bullet-time effect from The Matrix.
I thought, This is getting ridiculous. Slow motion? Really? The universe was crazy eager to make me the ultimate killer.
I pulled the trigger anyway. Meh, it was only a tranq gun.
THE DART FLEW STRAIGHT AND TRUE
Well, straightish and trueish, subject to deflection by gravity, the slight winter breeze, the eddies of air in the alley, and the itty-bitty wobbles from imperfections in the dart. My powers must have compensated for all those deviations, because the dart zipped flawlessly over Jools’s shoulder and hit Lilith in the eye.
Earlier in the fight, I’d decided to leave Lilith’s eyes alone. Not anymore—the situation was too dire for me to be squeamish. Or maybe it was just the difference between ganking an eyeball with my bare hands and shooting it from afar with a dart.
Either way, out, vile jelly. Sploosh.
LILITH SHRIEKED
Not the roar of a wounded predator. Lilith shrieked like a stricken child, bewildered by what had just happened. She dropped Jools and staggered away, clutching her eye.
She whimpered.
Shit.
JOOLS FELL
Her legs wouldn’t hold her. They were as limp as rags.
Miranda possessed just enough strength to put herself between Lilith and Jools. Then she slumped, exhausted.
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