by Pond, Simone
No more stalling, it was time to go through the portal …
I stepped closer to the spinning pool of neon light and turned to Rocco. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, come for me, okay?”
He gave me a sturdy nod. “If I end up going through that portal, you can count on me taking out every son-of-a-bitch in that place.”
“You’d never survive,” Lucius murmured.
“Don’t test me, vampire,” Rocco said, then looked at me. “If you ain’t back in three nickels, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
I moved closer to the portal, and an icy chill filled my veins. I closed my eyes and blindly stepped into the light, praying it wouldn’t hurt too much.
It didn’t hurt at all. And in a blink, I was in an old-fashioned parlor that looked like a place where wealthy businessmen from the Victorian era might’ve taken respite. The chaise lounges, tiffany lamps and Persian carpets were lavish, but antiquated. Had I traveled back in time? Judging from the men in their modern suits and the cosmetically perfected ladies flirting with them, I’d say no. Many of the men sat on the antique velvet couches while the women giggled and whispered into their ears, running their polished fingernails through their hair. Other ladies in corseted negligees strolled about, flaunting their wares to potential customers. Couples would saunter off behind a dark red velvet curtain to another section to finish their business transactions.
My Armor glowed, so it was still in activation mode. I tapped the top of my head to cloak myself. I had fifteen minutes before Rocco came blazing through the portal ready to fight. That wouldn’t end well, so I needed to hurry up and find Charlotte.
I did a quick scan of the room. Charlotte wasn’t among the scantily clothed ladies flouncing around the parlor. The tightness gripping my throat had loosened a little. Hopefully she was safe. I wouldn’t know for sure until I explored behind that red velvet curtain.
I slipped through the folds of the thick fabric and entered a long hallway. Endless doors lined the hall like a house of mirrors. Great. I’d never be able to check every one of those rooms in less than fifteen minutes. I could’ve used Rocco’s sonar skills at the moment, but all I had was my acute sense of smell. Was I supposed to sniff out Charlotte like some kind of supernatural hound dog? I couldn’t even remember if she had a distinct scent.
Suddenly, a strong odor of rotting flowers—roses to be precise—curled around me. The fetid scent made my stomach curdle. I’d know that smell anywhere. Lilith, the diabolical succubus, was in close proximity, no doubt draining the life out of some gentleman caller. I followed the trail down the hall a few yards and stopped in front of a door. I didn’t have to press my ear against the wood to hear the man moaning as Lilith purred spells into his ears. I didn’t want to enter the room and never be able to un-see what was going on, but I only had about ten minutes before Rocco would barrel through the portal and slay anything in his path.
I took the safe route and knocked on the heavy door. When no one responded, I pounded harder. And when that didn’t work, I used my magical boot to bust down the door. The thing came off its hinges and slammed to the plush carpeting. I stepped over the plank of wood, holding up my shield and sword, and entered the suite.
Lilith jumped from the king-sized bed stark naked and glared at me. “Fiona Farrow. What a nice surprise.”
“Where’s Charlotte?”
She cackled and quickly shifted from the gorgeous blond supermodel into the slithering, scaly succubus. The man lying in the bed rolled off to the floor and scurried to the bathroom, locking the door behind him. Lilith’s long tail came out from behind her and charged at me like an arrow, which I deflected with my shield. The shock gave her a jolt and she stumbled back a few feet. Her jagged teeth chomped at me as she hissed.
“Can you please shift back to your regular self? This is disgusting. And played out. You don’t stand a chance against me.”
She didn’t appreciate that in the slightest and sprung at me, claws out and tail dripping venom. I lifted my sword and came down hard across that unruly appendage, cutting so deep that the tip dangled by a few strands of scaly skin. The succubus dropped to the floor shrieking in agony. I had to look away to keep from throwing up. Lilith had no choice but to shift back into her human form.
“Please. Don’t kill me. Please,” she cried, pain gripping her face.
I held my sword over her, ready to lop off her head at any moment. “Give me one good reason not to.”
“I’ll tell you where Charlotte is.”
I pressed my sword up against her slender throat. “You’re going to tell me where she is either way.”
“She’ll never talk to you again if you kill me.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take. So just tell me where she is. You have thirty seconds before I start slicing off body parts.”
Lilith curled up into a ball and sobbed. My sympathy for her wasn’t helping the badass sword fighter persona I was trying to live up to. As much as I hated her, killing her seemed so drastic. After all, she was my best friend’s sister. Did I really want to ruin Charlotte’s life? I knew how hard it was to lose family. But the succubus had tried to kill me once before. And in college she had stolen away every guy who had shown interest in me. Oh, and she did turn me over to Cagliostro for a blood sacrifice a few months back. Screw her.
I closed in and brought down my sword, cutting off her foot. She screamed, crying for me to stop.
“Where’s Charlotte?” I asked again.
“You’ll never get out of this place. You can’t get out through the in door. But I know how to get out. If you let me live I can help you.”
I most definitely didn’t trust Lilith, but we’d need to get out after I found Charlotte. I approached her again, lifting my sword and coming down hard on her wrist. Her cries pierced into my brain. Guilt hit me again. It wasn’t like going up against a stranger, but I had to get Charlotte and fast. I positioned my foot above her head, ready to come down hard on her skull.
“Let’s try this one last time: where is your sister?”
“Fine. Fine! Just please stop! It’ll take months for me to regenerate. She’s in room 4113. At the end of the hall.”
I smiled, cocking my head. “If she’s not there, I’m coming back to finish you off.” I kicked her stomach and she let out a screech, then passed out. That would have to do for the time being.
I went back to the hallway to find some of the escorts peering out from their rooms to see what was happening. At the far end of the hall, a team of guards wearing black coats and sunglasses appeared. Vampires. Just like the ones Lucius had with him earlier that morning. They’d be fast. I cloaked myself and dashed down the long hallway toward room 4113. I didn’t have much time, knowing that even if I was cloaked they’d follow my scent. Those high-powered bloodsuckers weren’t messing around.
Banging on the door, I called out, “Charlotte, are you in there? It’s Fiona. Please open the door!”
As predicted, the vampires caught my scent and sped toward me. Charlotte still hadn’t opened the door. I didn’t blame her, I could’ve been anyone posing as her best friend. Since I was cloaked, I darted back down the hall, zipping past the vampires. They caught my scent again and trailed after me. I entered a room and started busting through walls with my shield. My adrenaline was so incredibly torqued, nothing could stop me. Not even walls.
But my luck ran out when there weren’t any more walls to careen through, and the pack of vampires caught up and cornered me. The Armor would hold up against the vampires for a few minutes, but eventually my own strength would give out. Fortunately, I still had my small canister of mace in my coat pocket. I de-cloaked and sprayed the mist into their growling, fanged faces, causing the entire pack to collapse.
With the vampires down for the count, I dashed back to Charlotte’s room and banged on the door again. I tried busting it down with my boots, but there was some sort of magical spell on the door that I couldn’t break through. I had app
roximately two minutes to get Charlotte and head back through that portal.
“I’ve come to get you out of here!” I yelled through the door.
Finally, she spoke. “How do I know it’s really you?”
“I’m your best friend.”
“Everyone knows that,” she said.
“I’m twenty-one and I’m still a virgin,” I yelled.
“Also something everyone knows!”
“When you were little, you healed Lilith’s broken arm and from that moment on you knew you wanted to help others.”
Silence.
Then the rattle of the door handle. Standing before me was my best friend, wearing pajamas, her dark hair pulled back into a short ponytail. A halo of soft pink light radiated off of her. The healing light. She was still a healer. I stared into her big brown eyes and felt love swell in my chest. Definitely Charlotte.
“Fiona!” She gave me one of her rib-cracking hugs.
As happy as I was to see her, this wasn’t the time for a reunion. I grabbed her wrist and yanked her into the hallway just as another group of vampires entered.
“You still have your powers, right?” I asked.
She nodded.
“We’ll need to combine forces to get around the bloodsuckers. You ready?”
“I’ve been ready!”
We held hands and an electric shock jolted my arm. Charlotte’s powers had grown since we had last been together. We zipped down the hallway, me slicing through the vampires along the way. We arrived at the portal just as Rocco and Lucius entered the parlor.
“Stop!” I yelled, halting just before them. “We have to get out of here! It’s swarming with vampires.”
Rocco spit out his matchstick. “We can’t. Apparently, the portal only goes one way, and this prick bloodsucker won’t tell me where the exit is.”
twenty
Lucius leaned against the wall for support, half smiling. Though he was only a shell of his former self, he once again had all the leverage.
“You still have the silver?” I asked Rocco.
“Yep.”
“Go guard the entrance,” I said. “And stick with him, Charlotte.”
They went over to the red velvet curtain, and Rocco roped a stanchion of silver chains across the entrance to hold back the seething and hissing pack of vampires that would soon be coming for us.
“What’s your plan, Fiona Farrow?” Lucius grinned, no more twinkle left in his dead eyes. They looked like two moss-covered stones. Empty.
“Are you gonna tell me where the exit is?” I asked.
“Why should I? You’re just going to kill me.”
He was right about that. I no longer cared about keeping my end of the bargain. I wanted the vampire dead, along with all the others in the building. Maybe even the entire AOV. They were too powerful, and now that Cagliostro was gunning for them, the Monarchy would most definitely be in danger. I couldn’t imagine a world without Light, but that’s exactly what the evil bastards wanted. They wanted everything.
I lifted my sword over Lucius. “You’re sure you don’t want to tell me?”
“Not unless you want to make a deal.”
“I’m done making deals with demonic assholes.” I brought down my sword and severed Lucius’ head from his body.
His bones collapsed to the floor in a cloud of dust. No big explosions. No screaming or howling. Just a very uneventful end. It was kind of a letdown.
“Rocco!” I shouted across the parlor. “Throw me your matches.”
“Did you just kill our only hope of getting out of this bat cave?” he yelled.
“Just give me the matches!”
He tossed over the box, and I struck one of the wooden matchsticks. I placed the flaming matchstick on top of the pile of dust, igniting what remained of Lucius Diamond. I was pretty sure he couldn’t have come back from that, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
I picked up the three pairs of silver handcuffs from the floor and slipped them into my pocket, then joined Rocco and Charlotte by the entrance.
“That silver barricade won’t hold them off forever. We need to get to Lilith. She knows how to get out of here,” I told them.
Rocco folded his arms across his sturdy chest and tilted his head back. “You checked the hallway lately?”
“I don’t need to. I can smell them.” The whole place smelled like a bouquet of overly sweet roses and jasmine.
Charlotte smiled at me. “I’m so glad you came for me, Fiona. This place is weird.”
“They didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do, did they?”
She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t like that. I was actually taking online classes to pass the time.”
I laughed. All that time I had pictured Charlotte wearing skimpy clothes and “escorting” rich bankers and businessmen. The thought of her sitting in a fancy suite taking online classes was almost comical.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“I just thought maybe your sister had turned you. That she was pimping you around.”
Charlotte punched my arm playfully. “Come on, Fiona. You know me better than that.”
“I don’t know what I know anymore. Freaking Cagliostro had me fooled. Made me think he was you. I’m just so glad you’re okay, Char.” I hugged her.
“All right, ladies. Enough of this.” Rocco separated us. “We got a pack of bloodsuckers we need to take down. And we don’t got much silver. So if you got any ideas, please share.”
“Between two Protectors and a healer, we can come up with something,” I assured him.
Rocco and I could use the Logos, however the main problem was the vampires were incredibly fast. So by the time we spoke the string of ancient words, they would’ve ripped off our heads. We needed something more immediate. Silver was our best hope at weakening them, then we could move in full force with the Armor and the Logos. We didn’t have any more full canisters of the silver aerosol spray, but I had the silver handcuffs. How could we use them to our advantage?
Once again, I had a vision of the little blue faerie who had helped me in San Francisco. Laila. She had used her magic dust to get me out of a few scrapes. Maybe there was a way to turn the handcuffs into silver dust? A combination of that, some wooden stakes, fire and our magical Armor could do some damage. We needed to gather up some supplies.
“Help me find some sort of bowl,” I told Charlotte, then handed the cuffs to Rocco. “Hold onto these, use them like nunchucks if any of the bloodsuckers get past the chain.”
Rocco took the cuffs and chain-linked them together and did a few practice swing maneuvers. Clocking a vampire across the head with that would hurt.
Charlotte and I scoured the parlor, looking in drawers and cabinets, searching for anything that we could use as makeshift vampire deflectors. We found crates of champagne—not helpful. And scotch—potentially helpful for fueling fire. In one of the cabinets, I found boxes of cigars and some high-end butane lighters and fluid. Jackpot! Charlotte found a bowl. We still needed wooden stakes. I caught a gleam coming off the wooden bar and knew what I needed to do.
“Stand back.” I wielded my sword and came down with a vengeance, cracking the counter right down the middle.
A loud crack splintered through the room, getting Rocco’s attention. I began breaking the bar and stools into pieces.
“Hurry up, Farrow! We ain’t got much time,” he yelled.
One of the vampires shot over the silver stanchion and entered the parlor. Rocco clobbered it with the chain of handcuffs, sizzling the vampire’s cheek. He then swung his sword, slicing the head clean off. Charlotte and I gathered all the supplies, dropping armfuls of wood next to Rocco’s feet, along with a couple of lighters and the fluid.
“Charlotte, stake any of the bastards right in the heart. And Rocco, they hate fire, right?”
“Fire works, but only as a deterrent. We need silver.”
“I’m going to shave down those handcuffs and make some s
ilver dust. Just keep them back. If you can’t stake them, catch them on fire. Got it?”
Rocco handed me the cuffs. “How you gonna shave that silver?”
“My sword.”
Rocco gave me a firm nod of approval, but Charlotte’s eyes were wide with terror.
“You’ll be fine, Char. Just keep those wooden stakes ready. And Rocco’s good. He’s been doing this a long time. You just need to hold them off for a few minutes until I get enough silver dust. Then we can go back out there and get to your sister.”
Charlotte actually laughed. “It’s too ironic that we keep needing her help for the trouble she keeps getting us into. If she weren’t my sister, I swear I’d freaking kill her.”
“Oh, trust me. I was so close.”
Another vampire slipped into the parlor, and Rocco drove a piece of broken bar stool into its chest. It fell back and hit the floor hard, then proceeded to wither into a pile of gray dust.
“Get to it, Farrow!” he shouted, piercing another vampire in the heart and tossing some wood to Charlotte. “Gonna need you to step up, sweetheart.”
She took the wooden stakes and stood behind Rocco as the second line of defense while I got to work with the cuffs. I situated the bowl Charlotte had found on the floor and stood over it, then began sliding one of the pairs of handcuffs along the edge of my sword. The faster I moved, the quicker the shavings fell.
Behind me, Rocco and Charlotte continued stabbing vampires, spraying flames and catching the bloodsuckers on fire.
Silver dust began to accumulate in the bowl, but not fast enough.
“Fiona!” Charlotte yelped.
As I looked up, one of the vampires seized me by the throat. I dropped the cuff and focused on my sword, but the vampire’s strong fingers were crushing my windpipe. The parlor grew dark around the edges of my vision. Charlotte was coming for me, but Rocco commanded her to stay with him to continue slaying the vampires.