by Amy Boyles
“Drink.”
SEVENTEEN
Dex’s lips curled back. Then he stopped. “Sure?”
I pressed his mouth to my neck and said, “Sure.”
His fangs sank into my skin. I suddenly felt very brittle, as if I could break in two. A white-hot pain seared through me. A moment later it was replaced with elation. Strange, that the bite elicited a twinge of pleasure as well as pain.
Dex drank his fill, which took—I don’t even know how long…seconds, minutes? When he sat back and finally pulled away, Dex cupped my face in his hands. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, Andie. If you don’t turn now, you’ll die.”
My head swam. It didn’t make sense. I felt fine. I shot him a confused look.
“Try to move.”
For the briefest of moments I watched as his wounds healed. Flesh threaded itself together, stitch by stitch until his skin became whole. At the same time I tried to lift my hand. My brain sent the message down my arm, to my wrist and to my fingers, yet nothing happened. I tried to move again, but I couldn’t.
Dex cradled me in his arms. “You’ve lost too much blood. To turn, you must drink or you will die.”
I parted my lips, but I couldn’t speak. Dex ripped open a bit of his wrist and pressed my mouth to the cut.
I drank.
His blood didn’t hold the iron flavor I expected. It tasted more earthy, different, like it was infused with magic. Once I had my first drink, it was hard to stop. I sucked and gulped, wanting as much of him as I could get. It was like drinking a Coke on a hot summer’s day—I just couldn’t get enough.
Everything changed. My magic blossomed, my muscles shrank and hardened, compacting painfully. It even felt like my bones were being wrapped in bands, they got so tight. And I also felt a rush, an intense tingle that started in my toes and rushed up to my head one inch at a time. It was sharp and uncomfortable, but I knew I had to work through it.
Dex pulled his wrist away. “You drank enough.”
He settled me back onto the floor and hunched over me. My eyelids fluttered, and for a moment I couldn’t speak. Sights, sounds and vibrations peaked. A final, sharp pain ripped through my body, and I felt my canines sharpen and elongate into fangs.
Suddenly blood filled my senses. I could smell it in the air, sniffed a little bit that lingered on Dex’s lips. My eye twitched. I could hear hearts beating one house down. When I inhaled, the aroma of their blood trickled up my nose.
For a moment my brain went haywire. All I could sense was the iron of blood, and I wanted it. I made a move toward the door. Dex grabbed my shoulders.
“Andie.” He snapped his fingers in front of me. I blinked several times. “Andie, remember why we’re here. Remember what happened. I know you want to leave; I know you want to go feed. Right now you can’t. Right now you have to focus on what’s happening. The lord vampire is here. That demon he has, it attacked me. Did this to me. I think it must’ve taken some of Jonas’s power and did something with it. We’ve got to fight.”
It took a minute to jar my memory, but it all came flooding back. It was as if my old life was completely separate, and a dream more than it was reality. I had the memories, but they didn’t want to filter into this new life. It must’ve been some kind of vampire evolutionary thing to keep people moving forward instead of wanting to drift back to their old lives.
The severity of the situation reached me. “Lana. I came back for her and her family.”
Dex swiped his fingers under his nose. “I followed the demon here. I don’t know where they are.”
I cringed. “He took them somewhere.” I curled my fingers into Dex’s shirt. “They’re going to do the same thing to them that they did to Jonas. We’ve got to find them.”
“Andie, I can tell you exactly how to find them.”
My heart leaped for joy. Best news I’d heard all day. In fact I was going to ignore the fact that I had just become a vampire. Because to be honest, being a vampire was actually kind of cool. I could hear better, see better, think more clearly. My mind wasn’t crowded with extraneous thoughts. I even had the feeling that Dot could no longer annoy me.
Well, maybe I didn’t need to push it.
“Great news! What do we need to do? How do we find them?”
“Did you bring the book?”
I felt in my jacket pocket. My fingers brushed the leather binding. I pulled it out and held it in front of him. “Here it is.”
Dax ran his fingers over the binding of The Witch’s Handbook. “You didn’t almost die like I did. You were turned from living to vampire. You still have your connection to it. If you want to find Lana, her family, destroy that demon and face-off against the lord vampire, I’ll tell you what you need to do.”
I nodded enthusiastically. “What? And how do you know?”
He held the book out to me and said, “Because it makes sense. Use your fangs and destroy it.”
I hesitated. “What?” I said hoarsely. I suddenly realized the actual need for blood was for a reason. My body needed to rejuvenate, needed to strengthen itself. I guessed the actual transformation had taken quite a toll on me. I hoped I was able to put off the hunger long enough to kick some butt and take some names.
Dex nudged the book toward me. “Summon your magic. It’s more powerful now than ever before. Pull it into you and thrust everything into your fangs and into the book. That will do what you need.”
When my life had been tethered to the book, the idea of destroying it would have given me heart palpitations. But now, the book no longer stole bits of my life force when I summoned its power.
I realized that I was now a vampire and if I wanted to destroy one of my own kind, my strength was my best asset. I looked at the book, contemplating this piece of paper and leather that had possessed such a hold over my life for so long. I thought of Vordrid, my promise to him. If I did this right, he would be free, able to live his life however he wanted.
I gave Dex a worried look. He nodded. “It’s the only way.”
My tongue grazed the tips of my fangs. Those babies were razor-sharp, if I do say so myself. I was a lean, mean, vampire machine.
Though it still felt weird to be a vampire and a vampire hunter. How the heck was that supposed to work?
First things first, I had to stop a demon and a lord vampire. Magical energy hummed on the air currents. I pulled on it, fueling the innate power. It rocketed through my body and up toward my fangs. I took the book in my hands and chomped.
A flood of power unlike any I’d ever experienced before, clearly fueled by vampire magic, flooded into the book. The power cocooned the tome, curling around it.
“You’ve done enough,” Dex said. “You can release it.”
I retracted my fangs and watched as the book circled up into the air higher and higher, spinning and spinning. The cover flipped back. Lightning shot out of it and into me.
If I thought becoming a vampire hurt, this was a thousand times worse. Fire and pain racked my spine and raced down, firing into my nerve endings. The agony was crippling. It felt like my bones were being repeatedly broken. I bowed over and crumpled to the ground.
I didn’t see it happen, but I felt the explosion as the book shredded into hundreds of pieces. I took one breath, two. I flexed my fingers, ran my trembling hands through my hair, onto my shoulders, down my arms and over my legs. I was still here, I was still alive—well, undead, but who’s being technical?
“Oh my word,” Dex said. “You’re glowing like a warrior princess.”
I looked at my hands. He wasn’t lying. A white halo emanated from my skin. I sure as heck was glowing. The energy rushing through me was indescribable. I felt almost like a demigod with power the likes of which I had never known before.
And I had no idea how long it was going to last.
“Now,” Dex said. “You can use the power of sight.”
I flexed my fingers, taking in the glow that surrounded them. I licked my lips and swallowed a few tim
es. The power of the book flowed through me, and the world around me connected itself to my very veins—or so it felt.
“Okay,” I said hoarsely.
Dex pulled me to him and kissed me. My body melted into him. When we parted, he stroked his fingers through my hair and said, ”You can do it. That was just a kiss to get you relaxed.”
I swiped a line of drool from my bottom lip. “Well, it worked.”
I took a step back and closed my eyes. It took me a moment to remember what I was supposed to focus on. So many things flooded through my brain—heartbeats, the pulses of people nearby, ideas, the newness of being a vampire. I had so many questions to ask, so many things I wanted to know, but I forced all of that away. I locked it down into a place where it could disappear, at least for a brief period.
My one and only chance to right everything that had been wronged lay within my grasp. All I had to do was find the demon and the lord vampire while I still had this surge of power.
I focused on Lana and her family.
It felt like a thousand threads shot out of my head and into the world. Images, pictures flooded my brain. I shuffled through them like I was shuffling through a Rolodex, alphabetizing and categorizing. Finally the exact image of what I needed hit me.
My eyelids fluttered open. The halo was still there, and for a moment it surprised me. I took a breath.
“What did you see?” Dex said.
“I saw them. Saw Lana, her daughter and her husband. I know where they are.”
Dex nodded enthusiastically. He grimaced, and I knew he was still in a little bit of pain. I wasn’t sure how long it took for a vampire to heal; it couldn’t take very long. I mean, they were undead.
“Where are they?” he said.
I ground my teeth and clenched my fists. “They’re at the church. And so is the demon.”
EIGHTEEN
We raced to the church. When I say race, I don’t mean running at top speed. My vampire legs flew like the wind. I was as quiet as a whisper and as lethal as a bullet. Probably more lethal. Probably a combination between a samurai sword and a bullet. But I digress.
We were a few blocks away from the church when a black pickup truck passed us going the opposite direction. Missy Burke scowled as she drove past. She did a double take, trying to figure out what we were, I was pretty sure. I turned back briefly, just long enough to see her turn the vehicle around and head back the way I was coming.
I smacked my forehead. The last person I needed, doggone it, was Missy Burke meddling in what I was about to do.
“Dex, go on ahead without me.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “No way. Forget her. We’ve got to go.”
We reached the brick structure. A beam spotlighted the white cross tacked to the steeple.
The demon stood outside. He was in full form, horns, green scaly skin and pure grossness.
“Hey, ugly,” I said. The demon snarled and whirled toward me.
“Yes, I’m talking to you,” I said.
“The snarky comments are supposed to be mine,” Dex said.
I shrugged. “Lot’s changed in three years. Now I do the snarky stuff.”
He shrugged. “Well, I guess as long as one of us is doing the snarky stuff, we’re okay.”
The demon snarled.
“Where’s Lana? Where’s her family?” I demanded.
“You want them,” he growled. “Come and get them.”
“Now what the heck does that mean?”
I didn’t have time to come up with an answer because several things happened at once. The first was that the church doors banged open and the families flooded outside.
What? They were supposed to stay in.
The demon turned toward them.
I saw Dot. “Use the worm!”
The demon leaped toward the kids as Dot pressed her hand in her pocket. A second later the children, their parents and Dot disappeared.
The second thing that happened was Missy Burke rolled up in her truck. But she was tailed by about five other cars.
Great. Looked like we were about to play Showcase Showdown with the townsfolk.
The demon pivoted toward me and lunged. I sprayed shards of magic straight into him. It deflected off his scales, scattering across the night sky. I threw a confused look at Dex.
“How am I supposed to destroy him? My magic doesn’t work.”
“Just keep hitting him,” he yelled.
I threw every bit of power at the demon. I possessed the power of the book. I had absorbed it and was supposed to be able to trap him or something. But nothing was working.
A stream of his magic hit my shoulder and parried off. It burned my skin. I yelped in pain but kept on thrusting my magic at him.
“We’re not getting anywhere,” I said.
Finally I had an idea. I wound my magic like a rope and threw it at the demon. It coiled around his body.
Success. Trapping a demon looked to be within my grasp.
Dex jumped toward the demon. The creature lunged for him, opening its mouth as if ready to sink his teeth into Dex. My motherly instincts took full hold. I rushed forward and threw myself into the creature.
Suddenly a portal opened and I slipped through. I fell, stumbling inside the demon. The church was gone, the demon had vanished, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the lord vampire standing before me.
“Andie,” he said. “I’m thankful you could finally join us.”
NINETEEN
I looked around to see who else the lord vampire could have been referring to when he said “us,” but there wasn’t anyone else—only him stretching over a dark, deserted cemetery.
Crumbling headstones, climbing vines and etched writing worn by years of acid rain told a story of an ancient, deserted place, one that was particularly suited to being the showdown location of one vampire and one hunter.
“Nice digs you’ve got here,” I said.
The lord smiled. His lips parted, revealing sharp fangs that I had no doubt could rip right through me if he wanted them to.
‘If he wanted them to’ was the operative sentence.
“I’m glad you like this place. I picked it just for you.”
“For me? That’s awfully vampiric of you.” I stepped to his right, dusting my finger along the top of a tombstone. “I’m not sure I’d like to live here indefinitely, though. Vacation spot? Maybe. I guess that depends on whether or not there’s a beach on the other side of the gates over there.”
He tipped his head back and roared with laughter. When he righted himself, the corners of his eyes still crinkled, still shone with amusement.
“You’re a very interesting hunter.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I try.”
As much as I wanted to launch right in and start attacking this vamp, I needed to wait. There was no telling what he had planned that could live on without him. My first goal was to glean as much information as I could.
“So, why am I here?”
The lord motioned to a picnic table set up in the middle of the cemetery. A white and red checkered cloth covered it, an open wicker basket overflowed with fruits, and a Chianti bottle sat between two empty glasses.
He studied me as I strolled over to the setup. “So we’re to break bread and call it a day? Sing and hug, and leave with an understanding that though we might be different, we still have lots of things in common? Is that it?”
The lord crossed to the table. He moved like liquid silver, floating with a grace and ease that was mesmerizing. He wore a black turtleneck, black jeans and dark boots. He looked very European, if I do say so myself. Though his accent was sort of old-world American—like an old Tracy and Hepburn movie.
He sat. “I would like to have a conversation with you.”
I gritted my teeth, feeling the poke of my fangs as they scraped over my lips. “Okay.”
His eyes sparkled. “And I think we should have it over a table.”
I hesitated. This would put m
e with his reach. All he had to do was swing one arm over me and there’d be two pieces of Andie.
He threaded his fingers through his light hair. “I won’t hurt you.” The lord lay a hand over his heart. “My promise to you. And since we’re going to be on intimate terms, you may call me Alexander.”
I quirked a brow. “All right, Alex.”
Yep, I gave him a nickname just because I could.
I moved to the table and swung one leg over the bench, then the other. My gaze didn’t waver from his face for half a second.
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“That’s an understatement.”
Alex pointed to the fruit. “Hungry?”
I laughed bitterly. “You know that’s not what I want.”
His eyebrows rose to peaks of interest. “How is the change going for you? The first few hours can be the most challenging.”
I shrugged. I’d be danged before I let this guy know anything about me. “It’s all right. I’m hoping I won’t be one of your kind for very long.”
“Ah,” Alex said. “The infinite struggle for good to overcome evil. It’s one I’ve been privy to for a long time. Plenty of so-called good guys thought that in my struggle to exist, that I’m merely wicked and need to be exterminated. I’m pretty sure you know all about that, though, don’t you?”
I nodded. “You turned my husband into one of your kind.”
His eyes narrowed. “I saved him. Made him better, stronger. Your Dex would’ve died if it hadn’t been for me. Is that what you would want? To lose your loved ones? See them die, waste away when you can’t help them?”
“He dedicated his life to doing the right thing, not slaughtering innocent victims.”
“And how do you know that they were all innocent? How can you be so sure? Because your so-called supernatural tribunal declared it so? Is that your means of gauging who’s right and who’s wrong?”
My shoulder twitched. “They’re not the ones sucking blood from people.”