by Jayne Faith
He straightened, his hand still on my hip and his face close enough for me to see tiny reflections of myself in his irises.
“You’re sexy when you sweat,” he said. The corners of his eyes crinkled with a genuine smile.
I wrinkled my nose, feeling my cheeks begin to flush at the odd compliment. “Gross.”
He stepped in and pressed his lips to mine, gently at first and then more urgently. Forgetting my focus, I nearly lost my hold on the demon. When Rogan pulled away, his eyes glinted with desire.
With a quick squeeze of my hand, he was off again. He looked at me over his shoulder.
“Keep up, Grey!”
With Loki keeping pace with me, I sprang into a run and pulled even with Rogan, my heart still pounding from his kiss.
My demon was nearing the vampire den. I watched through its eyes as it circled high over the compound, making a lazy spiral downward. With careful steering, I landed the creature on the high wall surrounding the property on one side of the courtyard where I’d seen Evan months ago. The courtyard was empty. Rogan had told me the routine of letting the human victims use the outdoor area only at night, when their vampire captors could safely walk outside.
Unsurprisingly, blackout shades were drawn tightly over every visible window.
I sent the demon across the winter-brown grass of the courtyard, landing it on the cement slab of the covered patio. At my will, it hopped like a bird toward the door, turned its head, and pressed it against the surface. I strained to hear through its senses, to pick up anything, any clue to what was going on within.
There was a shuffling sound, and was that a muffled moan?
I squinted, struggling to pick out the sounds. I thought I heard a low voice and was just about to send the demon up to one of the window sills to listen when the door flew open.
I felt the creature’s alarm. It strained against my control, and I tried to pull out of its mind, but I wasn’t fast enough.
Legs. Hands reaching down. A hand covering the demon’s head, tightening into a fist.
Squeezing. Horrible pressure.
An explosion of pain.
I screamed as my vision went blank. Sightless, I stumbled and fell, skidding my palms against the rough desert floor.
I slammed my hands against my ears and folded into a ball. I recognized my own voice, still screaming in terror, but I couldn’t seem to stop it.
Someone was shouting my name.
I’d run out of air. Had to inhale.
A sharp smack across my cheek, and the world reappeared.
I looked up, my face stinging. Rogan held my shoulders.
“Ella, say something!” he yelled even though our faces were only inches apart.
“I’m here, I’m okay,” I said as much to reassure myself as to get Rogan to stop hollering at me.
I pushed shaking fingers into my hair.
It was him. Just before I lost contact with the minor demon, I caught a glimpse of the lead vampire’s face.
“The big vamp twisted the head off the rip spawn while I was still linked with it,” I said, my mouth dry as the grit now embedded in the heels of my hands. “I shouldn’t have pushed it so close to the house and definitely not in the shade.”
I realized how stupid I’d been. If I were going to spy, I should have picked a spot in full sunlight, where a vamp would be less likely to reach outside.
Rogan gripped my face in both hands and tilted it up, squinting into my eyes. Loki whimpered and nudged my elbow.
“You made it out in time,” Rogan said, relief replacing some of the tension in his face. “Lesson learned, huh?”
I drew a trembling breath and nodded. “Yeah. That was scary as shit.” I touched Loki’s head, which seemed to reassure him.
Rogan stood and helped me up. “You okay to go on?”
I looked off to the distance toward the vampire den and then dropped my head. “I’m fine, but I’ve tipped them off.”
“We don’t know that,” Rogan said. “He was probably just playing it safe.”
He was trying to reassure me, but I recognized the worry in his eyes.
I planted my hands on my hips and let out a sharp stream of four-letter words.
“Well, if I did tip them off, it’s too late now,” I said. “Nothing to do but keep on.”
We resumed our cross-desert dash. Getting back into the rhythm of my boots pounding the ground, I tried not to waste energy beating myself up. But I couldn’t help wondering if I’d just put the entire rescue mission in jeopardy.
When Rogan slowed his pace, I knew before he said it that we were close to the vampire feeder den. Down in a shallow gulley, I didn’t have a direct line of sight to the compound, but my necro senses were alive with the presence of his demon spies, and I felt the larger arch-demons waiting on the other side of a ridge about a mile away.
“You’re sure they don’t have guards posted?” I asked, still breathing hard from the long run. I hadn’t seen any guards through the eyes of my ill-fated demon, but I was getting jumpy about the whole endeavor.
“Nah,” Rogan said. “The place is pretty well fortified, and anyone dumb enough to bust in would be vampire meat.”
“Dumb enough to bust in, huh,” I said, pretending to be insulted.
He shot me a withering look. “You know what I mean.”
He bent to pick up a twig and then knelt and began drawing a diagram in the hard-packed, sandy dirt. I dropped to one knee beside him.
“This is the main gate,” he said, pointing to one end of his sketch of the compound. “And here’s the drainage outlet I told you about. That’s where we’re going in.”
As he’d explained before, it was a small tunnel that went through the outer wall. When he’d been out here before, he’d actually shimmied through it so we knew it was passable.
“You think Loki will be okay on his own?” Rogan asked, glancing at my dog. “I didn’t arrange transportation for him.”
Remembering how Loki had transformed into a big, dark beast during our visit to the oracle, I nodded. There was more to him than met the eye, and I was confident he could take care of himself. I couldn’t imagine he would tolerate being carried away in the clutches of an arch-demon anyway.
“I think he can handle himself,” I said. “He’ll meet us back at the car. Right, boy?”
With an affectionate grin, I scratched behind one of his ears.
“We’ll have to approach from this direction so we stay out of view of any of the windows,” Rogan said, again indicating an area on his diagram.
When he started to rise, I grabbed the lapel of his duster and pulled him closer, planting my lips on his for a long, delicious moment before breaking away.
“Thank you for doing this,” I breathed.
His eyes sparkled, and he crooked a half-grin. “Thank you for giving me something to focus on.”
In the past few weeks, he had transformed. The reticent, icy man I’d first met had warmed. In his place was a Rogan who actually seemed to care about engaging with the world—this world, even though it wasn’t the one he believed he belonged in. I began to have hope that he might find contentment in the realm of the living.
Keeping as low as we could, we crept over the ridge that hid the compound. I followed Rogan as we skirted the high wall around the property until we got to a slight depression with a shallow ditch leading away from it. The drainage tunnel.
He looked back at me and pressed the side of his index finger to his lips in a reminder to stay quiet. Vampires had heightened senses, and we’d have to be extremely careful to keep from alerting them.
Rogan went first into the tunnel, and I waved Loki in next. I could see the outlet, but the space narrowed uncomfortably, forcing me to scoot along in an inchworm crawl. At least there wasn’t any water actively draining. I tried not to think about spiders or other creepy-crawlies.
The drain let out into a narrow strip of side yard. I gulped when I saw the windows, but the shades ov
er them didn’t move. We flattened ourselves against the side of the house, working our way around to where the multi-car garage was. Rogan wanted to jimmy open the side door that went into the garage with a little bit of magic. He was fairly sure the captives were being kept in a bunch of bedrooms during the day, which were in a wing not far from the garage.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him close so I could speak at barely a whisper in his ear.
“Why do we need to sneak in?” I asked. “Can’t we just blow the door in with magic and surprise the shit out of them?”
He tilted his head, considering. “Why the hell not?”
I felt a ping of satisfaction. For once, someone wanted to go along with one of my impulses. I loved that he was game. A slow grin tugged at the corners of my mouth as I anticipated our grand entrance.
He beckoned me to follow, and we went around past the garage. He pointed at the oversized front door. The house was a sprawling stucco number with what looked like a vaulted entry.
“I’m going to blast the whole entry out, and I’ll take a bunch of roof with it,” he whispered rapidly in my ear. “The sudden sun exposure should disorient the vamps, and might even incapacitate some of them temporarily. I’ll try to keep all the debris up and out of the way.”
He flapped his hand at me, indicating I should back up several feet. Loki stayed by my side, his ears perked and his eyes intent on Rogan.
The air prickled with the torrent of magic that he was summoning. I unfurled my whip, and it fell softly to the ground. Following Rogan’s lead, I centered myself and reached deeply for earth magic and then wove as much fire through it as I could bear.
Rogan’s arms were bent at the elbow with his palms up and fingers splayed. His hands disappeared in growing orbs of swirling power. The magic swelled until I had to look away or risk temporary blindness from the brightness of it.
The very air itself seemed to tear as he hurled power at the house. The blast deafened me and nearly knocked me off my feet as the ground rocked.
My heart pounding, I formed a shield of earth magic in front of me and over me and charged past Rogan and straight for the dust cloud where the front door used to be. Loki sped along beside me, and my battered eardrums picked up his snarls as if they came from far away.
Rogan fell to his knees as I ran by him. He’d likely spent himself with the blast, but I couldn’t afford to stop and check on him. Loki and I were on our own against the den of rogue vamps.
I coughed as dust swirled. Debris rained down on the earth-magic shield. Even through the chaos of the explosion, I could smell the blood. The heavy, nauseating smell of stale blood layered over the more subtle but brighter, metallic scent of fresh blood.
My hearing was starting to recover, and groans and screams filled the air.
Something sped in from my right, and I caught a glimpse of blood-red irises and a pale freckled face framed by red-orange hair. I swiveled my shield. The vamp was small in stature, but she crashed into my wall of earth magic like a Mack truck.
The blow rebounded through my magic and back at me like a punch to the brain, and I reeled as my vision fuzzed around the edges and pain exploded in my head. I lost my hold on the shield, and it winked out.
The girl vamp collapsed to the floor. She’d knocked herself out and landed in a puddle of sunlight. Her skin began to smoke and sizzle like bacon in a fire.
I whirled around just as a growl announced another vamp.
He leapt from eight feet away like a lion attacking its kill. Swift as a reflex, my whip snapped into the air to meet him. It curled around his waist, and I yanked with all my strength. His own momentum and the added power of the magic in my weapon sent him flying by me and slamming into a tall female vamp with a halo of frizzy dark hair. They both crashed into a marble column, temporarily stunned and exposed to the sun.
A compact male vamp with the body of a wrestler ran through the gloom where the roof was still intact.
Loki, in the form of the great beast I barely recognized, charged to meet the vamp. With a swipe of a huge paw, he tore the vampire’s head clean off.
Feeling confident my dog had my back, I headed left, where I believed the wing of bedrooms was likely located. So far I’d seen only vampires.
There was a long, dark hallway where Rogan hadn’t managed to rip the roof away.
The smell of blood was stronger from that direction.
I looked in open doorways, passing a bathroom, bedrooms in disarray, and what looked like a sauna room.
I kept running. At the end of the hallway there was a short right turn. Through an open doorway, I burst into a room where the smell of blood was thick in the air. It was dark, but I could make out the human forms lying on sofas, chairs, and beds that were arranged at odd angles and had obviously been dragged in from other parts of the house.
I slammed the door closed and formed a seal of earth magic around it.
The blood victims were stirring, some mumbling, a few of them even sitting up to look around. I squinted in the low light.
“Evan? Where are you?” I called, my pulse pounding through my veins. “Evan!”
I went to the nearest male form. No, too old to be my brother.
The door rattled behind me, and something on the other side let out a menacing growl.
I raced to the next person and the next, searching for the face from my visions.
There was a violent blow against the door that reverberated through my magic and into my head like a huge gong. I winced, but tried to ignore the pain. The door still held.
“Evan!” I yelled again.
Where the hell was my brother?
“Ella?”
I straightened and turned. In the corner, a young man stood hunched with his shoulder braced against the wall as if it were the only thing holding him up.
My hand reached for him as a sob tore from my throat. I didn’t remember moving across the room to him, but suddenly my arms were wrapped around his too-thin body. He was as tall as me. How could he have grown so much?
He shifted his shoulders, wriggling free of my embrace. I looked into his face but couldn’t read his expression.
The door exploded inward, breaking my earth-magic seal and sending my magic rebounding back at me like nails driving into my temples. I winced but reached for my power as a vamp stalked in.
It was the big one. The old vampire.
I shoved Evan behind me and clenched my whip. Something trickled from my nose. I swiped at it, and my hand came away bloody.
The huge vamp took two running steps, blurring with speed, and launched himself at me.
Ignoring the drilling pain behind my eyes, I reached past the realm of the living and into the in-between. In a blink I’d grasped the ley line magic and dragged it back to where it shouldn’t be. It filled me and flowed down my arm and into my whip.
I lashed out at the vamp. He tried to block the whip with a raised hand, but it snuck past to wrap around his torso, pinning his arms to his side.
I couldn’t get leverage fast enough to take up the slack in the whip and redirect his momentum. I reached for my Sig, which was loaded with the anti-vamp bullets, but the vamp crashed into me, still wearing my whip like a straightjacket. The gun flew from my hand and went skittering across the floor.
The sheer mass of his weight pinned me, but I wasn’t making it pleasant for him. I punched him in the temple and blasted fire magic at his eyes, singing his eyelids but not managing to blind him. I pulsed more magic into the whip, and it responded by tightening around his torso like a boa constrictor. The vamp’s face was inches from mine, and I watched with satisfaction as his eyes bulged.
I’d nearly managed to work myself out from under him when he flexed his biceps and broke free of the whip.
The rebounding magic slammed into my head, and I nearly lost my hold on the world. With blind urgency, I flipped over to all fours and started to scramble away.
I could feel the blood pouring from my nose, an
d pain lanced from my brain down my spine with every breath.
Shit. This was bad. My vision was still clouded. Also very bad.
I pushed to my feet and reached for more ley line power, trying to gather for one big blow. But I was so disoriented I couldn’t tell where my target was.
“You’re mine,” the vamp snarled from behind me.
A hand yanked my hair, and I fell backward. Then a vice grip closed around my neck.
I clawed at his hands and jabbed my elbows back into his ribs. He lifted me clear off the ground and shook me like a dog with a rat.
My windpipe closed. Oh god, no air.
My head was going to burst from the pressure. If I didn’t suffocate first. The room around me began to dim.
Searing agony at the spot where my right shoulder met my neck brought me back, and I let out a strangled scream.
The damn vamp bit me.
Pain quickly dissolved into an exquisite high. I knew what was happening, but I couldn’t fight it. My muscles went limp with the pleasure of the vamp saliva working its way through my bloodstream.
The world began to clear around me, and I saw Evan. He’d slid down the wall and sat slumped there like rag doll, his face half-turned toward me. The gun was only a couple of feet from his leg. That seemed important, but I lost my grasp on the thought before I could follow it to completion.
I smiled at my brother.
I found you.
I tried to say it, but my lips wouldn’t move.
Something large and furry blurred in my periphery, and then I was tumbling to the floor, free of the big vamp’s grasp.
I watched through the fog of my high as Loki slammed a giant paw on the middle of the vamp’s back. My dog that was not my dog clamped his muzzle around the vamp’s neck, bit down, and shook violently.
The pop of the vamp’s spine snapped me into reality enough to know that I needed to move. He was down for the moment, but not for good.
Swiping a sleeve across my face and barely noticing the thick smear of dark blood, I forced my legs under me and stood.
I snatched up what was left of my whip and scrambled over to grab my Sig. I reached for my brother and hefted him to his feet.