Jared stood, leaving the stake in place. He then quickly moved toward his bike and rummaged around in the saddle bag for two more stakes, handing one to me and holding another at chest height. “One down,” he said.
I wiped the sweat off my brow. “One down… too bad it wasn’t Marie.”
“I doubt Marie will go down that easily.”
“One can only hope.”
Raindrops kissed my forehead, first few, then many. With a little magick I was able to conjure an invisible shield to protect us both from the brunt of the rain, keeping us warm and dry despite the wind and the water coming at us from all sides. It was when the rain started to fall the hardest that the next vampire came. This one moved quietly, its footing soft, its pace slow and deliberate, like a panther stalking through the jungle, but it hadn’t been quiet enough.
At the last possible second, I spun around, my own stake in my hand, and I launched it into the vampire’s chest using magick to propel the stake like a bullet. The stake struck the vampire head on as it pounced, piercing its ribs and its heart with so much force it killed the vampire’s momentum and forced it to fall to the floor a few feet away from where I stood. It writhed for a moment, shrieking, and then fell silent.
“That’s two,” Jared declared, his voice rising above the rain, but before he could celebrate, there were more of them; six, maybe seven sets of reflective eyes coming into view, the light from the bike’s high-beam catching on them as they slowly closed in on where we stood.
“I think we pissed them off,” I said.
“We have their attention, at least.”
One of the vampires hissed and went to lunge at us, but then decided better of it and moved away, joining the other advancing vampires. They were like snakes, each of them hissing, each of them slowly inching toward us, testing us. Occasionally one of them would snap, and then retreat. Snap and retreat. More of them seemed to be joining in, coming out of the woodwork like termites. I’d started counting them, trying to keep track of just how many there were, but I lost count; it was starting to look like the entire town had shown up.
Perfect.
“Nina, Nicole,” I said, “Now.”
Nicole’s voice pushed into my mind from beyond. “Okay. Hit the floor, right now.”
“Jared, down!” I yelled, and no sooner had my hands hit the wet, gravelly floor that arcs of lightning rained down from the sky, crackling and zapping, flashing brightly even against my shut eyes. I could hear the vampires hissing and snarling, many of them shrieking from the pain of being run through with the awesome power of a lightning bolt time, after time, after time. Nina was putting that lock of my hair to good use.
It wasn’t long before my nostrils were assaulted by the smell of charred, dead flesh. It was a smell I’d only recently been introduced to, when Delphine’s pet zombie showed up, but it was one I never wanted to smell again for as long as I lived. It was powerful enough to send prickles moving through my body, and not the good kind. One whiff, and I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t; I had to fight the urge, I had to keep my cool.
When it sounded like the lightning had stopped striking the area we were in, I picked myself back up, dusted myself off, and immediately hurled a ball of magick at the closest vampire I could find, pinning it to the wall of the warehouse nearest to me. I then reached for the stakes hiding in the saddlebags of Jared’s bike with my mind, plucked one out, and launched it directly into the already weakened vampire’s chest. The impact killed it after a second or two.
All around us, vampires were struggling to move, while others were convulsing on the floor like fish out of water. The entire area smelled like burned ozone, the air itself was charged, and here and there, tiny embers were burning, those the rain couldn’t touch… her vampires were falling, and yet, Marie was still nowhere to be found.
A vampire suddenly sprang to its feet and dashed toward us, catching me off guard. I turned just as it reached for my neck with its hands, but a shadow rushed between us and stopped it just short of reaching me. Delphine’s momentum was enough to knock the already weak vampire off its feet and send it to the floor. She then pounced on it, arched her neck up, and plunged her fangs into his neck. But she didn’t drink, instead she ripped its neck open and spat out a piece of its dead flesh.
The vampire’s legs bucked once, twice, then it stopped moving entirely.
Delphine turned her head; her lower chin was covered in black blood slowly dripping away with the rain. “I apologize if I startled you,” she said.
“You saved my ass. No apology needed.”
She grinned, flashing her fangs in a predatory way. There was a burst of darkness, then, and the darkness materialized behind Delphine, the shadows coalescing to form Marie’s body. In a flash, Marie placed both of her hands on either side of Delphine’s head and then twisted each in the opposite direction. Delphine’s neck gave a loud snap, and then she fell to the side, limp, her eyes wide open.
My heart leapt into my throat, and my stomach lurched. “Delphine!” I yelled.
Marie turned her eyes up at me, and unlike the other vampires, hers flashed gold instead of silver. “You are killing my kin,” she growled, “Do you not know you should never kick a hornet’s nest?”
“Hornets are dicks,” I called out, “You deserve what you get for what you do to my kind, what you do to humans.”
Delphine wasn’t moving. I didn’t know if a vampire could die from having their neck snapped, but she wasn’t moving. “Is that the best you’ve come up with?” she angled her head to the side. “It’s been months since last we met, and that’s the best line you could come up with? What have you been doing this whole time?”
“Preparing to fight you.”
She crossed around Delphine’s body, and I moved to match her, keeping her at a distance. “Really?” Marie asked, “Because of the two of us, I’m the only one who has been raising an army. I don’t see your witches here in force, defending their leader. I see my people, they are here because they smell blood, and weakness, and they all want a taste of you.”
“They’ll have to go through me first,” Jared said, stepping up.
“Ah, the demon-blood,” Marie said, grinning like a hungry wolf about to pounce on its prey. “They say the blood of your kind turns vampires to ash, but the taste is so exquisite, in the moment before death, that vampire enters a place of total and absolute bliss inside of which entire lifetimes are played out, while only seconds pass in this world.”
Jared pulled the sleeve of his jacket up. “Take it,” he said, “Have your blissful fantasies. At least then we’ll be rid of you.”
She shook her head. “Tempting, but I would rather live forever in this world than only a handful of lifetimes in another.” Flexing her hands, I noticed her fingertips had become razor sharp claws that glimmered with every arc of whipping lightning.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said, readying myself.
“With pleasure,” Marie said, and then she disappeared into a puff of black smoke right in front of my eyes. A heartbeat later, she was standing so close to me we could’ve kissed if she’d wanted to, and then her hand was in my stomach.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I hadn’t felt her fingertips slip into my flesh, I only knew they were in there because of the immense pressure in my gut. I coughed, blood spilled from my lips, and then the pain crashed around me like a massive wave that made my head spin. As I fell to the floor, all I could think was I don’t remember her being that fast… how was she that fast?
Green light erupted around me, distantly—as though through a thick fog—I heard an animal roar, followed by the sounds of a battle. I hit the ground on my back, but the pain in my stomach was too intense for me to feel the impact to the back of my head. Everything just shook a little. I blinked hard, coughed again, more blood. I turned to my side and spat out what was left in my mouth.
She’d gotten me good. Turning my eyes down, I could see my own blood spilling
from the wound, turning the already dark, gravelly floor even darker, mixing with the water there and then running in all directions. I pressed my hand against my stomach and concentrated, channeling my magick into a healing spell to try and seal the wound before it killed me. My hand began to glow with faint, pale yellow-green light, but someone pulled me onto my back again, breaking my concentration before I could finish the spell.
The vampire loomed over me and snarled, baring its fangs. Without thinking, acting only on instinct, I pushed my hand into its face and willed my palm to burst into flame. The vampire’s face caught, it hissed, and backed off, battering its face with its hands. But not even that, not even the rain, could stop the fire from consuming its supernatural skin. Sunlight was the bane of vampires, and fire was an extension of that bane. It would die from that, and it would die fast.
Don’t celebrate, Maddie. I’m probably gonna die fast too.
I let myself fall to my back again, feeling the blessed rain touch my face. Around me, bursts of green light erupted like fireworks. Jared was fighting Marie. Both of them were moving quickly, almost too fast to see. Marie’s claws were sharp, but every time she touched his skin, it wasn’t blood she’d find, but green fire and sparks.
He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her a few feet into the air. His eyes were glowing, and their glow caught Marie’s face, twisted with fury. Jared then wound back his arm and smashed his fist against her face with a mighty crack I was sure could’ve been heard from my house all the way across the city. Then he hit her again, and again, and each blow caused more green sparks to fly from his knuckles.
I fought to get to my feet, but my abdomen was on fire, and I only barely made it up. When I finally did, the world was spinning, lights were swirling, and I thought I was going to topple over, but I shook the daze away and focused. Jared tossed Marie to the ground, her body smacking the gravel with a thud. She wasn’t moving, and her friends were gone or hiding.
“Maddie!” Nicole said into my mind, just as frantically as if she were here in person, “Are you okay?”
“A vampire just had her hand inside me, but otherwise I’m good,” I said, “She’s here—what’s taking so long?”
“The dhampir isn’t cooperating, Jean Luc is on it.”
“On it? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know—he’s locked in a room with her, I can’t see inside it.”
“Dammit. Hurry, we can’t keep her here forever.”
Mustering what inner strength I had left, I channeled magick into my right hand, aimed it at Marie’s body, and this time, conjured fire to spit out of my palm and douse her in flame. “Aurem, rego, fira!” I yelled, and my right hand turned into a flamethrower that lit the whole area we were in, but Marie wasn’t down for the count, not by a long shot. Before the flames could touch her, she was already on the move, spinning around us like a shadow, circling, watching. She could’ve run if she’d wanted to, but this time she wanted to kill us—it was death or glory for her, and for me too, now.
“Get close to me,” I yelled at Jared, and he did as I said, rushing over to where I was standing and taking his place by my side.
Marie hissed, fangs bared, and she lurched out of the darkness toward us, her fingernails gleaming, and venom in her golden, reflective eyes. I crossed my arms in front of myself and bid Eliza’s shield to manifest and protect us, knowing that if she was to touch it, the power of the shield would burn through her body like it wasn’t even there.
But the shield failed me, Marie landed on me, and without so much as a millisecond of hesitation, she finished the job she’d started when she plunged her hand into my stomach. This time, I felt every moment of contact, ever wriggle of her fingers, every slice of her nails. The insides of the human body registered pain differently to the way the skin did, which meant what she was doing wasn’t hurting exactly, but it was making me nauseous, making me feel like I wanted to pass out.
I reached for Jared and groped at his chest. He swung around me and punched Marie across the face, pulling her away from me, but I fell once more and landed hard on the ground. I could hear Jared grunting and groaning as he attacked Marie with all the power his demonic blood would give him, and this time, while I lay there, I found myself wondering why the shield hadn’t worked.
Where had Eliza’s magick gone? Why hadn’t it protected me? Had Suzanne double-crossed me? No… this was on purpose. Eliza had done this on purpose to… for me. For my benefit, somehow. Although, I was about to die; what benefit would I have in that? In my mind I could hear Nicole’s frantic voice swimming in and out. She was watching this unfold and was helpless to stop it from happening. I wished I could’ve said something to her, offered her some kind of comfort, but I couldn’t speak. It took everything I had just to remain conscious, and even that was slipping fast. So fast.
I tried to turn my eyes up at Jared, but all I could see were blurred shapes crashing into each other, one black, one bright green. Marie was formidable, powerful—maybe too powerful for us. Going up against her head on was starting to feel like a bad idea, but what other choice was there? Eventually she’d have come for us, and then I’d still be right where I am now. Dying.
Darkness overtook me, my vision blackening. I tried to stay awake, but I couldn’t hold on. Then there was light all of a sudden, bright, white, and almost blinding. I tried not to look directly at it, but it was the only thing I could see, the only thing left to hold onto when the alternative was death. I remembered reading about this, about the light—it was just something the brain did when it started to slip into death, there wasn’t anything of any religious or spiritual significance to it at all, only a chemical process.
That sucks. I wasn’t a religious person, except for where magick was involved, but right now I found myself hoping there’d be more. Anything more. Because anything beat dying on cold, wet gravel in an industrial park in the middle of nowhere. Then I saw a shape merge into the light in front of me, or more like a shadow, dark and distinct. It approached, and my heart leapt into my throat with whatever strength was left inside that tired, blood-deprived muscle.
The shape approached quickly, becoming so big it was starting to block the light that seemed to be pulsing from behind it. Then the light was gone, and the shape came into focus in front of me. Delphine, looking every bit like an angel with her perfect face and her porcelain smile. She hushed me with her finger, took my head in her hands, and opened her mouth wide to reveal her sharpened fangs.
There was a pinch of pain, then darkness… and then nothing.
A moment passed, a moment I spent suspended over the line between life and death. I couldn’t see, or hear, or speak, or even sense. I didn’t even think I was, though I could think… so maybe I was after all? My heart gave a mighty heave, then it gave another, and another, and with every pump of my heart, I could feel, and hear, and smell. It was little more than a tingle at first, a tiny current meandering through my nervous system. Then, slowly, I started hearing the distant signs of a struggle between two people, a man and a woman. Finally, was the smell of blood, stronger than it had been a moment ago; so strong it was almost inside my nose.
Wait.
My eyes popped open, and the world came rushing at me like a roaring hurricane. Sounds, colors, sensations; I was alive like I’d never been before, power coursed through my veins, magick crackled inside of me, desperate for me to let it out. When I turned my eyes up, I saw Delphine staring back at me, her expression as hard as a rock, her eyes fixed on mine. In front of me was her forearm, which I was gripping tightly, and with steady, sucking motions, I was drawing her cold, black blood into my body. The taste was strangely sweet, though it carried the same metallic undertones as regular, living blood, but it was doing something to me.
This blood that belonged to a dead person, was giving me a renewed lease on life.
I could feel it, life’s warm radiance, pulsing through me like the beating of a war-drum. Delphine laid a hand on my hea
d and pushed me off her wrist, but I wanted to stay where I was; I needed to keep drinking. It wasn’t a selfish want, but a need, like a thirsty person’s need for a drink of water to ease the pain in her stomach.
Finally, with great effort, Delphine managed to pull me away from her wrist. There wasn’t much blood on her wrist, but I could still taste it on my lips, could smell it on my breath. I wanted more, needed more, but she was cradling her wrist and keeping it out of my way. She looked… tired, which was strange considering she was a vampire.
Then it hit me. “What… did you do to me?” I asked, though my voice sounded far away, as if I was speaking underwater.
“You must fight now,” Delphine said, her voice sounding equally distant. “Fight her, Madison.”
I turned my eyes up and saw Marie, now, moving a little slower than she had been a moment ago. Her body had shape and substance to it; she wasn’t a blur anymore, and neither was Jared. Were they moving more slowly than they had been before? No, my senses were heightened. I could feel it. It wasn’t just my vision, either—I could smell the ocean even from here, could smell the blood, my blood, even though it had mostly washed away. I could also hear the ruffling of feathers from inside a tree, somewhere nearby.
What has she done to me?
I didn’t have time to answer the question; Delphine was already helping me get to my feet. “Remember what you taught me?” she asked.
“Taught… what?”
“What you taught me earlier tonight, how to use the magick inside of me.”
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