He stepped forward, his eyes flickering with fury. “No, this is saving our race,” he murmured. “I’m creating soldiers that will answer to one master and will destroy those who oppose us with unyielding ferocity.”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “You’re never going to do anything of the sort. Insane vampires don’t ever make the history books. But they do die. A lot. Here’s hoping I’m the one to make that happen.”
Earnshaw was no master. He was a guinea pig. Whoever was running the show was smart enough to use someone disposable and deluded enough to try such a thing.
He smiled at me, his fangs elongated just slightly. “How will you kill me when you’ll already be dead?”
His eyes moved to the witch, and there was a loud clang as the cage unlocked. I watched as the creature moved, slithered almost, towards Earnshaw and me.
The smell of death and rancid blood intensified as it came to a stop, vacant gaze on Earnshaw.
“Master,” it croaked, voice raw and distorted, as if it couldn’t quite taste the word properly.
Earnshaw stroked the matted and dirty hair that had once been blond, then turned to me. “The cause will win. The world will burn. And vampires who are traitors to our race will get punished. We will take our rightful place as rulers.”
I struggled against the pain to grin. “That’s a nifty little speech. Did you write it yourself? I bet they made you practice it at headquarters before they let you out.”
He backhanded me with a speed I easily could have dodged had I not been paralyzed by the witch’s magic. As it was, the impact sent my body hurtling to the ground.
The pain was barely noticeable against everything else in my system, but the gesture in itself was important. Earnshaw was trying to show his strength. Though strength was not what such a gesture connoted; it was weakness. As was taking a helpless human and turning them into… that.
“Hitting me when you’ve got your pet witch rendering me immobile is rather similar to preying on helpless human children. Rather pathetic,” I hissed. I was trying to bait him to getting the witch to release me. Then I could kill the prick, and then maybe he’d stop talking.
He stood above me, grinning, his gaze traveling the room to the stoic slayers. Thorne was watching us, breathing heavily through gritted teeth, the veins in his neck pulsing. His fury mingled with the death in the air.
“Maybe we won’t kill you… yet,” Earnshaw mused. “I think I need to notify the movement of just how depraved your relationship with humans has become. In the company of slayers,” he spat. “Even for you, that’s despicable. I enjoy being a part of whatever punishment the master conjures up for such a betrayal.”
He glanced to his witch, giving her a brisk nod before turning on his heel.
I struggled to get up, the weight of magic still a lead force of pain, rendering me little more than paralyzed.
“Kill them all,” Earnshaw ordered flatly to the vampires facing off with the slayers.
He gave me one last grin. “I’ll be seeing you soon,” he promised.
Then he, his pet and the witch were gone.
I got Earnshaw’s rapid exit, but the witch’s was puzzling. They couldn’t disappear into puffs of smoke, nor did they have the increased speed that vampires had.
Troubling.
But at least I wasn’t paralyzed with excruciating pain and had a grip on my motor functions.
The thud of flesh against flesh, grunts and the smell of fresh blood had me jumping upright.
The slayers were facing off with the remaining vampires. Even without their weapons they weren’t doing too bad. No Neck with the knife was doing okay, and Thorne was holding his own, but the rest were most likely going to die.
If I didn’t do something.
I bit my lip and glanced to Sophie. She was still motionless but breathing.
I looked back to the fight.
Was I really going to save slayers? I mean, I’d made some questionable decisions and never really stuck with mainstream vampirism, but this was going off the deep end.
Earnshaw was already running off to his master, if I didn’t catch him first. I could leave them to their fate and trail Earnshaw to find out who the ‘master’ was, or at least kill him before my dirty little secret got out. It would be the smart thing to do.
The kid took a savage blow to the chest and hurtled past me before crumpling to the floor.
“Fuck,” I cursed, then extended my arm to stop the vampire intent on finishing the kid off.
My arm jarred slightly at the impact, which sent him back a foot.
The vampire’s eyes flared in disgust.
“Race traitor,” he hissed.
I rolled my eyes. “Come up with some new insults, please.” I stepped forward and gripped his neck, then commenced the icky job of detaching his head.
Once he was lying in two pieces below me, I commenced in further damning myself in the eyes of everything that was unholy.
The rest of the vampires were young. Stupid. Weak. Even still recovering from the witch’s magic, I was able to beat them. Sure, they got in a few lucky hits and messed up my hair, but it was child’s play.
After I’d snapped the last neck, the deafening sounds of battle diminished in a surge, as if a vacuum had come to suck all sound from the room.
The bloodied slayers were scattered around the room, breathing heavily. No Neck was holding his arm against his chest, which suggested it was broken. The bone sticking out from the skin was a dead giveaway too. Kudos to him, though; he had yet to make a sound, even though his face curled slightly in a grimace of pain.
The other two were standing slightly dazed, looking to the bodies on the floor in confusion.
Idiots.
The air changed, the thump that had been the background to this entire event becoming deafening.
Thorne was in front of me, looking slightly winded but otherwise unharmed. And totally hot.
I glanced down at the way his tee clung to his abs before I reminded myself that it wasn’t the best time to be wondering what they’d taste like. The fog of death was heavy over the room, pulsing with its weight.
On the other hand, maybe this was precisely the time. My stomach tingled with the thought.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his gaze flickering over me in concern.
I scowled at him. “I’m immortal. Is my head still attached to my body?” I didn’t wait for an answer to my rhetorical question. “Then I’m okay.” My eyes darted to the corner of the room. “Though I can’t say the same for your little friend. He seems to be bleeding out,” I added in a bored tone, dusting off my jacket. It was fricking custom. If it stained I was raining hell down on those assholes.
He moved quickly, and I tried my best not to drool at the fluid movement of his bulging muscles. He was all sweaty and covered in blood from the fight. I licked my lips.
“For fuck’s sake, Isla,” he shouted, pressing his hand into his annoying friend’s shoulder. “A little help?”
I rolled my eyes and moved over to the corner of the room, stepping over a groaning body as I did so. I didn’t behead all the vampires, just broke their necks; it usually rendered them immobile for a decent amount of time, but that one was healing too quickly. He would still be paralyzed for at least another twenty minutes. My heel may have slid into his palm, and he emitted another grunt of agony. “That’s for my jacket,” I informed him.
Thorne glared at me, all concern gone from his features. Only irritation and hatred remained. Good. I could deal with that. Concern and warmth were troubling and a trifle unsettling; we were immortal enemies, after all.
“By all means, move at a leisurely fucking pace,” he growled. “It’s not like his life hangs in the balance.”
I rolled my eyes again, bending down gingerly to escape the worst of the blood. It wasn’t like I was tempted to take a bite or anything; it would take some pretty extreme starvation to forget slayer blood equaled painful and slow death. No, I just did
n’t want my jacket ruined anymore.
“Why must things like this happen on days I wear white?” I asked no one in particular.
Both he and his pale friend glared at me. He looked like he might try to stake me right there.
“All right, all right, don’t get your panties in a bunch, boys. You humans are always so serious about mortal wounds.” I slapped Thorne’s hand away, inspecting the kid. He’d been unlucky enough to be stabbed with his own blade by the looks of it. Either that or the vampires had carried their own weapons. Vampires didn’t need weapons. That gave credence to a slightly disturbing theory that they had expected slayers to be there. Since we couldn’t bite slayers without the nasty side effect of certain death, some vampires decided to go all human with guns and knives. Ones who were young or weak and didn’t know how to fight if fangs weren’t involved.
I was not one of them.
“It hit an artery,” I murmured, watching the blood flow and the kid’s tan dissipate at an alarming rate.
“Fuck,” Thorne hissed. It was one word, uttered quietly, but it had enough weight as if he’d yelled.
The kid’s eyes darted around the room, unseeing before they settled on Thorne. “Am I going to die?” he asked, his voice thick and wet.
“Most likely,” I told him honestly.
Thorne clutched his chin. “No, you are not going to die,” he promised. His voice was so firm, so full of authority that I might have believed it, had the kid not been losing enough blood to contradict him. I’d seen enough bleed-outs in my time. Had been the cause of most of them. He had about two minutes left, tops.
The kid’s eyes went vacant again.
Thorne’s gaze narrowed at me. “Can’t you do something?” he hissed.
I shrugged. “I’m usually the one causing these types of wounds. My expertise doesn’t translate to healing them. And before you ask, my blood doesn’t work either. That shit’s only real in Hollywood.”
He scowled at me.
“I can heal him,” a voice croaked from behind me.
I glanced up at a shaky-looking Sophie. She was almost as pale as the kid. “Hi, sleeping beauty,” I greeted, then frowned at her. “If you don’t mind me saying, you’re a lovely shade of gray. I don’t like your chances of saving this one. Death’s in the job description anyway.” I put my hands up in a ‘you win some, you lose some’ gesture.
Thorne’s glare was heavy on the back of my neck but I ignored it.
She poked her tongue out at me, a signal that she wasn’t completely tapped out, and pushed me out of the way.
Thorne bristled as she approached. The men behind him, who had gathered around their dying comrade, fastened their grips on their newly retrieved guns.
I gave both them and Thorne a look. “What do you think she’s going to do, make him even more mortally wounded?” I asked sarcastically.
They scowled at me.
Sophie gave Thorne an even stare. “I’ll save your friend. Despite what you think of me, I value human life. Even slayers. Even slayers who waltz into my office and get all confrontational. I’m a peach like that. I’ve got the power to save him. Are you going to let him die because of your pride or arrogance?”
Credit to him, Thorne didn’t even need a millisecond to think, immediately leaning back to let Sophie in as he lifted his hands to the men behind him.
They didn’t look happy, but he must have been in charge, as they obeyed.
Sophie started to murmur under her breath and the taste of her magic was immediate. The rancid, bitter taste of death that lingered in the air was replaced with the light and sweet flavor of life magic. Not exactly white magic, which would suggest that Sophie was pure and good, but the dusky gray kind that was more complex.
The hardness left the humans’ bodies. I doubted they could boast the same awareness of the magic that we could, but it didn’t mean it didn’t affect them. Even oblivious mortals would notice the difference, the thickness to the air. They would recognize it but it would settle into their brains, turning thoughts soft at the edges.
Well, this stuff anyway.
Minerva’s shit that had clutched me before would almost certainly have made them go insane, even indirect contact with it. They’d been lucky that the initial blast had separated me enough from them that they weren’t polluted by the magic.
I wasn’t as lucky obviously. Even with the sweetness of Sophie’s life magic, my thoughts were sharp and uncomfortable at the edges.
I was dancing with madness myself, but luckily I was already on the wrong side of sane, so I could resist it. Or at least accommodate it. That was the thing; completely sane people were usually the weakest, the ones who went crazy the easiest. Because they lived life on a sword’s edge, sanity wasn’t something they could grip with both hands. It was better to be a little crazy so when the world threw you a lotta crazy, you knew how to deal with it.
Fire with fire and all that.
In the blink of a human eye, the kid regained his unnatural tan and coherency came back to his sparkly blue eyes. The blood staining his skin and ruined tank remained, but its source had dried up.
He sat up abruptly, Thorn put a hand to his chest. “Easy, Chace,” he murmured.
Of course his name was Chace.
The kid blinked. “Am I alive?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes. I can’t say the same for your sunglasses,” I cut in, nodding to the crumpled mess beside him. “You can’t have everything, though. Unless you’re me.”
Sophie leaned back, frightfully more pale. She dusted off her hands before pushing up. “Okay, you can leave now. And let’s never do this again. There’s a reason why no one likes slayers. They ruin perfectly good offices and make it so my latest case gets stolen from me.” She looked pointedly at the empty cage, then stumbled slightly.
I moved to put my hand on her elbow. “And you suck the power out of my favorite witch,” I added, frowning. “Fun ones are really hard to come by.” I winked at her, though an undercurrent of worry tainted my voice.
She gave me a weak smile.
Thorne helped the kid up. He regarded Sophie, his eyes softening.
Was I a bad person for being jealous of pretty much my only friend for being on the receiving end of that look? Yes, yes I was.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, his voice smooth and rough at the same time.
When his eyes moved to me they hardened instantly. And damn if that didn’t smart a little. “That vampire. The one who sired that….”
“Thing? Atrocity? Abomination?” I finished for him as he struggled to find the word.
He glowered at me. “That human being,” he said through gritted teeth. “You know where to find him?”
“No,” I said sweetly. “I don’t associate with those types of vampires. You know, the ones who promise to kill me. Call me crazy. You wouldn’t be the first. Or three hundredth.”
Of course I knew where to find Earnshaw. More accurately, I knew where to find someone who knew where to find him. No way in hell I was telling the slayer that, though. He was already far too involved in this. And he shouldn’t be involved for a multitude of reasons, number one being it put him in my orbit and subjected me to the weird connection we seemed to have. The more I saw him, the less I was able to think about things that didn’t involve him.
Or his abs.
Or his large hands.
Or his undoubtedly large—
“We’re not killing her?” No Neck hissed, interrupting my train of thought. He gripped his knife with his uninjured hand.
I put my hands on my hips. “Well, that’s just rude. Talking of killing me right after I saved your worthless lives.”
Thorne opened his mouth to say something but the kid beat him to it. His blue gaze had darted between me and Sophie since he left death’s door.
“We’re not killing them.” His voice was deeper and much more adult than he looked.
All heads turned to him.
“She
saved us.” He nodded to Sophie. “And the witch saved me.”
No Neck stepped forward an inch, and Thorne positioned his body slightly so he was between us.
The gesture was obviously instinctual, and puzzling. Puzzling because it almost seemed it was to protect me.
But that was insane. I didn’t need protecting.
His friend did.
“Do you not have any idea what she is?” He didn’t wait for a response. “A vampire.” He enunciated the word carefully and with distaste.
“Good spotting.” I gave him a slow clap.
“It would sell its own mother for a pint of blood,” he hissed, as if I hadn’t spoken.
I scowled at him. “Of course I wouldn’t sell my own mother,” I retorted with mirroring distaste. “I’d give her to you for free,” I added sincerely. “In fact, I’d pay you to go and slay her.”
Sophie let out a choked laugh. Chace’s eyes twinkled as if he hadn’t almost kicked the bucket moments before. Thorne’s arms were crossed firmly over his chest, his face carefully blank. But his aura lightened slightly, with amusement if I weren’t mistaken.
No Neck was not amused. “She’s everything we’re trained to kill.”
I rolled my eyes. “Lucky they’ve got you here to remind them of their entire purpose in life.”
Chace shook his blond head at No Neck. “We’re trained to kill evil,” he argued. “From where I stand, she’s not evil.” His voice was firm. Resolute.
I laughed. “Child, there is no such thing as evil. Or good. That’s what you self-righteous slayers need to learn. Not that you will. Now, you were just leaving?”
I glared at Thorne, who looked like he was going to push the issue of the turned vampire.
We commenced in a stare off and so help me, I would snap No Neck’s vertebrae if they gave me any more trouble. I was bone tired, had just almost been killed by a witch and ruined my favorite jacket. I was not in the mood.
“We’re findin’ that human,” he promised before turning his back.
“Good luck with that. If you do, I won’t be there to save your bacon and you’ll all undoubtedly die.” I paused while No Neck sneered at me. “I’ll text you with any location I get, just to speed the process along.”