“Silvanus,” Shufah tried to scream, but her throat was parched and it came out as a cough. “Leap us out of this place!”
But there was no time. Suhail launched the barb at Silvanus once again. He caught the stingers with both hands, slowing its speed, but the force of the blow blasted through his grip, piercing his left hip.
Silvanus cried out in pain as the impact drove him backward. He tightened his grip on the cord, preventing it from burying deeper into his Divine flesh, but Suhail had been counting on this.
Suhail retracted the cord with the speed of a striking cockatrice. The sharp, backward-facing serrated edge of the barb snagged Silvanus’s hands, trapping his grip, and he shot forward like a man falling from the sky.
Shufah watched, dazed with horror, as her brother opened his arms—and his festering mouth—to receive his Divine prize. For one terrifying moment, she imagined Suhail’s jaw unhinging, his vile mouth gaping impossibly wide, and him swallowing Silvanus whole, like the mythical manticore.
Instead, Suhail caught him in a crushing embrace, then plunged his festering teeth into Silvanus’s left shoulder and came away with a hunk of bloody meat.
Silvanus howled, but whether in pain or rage, Shufah couldn’t say. Before Suhail could strike again, Silvanus drove his right fist upward into Suhail’s jaw, then hammered it sideways across his temple.
The blows sent a pair of thunderous cracks echoing across the room. Suhail shifted hard to the side, his grip slipping, but not entirely. As he spun, he caught Silvanus by the injured arm, yanking him forward. Silvanus’s entire body tightened as the electricity of pain flooded every nerve ending. Suhail took advantage of this moment of distraction and smashed Silvanus in the chest with his open palm.
Silvanus’s sleeve tore free and for one horrifying moment, Shufah thought the Divine’s arm had been plucked free. His feet left the ground, and though he didn’t travel high off the floor, it was high enough for him to clear the bannister of the balcony.
Suhail swayed on his feet, intoxicated by the flesh and blood of a Divine Vampire filling his mouth. He shivered like a dog shedding water from its fur. His ever-changing eyes stared dreamily up at the ornate ceiling. He blinked several times and licked his changing lips.
Shufah spun to face her friends, her own eyes bulging with fear. “Now, while there’s time,” she blurted out, trying her best to keep her voice at a whisper.
Suhail, now merged with the umbilicus, probably had more powerful hearing than she herself, but Shufah hoped his momentary swoon was enough of a distraction that he wouldn’t immediately notice their departure.
“To Silvanus,” she said, pushing her coven toward the ivory banister. “Our only chance is for him to leap us far away from here.”
The fear written upon all of their faces matched the fear in her heart. Silvanus had been bitten, a feat she had believed impossible until now. Did the law of savage bites still apply to her brother? Would Silvanus change? If so, what would he become? They didn’t have time to ponder such things now, lest they learn firsthand.
They had only two choices: jump and maybe live, or stand still and die… or worse.
They turned and jumped over the banister, not one at a time but in a cluttered bulk. They landed with nimble ease and then darted across the dark room toward Silvanus.
The Divine Vampire lay upon his right side, his uninjured arm over his head, his face pressed hard against the marble. They circled around him, none daring to draw too near. Shufah forced herself a step closer and her breath caught in her chest.
The gaping wound on Silvanus’s left shoulder leaked diminishing rivulets of bright crimson blood, not black as she had feared. The flesh around the wound looked red and emanated a great heat, but seemed untouched by the savage infection.
Shufah reached down to rouse him and her hand shook uncontrollably. Before her fingers could make contact, Silvanus’s right hand shot forth like a striking viper, catching Shufah by the wrist with such speed she never even registered the movement.
She opened her mouth, meaning to scream in startled terror, but a sudden painful electricity invaded her skin and burrowed deeper. The electricity pulled at her very essence, a billion hungry mouths feasting upon her soul.
Silvanus snatched his hand away, and Shufah collapsed to the floor beside him, their faces nearly touching.
This wasn’t the first time Silvanus had fed from Shufah. The first had been in the bowels of Purgatory when he had fed from all of them to gain enough power to leap the large group to safety before the hidden mountain base self-destructed.
The first time had been uncomfortable, but manageable. But now, being the sole source, she felt as though she had been turned inside out.
Silvanus rose to his feet on shaky legs, reached down, taking Shufah by the hand—thankfully, no electricity, this time—and helped her up. She swayed, feeling as though she might black out, but he touched her face and returned some of the life-force he had stolen from her.
She glanced at his left shoulder and saw that much of the lost flesh had regenerated. Now, all that remained was a three-inch gash that spilled only the smallest droplets of blood.
A pang rolled through Shufah’s gut at the sight of Silvanus’s Divine blood. Every vampiric instinct within her begged for her to latch onto the wound before it healed for good.
Shufah clenched her eyes and willed the thirst away. When she looked again, Silvanus had taken a couple of steps back. For her safety, not his own, she guessed. “Can you leap us out of here? All of us?”
Silvanus contemplated their number for a moment. “Yes. But I must feed from you. And it’s going to hurt.”
None of them argued.
Without sound, without warning, someone appeared just behind the group. Shufah knew it from the almost imperceptible stirring of the air. She turned, expecting to find her brother’s demonic eyes washing over them.
But it wasn’t Suhail.
Shufah’s mind seemed to liquefy and pour into her feet. A collective gasp rose from the group, except for Silvanus. His was a tormented groan.
Unable to believe her eyes, Shufah stumbled forward, as though this would either verify or dispel what she saw. Her tongue lulled thick in her mouth, and she could find the strength to speak only one word.
“Jerusa?”
Chapter Ten
“Jerusa?”
The name fell from Shufah’s mouth with clumsy abandon. She started forward, but Silvanus’s quick hands caught her by the shoulders and held her fast.
From the outside, Jerusa looked immaculate. The scaly black shards of the stone cloak were gone. Her pale skin looked almost mortal, if not just a bit too flawless. Even the long pink scar that had brought so much trouble to her vampiric life had been erased. Her long auburn hair hung down her back in a disheveled tangle, full of twigs and leaves, yet it seemed to glow like molten rock.
Jerusa stood before them perfected, Divine. Yet, Celeste sensed something was terribly wrong with her.
She watched them with a blank, emotionless glare, moving from face to face without the slightest hint of recognition. Her eyes did flicker for a moment as they passed Silvanus, but the love for him that once lived there had been replaced with a dreamy malice.
“This is not the same Jerusa you remember,” Silvanus warned them. “She’s not here for a reunion. She’s here to kill you.”
“Leap us out of here, Silvanus,” Shufah said in the forced calm tone of someone backing away from a grizzly bear.
“I can’t leave her here. I’ll distract her. You run.”
Something stirred all around them. Not a physical presence. More like a cloud of pure hatred. Celeste looked to her companions. They felt it, too; though, to them, it seemed nothing more than the stress of the moment. But Celeste knew better. She had dealt with this cluster of entities before.
Jerusa’s radiant emerald eyes sank beneath flooding pools of what looked like savage blood. Celeste, however, discerned this to be only
some strange illusion. Then, in perhaps the strangest glamor of all, Jerusa’s chest scar reappeared, burning bright upon her chest like a strip of white fire.
With the sun still high in the sky, the emergency shutters and reinforced outer doors were engaged, leaving the grand hall in a heavy darkness. Not so dark, however, as to blind the vampires to the sudden appearance of an army of even darker living shadows.
The shadows buzzed about them like demonic hornets whose nest had been disturbed. They churned in and out of one another, no discernible thought guiding their actions, only an ancient, festering need to destroy.
“Savage wraiths,” Celeste blurted out.
“Yes,” Silvanus said. “And they mean to have you join them. Run! Now! I’ll handle her.” He ran toward his love, perhaps to tackle her, perhaps to embrace her. His mind was hidden to Celeste.
The savage wraiths’ mindless rage snapped to attention, and they rushed to intercept Silvanus. But before he managed three steps, Suhail materialized beside him, and sent Silvanus barreling sideways with a powerful blow to the head.
Though they had faced Suhail only moments before, the shock of seeing Jerusa alive had driven him from their minds long enough for him to, once again gain the upper hand.
“Ghost seer,” Suhail said in a dual tone of bliss that set Celeste’s teeth on edge. “Alive and Divine. How splendid.”
Suhail rushed Jerusa, but the savage wraiths were quicker. A maelstrom of living smoke descended upon Suhail, driving him back, near to the wall.
He fired his umbilical cord at Jerusa, blasting through the storm of wraiths. She caught the barb with relative ease, her face as implacable as stone. Suhail retracted the cord, yanking Jerusa off her feet, as he had Silvanus.
He darted forward, powering through the wraiths, and reached for Jerusa’s quickly approaching throat.
Jerusa teleported before he could snatch her out of the air, and he stumbled forward, shielding himself as best he could from the continual onslaught of dive-bombing wraiths.
Celeste’s blood felt thick and cold. Her limbs heavy. She watched, mesmerized, as the savage wraiths collided with Suhail, bouncing off like tiny birds upon an elephant, and her augur’s instinct told her that’s not at all what the wraiths had expected.
A guttural, pain-filled moan rose from the balcony. Not a sound made by an immortal creature, but a purely human noise.
Suhail stiffened, as though the cry stung him. He vanished from below, reappearing somewhere above, quickly followed by Jerusa. Celeste knew this only because the storm of wraiths turned with sudden focus, flying with deadly purpose to the upper landing.
Celeste ran to the grand staircase. Taos tried to stop her, but she ripped her arm away. He called after her, following a mere step behind, but she paid him no mind. She leapt up the once spectacular staircase two treads at a time.
It was madness. With Suhail preoccupied with Jerusa, and the savage wraiths focused on Suhail, now was the most opportune time to escape. But she had to see what was happening above. Had to. She long ago ceased questioning the psychic magnetisms that pulled her this way or that. Something important was transpiring between Suhail and Jerusa. Something that could tip the balance one way or the other.
Celeste stopped on the top stair so quickly that Taos nearly toppled over her. He caught her around the chest, both of them stumbling forward but kept from falling. Taos moved to her side, keeping his trunk-like arm around her waist, but if he had any notion of scolding her, the words were slain by the sight before him.
The cloud of wraiths made it difficult to see. Like peering through a brutal sand storm that not only obscures your line of sight, but stings your eyes and bites at your flesh. But what Celeste did see terrified her to the core.
At the far end of the balcony, Conrad still stood with his back to the wall. The mortal woman—who had been cursed to house the strange, yet powerful ghost, Alicia—writhed in his unbreakable grip. She clawed at his arms and face. She pawed at the air, groaning and moaning as she futilely reached for Jerusa.
Jerusa stood at the other end of the balcony, with her back almost touching the ivory banister. Suhail was positioned just in front of Conrad and Alicia.
But it was the savage wraiths that captured Celeste’s attention.
There was no way to number the wraiths. They darted back and forth like dust in a tornado. Celeste guessed there were several hundred, maybe even a thousand.
Below, when Suhail advanced on Jerusa, the wraiths poured their entire collective strength into protecting her. Now, here on the balcony, the wraith horde had split into two factions, each with their own—though not competing—agenda.
Half of the wraiths formed a wall of living smoke stationed before Suhail. The wall undulated and flickered as several wraiths made swooping attacks, giving Celeste momentary openings through which to see. The wraiths struck Suhail with force, occasionally knocking him back a step or two, but seemed otherwise unable to harm him.
Suhail didn’t attack, however. Instead, he held his position before Conrad and Alicia, as though he was her guardian, not her captor.
The other half of the wraiths swirled before Jerusa in a spinning pillar of shadows.
Though the wraiths swooped and swirled about, striking Jerusa with increasing ferocity, she inched her way, with blank-eyed determination, through the mob of demons.
Celeste became vaguely aware that something was happening on the floor below. An unknown voice, one she didn’t recognize, argued with Silvanus about something. The sound of the wraiths whipping about dulled her hearing, and to be honest, she was too engrossed in what was happening to divide her attention.
Footfalls sounded on the stairs behind them, and Taos spun to face whoever approached. Celeste’s eyes remained fastened upon the battle before her, but when she felt Taos relax with a sigh, she knew it was the others coming to retrieve them.
Taos took Celeste by both shoulders and pulled her backward. “Come on,” he said in her ear. “We have to go right now.”
The urge to resist him, to stay and see how this all played out, burned hot in her like a fever. Yet, her gut told her it didn’t really matter who won this contest, Jerusa or Suhail. She and her friends would be the next to die, regardless.
Another hand, small, soft but endowed with incredible power took her by the elbow. This time, Celeste allowed the hand to turn her away from the shadowy carnage, and found herself looking down at Shufah’s beautiful but fear stricken face.
“For pity’s sake, child, we can’t linger here any longer.”
Celeste nodded, looking from Shufah to Taos, and shivered as the heavy blanket of obsession fell from her. She no longer seemed to care what was happening behind her. All she knew now was that they had to get as far away from the Ice Sanctuary as possible.
They rushed down the stairs. Shufah led them to the right, back toward the passageways leading to the labyrinth beneath the house. The Furies huddled together near the doorway. Thad paced in a wide figure eight. And Silvanus stood facing a man not much taller than Shufah, with a shock of red hair, and fierce blue eyes.
At first, Celeste mistook him for a mortal. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Divine Vampires blended so well with humanity that even the blood drinkers couldn’t distinguish between the two. Had she met him under different circumstances, she wouldn’t have noticed his preternatural aura. But in the Ice Sanctuary, among monsters and myths, his ancient eyes betrayed his true self.
“No. It’s too dangerous,” Silvanus was saying to the red-headed Divine.
“What choice do we have?” he snapped back, more from anxiety than anger. “She won’t let me near her, but she may let you. You leap Jerusa somewhere safe, and I’ll leap that foul abomination five miles in the air and leave him to fall.”
“We don’t even know if it’ll work.”
“Then we leap the blood drinkers out of here and leave her to die.” The words of the other Divine hung heavy in the air.
Si
lvanus’s troubled eyes switched from the balcony to Shufah. She placed a timid hand upon his shoulder.
“Do what you must. Save her. We’ll make our way back through the tunnels. When the sun sets, we’ll make a run for it.” There wasn’t much hope emanating from Shufah’s voice, but she managed a small smile, anyway.
Silvanus nodded. “Hurry below. Augustus and I will wait until you’re well on your way before we leap.”
“Jerusa is toward the banister,” Celeste said. “Suhail is toward the back wall.” She looked to Augustus. “Suhail can leap just like a Divine. Watch that he doesn’t follow you.”
Augustus nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”
Shufah herded the blood drinkers toward the descending stairwell, but stopped just before passing over the threshold. She glanced back at Silvanus. “Be careful.”
Taos led the march downward, chasing away the inky blackness with a softball-sized orb of fire floating above his palm. Shadows danced at every turn, lunged at them from every doorway, and seemed all too much like the savage wraiths. Trepidation brewed around them like a summer storm.
Though they were delving deeper underground, Celeste thought she caught the undulating sound of machinery, of powerful rotating motors, far above them. The others heard it, too, for they all paused for the briefest moment.
“It’s just a helicopter,” Tisiphone said. “Military grade.” And she would know, for though she had no ears of her own, no vampire alive had better hearing than Megaera, and the Furies existed as one being.
“It’s no concern of ours,” Shufah said. “Keep moving.”
They made it almost to the place where the ostentatious beauty of the upper house devolved into the rough-cut hewn stones of the subterranean catacombs when Taos came to an abrupt halt. He issued a loud curse which echoed up the long stairwell.
The Savage Vampire (The Perpetual Creatures Saga Book 5) Page 11
