Vamped Up

by Kristin Miller

  Death shades slinked along the walls, the floor, the ceiling. They gelled and puttied and slithered like black-bellied serpents. But as frenzied and arrhythmic as their movements appeared, they hovered near a set of cathedral doors not twenty feet in front of them. In front of one door in particular—a heavy wooden one with railroad spikes shoved through its edges in an arching design—a swirling mass of black had become a hissing tornado of shadows so thick it was impossible to peer through.

  A high-pitched wail pierced the stillness. Death shades scattered, though they never veered their course far from that damned door.

  Eve’s hurt.

  Ruan twitched, anxious to bolt. Lilith snatched his shirt, pulling him deeper into their protective cover. “What in God’s name are you doing?” she whispered, mere inches from his mouth. “Do you see how many of them there are?”

  He took inventory quickly. They were an angry mob of bees swarming around a honey hive. And Eve was the honey. The space between where he and Lilith stood to the door seemed to be filled with more death shades than air. They crisscrossed over one another, consuming all available space, from ceiling to floor.

  They were guarding Eve.

  “Where are the elders?” Ruan whispered. “Dead?”

  Savage couldn’t have killed them all so quickly . . . could he have?

  Lilith’s eyes fluttered closed and she took a deep, meditating breath. “No. We still have time. But we have to plan it together. One . . . two . . .”

  “Wait.” Ruan eyed the distance to the heavily bolted door separating him from the love of his life.

  He grabbed a grenade from his belt. Popped the pin. Tossed it over. It landed a few feet from the door and bumbled to a stop. The clunking sound of metal on brick alerted the death shades something didn’t belong. They spun faster around one another as if being propelled by some gravitational pull, and began to shoot off a few at a time toward the grenade.

  Lilith ducked behind Ruan for cover. As the Boom! rocked the room, Ruan shielded his eyes. The explosion didn’t devastate the underground facility, but it tore a zigzagged gash out of the door big enough for him to slip through, blasted a sizeable chunk out of the side wall, and sent a handful of death shades into a wild hissing frenzy. The boom and fire didn’t hurt them. But they sure as hell didn’t seem to like the way the place lit up like the Fourth of July.

  “Take these.” He placed two grenades in Lilith’s palms.

  She slid them back on his belt. “I’ve got my own firepower.” Smiling, she brushed her hands down her gown. Even now . . . even when faced with certain death, she exuded old Hollywood grace. “Ready?”

  Adrenaline sparked through his veins. “Hell, yes.”

  “I don’t know how much time I can give you.”

  “Don’t worry about me.” She gave him a slanted look—the kind that relayed the message that she knew exactly what he schemed to do. He was going to free Eve . . . and stay behind. “All that matters is that Eve comes out of this alive. I’m prepared to sacrifice what I have to in order to make sure that happens. You understand what that means for my soul, right?”

  She nodded slowly. Then measured the distance down the hall they’d just come from to the stairwell in the other room. “This might not clear the entire antechamber, but it should give you more of a shot. Come on.”

  They descended back into the shadows, back down the narrow hall, and emerged on the other side, illuminated by the dim lights still swinging overhead. Ruan smashed against the side wall, held his breath, and hoped to God the plan worked. Because he was going to bust into that chamber and get Eve out . . . whether that meant he had to plow through two death shades or two hundred . . . although he’d much prefer the former.

  From the center of the room, Lilith shot a spinning fireball down the hall. It must’ve blasted through a few of those suckers in the antechamber, because walls rumbled and air crackled with the sound of snakes . . . thousands of them . . . but the deadly things swarming through the hall weren’t measly serpents.

  Ruan felt the room buzz with energy. His ears hummed from the magnitude of it. He imagined them ghosting along the ceiling, slinking along the walls, clambering over and through one another to reach Lilith first.

  “Nice knowing you,” Lilith said, and darted to the stairs leading to ground level.

  Just as planned, her sprint drew the death shades deep into the room, right past him. They burst from the hall like dam gates breaking open, slithering over the floor, across the ceiling, charging across the room.

  Ruan got a single glimpse of Lilith—one that would burn into his memory forever—she was running hard, though it could’ve been slow-motion in his mind’s eye. She was taking long, yet effortless strides, her fan of red hair swaying behind her. The train of her dress kicked up with each step, though it didn’t slow her progress a second. In fact, it seemed she was outrunning the death shades. She thrust her hands out to the side, toward the center of the room and the largest swarm of death shades. Starbursts of brilliant white light shot from her fingertips, lighting up the place like a strobe. The death shades retracted, slithered toward her faster, spitting and angry. They came upon her fast. Licked at the cape of her dress and reached wicked fingers of smoke up her back.

  Ruan didn’t have time to see if she reached the stairs. She was on her own.

  As was he.

  Path momentarily clear thanks to Lilith’s distraction, Ruan seized his only opportunity, no matter how bleak. He bolted from his position slinked against the wall, through the hallway, his boots striking stone with all the fire and determination he could muster. Once into the antechamber, he realized the grim reality: not every death shade took the bait.

  A slew of death shades bubbled and stretched across the floor, headed right for him. He stole a few more strides, then dove headfirst through the gash in the heavy chamber door. His trench coat caught on the wood shards and ripped to shreds. He rolled out of it onto the floor of the inner chamber and slammed against the same whitewashed tablet from his past. His head immediately throbbed; his breath came out in pained pants.

  He didn’t have to see Eve to know she was right above him, strapped to the tablet he’d smacked against. He was instantly sledgehammered by the overwhelming scent of her blood. He clamped down his bloodlust by biting down on his tongue and scissoring it between his teeth. Reaching up, he grasped the smooth stretch of her arm, then ghosted down to where it was hooked to the stone. She whimpered, sounding tired and desperate—it hollowed him.

  Expecting the swarm of death shades to sweep into the chamber behind him, Ruan rushed to his feet, finger to grenade pin.

  “Come on, suckers,” he ground out. “Let’s rock.” He’d toss that grenade through the death shades, through that door, and a toss another through the goddamn brick wall to get Eve out if he had to.

  But the next few seconds happened much too fast to think anything through.

  Feeling pure hatred seethe behind him, Ruan spun around, his eyes catching on Savage’s familiar black scar. The sucker was guarding Eve himself . . .

  Ruan pulled two blades from the strap on his arm and let them fly from his fingers. Savage ducked, dodging the spinning weapons. An orb of light gathered between Savage’s outstretched hands. He thrust the ball of energy into the air. Ruan dove to the ground, expecting to be blasted with the same fireball he’d seen in the alley behind Mirage. He rolled to his back and kick-flipped to his feet.

  But the explosion didn’t come.

  “What the fuck?” Savage mumbled, staring down at his empty hands. Blood dripped from his fangs, down the rough edge of his chin.

  Wait . . . Savage had fed. With a hiss, Ruan’s gaze snapped to Eve. Two bloody and ravaged puncture marks glistened in the soft cradle of her neck. The sucker had been draining her.

  “NO!” Ruan roared, seeing nothing but red. He leapt into the air, a
imed to rip out his jugular. But Savage jumped back with speed Ruan wouldn’t have believed if he hadn’t seen the flash with his own eyes.

  Savage drew his Glock and popped off two quick shots.

  The bullets hit Ruan square in the chest. He staggered back from the sheer force of the hit. His rib cage pinched tight. The bullets burrowed deep into his heart. Eve’s scream drowned out Ruan’s own battle cry as he charged Savage, slamming him against the wall.

  Savage’s gun fell to the floor, cartwheeling across the stone and out of reach. He laughed in Ruan’s face, a deep gurgle that echoed off the chamber walls. “You think I really need a gun to bring you to your knees?”

  Blurred with hell-raising fury, Ruan rained fist after fist down on Savage’s head. His ears were deaf to anything but Eve’s thunderous cries. His eyes hazy with anything but the deep groove in Savage’s face. But Savage’s hands seemed to be everywhere at once. Slamming into Ruan’s face. Jabbing his side. Breaking his ribs. Slicing his heart in two. He was much too strong. Abnormally so, even for a therian-vampire hybrid.

  They fumbled against one another . . . until an overpowering warmth spread through Ruan’s chest, spread outward to his arms, numbing his fists until they couldn’t clench any longer.

  “What’s wrong, Loverboy? The silver of those bullets finally sinking in?” Savage slammed Ruan’s head against a massive stone cemented crookedly in the wall. “You can bruise me up all you want in this pathetic battle of yours. I’ve already won the war.”

  Ruan felt his chest rupture. “You haven’t won shit.” He choked down a blood-curdled cough, then connected another fist to Savage’s temple.

  As the numbness consumed Ruan’s body like wildfire, his legs wobbled. And with a final blow to Savage’s jaw, the pain finally dragged Ruan to his knees.

  His world blurred. Stars danced in his eyes.

  “Ah, there you go. I knew you’d give up sooner or later.” Savage’s laugh buzzed in his ears, low and distant. “You cannot defeat me, you meddling leech! I control the mawares of—”

  In one lightning-quick strike, Ruan unsheathed the dagger from his boot and reared up, sinking the blade deep into Savage’s side.

  “No!” Savage stumbled back. He pressed his hands against his gushing stomach wound and stared at Ruan, wide-eyed. Disbelieving. As if out of all the knowledge of this world, he didn’t, or couldn’t, see that coming. Somehow reacting to their master’s agony, a blur of death shades poured through the gash in the chamber door and melted along the floor. They spilled over and around him, covering him in some sort of protective shield.

  Feeling like a grenade went off in his chest, Ruan dragged himself over the floor. Away from Savage and the death shades. Toward Eve—his only salvation. He couldn’t suppress the outpouring of blood from his organs any longer. He coughed violently, smattering the stone in Rorschach patterns of crimson that made his head spin with delirium.

  “Eve,” he breathed. He reached up for her, his arm like lead. She was cold . . . much too cold. And she was covered in something silky. Wet. It moved.

  With a bat-like squeal, a death shade slinked off the tablet behind him—one that must’ve been covering Eve’s body—and swept its frigid curtain of doom around Ruan’s shoulders, up his back and over his head. He shuddered against its sweeping waves, but went rigid as rock—frozen from death’s cool promise rather than fear.

  He fought the pull to succumb to the dark, but it was too strong. The death shade was heavy. Suffocating. All-consuming. As Ruan took a labored breath, he inhaled a single whiff of smoke from the death shade’s cover. It wiggled along his tongue like a lover’s stroke, slid down his throat like woodsy wine, and left its sulfur taste stuck between his teeth. The tendril of evil burrowed its way into the lining of his lungs, slithered with the blood in his veins, and pumped into his heart, aching to fill his body and search out his soul.

  “No,” he heard Eve say from a great distance away. “Lilith, don’t!”

  Lilith . . .

  Starbursts of fire exploded against the death shade covering Ruan’s body. It hissed, shrank away, writhing to escape the blinding light shooting from Lilith’s fingertips.

  Ruan barely mustered the energy to lift his lids . . . just in time to see Savage rise from the corner, death shades cloaking him from head to toe.

  “You’re too late, Lilith” Savage seethed. “The death shades have already bound to me. They do as I say now.”

  “You can’t control them all, Kane. That kind of power is not meant for one vampire.”

  “Ah, but I’m not like other vampires now, am I?”

  “We’ll see.” Lilith blasted a solid stream of fire against the death shades protecting Savage’s body. They slid off him like melting wax and scurried over the floor in a frenzy. She ceased fire. The room grew cold. “Call them off now and I’ll spare your life.”

  “A forgiving heart has always been your weakness.” Savage spread his arms wide. “Take her!” The death shades answered his command. They oozed into one monstrous death shade, rising up into something resembling a coiled serpent, arching back, ready to strike.

  Lilith widened her stance, unleashed brilliant streams of fire into the heart of the beast. It shrank back, fought forward, slamming against the powerful flame. Walls warped. Thunder from the opening of hell’s gates shook the entire fort.

  Ruan blinked hard. Slowly. Fought to watch the light and dark slam against one another in the most even battle he’d ever seen. Sparks flew through the room. Death shades pushed against Lilith’s blast stronger than she could hold. Her feet slid back. She was trying to hold her ground. And failing.

  Savage opened his chest wide and lifted his arms to the sky. “You may think it’s an even fight now,” he cackled, hidden behind a massive veil of shadow. “But how about fighting all the death shades at once? I command you—” he screamed over the deafening anger of the firefight.

  “Ruan!” Lilith yelled. “Give me the Grimorium Verum—it’s the only way!”

  But Ruan was groggy. His insides raw. Charred. “I couldn’t . . . can’t remember . . .”

  “The words I used in 1912 . . .” She spread her hands apart. “ . . . aprilgaza commando!” She split her thick stream of starburst into two. The death shades met both streams equally, fighting against the fire. As the shade at the front shrank away from the light, another melted forward. “Eve can bind the energy in the amulet but the incantation has to come from you! You’re the one who cast it away. You’re the only one who can bring it back! Do it!”

  The dark tugged at Ruan’s spirit, dampening his ability to breathe, let alone speak. His mouth opened, but the words wouldn’t, couldn’t, fall from his tongue. The grim realization of what would happen to Eve now, if he left this world, washed over him like a tidal wave. Eve was going to be left to die in this goddamned chamber again. Because of him, she’d die by a soul-snatching death shade rather than his bloodlust. Even by his death, she wouldn’t be free.

  Once again, he’d failed her.

  As blackness closed in, threatening to suffocate the last human part of him, Ruan looked into Lilith’s desperate eyes and said, “My soul . . . my soul for her life.”

  “No!” Eve yelled from behind him, fear trembling in her voice. “Ruan, wait!”

  “I loved you the best I could, Eve.” Switches flipped in his brain. Memories unlocked. His heart withered, beating its final tune. “I’m sorry it wasn’t enough.” Riding his last breath, he exhaled, “A Grimorium Verum . . . aprirligaza commando . . .”

  He couldn’t muster the will to open his eyes—to see if the enchantment Lilith used in 1912 made the tome appear. He couldn’t even tell if the rumbling all around him was from the firefight between the death shades and Lilith’s fire burst, or his core collapsing into the Ever After. And even though he knew it wasn’t possible, that Eve was still strapped to the table, and he
’d failed her when she needed it most of all, Ruan could’ve sworn her arms cradled him in the softest of embraces as he tumbled into oblivion.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “The difference between vampires and elders is simple: vampires know when to fight . . . elders, when to succumb.”

  The Gap Between Our Fangs by Elder Cross

  “RUAN!” EVE SCREAMED over the hair-splitting roar of death shades. “Ruan, don’t leave me!”

  As Lilith reached a hand for the Grimorium Verum, which had appeared teetering on the very edge of the tablet, the bursts of fire spewing from her fingers dimmed. Wild gusts of wind blew through the chamber. The death shades shoved forward, knocking her off balance. “I can’t hold them much longer!

  “Ruan!” Eve pulled on the straps binding her hands. “Ruan, come back! You can’t leave me here without you!”

  Savage’s maniacal laugh was the only thing Eve could hear over the hard pounding of her heart. Shock morphed into anger. Anger boiled over into pure, unadulterated rage. She breathed hard through her nostrils, clenched her teeth. The amulet went hot. Burned her chest. Energy hummed in her veins, making her skin itch and her lips twitch.

  She thrashed her head back against the back of the tablet and screamed, willing her soul to explode out of this place and find Ruan’s again. This wasn’t happening. Couldn’t be happening. The entire chamber flashed blindingly white, heating up to scorching levels; sweat trickled down her temples. When Eve brought her gaze back to center, she gasped. Streams of white light twirled out of the onyx eye of the amulet, entwining together, reaching the ceiling.

  Her body heated to unnatural levels.

  Death shades weakened, their shades immediately dimming under the brilliance of the sudden surge of energy. How the hell was this happening?