“They aren’t swords, they’re machetes,” I said. “And that’s to scare them. Because we’re going to threaten to cut off their heads.”
She nodded. “But I don’t think I could cut off anyone’s head.”
“No, I know that. You don’t have to. Just look tough.”
She wrinkled up her nose, considering.
“If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to,” I said.
“Well, you were all saying that stuff about little Jenna, and I don’t want her getting her blood drained out of her or whatever,” said Felicity. “So, no, I’m in. I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” said Connor. He was standing in the doorway wearing a pair of tiny cut-off jean shorts and nothing else. He scratched his stomach and yawned. It was barely after sundown, so he must have just woken up.
“We’re going after the vampires at The Dungeon,” said Felicity.
“What? Without me?” said Connor.
I raised my eyebrows. “You want to come?”
“You let me come last time we went up against vampires,” he said, grinning.
“Yeah, but there was also that time you got hurt when the vampires broke into the hotel,” I said.
Connor squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I healed from that really fast, though. I’m a gargoyle. I’m tough.”
“Where’s your talisman?” I said.
“I can get it,” he said.
“You really shouldn’t take that off,” I told him. “It can protect you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He yawned again. “So, I can come?”
I sized him up. “I really don’t know, Connor.”
“I’m not letting you guys leave me behind,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “But the first sign of trouble, you run and get out of there.”
“Can I carry a machete?” he said.
I couldn’t help but grin. “Sure.”
“And I’m going to need coffee,” he said. “Are you guys leaving like right away?”
* * *
“Um, you’re that chick who was here before with the cop,” said the doorman at The Dungeon. “I can’t let you in. Besides, you can’t bring, um, weapons into the club.” He gestured to our machetes, which we had strapped to our belts.
“I’m not asking permission,” I said. “Step aside.”
The doorman furrowed his brow. “Listen, if you don’t back away—”
“What? You’ll call the police?” I laughed. “I highly doubt that.” I put my hand on my machete. “Move.”
He thought about it. He shrugged. “Okay, yeah, whatever.” He took off away from the door, running for his car.
Felicity, Connor, and I exchanged a look. That had been easy.
We stepped inside the club. The atmosphere hadn’t changed at all since the last time Lachlan and I had been there. Red lights, a floor filled with couches. The only thing different was that the couches weren’t full. I guess it was a little early for all the younger dragon set to come out. It was also a Wednesday, and maybe that made a difference. I didn’t know. I vaguely remembered that when I was an unmated dragon, I was all about partying on every day that ended in Y.
Whatever the case, it meant that the vampires without someone to prey on were lounging around the room in the tables and chairs that lined the edges of the room.
They might not have been vampires, but they looked the part. They were all very gothic, decked out in black leather and wearing lots of eye makeup.
When they saw us, they all stood up.
There was a bit of a stare-down between them. And then they seemed to come to a silent consensus and all of them sat down except three, who approached us.
They were all male. One had a nose ring. Another had a bare chest under his leather jacket. The third had his hair in a ponytail at the nape of his neck.
“We don’t usually serve drakes and gargoyles,” purred Bare Chest. “But I’m willing to expand my horizons.” He winked at Connor.
Connor yanked his machete out of his belt. “We’re not actually here for your services.” He pointed the long blade at Bare Chest, who backed up, eyeing its sharp edge.
“Hey, there’s no reason to get violent,” said Nose Ring.
“No,” I said. “There’s not. How about you all just pack up and leave this place and stop feeding on dragon youth? Then we wouldn’t have any more problem.”
Ponytail laughed. “Who do you think you are?”
“She was here with that cop,” said the manager we’d met before, hurrying across the room. “What the hell?” he said, gesturing to the machete.
Connor pointed it at the manager.
“You really human?” I asked him.
“He’s really human,” said Bare Chest.
“Good,” I said, grabbing the manager and pulling him close so that I could stare into his eyes. “You’ve suddenly decided that you have no desire to work here anymore. You’re going to want to leave.”
“Yeah, I want to leave,” said the manager in the sleepy voice of the compelled.
I let go of him.
He turned slowly and began to wander toward the door.
Bare Chest narrowed his eyes. “What are you?”
I laughed, letting a little tendril of smoke escape my lips. “Guess,” I hissed.
“Fuck,” said Ponytail, starting after the manager.
I reached out with magic and halted him. I picked him up off the ground and pulled him back in front of us.
“All right,” yelled Felicity, “it’s over. Any vamp with your teeth in someone’s neck has two seconds to remove them before we remove them for you.”
There was a rustle of movement around the edge of the room from the waiting vampires, but the vamps on the couches didn’t budge from feeding on their partners.
I looked at Felicity. “Keep those guys from going anywhere.” I pointed to the perimeter of the room.
Felicity clutched her talisman and reached out with the other hand.
The vampires at the edge of the room were all suddenly pinned to the wall.
I turned to the center of the room. I reached out with my magic and plucked each of the vampires who was feeding on a dragon off of their prey. I lifted the vampires into the air, hovering them near the ceiling.
“Any dragon in here needs to get out,” I called.
The dragons were sitting up and looking around, confused.
“Who are you?” said one.
“Who told you to come in here?” said another.
“Your mothers,” I said in a grim voice. “Now go home before you get in the middle of something you don’t want to be in.”
“Fuck you!” yelled one.
I blew out a tongue of flame. It hit one of the couches, and it went up like a torch.
The dragons all got to their feet. Young dragons couldn’t breathe fire. It was a skill that they didn’t get until they were mated. They scattered, heading for the exits.
As soon as they were all gone, I smacked the floating vampires down against the floor, making sure they all hit the ground hard.
They groaned and cried out.
They were the ones I needed to be worried about. After just feasting on dragon blood, they’d be brimming with magic.
This wasn’t going to be easy, so I needed to move fast.
Before any of them could react, I started blowing out fire, catching every couch around us on fire.
I blew fire at the walls, at the ceiling. The wallpaper caught the blaze, as did the beams in the ceiling. I looked at Felicity. “Contain it. Keep the flames from spreading to the storefronts on either side.”
She nodded once, screwing up her face in concentration.
“I’m burning this place to the ground,” I yelled into the smoke. “Don’t rebuild, and don’t set it back up again, or I will find you. The dragon community does not appreciate you feeding on its young.”
I didn’t wait for a reaction. I backed up, pulling out my machete. “Come near us, we take
off your heads.” I nodded at the exit.
Felicity was still concentrating, staring at the ceiling.
I took over, my magic filling in the gaps, keeping the fire contained. It blazed and burned the interior of The Dungeon, but didn’t spread to the rest of the strip mall. “Let’s go,” I said to Felicity and Connor.
We backed up against each other, facing outward, all of us with our machetes drawn.
And we headed for the exit as quickly as we could.
A burning piece of couch came hurtling through the air. Too fast to be propelled by anything other than magic.
“Got it,” yelled Felicity, halting it in midair before it hit us.
“Thanks,” I said. I had a good bit of magic, but it was hard to concentrate on doing several things at once. Holding back the fire wasn’t easy. I had to think about so many points of possible escape, jam them up with magic. And I had to keep moving and talking at the same time.
More fiery missiles were coming for us.
We were maybe ten feet from the door out.
“Down!” I yelled, and we all hit the ground.
Felicity threw up her hands, forcing the burning objects back into the blaze.
I carefully got back up into a crouch.
“Connor!” screamed Felicity.
A small, burning object hit him in the chest.
Connor brushed it off like it was nothing.
Felicity let out a breath.
“Stone doesn’t burn,” said Connor, grinning.
“Guys, we need to get out of here,” I said, pointing to the door.
We started to creep toward the door, still in a crouching position.
The interior of the room was full of smoke and fire. We could barely see anything through the haze, but above us the fire was eating through the ceiling, and the wallpaper was peeling away in the heat. It was as if the place had been hit with a storm of fire, and it was burning to the ground.
Good.
We were practically out of there.
And then my legs went out from under me, and I was on my back.
Magic. Someone had yanked me down with magic.
I tried to scramble up, but I was held in place, held down by someone powerful.
“What gives you the right to burn down my establishment?” said a voice, tinged with a strange sort of accent.
Old vampire, I thought immediately. He talked funny, because he was from a different time. I craned my neck backward, in the direction of the voice, and sure enough, there he was.
He stood behind Felicity and Connor, holding both of them in midair with his magic. He was tall with dark eyes and skin like paper. He was ancient, probably five hundred years old or more.
This was where the stories of vampires came from. Old vampires were rare. It was possible for vampires to live on indefinitely. Magic kept them halted at the age in which they died, and they didn’t change. But after a certain point in time, they did start to almost… age. They faded, turned white and spindly, and they were fragile. They couldn’t go out in the sun for very long.
Truthfully, most vampires didn’t live that long. They were either killed in mishaps or accidents or they ended up committing suicide out of sheer boredom, or so I understood. Apparently, living forever was a big snore. As a dragon, I was in possession of a long lifespan myself, but since everyone I grew up with lived to be three hundred years old, it had never seemed that long to me.
The thing about old vampires, though, was that they were physically fragile, but magically strong.
Still, if I could get one good ball of fire out of my mouth and into him, he’d go up like a matchbook.
He shook his head at me. “Try to burn me, and I will kill your companions.”
Like he’d read my mind. “Let them go,” I said. “You let them go, and I’ll stay. We’ll talk.”
“I don’t want to talk,” he said. “I want to rip your head from your body and bathe in the fountain of your blood.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen,” I said. I threw magic at him, trying to knock him off balance.
He flinched a little, as if a strong wind had gusted in his face. But he didn’t move.
Well, crap. I was probably a little tapped out, what with breathing all this fire and containing all the flames and everything.
“Try that again,” he said, “and I will bash their skulls against each other until their brain matter oozes out.”
He really was very graphic, wasn’t he?
What the hell was I going to do? I couldn’t move. I couldn’t use magic against him.
This was bad.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I licked my lips. “I’m not letting you kill them, and I’m not letting you kill me. There something else you want?”
He walked between the dangling bodies of Felicity and Connor, both of whom looked terrified. They were trying to make noise, but their lips seemed to be literally sealed, so all either of them could do was make high-pitched mmm-ing noises.
The old vampire knelt down over me.
I looked up at him. I was on my back, and he appeared upside down.
“I want my place of business restored.”
“Too bad,” I said. “You can’t have vampires feed on dragons like that, not without making people angry.”
He shook his head. “I could hunt your kind if I chose. In times past, my coven sent dragons on the run in the desert, where they could not shift. We waited, we watched, we encircled, we pounced. I have killed your kind.”
“No,” I said in a small voice. “Vampires can’t kill dragons.”
He laughed softly. “A lie that dragons tell themselves to make themselves feel superior. Your kind is not invulnerable.”
“Well, neither is your kind,” I said. This close, I could certainly get the fire into him before he could do anything to Felicity and Connor. He wasn’t even looking at them. I coughed a bit. The smoke was getting thicker. I couldn’t really tell what was happening to the club, not with the vampire blocking the way, but I was worried that if we were trapped here too much longer, we wouldn’t need this crazed old vampire to finish us off, because we’d all burn to death.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I will taste you now.”
Yeah, not going to happen. I sucked a big lungful of air to breathe out fire—
And coughed it back out.
Damn it.
He seized me by the shoulders, lifting me.
I struggled.
He laughed, using magic to hold me in place.
I threw magic into him, trying to dislodge him.
“Stop that,” he snarled.
Felicity and Connor both screamed at once—sounds of pain.
I tried to twist, to see them. “Felicity?” I yelled.
The vampire sunk his teeth into me.
I shrieked. That bastard. If he thought I was going to let him do this to me, then he was—
He pushed me away, sputtering.
I scrambled to my feet, snatching up my machete.
The old vamp was spitting out my blood. “You are joined to another! You have tainted me with your muddled blood. You are disgusting, linking yourself to one of my kind in that way. You think it will make you stronger, but it only makes you both weaker, and to think that I—”
I swung the machete in a wide circle, and it hacked into his neck.
His eyes bulged.
I struggled to keep cutting through, but it was stuck in the meat of his body. I gritted my teeth.
Felicity and Connor both dropped to their feet, letting out gasps of relief.
I put magic behind the machete, forcing it through…
The old vampire’s head toppled off.
I reached out for my friends’ hands. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
We ran for it.
* * *
The vampires all got out, near as we could tell, anyway. We saw them pulling out of the parking lot in their cars. We saw them running out of the buildi
ng and down the street.
Once the fire engines showed up, we decided it was time for us to get out of there, but so did the vampires.
There wouldn’t be anyone left to tell the tale, which was just as well. The last thing I needed was to have more trouble with the police, like last time. I really hadn’t meant for anyone to die that night, but I’d had to stop that old vampire. He was crazy.
Connor was excited. All the way back to the hotel, he sat in the back seat of the car and jabbered on and on about how awesome we were. “Oh my God, we should become like vampire killers extraordinaire or something. We could run around exterminating all the bad ones.”
“I didn’t want anyone to die,” I protested from the passenger’s seat. After the incident with the stop light, Felicity had insisted on driving. “Anyway, that was way too dangerous. I shouldn’t have brought you two along.”
“You needed me,” said Felicity.
“And I helped too,” said Connor.
“Actually, I think you mostly just nearly got yourself killed,” I said.
“Well, to be fair,” said Felicity, “it was pretty cool that he was impervious to flames. How come I never knew that about gargoyles?”
“Gargoyles were created to be able to withstand dragon attacks,” Connor said. “We don’t burn up. And we’re super strong. I mean, you don’t see me doing a lot of weight lifting, right, and I’ve still got these wicked guns.” He flexed.
“Connor, if anything happened to you, I couldn’t take it,” I said. “I shouldn’t have brought you along.”
“Maybe if Connor learned to use his talisman to do magic too,” said Felicity. “I could show you some stuff.”
“Really?” Connor was excited. “Awesome. That would be so cool. And then we could just go after all kinds of scum and villainy in Sea City. We could be like superheroes, cleaning up the streets and making it safe for upstanding citizens.”
Felicity laughed.
“No way,” I said. “It’s way too dangerous.”
“You said you wanted to be able to help out the city,” said Connor. “This is how we do it. We don’t have to stick to vamps either. We could go after slayers too. We could stop them from killing dragons. That would be a good thing. A really good thing.”
I sighed. “I only did this as a favor to an old friend.” I turned to look at Connor. “But it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you learned to use some magic as well, I have to admit. I’d feel better if both you and Felicity could take care of yourselves.”
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