Howls of rage quickly followed the fallen vampire’s screams of pain, and Nyla knew she’d just royally pissed off the vampire army surrounding the house. They’d come in more forcibly now, knowing there was someone armed inside. She couldn’t shoot in two different directions with only one gun in one hand, so she sheathed the sword, replacing it with the second gun.
Time seemed suspended as she waited, a gun pointed toward each room, her index fingers poised over the triggers, waiting for her enemies to appear. She could hear her heartbeat roaring in her ears and briefly closed her eyes, willing it to slow down. When she reopened them, she breathed easier. For the sake of the child in the closet, she’d fought back the last tremor of fear trying to shake her.
And then all hell broke loose.
JAKE BROUGHT Peewee’s hot-wired truck to a screeching halt outside the house where Nyla was protecting the kid. His protective instincts went into overdrive. He’d sensed the small army of vampires before he even reached the house, and since he couldn’t see any outside, that meant they were all in the house . . . with Nyla. And if she wasn’t alive when he marched in there, he’d send the monsters to hell and then follow them there where he’d rip them to pieces every day for the rest of damnation.
“Stay in the car,” he ordered the teenager in the backseat as he opened his door.
“What if those things come out here?” Marilee asked, shooting a cautious glance toward Seta, who narrowed her eyes at her.
“We gave you a gun,” Seta reminded her. “Now stay out of our way.”
“Can you sense them in there?” Jake asked Seta as they simultaneously slammed their doors shut.
“Yes. I sense Nyla too. She’s alive, and fighting her heart out.”
Relief flooded through Jake, and it was in that moment he realized he was trembling. He glanced over at the vampiress next to him as they marched toward the house, wondering what was going through her mind.
“Are you going to be able to do this, or should I go in alone?”
“Do what? Slaughter everyone in sight?”
Jake picked up on the disgust in her tone and found it amusing coming from a bloodsucking witch. “They’re your people.”
“So every non-vampire in this country is your people? Even the serial killers and rapists?”
He ignored her last remark, wrapping his right hand around his gun, which he’d finally found locked away in a small room next to Peewee’s office. It wasn’t the right time to be getting into an in-depth debate with the vampire-witch. Nyla’s life, and the lives of two innocents, were at stake. “I just want to make sure this isn’t going to be a conflict of interest for you.”
“My only interest is in protecting the child and his mother.”
“It better be,” he warned, bounding up the porch steps.
The front door had already been kicked in, and most of the windows were busted out. He kicked what was left of the door aside and with his gun pointed straight ahead, stepped into hell.
NYLA SWUNG HER sword in an arc, having dispensed all of her bullets within the first five minutes of the attack. Vampires had rushed in from all directions, kicking in doors and breaking through windows. She’d shot at them first, taking out as many as she could, before having to rely on her sword. If not for the fact she could evaporate into mist whenever too many of them closed in on her, she’d have been dead long ago.
She heard the front door being kicked off of its one good hinge, and thought, Oh no, not more of them. But dread turned to sweet relief when she saw Jake and Seta barrel into the room. Jake was alive, and, except for some gashes, bruising—and blood that she was sure wasn’t his staining his clothes—he looked good.
“Thank you,” she whispered to the heavens before decapitating another vamp. The beasts were beyond determined, never backing down, as though they were on a mission with strict orders to not turn back, no matter what. And the damned things seemed to be multiplying.
“Is the boy all right?” Jake called to her while he fired UV bullets into the crowd of bloodthirsty vamps, successfully turning several of them into rotting piles of gunk.
“He’s secure,” Nyla answered, noticing the horror in Seta’s eyes as the vampiress watched Jake’s victims dissolve. She understood the vampire-witch’s reaction, remembering the fear that had run through her the first time she’d seen what the UV bullets could do.
Nyla turned just in time to avoid having fangs sink into her shoulder, and impaled a portly, middle-aged vamp with her sword. Just as the crowd of vampires started to thin out, thanks to her sword-swinging, Jake’s bullets, and Seta’s fireballs, more poured into the house.
“Where the hell are these things coming from?” Jake yelled over the commotion of the fight, dropping his empty gun in favor of a lamp stand and impaling one of the vampires on it.
“Jake!” Nyla threw her sword to him, filling her hands with the knives she’d kept sheathed to her forearms. He caught it and swung just in time to protect Seta from one of the charging vamps. The vampire-witch seemed to be weakening, her energy drained by the power needed to produce the fireballs with which she’d been killing vamps.
“Seta! Get behind me,” she instructed. “Only use your fireballs when too many are on me. I have to bring them in closer since I only have my knives.” Of course, she could change into mist if they got too close, but it was too risky to chance doing that around Jake.
“Keep one of them alive,” Seta requested as she fought her way to Nyla, standing back to back with her. “It’ll take the last of my energy, but I might be able to read one of them and figure out who sired them.”
The battle continued, blood splattering over walls, furniture, and them as she continued hacking vampires to pieces. Seta used her fireballs only when necessary, and Jake swung his sword like a man possessed. Nyla couldn’t help shuddering at the violent sound of his guttural cries as he ended each vampire’s life.
“Touch him,” Seta said softly from behind Nyla.
“What?”
“Touch him. He’s losing himself to the rage inside. When I walked into the sheriff’s department, he’d just set a vampiress on fire, after she was already near death. If he gets any farther gone than he already is, I might not make it out of here without one of us dying. I’m too weak to teleport, and I seriously doubt you could kill him to save me. I don’t want to kill him, but I won’t allow myself to die either.”
Nyla gulped, knowing she couldn’t kill Jake, even if he was in the wrong and about to take an innocent life. She also couldn’t stand by and watch Seta kill him in self-defense.
“Touch him, Nyla. Your touch has the power to diminish his darkness.”
Nyla rammed one of her knives into the gut of an attacking vampire, pulling it up until she reached the heart and successfully cut it out. She closed her eyes as the organ fell to the floor. She had enough awful memories from the night to last her a lifetime. Too many.
The vampire’s body fell to the blood-soaked floor with a sloppy-sounding thud, and Nyla stepped over it to make her way to Jake, sensing Seta following behind her. She swung her knives, effectively carving out a pathway to the man she loved, the man whose eyes were filled with a rage that chilled her to her marrow. Reaching him, she put her back to his, and Seta stood angled between them.
The three of them stood together in an imperfect circle, fighting at each other’s sides, and she took the only moment she had to place her hand on Jake’s thigh, relieved to feel some of his anger drain out of him and into her.
“They’re going to swarm us this way,” Jake warned, his voice closer to normal but still not quite there.
“Yeah, but at least none of them can creep up behind us.”
Nyla took her hand away as a vampire charged her, needing both knives to stop his advance. She had to have faith that she’d done enough to make Jake
less of a threat to Seta.
The vampires thinned out as the trio fought with everything they had inside them. Finally, with the walls and carpet soaked in blood, they won. Only one vampire stood before them, determined to fight until the very end.
“No!” Seta yelled as Jake raised his sword in the air, ready to decapitate the last surviving enemy. “Restrain the vampire, but don’t kill him. I need to put my hands on him and see if I can determine who sired these fledglings.”
Jake seemed oblivious to Seta’s words, and Nyla grabbed his arm, successfully stopping him from killing what could be their only chance of discovering who had turned the residents of Hicksville into a vampire army.
The vampire charged them, but Seta quickly raised her hands, using her power to pin him against a wall.
“Sweet move,” Nyla commented as she watched Seta approach the thin, dark-headed man.
“Yes. Too bad I’m going to drop like a sack of rocks after I’m through with him,” the vampire-witch said, her voice haggard. “I didn’t feed before all of this. Big mistake.”
“What are you doing?” Jake asked.
“I’m going to pull his memories,” Seta said simply as she stopped before the man and placed her hands on his body.
Nyla looked around the room as they waited, nearly gagging at the sight. Blood was everywhere, including on them. Bodies littered the floor, some whole and some an assortment of chunks. The place would never be clean, would be better off burned.
“Bobby? Maybelline? Are you all right?” she called to the people waiting in the closet.
“Yes, can we come out?” Maybelline answered.
“No!” Nyla said quickly, then added to Jake. “We’ll have to cover the boy’s head with something when we take him out or he’ll be in therapy for the rest of his life.”
“Is my daddy dead?” Bobby’s small voice came from the closet.
Nyla looked down, not wanting to answer. Bobby’s dad had been one of the first she’d killed.
Her thoughts were interrupted as Seta screamed, falling back from the vampire’s burning body, her hands aflame.
Nyla stood speechless as Jake ran from the room, quickly returning with a sheet. He batted the vampire-witch with it until the flames were doused and pulled her away from the vampire’s burning body before the fire could spread to her.
“What the hell was that?” Jake asked, looking at Seta’s charred arms.
“Hellfire,” the vampiress answered, her voice laced in pain. “Lucifer uses it to protect his minions.”
A scream and a series of gunshots sounded from outside the house, diverting their attention.
“Vampires are outside,” Jake said, jumping to his feet.
“Who’s the woman screaming?” Nyla asked, and more importantly, she thought, who was out there with a gun? She was sure Billy Bob and Bubba Lee had been killed.
“Marilee,” Jake answered, already halfway out the door.
“Marilee?”
“Another hunter we picked up,” Seta explained with a pain-filled laugh.
Nyla bent down to the woman and checked her burns, which looked as nasty as they apparently felt. The burning vampire had turned into ash and somehow put himself out.
“I saw a vampire with fur,” Seta said, her voice a thin rasp.
“With fur?”
“Yes. And I saw you. These vampires were made to destroy you.”
“What?” Nyla’s heart skipped a few beats. “Why?”
“I don’t know. The hellfire prevented me from seeing more.”
A roar cut through the air, turning Nyla’s blood to ice. It was Jake, and he was screaming in pain and rage.
“Go help him,” Seta prodded. “I’ll be fine here. I don’t sense any vampires near.”
Nyla nodded and ran out the door as fast as her legs would carry her. Jake and a blonde teenager stood over a woman’s body twenty-four feet from the house. Jake’s hands trembled with rage as he fell to his knees over the woman’s body, screaming “No” over and over, his voice growing in ferocity.
Nyla skidded to a stop beside them, realizing the latest victim had been practically dumped at their feet. Whoever was killing these girls was taunting them now.
“Jake . . .” She reached out to comfort him, but stopped as she realized who lay on the ground before him. As she looked into the pretty, young face of the latest victim, she realized where his pain and rage were coming from. It was Chrissy, the fourteen-year-old girl he’d met at The Crimson Rose, the girl she’d found him manhandling in the alley the night she’d shown up as herself.
She knew Jake well enough to realize he was blaming himself for the girl’s death, that he was railing at himself for not taking her home that night. If he had, she would be alive and well, not lying on the ground before him with two fang marks in her neck.
Fang marks that were not closing.
Chapter Nineteen
“JAKE.” NYLA REACHED out to him, but he shoved her away.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Jake, please.” Nyla tried to hide the pain in her voice, feeling rejected, but understanding he was angry with himself and lashing out at her because she was within reach. “Jake, it’s not your fault. There was nothing you could—”
“Don’t!” He rose to his feet, turning away from the body of the young girl. “I had her, Nyla. I had her right in my hands! I knew she was a runaway, and I knew she was in trouble!”
“And you did all you could do.”
“No! I didn’t do all I could do, Nyla,” he snarled, “because the moment I saw you my dick started doing all the thinking for me. All I could think about was what it would be like to be inside you, and I just let the girl go.”
“Um, I’m going to let you two hash this thing out,” the blond teenager murmured from beside them, glancing uneasily between them when they both turned their gazes on her.
As Nyla watched the girl walk backwards a few steps and then turn and run toward a truck, she carefully chose her words. “If you want to blame me for this, go ahead and—”
“I don’t blame you. I blame me. I let her go.”
“What was your other option? Take her with you? That would have been just beautiful if the cops found you, a twenty-eight-year-old man with a fourteen-year-old girl. You warned her of the dangers of the streets. It’s not your fault she didn’t listen.”
“How do you know she didn’t listen? She could have been grabbed that same night, and all because I let her walk away.”
Nyla looked down, unable to deny the possibility of that scenario. If she recalled correctly, Chrissy hadn’t had the same twang as the residents of Hicksville. She was most likely from Louisville and had been abducted there. Whoever had done this to her had kept her alive for awhile. “We’ll get the bastard who did this to her, Jake. That’s all we can do.”
“It’s not all we can do,” Jake said, his voice a low growl, as he picked up the sword he’d dropped on the ground and turned back toward the house.
“What are you doing?” Nyla asked, fearing she already knew the answer.
“She died because of vampires. I say we kill them all.”
“Jake, no!” Nyla ran to catch up to him as he steadily marched across the yard. She grabbed the back of his blood-soaked shirt and tugged him back, forcing him to turn and look at her. “You can’t kill Seta. She helped us.”
“I don’t give a fuck what she did. They’re all animals, all predators. Get her hungry enough, and she’ll suck us dry.”
“You don’t know that, and she’s hurt in there because she helped us!”
“She’s helping her own kind. They don’t want the exposure, Nyla. If more people believed in their existence, there would be more hunters. That’s all her help is about! I should have never called Chr
istian in the first place; a vampire minister for crying out loud. If that’s not the most twisted—”
“Believing in God is twisted? Did Christian ask to be a vampire, Jake? Did Seta? Did any of these people who we’ve just killed? Have you ever bothered trying to find out?”
He glared at her. “What is all this bleeding heart crap? You’re starting to sound like one of them! They claim they’re people, but they’re not people, Nyla. They’re parasites. Killers!”
“Says the man who just killed a roomful of them,” she stated dryly. “And if Seta and Christian are so bad, Jake, why did they let you and your brother go? They could have tried to kill you in Baltimore.”
Jake continued to glare at her, the fury in his gaze hot enough to burn flesh. “That doesn’t change the fact that they’re killers.”
“Newsflash, Jakie. Tonight we were all killers. And you seemed to enjoy it more than anyone.”
He drew back, as though her words had lashed him across the face, and in a way, she supposed they had. But she needed to make it crystal clear that he was the one who had been the most blood-hungry. “I love you, Jacob Porter,” she said, filling her hands with the bloody knives she’d sheathed after the last vampire went down, “but I won’t let you kill an innocent woman.”
Jake’s eyes went wide, and he looked stunned for a moment, then he looked at the knives, his hand tightening around the handle of his sword. “You’d fight me over her,” he stated, his eyes full of an identifiable emotion which seemed to reach out and squeeze Nyla’s heart.
“She’s an innocent in this, Jake. I won’t—I can’t—let you kill an innocent.”
He shook his head, muttering something too low to hear, but undoubtedly crude. “If I see her now, I’m going to kill her.”
“Then take the girl home. It’s too late to protect Chrissy, but the one in the truck can still be saved.”
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