Follow the Bloodshed (The Executioner Trilogy Book 3)

by Sowder, Kindra

  Sam had come to meet another crawler, slashing with the blade and lacerating the throat of a shriveled crawler. If we had let them feed this probably would’ve been the first feeding it had had in months. On contradiction to what I thought she now looked as if she could take care of herself, causing my worry for her to dampen.

  There must have been at least ten to fifteen of them left, but it felt like an army. A few vampires littered the crowd of crawlers and they had noticed us a lot faster than the crawlers had. I pulled the trigger again and hit the crawler directly in the forehead. I didn’t even have to aim again. My heart was pounding and so was the beast, growling and screaming from within its cage. The beast was all id, nothing to keep it in check besides me. When in the presences of evil and danger it had no reasoning except to unleash itself and kill everything.

  One vampire moved towards us. His red eyes were wide and intense and almost seemed to glow in the darkness. The moonlight and the light from the now flickering street lamp overhead bounced off of his pale skin, causing his exposed canines to shine white and beautiful in the darkness we were surrounded with. Most people said that when faced with danger you experience tunnel vision. I didn’t. I could see everything around me. I could see the vampire moving towards Beth and me as well as the dispersing crawlers making their way towards Gordon. Behind Sam and me, a few crawlers were sticking around to bite and torment the struggling man. I was surprised he was still alive and fighting them off as best as he could.

  I swung the gun around, aiming it at the vampire’s chest. It was worth a try. I had no idea if these bullets were silver or not. I had the gun pointed at the center of his broad chest as his legs carried him quickly in my direction. The gunshot rang in my ears as the bullet exploded planting itself right where I had meant for it to go. While the kick of the gun wasn’t too bad, the shell came flying out, burning my neck on contact as it flew to the ground. The vampire jerked back, the shot making him take a few steps backward, but he didn’t turn to ash. I yelled out in frustration as he turned to me, hunched in a defensive crouch and hissed in pain.

  A small rivulet of blood oozed from the wound and ran down his slick chest, but didn’t heal and the blood was black instead of bright red. It was dead blood that had become stagnant. The thought caused me to shiver. Then the hiss grew into a snarl, his lips curling back to expose more of his long canines. I brought the gun down to my side while removing an arrow from the quiver at my shoulder but wasn’t sure if it would work with the head that was on it. As the vampire watched me, head tilting to the side in curiosity, I placed the arrowhead underneath my foot and pulled the shaft to the side, snapping it off with a loud and echoing break that sounded like bone splintering.

  Running towards me, the vampire cried out. Once he was within arm’s reach, I grabbed his outstretched arm and turned it, placing my foot just in front of his so he tumbled to the ground. A grunt escaped his lips with the impact and the wood in my hand was just itching to be used and my hand eager to use it. I straddled him and plunged the wood into his chest. It was harder than it should’ve been. The arrow met resistance and the vampire’s scream of pain quickly turned into laughter as he realized I didn’t have the strength to follow through. He placed his hands on mine and began to pull the arrow out, all with a grin on his face like he had already won. His red eyes made contact with mine, but I was beginning to think he had no idea who I was. I began to let the beast roll again, letting it fuse into my bones, blood, and muscle. I didn’t need the arrow to kill him and he didn’t seem to realize that just yet. He was about to learn.

  “You have no idea who I am, do you?” I taunted.

  I let the fire inside reach my eyes and felt the heat rush to my face. I knew the color had changed to the amber color of liquid fire. His eyes went wide with fear as I let the heat build, flowing from my heart and down throughout my entire body, light pulsating with each heartbeat. Every sound around me was muffled except for the rhythmic beating of my heart. All I could feel was the heat and the nervous energy and terror of the vampire below me. I could feel him struggle to get out from underneath me but with the strength and power of the beast I was an unmovable force.

  I let the fire course through me and pushed it towards the arrow shaft. Tendrils of fire wrapped themselves around the shaft and moved like snakes towards the vampire’s hands resting within centimeters of my own. He kicked and screamed as the tendrils of fire got closer to his skin. Once the flame made contact I could hear the sizzle of him turning into embers and ash. A female vampire’s anguished cries sounded through the air. I turned to my right and could see her running towards us, tears of black dead blood streamed down her face and her mouth open. I had just slain her vampire lover.

  It wasn’t the first time I had run into this and I was sure it wouldn’t be the last. I pushed the flames more quickly into him and let them spread as I stood. He would be a human shaped pile of ash within moments. I caught her mid-run around the throat and squeezed, wanting nothing more than to hear her pathetic attempts to form words of vengeance. Her skin was cold and I couldn’t help but think about how I could warm it up. I reveled in the power of holding someone’s life in my hands. I realized it was the beast that felt this way. The humanity inside of me cringed, but she still had to die.

  Her feet were dangling off the ground before I realized I was lifting her. She felt feather light. Her cold, dead fingers were scratching at my hands trying to get free, but all it did was make me squeeze harder. I felt her feet make contact with my shins a few times, but it didn’t hurt. Felt more like an annoying thump than anything else. I thrust my free hand into her chest and grasped her heart. Even though she was technically dead her heart was still warm against my skin. It was like feasting on human blood had at least kept that part of her alive. From what I could tell with vampires their heart was the most crucial part of their being, which is why they died once it was destroyed.

  Within seconds of the heat from my hand bleeding into it, the organ was turning to ash and as soon as the heart was gone so was she. She exploded noisily into a cloud of ash and smoldering embers, fluttering in the air around me like snow. I couldn’t help but stand there and stare at it in wonder for just a moment.

  Making my way towards the screaming and flailing man, I unleashed fire and destruction upon every crawler that came my way. I hadn’t noticed until I saw her shrink away from the flames, but Sam had been close to the crowd of crawlers. She shrieked but didn’t lose sight of the objective. There wasn’t nearly as many of them as I would’ve thought. But they were scared of me now after the display of power and were more interested in going after Beth. She was the only pure human outside, besides the man whom they were mauling. Once I made it within a few feet of him, I could see there were still three crawlers latched onto him, tearing at his flesh like a pack of wild dogs. I cringed.

  I felt like an animal, the beast draining away every ounce of humanity I had left. It must have been the sight of the vile creatures sinking their teeth into his muscles and skin, blood pouring onto the asphalt in a glistening black river. It caused the beast to rise and explode like Mount Saint Helens, the humanity in me cracking off into the abyss where I would have to brave the darkness to reach it again.

  I took the one crawler nuzzling the base of the man’s bloody throat with one hand around his neck and sent the heat into my hand in a perfect circle. His head fell off and the warmth spread until all of him was a pile of embers on the ground and his comrades were about to become just the same. The crawler’s head was still whole and close to breaking. I pushed my foot into the skull, almost burning my skin as it crumbled and cracked, the shudder of it running up through my leg and reverberating into my torso. The beast was purring inside me and causing my ribs and my skull to vibrate with the sound. There were a few singed parts of my flats that I could feel rubbing against my skin as I moved to stand above the man with feet on either side of his body, placing my hands on the heads of both crawlers that were at his sid
es.

  They howled and tore themselves away from the man, but he was barely moving. Boney and cold fingers clawed at my hands as their heads disintegrated. My skin was now coated in his blood and scratches were being sliced into me by dead fingers, but the beast didn’t care. Each scrape filled with liquid fire that quickly turned into brand new flesh as the scalding fluid fell away and hissed when it hit the ground.

  The strap of the quiver of arrows dug into my shoulder as I snapped the crawler’s heads from their bodies with one quick jerk, the cracking sound causing me to clench my teeth. With a demonic scream the creatures turned into embers and ashes as I let the flames flow through them, some falling to the ground and some floating through the air around us. I looked at the man on the ground. His face was pale, his hair a mass of blonde and crimson, and his body had been ravaged. The beast inside of me told me I should just kill him. There was nothing else we could do for him, but the human part of me wanted to try to save him. I could feel the shivers of shock running through his body as I knelt to speak to him.

  There were still screams and cries all around us. I could hear Beth and Gordon in the hustle. Still no Chase to help in the fight. I meant what I had said to him. This wasn’t over. He could face it if Sam could, and she was still fighting the good fight. More crawlers had been drawn to the sounds of the fight and she moved through them with swiftness I had only seen in Hell, but I didn’t see her using her strength like she had when we had first surfaced. Had that been adrenaline after all?

  Feeling the pulse on the side of his throat that had been torn to only so much meat, I knew he was close to death if we didn’t do anything. He would die and turn. No way around it. Even if it was for nothing I would try. It just wasn’t in me to give up. I placed my hands on him to get him ready to be put into a fireman’s carry and he moaned in protest. Through gritted teeth I reassured him everything would be alright. When I began to lift him I was tackled to the ground by something heavy that knocked the wind out of me. I hit the asphalt and I could hear the man land right back on the ground, but roll just a few feet, putting him even farther away from me and safety.

  Silence overtook the night. The rest of my group was still fighting, but I couldn’t hear any of it. Even the crickets were quiet, but I could feel an energy in the air building and buzzing against my skin and sending tremors into the muscles beneath. A pair of deep red eyes were hovering over me, searching my wide green ones, trying to decipher what I was and my purpose. This vampire was a product of Lilith, direct, deliberate and terrifying. The beast wanted to rip the vampire’s head off, but I forced my body into immobility and lay there, barely breathing, like it could only see me if I moved. I knew that wasn’t the case, but I lay there frozen regardless. He searched me with his eyes and I could feel an invisible hand caressing me, reaching into me like he was trying to feel the beast inside me and trying to read it too. The beast didn’t like that and responded with a low and warning growl that was barely audible through my closed mouth. I felt violated as invisible energy moved through me and stayed no matter how much I tried to shove and push it out. It was like he was even swimming through my blood. Yes, this one was definitely Lilith’s creation, but there was something oddly familiar and unsettling about him. His hair was long and hung down over his face and his features looked so familiar it hurt.

  Gordon’s voice and Sam’s screams sounded, breaking the silence around us and shattering it to pieces. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of the vampire hovering over me and I could still feel energy rummaging through my own. A voice echoed through the quiet again, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then I heard it.

  “Vlad! No!” Gordon yelled at the top of his lungs.

  That was when I knew whose eyes I was looking into. Vlad Tepes. Vlad the Impaler. The man, the legend and the monster. Vlad. Gordon’s brother. I turned to see Gordon’s face, wide eyed and terrified, my head lolling to the side as the beast slunk into a dark, quiet corner of my mind. Not absent, just noiseless, but I could still feel the heat and see the light rising from my body. I knew I had been abandoned, but only for a moment I hoped. It was like the moment when I had met Gordon and we were the only two who existed, except this time it was Vlad, Gordon and I. Nothing else existed. Not even the beast.

  A tooth scraped the side of my neck, causing me to jerk and gasp, but there was no penetration. Only so many words were spoken in that same velvet voice Gordon possessed. “Fată frumoasă, you will see me again.”

  Just as quickly as he was there, he was gone. Not even a trace of him was left behind and everything was quiet. I sat slowly to see Gordon rushing to me, checking my neck for puncture wounds.

  I pushed him away with my hands and gave him a reassuring, “I’m okay.” He sighed in relief and sat back on his heels. Yes, I was okay, but the man lying on the ground wasn’t. I could hear his labored breathing just barely and knew he was suffering. Sam was by his side. The fighting had ceased but I could hear even more crawlers and vampires making their way towards our hunched forms.

  Hopefully it wasn’t too late to save him. Stuffing the pistol into the waist band of my shorts I stood and walked to the man whom Gordon was now lifting into a fireman’s carry. The man grunted; bloodstained blonde hair bobbing as Gordon walked him to the front door and up the steps. There was the smell of iron in the air from his blood and I had to fight the urge to gag. It was a smell I couldn’t get used to.

  Chase ran to the door as Beth raised the shield, Sam barely making it over the border as a shimmer and a zap signaled its placement. I turned to see Beth, hand still in the air, sitting on the ground. She didn’t seem to care that the grass was covered in dew.

  I continued to walk into the house. The only person that could help her now was herself and no matter how much I wanted to be there for her I just couldn’t. I had no idea what the last six months was like for her and Chase, but I could guess. If it were anything like my stint in Hell then I understood completely.

  Once I crossed the threshold into the kitchen Gordon was sliding the man onto the kitchen island with Chase’s assistance. He groaned in pain and his eyes fluttered, barely opening enough to see us. I had been in a state like this before. He was turning and this would mean a shower of holy water and a silver nitrate shot I had gotten when Lilith had made her appearance. Beth and I had taken plenty of holy water baths in our time together. The energy in the room was changing and I knew I wasn’t the only one who could feel it. Gordon, Chase, and Sam were standing there staring at him as he lay there. Turning or dying, but I was betting on turning and I knew this from experience. From the look on their faces I would have to take this into my own hands. They stood there, rooted to the floor, staring at the helpless man with regret in their eyes. He was already beginning to sweat and he was incoherent from blood loss. He was on the verge of turning into one of the undead and holy water and silver nitrate was the only way to stop it that didn’t involve killing him.

  I moved to the cabinet beside the stove and began to rummage through it. We had to have holy water and silver nitrate somewhere. Considering the state of the world you would think there would be a short supply, but not in this house. It took a few long moments but I found three clear bottles of holy water and one amber bottle. This would be all I would need to stop this man becoming a vampire. Did this work if he was bitten by crawlers though? I honestly had no idea and we were in no way prepared if this didn’t work.

  “Have we tried this on crawler bites before?” I pointed the question at Chase. Beth still hadn’t come inside and he was my best bet. More than likely they had at least tried. His eyes were only for the man on the kitchen island. I snapped my fingers in front of his face and asked again. “Come on, Chase. Does this work on crawler bites? I need to know now.” He seemed to snap out of it and his eyes met mine. The amber color seemed to be swimming around his pupil. It was strange how I had never noticed that before.

  “I really don’t know. Normally it happened so fast we never h
ad a chance to see if it worked or not.” The sentence was rushed and now I knew why he didn’t even want to try to save him to begin with. They had been through this before but didn’t have enough time to save them. I was beginning to wonder who it was, but I didn’t have time to stop and think. I was also beginning to wonder if he was lying to me about any of this.

  “Gordon, I need a syringe. One of the glass ones,” I said as I pointed to the drawer directly behind him. “I have no idea if this will work, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  He nodded and nabbed the syringe out of the drawer and handed it to me, while trying to move around Sam’s still form without running into her. I was standing at the man’s side. Sweat coated his skin and soaked his clothes and I knew the change was upon him. There was no way I was going to give up on him. I would save him or have to kill him, and I was truly hoping I wouldn’t have to do the latter. Killing another human being wasn’t an option, but soon he wouldn’t be a human. He would be one of those things. He would soon be only an animal with the instinct to kill and feed and there would be nothing left of him. Granted, I didn’t know him, but now that I knew there was barely any humanity left in the city it felt like I was losing something. Pouring the three bottles of holy water on the three bite marks, I listened to him cry out and watched as the steam rose from the wounds. I had never seen this happen before with your run-of-the-mill vampire. Did this also happen with Lilith’s breed of vampire?

  The steam was rolling away from his body like a fog rolling its way down to the floor and over our feet. The sizzle grew louder as I poured more and more holy water onto his wounds until all three bottles were empty. This would need to continue until the reaction subsided. Then we could move onto the silver nitrate. With a normal vampire bite only three bottles were needed, but it looked like much more was needed for a bite from a direct creation of Lilith. I was hoping there was more. I hadn’t noticed as I watched the man writhe, but Sam had gripped his shoulders, holding him down like Gordon had me when we first met.