by Jack Knight
“Maddi?”
That one was Matt’s voice, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. Since the knife wouldn’t work on the vampire, I had to use it on myself. I slashed it across my palm, slapped my bleeding hand against the back of the vampire’s head, and yelled.
“Ignesco!”
There was a flash of light as fire tried to take to the vampire’s hair, and then it went out. Somehow, these things couldn’t be harmed at all.
There were banging and scraping sounds all over the room. Grunts, screams, yells, all of it blended together as I stared at the vampire that didn’t even care that I had tried to hurt him. A few seconds later, the vamp dropped the Hunter to the ground and looked up at me with a bloody smile.
“You can’t hurt us, Hunter,” it said with ecstatic glee.
All magic has limits. It takes a sacrifice. It takes something. Which meant, these things couldn’t always be invincible, otherwise they wouldn’t have waited to ambush the Hunters at once. They were trying to strike fast.
They were on a time limit.
Out of nowhere, Matt tackled the vampire that had been in front of me. The two of them hit the ground before I could react. I was about to dive on top of them to help keep Matt safe, but another vampire grabbed my arm and yanked me back, slamming me into a table.
My hand was still bleeding, I had to try again.
This time, when I slammed my hand into the vampire’s skin and yelled the incantation, it worked. The vampire’s eyes went wide and it started screaming as it’s skin burst into a flame that spread over its entire body in seconds.
I looked around the room. Dead Hunters covered the floor. Magnus was up against the wall and his head was drooping against his chest, hopefully he was just unconscious. I didn’t have time to look for Asher, because the vampire that had been fighting with Matt was running out of the room, carrying Matt over his shoulder.
The vampires must have realized they were out of time. The first one was out the door before I could blink, but the remaining vampire wasn’t as fast.
I had never been so happy to be bleeding in my life.
“Motum subsisto!”
The vampire froze just before he reached the doorway. I leapt to my feet and ran at him. He couldn’t run. I had finally caught one, and I was getting my answers now. I couldn’t keep up with a vampire, but the one that had taken Matt had to be going somewhere. I didn’t care if I was saving Matt or avenging him, I was done running around in the dark.
I grabbed the vampire, threw him up against the wall, and pressed my knife against his throat. Before I could say anything, Asher was at my side, he held up a hand, a ball of fire was hovering an inch above his palm.
“Nice one, Maddi, you’re getting good.”
I ignored him. “Why are you killing Hunters?” I demanded.
The vampire, who looked a lot like the shifter I had killed just before meeting the Reapers, held up his hands in surrender. His eyes were wide, and he looked terrified. What was with all these cowardly vampires?
“Whoa! I don’t know, we’re just supposed to kill them. We were ordered to! If we didn’t agree to do whatever he said, he never would’ve let us out of those cages. I felt like I was suffocating, man!”
“Whatever who said?” I demanded as I pressed the blade of my knife into the vampire’s neck. “Who made you?”
“Some guy! He said his name was Torn!”
Chapter 22
THERE WAS NO WAY TORN was the one making the vampires. He was dead. I had seen the police report, it had a picture of his dead body. The vampire had to be lying, or wrong.
I glanced over to Asher. The fire in his hand had gone out, and he looked like he was trying to process what he had heard. He didn’t look angry or confused, he looked more surprised than anything. After how upset he had gotten at Torn’s death, I couldn’t blame him.
When I turned back to the vampire, I decided the easiest thing to do was ignore that and try to find out as much as I could.
“How did you become a vampire, explain everything.”
The guy still looked terrified, he kept glancing back and forth between Asher and me. It took him a couple of tries, he just stood there, opening and closing his mouth for a few seconds, before he got anything out.
“I... I mean, I was out at a movie one night. I was on a date, and it went really well, and then someone grabbed me. When I woke up, I couldn’t breathe. This guy threw in a bag and I drank it and felt a lot better. The same guy came by every so often, telling me I could come out as soon as I agreed to obey every command he gave me.”
Alright, sounded a lot like he had been Turned, but that wasn’t very much information I didn’t already know.
“Threw a bag into where?” I pressed. “Where were you exactly?”
The guy started shaking against my arm as he answered, “Dude, I seriously don’t know. It was a big building, made out of concrete. We were kept in cells, like in a jail. He said we weren’t allowed to remember where it was, so I can’t remember. But, we can always find our way back, we’re like messenger pigeons.”
That was actually good news. We could have this guy lead us back to the building. We could figure out if it really was Torn and we could put an end to all of this. Finally, I had found the solution to this very aggravating problem.
“Yeah, right!”
I made sure to keep the vampire pressed against the wall and my knife on his neck when I turned to look for the source of the voice that had just spoken. One of the Hunters was standing up.
“Huh, you didn’t all die,” I realized aloud.
The man shuffled awkwardly forward. He was cradling his left arm against his chest and wasn’t putting much weight on his right leg. Chances are, he shouldn’t have been walking at all, but he was a Hunter. We were taught to endure torture, a couple of injuries were nothing.
The Hunter ignored me and shoved Asher out of the way. Asher still looked like he was in a daze and didn’t resist. He just stumbled backward until he regained his balance and looked up like he was waking up from a dream.
“Why did you attack us?” the Hunter demanded of the vampire.
The vampire was really shaking now. I got the feeling that he would have crumpled to the floor if I wasn’t holding him upright. He looked at the Hunter out of the corners of his half-closed eyes when he answered.
“I didn’t have a choice, he made us. He said that we were being made to destroy the Hunters,” the vampire whimpered.
“Good enough for me,” the Hunter growled.
I figured out what was happening a second too late. The Hunter reached out his good arm, grabbed my hand and shoved it forward. The knife sliced right through the vampire’s neck.
The Hunter tried to pull my arm back and forth in a sawing motion, and I did my best to resist. Even a wound like that, a vampire could heal as long as his head wasn’t completely severed. I growled and tried to rip my hand away from the Hunter, but he was stronger than I was.
He didn’t release me until the vampire’s head fell to the ground and blood started draining out of it, leaking across the floor. For a split second, I was glad that vampire blood pressure was almost nonexistent, otherwise I would’ve been covered in the guy’s blood. Then, I realized the severity of what just happened.
I took my weight off the beheaded corpse and let it fall to the ground as I turned and brandished my knife at the Hunter.
“Are you fucking stupid?” I demanded. “He could have led us to the vampire factory! We could’ve wiped them all out at once! You just killed the only way we had of finding the rest of them!”
Now that I wasn’t so focused on the vampire, I noticed that several of the Hunters hadn’t died. A few of them were now standing and watching the exchange. Magnus was upright again, too, but he was leaning against a wall for support.
“He killed Hunters, so did his friends, the punishment for that is death!” the guy spat.
There was a fraction of a second where the guy’s eyes flick
ed to my knife, then back to my face. For a brief moment, he looked puzzled, then I saw the realization hit him. “You’re Maddi, aren’t you?” he growled.
Shit.
“Time to go!” I shouted.
I kicked the Hunter in the stomach as hard as I could. On his injured leg, he couldn’t keep his balance when he stumbled backward and he fell over.
Making sure to grab Asher’s hand before I turned, I bolted the last few feet toward the door. I heard pounding footsteps behind me as Asher and I ran back through the open room and through the hall we used to enter the building. I was one step from the hallway when I felt Asher’s hand be ripped away from mine.
I spun back around and saw two Hunters. One had grabbed Asher and they were already fighting. Thank god the Hunters all seemed to be injured and unarmed, otherwise Asher would already be dead.
Then, there was the guy who came right at me. He threw a punch at my face, which was bad news for him. I dodged his attack and kneed him in the stomach. He bent forward just enough that I could slam the hilt of my knife into the back of his head and he crashed to the ground, unconscious.
I ran toward Asher, but it turned out I didn’t need to. The Hunter had punched him in the face, I could see a thin line of blood spilling over his lip, and apparently that was enough.
“Violentus potentia!” Asher yelled as he thrust both of his hands toward the Hunter that was in the middle of throwing a punch.
The Hunter was lifted off his feet and thrown across the room so hard that when he slammed into the staircase I heard a crack as loud as a gunshot. I kind of hoped it was the sound of a bone breaking, but chances were it was just the wooden stairs.
When I started toward the room we had just left, Asher shouted again.
“Maddi! What do you think you’re doing?”
I hesitated, but only because the authority in Asher’s voice was so surprising.
“We have to get Magnus,” I answered as I glanced toward the room. I could hear the sounds of a struggle. I had no idea how many Hunters he was fighting, but it didn’t sound good.
“Magnus is the most powerful mage I’ve ever met, and he was trained by the Hunters. He’d be pissed at us for wasting an escape to help him when he doesn’t need it,” Asher insisted.
He didn’t even give me a second to think it over. Asher ran forward, grabbed my hand, and pulled from down the hallway and out of the building. We didn’t stop running until we had made it all the way back to the church.
By the time we reached it, I was breathing hard. Asher just barely made it inside the building before he collapsed, covered in sweat and panting so hard I worried he would hyperventilate.
“You need to exercise,” I laughed as I leaned against one of the pillars in the church’s entryway, so that I could catch my breath.
“I’m... fit as... a fiddle,” Asher gasped with a strained smile on his face.
Joking aside, I felt horrible. I couldn’t believe I had left a fellow Reaper in the building full of Hunters. Even worse, a Hunter had recognized me. Chances were, he wasn’t going to keep the secret like Matt had.
Also, Matt had been hauled off by the vampires. If he wasn’t dead already, I couldn’t imagine the horrible things the vampires were going to do to him. This was getting worse and worse every time I tried to fix anything.
Eventually, Asher could breathe again. The second he could, he stood up and walked unsteadily toward the church’s hallway, weaving back and forth like he was drunk.
“Where are you going?” I asked. “We have shit to figure out.”
“Yup,” Asher called back without turning around, he still sounded a little breathless as he added, “seems like something we should consult our resident genius about.”
Gen. Got it.
I followed Asher through the church to the computer room, where Gen was busy typing away. She had left the door open, so Asher didn’t even bother to knock before he walked in.
“Gen, huge problem. We need to see that file on Torn’s death again,” Asher said as I was entering the room behind him.
Gen spun around in her chair, she looked like she was about to say something, but I beat her to it.
“No, we need to know if there are any buildings in the city that could be converted into makeshift jails. Our priority needs to be finding the vamp nest.”
Asher turned around to face me and sighed. “Torn is the one who brought me into the Reapers. If he’s really alive, I need to know.”
“Torn’s alive?” Gen gasped, her eyes went wide and she gripped the arms of her chair so hard I could see the indents of her fingers on the chair’s padding.
“Maybe,” I answered quickly. “We don’t know for sure. The only way to find out is to go to wherever the vampires are holed up.”
Asher turned back to Gen and gave a quick recap of our adventure through the Hunter building. She looked terrified the entire time. When Asher finished, she shook her head and whistled.
“Man, I’m super grateful I can’t fight. I would hate to go on missions like that.”
She spun around in her chair and started typing away at her computer before she spoke again.
“Sorry, Asher, but Maddi’s right. If that police report was fake, we’ll never figure it out from here. If Torn wanted to fake his death, he’d have turned some dead body into a perfect likeness of him. We need to find that building. I think I can narrow it down in a couple of hours.”
I sighed and walked over to lean against one of the computer desks as Asher, with a sigh of resignation, fell into one of the many computer chairs.
“Fine, whatever,” Asher groaned.
“Everyone come quick!”
All three of us turned at the sound of the voice to see Carver, who I usually only saw at breakfast, standing in the doorway, looking shaken to his core.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Carver made eye contact with me and answered in a quiet voice. “Magnus just got back, and he’s not looking good.”
Chapter 23
FOR A SECOND, I COULDN’T process what Carver had said. How had Magnus gotten back so soon after Asher and I did? Then, I remembered that Magnus could have used a car. If he was in bad shape, the thought of him driving around in San Francisco was almost as terrifying as leaving him alone with the Hunters had been.
Asher jumped up and raced out of the room, he and Carver disappeared within seconds of the announcement, but I was torn. I turned back to look at Gen, who looked like she was struggling just as much as I was.
We needed the info, and we were both worried about Magnus. Thankfully, Gen spoke first.
“You go. I’ll keep working on this, I won’t be able to help Magnus anyway.”
“You sure?” I asked. I had already pushed myself back off the desk and I could feel my muscles tensing, ready to sprint out of the room.
“Yeah, but you come back and give me a report as soon as you can,” Gen commanded as she turned back around to her computer.
That was all I needed. I sprinted back through the church as fast as I could. When I reached the main room, I saw that every other Reaper was there, except for Gen and Ezra. Of course, the leader of the Reapers wasn’t there. He never was.
I had to make my way around the crowd, as Magnus had sat down in a chair next to one of the tables, and everyone was surrounding him. When I finally got a glimpse of him, I cursed under my breath.
“Not looking good” was a major understatement. Magnus looked like he’d lost a fight with a woodchipper.
He was covered in blood, there were gashes all across his arms, face, and chest, his clothes were ripped and sliced open all over, and he looked like he was having trouble keeping his head up. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. His arm looked terrible.
His left shirt sleeve had been torn open by Atasha, who was kneeling by his side, everyone else was a step or two back. Magnus’ entire left arm was black and shriveled, like it had been burned and died. The way Atasha was moving it, it didn�
��t seem like Magnus had any control over it at all, like the muscles, if there were any left, were useless.
“Everyone,” Atasha barked, “I need ingredients for every healing spell you know!”
Immediately, everyone sprinted away. Most of them ran toward the store room, a couple of people ran toward the library. Asher was already about twenty feet away when he turned back and waved at me.
“Maddi, come on!”
I glanced back at Magnus’ arm for a second before I replied, “Dude, I don’t know any healing spells.”
“We’re going to need help carrying everything!” he shouted.
I can carry shit, good, something to do.
I hurried to follow Asher, who turned away and headed to the storeroom, several seconds behind everyone else. Apparently, whatever was happening was really serious, but I didn’t understand what was going on.
“What happened to his arm?” I asked Asher as we made it to the storeroom.
The room was filled with wire shelving, like the pantry in a restaurant. Everything was in labeled bottles, vials, and boxes, but I didn’t know enough magic to know what was useful. Thankfully, I was the only one. All the other Reapers were darting all over the room, grabbing things off the shelves in handfuls, and sprinting back to help Magnus.
Asher started pulling things off the shelves and shoving them into my arms as he answered, “He overdid it. If you use too much magic at once, and your body isn’t used to it, there are consequences. As powerful as Magnus is, I’m surprised San Francisco is still on the map if his entire arm died.”
It should have scared me that Magnus could wipe an entire city out of existence, but I just thought it was awesome. It would have been a lot easier to appreciate if I wasn’t afraid Magnus was going to lose his arm.
“Okay,” Asher said as he grabbed a couple more bottles off the shelves, “come on.”
We sprinted back to where Magnus was sitting, his head drooping and his eyes closing much too long every time that he blinked.
Everyone had set the ingredients on the nearest table to where Magnus sat and Atasha was mixing a bunch of things together, working so fast I couldn’t imagine she had any idea what she was doing.
