Last Vamp Standing

by Kristin Miller

  The ground was littered with bodies. Saturated with blood.

  Still the enemy advanced. Possessed vamps seemed to drop from the sky. They emerged from the earth and slinked from behind trees. If one fell, three took his place. They were a war machine, a sickening hydra that replaced bodies with each kill. They clawed their way over the earth, hissing and spitting.

  The elders might’ve had more power as they unleashed their mawares full force, but they were grossly outnumbered. They’d be overrun before the hour was drained.

  “Now!” Slade’s voice carried over the elder’s faltering line.

  On command, a second wave of elders fled the forest, shooting fire from their fingertips and warping the air around them. Blue and green sparks spewed from the hearts of elders’ palms, while others stood back, mumbling chants and screaming commands, their hands covering their ears.

  Vamps fell, shrieking, holding their heads as if they could hear some sort of torturous wailing that the elders couldn’t.

  As a high-pitched wail soared over the rest of the screams, Dante looked back. The two elders flanking Ariana had fallen. Silver-tipped arrows protruded from their chests.

  “Get down!” Dante bounded and leaped, dragging Ariana to the ground as a third arrow aimed for her heart streamed high, missing her completely.

  “We need to fall back,” she yelled. “They’re too powerful!”

  “No.” He dragged her behind a fallen log for temporary cover. “There’s too many. We need help.”

  “Everyone who can help is here.”

  More blood-curling screams. More suffering and death and pain. Savage was separate from it all, watching from his high point at Darkly Meadow, safe from the guts and glory of battle.

  “Then I’ll find a different kind of help.” Dante gave Ariana his guns. Kissed her. “Stay here, stay safe, and for the life of me, don’t do anything crazy.”

  “You know me.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Chapter Thirty

  DANTE DIDN’T HAVE much time to reach the Watchers’ compound. He hightailed it down the line of elders, ducking as glimmering arrows zipped past him. He dodged enchanted bullets. Jumped over rivers of shadowy snakes. Stopped completely when a blast of fire unfurled from the palms of an elder and caught the nearest tree on fire.

  He kept running. Churning his legs over faster than they’d ever gone before. Over projection pits, down and around dirt paths that led to more death shades and more vamps on death missions.

  He ran until the smoke and fire of battle could barely be seen on the horizon. Until the screams of victory and shouts of despair could barely be heard. Then he zigzagged east, swerving his way around trees, watching for Savage’s soldier vamps who might’ve broken the line.

  And finally, when he felt a pair of eyes boring into his back, Dante knew he’d made it as close to the compound as the Watchers would let him get. Seemed they were watching the show.

  “Hello, Pike,” Dante said, spinning around.

  “If you came to repay me for the pit-incident with your female, you might as well turn back now.” Pike slid from behind a fat tree trunk and faced Dante. Behind him, emerging through sheets of rain, were the four towers of the Watchers’ compound, a gunner in each one. “There are eyes everywhere in this forest. And those eyes are attached to Watchers who will gladly sacrifice their seat in the Ever After if their show of violence protects me.”

  Dante lifted his arms, showing an empty gun belt. Rounds of ammo pop-pop-popped over the horizon. “I’ve come unarmed. I’m no threat to you, your Watchers, or your compound.”

  “Then you’ve come to ask us to fight.”

  Dante nodded and scanned the trees for Watchers, death shades, vamps with a death wish. “I’ve come to ask you to stand up against evil. To fight for what is right and good.”

  “And you think you know what is right and good? Because you finally care for someone other than yourself?”

  Pike paced around Dante like a cougar stalking its prey. He didn’t cower from the pouring rain. And his face didn’t illuminate when lightning breached the cloud cover. Everything in the forest had darkened and shadowed over.

  The scales had tipped. Evil had taken over.

  “Because of the oaths we’ve sworn against sex and violence, our entire compound will break the curse our ancestors have burdened upon us,” Pike said. “We’ve resisted the Jinn. We’ve grown so accustomed to the Nightshade, most of us don’t even need it anymore. We will pass to the Ever After with clean hands and a clean spirit.”

  “I think you’ve got it twisted.” Dante swallowed hard before dropping the big-ass bomb in his arsenal. “Fighting will not banish you from the Ever After. Neither will making love to a woman.”

  “Really? You think we’ve been wrong all this time?” Pike lifted his gaze to the trees. “Hear that, Watchers? He thinks because his mother was an angel and his father was a Primus that he’s above us. He thinks because he’s a First Generation he’s figured it all out.”

  “What’d you just say?”

  “Why don’t you enlighten us? Inform us what we’ve been missing all this time.” Pike’s sarcasm was rich, sounding a whole lot like fear.

  “You knew my mother?” Dante stepped toe to toe with Pike, hyper aware of the red laser sights from half a dozen AR-15’s on his back.

  Pike nodded, the hatred in his eyes burning bright. “Your mother was an angel . . . the one who built our compound after she fell in love with a vampire . . . your father, Andre Cornelison.”

  “Holy shit.” Dante stroked his hand over his head and tried to soothe away the sudden pounding. Pike’s words pierced his skull: The one we’ve been waiting for.

  “Your mother was the one who showed us the path to redemption. She guided our desires and planted the first garden of Nightshade behind the elder cemetery. So you have to forgive my disbelief when you show up this night, the night of Black Moon’s demise, going on about how fighting and pleasuring women will grant us peace in the Ever After when your mother, your own flesh and blood, was the one who set up our rules to begin with.”

  An explosion rocked the forest, quaking the ground like only a California earthquake could. Except the tremor didn’t quit. It intensified and the ground groaned, like beings from the Nether Realm ached to get their piece of the battle. Trees shook down to their roots. Firs swayed like palm trees, dropping pine cones and snipping Watchers alike. The earth seemed to open up, cracking east to west, crumbling everything into a trench in its wake.

  Dante braced himself on a lightning-fried stump. “It’s not fighting that prohibits you from entering the Ever After!” he yelled over the constant roar. “It’s fighting for evil. Fighting for selfish reasons. Fighting for the sake of fighting. But fighting for what is right will save us!”

  “You are in a perfect position to say such things, aren’t you?” Pike stumbled, falling into the pit. Echo swept behind him—it seemed from out of nowhere—and lifted him, braced him. “There’s no way to test your theory. If we fight for Black Moon and assist in defeating Savage, we could erase the progress we’ve made. One kill by our hands could damn us forever.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong!” Dante jerked his collar aside, revealing his neck and the head of his shoulder. And a dark, swirling tribal tattoo that matched the one Pike had creeping up his neck.

  “So what?” Pike hissed. “I’ve got one too, or did you think you were the only one who has shown restraint against the Jinn? Echo would have one too if he could resist screwing those wood nymphs long enough.”

  “Pike!” Echo hollered as the incessant booming was replaced with the hush of falling rain. “He’s been fighting. He’s got blood on his hands. Look . . .”

  Dante held up his hands. Turned them over and showed Pike rivers of blood stained into his skin. “Fight with us, Pike. Fig
ht for us. Fight to defend what you know to be right, fight for good and truth and light and you’ll be granted access into the Ever After.”

  “I—I don’t understand.” Pike backed away, his hands stretched in front of him, as if he could keep Dante away. “The mark should only be seen when you resist the Jinn, but the blood . . . this can’t be . . .”

  Dante couldn’t blame Pike for being shocked. Everything he’d ever known was crumbling down. Thankfully that feeling was old news for Dante now.

  “It’s not watching the trials of man and vamp from a distance that’ll break the curse, Pike. It’s watching and judging and then using your strengths for the right purpose.” Dante stepped forward, outstretching his hand. “What do you say? Will you help us?”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Winds of change surround us, throwing our strong-held beliefs into the fray. Holding steadfast to our beliefs is how we’ve kept our faith alive this long. Sadly, it may no longer be enough.”

  WATCHER ARCHIVE, UPDATE

  BY THE TIME Dante got back to the fighting ground, there wasn’t much of a fight left. Elders had been slain—there were too many dead bodies to count. Vamps from the city were left defenseless, shooting with what little ammo they had left.

  Savage’s army far outnumbered Black Moon’s. They were merciless creatures, evil incarnate, spawned from Savage’s sick motives. Elders were decapitated, covered in pools of blood, mud, and entrails.

  They didn’t need to be massacred this way. It was too much. Truly evil.

  It would’ve been perfect for Dante to come back with the Watchers in tow. Would’ve been glorious to watch the vamps’ mouths drop as he brought back another wave of warriors—ones who could fight with the powers given to them by their angel ancestors.

  But Pike had turned away, deaf to Dante’s words, too scared of the unknown. Dante had returned to the fight hoping the Watchers weren’t needed anyway. Praying the elders were holding their own.

  He’d been dead wrong.

  As Dante came across a possessed vamp crouched over an elder with blood slathered across his chin, bursts of adrenaline flared in his middle.

  Just the way it did when his voices resurfaced. Only they didn’t.

  Craving the primal intimacy of hand-to-hand combat, Dante kept his guns holstered and unsheathed a dagger from his boot. As he passed by the vamp, still crouching, still bleeding, he stabbed the blade through his heart right up to the hilt. With a hiss, the vamp fell back and hit the ground. The death shade that had possessed him slid past his lips and evaporated into the dark.

  Getting back to Ariana’s position proved to be more difficult than Dante thought. There was more enemy fire than friendly, and the elders’ mawares were weakening. He could feel their energy slipping and dark energy surging in early victory.

  He brought down every enemy vamp that crossed him. Sliced the throats of a few. Buried his blade into the chests of others. By the time he reached the fallen log where Ariana had hidden, he was covered in blood from blade to boot.

  “Ariana!” Pushing past an elder who used elaborate hand motions to topple trees over the enemy, Dante searched behind the log. In front of it. Into the forest where death shades reigned and elders retreated.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Where is she?” he asked the nearest elder, panic rising in his gut.

  But the elder didn’t move. He kept eye contact with the fir tree in front of him, manipulating it, spinning it around on its base.

  “Ariana was behind here.” Dante’s voice kicked up an octave. “Did you see where she went?”

  He couldn’t bear to ask if she’d fallen or been dragged away.

  The elder broke eye contact with the tree, which leaned perilously to the side. With a thunderous boom, it crashed onto a group of vamps who were fighting for them.

  “Look what you’ve done!” the elder gasped, his hands trembling as they covered his mouth. Pressure, it seemed, had taken its toll. He looked like a shaking leaf, poised to fall. “Look what you made me do!”

  Dante gripped the elder by his collar. “I need you to focus for a second.”

  “We don’t have a second. Do you see the blood bath out there?”

  He wouldn’t, couldn’t quit.

  “Ariana was behind this log, right here.” Dante jerked him around the backside. “She was right here. Did you see where she went?”

  “The only thing I’ve seen is death. Death and defeat.”

  He shouldn’t have left. He should’ve taken her with him . . .

  Dante released him as a swarm of vamps came out of nowhere, leaping over the log. They wielded long wooden staffs with ends that’d been whittled down to sharp-ass points. Jabbing their staffs in unison, they bore down upon Dante and the elder.

  But Dante wasn’t about to go down hiding behind a log. He dropped to bended knee and rolled out of the way, his nails elongating to picks as he went. The elder fought, tossing dirt into their eyes, rolling the fallen log beneath their feet without physically touching them. The passive maware didn’t hold them off for long. The elder turned to run. The distraction didn’t last long enough. He got a staff through his torso and fell face first in the mud.

  Dante’s voices should’ve taken over by now. He should’ve relished the violence. But his brain was quiet, his thoughts his own. He welcomed the change and the control he had over the pain he inflicted.

  Growling so loud it spun all the vamps around, Dante let the anger inside him erupt as he jumped onto the nearest vamp and sliced his head clean off. He jumped to the next, stabbing his nails through his heart in mid-air. The vamp dropped to the earth as the other swung its staff, aimed at Dante’s throat.

  Dante balled the adrenaline into his gut and pushed the energy outward. A vortex of wind swirled around the vamp, knocking him off balance, spinning him around. The staff shifted in his hand. Dante sliced the stick of wood in quarters, then made his next slice through the vamp’s heart.

  The sound of a thousand battle cries filled the air, followed by the song of clashing steel. Dante peered through the rain and shadows.

  Watchers.

  They came by the hundreds, wave after wave of warriors in white. They overtook the forest, slicing through the hearts of the enemy, fighting alongside the warriors of Black Moon.

  With renewed vigor, the elders pushed forward, slowly driving Savage’s soldiers back. Fires smoldered everywhere. Not even the rain could put them out. They were born of something more than spark and flame. They were born of energy and spirit, courage and vengeance.

  As a familiar warrior in white rushed by, Dante charged a hissing hoard of vamps.

  “Glad you made it, Pike!” He slashed at one, took out another. “I was starting to think you were afraid.”

  “Ha! Watchers show no fear. ” Pike swung his sword, slicing an advancing vamp in half, head to groin. Then he pulled back his collar, revealing the black mark that remained etched into his skin. “We are now following your lead.”

  “We can’t let them advance another inch. They can’t reach Black Moon’s walls.”

  Pike put two fingers to his pale lips and whistled. An army of Watchers assembled before Dante’s eyes.

  “Go. Fight your battle,” he said, shoving Dante in the back. “We’ve got this.”

  “Dante!” A voice screamed above the drumming of his heart. “Savage!”

  He spun toward the voice. On the horizon, Slade, Ruan, and Eve were poised in the middle of a ring of vamps and death shades. They seemed to be holding them back, fighting with their fists and boots, guns and throwing knives. Eve blasted through death shades as they slithered over the dead, calling out to Ruan when a vamp ventured too close. Though Dante didn’t spot Savage, he took off at a dead sprint, slaying every vamp that blocked his path as he went.

  Ariana was nowhere to be found, but
Dante couldn’t help scanning the faces of the fallen as he raced by. His heart was in his throat, his stomach balled in knots. He wanted to find her, but not like this.

  When he finally cleared a path and reached the circle closing in on Slade, Ruan, and Eve, they fought harder, seemingly glad to have reinforcement. He blasted his way to the center, shooting vamps in the back, bringing them down.

  As Dante climbed over piles of bodies and reached the center, Ruan grabbed his arm. “Slade saw vamps retreating toward Darkly Meadow. Savage will be gone by the time we fight our way through this.”

  “Work some magic, Watcher,” Slade growled, bringing down two vamps with one swipe of his blade.

  “You got it.”

  Pinching his eyes closed, Dante focused on the swarm of vamps clamoring their way over the dead. Their anger was almost tangible, threading through the air, settling on his skin in a cold sweat. He knelt, fist to earth, head hung low. Thought about nothing but knocking the vamps down like bowling pins. They groaned as his stomach clenched, as the hurricane force wind gathered in his gut. And when he cried out, blasting the energy from his middle into the air around him, their groans dropped off.

  When he opened his eyes, he choked back a gasp. Every vamp within a twenty-foot radius had been leveled, as if they were blown back and TKO’d.

  “Told you it was a wicked trick,” Ruan said to Slade as he grabbed Eve by the arm.

  “There’s more coming.” Dante pointed to the mass lumbering up the next hill. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”

  They took off at a dead sprint, heading east toward Darkly Meadow. The path seemed darker than Dante remembered it. Rockier and harder to traverse, too. He twisted his ankle and leapfrogged over fallen logs more times than he could count. Not to mention Savage’s vamps were everywhere. Slicing and dicing didn’t slow him down though, and the other three were right behind him, shadowing his every move.