Taos and Ralgar turned to face each other, palms up before them. Tiny suns sparked to life, but quickly grew to the size of basketballs. They closed their eyes. Drops of blood sweat poured down their faces. Ralgar’s orb went from red to white.
“Come on,” Ralgar said to Taos. “Concentrate. Make it hotter.”
Taos trembled all over. His orb went white. The heat was intense, licking up even the water in the eye of Ming’s tornado. Taos and Ralgar backed away from each other. Ming spread the storm out, as far as she could without thinning the wall too much. They continued to spread apart until the backs of their leather dusters were being shredded by the particles of flying sand.
A savage dropped from the sky, most likely vaulted up and over the storm by one of the savage telekinetics. Jerusa skewered him through the abdomen before he even hit the ground. He lashed out at her with his sharp fingernails. His teeth cracked together like a bear trap. Jerusa spun in a circle and tossed him back the way he came, though, this time, he didn’t quite clear the top of the storm. He shrieked in pain as the wall of sand and water twisted him into a knot of broken bones.
Ming was on her knees in the center of the storm, smoldering from the heat of the duel orbs of fire. She shook uncontrollably, a loud and weary groan falling from her lips. “Hurry,” is all she could say.
“Are you ready,” Ralgar said to Taos.
“I’m ready.”
“Whatever you do, don’t miss.”
“I won’t.”
“Now, Ming!”
Ming dropped her hands to her sides as though they weighed a thousand pounds each. The storm immediately died, dropping large wet clods of sand all around them. The savages squealed as they backed away from the intense light of the fires.
Taos and Ralgar threw their hands out, propelling the white-hot orbs of fire forward. The twin comets streaked over the water, splitting the waves and leaving a wake as their tales. The two fireballs collided with each other at the same time as they hit the ship. Jerusa was down on her knees, with her eyes closed and her face in the sand, yet she could still see the brilliant flash of light. A second later, the whumf-boom of the explosion sent a shockwave that blew her onto her side.
A cacophony of pain filled the night as an army of blinded savages cried out all at once. “Take them out,” Ming shouted, her voice barely audible above the noise.
Jerusa didn’t hesitate. The savages wouldn’t be blinded for long. This was their only chance. She rolled to her feet and rushed into the crowd along with Ralgar, Celeste and Taos. With her thin double blades, she pierced and hacked every savage in sight. She and Celeste knocked them down, Ralgar and Taos lit them on fire. They tore through the crowd like a train, leaving nothing but devastation in their path.
The savages’ sight quickly returned, but by then, many of them were writhing in flames. The savages were no longer tightly packed and they had to split up to chase the stragglers. Taos and Celeste rushed into a group of about ten savages. Celeste spun, severing all of their legs below the knees. She stepped back as Taos began to burn them and didn’t see a savage rushing in from behind.
The savage grabbed Celeste by the hair, wrenched her head back and went for her throat. Before his teeth could touch her, the savage was smashed to the ground by an immense, unseen force. “Watch your back, Celeste,” Ming said. Taos lit the crushed savage on fire before he could start to swell with spores.
Suddenly, the flaming savages began to float up from the sand, still writhing and screaming as they were cast out into the sea. The two savages that had been with Suhail on the deck were now on the sand, using their telekinesis to throw their burning comrades into the safety of the ocean. The savages hit with a splash and a hiss as the flames were extinguished.
“Well, I didn’t expect that,” Taos said. Already, the blackened savages were emerging from the water, smoke and steam billowing off of their charred flesh. Not all of the savages had survived the fire, but most of them had.
“What do we do now?” Ralgar asked.
“Do it all again,” Ming said. “I’ll try to keep the ones on fire from reaching the water.”
They rushed into battle again, but the wind had been taken out of their sails. Ming couldn’t keep up with the other telekinetics. They tossed the savages into the ocean as fast as Taos and Ralgar could burn them.
“I have an idea,” Taos yelled. He extinguished his fire and ran off toward the house.
Jerusa was about to warn him about Suhail, but he was no longer on the deck. She turned to ask the others where he had gone when she spied him running at incredible speed toward Ming. Suhail slammed into Ming and the shattering of her bones cracked like thunder. Ming flew high into the air and came down in the water near where the burning wreckage of the ship was finally slipping beneath the waves. The savages in the water turned and started for Ming, swimming through the water with the skill of sharks.
Ralgar shot several fireballs at the swimming savages, and though his aim was true, the flame couldn’t take hold of their wet bodies. The savage telekinetics blasted Ralgar and Celeste off their feet, pinning them to the sand. Jerusa drew back her arm, preparing to toss her skewer like a javelin, but Suhail, suddenly by her side, snatched her by the throat with his mismatched hand.
“Blloodd wwwiiitttccchhh.”
Jerusa tried to turn her face away, but couldn’t. “Has anyone told you that you have terrible breath?” Suhail’s diminished lips curled back even farther, making visible every tooth in his rancid mouth. She wasn’t sure if he was snarling or smiling. She looked to the ocean. Ming bobbed up and down in the waves, unconscious and unaware that a dozen savages were swimming directly for her. Suhail tightened his grip on her throat and hoisted her off the ground.
“Alicia,” she managed to squeak out before he pinched off her air.
The dark night burned away in an explosion of spectral light as Jerusa’s army of ghosts appeared around them. Suhail shielded the permanently dilated pupils of his eyes from the light, roaring in anger and pain, but he did not release her. Alicia appeared between them with a hand on each of their chests, her wide eyes fixed on Jerusa. She nodded and Jerusa nodded back. Whatever magic Alicia possessed to deliver pain to Jerusa and those touching her, she held none of it back that night. Jerusa screamed. Suhail screamed. The whole world, now bleached white and full of fire, seemed to scream along with them.
When the pain subsided, and Jerusa’s senses slowly re-calibrated, she found that she and Suhail were both on their knees in the wet sand. Though he seemed to have been dealt a heavy blow, he still managed to hold on to her throat. Alicia stood to the side, hunched over. She had given it everything she had, but couldn’t dislodge Suhail.
His blood filled eyes rolled around to Jerusa. He opened his mouth as he pulled her in. She didn’t even struggle. She had no fight left in her. His teeth pressed against the flesh of her neck.
Something pierced Suhail through the shoulder of the arm he held her with. He reared back with a roar and Jerusa saw what she thought was an arrow forged of fire. The broad-head was white hot and the quill were tiny flames licking the air. The arrow seemed to melt and fall into the hole of the wound it created. Suhail’s arm, from the shoulder down, crackled like a log in the chimney. It broke open, exposing the fire burning within. Then his arm turned to ash and was carried off in the wind.
Suhail clutched the place his arm used to be, and rolled to the side, barely dodging another fiery arrow. Jerusa looked for the archer and found Taos standing on the rails of the deck, holding what looked to be a large bow made of fire.
The flaming bow seemed to diminish around his hand, as to not burn him as it had that night Jerusa and Celeste had found him. When he pulled back on the place where the string should have been, another flaming arrow appeared. Suhail fled down the beach, kicking up a cloud of sand. Taos took out the two savage telekinetics, hitting them each in the chest, incinerating them from within in mere seconds. Taos hit another savage that trie
d to rush him. The savage took the arrow in the gut, then sprinted toward the water. But the ocean couldn’t quench this fire, and the savage burned to cinders beneath the waves.
Alicia pulled Jerusa to her feet. “We have to save Ming.” The ghost shook her head and motioned for Jerusa to run. “I’ll do this with you or without you.”
Jerusa ran to the edge of the water and jumped with every bit of power in her legs. She zoomed out over the waves, thirty yards or more. Just as the arc of her travel started to decline, something solid appeared beneath her. Alicia had materialized in midair, caught Jerusa’s feet in her hands, and pushed her back into the air.
“Higher,” Jerusa called to Alicia. “I need to get higher.”
Alicia, once again, appeared beneath her. Jerusa sprang from the ghost’s hands, climbing to twenty-five feet above the water. She was two-thirds the way to Ming. One more good jump should do it. Jerusa leapt a third time from Alicia’s hands, taking her up to fifty feet, but the trajectory of her travel was all wrong. She was going to overshoot Ming. The savages, moving through the water like a pack of eels, were nearly upon her.
As Jerusa passed over, Alicia snatched her hands from above, and with an aerial loop, she sent Jerusa rocketing, head first, toward Ming. Jerusa felt Alicia’s hands pressing against the soles of her boots, and her speed doubled. The wind whistled in her ears, her eyes blurred with tears. Jerusa caught Ming just as the first of the savages were reaching out for her. She wrapped her arms around Ming’s limp body as Alicia pushed them both deep beneath the water.
At first, all was black, but then her ghost army appeared around her, lighting the way with their spectral auras. The savages were after her, maneuvering the water as though they were born from it. Alicia pushed Jerusa through the water, left and right, up and down, in spirals and twists. Anything to dodge the savages. She brought them up and out of the water, like a dolphin skipping over the waves. The savages followed and several were met with flaming arrows. With one final leap, Alicia brought Jerusa and Ming rolling up onto the beach.
Ming stirred but wasn’t quite awake. Jerusa threw Ming over her shoulder and ran up the deck stairs for Taos. Celeste and Ralgar were fighting a group of savages, but for every two they burned, one managed to extinguish itself in the ocean.
“Up here,” Taos shouted to them. Just as Jerusa reached his side, a skewer—her skewer—fired past her head like a bullet, and caught Taos in the chest. He fell backward off the rail without so much as a groan of pain.
Suhail stood on the beach where he had thrown the skewer with his remaining arm. The savages converged behind him as he moved toward the house.
“Taos,” Celeste screamed, jumping from the beach up to the deck. She wrenched the skewer free, and Taos yelped in pain. “Oh, thank goodness. It missed his heart.” She examined the skewer. “I don’t think there was any savage blood on it.”
Ming rolled over on her side and coughed up a gallon of seawater. “We need to go,” she said, pointing to the back door of the house. “Get inside. Get to the basement. Burn the house. Our only chance.”
None of them argued. Taking refuge in a burning house seemed like as good a plan as any, considering the circumstances. Jerusa scooped up Ming. Celeste and Ralgar pulled Taos to his feet. Savages crawled across the rooftop. Several more leapt up onto the deck. The vampires sprinted forward, smashing through the glass French doors without slowing.
“How do we get to the basement,” Jerusa asked. The house was large with many doors. Who knew which one led to the stairs?
“Ming,” Celeste shouted. “We need a path.” Ming lifted her fist and smashed it down like a hammer, and at the same time, a hole opened in the floor as if she had just driven a giant nail.
Taos and Ralgar sent fireballs in every direction and the house went up like dried newspaper. The savages spilling into the house recoiled from the heat and light. Ming opened a hole in the ceiling, and Taos and Ralgar sent the waves of fire into the upper floors.
Jerusa dropped through the hole in the floor, Ming still on her shoulder. She fell two stories and hit the concrete basement floor with a bone shattering crack. She rolled out of the way just as Celeste followed. Next came Taos, then Ralgar.
“Get close,” Ming said. “It’s about to get tight in here.” She lifted her hands, clenched her fingers as though she had a hold of something, and then wrenched down. The burning house imploded, burying them in the shattered remnants of someone’s dream home.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The darkness had a weight to it, as though he were buried beneath quicksand. Time didn’t exist here. Only pain and sorrow. Thad didn’t know how long he had been locked in the small box beneath the floor of the dungeon, but it felt like at least a week. He’d give almost anything for a drop of water just to douse the burning desert of his tongue.
His thoughts, once again, ran to Beth and a red hot brand of guilt pierced his heart. He hoped she wasn’t in a place like this. He hoped they hadn’t beaten her with the whip of vampire teeth. If they killed her, he hoped it was quick and painless.
Some insect, cloaked by the darkness, crawled across his face. Thad shoved it into his mouth and chomped down with greedy fervor. The bug made a pitiful meal. His stomach coiled around itself. If only a rat would come snooping around. Was their plan to leave him here until he died of dehydration? Would they allow him to be born of the bite? Maybe they were going to leave him here until he turned, then let him slowly starve until the Stone Cloak took him.
A noise rattled nearby. He spun into a sitting position, which wasn’t easy in this three foot cube cell, and tried to calm his ragged breathing. Footsteps echoed above his head. The muffled sound of voices filtered down to him. He pressed his ear against the cold steal door in the ceiling, trying to better hear what they were saying. Thad thought he heard the name Heidi and he repeated it with a hiss.
The door to the cell snapped open. A powerful hand yanked Thad from the cell and tossed him roughly to the stone floor. The muscles in his legs and back were knotted wires full of electricity. He stretched out flat on his back, groaning as the blood flow returned to his lower extremities.
“Stand up,” an unfamiliar voice roared. It was the Japanese Hunter that had held him down when Marjek whipped him. “If you make me carry you, I’ll break your legs at the knees and burn your fingers to the bone.”
“All right, all right,” Thad croaked as he climbed to his feet. “Give me a second, will ya? I’ve been crammed down there for a week or more.”
“Actually, it’s only been three days,” Sebastian said. The dwarf stood in the corner of the stone cell, glancing at his fingernails as if there was nothing better to see. “We had to keep you down there until Heidi returned from business abroad. She’s back now, and desires, very much, to speak with you.”
The Hunter grabbed Thad by the neck and propelled him toward the exit. Thad’s legs became entangled after a few choppy steps and he slid through the door on his face. He regained his feet and wiped the blood from his mouth. The vampires perked up at the scent, but neither came for a taste.
“Go on,” the Hunter said, shoving an iron-stiff finger into Thad’s back.
“Where to?”
“My quarters,” Sebastian said. “Heidi will meet us there.”
“What if I refuse to go?”
The Hunter shoved him forward. “Then I’ll bite off your nose. Perhaps peel the skin off of your back. Heidi just said to deliver you alive. She didn’t say anything about uninjured.”
“I’d listen to him,” Sebastian said. “Hunters don’t have the capacity for humor.”
Thad limped out of the room. He wasn’t sure which of the dungeons he was in, but it wasn’t the one with the savage pit near the furnace room. He could hear other humans moaning and crying from their cells, and it bled into a sort of bleating white noise.
“Where is Beth?” No one answered. Thad stopped and looked down at the dwarf. “Is she dead?” Sebastian didn’t speak,
but the look upon his asymmetrical face was perplexing. He seemed both weary with sadness, and expectantly hopeful all at once. “Answer me! You at least owe me that.”
Sebastian sighed. “She’s not dead…yet.”
“Where is she? What’ve you done to her?”
The dwarf’s face soured. “I have done nothing to her, boy, so turn your accusing gaze elsewhere. Her fate is of her own making.” The Hunter smacked Thad across the face, as if to fortify the dwarf’s point.
Thad caught the trickle of blood dripping from his nose with his tongue. He thought about spitting it in the Hunter’s face, but he was in no shape to take a beating. Then again… The Hunter cracked Thad in the side of the head with a punch so fast it seemed to break the sound barrier. But that might’ve just been Thad’s skull cracking. The Hunter, the blood-spittle still running down his face, jerked Thad up from the ground, and shook him side to side, as if he was trying to rearrange all his organs.
“He needs to be delivered alive,” Sebastian said in his normal bored tone. “You’ll be the one that has to explain his corpse to Heidi.”
The Hunter scowled at the dwarf, then shoved Thad away in disgust. Thad made several attempt to stand, and when he couldn’t—the world just wouldn’t quit teeter-tottering—the Hunter tossed him over his shoulder like a bag of sand.
The large house was full of vampires—Stewards, Hunters, and regular vampires seeking protection—and a generous helping of infected humans, yet they didn’t encounter anyone else as they passed into the upper levels. Somewhere in Thad’s jumbled thoughts, he wondered if it was daytime. As his brain unscrambled, he realized they were traveling by one the house’s many secret tunnels. In fact, this particular area seemed vaguely familiar. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might be the same tunnel Celeste, the augur, carried him through the night he tried to hang himself.
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