by Debra Dunbar
There was blood, a whole lot of dark red blood with chunks of flesh splattered on the walls and floors. Semi-corporeal specters fought, tearing limbs and pieces from the vampires. I stared, unable to process what I was before me. I’d trained my whole life as a soldier, but never seen anything like this.
We were under attack, and me without my sword. I couldn’t even see it since there was a battle in the hallway, between me and my weapon. I swear that was the last time I got talked into leaving it behind. Although I wasn’t sure what good my sword could do even if I managed to reach it. Each time the vampires got a grip on a specter, the beings turned to smoke, resuming a physical form once they’d shaken off their opponent. Vampires could take a lot of physical damage, but they were being torn apart bit by bit while the spirits remained unharmed.
What the heck? Was this Russell’s retaliation? The gang continuing their war with a different necromancer? This wasn’t my fight. The vampires weren’t blameless victims. It wasn’t my duty to defend them, or even get involved. Not one Templar would blame me for ducking out the back door and leaving the vampires to reap whatever shitstorm they had sown. In fact, this was the perfect distraction for me to get away without any unpleasantness regarding the completion of my contract with Leonora.
Except that would mean I would be leaving my sword behind. Yep, that was it. I was going to get my sword then get out of here. I wasn’t going to engage in battle or defend a bunch of murderous vampires. Not at all.
I had a butter knife, a keychain, and a can of mace. None of them were effective against spirits. I’d come here prepared to defend myself against vampires, not specters. There was only one thing in my bag of tricks that might work, and I wasn’t sure what effect it would have on the vampires. I couldn’t just stand here and do nothing, though. If I did, I was going to witness a massacre, and there were no guarantee that these spirits wouldn’t turn their fury on me when they were done.
I stepped into the hallway, hugging the wall as I made my way forward. I needed a specter that wasn’t touching a vampire, but they were all in the middle of combat. Some of the vampires were teaming up on the spirits, but the damage they were inflicting was far outweighed by what they were receiving. I needed them to step back so I could have a clear shot at one of the spirits.
“Hey,” I shouted, dodging a vampire’s back-swing. “Fight me instead. Me. Templar. Come get me.”
No one paid any attention, so I picked up a spindly, decorative hallway table and swung, bashing a vampire in the face when it passed right through the spirit.
Oops. The vampire’s head snapped backward from the impact, and he slid on the bloody carpet. That hadn’t worked out as I’d planned, and I wasn’t sure the six inches of space between them would be enough to protect the vampire, but it was all I had.
I raised my crucifix. “Jesu, luys im chanaparhy.”
The tunnel shot out in front of me. The vampire had good reflexes, throwing himself backward away from the light. The spirit didn’t have such skill. The three foot wide beam hit him square on, blasting him into a shower of sparks. The tunnel of light vanished the moment it exploded the specter, but the vampires hit by the sparks shrieked, their skin burning.
Not the best of solutions, even if it was all I had. I didn’t have an opportunity to think of something else, because now I had the attention of the other spirits. Five of them abandoned their attacks on the vampires to come straight at me.
“Jesu, luys im—” My blessing ended with a scream as they tore into me. I swung blindly with my knife, but it passed right through them.
I’d spelled this knife thinking I’d need to defend myself against vampires, not bodiless spirit beings. I needed my sword. I could see it on the floor next to a broken lamp and a smashed table, far out of reach. Swinging the knife like a wild woman, I tried to push past the spirits and the wall of vampires toward my sword. How could something be solid enough to feel like they were ripping my flesh while they were still non-corporeal?
It was then I realized the spirits weren’t actually tearing my body. They were passing their hands through flesh and bone and pulling at my very soul. I kept stabbing with the knife, in panic mode and unable to concentrate enough to repeat the blessing. Fine droplets of blood flew in an arc following my arm, and I realized they were from me. I was bleeding out my pores, and when they managed to get a good grip on my soul, I’d be dead.
My knife was a flash of metal. I held the cross aloft and tried again to say the blessing, but nothing came out of my mouth. The pain was horrible, my arm continuing to swing on a form of auto-pilot, no doubt from my Templar training.
Something large hit me, knocking the breath from my lungs and crashing me to the floor. I was face down, finally sheltered from the specters, well aware that my savior was taking the brunt of their attack.
“Get her out of here.”
It was Dario’s voice. A wave of relief crashed through me as I realized it wasn’t him on top of me being torn apart by the specters but some other vampire.
“No, my sword. I just need my sword.”
Hands grabbed me, yanking me out from under the vampire and hauling me out of the foyer toward the back of the house.
“Get off me.” I struggled in vain against the vampire’s greater strength. I hated I was being hustled to safety like some helpless damsel. I was a Templar. I’d been trained my whole life to fight. I just needed to get my sword.
“Dario says get you out of here, so that’s where you’re going. Come on.” The vampire half-dragged me through a back room, swinging a large metal door open. A burst of cold damp air hit me and I shivered, pulling back. The vampire paused, and then tightened his grip. As he turned to face me I saw his eyes black and feral, as well as the sharp points of his fangs.
Shit. I knew Dario had intended to get me safely out of the house, but from the look in this vampire’s eyes he’d changed his mind.
Injured vampires needed blood. This guy was injured, and beyond caring how much he took. I reached for my crucifix keychain, dismayed to find that both the keychain and the knife had fallen from my hands as I’d hit the floor. I looked down and saw my hands, as well as the front of my clothing, splattered with blood—my blood. I was a walking buffet standing right in front of a vampire lost in blood lust.
“Dario said to get me out of here, to let me leave out the back door.” I halted and tensed. If he was going to continue, he was going to either have to drag me or give me a good reason for proceeding forward.
“No. We’re not.” The vampire’s grip tightened, and he pulled.
I leaned backward, remembering how my tussle in the SUV with Dario had turned out. I had more room to maneuver this time, and my goal was escape, although that goal seemed unlikely given this guy probably didn’t care whether he broke my arm or not.
“You’re going down those stairs if I have to throw you down them,” the vampire snarled.
My whole body went cold.
I’d read enough true crime novels to know that chances of escape, let alone survival, diminished significantly once captors got their victim where they wanted her, but Dario had said the vampires would think twice before harming me, that there would be repercussions for killing a Templar.
There were repercussions for killing an entire family in their home, but that hadn’t seemed to stop them. And this was one vampire, injured and hungry. He wouldn’t care one bit about repercussions right now. Hunger.
I had a choice, fight this guy and probably die. No one would hear the struggle or hear us scream, and I had nothing but my bare hands as a weapon. Or I could let him chain me up somewhere. I could try to escape once he left me alone, possibly be somewhere with a weapon I could use to protect myself.
Screams and sounds of smashing furniture intensified from the hallway. The vampire yanked, nearly pulling my arm from its socket.
“Come on. Get moving now.”
He needed to get back to the battle, and if I didn’t go willingly, I
was going to find myself trying to escape with a dislocated arm and probably two broken legs.
So I went, easing my weight forward as the vampire lead me down the stairs, wincing when he tightened his grip just a hair shy of bone-crushing. We went toward the back of the basement and down a second set of sturdy stairs into an empty, dim room with a steel door on the opposite wall. The vampire jerked me forward, slid the bolts, and opened the door. I had a split second to look around, hoping there was something I might be able to use as a weapon, assuming I got out of this locked cement-and-steel room the vampire was about to put me in.
Rope. Chains. What looked like a leg-hold trap. Some well-used wooden benches stacked against the wall. And another set of stairs leading further downward. I squinted at them, trying to see how far they went. Was there a sub-basement? A sub, sub-basement?
“Dario isn’t going to like this,” I told him in a last ditch effort to get through the hunger to whatever humanity was left in him. “He’ll kill you once he finds out.”
I hoped so, although maybe not. This guy was family. The two of them might have known each other for a hundred years. I was just an intriguing meal. I’m sure Dario would be pissed, but I wasn’t sure he’d be angry enough to avenge me. Would he even survive the battle upstairs? Would anyone come for me at all, besides this vampire who wanted to drain the blood from my veins? Whatever happened, I had no one to rely on but myself.
“Shut up.” The vampire slammed me against the wall. I turned my head just before I hit, taking the impact to the front of my body and the side of my face. Once again I felt blood, this time trickling down my cheek.
I was yanked back from the wall as quickly as I’d been slammed into it, then thrust forward through the doorway. It was dark, so dark I truly couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Vampires must have superior night vision, as I felt myself guided forward and nudged backward into a chair. I tensed, ready to fight if I heard the slightest rattle of chains.
Instead I smelled the familiar scent of cinnamon and myrrh, shuddered as a tongue traveled its way up my cheek. “I should drink from you right now,” the vampire murmured, “but my absence will be noted and others will come. I don’t want to share.”
The only thing saving my life right now was this guy’s greed. If I was going to die at the teeth of a vampire, I’d rather my executioner be Dario, not this guy. Still, every second I lived gave me another second to try to survive, to escape. And as soon as this guy left, I was going to do everything in my power to get out of here.
I felt him step away and took a breath of relief. There was a moment of light as the door opened, then darkness as it slammed shut again.
I couldn’t hear the battle from down here, had no idea how much time I had, but the sand was quickly running out of my hourglass.
Chapter 18
I SAT STOCK-STILL, holding my breath as I listened for any noise that might indicate I wasn’t alone in the room. Nothing. I couldn’t even hear sounds from the other part of the basement. I stood, holding onto the chair to orient myself in the darkness.
Haxa Luz
And then there was light. Well, not as much light as I’d hoped for, but at least I could explore my surroundings without doing a face-plant onto the concrete floor. Cement block walls made up the tiny six-by-six room. There was the chair that my hand rested on with a pile of chain and locking cuffs next to it, what looked to be a blanket balled up in a corner, and something that I strongly suspected was a dogfood dish.
I blinked back tears. There was no sense in giving up hope now. A dish, iron chains, a blanket, and a metal chair weren’t much, but MacGyver wouldn’t let that stop him from using all this stuff to break free and rain down a world of hurt on these vampires. I was a Templar. That had to give me a whole lot more ingenuity and strength than a fictional television character.
Using my floating ball of light, I flipped the chair over and examined it. If I snapped off the legs, I’d have some stakes, and more importantly supplies to create a makeshift crucifix. The vampires upstairs had been burned by the blessing. If blood-starved vamp came back, I’d light him up and run for it. Or try to light him up. My sword and keychain were consecrated. I’d never done a blessing without a sanctified crucifix, but I was hoping two crossed chair legs would do in a pinch. Hey, it worked in the vampire movies.
Clearly I lacked faith, because I wasn’t willing to put my one chance of escape on a makeshift religious symbol. If the blessing didn’t happen, I’d pivot that asshole around and jab him through the heart…hopefully. Tapping on the chair legs I noted they were hollow. With the cement walls and floor, or the metal of the door, I might be able to squeeze the end together to form a sharp point. It wouldn’t be the traditional wooden stake, but it would give me a weapon.
Crucifix to the face, a few chair legs to the heart, and my attacker would be down. Then I’d get out and hide until dawn. If any of them came after me, I’d call my family and bring the holy wrath of the Ainsworths down on them.
I got to work, wincing at the noise as I banged the chair against the wall. The thing was better made than I had thought, and I’d worked up quite a sweat by the time I managed to snap the legs off and splinter the rest into jagged chunks.
It gave me time to think. Did Dario believe I was safe in my apartment? How long would it be before he knew differently? I hoped he’d go to check on me before sunrise and realize something was wrong. I wanted to be optimistic about my chances of getting out of here, but just in case things went horribly wrong, I’d hoped Dario would avenge my death. Or at the very least let my family know what had happened to me.
Or not. I still didn’t trust my judgement when it came to that vampire. Was I letting my hormones sway me? The murder of the Robinson family weighed heavily on my heart, but part of me wanted to trust Dario. He’d said he’d done things in his three hundred and fifty years that he regretted, who’s to say he hadn’t been forced to turn the other way when Shay and her family were killed? If keeping silent was the price for him staying alive or for not being cast out of his Balaj, then perhaps he was less to blame than the others.
I’d never been in a position where someone was going to die whether or not I stood up for them. And I’m sure his standing up for Shay would have meant Dario’s death. What if he had no choice in the matter?
What was I doing? I was sitting in a tiny basement cell, bashing a chair against a wall and making excuses for a vampire that I desperately wanted to not be guilty of ruthless murder. I was such a fool. How could I be so blind as to think that Dario wouldn’t put his family as well as his own safety before the life of a fourteen-year-old girl? I might desperately want to think him innocent, to forgive him in this crime, but deep down inside I’d always see the face from the picture, the girl-almost-a-woman with the secret in her brown eyes, every time I was with Dario.
He might have had good reasons, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t judge him for doing nothing as Shay Robertson died, as the vampires fed from and kill her parents and siblings.
My head came up, my fingers stilled as I felt the familiar tingle across my skin of a vampire approaching.
Fue.
With the word, my light was extinguished, hopefully giving me a few more seconds to surprise my kidnapper. I readied my makeshift crucifix and another unsharpened, chair leg. There was the click of a key in a lock. The door opened and I saw a figured shadowed against the outside light before I lunged forward.
“Ansurb.”
The original Templar incantation of protection had been Jesu, pashtpanel indz bolor ansurb eakneri, which had been so long that it had resulted in a lot of dead Templars. Thankfully the shorter version worked as did my chair-leg religious symbol because I’d barely gotten the word out of my mouth before I was punched in the face.
I heard a scream that sounded more like a roar, smelled the sizzle of burned flesh, then I was slammed against the block wall, my head making an alarming crack on impact. No pain registered, but my legs
wobbled, and my left arm felt partially numb. I’m sure the room would have been swimming before me if the door hadn’t slammed shut leaving me blind in the darkness.
I couldn’t hear shit from the ringing in my ears, either, so I let my instincts guide me, stabbing with the chair leg at the scent of cinnamon and myrrh. I hit something with give, felt sticky liquid on my hand, and swung my other hand forward to strike again with my crucifix. Again the aroma of burning flesh.
Hands tried to grip me but I struggled, twisting and attacking with both of my makeshift weapons. Wet ran down my head and into my mouth as I tasted the tang of my own blood. Oh God no. I was bleeding. If the vampire hadn’t been ramped up before, he would be now that he’d scented my wound. I felt a surge of adrenaline at the thought and battled like a cat about to be bathed. I kicked, hit, head-butted, and kneed, determined to subdue the vampire and escape.
As if from down a long tunnel, I heard the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, of our feet, of the vampire’s muffled curses. My blood ran into my ear and eyes, my head began to ache and the floor seemed to sway under my feet. If I didn’t take this guy down soon, I was going to pass out.
I was desperate, so I did the unexpected. I dropped to the floor, taking my assailant down with me, then rolled slamming the end of the crucifix toward where his eye should be. Hands gripped my wrists before the cross hit its mark, and my arms were slowly forced backward and twisted until my weapons dropped. I went to head-butt the vampire, but my head only lolled to the side. So tired.
“Aria.” I heard Dario’s voice as if here were inside a mattress filled with cotton. “It’s me. Stop fighting.”
Shit. I hadn’t seen him in the darkness, nor recognized his voice since my hearing had gone out once my head had hit the wall. It was kind of funny that I’d just beaten the crap out of the only vampire here that might be on my side. I wanted to laugh, but a sob came out instead.
