✧ 56 ✧
The twin sisters took a defiant stance. Two against twelve vampires seemed like an unfair battle. But they were no normal twins. They were abnormal, monstrous, and brutal.
Anne rose abruptly from her chair and shouted at her child. "Maggie! What is the meaning of this?"
Maggie smirked. She had always despised her mother's choice of diet.
"And what is Martha doing here?" Anne added. "Don't put your sister in danger."
Anne's favorite child was obvious from the way she spoke. She always had a soft spot for Martha, and after Martha turned into a zombified werewolf, Anne's love and care for her only grew stronger.
That only made Maggie resent her more.
And it made her all the more determined to use Martha as a weapon; if only to spite her mother.
Nevertheless, their twin bond had just become stronger.
Martha growled at her mother, defying her words. Even in her beastly form, she felt Maggie's anger coursing through her veins, as if it flowed from Maggie's grip on the leash straight into her pulsing, shredded neck.
The seniors' leader—a man with a chipped tooth and a balding crown of hair—seethed with fury.
"You dare disturb this sacred coven?"
"Heh." Maggie scoffed, her hand twitched next to the dagger on her pale-white thigh. "I dare do more than that. Release the human boy and, I promise you, I will not release Martha."
Martha began barking violently, rattling the chains attached to her collar. But with half her neck torn open, the barks dissolved into wet, gurgling growls bubbling straight from her throat.
The leader lifted his chin proudly. "This blood bag is ours. And if you—"
Before the senior could finish his sentence—or his threat—Maggie sighed.
"Very well, then."
Maggie had been eager for a fight anyway. So she let go of the leash.
Martha was finally free after years of captivity in her mother's study room. The sudden freedom ignited something feral inside her, if she still had a soul left to ignite. Adrenaline, or the zombie equivalent of it, surged through her undead body.
Martha lunged at the priest's hand—the one with the threatening finger—with unbound speed, like a bull charging at the flap of a red cloak, and tore his arm clean off.
Being a hybrid between a werewolf and a zombie had many drawbacks, but speed wasn't one of them. Martha retained the unnatural speed of a werewolf, though it came with the terrible cost of being forever trapped as a decaying half-lycan.
In a split second, she was back at her sister's feet, crouched low and munching on the leader's severed limb.
The leader groaned as his followers gasped in horror.
Oh, she dared.
He clutched the torn socket of his shoulder as blood gushed from where his arm was supposed to be.
His eyes burned with fury as they locked onto the demon girl—the twin who had the guts, or perhaps the literal lack of it, to attack him.
Then his glare shifted to the other twin, Maggie, the one who had unleashed that abomination upon them.
With his remaining arm, he raised a finger and pointed at the sisters.
"Get them!"
The vampires of the secret coven surged forward to attack the twin creatures. Half of them lunged at Maggie, while the others closed in on Martha.
All except for Anne.
Maggie's eyes turned red.
Martha's claws dripped with the leader's blood.
And then all hell broke loose.