Chapter 17 Sylas #5
I called them snapshot spheres. They would float over the target area and gather photographic evidence, which I’d already magically programmed to be sent directly to Charlie in the form of a glowing red business card.
A brief spark of his power would obtain access to the photographic intelligence that he’d need to ensure the Guardian Movement put these fuckers away.
I couldn’t worry about taking magical photos myself while I was in the throes of battle, so this was an ideal solution.
The creation was something I’d been using with my vigilante work to gather evidence and data as part of my long-term plan.
I’d taught it to Kai recently during a couple of our breaks outside Arcanum Conclave.
He’d been worried about Nyx working fulltime at Crossborn and traveling throughout the supernatural world to further the Crossborn Refuge System that he and Velra had originally developed.
There were still hybrid-haters out there and Nyx was more exposed by being everywhere with his work.
Not to mention, Kai hadn’t trusted in the quiet from Puritas lately.
Tonight, I’d learned that had been for good fucking reason, something I’d need to disclose to him after this mission.
For now, he was using these snapshot spheres to monitor Nyx without being too invasive. They couldn’t be detected like a holoscreen could by a being with heightened intuition. And they also dissipated once they’d taken their snapshots, the magic returning to the caster.
I thrust them forward, watching as they passed through the ward with pop after pop, then rushed toward the building.
Three minutes it would take them to complete their task.
I waited as they disappeared into the structure itself to take their snapshots, weaving through corridors and shadows, capturing every damning detail.
In the meantime, I swept a glowing red palm the length of myself, casting a necromantic shield that would repel any death-touched being.
With the power I needed to expend in a moment, I couldn’t afford to take a big hit, let alone fall victim to one of a magic-wielder’s greatest weaknesses—the speed of a vampire.
Although, if one were to feed from me, it would likely be their death sentence, but the blood draw would weaken me, so there was that.
Once the shield was in place, I felt a rush of additional power roll over me—the snapshot spheres completing their job and their magic returning to me.
I used that to smash my fist into the ward and bring it down fully.
Game on, motherfuckers.
I stormed toward the entrance, my magic flaming wildly on either palm.
Once I was within range, I thrust a blast of raw magical force at the double doors.
They exploded inward, cracking and splintering, and raining down all over the winding staircase of the foyer.
It made quite the shocking statement to the dozen vampires gathered around engaging in a fuck-and-feed with a handful of the magic-wielder hostages. Against the walls, on the stairs, and even on the worn stone floor.
My stomach roiled as I saw the magic-wielders were in various states of undress, some barely conscious.
One was being felt up against the wall, a vampire feeding on his throat while his hands—like all the others—were bound by Inhibitor cuffs preventing magic usage.
Other vampires had their fangs in throats, taking magic through their blood, their eyes glazed with it, high as fuck.
Two vampires were on the floor straddling two female magic-wielders, their fangs buried in their bare breasts.
It was beyond sickening and I had to swallow down the bile rising to my throat.
One of the vampires who’d been hit by the portion of the door wreckage that had reached the stairs tossed his magic wielder aside, then launched himself at me.
I thrust my hand out, stilling him instantly.
With another, I swept my red flame to the left at two others coming at me. They smashed into the wall and a twist of my hand snapped their necks in efficient unison.
Another lunged at me, but slammed up against my shield, and was propelled across the foyer floor, smashing his head against the bottom of the wall.
I stormed toward him, firing a blast at another two incoming fools and blowing them high up into the chandelier of the vaulted foyer ceiling. The metal of the chandelier tore into their throats and it had them hanging there from it like macabre decorations, choking and spluttering.
I reached the fool who’d come at me, then smashed my boot into his face, knocking him back before he could spring to his feet.
Then I drove the heel of my boot into his face, watching with sadistic satisfaction as flesh scraped and bones crushed, breaking his fucking features, and earning muffled shrieks from him.
Pull up. Take it down.
I forced myself to step back.
Personal satisfaction and my version of brutal justice wasn’t on the menu tonight.
I had a job to do. For somebody else.
Just a little bloodshed. No killing. And no real torture either.
It wasn’t just that there wasn’t time for that, or because Charlie had laid out how he needed it to go down. It was honestly—as much as it vexed me that it had gotten to me—his warning he’d spoken earlier.
“We must be careful that we do not become those we fight, Sylas.”
I grunted, then snapped my fingers and broke the necks of all the remaining vampires in the foyer vicinity. It would keep them unconscious for long enough.
Then I clothed the magic-wielders in robes with another spark of my magic.
These, with it only being a handful at a time, I could simply teleport out to Charlie and his people.
“Go. You’ll be safe now and cared for. Help is waiting,” I told them, as they gathered around me in awe and confusion.
I had to help two off the floor because they were so lethargic after being fed on and abused.
They were all fucking shaking with it, it was that fucking horrific.
I stepped back once they were all together, then I swept a cloud of teleportation around them, watching as they dissipated, and were sent along to Charlie.
A low growl rumbled in my throat as I glared at the unconscious vampires.
And then I started down the main corridor to the left, headed for the Banquet Hall.
The corridor stretched, long and shadowed, flickering with muted light from a couple of bare bulbs above. Doors lined either side.
Vampiric energy pulsed from within.
It was absolutely no surprise to me, as I was sure they’d been counting on, when the doors burst open from either side when I was halfway down the corridor, and two dozen vampires burst out, snarling, hissing, fangs and talons bared.
Imbeciles.
While a vampire’s speed was a magic-wielder’s greatest weakness, a necromancer was right up there with a vampire’s greatest fear.
I was the monster they whispered about in the shadows.
The nightmare they cowered from.
A blight they’d do anything to avoid coming into contact with.
But these members of Clan Thalbraxus were far too hopped up on stolen power and arrogance to have the good sense to run.
I thrust my glowing palms out either side of me, my red flame exploding forth.
Screams sounded as it tore into them, blasting them through the doors and walls alike, decimating the stonework as it propelled them back into the rooms in bloodied, beaten, and unconscious heaps.
The couple who darted out of the way, I broke their necks with two twists of my wrists.
As I passed on by, I trapped the ones among the wreckage either side of me in stasis, ensuring I used a non-necromantic specific spell so that the Guardian Movement wouldn’t immediately associate it with my work.
I stepped around the wreckage and stormed down the corridor, eyeing the yellow-stained ivory double doors ahead.
I stumbled in my step for a moment as a wave of lightheadedness assaulted me.
No. Not now. Not fucking yet.
I knocked into the wall, my shoulder taking the brunt of it.
Fortunately, adrenaline surged, helping me out, as I heard commotion from inside the Banquet Hall up ahead behind those doors.
The vampires within had finally been alerted to my presence.
The fact that I’d already taken out several of their clan members and even decimated part of the building and they’d only just registered an attack really spoke to how out of it and fucking high they were on magic-wielder blood.
I pushed off the wall and blew the doors to shit, then strode across the threshold.
Cracked marble floors were stained brown-red from dried blood. Faint golden latticework clung to the walls, its former glimmer and grandiose appearance now withered and drained away.
The two female clan leaders cast a disturbing visual with gothic decayed Victorian gowns, hoop skirts wilted, satin faded, and age and blood staining the fabric.
The three male leaders, all sporting long, greasy dark hair followed the theme, wearing high-collared waistcoats, and frock coats that were stained and drained of color, even torn in places.
They sat upon five thrones, antique velvet chairs, now yellowed and cracked, stained with blood, fresher blood from their current feeding spree even currently dripping down the legs. They were each elevated on cracked dais.
They clearly thought themselves power players. But they were nothing but twisted relics. Rotting rulers drenched in degeneracy and decay in a hellhole of a supernatural drug den.
They were sharing two magic-wielders between them—a man and a woman—who they’d stripped down to their underwear, the male across the lap of three of them with bite marks all over his body, twitching as they buried their fangs in his abs currently.
The female was being shared by two others at either side of her throat.