Chapter 56
CHAPTER 56
The third kick to the front doors finally broke them open. Roger strode through the mansion doors with a level of confidence he had never dared show in this place before. Behind him, Bastian, the not-cat Lee, Lacey, another two hunters, and five vampires poured in, quickly spreading out in the foyer. A team of guards swept in and were immediately riddled with arrows from Lacey and two of the vampires.
“Seamus!” Roger shouted at the top of his voice. He sent a silver dagger toward the heart of a guard who came from a different hallway and then pulled another so he still had one in each hand. “I’d like a word!”
“A word ,” Seamus said, the word dripping with hate and annoyance so thick that the other vampires took a step back toward the door. Seamus walked out onto the landing at the top of the sweeping staircase and gripped the handrail as he glared down at them.
His eyes were pitch-black with red stars burning in their centers. As Roger watched, his fingers stretched and grew talon-like nails, his torso—already covered in blood—became emaciated, and his ears lengthened into long points. Several pairs of fangs sharpened his smile. That grin promised the end of Roger in a long, excruciating death.
Roger’s knees began to buckle. He ought to beg mercy. To fall down and prostrate himself. Perhaps he would be welcome back. He wanted that. He wanted to know the sweet embrace of the vampire who had made him, who he had known for centuries, who he had been with in so many ways.
No . There were snakes in his mind, teasing out his desires and fears and thickening them in unwanted ways. Seamus was trying to twist him.
“What word would you like?” Seamus said with his smug, toothy smile.
“Die,” Roger snapped. Then he flung a blade at Seamus’s heart.
Seamus vaulted over the railing and plucked Roger’s dagger from the air. Before he hit the first floor, he sent it back out, nailing one of the vampires in the heart. The vampire cried out, but before she could yank the dagger out, a puff of red mist exploded out from her. She collapsed to the floor.
“Join. Me,” Seamus declared, and he stretched out his hand to the remaining vampires.
The four vampires clutched at their heads or their hearts, but quickly, their eyes were turning glassy.
Seamus had to be manipulating their emotions like he’d attempted to screw with Roger’s head. Back in the ballroom, Roger had managed to counter him, but he was realizing that Seamus hadn’t used his true strength in that moment.
Or perhaps there was a flaw in his power. Mentally, Roger raced to reach the other vampires with him. Seamus was flooding their minds with fear of what would happen to them and forcing a desire to obey upon them. The fear was founded in each of them, but that desire was too small a sail to move the ships in the direction Seamus intended. Seamus was having to pour energy into them.
Roger sought their instincts, their desires to survive and thrive, their longing to be rid of the creature before them. His inner tides swayed to his call, rising as he begged for more to save the ones with him. A molten bubble of warmth flowed into the tides, aiding his strength, bringing on a wind that helped him guide the vampires away from what Seamus wanted.
“What?” Seamus snapped as the vampires stood straight, the glossiness leaving their eyes. Lacey was unleashing arrow after arrow; the other hunters were unloading silver bullets. Seamus caught most of the arrows and angled his body so the bullets didn’t strike his heart or head. He turned his focus to Roger, and his eyes widened. “What are you?”
“Better than you,” Roger growled. He strode forward.
And the distraction served its purpose for this stage of the battle. While Seamus had been preoccupied with the vampires and Roger, the not-cat Lee had slunk around to the other side of the foyer so that he was opposite Bastian. As Roger stepped closer, Bastian released the spell he’d been preparing. A roaring wall of flames wrapped around one side, met Lee, who stamped a paw, and then finished out the circle by racing back to Bastian. The top of the flames met in a dome.
“Shall we dance, master ?” Roger asked with a sharp grin.
“It will be your last,” Seamus promised.
Roger surged forward with a shout.
“Why aren’t we going down the stairs?” Katie asked. “That’s where all the doors to the outside are.”
“We’re vampires, we don’t need doors. We just need an exit and to not land on stakes or silver,” Takashi muttered. He was trying not to shake. Something—no, Seamus—had overcome Zack, and Zack’s eyes had mutated colors to become endless pits and ruby red. Seamus had taken control of him in some way without being in the same room. That was not good. Not at all good. He had enough presence to send us away. He is lost, not gone .
Finally, at the end of one long hall, Takashi saw a window. Holding Katie’s hand, he ran for it as fast as he could. Each step was a mile crossed, and yet the hall seemed to stretch forever.
Anton stepped out around a corner. The shadows beneath him thickened, and the ones in the hall near him grew. Darkness clouded the way, but Anton’s eyes glowed red in the dimness. The smell of burnt ozone and dead roses overwhelmed everything else.
Takashi stumbled, and then his foot caught on a tendril of shadow creeping out from underneath a console table, the vase rattling as the shadow disturbed the table’s balance. He danced backward a step only for another tendril to wrap around his leg. It cinched painfully, breaking bone, and he held in his scream the best he could.
“I offer you an escape, and you abuse my weakness for you to release my toys and then my daughter.” The dropping temperature in the hallway wasn’t as severe as the tone in Anton’s voice, and it was plummeting so quickly that ice formed along the walls. “My love is right. You are a leech.”
“ Our daughter, you said,” Takashi gasped through the pain. More tendrils sought his limbs, and he fought to keep them from trapping him. He was losing the struggle. “She is part of me, and I cannot leave her in this hell.”
“You were rude! Filling my head with longings for you when I should have known this was all a trick.” Anton clenched his fist, and the tendrils tightened as one. “Everything you are is a lie.”
“You saw into my mind!” Takashi cried out. “You saw the deepest parts of me before anyone else. What did you see, Anton? What did you truly see when you plunged into the depths of my soul? Am I a liar? Or are you so willing to blind yourself to the terrible truths about Seamus that you’ll forsake what you know?”
“He is my love ,” Anton snarled.
“Why?” Takashi demanded. “Why defend him like this? Are you so afraid that no one else will love you that you will destroy everything for one bastard who does not see you as an equal?”
“You don’t know us!” Anton roared.
“I walled away my heart because I feared letting anyone into it,” Takashi said. “You have built a fortress around your feelings for Seamus, but it is a house of cards. You hate any wind because it would send his lies and his manipulations flat against the ground. And what you hate most of all is that I am right.”
“Enough,” Anton declared. “You will not come between us. Soon, nothing will ever hurt us again.”
A tendril twisted around Takashi’s neck and squeezed. Unable to hold himself up, he collapsed to his hands and knees, the shadows pulling ever tighter.
“Fulminis!” Katie shouted, and a streak of blue lightning soared over Takashi.
With a wave of his hand, Anton brought up an invisible shield, and the lightning bolt crashed against it. Blue sparks cascaded down. As Katie continued to blast the blot forth from her wand, it brightened the hallway.
The shadows lessened. As the light was pouring over Takashi, the tendrils couldn’t keep their strength. He broke free of them.
Katie was panting from the effort of maintaining her spell, and Takashi could feel how she was pulling power from him. They wouldn’t last like this.
Takashi surged forward, going for the low right side. Either the shield wasn’t there, or Anton couldn’t keep him out.
For all Takashi’s hope that Anton might flourish into a better man without Seamus in his life, there was none now. He rose to his feet behind Anton.
Anton half turned, calling on more shadows, but that divided his attention, and his shield cracked. Takashi struck at him, and though Anton countered, each move took a bit more focus. Pulling as much speed as he could, Takashi attempted to land his blows over and over. Anton continued to slide away, continued to counter, and began to slip.
But Takashi’s energy was also fading.
With a last, desperate scream, Takashi shoved his hand toward Anton’s chest with every ounce of his fury. His hand punctured his flesh, going through his ribs, and closed around his heart. He ripped it clean from Anton’s body.
Anton dropped, his shield dissipating as he fell. The lightning bolt knocked Takashi back against the far wall beside the window, Anton’s heart falling to the floor beside him as he did.
“Holy shit, I’m sorry!” Katie ran to Takashi’s side. She glanced at Anton. “Is he … is he dead?”
“Do you have a fire spell?” Takashi groaned.
“Yeah.”
Takashi nodded at the heart.
Katie pointed her wand at it. “Ignis!”
An orange flame lit the heart and quickly turned blue, then green. The blaze caught the wall on fire. Katie aimed her wand at the stray flame.
Takashi pushed himself off the floor. Every fiber of his being ached, and they had yet to make their escape. “Let it burn.”
“Are you sure? Zack is still?—”
“Zack will make it out,” Takashi replied. I pray he is himself when he does . He threw the window open. “We have to leave.”
Katie nodded and hurried out the window. As Takashi waited for her, his gaze lingered on Anton’s body. No red mist emerged, even as the heart on the floor beside Takashi’s foot crumpled into itself, and he remained handsome. He should have turned gray and lifeless; a flood of red mist should have escaped someone so old.
Had Anton managed to find true immortality? Would he hunt down Takashi if he survived?
Guilt swept over Takashi as he dropped out of the window and to the dark garden below. If we’re lucky, the fire will finish him off . Takashi took Katie’s hand, and they ran toward the western fence. Flames flickered in the window they’d left open, and the sounds of clashing enemies echoed out into the night.