Chapter 7 #3
A chorus of screams resounded throughout the room, both human and vampires alike.
Male and female vampires shouted with fury, accusing the Asamire of an assassination plot against the Lasombre.
The Asamire soldiers were more than prepared with stakes and wooden bullets, plus a number of their own stocks of sun bullets to use against their guests.
They seemed to be pretty evenly matched, but I watched more than one vampire ripping off another’s head from its shoulders.
When I studied a bit more closely, I recognized that some were stronger than the others in the speed at which they moved and the power of every blow they landed.
The terror of the human women only added to the insanity.
It was pure chaos and just when I turned to aid the closest human woman near me, a pair of otherworldly yellow eyes caught mine. They were unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
I stilled, unable to see what I was looking at in the overwhelming shadows surrounding it. When it finally stepped out of the darkness, I recognized it for what it was.
It was a wolf and a gigantic one at that.
The jet-black color shone in the dim light.
As it walked forward, I finally came to terms with how massive the great beast was.
It stood several feet taller than me. The wolf cocked its head and appraised me coldly, before sitting back on its haunches and howling hauntingly loud right in front of me.
A series of other howls began to circulate throughout the indoor and outdoor sections of the nightclub.
The vampires inside the room froze. One man opened his eyes wide with disbelief at the emergence of such an unexpected guest. Another cried out in fear and yet another roared at the challenge of this new contender in what had devolved into one big fight.
A whole pack of wolves bounded into the room and then it erupted into an all-out battle. Wolves leapt at the vampires closest to them and I gritted my teeth as the grisly sounds of bodies being ripped apart reverberated throughout the room.
The music hadn’t stopped pumping, the chorus of screams and growling only growing more thunderous by the second.
I noticed that the wolves only seemed to be attacking the vampires.
None of them made a single move toward the human women, which was a relief.
In the turmoil and with the vampires causing their own immediate destruction, I decided to focus on getting the girls out for the time being.
If any vampires got in my way, I’d end them.
I rushed forward to the nearest girl. Her arm had been bitten and she was staring down at the wound in a state of shock.
A quiet keening whine escaped her lips and I grabbed roughly at her shoulders to snap her out of it.
She was trembling beneath my fingers, and I slowly realized the bite mark on her forearm wasn’t the only injury she’d suffered. She appeared to be in shock.
Her face was extraordinarily pale.
“Hey. We need to get you out of here,” I snapped, and her pale green eyes stared blankly back at me.
It was like she had checked out completely.
I shook her slightly again and a glimmer of acknowledgement returned before it disappeared again.
A gray wolf bounded to my side and leaned downward, almost as if it was a horse waiting for a rider to climb up on its back.
The pale yellow eyes met mine, staring intently as if he was trying to send a message to me. I aimed my gun right at its skull and I gritted my teeth once the great beast made a noise that almost sounded like a growl and a chortling laugh combined into one.
I lowered my weapon. My sun bullets would probably be useless against a creature like that.
The wolf looked intently from the girl to his back.
He didn’t speak, but his message was clear all the same.
He wanted me to put the girl up on him. I was hesitant to trust a beast like this, but everything I’d seen so far seemed to indicate that the women weren’t the wolves’ main target, at least on the surface. Still, I had to be sure.
“You won’t hurt her,” I snarled and slowly, the wolf shook its head that he wouldn’t.
“She will be safe?” I pressed. The beast nodded resolutely.
For one more moment, I wavered on the edge of indecision. If I did what the wolf wanted, I could be damning the girl to a fate worse than death. I didn’t know what these beasts were capable of.
There was something about those eyes that made me want to believe him. It might have been the warmth behind them, or the soft gentleness of his gaze, but in the end, I decided to trust him.
I grasped the frozen girl around the waist and used my strength to toss her up on the waiting wolf’s back. She didn’t put up even the slightest fight as she stared down at the creature with a sense of awe.
“Hold on,” I called out. Finally, I watched as her fingers gripped at the rough fur and with a growl of thanks the wolf bounded off toward the exterior walls.
He leapt over it like it was just a speedbump along the road and then he was gone.
All around me now, the wolves appeared to be gathering the human women and tossing them up on each other’s backs.
I knelt behind a club couch, watching closely as they came and went with one after the next.
I prayed that I’d made the right choice.
In the center of the room, Isabella and Banu continued to fight each other in a savage brawl.
She scratched at his eyes. He yanked at her hair.
Her dress had been ripped to tatters and his own suit was torn in a number of places.
Neither of them showed any sign of slowing down.
She fought with the ferocity of a woman who had just lost the man she loved and if I watched closely enough, I could see that she was gaining ground against him.
A flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye made me turn my head.
The woman in red had somehow managed to make her way to my side.
I hurriedly raised my gun in order to protect myself, but she put her hand on the end of the barrel instead.
The whole move was extraordinarily bold, and it was enough to pause my trigger finger from ending her life.
“I am not your enemy, Natalia,” she murmured.
“How do you know my name?” I spat.
“I was asked to keep an eye out for you,” she continued evasively, and I grunted, bringing the butt of my other gun around to knock her in the side of the head. She was ready for that and carefully put her other hand up to block that one too without even looking.
“By whom?” I grimaced. “You’re just another vampire.”
“By a friend,” she answered curiously.
There was no time for me to digest her words because another vampire recklessly surged toward us. His blood-red eyes were focused on my throat with a ravenous hunger, and he grabbed at me so quickly that my only course of action was to bring my arms up defensively to try to stop him.
The female vampire beside me burst toward him. She spun him around and gripped him by the scruff of his neck, jerking his head up so that I could see his face.
His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth. His red eyes were glazed over.
“Blood drunk. Stupid bastard. Virgins are a delicacy to be savored, not slurped dry,” she spat and with a hard twist, she ripped his head right off. She didn’t even break a sweat as she did it.
With a cold-blooded assuredness, she tossed the head aside and released her hold on the man. He fell to the floor in a bloody heap. She didn’t glance in his direction again.
Neither did I.
We turned our attention back to one another. Her gaze flickered red as she studied me and I stiffened, trying to figure out what was going on in her head. Was she going to try to feed from me? Did she want something else?
After a moment, she turned the sides of her lips up in a look of glee that was so deeply unsettling that I jerked up my guns in defense once more.
“So beautiful and so courageous for so fragile a thing,” she murmured, and I stared back at her with confusion.
“I don’t—” I began, and she shook her head.
“Come, there will be time for conversation in a moment. Right now, you need to put those handy little bullets to work before the rest of the vampires make their way through any more of your human friends,” she shouted, beckoning toward those that were still feasting on the women that were left.
“I didn’t catch your name,” I called out.
“I didn’t give it,” she countered with a smirk.
“I know,” I responded flatly.
Behind her, a man sprinted at her, and I popped off a bullet and shot him straight between the eyes. The shot had gone just over her shoulder, only just missing it. I could have killed her, but I chose not to.
“Even more curious,” she grinned, clearly surprised that I’d chanced protecting her from him. As if I’d passed some test, she cleared her throat and cocked her head in my direction.
“My name is Josephina,” she said, just loud enough for me to hear.
I was exceedingly aware of her proximity to me, and I kept an eye on her even as I directed my gunfire at the vampires that were poised to attack the women that still remained inside the club.
She didn’t move to threaten me and even though she made me uneasy, I pushed my reservations aside and prioritized what I was here for in the first place.
When I was down to my last bullet, I twisted hard and aimed for the blurred figures of Isabella and Banu still caught in the throes of battle. I squeezed the trigger. I didn’t shoot to kill; instead I aimed directly at Banu’s ankle.
Perhaps it was a bit symbolic, but I was going for his Achilles tendon.
I didn’t miss.
His ankle exploded in a flare of light and Isabella snarled with triumph as she clutched at the man’s head. I looked away, knowing how it would end. I shuddered at the sound of his tearing flesh. She roared and the wet sound of a head hitting the floor made me shudder in disgust.