Nema #2
The first vampire struck.
Gaius caught the blow on his sword, but the force of it drove him back three hard steps across the stone.
He stayed on his feet.
Before the creature could strike again, Gaius turned the recoil into a cut at its throat. His blade found the narrow gap above the neck guard, and dark blood opened beneath the edge.
For one impossible instant, I thought he had killed it.
Then the wound closed. The vampire smiled.
Gaius attacked again.
He fought without wasted motion. Every strike had purpose. Every step kept his body between the creature and me.
He knew what he was facing. He knew he could not match its strength. He fought anyway.
I lunged toward Skip.
The second vampire shifted into my path before I had taken two steps.
I changed direction. It changed with me.
It was herding me, keeping me where it wanted me while the other creature dismantled Gaius piece by piece.
The first vampire caught Gaius’s sword arm and twisted.
Bone broke with a crack that filled the hall. Gaius staggered. Before the scream could escape him, he drove his shoulder into the creature’s chest and forced it backward.
Half a step. Against one member of Morvanna’s command layer, half a step felt like a small victory.
The vampire struck him across the chest and drove him backward. Gaius hit the wall shoulder first and collapsed to one knee. His sword fell from fingers that no longer obeyed him.
“No!”
He tried to rise. Of course he did.
Gaius had saved my life once. Even now, broken and bleeding, he was trying to do it again.
The vampire reached for him.
Flavia hit it first.
She came from the side with a cry that was part fury and part grief. Her blade found the seam beneath its shoulder and drove deep into the flesh beneath.
The creature twisted toward her. That was what she wanted.
Flavia ripped the sword free and struck again. Once at the throat. Once behind the knee. Once through the hand it raised to catch her blade.
Speed was the vampire's advantage, so Flavia decided to counter it. She used the council table to restrict its movement.
She used the council table to restrict its movement, forcing it into the narrow space between the chairs. When it lunged, she slipped inside its guard and drove her sword through the gap beneath its raised arm.
The blade sank deep. The vampire screamed. Flavia tore the weapon free and struck for its neck.
The second vampire abandoned me and caught her wrist.
“Save him!” Flavia screamed at me.
For the first time, the path to Skip was open.
I ran.
Behind me, Flavia turned with the vampire’s grip instead of fighting it. She planted one boot against the edge of the council table and drove the other into the wounded creature’s chest. It flew backward into the wall.
“Get your fucking hands off me!”
Her free hand pulled a knife from her belt.
She buried it in the second vampire’s eye. Its scream shook the rafters.
The grip on her wrist loosened. Flavia twisted free and slashed her sword across its throat.
The cut opened wide. Then it began to close.
I reached Skip, dropped my hook and sword beside the chair, and grabbed the rope around his right wrist. The knots were too tight to pull apart. I reached for the knife at my belt.
“Meghan!” Flavia shouted.
I looked up.
The wounded vampire had risen behind her.
Flavia turned and caught its strike on her blade. The impact drove her back against the table, but she held.
The second vampire tore the knife from its ruined eye.
Flavia saw it coming.
She shoved the first creature away, pivoted, and met the second with a cut across the face. The blade opened its cheek to the bone.
For a heartbeat, she stood between them.
Blood streaked her face. Her breath came hard.
Neither vampire had managed to bring her down.
“Cut him loose!” she shouted.
The first attacked from her right. She blocked it. The second came from her left.
She ducked beneath its hand and drove her elbow into its throat. Then she turned and slashed the first across the knee, forcing it down.
She was magnificent.
But it wasn’t going to be enough. The certainty struck me with such force that my hands stopped moving.
“Flavia!”
I drew the knife across the rope around Skip’s wrist.
Then the second vampire seized Flavia by the back of her armor.
It hurled her across the room. Flavia struck the edge of the council table, spun, and hit the stone wall shoulder first before collapsing to the floor.
Her sword skidded from her hand. She did not move.
For one impossible second, the room disappeared. There was only Flavia lying crumpled against the wall, one arm folded beneath her, her face turned away.
No blood pooled beneath her. Nothing marked an obvious killing blow. But she was too still.
My breath stopped.
No.
Fuck no.
Not her too.
They had followed me into this room. They had trusted me to bring them through it.
Gaius lay against the wall, trying to drag air into lungs that no longer seemed able to take it. Flavia lay motionless on the stone.
The thought hollowed me out.
This was my plan. My responsibility. My fault.
Skip jerked against the chair, a muffled command tearing through the gag.
Move.
I cut through the rope around his other wrist. Skip tore the gag from his mouth as I turned toward Gaius.
“Meghan, don’t.”
“I can’t leave him.”
“You can’t reach him.”
His voice was raw, barely more than breath, but the command in it was still Skip.
Across the room, the vampire seized Gaius by the hair and pulled his head back.
Gaius’s eyes were open.
He was still conscious. His gaze found mine. There was pain in his face, but no accusation. No regret.
The vampire looked directly at me. Then it sank its teeth into Gaius’s throat.
His body convulsed. The sound that came out of me did not feel human.
I started toward him.
Skip caught my wrist with his newly freed hand.
“No.”
“They’re killing him.”
“I know.”
The words broke in his throat. I felt his anguish and the brutal certainty beneath it.
“If you go, they take you too.”
The second vampire stood between me and Gaius now. Blood ran from its ruined eye, though the wound was already closing. It watched me with the patient certainty that I would come.
That was what they wanted.
They wanted me to abandon Skip. They wanted grief to choose for me.
The creature holding Gaius drank slowly. Deliberately. It kept its eyes on mine as his struggling weakened and the strength left his body.
It wanted me to witness every second. Gaius’s hand opened. His body went still.
The vampire released him.
He struck the floor with a final, terrible weight.
Its mouth was covered in blood. Its red eyes remained fixed on mine.
Behind me, Skip made a broken sound.
Flavia did not move. Gaius never would again.
Grief rose inside me, vast enough to drown the room. Then rage caught fire beneath it.
I dropped the knife, snatched my hook and sword from the floor, and lunged at the blood-covered vampire with the strike Varia had taught me.
It moved too fast.
The vampire with the healing eye intercepted me. It ripped the sword from one hand, wrenched the hook from the other, and seized both my arms before I could recover.
It held me with casual, overwhelming strength, using only a fraction of what it possessed. I could not move. I was not going to be able to move.
Behind it, Skip forced himself out of the chair.
“Let her go.”
The vampire did not even look at him.
“Skip, no.”
His eyes found mine.
“I’m not watching them take you.”
His wrists were free, but his ankles were still bound. He caught himself against the table and threw his body at the vampire holding me.
He had no armor. No weapon. He could barely stand. He came anyway.
The blood-covered vampire intercepted him before he reached me.
Skip hit the floor hard, twisted onto one knee, and tried to rise again. Rage and pain tore me, so fierce that for an instant I could not tell which of us it belonged to.
The vampire lifted one hand to strike again.
“Enough.”
The creature holding me spoke without raising its voice. The other vampire stopped.
“Varia wants him alive.”
Skip looked up, blood running from the corner of his mouth. The vampire’s grip tightened around my arms.
“She wants him to watch.”
Then Varia walked in.
***
The thing Varia had become wore her face perfectly.
All of it was present.
None of it was her.
The eyes were fully red. The flat red of the command layer, the color that replaced everything that had been there before.
She was smiling.
Varia’s mouth formed her old smile, but it stopped before it reached her eyes. I had seen that emptiness on Mira.
“Restrain him,” she said. “And gag him. I have no interest in hearing him interrupt.”
The blood-covered vampire seized Skip before he could regain his feet.
He fought anyway. He drove an elbow backward, twisted against the creature’s grip, and nearly tore free despite the rope around his ankles. Then his eyes found mine.
The vampire wrenched his arms behind him.
“Meghan, I love you.”
He said the words like this might be the last chance he would ever have.
“I love you too,” I said. My voice broke, but I forced the words out.
The vampire dragged him back toward the chair.
They forced Skip into the chair and bound his wrists to the armrests again. Another rope went around his chest, cinched tight against the chair back.
He never looked away from me. I didn’t look away from him.
The gag was pulled across his mouth and knotted behind his head.
I felt his fury, his fear, and the echo of the words he could no longer say. I love you.
Varia turned to me.
“Bring her here.”
The vampire holding me tightened its grip and started forward.
I twisted hard enough to wrench one shoulder, drove my heel backward, and tried to pull an arm free. Nothing moved. It held me as easily as if I had not resisted at all.
Varia watched me struggle.
Then she looked at the other vampire.
“Help him.”
The blood-covered creature crossed the room.
One vampire pinned my arms behind my back. The other locked both hands around my shoulders and upper body, holding me upright and still.
I tried to kick.