Chapter 11 Ezra
Suggested Listening: Dumb Blonde (feat. Nicki Minaj) by Avril Lavigne
Treznor’s head rolls off his silly putty neck and onto the floor with a wet plop. For a moment, I’m transported back in time. We were carving pumpkins at a friend’s house, and the one I was working on was precariously close to the edge. And it fell with a wet plop, a lot like Treznor’s skull.
My vision narrows to the vampire’s fluttering eyes as the last vestiges of life leave them. Sanity abandoned that husk a long, long time ago. I can almost feel his energy extinguishing.
The vampires are the first to move. They stagger back, gripping their chests. Their jaws work like gasping fish.
“Ezra?” Gracie says, her voice watery.
Through the numbness, one thing demands my attention. My aching teeth. It’s like they’re throbbing. I’m so hungry.
I rock toward her, my gaze trailing down to her neck. I’m staring at her like I used to stare at the small loaves of bread my director’s husband would make during the holidays. Biting into those fresh out of the oven was one of my favorite damn things. My stomach gurgles, and I take a step.
No!
Treznor’s blood spills out over my forearm.
Whirling, I dig my other hand into the side of Treznor’s ribs then yank my arm out.
I lift the body over my head. His blood pours out over my face and into my mouth.
It’s sour and cold, but there’s a depth to the flavor.
A bit like aged liquor. The more I get, the more I develop a taste for it.
But without a beating heart, the blood is stagnant in his veins.
I need more. Before I kill Gracie. Before I do something I’ll regret.
I drop to the ground, letting the body fall flat, then begin chest compressions with one hand. The blood flows sluggishly. Leaning down, I latch onto the shoulder and drink from what’s left of the artery as I pump the chest of my sire.
There’s a part of my brain that is horrified at what’s happening. But another part of me recognizes that, as a monster, I have to do things to stay alive I’m going to find distasteful. It’s simply how things are.
The relief isn’t instant. But little by little my veins plump up, and blood begins to flow to my extremities. I can feel my flesh knitting together, albeit faster than usual.
A pair of deep shouts startle me out of the trance of feeding. And that’s when I feel it. The shadow of many presences in my mind. Shouts. Pleas for attention. Blood. And darker things.
The two vampires rock and crouch on the metal grate floor a dozen yards away.
One sits up, eyes completely black, and stares around the room with what I can only call fear.
“Boo!” Vyslan shouts and lunges at the vampire.
The vampire screams and throws himself back, scrambling away from the demon. Which only makes Vyslan giggle.
“I’m going to get you,” he chants and comically tip-toes after the terrified vampire.
I watch the two of them run circles around the liche lady clinging to the table with her mangled arm. I can hear the vampire’s thoughts. His lips aren’t moving, but I know the unfamiliar words chanting through my mind are his.
He’s frightened. Of Treznor. Of me. Of this modern world. He lives in fear all the time. It makes my heart clench to feel it so viscerally. And he’s just one of many.
::What did he do?:: Another voice drowns out the chattering thoughts. This one is almost familiar, but similarly tinged with panic.
Feet pound on stone in the distance. A smaller door is thrown open, and the vampire-thrall guy I’ve encountered before staggers in, eyes going wide as he takes in the scene.
“Y-you killed him,” he blurts out.
I look from him to Treznor’s body and back.
“Is he really dead?” I ask.
“This isn’t Monty Python. He isn’t going to get up and dance a jig for you,” the other vamp snaps back. He mutters under his breath, hands shoved back through his hair. “I just—are you calm?”
I glance over at where Vyslan is now chasing the two shadow vampires around. I actually feel sorry for them. I think one of them is crying.
Gracie, Puck, and the two guys I don’t know have huddled up a few feet away just watching me. Puck’s open revulsion isn’t new, but the others just seem to be wide-eyed and watching me.
“I guess,” I mutter.
“So…” The guy gestures at the space around us. I think his name is Eugene. How do I know that? “What do you want to do?”
“What?” I croak.
Eugene flops his hands out. “What do you want us to do?”
The big guy with the red scales, the liche lady called óengus, looms in the mangled doorway. His clothes are mostly burnt off at this point, but he seems to be otherwise unharmed.
The voices swell in volume, drowning out even my own thoughts.
“Shut up!” I shout.
Immediately everything goes quiet.
“Sorry,” Vyslan calls out. The vampire in his grasp turns into black smoke and flits away. “Were we too loud?”
Gracie’s eyes stay on me, but she holds out her free hand. “Vys? Babe? Will you come over here and hold my hand, please?”
“Of course, sweet witch,” he says and jogs over to clutch her tiny hand in his.
“What the fuck is happening?” I ask and look at Eugene.
“Fuck,” he mutters and rubs his hands on his jeans. “Y-you have no idea, do you?”
“Kill him!” the liche lady says.
The red, scaly bastard snarls and leaps across the room, driving his fist into the liche lady’s face. The force of his blow smears her across the wall in a manner that makes me avert my gaze.
óengus turns and shakes his hand. I hear the wet slap of something hitting the floor. “I’m not sorry about that.”
“Cool. Cool. Neither am I,” I mutter and glance at Eugene. “W-what’s happening?”
The other vampire crouches down, but there’s still a lot of distance between us. “You killed Treznor. Right?”
“Looks like it.”
“And then you drank the last of his blood.”
“Is that a question?”
Eugene rolls his lips between his teeth. When he speaks, his words are gentle. Like I’m some sort of rabid beast that needs calming. “Nope. Guess not. So, here’s the thing, Ezra. May I call you Ezra? Or do you prefer… Something else?”
“Ezra is fine.”
He inclines his head. “You were never really part of the thrall hive mind, so you don’t know. That’s okay. What matters here is that you have… Well, you’ve replaced Treznor.”
“I—what?”
“He means you drank your sire’s last blood, you’re now the sire,” óengus says bluntly.
I blink at the scaly guy then back at the vampire. “Um, is your name Eugene?”
“Yes. It used to be a fashionable name.”
“Cool… Cool. Cool. Cool.” I jolt when I realize I’ve just repeated myself. Am I losing it? Did I inherit Treznor’s bat-shit crazy disposition?
“What are you thinking there, buddy? Where’d your head go?” he asks.
Fear sinks in, and my bones go cold. “Is… Does this mean I’m going to… Am I going to become… Like him?”
“You don’t exactly seem like the type,” he says with that same gentle, rolling tone.
“What the fuck did you do?” óengus demands.
The two shadow vamps materialize and begin babbling at óengus, gesturing at me. The guy glances from them to me, his brows inching ever higher.
Eugene covers his mouth and tries to muffle a laugh. He fails to swallow it, and it bursts out, echoing in the chamber. “Sorry! Sorry, this is not funny. It’s just that… It is funny. All this time, he was terrified of someone supplanting him, and then he forces your hand. It’s just… It’s rich.”
“Alright. Move.” Gracie sighs with irritation. “Puck, let go. I said—stop. Vys?”
Gracie wiggles out from between the men and steps forward while Vyslan holds his arms out, blocking Puck from grabbing her.
“Heeeeeeyyyyy,” she says and wiggles her fingers at me as she stops next to where I’m kneeling.
I take her fingers while clenching my jaw. But there’s no driving urge to bite her. I pull her hand to my lips and press a kiss to her knuckles.
She is safe. My witch will be well.
“Eugene, let me get this straight…” She pauses and sways slightly, clear indicators that she’s not entirely sober. “Treznor was afraid of Ezra, so he captured him, then Ezra killed Treznor, drank his blood, and now Ezra is the sire?”
Eugene blinks a few times. “Yes.”
I can hear him thinking, ::That is what I just said.::
::Watch your tone.:: I think the words, but when Eugene’s head snaps toward me I know he heard me.
“So Ezra is the big, bad vamp now. Not Treznor.”
Eugene inclines his head. “That is correct.”
“But what does that mean?”
Eugene’s gaze lands on me. There’s fear there, but also a measure of hope.
Images, flashes of the past, come to me unbidden.
I think they’re Eugene’s memories. Moments of terror.
Being dragged away from his family and those he’d loved.
It’s like being strapped to an emotional rollercoaster as I’m fed the highs of hope and the lows of dread.
“It means that every vampire Treznor has made, all of his thralls, everything he has now belongs—and answers—to Ezra.” He inclines his head again. “We are yours to do with what you please.”
I shake my head, dispelling the visions and emotions that aren’t my own.
I can feel the thralls. Some of them are no longer human.
Others have embraced their terrible nature.
And they want me to let them loose. To set them on the city to ravage and kill.
Then there are others. Some that are still mostly human.
And beyond those are ones like Eugene. They aren’t thralls, but they aren’t full vampires anymore either.
“I don’t want to command you. I don’t want any of this.” I shake my head. “I’d rather you make up your own mind, that you choose to not be monsters. Like him.”
“That’s it?” one of the shadow vampires says in heavily accented English. The flashes I get of their history include a lot of sand and a completely different time.
The other shadow-vamp says something. óengus snaps at them, then they fall silent. Staring at me.
“That’s not how it works,” Eugene says, still treating me with kid gloves. “We are yours now. Our minds are not our own.”