Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
“Whoa, dude,” I say and hold up my hands, recognizing the half-sun symbol on his shirt right away.
It’s the Church of the New Dawn, founded by a televangelist pastor who isn’t ordained in any real denomination.
They formed shortly after vampires came out of the coffin and gained a lot of followers pretty quickly, starting as a place for people to go who were scared of vampires.
They say most of their members are still that way, but there are of course extremists, like this guy.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I do,” he says, gripping the detonator in his hand. “Vampires escaped from Hell and we have to send them back, one by one.”
“You’re focusing on the wrong monster right now.
” I take a small step to the side, eyeing the device he’s wearing.
It’s glowing, which can only mean one thing: it’s a Sunburst, a bomb filled with UV light.
I don’t know exactly how it works, and I’ve never seen one detonated.
They’ve been talked about on the news, and it’s a hot button political issue with a lot of Americans divided on whether or not this is something that should be government funded.
It’s designed to act as the one thing vampires are unable to defend themselves against: sunlight. When detonated, a solar flare emanates from the core, sending a blast of energy in a twenty-foot radius. It would burn and vampires around—and would be fatal to any humans in close proximity.
Right here, this bomb isn’t going to kill Xavier or Theo. The segmented sunlight will sting or stun them at best. But as for me and the tables around us…we wouldn’t be getting out of here unscathed.
“There’s only a couple vampires here. You’re going to hurt far more humans.”
“Every one of you humans in there, offering your blood to these sinners, deserve to die too.”
There’s no reasoning with this man. He’s been brainwashed and set in his ways even before. My heart thumps in my chest and I don’t know what to do. I could use magic to shove him back and then run, saving myself but putting everyone else at risk.
Before I have time to consider it more, Xavier is there behind the guy, appearing from nowhere. He pulls the detonator from the guy’s hand and reaches around, grabbing the guy’s throat. In a swift movement, he rips out his trachea. Blood splatters across my face and people scream.
Then they notice the bomb.
“It’s a Sunburst,” I rush out, eyes meeting Xavier’s. The bomb starts beeping and Xavier looks at the detonator in his hand. We realize it at the same time: this thing had a backup, tied directly to the guy’s heartbeat.
Xavier brings his foot down, cracking the casing of the inner channel of the bomb. Bright light pours out, and an ear-piercing hum fills the air. Then everything goes still and my heartbeat echoes in my ear.
One.
Two.
Three—the bomb goes off, feeling like a blast of fire. Xavier wraps his arms around me, bringing me to the ground and shielding me from the light. We hit the ground, his hand behind my head to cushion the fall.
And then it’s over. The air is hot, sizzling with energy.
“Xavier!” I cry, unable to see anything with his body over mine. He’s still here, still solid and not goo. He’s okay.
“Wren,” he breathes, sitting up. His face is charred, but it’s already healing as he sits up and pulls me to him. “Are you hurt?”
“No. We need to check on the others.”
“I don’t care about the others.”
He gracefully gets to his feet and helps me to mine. The back of his suit jacket is burned, but the fire didn’t come from the blast. It came from his skin burning. Xavier runs his hands over me, checking me out to make sure I actually am okay.
Smoke fills the room and the fire alarms start going off, followed by the sprinklers. Xavier takes his jacket off and drapes it around me. Everyone starts to panic.
Theo zooms out of the back, going right to Xavier.
“We felt the sun surge,” he says and then eyes the bomber, laying on the floor.
His body has been torn open from the blast with his skin melted off.
And then I see the overturned tables next to him, and the lifeless bodies strewn on the floor.
Someone lays under an overturned chair, groaning in pain, and several others scream in pain from the severe burns on their flesh.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp and make a move to go help them. Xavier holds me to him, not letting me move. “We have to help,” I tell him and he looks at me for a moment and then nods.
“See if there’s any more of them,” he tells Theo. We rush over to the table and Xavier easily picks it up, moving it off a woman. Those close by took the brunt of the blast, and if Xavier hadn’t cracked it, the solar energy would have exploded with much more force.
I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand how a Sunburst works. I watched a news segment on it a few months ago, and the scientific and technical terms went right over my head. All I know is that it more or less implodes and then emits a powerful surge of UV light.
The method is extremely controversial, not because it could possibly kill vampires, but because exposing humans to dangerous UVC radiation, which can lead to hypovolemic shock or systemic infections, ultimately causing death.
“I don’t know how to treat radiation burns,” I tell Xavier, pulling my hand away from the woman on the floor. She’s cut from landing on broken glass, and her face and neck are red like she spent too long in the sun. If it’s this bad already, she’s cooked.
Literally.
“You can’t,” he tells me. “Just try and stop the bleeding.”
Some of the others from our party come out, and the cops spring into action, calling it in and tending to the victims.
“What the hell happened?” Larkin asks me.
“Sunburst,” I say, starting to feel a little shook up. “Some whack job from the Church of the New Dawn.”
Larkin’s eyes narrow. “Were there vampires in the main area?”
“I don’t think so,” I tell her, looking around.
No one exploded into mush or caught on fire from the blast. The only vampires in this restaurant are Theo, Xavier, and the two reps from the VC.
This guy knew we were here but didn’t know what we looked like?
Or that we were seated in a separate, private room in the back?
Did he think the Sunburst was strong enough for the UV rays to penetrate through walls and knock out anyone undead?
And what did he think would happen to the humans?
The front doors burst open and Theo comes back in.
He has blood on his face and he’s dragging a man behind him.
“I found him in the parking lot.” He throws him forward and he skids to a stop by the police officers.
“Has a trunk full of holy water, crosses, and hand-whittled wooden stakes. I was going to kill him, but I thought it would be more fun to publicly chastise him.”
The man tries to scramble to his feet. Blood drips down his neck, having been bitten by Theo. The one cop in uniform gets him down and cuffs him. Sirens sound in the distance, and the full extent of what just happened starts to settle on me.
One of the VC reps comes over. “I’m putting in a call to Sienna.
You need to speak on this,” she tells Xavier.
“This is the third attack from the Church of the Rising Sun in this spring using a Sunburst.” She goes to the body on the ground and grimaces, nudging him with her expensive stiletto.
“One this big should have lit the whole place up. I’m grateful, but how? ”
“Xavier cracked the center-thingy,” I tell her. “And then shielded me.”
She looks at him and a big smile comes over her face. “You saved so many lives. The press is going to love this.”
I stand next to Xavier. My wet hair has been pulled into a loose braid and my makeup touched up.
Most of the blood has been cleaned from my face and hands, but Victoria, the VC rep who is eating this up, thought it would paint a better picture to leave some of the evidence of tonight’s terror on my body.
Reporters swarm around us, and bright lights make it hard to see into the crowd. We’re at City Hall, and I had no idea standing in front of this many people would be so exhilarating.
Xavier steps up to a podium, adjusting the microphone. “Tonight, my wife and I were brutally attacked while enjoying dinner in the city. We had human and vampire companions with us and while we made it out alive, not everybody did.”
He pauses, letting the weight of what he just said settle on everyone listening.
“What happened tonight was not a random act of violence. It was not a misunderstanding. It was not a tragic mistake. What happened tonight was an execution attempt carried out by extremists from The Church of the Rising Sun.” He stops and inhales slowly, not because he needs to, but because he wants to appear more human.
The crowd is silent, hanging on Xavier’s every word.
Both his name and his face are well known.
Even I knew the rumors before I met him.
Yet having him give a speech like this is a rare event.
Xavier’s jaw tenses and just the right amount of consternation clouds his face.
“Those people do not know us. They did not care to see who was around them nor did they ask who was human or who was vampire.”
He turns, looking at me. My hands are clasped together, shoulders back with my chin up. I can keep my composure under pressure, and while I used to dread being the center of attention, right now I’m just so angry.
“My wife is human,” Xavier says as he locks eyes, holding my gaze for a couple seconds before he purposely blinks and turns back to the crowd.
“Many of the people at the restaurant were human. And their lives didn’t matter if it meant a chance at killing those the members of the Church or the Rising Sun fear.
They can no longer claim to be protecting humanity and I am calling on every one of Charlotte’s vampires to stand united with me and do not let yourself become a weapon in someone else’s war. ”
He takes my hand and turns, leading me away from the spotlight.
“Wow,” Victoria says, shaking her head. “If I’d known you were that good on camera, I would have put you in front of it years ago. Why you prefer to stay out of the limelight is beyond me. He was a natural up there, wasn’t he?” She elbows me playfully.
“You were amazing,” I tell him.
“So were you,” Victoria says.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Exactly. You looked concerned. A little scared and banged up. Human. It was perfect.”
“Oh, uh, good,” I say, not feeling like that’s quite the compliment she thinks it is. A couple more vampires from the VC are here, and they speak with Xavier for a bit longer before we’re free to go.
“Well, brother,” Theo says once we’re al
in the car. “Are you going to say it or should I?”
“Say what?” I ask, pulling my seatbelt on. I cannot wait to get home and change out of these wet clothes and wash the blood from my hair.
“That restaurant had a human-vampire ratio of one-to-ten. The Church of the Rising Shitheads didn’t go there by chance to blow up vampires. They knew we were there.” He leans forward between the two front seats. “Which means we have a rat in the coalition.”