21. Julian
Julian
Something collides with us in the hallway.
It all happens so fast, out of nowhere, as red lights keep flashing and making everything look the same.
The air gets knocked out of me as I’m sent flying into the wall, Isidoro’s hand ripping from mine.
I hear flesh splitting, somebody choking.
Ria screams, but something cuts her off.
Fear floods my system. My heart tries to drill a hole out of my chest, my whole body coiling with tension. Coughing as my ears ring, I shake off the rubble and wobble up to my feet. My head is spinning, throbbing in sharp bursts as the flashing red worsens my vertigo.
“Julian!” Ria shouts, her voice terrified.
Snarling, I chase off the disorientation, squinting at my surroundings even as my forehead feels like it’s going to burst. Ria is on the floor by an upturned cart, glass shards scattered around her as she clutches her bleeding elbow.
And Isidoro… I search frantically for him, the red lights and the blaring sound so damn confusing.
Where’s Isidoro?
His presence engulfs me, guiding me through my scrambled senses, but it’s somehow faint, threatening to slip in-between my fingers.
I don’t let it. I snap my eyes to the left, a shape taking form. My throat constricts, my insides twisting. Isidoro’s on his knees on the floor, his eyes glowing as his face contorts in heart-stabbing agony.
“Isi—”
His gaze locks on me and he hisses in warning, blood gushing out of his mouth. My stomach sinks to the ground. I scan him for injuries and fear possesses every cell in my body as I zero in on the long, black rods that pierce his abdomen, jutting out from between his fingers.
I dart over, the pulsating pain in my head all but forgotten.
“Julian, no!” he shouts, stopping me dead in my tracks.
He spits more blood as the rods protrude even further, disappearing a heartbeat later as if they were never there. My veins ice over. Those are not rods but claws, long and deadly. Is there poison on them? I squint. I don’t see any. Please, let there be none!
Isidoro chokes, his eyes rolling back, the hole in his stomach shooting red everywhere as he collapses to the ground.
My soul splits open. My vision blurs. I rush over to his side with one single imperative—no matter what, he must not die.
I won’t let him die. Not here and not ever.
But before I can reach him, that same force from earlier crashes into me again, shoving me away.
My back hits the wall, bricks cracking and breaking and falling from the impact.
Pain stabs my chest, squeezing my lungs as air struggles to make it to the rest of my body.
A shadow looms over Isidoro, who’s trying to crawl his way over to the lab. It slowly materializes, first the black claws with their glinting tips, then the bulging muscles and the telltale gray skin, and finally the yellow eyes.
The walls close in on me. It’s an enhanced ghoul, but this one is different from the one at the quarry.
It’s bigger, and at least twice as strong, its eyes betraying restraint where before I only saw hysteria.
I dare not move so I don’t provoke it, scared to death it might finish the job and kill Isidoro.
There’s no doubt in my mind as I observe the engineered creature—this place is creating soldiers. Building an army to take us vampires out.
Footsteps thud as we’re locked in a stalemate, the ghoul-like monstrosity all but seeming to have forgotten about Isidoro. Good. He’s almost out of its way. A thousand knives stab me as I watch him bleed out on the floor, but I can’t risk aggravating the enemy. Not yet.
“I see you have met my pet,” a man says, voice light and amused. He pops from behind the massive bulk of his soldier, lacing his fingers together. “Now, wouldn’t that make for an excellent field test.”
“Where’s my father?” Ria demands, her voice choppy and breathless.
“Your father?” he echoes back, tapping a finger to his chin. “Ah, right. William Vance. I got what I needed from him and killed him. Sorry for your loss. Perhaps you’d like to join him?”
The man is tall and lanky, and an ugly scar zigzags down his right cheek. I recognize him from somewhere, but I can’t figure out where. “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
He laughs. “I suppose you wouldn’t remember me, would you?
It just serves to prove how inconsequential the life of a human is to you monsters.
I’m just one of many victims of your appetite.
It doesn’t matter who I am, really. I’ve created the perfect weapon, a soldier that can take down a king.
Starting tonight, you vampires are no longer the apex predators.
It’s us, humans, and my pet here will see to it. ” He pats the ghoul’s biceps.
This lunatic is delusional. Way in over his head.
And despite his villain speech, I can tell this wasn’t part of his plan, he’s not ready to come after us, or he would’ve done it already.
We caught him off-guard. We’re forcing his hand.
And sure, he might have taken down my father, but that was only possible because we didn’t know about this threat.
I glance toward the lab door, a trail of blood smeared on the floor. Isidoro is no longer there. Good. I clench my teeth. I believe in him. He won’t die on me. I just need to buy us a little more time.
“We encountered your pet in El Paso. Where do you want the body mailed to?” I taunt, bracing myself.
“I have no use for a failed experiment. Cerberus”—he pats the ghoul’s bulging biceps again—"is nothing like it.”
Cerberus? I barely hold in a snort. Seriously?
“Do you give him treats, too?”
The ghoul grumbles. “Bruce, I think he’s making fun of me. Can I rip his head off already?”
The air around me shifts, the hairs on my neck standing in anticipation. A wave of heat flushes through me, tying a knot in my stomach as a presence manifests out of nothing behind me, hidden from sight.
“I need a bite,” Isidoro whispers, his voice strained. His fingers graze my neck, rubbing gently the two dots that mark the spots where his incisors violated my skin. “There wasn’t enough blood left. No service either, so I couldn’t call Samuel.”
I try my best not to think about where said blood came from. “Oh. It speaks!” I say, stepping to the side so I can conceal Isidoro from our enemies. Fuck, I’m so glad he didn’t die. “Does it bite, too?”
There’s a sting, a flash of heat, and then my blood is sucked out of my body, one gulp at a time. It’s weird, and not in that sexy way either, but I grit teeth and let Isidoro take as much as he needs. If we are to survive this, we have to help each other.
“Enough of this farce,” the ghoul shouts, spittle flying out of its mouth. “You should evacuate. I will take care of these intruders.”
Bruce nods, turning to leave. But he doesn’t get far. The air swooshes as Isidoro catches up to him between one blink and another, knocking him out with a well-timed grab of his neck.
“Bruce!” the ghoul cries out, swinging at Isidoro, who hops back effortlessly if a little less gracefully than usual.
“We have your master. Stand down,” he orders, tossing the unconscious body on the ground next to Ria. She produces zip ties from her pocket, securing Bruce’s hands.
Cerberus charges at Isidoro, yellow eyes blazing with rage. “So, so arrogant! You think you can control our kind, that your powers are enough to make us submit. No more. We chose this, and we will prevail. We will take you down from your throne and put one of us there instead.”
I don’t think that’s what Bruce had in mind. But who knows what lies he used to manipulate these ghouls into helping him. “Isi! Get Ria out of here, I’ll hold him off! Call for backup.”
Cerberus tries to cut them off, but I ram my claws into his leg, ripping a howl out of him. He swings, the deadly tips glinting under the red flashing lights. They miss my neck by an inch, scraping the wall and peeling off one panel.
The alarm stops blaring and even though the lights go back to their soft hissing and white hues, I don’t get to catch a break.
Cerberus’ claws pass too close for comfort to my face again, and I stumble back, tripping over a brick.
His bulk lands on me, sucking the air out of my lungs and almost crushing my ribs.
I manage to block his punch, but one claw digs into my forearm, unleashing burning agony across my entire nervous system.
It feels like the poison’s eating at my skin, melting my bones, the pain so absolute my vision blurs at the corners. Retching as I try to prevent Cerberus from finishing the job, I roll us on the floor, shards of glass and rubble lodging themselves in my body.
We hit a metal rack with vials, spilling them all over ourselves. Some of the liquid gets on my skin, stinging like a motherfucker. Cerberus groans, his hold losing its strength enough so I can slip out and get back up to my feet.
My whole body pulsates as if it’s on fire, not responding to my inputs.
I take a deep breath, Isidoro’s determined scowl flashing in front of my eyes.
God, how did he survive this? I can’t imagine how much it must have hurt.
Fuck, is he alright? Was he pretending? Is he out there somewhere, dying out of sight?
I won’t let him.
Wheezing, I hold my hands in front of me and charge at Cerberus, who’s just gotten up.
His fat fingers grab my shoulders, stopping me short.
My right side is completely useless, bones breaking and flesh tearing, a million shards of glass shattering inside me.
I wail, letting my incisors drop as I bite into his biceps.
He tastes rancid, wrong on my tongue. It shakes loose a memory from the night I found my father, that same stench faint in the air around him. Cerberus killed him, there’s no mistaking it. And now I’m going to kill this motherfucker in turn.
I don’t let off, not now that I’ve got him, not until I’ve bitten off his entire hand.
Screams fill the corridor, the limb not giving up without a fight.
Something hard and heavy hits me on the head, and I black out for a few moments, the world disappearing in a shroud of darkness.
Another hit to my head pulls me out of it, my body colliding with metal with such force, some of my ribs get crushed.
When I open my eyes, panting and coughing my own blood, Cerberus is on the floor, whimpering and clutching his arm, or what’s left of it.
Next to me, the rest of it oozes a mix of blood and a blue substance, the foul smell making me gag.
I make to stand. My legs don’t listen to me.
The bitter taste in my mouth spreads to my chest, worsening my wheezing.
Fuck, I think I ingested some of the poison when I bit off his hand.
Panic plunges me into desperation as I try to move again.
Fire licks the tips of my spine, unforgiving in its caress.
I take inventory of myself, realizing that my hip wound has been ripped open, the same blue substance that’s still oozing from Cerberus’s arm clinging to it.
The pain comes with a delay, a moment after the graveness of my injury settles in. I huff out, stifling down a scream as the burning sensation slithers from my right side all the way to my toes, exacerbating the bitterness, too.
Cerberus cackles, stumbling his way toward me. “You will pay for this. You are dead. I will kill you, and this time it won’t be pretty like when I murdered your father. I will rip you to pieces and I will eat them, one by one.”
I force my body to listen to me, but it simply doesn’t respond.
Ingesting the poison must’ve sped things up.
It’s already gotten to my nerves, I’ve got no other explanation.
Unlike Isidoro, I’m still relatively young by vampire standards, I haven’t fully grown into my strength or my powers.
My healing is nowhere near on par with his.
Fuck. I don’t know if I can come back from this.
The enraged ghoul hovers above me, his intact hand flexing with claws at the ready. They’re long and menacing, and their proximity makes the utter torture throbbing inside me worse. My awareness wavers, a sort of heaviness settling over me.
I don’t want to die, but I fear I might be out of options.
Cerberus strikes, a scorching wave crashing into me as his claws ram into my sternum and begin ripping it open.
It’s agony, pure and absolute, every inch that gets torn off radiating through me.
An explosion goes off, both inside me and out, gunshots hissing past and around me.
My executioner groans, stumbling back as his claws cede their destruction.
I blink, chasing away the blackness and blurriness as best as I can as I fight not to pass out. Isidoro’s hands are strangling the giant, their circumference barely enough to wrap around the thick neck.
Fuck, I’m so relieved he’s alive and didn’t die on me. He glows in the white corridor, his fiery hair matching in viciousness his wild, furious eyes. He’s beautiful, so fucking gorgeous, so perfect, so irresistible. He wins, fuck it, I surrender. I want him too much. He’s mine. And I’m his.
Cerberus chokes, his body bleeding from a hundred bullet wounds as he gasps for air. Isidoro’s claws sink into his fat neck, the muscles on his forearms flexing as he rips the head off cleanly and tosses it to the side.
Wow. That’s kind of badass. Messy and ungraceful and so unlike Isidoro, but still badass as hell.
Isidoro’s men rush to the scene as my body starts to shut down, Samuel dumping a bag of blood in his king’s hand before he crouches down next to me and injects me with something.
I give him the thumbs up, or at least attempt to, but the pain and the relief are too much, too tempting, pulling me under.
Isidoro drops to the ground, his bloody hand stroking my cheek. “Stay with me, Julian,” he says, kissing my lips softly as he feeds me his blood.
It’s delicious, bringing with it a hum of pleasure to me, a final taste. God, this man really will be the end of me. Literally and otherwise. “If I… survive this, we are extending our deal… indefinitely…”
A lump forms in my throat, and I cough more blood, the agonizing burning spiking again. It reaches my chest, and from there spreads to my neck, my face, even my eyelids, taking me under before I can ask him to send me off with one last smile.