I started to jog toward them, my mind boggled by the idea of several vampires stepping out of their home and into the bright sunlight. They were slowly burning to death. There was no clear plan in my head; just the idea that I had to get them back inside where they were safe from the sun.
When I was still a couple houses away, Gideon grabbed my shoulder, pulling me to a sharp halt. “Wait! This feels all wrong.”
“We can’t just stand back and watch a bunch of vampires fry in the sun,” I snarled, trying to jerk out of his grasp so I could try to help them before it was too late.
Yet before I could get any closer, a Good Samaritan decided to brave the Towers warlocks and try to usher the sleep-walking vampires back into the safety of their home. In a violent blur, the vampire closest to the human lunged at him, tearing his throat out with fangs and claws. It all happened so fast — a devastating combination of blood and black smoke like a demented magic trick on a Vegas stage.
“What the hell?” I shouted, stumbling backward in horror. Recovering from the explosion of violence, I jump into the struggling, instinctively moving to pry the vampire off his victim, but Gideon’s hand tightened on my shoulder, holding me in place. Twisting around, I knocked the warlock’s hand away. “We have to help them.”
“He’s already dead,” he replied, his eyes never straying from the bloody scene before us.
When I turned back, I found that the vampire had dropped the now lifeless body to the ground, leaving it to coat the empty street with blood. This didn’t make any sense. The vampire hadn’t even attempted to feed from the poor soul. He just killed him as quickly as possible, like pulling the plug on the TV.
Obviously, the vampires hadn’t been driven out of the house to feed. If this was suicide, I can’t understand why the creature had taken the time to so brutally kill the bystander. With no one in front of him, the vampire now stood in the middle of the sidewalk, swaying slightly as the sun slowly cooked him. Ash flaked off, rising up into the breeze to dance around him in a macabre ballet.
“We have to do something,” I repeated, though I hadn’t any suggestions on what exactly that was going to be.
“What? They’re already dead.”
“Just because they’re vampires doesn’t mean—”
“No, damn it!” Gideon cut me off. He stepped forward and pointed at the chest of the vampire that had attacked the man just seconds ago. “His heart has been ripped out. He’s already dead. There’s nothing to save.”
My eyes dropped from the face of the poor creature with his flaking flesh to his chest. There was a hole in his Batman T-shirt right over where his heart had been. Dark, thick blood stained the fabric, and when the cold winter breeze ruffled his crusty shirt, you could see the hole extended down into his chest. Hesitantly stepping closer, I looked over all the vampires who dotted the front yard of their home. Each one had a bloodstained chest. Someone had killed an entire nest of vampires during the daylight hours and then . . . reanimated their bodies.
A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the winter wind. “How?”
“The magic that we felt,” Gideon murmured. He shook his head in disgust as he pushed up the sleeves of his jacket and shirt. “We need to put them down before someone else gets hurt.”
Clenching my teeth, I balled my hands into helpless fists at my side. I wanted to do something to help them, but it was already too late for that. Once a vampire’s heart was staked or removed, life flees the body and there’s no getting that back. This stiff, shuffling movement made you want to believe that there was still some life left in these poor creatures, something that could be saved, but it was an illusion.
Magic tingled in the air as Gideon drew energy to himself and began to cast a spell. In unison, the vampires stopped their shuffling and their heads snapped in Gideon’s direction as one.
Fear careened through my system, sending my heart pumping. “I think you might want to stop what you’re doing,” I said, taking a slow step backward.
The warlock focused on the vampires, his eyebrows nearly lifting to his hairline. “Huh.” The surprised sound was a massive understatement when it