and tried to belt me in the face. But he seemed as rattled as I was and also missed, although the action brought him close enough to kiss. Or to bite through his jugular, so I did, feeling his death throes above me while his warm, wet blood cascaded over my face and breast and hair.
I laughed; I didn’t know why. I had meant to roar instead, hoping to disorient my attackers further, and buy myself a few more seconds. But what came out instead was wild, almost hysterical laughter.
But it seemed to do the trick.
The fey who could still function began getting off of me. They began getting off of me quickly. But, ironically, that left me more vulnerable than before, as those who had not been injured started poking at the diminishing pile with swords and spears, trying to skewer me.
They hit their friends half the time instead, but the other half they hit me, resulting in both of my legs taking wounds. I did not feel them, but they were there, and there are plenty of arteries in the legs. I needed to retreat before I bled out, but . . .
I did not know how.
I tried my stun scream, but it did not work, possibly because my brain was still jittering around in my cranium. It left me wailing like a banshee for no apparent reason, on an enemy vessel surrounded by foes who did not seem to recall that they were not supposed to kill me. To make matters worse, there was nothing close enough to jump to, even had I been able; my spirit form persistently refused to manifest; and I was having difficult thinking straight, which made formulating a plan virtually impossible.
But then something strange happened.
“Augggghhhhh!!! Motherfuckers! Come at me, bra!”
I looked up the sound of a familiar voice. It was distant, yet rapidly getting closer. The still conscious fey looked up, too, seemingly confused.
And then Raymond kamikazed their ship.
The smaller vessel did not have the heft of this one, but he was going full out when he hit. The crash sent us slamming into a massive stalactite, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure where one vessel started and the other ended. But I was sure of one thing.
I had until the fey recovered to get off this ship.
So I did, slithering out from under the remaining pile, many of whom had been helpfully thrown into their friends by the crash.
“Hurry up!” Ray yelled. “What are you doing?”
“My legs no longer work,” I said thickly, although my elbows were pulling me along pretty quickly.
That was just as well, because my words seemed to utterly incense Ray. “Sons of bitches!” he screamed, and suddenly, the whole capsule was filled with jumping, blue white fire.
I had just rolled back onto ours, which was looking a little worse for the wear, with black impact marks on the metal and a missing shutter. But it was not dented, surprisingly. Although the interior was alarmingly full of rocks.
And so was the side of Ray’s face.
He had clearly taken the brunt of the last barrage, but he was a vampire. He remained on his feet, furious and functional. And he looked better than most of those on the now fiery hulk beside us.
“What did you do?” I asked Ray, as the fey screamed and burned, some of them jumping into the darkness, others leaping for us—
And missing, because Ray was backing us up, and backing fast.
“Found these,” he panted, pointing down at a trio of nodules sticking out of a panel below the door. They looked like the ends of the fey’s spears, only blunted. I supposed because they weren’t intended to stick into anything. Instead—
“Oh, you want some more?” Ray screeched at the fey ship, which was now pursuing us. “You want some more? All right, have some more!”
The darkness lit up with a triple blaze of blue white energy, which smacked into the fey’s craft like a fist. I doubted that it would make much of a difference, as the vessel was already burning. I was wrong.
The fey’s craft exploded, like a brilliant supernova in the darkness, sending fiery shards and smoldering bodies everywhere. It was so bright that it lit up a huge swath of the cave, causing reflected flames to leap on walls of what looked like ice, but were probably just coated in more limestone. Because the stalactites looked like they were boiling, too.
The fey’s craft plunged into darkness, dragging flames behind it, and was