Seventh Seal - Jacquelyn Faye Page 0,78

burst into the room.

That close to dawn, I had assumed he'd be alone. I had assumed so very, very wrong. A kiss of at least twenty vampires stepped from the shadows and rushed me en masse. Fearlessly, they swarmed me, confident in their numbers. In the space of a heartbeat, I was gripped and pushed to the ground at their feet. One of them grabbed a fistful of hair and lifted my head to face their lord as they parted before him.

"What? Did you truly think you were a match for me?" He lifted his chin from his fist and started laughing. The vampires around me joined him and stopped when he trailed off.

When he finished, I started and ended it with a single word. "Fidget."

Abernathy tilted his head and scrunched his eyebrows in confusion. I smiled as I felt the shadow slither down my sleeve and crawl over the flesh of my hand, dropping to the polished wood floor between me and the vamps.

Soundlessly, he grew and then bellowed a screech as he stood and towered over the semicircle of undead around me. They began hitting the walls around us, thudding twice as they fell to the ground wetly after.

A wave of fear washed over me as the shadow demon started tearing their flesh and limbs. I stood slowly and let the fear change me into exactly what I needed to be at that moment.

Snarling, I walked toward the mediocre throne as my fangs ripped through my gums, my nails tore through the flesh of my fingers, and a burning bloodlust boiled through my veins. For nothing but effect, I ripped the broom charm from my neck and swung the scythe. I led with the dull edge as I charged, stopping short just as the metal pressed his neck against the high back of his chair.

"Call this pointless war off."

"You're not even a vampire!"

I hissed and bared my fangs at him. His eyes bulged even more. "No. I'm more," I lisped around my overly large teeth and let the shadows rise up around him and bind him to the chair he'd been so proud of the moment before. "Are you done?"

He nodded, quickly and emphatically.

Fidget roared behind me. I turned my head and sent a mental command to him, sparing the lives of the handful of vampires cowering on the floor.

The squeal of the shadows binding the vampire to the throne were the only warning I had. He had been bound, but with silver daggers hidden in his hands, blades turned toward him. I caught the glint of their gleaming surface as he raised them after severing the bindings. In a blink, he stood and plunged one in my chest and the other into my heart, the other through my back, its tip nearly nicking the other between my ribs.

I looked down at the grizzly wound as pain blossomed through my chest. My vision darkened as the edges faded away into nothingness.

Abernathy's laughter filled my ears as he lowered me to the ground at his feet. With an evil sneer he twisted the blade in my chest and yanked it from my chest.

I didn't scream, I didn't call out, the pain was already too intense for rational, or irrational, thought. The wounds weren't enough to kill me, but I was fighting to remain conscious. If I passed out, it was over. He could really kill me at his leisure.

Abernathy made one horrid mistake.

Without my reins, Fidget was free to flee or feast. He might have been a shadow demon, possibly just a baby, but he loved his mother. His shriek of anger blasted the laughter from my ears and Abernathy's lips as he hurtled over the bodies of the vampires between us and smacked Abernathy across the room with an elongated shadow claw. Blood sprayed over my field of vision in a crimson bow and splashed down over me in liquid fire. Three more shadowy figures joined my shadow demon as they flew across the room and ended Abernathy in screams of pain and rage.

∞ ∞ ∞

A cool cloth wiped across my brow and the smell of wet blood wafted to my nose. Blinking, I stared at a very worried looking vampire hovering over me. "Yuki?"

She pulled the cloth away and frowned at me. "If you were in better shape, I'd roll you over and kick your ass. Master," she added almost as an afterthought.

"We would, too," Dar chimed in angrily, hugging a scared looking Shea to his chest