“Oh. Well, you see, Bubbah, there’s a small problem with that,” Eli said, his tone laconic, his voice filling the emptiness of the small clearing. “The crystals are all broken and the dragons are all free. And Joseph Santana, aka Joses Bar-Judas, aka the elder Son of Darkness, aka asshole of the paranormal world, is true-dead.” He chuckled, his battlefield mirth, more death than amusement. “And by the way, as long as we’re on the subject of dragons, the arcenciels are pissed at the vamps for the slavery-in-a-crystal thing. They’re thinking about war.”
As he spoke, the three other vamps spread out, moving into the dark. Beast gathered herself. There was a soft sssss, followed by a prolonged thump, as if a vamp had dropped into the snow and banged his head. The smell of vamp blood spread on the air.
Another sssss, and a second thump, this one a tumble. We placed the sound and Beast gave a cat grin, all teeth and viciousness. Flying claws, she thought. Eli was playing with his new toy and he got off two shots with the bow before the vamps figured out what was happening and moved. I heard a pop of vamp movement, displaced air, fangheads faster than the human eye can follow. Yet, Beast’s eyes tracked both by sound, movement of air, smell.
Beast is best hunter. Before I could react, she leaped. Front legs stretching, claws out, back legs shoving hard.
She fell fast in a horizontal-distance-to-fall ratio that spanned the vehicles, the entire clearing, and hid her in night shadows on the other side. I never saw the branch she landed on, just felt gravity jar through our body as she half landed, half shoved off and vectored at a sharp angle that stole nothing from her momentum. She fell again. Fast.
Beast rammed into a softer body. Claws ripping. Grabbing. Teeth sinking in. The crunch of bone and tear of tendons. The taste of acid, hot peppers, and cold blood. My vampire prey. My meat. My blood.
She rode the vampire down. Slinging her head back and forth, dislocating the vertebrae. Cold blood splattered. We bounced on his back. Beast continued working the spine, back and forth. Until she ripped out a chunk of vertebra.
Holy crapoley, I thought.
My meat.
I got that. But you might need to eat later.
In the trees, the sound of gunfire was sharp and nearly painful. Protectively, we tucked our ear tabs. Sniffed. Smelled the stench of guns and blood on the still air. Human blood.
Eli blood? Littermate? Beast thought, raising her head, tracing the sound and the scents. Her tongue slicked her jaw and nose clean of the strange vamp blood. Tasted bad.
Snow started to fall, large, saucer-sized things too big to be called flakes. Heavy and wet, they made a noise when they landed, like tiny plumffs in the silence.
Beast has vampire one. Two vampire, with flying claw in body, is there. She glanced toward something in the snow. I didn’t have time to focus through her eyes. She turned her head. There is three vampire with flying claw in body. She looked up and into the darkness. An enormous snow-pancake landed on her snout. Another between her shoulders. Eli is there. Smell Eli blood. Beast jumped straight up, sank her bloody claws into the trunk, raced high. Into the tree branches. Stretched into a sprint across the limbs toward the blood scent.
Drew up hard. Stopped. At the base of a neighboring tree was Legolas look-alike, dark blood on the icy white carpet. Heavy white snow landed on his fancy coat and white face. A shaft protruded from his chest, directly over his heart. We smelled the acrid stink of vamp blood and silver. Lego was a goner unless we got a master vamp to bleed and read and revive him. Blood splattered over his body.
Above him, facedown on a branch, was Eli. Arms and legs had been holding him in place. Now all four dangled. Blood ran off the fingers of his right hand, stained his cold-coat sleeve. He wasn’t moving. Beast made a single long bound, hard and high, landed, claws sinking into the bark, beside him. Claws on her left arm retracted. She swatted his face. Again. Sorrowful, anguished, she thought, Much blood. Too much blood.
Eli shifted slightly. He began to slide. He might not survive the landing.
No! I/we screamed. Puma concolor scream. Pain blasted through my arm. Fingers with retracted claws grabbed him. A humanish hand. Holding littermate. Pain ratcheted through my hand