Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,58

we have him now?” another whispered.

“The demon could die. We have to be careful. Lord Vasilii will make sure the demon keeps feeding us.”

My stomach turned over. They intended to keep Zylas as their personal blood bank? My hands tightened around his arm. Zylas, return to the infernus.

I waited for crimson light to overtake his body. Was the infernus too far away for him as well, or had the tranquilizing vampire saliva and blood loss anesthetized him? His comatose state, so much worse than when I’d been bitten, terrified me.

“Zylas,” I whispered, pressing against his side, my lips against his ear. “Go back to the infernus. Quickly.”

A shadow moved across me. Bethany grabbed my hair and hauled me away from Zylas. She threw me down and I hit a bucket, knocking it over. Discarded papers spilled across the floor and fluttered toward the abandoned air compressor and red jerry cans.

“Stay there and be quiet, girl,” she ordered.

I lay on my stomach, pain burrowing deep in my muscles from my earlier impact with the wall. A foot from my nose, a glossy photo lay amidst the scattered papers: my face, smiling back at me. A square graduate cap sat on my head and matching robes draped my small frame, while my parents beamed with pride on either side of me.

My throat closed. My high school graduation two years ago. How had the vampires gotten that photo?

“The demon smells so good,” a man groaned longingly.

Half under the photo was a lined sheet torn from a notebook, the cream paper filled with handwritten blue ink.

“Control yourself. Lord Vasilii doesn’t allow disobedience.”

My fingers closed around the paper, and as I squinted at that familiar loopy handwriting, I slid the page closer. Something small clattered softly against the concrete—a ballpoint pen. A pen. Sucking in a wild breath, I stuffed the paper down the front of my sweater and took hold of the pen.

“Lord Vasilii has promised we’ll get all the demon blood we want,” Bethany crooned delightedly. “Can you imagine?”

I flipped the photo over and drew across the back in a single, swift stroke.

“Mythics won’t dare hunt us then. We’ll be as powerful as they are.”

“Even more powerful! Only we can bring demons down with a single bite.”

Pressing the pen into another scrap, I drew a different rune across the paper’s full span.

“Demons are even more susceptible to our bites than humans. We’re the ultimate demon hunters, and mythics have no idea.”

The vampires laughed, voices coated in eager hunger. I crawled forward, belly sliding across the rejected papers they’d stolen from Claude, from Uncle Jack … from my parents.

“Do you think Lord Vasilii would notice if we took one more sip from the demon?”

Eyes fixed on the air compressor and the row of jerry cans beside it, I pushed myself across the floor.

“He ordered us not to feed again …”

“Just a little taste?”

I glanced back and my lungs constricted. The three vampires were crouched around Zylas’s prone form. Bethany held his wrist, staring at the punctures in his hand from the bite that had brought him down.

“I need more.” Drool spilled out of the corner of her mouth. “I need it.”

“Bethany …” another vampire began sternly.

Her mouth opened wide, fangs gleaming, and she pulled his hand to her mouth.

I shoved off the floor and jumped toward the air compressor and its collection of jerry cans. A vampire shouted in warning. I flung my arm into the air, clutching the photo with a rune scrawled over the back. “Luce!”

Light as bright as the sun flared, and the vampires cried out in pain. I grabbed the nearest jerry can and stuffed my second paper into the nozzle.

“Ig—”

An arm clamped around my neck, cutting off my air. The vampire dragged me backward and the can slipped from my grasp, landing on its side. Gasoline spilled out. With beastly strength, my captor hauled me over to the other vampires. They surrounded me, black-and-white eyes glaring down, the red rings brighter than I’d ever seen before.

The arm around my neck loosened enough that I could breathe. Focusing as hard as I could on the slip of paper I’d shoved into the jerry can, I gasped, “Igniaris!”

The paper burst into flames—and the gasoline fumes exploded. A fireball ruptured the can and whooshed out in a blaze of light and heat. It caught the other cans and they burst, flinging flaming liquid across the room. Fire roared, engulfing the exposed drywall. The papers all over the floor caught and the flames