so I was the one they’d come for. In her sharp gaze, I saw the many fantasies she’d had about my death for the last few weeks. By the looks of it, she was already salivating at the prospect of being the one to serve it up to me on a silver platter.
“What witch?” Finn shouted, pointing an arrow in Eliza’s direction.
“That one,” she answered with a hiss, pointing a long, red fingernail my way.
“You’ve your shit in bucketfuls if you think that’s happening,” Finn shot back as Ethan seethed, “Never.”
His stern defence of me took me by surprise. Butterflies fluttered through my stomach, even as I winced at the sound of bullets firing behind us, making my ears ring.
“Have it your way,” Eliza replied. “If you won’t hand her over, then we’ll just have to take her.”
She raised a gun, which I hadn’t noticed until that point, and fired it at the slayer by my side so fast I hardly had time to register what happened.
Whitfield laughed with wicked joy, levelling his cold eyes on Ethan.
My attention went to the wounded slayer, and I stared at him in shock. Eliza didn’t pull any punches. She shot him right in the heart. Undiluted anger spread through me like a virus, encapsulating my every pore. Grabbing a stake out of Finn’s back pocket, I made to run at Eliza. With one hand holding his bow, Finn reached out and pulled me back, shaking his head at me before the vampires noticed I was about to run at them in idiotic, suicidal rage.
Surprisingly, Delilah was next to launch an attack. She aimed her projectile directly at the vamps before pulling a lever. The thing began spinning around, shooting out stakes like a vampire killing machine gun. The sharp wooden spikes took down several vampires at once.
That was when all hell broke loose, and both sides charged for one another. Finn advanced at a steady pace, effortlessly shooting arrows like it was second nature. Rita spread out both palms and released the same light she’d thrown at Emilia earlier, only this time there were no magic sparks to fight it off and it knocked the vampire she’d been aiming at unconscious.
Noreen, Alvie, and Gabriel joined hands, chanting a spell in unison. I recognised this one from my recent studies with Rita. It was a glamour spell. They were ensuring that the fight remained unseen by human eyes.
I couldn’t keep track of everyone, but I was vaguely aware of Ethan and Whitfield facing off with their swords. They didn’t even seem worried about being hit with the vast array of projectiles that were currently flying all over the place.
Amid the carnage, all I could focus on was a head of honey blonde hair and a mahogany silk dress with nails as red as blood and high heels to match. She came for me, and something deep inside of me—something feral—relished the fight to come. This ended here and now. One of us wasn’t walking away, and I was going to try my hardest to ensure that person was Eliza.
She reached up and ran a hand over the side of her face that I’d burned with my sparks.
“See how I’m all healed up?” she asked, a cruel slant to her mouth. “Your little trick didn’t keep me hurt for long.”
I lifted my hand, summoning my sparks, or as Emilia called them, electrical fire. “Maybe I’ll leave a longer-lasting mark this time,” I replied, doing my best to match her casual tone. She wanted me to fear her, but I was coming to learn that, although I still feared vampires and what they could do to me, I was also something to fear. I wasn’t a defenceless human. I was the granddaughter of a sorcerer who was discovering new abilities each and every day. I could take Eliza.
Good God, I really hoped I could take her.
“I’m going to pull out your heart and feed it to you,” she threatened.
“Has anyone ever mentioned you have issues?”
She swiped her claw-like hand at me, and I backed away. Okay, I had a stake in my pocket and a razor in my hand, but which to choose? Remembering that I now possessed Finn’s knife fighting skills, I decided the blade was the safer option given my lack of experience with stakes.
Taking a chance, I lunged at her with the razor, slicing into her femininely muscled arm. She actually did a double-take as dark blood dripped down her bicep from the