Damned by Blood

Chapter Nine

Mikhail flowed through her, icy and powerful as a river roaring out of the mountains. She’d known all along that it would come to this. That she would kill him. But now that the time had come, she hated it. He belonged in the world. He deserved to live.

But his blood leapt into her mouth, insistent. She didn’t even have to suck. His strength renewed her, giving back all he’d taken and so much more. His goodness staggered her. She rubbed up against it, hoping some of it would rub off.

Alya knew exactly how much blood she could take from anyone before she did harm. Mikhail had reached that point. He slipped into unconsciousness, but still his blood sang, yes, take me.

He was perfect and beautiful. His dying thoughts were of her. He loved her. As if she deserved it. As if she’d done anything decent in her life.

The compulsion to finish the kill was strong, almost too strong, but she tore her mouth away. With a few quick strokes of her tongue she halted his bleeding and paused, gasping, confused, her head and heart brimming.

I’ve got to save him.

She had no plan. No hope at all, really. More than likely she’d be dead within five minutes. But if there was even a sliver of a chance that she could get him out too, she had to try. And if she failed, well, with any luck he wouldn’t wake before the sun hit him.

Resolved, she sprang off the table and grabbed a six-foot length of chain.

Mikhail was with her. Not his consciousness, but his essence, unabsorbed and unsettled. Like a drop of dye spreading in pure water, it tinted everything she did. His caution tempered her recklessness. On her own, she would have rushed the building. Instead she crept through the door on assassin’s feet, descended a few stairs and entered a long hall, her senses prickling. There were guards at the end of the hall, she could hear them talking. A TV blared in the room to her right, and men shouted at it. She recognized the sound of sports. Using her finer senses she took a second sweep of the area and realized a single vamp was in a room to her left. Quiet. Maybe sleeping.

She slipped into that room, hoping to find Halverson, and walked straight into the butt of a rifle. The blow to her forehead bounced her off the nearest wall. Anna Halverson spun the rifle around for a killing shot.

Alya swung out with her chain and caught Anna’s leg by either chance or luck, because she couldn’t see straight. But she felt the chain grab hold and she yanked hard. Anna fell on her back and Alya was on her.

Unable to shake images of the sun igniting Mikhail’s flesh, Alya wasted no moves. She strangled Anna with the chain and claimed her gun. The room contained another treasure: an acetylene torch. With the chain around her neck, the gun across her back and the torch in her hand she crept back into the hall and began to set the place afire. As the smoke spread, the men came out to investigate. There were more than Mikhail had guessed. She picked them off one by one, first with the rifle, then with the chain, and then with her bare hands.

“Halverson!” she called, retreating to the stairs, hoping to lure him out to the roof.

Gunnar attacked out of nowhere, pushing her out the door. A cloud of black smoke rolled with them, obscuring the morning sky. He was brave, but he was just a boy. In a couple of moves she had his arm wrenched behind his back.

“You bitch!” he cried, his voice breaking with fear. “I’ll kill you for this.”

“Stupid child. I eat boys like you for breakfast. You’re going to tell your people what happened here. You’re going to tell them to live clean and stay quiet or I will come to the fucking North Woods and paint them red. And believe me, I will start with you.”

She pitched him to an adjacent rooftop some eighty feet below. Young vamps had some bounce to them. Usually.

“Gunnar!”

She turned to see Halverson running at her with a fire axe.

Mikhail knew he wasn’t in heaven. Black smoke billowed around him in smothering clouds, stinging his eyes. A terrible stench filled his nostrils, a noxious combination of burning plastic and flesh. He’d killed too many people in his life to go to heaven. Thou shalt not kill was a basic commandment, after all.

A man screamed, agonized, but his cry was ominously short. After that he couldn’t hear anything else except the roar of the inferno. And then, out of a fountain of glowing embers, walked Alya—or some demon goddess that looked like Alya. She was naked, her skin shining black. Ash whitened her hair. Her face was contorted with blood lust. Her eyes, red. In one hand she carried a battle axe. In the other, a club.

No, not a club. A dismembered arm.

“I’m getting you out of here,” she said.