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By Root 6668 0

used it. When my body met the floor I had one foot in Damian’s stomach and two hands on his arms. A tome nage throw is the only throw in judo where you commit your whole body to it. Most throws have variations you can do at the last minute if they don’t work, but the tome nage either works or it doesn’t. You fail, and your opponent is on top of you in a perfect position to pin you. But I hadn’t chosen the throw, it had been the only move Damian’s attack left me. I had seconds to do it right or have him eat my face. So when I kicked up with my feet, I gave it all I had. I’d forgotten that all I had was more than it used to be.

Damian flew through the air again, but it wasn’t his supernatural powers this time. I rolled over in time to see Damian hit the wall yards away. He hit hard enough to crack the paint and leave a partial imprint of his body on the wall, when he slid to the floor.

I heard someone behind me say, “wow,” and it wasn’t Richard, because he was nearly up beside me, rounding the couch. I didn’t have time to glance behind me to see if it was Nathaniel or Gregory, because two bad things were happening at once.

The first bad thing was that Damian was getting slowly to his feet. Slowly enough that I think I’d hurt him, but he was still getting up, still not unconscious. The second bad thing was the woman had started screaming again, and thanks to me throwing Damian across the room, she was the closest person to him. She’d backed up when he sailed through the air, otherwise she’d have been almost where he landed, but when he turned around, she’d be a yard away. Not good.

Richard made a move toward her, but she was already backing up, and not toward us. She was backing up toward the open front door. There was something about the way she was moving that made both Richard and I say something. Richard had time to say, “Clair, don’t . . .” I had time to say, “Don’t run.” But it was too late. She ran, just as Damian turned to see her. It was like putting a cat into a room full of mice; they’ll chase the running one first.

Richard was moving, but even with his speed there wasn’t time to get ahead of Damian and block the door. All Richard had time for was to rush Damian, to crash into him and take them both to the floor.

He had the vampire down but not pinned. Richard screamed. His shoulders blocked my view, and I had to move around to their heads to see Damian’s mouth buried into Richard’s upper chest.

I knelt to help pry Damian’s mouth from his flesh, but Richard made the preternatural rookie mistake. He grabbed Damian by the hair and pulled him off of him. Vampire bites are like snake bites; if the snake has a good grip, you don’t just yank it off. Yanking it off causes more damage than letting the snake let go on its own, or prying it loose. I guess the exception would be a venomous snake, if you go on the asumption that the longer it bites you the more poison it pumps in, which may or may not be true, but vampires aren’t venomous. It was an impressive show of strength, tearing the vampire’s mouth away from his flesh, but impressive shows of strength have their price. Richard’s shirt ripped away from that entire side of his body, and a great, bloody hole showed in his upper chest, almost to the shoulder. His hand, which had been pushing against Damian’s shoulder, suddenly went limp, and all that kept Damian from sinking teeth into Richard again was Richard’s grip on his long red hair.

I put a hand on Damian’s shoulder and pressed, and unlike every other time I’d tried to hold down a rampaging vampire, this time it worked, at least a little. Let’s hear it for preternatural strength.

A gobbet of flesh fell out of Damian’s mouth as he tried to turn and sink fangs into me. Richard yanked on his hair and kept those straining fangs from me. He tried to use his left arm again, and it moved, but he couldn’t push with it. Something important had gotten torn up. Super strong or not, he was suddenly fighting with only one arm.

Between the two of us we could keep Damian from sitting up completely, but we couldn’t keep