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By Root 3793 0

from me, naked teeth opened in a scream. I shoved the cross in its face, and those teeth snapped at it like a dog telling you to stay away. But those teeth caught the chain, and bit through it. There was a moment where even without most of the flesh left on the skull I could see surprise on its face. I flung my arms across my face and heard the dull explosion, the spatter of debris. There was a sharp pain in my hand, and when I could look, I had a bone shard in my left hand. I pulled the shard out, and only then did I bleed.

The vampire was just so much mess scattered around me. The cross lay on the ground still glowing, smoke rising off its surface as if the metal had been freshly made and quenched in the blood of the vampire. I started to pick it up by the chain, and Nikki, Colin’s human servant, was standing over me. I caught the dull flash of her knife and rolled away, coming to one knee with the Browning in one hand. She was right above me waiting for an underhand strike, but I wasn’t standing, and she didn’t have time to change her strike. I started to pull the trigger and a werewolf barreled into her, took them both off into the dark. Shit. What was I supposed to do, yell “mine” like in a volleyball game?

I heard Jason yelling. He was standing only about a yard away with both arms stuck through the chest of a rotting vampire. He was pulling desperately on his arms, but they seemed trapped, caught on the ribs. The vampire didn’t seem to mind. It licked his face, and he screamed. Another rotter was on his back, riding him, head back for a strike. I sighted down my arm at the head and fired. The head jerked back, and brains spilled out a hole on the other side in a dark gush, but the vampire turned its head slowly and looked at me. I fired into that calm face three more times in a tight cluster before the head collapsed in upon itself like an empty eggshell. The vampire fell away from Jason.

I walked towards Jason and the other vampire. Now it was the vampire who was struggling to get free of Jason, but they were entwined like bumpers after a car wreck. I put the gun barrel under the vampire’s chin, my other hand over Jason’s eyes to protect them, and fired. It took three shots for the brain to be destroyed and the body to go limp.

I moved my hand from Jason’s eyes, and he looked past me, eyes widening. I was already turning before he could yell, “Behind you!”

The blow came before I’d finished the turn. My shoulder and arm went numb. My hand opened and the Browning slipped out while I was still trying to see what had hit me. I dived for the ground, rolling on my good shoulder and came up to my knee to see Nikki holding a very big stick. I was lucky she’d lost the knife somewhere.

I started to draw the big knife down my back, but I was using my left hand, because my right still wasn’t working. Left-handed I was slower, and Nikki was unbelievably fast. She moved in a blur of motion that was beyond human. She was on me, slashing the air with the club, and I gave up trying to draw a knife, and worked just at not being hit. The attack was so quick, so savage, that I didn’t have time to stand. All I could do was roll on the ground barely ahead of each blow.

The jagged end of the branch sank into the ground next to my face. She struggled for a second to free it, and I kicked her in the knee. It made her stagger, but didn’t dislocate it, or she’d have screamed. It did force her back from the club. I rolled away, trying to get to my feet. She grabbed me, and lifted me over her head like she was bench-pressing me. The next thing I knew I was airborne. I hit the ground just short of the oak, falling into the bones beneath the tree hard enough that some of them shattered. The jolt of power that ran through me from hands to knees drove what air I had left from my body. I lay there half-stunned, not just from being thrown across the clearing, but from the power roaring across my body from the bones. It was death magic, and though different from mine, it recognized me, recognized my power. I knew as I lay in the bones that I