Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [56]
He pressed himself into me, and I put everything I had into keeping him away from my face and throat. My arms started to shake with the effort, and my elbows were bending. His face filled my vision, and his saliva dripped on my face. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled for help.
Gregory was there, his hands on Damian’s arm and shoulder, trying to use supernatural strength against supernatural strength. He slowed Damian’s push toward my face, but only slowed it. Damian was like a human on angel dust, stronger even than he’d been, because there was no one home to help him regulate his force. He was all about that force, and his goal in life seemed to be my face.
Nathaniel grabbed Damian’s other shoulder. Blood was still dripping down his arm, but it had slowed. Which meant Damian had found a way to injure him that didn’t include teeth or nails, those wouldn’t have started healing, yet. I think with the two of them pulling and me pushing, we might have made it, but Nathaniel’s bloody arm was next to Damian’s face. He was enraged, but all vampires, even revenants, react to fresh blood.
His neck turned in my hand, and I’d been so intent on pushing him away, that it surprised me. He would have sunk fangs into Nathaniel’s arm, except Gregory was a fraction too quick, and a fraction too slow. He managed to get his arm halfway around Damian’s neck, which put his wrist almost in the vampire’s mouth. Damian did what any animal would do, he bit him.
Gregory screamed and tried to pull away. It worked, and it didn’t. He pulled away from us, but the vampire went with him. They moved so fast, that Nathaniel fell against me, smearing blood down my skin. He was on his feet and moving toward the sounds of fighting farther down the hallway, before I’d gotten to my knees.
Damian had Gregory pinned on the floor, worrying at his arm like a dog with a bone. Even over Gregory’s screams I heard the bone crack. Nathaniel was there, wrapping his arms around Damian’s waist. He lifted him into the air, but the teeth stayed in Gregory’s broken arm, so that Gregory was pulled to his knees by the pain and the fangs locked into his arm.
I was almost to them, when Damian remembered he could fly. He pushed off from the floor and smashed Nathaniel against the ceiling hard enough that plaster dust rained down on them, and when Damian touched ground he rolled out of Nathaniel’s loosened grip. Damian had been a warrior once, and though Nathaniel and Gregory had the strength, they didn’t know how to fight. Strength without training was no match.
I was suddenly the only one standing in the hallway, except for Damian. He came for me in a blur of movement. I got one foot planted and had a heartbeat to see him, think what I’d do, and do it. Years of practice in judo, and my body remembered, before my mind had caught up. I used his own momentum against him, one arm and his hip as the pivot points, and I threw him, as far and as hard as his own motion would let me.
He ended at the top of the stairs, crouched, and turned toward me, before I had time to marvel at how far I’d thrown him. Let’s hear it for not being human anymore.
But a figure rose above him, coming up the stairs. It was Richard Zeeman, local Ulfric, Wolf-King, ex-fiancé, and in the wrong place at the worst time. I had a few seconds to see that his hair had grown out just enough to give some curl to his woefully short locks, that the white T-shirt made his fading tan summer-dark with contrast, that he was still one of the most handsome men I’d ever seen. Then the vampire turned, noticed him, and launched himself at Richard. He balanced them both for a second, then the other man’s weight took them both, and Richard fell backward down the stairs, with the vampire riding him. They vanished from sight, and over the sound of their bodies falling down the stairs, I heard a woman start to scream.
16
I WENT TO the stairs, expecting to see