Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [58]
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 him pressed to the floor. He kept straining upward, teeth slashing the air, sounds coming from his throat that were more animal than human. We weren’t losing the fight, but we weren’t winning either. We needed a different plan of attack.
I moved off of his shoulders enough that he raised up more, and Richard’s eyes were wide. “I can’t hold him one-handed, not alone.”
“I’m going to put an arm around his neck to control his head,” I said, “but I need him higher off the ground.”
“A choke hold won’t work on a vampire. They don’t breathe.”
That was half true, but I let it go. We could argue later. “I’m just trying to control his head, that’s it.”
He gave a small nod. He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue about it, and that was good enough. I slid in behind Damian, and he was so busy straining after Richard, that he didn’t seem to notice. I knelt behind the vampire, and for the first time was very aware that I was nude. The fight had sort of made it unimportant. What made it important now,