Dread Nemesis of Mine

chapter 26

Unlike the sensation when Maximus had fed upon me, there was no pleasure whatsoever from the vampling bite. Only pain and agony. Using every last ounce of willpower, I bent back my other leg and kicked the thing's head.

Something cracked. The creature's head snapped back at a terrible angle. Slammed into the curved wall. The vampling pushed off it, landed on all fours, and hissed. A pair of broken glasses dangled from its nose. A soccer T-shirt and shorts, torn and bloody were the only other reminders of the humanity the undead creature had once possessed.

Despite the withdrawal of its fangs, the agony in my veins persisted. Desperation lent me the strength to roll backwards down the stairs while the vampling, running on hands and feet like an animal, chased me. I tried to lurch to my feet. Dizziness pulled me back to the floor. I resorted to crawling as the venom in my blood betrayed all sense of balance.

Cold hands gripped me. The vampling's teeth went for my ankle. A frightened yelp escaped me as I jerked my foot free and kicked my pursuer in the head. The kick propelled me head-over-heels, backwards down the remaining stairs. At the bottom, I hit the wall to the side of the stairwell. The hilt of my sword clanged against the stone. Somewhere during my flight, I'd lost the assault rifle. Bracing my back on the stone surface, I pushed to my feet, drew my sword, and turned right to face my attacker.

The vampling snarled. Dove at me.

Reflex kicked in. I dodged to the left. Swept my sword down in a cutting motion. Steel met bone, cleaving through it like hot butter. One of the vampling's arms flopped to the ground. I jerked my sword from the creature's ribs and sliced down again and again, chopping the thing into bits.

A groan sounded in the hallway behind me.

I spun and faced two more undead. Steadier on my feet now, I mustered all my strength and sliced both their heads off in one clean sweep. Reversed my swing and took off their legs. More groans warned of another attack. Vamplings shambled out of the room where Maximus had strapped me down like an animal. Horror, hatred, and anger suffused my heart and burned into my veins.

Even more creatures appeared behind me. I had nowhere to go.

Fear vanished, erased by the certainty that, here, I would die. Blinding anger burned through the fear, boiling into fury.

"Xhi kakini xhe keyalla!" I shouted in a guttural voice. I will kill you all!

Demonic instinct overwhelmed me, and my sword flashed like lightning among my enemies.

"Justin?" A warm hand caressed my jaw.

My eyes fluttered open. I flinched back with a shout.

"It's me, Justin. Elyssa."

"Holy Mary, what happened down here?" Fausta looked around the room, eyes wide. Blood spattered her face and clothing, but she otherwise looked no worse for wear.

I held out a blood-coated hand to Elyssa. She pulled me to my feet. I felt weak, but not completely drained. Dismembered, twitching bodies lay everywhere. Dark vampling blood covered the floor in a spreading lake of death.

"I don't remember." Pressing my hands to my head, I tried to recall the battle, but found only fleeting images and roars. Had I manifested into my demon form? My sword lay at my feet, and the bodies looked as though I'd run them down with a lawnmower.

"Remind me not to piss you off," Fausta said. She looked up the spiral stairs. "I think we're done here."

I followed her and Elyssa up the stairs, still feeling woozy and disoriented. The gagging stench of charred flesh and hair made me double over as I neared the top. It was all I could do to push it away as my supernatural senses soaked it all in.

A gentle breeze carried the smoke toward the chamber from which the vamplings had come. Adam, his face sweaty and covered in soot, appeared to be the source of the wind, his staff waving in circles. When he saw us, he stopped, mouth dropping open as he looked at me.

I looked down and noticed my blood-soaked clothing and my crimson hands. "Oh, god."

Michael, his own face splotched here and there with red, raised an eyebrow. "What happened?"

"He went crazy or something and killed—I don't know—twenty vamplings?" Fausta shook her head. "It was hard to tell with all the body parts."

Michael nodded his head toward the stairs. "Is it clear down there?"

Elyssa took my hand and squeezed. "Yes."

"What about in there?" I pointed at the chamber beyond the red door.

Michael nodded. "Looks like it. We were about to go check it out."

Adam sent a globe of light inside the room. Piles of roasted bodies and dismembered limbs lay at the entrance and beyond. A tar-like substance I identified as burnt blood covered the floor.

"I really don't want to go in there," Fausta said with a shudder. "Maybe we should wait on the Custodians."

Taking a deep breath, and instantly regretting it, thanks to the odor, I stepped past the charred bodies and inside the room. If the cells in the tunnels had been where the former dungeon wards had kept most of the prisoners, this room must have been where they put the vilest criminals, or at least the ones they wanted to suffer the most.

The room was large and filled with crude torture devices. They looked old, rusted, and unusable. Along the edges of the room were windowless, iron doors. I heard a moan and jumped back, ripping my sword from its sheath. The weak moan came again. I looked around the room, but couldn't find the source. Then I looked up. Cages hung from the ceiling by thick chains. In the glow of Adam's light, I made out a pale form lying in a heap inside one of them.

It groaned.

"Lower the cage," Michael said. "We need to burn it with the others."

A crank on the wall secured the chain. I spun it around, lowering the cage as the poor creature inside moaned. The cage clanked to the floor. A thick padlock secured the barred door.

"I've got it," Adam said, touching his staff to it. The padlock snapped open a few seconds later.

The cage door squealed open with a firm pull of my hand. The vampling huddled in the fetal position, shivering under a pile of blood-stained clothes.

"That's odd," I said.

Michael grabbed at some loose cloth and dragged the vampling out. Let go and backed away. The body sprawled. Red eyes looked up into mine from a blood-stained face. Blackened veins riddled the skin, writhing like snakes beneath the surface. I gasped and dropped to a knee.

"Help me," the infected vampire rasped. "Please, Justin."

I stared in horror at the vampire. At the young woman I knew. At Felicia.

Adam cried out. His staff clattered to the floor as he fell to his knees beside me. "Felicia! Oh, god. What the hell did Maximus do to you? That son of a bitch!"

She gripped his shirt with a pale hand already darkening with infection. "Adam?" She smiled. Shuddered and gasped. "Brother, you're here?"

"For you, sis. I came for you."

"You—you finally came for me." A tear trickled down her cheek.

Tears poured down Adam's face. He bent over his sister and hugged her tight as agonized cries tore from his throat. "All my fault. All my fault. Don't leave me, Felicia. Please don't die."

She sucked in a breath as her body bucked with spasms. "You have to kill me. No choice."

"Isn't there anything we can do?" I asked Michael. "Some kind of Templar cure?"

He looked on, his eyes troubled. "I'm sorry."

Elyssa appeared in the doorway, holding Meghan in her arms. She set her down. "She's over there. Please try to help."

Meghan knelt, placing a hand over Felicia's forehead. Eyes full of tears, she looked at Adam and shook her head. "There is no cure. Nothing I can do."

"Can my blood do anything?" I asked. "Like it helped Stacey with the hellhound venom?"

"I'm afraid not," Meghan said. She wiped the moisture from her eyes and took Felicia's hand.

"Take care of my brother," Felicia said. "Marry him and keep him out of trouble. He's a handful."

Meghan sniffed and nodded. "I will."

"He'll blame himself. Always does." Felicia sucked in a harsh breath. "Not his fault. I…made choices."

"I should have been there for you," Adam said.

"Love you anyway," she said, panting as pain filled her eyes.

Wiping away the cloud of moisture in my own eyes, I stood up and walked away, anger boiling within. Why had I let her go off by herself? Why hadn't I insisted she stay with me and Katie? Wasn't there someone who could stop this infection? Cure her?

Daelissa!

The insane angel somehow prevented Templars from succumbing to the virus. Could she cure them? The question was moot. She didn't give a crap about saving anyone, only about restoring the rule of her people by any means necessary. But there was another person who might be able to help. First, I'd have to find her. I looked at Felicia's slim figure, writhing as it battled the vampling curse, losing inch by inch.

"Meghan." I touched her shoulder and pulled her aside to leave Adam still hugging his sister.

"Yes, Justin?" She wiped her red nose with a tissue.

"I think—hope—I know someone who can cure her."

She shook her head. "It's not possible, Justin. We've tried to find a cure in the past, but it just doesn't exist. The vampling curse is the blackest part of the vampire curse, dark and ancient magic far beyond arcane knowledge."

"If Daelissa can inoculate Templars against it, maybe she can heal the virus."

"After what you've uncovered about her, why would she help?" Meghan shook her head. "She's mad."

"No, not her. There's another."

Meghan's eyes widened. "The dark angel?"

"Nightliss."

The Arcane considered this information for a moment. "She helped you defeat Vadaemos. She's very powerful."

"I think she can cure Felicia, but I need time to find her."

Meghan's eyes narrowed. "Why would Nightliss leave you? If she's so powerful, why isn't she here helping right now? Do you know how many lives we could have saved?"

"I get the feeling there's a lot more going on than just me," I said. "It took everything she had the last time she helped. For all I know, she's recovering."

A sigh escaped her lips. "Well, whatever her reasons, I hope they're good ones. All I can give you is more time." Meghan looked at Felicia and shook her head. "But it won't be much. Days at most." She gripped her wand and seemed to steel herself with a deep breath. "I'd better do it now."

I walked over to Adam and placed a hand on his shoulder. "We might have a chance at beating this." I took Felicia's hand in mine and offered her a hopeful smile. "I'm going to find Nightliss. Just hang in there, okay?"

"You really think there's a chance?" Felicia asked, hope rising in her pained voice.

I squeezed her hand. "There's always hope."

Meghan waved me and Adam away, kneeling behind Felicia, and putting the petite vampire's head in her lap. Murmuring in a low voice, she stroked the wand through the air over Felicia's body while the rest of us stood and watched. A gentle white glow settled around Adam's sister, and her convulsing body went limp and relaxed, eyes closing as if in the bliss of relief from pain.

By the time she'd finished, Custodians had appeared, wearing large silver tanks on their backs like something out of an old sci-fi movie.

"What are those for?" I asked Michael.

"Quicksilver."

"I can't believe they have that much of it," Elyssa said as she came to stand next to us.

"This is probably all of it," Michael said. "Nobody knows how to make it anymore, or where to find the ingredients."

I remembered the stuff. Underborn had used it after Brad Nichols and his infected group of vampires had tried to kill me at my school. "Is there any other way to prevent the spread of infection?" I asked.

"Fire works, to a degree." Michael shrugged. "But quicksilver is far more effective."

A great idea occurred to me. "What if we injected Felicia with it? Would it cure the virus?"

He raised an eyebrow. "It'd kill her. Back in the day, before we used non-lethal methods, Templars used to dip their arrows in quicksilver to take out vamplings and vampires alike." Michael grunted. "Dhampyrs have some protection thanks to their human side, but it wouldn't be pretty."

A Custodian administered a shimmering squirt of quicksilver on a puddle of blood. The mercurial substance flashed through the dark liquid, following the streams and tendrils wherever it had leaked, leaving behind bright crimson.

I looked at the sticky red mess on my hands and clothes. "What about the blood on us?"

Elyssa motioned to a nearby Custodian and took a small spray bottle from him. "Hold out your hands. This is a diluted potion, but it'll still sting."

She sprayed a tiny amount into each of my palms. Silvery lightning burned its way across my skin, jumping the patches clean of blood, reaching every little splotch. Clenching my teeth, I watched it devour the dark infection along my arms, leaving behind red, irritated skin and clean blood. Hands balled into fists, I endured the brief pain as it seared across my face and neck.

"Wow, that hurt."

Elyssa gave me a sympathetic look. "You look like death incarnate."

"I feel like poop."

Each of the others used the potion to clean their skin. Michael, stoic as usual, didn't so much as flinch as the diluted solution disinfected his few patches of exposed skin and his uniform.

Meghan motioned to Adam. "I used a sleeping beauty spell on Felicia. It will slow the infection, but not stop it."

The tall Arcane knelt and picked up his sister, cradling her limp form to his chest.

"Let's move out," Fausta said after giving the Custodians a heads-up about the mess I'd left downstairs. She gave Felicia's limp form a concerned look and put a hand on Adam's arm. "You realize, if she turns vampling, we'll have to put her down, right?"

"I know," Adam said, voice rough. "So kindly shut up and get the hell out of my way."

Fausta raised her hands and stepped aside. "Put her someplace secure. I won't risk her infecting anyone else."

After negotiating bodies, blood, and a small army of Custodians as they cleaned up the aftermath of the bloodbath, we emerged outside into the breaking dawn. We were taken into private tents, provided fresh clothes, and given one more burning spray of quicksilver to be sure before they cleared us to leave.

Fausta came out of a tent near mine. She offered me one of her rare smiles and handed me a key. "Christian promoted me to Lieutenant."

"Congrats!" I said, unsure if I should try to hug her, or if that would lead to a swift disembowelment.

"I am the youngest female to ever hold this rank." She sighed. "Everyone had thought Elyssa would be the first. And then you came along."

My heart sank. "Just when I think you're not a bitch, you go and say something like that."

Fausta shrugged. "I don't avoid the truth."

"Yeah, but you could have some tact." I held up the key. "So why did you give me this?"

"It goes to my new quarters—a private cabin at the compound. But I can wait before moving in." She laid a hand on my shoulder. "There's more to you than meets the eye. When I first met you, I thought you were soft and weak, not to mention an untrustworthy demon spawn."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why didn't you just say all that with flowers?"

Her hand dropped and she gave me a genuine smile. Her resemblance to Elyssa was uncanny, despite her larger nose. "Enjoy the cabin. Just wash the sheets before you leave."

I groaned. "Don't take this the wrong way, Fausta, but you have beauty lurking behind your bitch shield. Maybe even deep down, you have a good heart." I leaned close and whispered, "But don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

A laugh burst from her mouth. She clamped both hands over her face, trapping her mirth, and regaining her composure. "I would appreciate it if you kept that a secret." She walked away.

Elyssa emerged from her tent a moment later and smiled. We climbed inside a slider. I showed her the key and grinned. "I scored us a private cabin."

She leaned her head against my shoulder, closed her eyes, and sighed. "I love you."

I squeezed her tight against me and tried to pretend everything was all right. Worry tangled my nerves. My calf throbbed where the vampling had bitten it. I was infected. Meghan had as much told me my blood was no defense or cure for the virus, and since I was half-human, it would ravage me every bit as much as it had Felicia.

Guilt pressed against my chest. I should have told the others. But I hadn't. I couldn't. There was only one person I could trust with this for now. And what would I tell her? How could I explain to the love of my life that unless I could find Nightliss and she could cure me, our future together would be cut short? If Nightliss couldn't cleanse the infection, I had at least one more duty to fulfill.

I would kill Maximus.