Pool of Crimson

chapter 19



The chanting was annoying. It also went on for-ev-er. I was tired of waiting. The damned blood circle still had me trapped so I wasn’t going anywhere. When Patrick had tried to stop them from raising the demon, Ethan had sicced a couple of goons on him to keep him in line. It’d taken six of them to hold him down. That’s right. My vampire lover was just as big a badass as I was.

Jesus, I had lost it.

“Anytime now, you smarmy bastard, I’m not getting any younger here,” I snapped at the lead chanter behind me. He faltered ever so slightly, stumbling over the Latin. The corners of my mouth turned up with a hint of delight as I turned the knife handle dangling blade down in my hand. The glimmer of the filmy red wall reflected back at me, as well as the image of where each of them stood gleaming in the silver of the blade as I spun it in my grasp.

The six vampires had done something to Patrick, restrained him somehow. He was creepy still. His body was stiff as a board, but they weren’t holding him anymore. Ethan wanted him to watch as a lesson. Lovely.

All the other good little vampires had backed up against the wall nearest the stairs, blocking my exit. I guess they wanted a quick getaway if things went bad. I couldn’t blame them. If I were raising a demon, I’d want an escape route, too.

I changed position and pulled one leg underneath me. My ass had fallen asleep and that’s all I needed in a fight was to not feel a part of my body. I was already dealing with cracked ribs, broken fingers, a broken nose, and a concussion. I didn’t need a tingling ass, too.

The switchblade in my back pocket pressed into my ass, proving that I still had feeling back there. As I shifted positions to get off the solid object digging into my rear end, something else sharp poked me and dug into my hip.

The Amulet! Thank God Almighty! I might live through this yet.

I reached into my pocket and slipped the little thing out. It appeared so fragile sitting in my palm with the dried vines and the seemingly self-suspended obsidian ring, but it had lasted days at the bottom of my bag, a fight inside my pocket, and now I was hoping it would survive a fight with a demon. I closed my fingers tightly around the object and waited.


The air shifted inside the circle, as if it had gotten thinner and warmer. I worked harder and harder to fill my lungs. I was light headed from the heat and the thinning density of the air inside the circle. The concrete beneath me shook and rumbled. Whatever was coming vibrated through my whole body. I pushed off the blood circle and stumbled to my feet. I’d made enough jokes. It was time to go to work.

I gripped the knife in my hand, even though my body screamed for relief. I wanted to sleep.

“One down, two to go,” I whispered to myself as the ground cracked and opened up at my feet, shooting an orange glow up to fill the blood circle with an ominous light.

Flames seeped up from the cracks in the concrete and the first few long, dark-skinned fingers gripped the edge of the cement. The fingers were huge, probably the length of my forearm with fingernails that were shaped and sharpened like talons. As the ground opened up, more of Ahriman emerged, inch-by-inch from the flames of hell, pulling his gargantuan body from a bottomless pit of fire and pain.

He took a deep breath through his nose and spun quickly to me. A smile crept across his lips, around the tusks sticking up from his bottom row of teeth. He had a glint in his eyes that I didn’t like.

I’d seen him before in my dream.

He was scarier in person.

That damned spider on his forehead stared at me and blinked. I knew him. He met my eyes. He knew me, too. That’s not possible.

“You.” His voice grumbled and gurgled as he spoke.

“You were expecting someone else?” I asked with a smile as I bent my knees and gripped the knife tighter. I braced for a fight. He hauled himself from the fiery pit of hell beneath him in one swift muscular movement that seemed boneless and too agile for something that large. He landed only feet from me on sturdy strong legs in a pounding of hard hooves on cement. He flung his long black-beaded hair from his face while the ground beneath him closed up. The cement remade itself as if he’d never come through.

“That’s a neat trick,” I said with a smirk. I had way more bravado in my voice than I actually felt. The demon was huge, and scared the shit out of me.

“I have many neat tricks,” he grunted.

“I bet,” I snarled back at him and brought the knife up.

“What are you going to do with that, little one?” he asked with an entertained chuckle.

“Oh, I don’t know. I thought I’d cut myself up a demon. I’ve got time on my hands,” I said nonchalantly, as if my life weren’t hanging in the balance. He towered over me at more than eight feet tall. I wasn’t about to show him how scared I was. I wouldn’t even admit it to myself. Sometimes even I thought I had brass balls, if I ever let myself stop to think about it.

“I’d like a snack before going out to conquer the world again. I hate to do that on an empty stomach.”

Great! Just f*cking great! Piss off the demon, why don’t you, Dahlia? I knew my mouth would get me in trouble one day.

“Come on then. Give us a kiss,” I snarled back at him.

He swung out at me with one of his giant talon-laced hands. I ducked low, even though every muscle in my body burned with pain. I screamed and rolled under his arms within reach of his legs. I came out of the summersault with the knife ready and pulled the blade smoothly across the back of his heel, slicing his Achilles tendon just above the hoof. The demon roared. His pain-filled bellows vibrated against the walls of the blood circle imprisoning us. I covered my ears with the base of my hands to shield my senses from the noise as he fell to one knee. His black blood gushed from the wound and covered the floor like liquid velvet.

One of his giant hands closed around my upper arm, shoulder, and upper body, and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe. He picked me up and completely held me in his gigantic grasp. Before I could do anything to stop him, he threw me across the circle. There was a moment where I was weightless and hurtling through the air. The peace and weightlessness was almost pleasant, like all the pain had ended. Then I hit the wall, literally.

I smashed into the solid existence of my own power with the force of a demon from Hell. I crumpled against it like a piece of aluminum foil and sank to the ground in a wounded heap. I couldn’t breathe. He’d knocked the air out of me, and my lungs burned. I panicked when I couldn’t get enough air to make the burning dissipate. The air was too thin.

I lay on the ground on my stomach. I tried to lift myself up but my arms and legs were weak and unsteady. I couldn’t hold my own weight. Every instinct I had was shutting down and accepting the end. I could almost taste death on the thin sulfur rich air.

Just give in. Death can’t possibly hurt more than this.

For a split second, I agreed. That other voice screamed, however, loud and in the front of my brain, NO! DON’T GIVE UP ON US YET! That was the voice I listened to as I pushed myself up on sore hands, where the skin was embedded with gravel, nails that were broken off and caked with blood, and knees that were scrapped, cut, and bruised. I took a deep breath. I forced the burning in my lungs to subside and my eyes to refocus. I pushed all the pain away.

The demon turned on me and gripped me around the middle, crushing my diaphragm and kidneys. His gigantic fingers dug into my ribs. I thought I could hear them cracking in protest. My brain had shut down the part of itself that felt pain. I knew I should feel my bones crack, but all I felt was numb.

He dragged me across the floor like a rag doll until he was hunched over me on one knee and held me down against the concrete. His black blood oozed from the back of his ankle in generous amounts; like a river it formed a pool on the concrete. I was covered in it. The floor was covered in it. The blood was sticky and burned my skin a little as it seeped through my clothing like liquid heat. His hot breath beat against my face, smelling like sewage and rotting flesh and churning my stomach as his breath filled my nose. My face burned as if the skin on my cheeks were melting off. I had a flash of what I had to do.

I hope this works.

It will. That voice that wasn’t quite me purred in delight at the back of my mind.

I turned defiant eyes up to meet Ahriman’s very red, very hungry ones. In my mind, I could almost feel him licking the flesh from my bones as he studied me.

“I’ll enjoy this,” he growled. The tusks from his bottom set of teeth almost touched his eyes as a smile crested his lips.

“So will I,” I said with a devious smirk. I struck out and sank the knife up to the hilt into his chest. I yanked down with all my strength, tearing the demon’s flesh open. He roared in pain and flung his head back as blood flowed over me.

I took the amulet from my other hand and shoved it into the hole I’d created in his chest. I pushed my hand deep into him until the amulet lodged into the hard tissue of his heart. “I control this circle,” I growled with force behind my voice. The circle pulsed with my anger as my heart beat frantically. “I control this amulet,” I continued. The amulet burned in my hand, warmer and sharper than the heat from his open chest cavity or the black blood from hell that covered me. ”And I condemn you back to the Hell from which you came,” I snarled out through clenched teeth.

The amulet seemed to dissolve in my hands as the magic seeped into the demon and out of me. I removed my hand from his open chest as his gigantic hands released me and his large talon hands clawed at the open wound, digging for the amulet.

Ahriman stood. He took a step back, filling the circle in a rage-filled scream. His body moved in forced, jerking, and unnatural motions that looked painful and disjointed. The ground rumbled beneath us as cracks of orange light peaked out from the cement and the floor opened up again to swallow Ahriman whole.

“NO!” the demon roared as dozens of snake-like hands slithered up from the bowels of Hell and grabbed onto Ahriman’s tree-trunk-sized legs. The snake creatures pulled him back through the cracks, Ahriman’s nails scraping across the cement as he tried to stop them from taking him back to Hell. The demon’s talons scratching across the floor sounded like the screech of bare rims on pavement. He fell back into the light from the flames below and then was gone.

The ground closed again, leaving no sign that it had ever been ripped opened by magic or that Ahriman had ever been there.

I turned. The vampires had gathered around the circle. Patrick watched me with wide approving eyes but he hadn’t moved. Whatever they’d done to him, the magic had kept him in place as I’d destroyed Ahriman. I placed both hands, now empty, flat on the blood circle. It was mine. The blood was me. The magic was mine to command, and I willed it to dissolve.

The blood circle fell like a curtain from the rod, splashing everything and everyone within five feet of the circle with blood, drenching me from head to toe in blood and gore. I used that and the emptiness I felt lingering in my eyes to my advantage as I faced Ethan.

“Two down, one to go,” I said with a sinister smile. I peered up at him from underneath my blood-soaked eyelashes, death in my gaze and a face streaked with gore.

“How?” Ethan asked in a horrified whisper.

“Do you honestly think you can contain her?” Patrick spat out at his Liege. “You won’t break her,” he said with an angry shout. I felt the pride he couldn’t contain, swelling in my chest as it swelled in his. I may not understand what the connection between us was, but I knew, knew he wanted me and not because he wanted something from me.

He wanted me.

I felt my gaze soften at the realization, and I swung around to Patrick.

The whole thing was silly really. Patrick was everything I was supposed to hate, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hate him anymore. I didn’t want to worry about what he was or wasn’t. I just wanted to get out of this alive and maybe take a shower. I wanted to worry about how much I loved him, in the morning.

“Ethan!” Patrick shouted with an edge of authority that startled me. I swiveled around to follow Patrick’s line of sight but it was too late.

Ethan placed his hands around my throat, digging his fingertips into the soft flesh beneath my chin, and picked me up from the ground in one swift movement. I dangled in the air from the grip he had on my neck. I hadn’t seen him coming and until that moment I’d still thought ... hoped that he wanted me alive.

Patrick’s panic echoed through me like a death knell as he struggled to break the metaphysical bonds holding him. He was secure enough that he couldn’t even lift his arm.

I dangled from Ethan’s grip, kicking and pulling at his hands as I struggled to get free. My lungs constricted from the lack of air. It seemed stupid and unfair that I’d survived everything he’d thrown at me just to be suffocated by this a*shole. Totally and completely unfair.

“If I’d known how dangerous you actually were, I would have allowed Candace to kill you sooner, when she wanted.” Ethan’s voice was deep and filled with regret as his fingers tightened around my throat. “You’ve become too dangerous, even to use.”

“Dominique, do something,” Patrick pleaded with the Ebony Goddess, his voice cracking as he spoke. She stood to Ethan’s right, a pleased smile on her cruel, but beautiful face. His desperation hit me hard and mixed with my own, creating a toxic cocktail that sent my fight or flight instincts into overdrive. I clawed harder at Ethan’s hands and wrists, anything to get free. I had to get free. As much as I wasn’t afraid of death, I wasn’t quite ready for it either.

“She’s killed our kind. I’ll do nothing to help her,” the Ebony Goddess said with disgust as she spat on the ground.

I gasped frantically for air as Ethan tightened his grip and my windpipe started to collapse. The Ebony Goddess’s face lit up with enjoyment as a tiny satisfied smile crept across her full lips.

I held onto Ethan’s forearms and kicked ferociously at him. It didn’t work. Nothing worked.

I’m going to die. This is it. This f*cking sucks.

No! Think! Think for us! that other voice growled through my mind. I stopped fighting and cleared my head. I let my mind wander and refused to focus on the air leaving my body, the pain of my windpipe collapsing, of everything but me and Ethan. I needed that deadly calm to focus myself. I had to move quickly and in the most efficient manner possible if I was going to live. What I was about to do had to be quick and clean. It wouldn’t be long before my mind clouded from lack of oxygen and I’d be beyond saving.

I slowly reached behind me and into my back pocket where Patrick had slipped the switchblade. It seemed like days ago, but it was the only weapon I had left.

I slipped it from the denim, then pushed the button. I screamed with all the air I had left to cover up the sound of the blade extending. Ethan didn’t even notice. He was too busy enjoying killing me to hear the faint click of the knife.

Patrick’s eyes widened as he watched me. I couldn’t tell if it was audible to everyone or just me as Patrick shouted, “Dahlia!”

Ethan watched me, his malicious grin of enjoyment making my stomach turn. I swung the switchblade in one swift, circular arm movement and whisked the knife over his extended arms, his hands still squeezing my neck, and brought the blade cleanly across his throat.

Ethan released me instantly. He clasped both hands over the gaping wound on his neck as he fell to his knees.

I examined the gleaming blade in my hand and noticed the burning flesh around the gash in Ethan’s throat.

The blade was silver. Patrick had given me a silver blade.

He’d intended me to kill, not to wound.

Ethan needed killing.

I fell to the ground with Ethan in a bloody heap. I was entirely focused on the kill to think too much about the pain in my body. I rolled toward Ethan. He twitched in panic on the floor as his life continued to flow from his neck in a liquid river of blood.

Patrick remained frozen where he stood but was gaining more maneuverability as Ethan’s power slipped away with each drop of blood that escaped his body. Ethan would have to feed in order to heal himself, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

I crawled over to Ethan on numb knees. The Ebony Goddess, Dominique, approached him from the other side of the basement. I had to get there before her.

I straddled Ethan with a knee on each arm and the knife hovering just below his sternum. From that angle I could shove the knife up into his heart with nothing to hinder the silver blade from its destination. It was the second time tonight and it didn’t get any easier.

I stopped momentarily as our blood fused together in an indiscernible pool of crimson on the floor. It struck me that his blood looked no different than mine. Candace’s blood hadn’t been any different, either, and it hadn’t stopped me from shedding it. It wouldn’t stop me from shedding Ethan’s either. Blood was life, and I fully intended to take his, even if it cost me mine.

Ethan was weak, but if I didn’t kill him now, he would feed and heal. He’d come after me again and again until I was dead. I was sure that Dominique would be the first in line behind him with her smarmy pet in tow. I couldn’t let that happen. I heard a movement next to me.

“If you come near me, I’ll cut his heart out,” I said plainly to her. The vampires didn’t dare question my intentions, not when Candace’s lifeless eyes and blood-covered face stared back at them. In my peripheral vision, Patrick had gotten one arm free and was working on the other.

I was out of options. I looked up at Patrick with resignation plain on my face. He struggled against the magic that held him. The expression on his face pleaded with me to wait just a bit longer. I was out of time, though. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had a plan, but I had little hope of it working.

Here goes.

The vampire on my right had moved up beside me. I took a deep breath to focus. The next few seconds seemed to move in slow motion.

I shoved the knife into Ethan’s heart and simultaneously swept the legs out from underneath the vampire on my right. As he fell to the ground, I pulled my knife from Ethan’s chest and reached over to slam the blade into the vampire’s heart.

Dominique had lurched for me but was intercepted by Patrick. Ethan’s death had released him fully.

Patrick and Dominique collided next to me with such force that the stone walls shook and the wind from their impact shifted my blood-soaked hair as they soared by. Animal snarls, ripping flesh, hard thumps, whimpers, and growls filled the silence as they fought each other. The other vampires began to close in on them, completely ignoring me. Thank God for small favors.

I stood on shaky legs and turned slowly in a circle, dragging my blood-soaked feet in a circle around me. My legs were jelly, and I was having a real problem standing on my own now that Ethan was dead. I didn’t have anything left.

“Stop,” I said in a firm tone to the crowd of vampires surrounding Patrick and Dominique. I closed my eyes and hoped that I could do it again. “Protect me,” I whispered to the blood around me. In a whoosh of magic and power, a smaller circle formed around me. I opened my eyes to the wide eyes and baffled faces of a dozen vampires. Not one of them wanted anything to do with me. Smart Vampires.

“Let them fight it out,” I said with a heavy breath. I was beginning to feel everything. The adrenaline had worn off quicker this time and I was left with my battered and broken self. I’d lost too much blood and my poor body was shutting down. I was a bit woozy from the total loss of blood.

Patrick gained the upper hand and struck Dominique with enough force that a few of her teeth flew from her mouth. They clinked on the cement floor as they skidded across the room. Dominique retaliated by bringing her fingernails sharply down Patrick’s chest like talons, leaving trails of blood across his alabaster skin. Patrick cried out. He balled his hand into a fist and punched Dominique in the face. She flew past me into the wall behind the stairs. Some of the stone from the wall flaked off and turned to dust upon impact.

Dominique took a minute or two to get up, but when she did, she released a shrill cry that would put a banshee to shame. She flew at Patrick.

Patrick moved slightly to the left and as Dominque passed him in midair, he snatched her, mid flight, by the hair and twisted her in painful halves. The snap of her vertebrae made me shiver as she fell to the ground with a broken back. She’d be paralyzed until she fed and healed the damage.

Patrick pinned her to the ground as she whimpered but never asked for quarter. Smarmy started to panic on the sidelines as he fidgeted in anxious anticipation.

“Will you take the blood oath?” Patrick asked calmly, staring down into eyes that looked daggers into him. His voice was ferocious and unforgiving. This was a side of him that I’d never seen. He was powerful and in control. Patrick embodied all of those qualities that I enlisted to survive. I was both impressed by him and frightened of him all at the same time.

“Not while that whore lives,” she spat out at him. Then she literally spat at him. He didn’t flinch or wipe away the vileness dripping slowly down his face.

“Then I cannot permit you to live,” he hissed with raised eyebrows.

She gave him a smug and cocky look. She didn’t think he’d do it.

Patrick glanced over at me, heat in his glare. I knew I looked like a mess. I was sweaty, tired, dirty, drenched in blood that had dried once, crusted, and was drying again. My arm was still bleeding. I’d tried to stop it by placing my hand firmly over the wound, but it wasn’t helping.

Patrick didn’t say anything. He smiled a funny contented smile that I knew was only for me before he turned back to Dominique. He growled down at her, showing his glistening sharp fangs. In one quick bite, he dug his teeth into her throat and pulled away, ripping out her trachea, esophagus, and most of her skin. Patrick spit out what was in his mouth, then reached over to the switchblade he’d given me. It was lying on the floor next to a pile of ashes that had once been Ethan. He grasped it firmly in his hand and separated Dominique’s head from the rest of her body. The hollow clink as the knife came into contact with the cement floor beneath was ominous.

Smarmy screamed. As Dominique turned to ash and disappeared, Smarmy decomposed before my eyes. He was still alive until his body finally crumpled in on itself in a bloody ball of organs, muscles, and bones sticking out from places they shouldn’t in what had once been Smarmy.

JESUS!

Patrick strode over to me. I brushed my blood-coated fingers against the circle and willed it to dissipate. He took me in his arms as his pride spilled over and into me. He kissed me hard, begging my lips to part and let him in. I met his passion with my own. When my lips parted, his tongue passed my lips, and I knew I was home.

He encircled me in his arms, taking care to not put pressure on my bicep or any other part of my body. Good man.

Patrick edged away from me slowly, hesitating as if he didn’t want to let me go. He looked down into my eyes, scanning my face and said boldly, “They fear you, and now they will fear me.” He smiled down at me, pleased and riding a power high, making me almost giddy with his delight. He then turned quickly on his heels to the rest of the vampires still in the basement.

“Gather the others. We will begin the blood oaths immediately,” Alex called. The first man came up to Patrick and knelt before him. Patrick opened up his own wrist with his razor sharp teeth and let the blood flow freely. The first vampire drank and swore allegiance to Patrick, then the next, and the next. As the parade of obedient vampires came to an end, the effects of shock and blood loss settled in. I needed medical attention, ASAP.

The cold hands of a stranger rested lightly on my arms. Once I was able to focus on her, I realized that she was pretty and petite. Alex with her bright yellow Big Bird hair gazed into my face with appreciation. She helped me to my feet and escorted me up the stairs. The aroma of fresh air seeped through rooms of the house, filling my nose as we crested the stairs of the basement. That damned Grand Piano had never looked so good.

“Why are you helping me?” I asked, confused. My mind clogged from the pain and I was pretty sure that I’d just slurred that sentence. I was on the verge of passing out.

“I will do what is in Patrick’s best interests,” she said flatly. “And right now, that’s you.” She pushed open the double French doors. The brisk night air hit me like I’d just stepped into a meat freezer. The cold air helped clear my head a little.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” she offered, but I stopped her.

“No,” I said abruptly. “My cell phone’ssss in my boot,” I slurred. “Call Danny. He’sss an EMT.” She reached into my boot and retrieved the cell phone. The steady stream of soft beeps were the only sound in the silent night. She dialed. The phone rang loudly as she held it to her ear. I slunk down along the brick wall as my legs finally gave out. The cold wood of the deck hit my ass harder than I’d intended. Sleep. I wanted to go to sleep. I didn’t care if I ever woke up.

“No Daniel, this is not Dahlia. It’s Alex. She has asked me to call you. She’s been injured and needs some assistance. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital.” She had an extremely flat tone as she spoke, very calm, clear, and concise. She looked down at me with some compassion in her cold expression. “I think you should hurry.” She snapped the phone closed and knelt down in front of me. She hadn’t said where we were. “Are you all right?” the vampire asked.

I nodded as best as I could and took a few deep breaths. I thought deep breathing would help me avoid the nausea percolating in my belly. I nodded again to convince myself and closed my eyes. I don’t remember Danny coming to get me.