The thing dropped the girl, hissed, and immediately started to charge to the mouth of the hallway. I barely had enough time to throw myself to the side of the door when the vampire burst out of the dark opening like a bat out of hell. I started to push myself away from the wall I had pinned myself up against, but the vampire moved so fast I hadn’t moved an inch before he was on me, his powerful hands pressing my shoulders against the wall.
He snarled in my face, and his mouth smelled like copper. “I know you, witch,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, heart thumping, “How’s the eye?”
He scowled and grabbed my chin, pressing his fingers so tightly against my face I thought my bones would crumble beneath his hand. Delphine appeared behind him. She grabbed his shoulder and forced him around with her superhuman strength, and as he spun, she drew her splayed fingers across his face and drew four lines of split, bleeding skin into it.
The vampire yowled, but released me, and I fell to my knees, clutching my burning jaw. Distantly, I was aware of the young girl the vampire had been feeding on running past me and into the night, and when I turned my eyes up, I was just in time to watch the vampire shove Delphine so hard the wall behind her fractured when she struck it. Then he started to advance on her, cracking his neck as he went and flexing his fingers.
“I’m going to have fun killing you both,” he snarled as he walked.
I planted my palm against the floor and grit my teeth. “You’re forgetting something,” I said, anger flooding through me now as the thought of what he—what his kind—did to us, to Remy.
He turned his head, his eyes glowing like stars in the night.
A breeze picked up around us, and my fist crackled with arcs of electric light. “It’s an even fight, now.”
The vampire’s brow creased during a momentary lapse of confusion. From my crouched position, I picked myself up and broke into a charge, throwing my crackling fist and hurling it at him as soon as I was close enough to hit him. Arrogantly, he didn’t move, didn’t try to dodge me. Instead he waited for me to get to him, lazily putting his hand up to block the punch, but when my fist made contact with the palm of his hand, a burst of energy surged through him like a thunderclap, with enough force to do to him what he had done to Delphine.
The strength of the hit had been enough to stop me in my tracks. Turbulent air surrounded me, dissipating just as the glow in my hand began to fade. I had never done that before, but doing it sure felt good. When Delphine got up, she ran up to me and stood by my side, facing the downed vampire.
“We should leave,” she said, “We aren’t a match for him.”
“Really?” I asked, “Because I just pounded him into that wall.”
“Trust me, Madison. We must gather the others.”
I looked at her, then, considering her words, and in the split second it took me to bring my eyes back to where the vampire lay, he was gone. My heart leapt into my throat, and panic wormed its way into my heart. The breeze picked up again, only I hadn’t caused it. Instinct led me to turn to the left and put my arms up, to throw the magick shield around myself, but before I could do it something crashed into my lower ribs, evacuating the air out of my lungs and robbing me of the ability to get it back.
I toppled over and hit the ground with the side of my face, eyes wide again, pain like white fire burning with every motion of my lungs as they struggled to take in even a little air—just enough to keep me alive. The street swayed from side to side, and fireflies danced in front of my eyes, conscious of the battle raging around me, though unable to participate.
But if Delphine believed the two of us together weren’t a match for him, then what did that mean for her fighting him alone? I had to get up. Somehow, despite—or in spite of—the pain in my ribs, I had to move. I had to stand up, fight this son of a bitch, and get rid of him before he hurt someone else.
My ribs screamed as I tried to stand. I almost didn’t even make it to my knees, but I persevered and got to my feet, one hand clutching my midsection. In front of me, a fight was taking place between two blurred, dark figures—one much smaller and faster than the other, whose missing eye didn’t seem to make him any less deadly.
I clenched my fist again and let magick fill me, drawing power from the world around me and causing the air itself to cool. Time seemed to slow as I conjured the effect in my mind, to the point where I could distinguish both combatants easily enough. Delphine, nippy and quick, was dodging most of the blows coming her way, but the ones that landed were painful to see and hear.
When the magick was ready, I honed in on my target, stretched my right hand toward him, and sent a bolt of telekinetic energy into his midsection. The vampire didn’t see it coming. When the magick struck him, it did so with enough power to knock him off his feet and send him to the ground. Delphine, though momentarily stunned, turned on the vampire, throwing herself on him and slashing at his face with her claws.
But he was stronger than her, and while she may have gotten in a couple of good hits, the vampire quickly shrugged her off his body and jumped to his feet. He snarled viciously, his one good eye burning with gold light.
He growled, and for an instant I thought he was going to charge at us again, but instead he turned tail and ran.
Delphine hurried up to me and stopped me from falling. “Easy,” she said, “You’re hurt.”
“I’m… fine…” I said, but I could taste blood in my mouth.
My legs went out from under me, and if it weren’t for Delphine holding me up, I would have fallen to the ground hard and passed out. The world was spinning, and my mouth was filling with blood, which I spat out onto the ground.
Delphine spoke, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. My hearing was leaving, and my vision wasn’t far behind. It was like I was seeing the world through a growing vignette, darkness encroaching upon me from all around. I must have started slipping in and out of consciousness, because Delphine seemed to move in quick, scattered movements; one second she was kneeling by my side, the next she was arching over me, and the second after that, she was holding her bleeding wrist above my face, and I was drinking deeply.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Removing my own t-shirt didn’t hurt nearly as much as I thought it would have. There was pain, sure, and more than a little discomfort, but considering I had spat blood earlier and had been dropping in and out of consciousness, probably due to a punctured lung, I couldn’t complain.
I winced, not because of how I felt, but because of the way my skin looked. The area where the vampire’s fist had struck my ribs was a mess of purple, blue, and yellow shades—a knot of color roughly the shape of the African continent. But I was alive, at least, and that thought made the hurt a little more bearable.
The front door opened, and Jared walked into the house. “Madison?” he called out, his voice echoing throughout the apartment.
“I’m in here,” I said from the bathroom, though I quickly pushed the door closed with my foot.
Jared approached the bathroom door, which hadn’t completely latched. “How are you?”
“I’m… surprisingly okay.”
“Surprisingly?”
“It’s a long story.”