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A long, shiny dark oak table sat in the middle of a large dining room, and seated around it were about twelve men and women of various ages and races, all of them slumped forward with their faces pressed to their dinner plates. They were dressed in fancy tuxes and bejeweled silk dresses with white napkins folded in their laps. Silver candelabras adorned the length of a delicate lace centerpiece on the table, their candlelight flickering inside empty crystal wine glasses.
There wasn’t a trace of blood anywhere, but I knew they were all dead. Even so, I reached out to the nearest woman’s swan-like neck, my palms soaked with nervous sweat, my hand trembling so hard I had to concentrate to keep it steady. No pulse. Not even a hint of one on her still-warm skin.
This was the Slayer Senate. This had to be them. But why? Why were they dead? More importantly, where was the person who did it?
I took a single step forward, steeling myself to stand tall among all this death. I had no love for these people, and yet they’d seen something in me at the tender age of nine, something that told them I had the strength to still be standing today. I’d wanted to demand answers of them, show them what they’d made and what I’d become. But it was too late for that. Anyway, it would’ve likely ended up with me in a one-sided shouting match.
Leaning between two of them, I searched for a hint of what had happened. Some of their plates still held food beneath their faces. Had they been poisoned? I touched a fingertip to one of their crystal wine goblets. The only thing I knew about wine was that it wasn’t coffee. And that it shouldn’t feel greasy. Wincing, I wiped my fingers on the lace runner on the table.
A soft click sounded from outside another door that led off the dining room, barely perceptible. It triggered my blood to storm through me, too loud to hear much else. Had that been a dog’s claws or something else?
I dragged in a nervous breath and released it in the barest of whispers. “Cleo?”
Only the Senate answered me back with their deadly silence. It was then that I realized that two chairs at the table were empty.
I should really go. Because two chairs. Two members of the Necron Brotherhood. I didn’t believe in coincidences anymore.
I turned to leave when the door I’d come in through banged open. I jumped at the same time as ice needled through my veins. Tattoo Guy from the police station, from the Necron Brotherhood—Detective Blake Friday—stood there, a wide grin stretching his face too tight. He wore a tux, and curling out from underneath his jacket onto the backs of his hands and up his neck were the Brotherhood’s son and moon tattoos.
“The vampire slayer herself.” His eyes twinkled in the candlelight, a menacing storm of dark glitter. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I’d walked right into a trap. I’d known I was walking right into a trap, even though the trapdoor was nowhere near here.
Detective Blake Friday moved closer to let the door close behind him, but I stood my ground. While my insides quaked, I refused to show him my fear. But I would show him that poison was for cowards when I fought him to face to face, fist to face.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
“A humble servant”—his eerie grin grew wider—“to the dark unknown. I thought for sure you’d figured that out by now.”
“Who are you to them?” I asked, pointing to the dead. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I thought that would be obvious too. You wave enough cash in these people’s faces, and you’ll be covered in drool.” He cocked his head and frowned, waving dismissively at me. “Tell me, is that blood yours? Did you hit your head and jumble that slayer brain of yours so you can’t think straight? Without the Senate, another slayer can’t be chosen.”
My stomach convulsed as if he’d punched me, but deep down, underneath the layers of shock the night had poured on top of me like wet cement, that thought had occurred to me. With the Senate dead, and then me dead, the slayer would be a thing of the past. Done.
“Why?” I hissed.
“Because that’s what the dark unknown wishes. Once he finds what he’s looking for in the Tunnel to Nowhere, the world as we know it will be his for the taking, and no one, not you or the Senate, can stop him.”
The Tunnel to Nowhere. The trapdoor in the Appelt mausoleum. It had to lead into this tunnel, and it did not sound pleasant.
“What’s he looking for?”
His face stretched too tight again with his creepy grin. “He doesn’t tell me everything.”
I nodded as if everything made all the sense in the world, and then gazed around the table at the fallen roadblocks in Paul’s path. Now, there was only one more. Me.
Willing my knees not to buckle, I forced a swallow. “So what happens now? Does Paul show up and off me? Are you going to offer me some poisoned wine?”
He smoothed his hand down his tux jacket and made a face like he was talking to a blank wall. “No.”
“No?”
He cut his gaze to the left. “But she might.”
I turned and met an oncoming semi-truck right to the face. The force hit me so hard I spun, like my body was hanging from nothing but strings. Then I smashed into the table. Dishes and cutlery bounced, and by the time they clanged back to the table, pain speared through my head. Blood gushed into my mouth, so much that I was forced to spit all over the delicate lace runner. Ruined. Just like the Senate themselves.
“Get up, Belle,” a voice said. Familiar, but at the same time not.
I closed my eyes to place the voice, but that simple movement sparked a rush of pain all over again. The left side of my face throbbed, and my vision on that side was seriously wonky. Much, much slower than normal, my legs received the message to support my weight. I stood using the back of a dead Senate member’s chair for support.
It hadn’t been a semi-truck that had smashed into my face at all. It had been a heavy silver tray, held by none other than my boss at The Bean Dream, Sylvia. She wore a red sequined dress that hugged her curves, much more glamourous than the dress I wore made from vampire blood. Hatred had swallowed up all of her features and had spit them back on her once-pretty face so she looked terrifying. Hatred for me even though I’d never once been late, busted my ass, and I always added a little extra whipped cream to the gingerbread lattes I brought her. Seeing her like this, seething with so much rage that it shook her hand gripping the silver tray, twisted up my throat and burned my eyes.
“I guess this means I’m fired,” I choked out, dribbling more blood down my chin.
“That’s one way of looking at it, yes,” she said. Her voice was edged with razor blades, a sound I’d never heard come out of her mouth.
“Is this what I get for not coming out with you?” I blinked hard so I only saw one of her. “Because I’m here. Let’s party.”
She shook her head, the candlelight sparkling on her ruby lipstick. “All roads led to here no matter what decision you made. We saw to that. This would’ve happened no matter what.”
We. Meaning Detective Blake behind me. I blinked hard so Sylvia’s face would come back into focus and spotted the slightest hint of an inked sun’s rays creeping up over her cleavage. At work, I’d never made it a point to study her cleavage for tattoos since she always kept herself covered.
“Nice tattoo.”
“It grows bigger every day. As does my allegiance to the Necron Brotherhood and the dark unknown.” Her dark eyes grew wide, insane, and I had no idea how I could’ve missed something like that while working for her. She probably really did have the delivery man in her trunk.
“And what do you get in exchange for allegiance?” I gazed around the table at the Senate. “Besides becoming a serial killer?”
“Power, of course. Did you not see the extent of the witchcraft I did to your vampire prisoner from the back alley? I’ve been waiting for the dark unknown to come for years, ever since I found a Necron Brotherhood book at an old witch’s bookshop, so I started helping the dark unknown clear the way to the Tunnel to Nowhere before he even arrived. He was most pleased and rewarded us with a hint of the power he’ll give to us once it’s all over.”
All over as in me dead, I assumed.
“Now she’s so far past making simple witch’s ladders, it’s laughable,” Detective Blake said, moving closer to Sylvia.
I frowned. “Yet no one’s laughing.”
“Least of all you,” Sylvia snapped. “The dark unknown promised us even more power if we kill you ourselves.”
Okay, I was really getting tired of the three of us flapping our jaws in a room full of dead people. I’d dropped my stake and Night’s Fall when my face had been flattened with a metal tray, but out of the corner of my eye, it still held its symbols. Long enough to dispatch these two and get back to the cemetery before its power turned dangerous?
“He loves getting others to do his dirty work for him, doesn’t he?” I leaned against the table to prop myself up, even though my slayer healing power had already started kicking in. The seraph knife strapped to my thigh was out of sight from them, blocked by the dead Senate members on either side of me. Keeping an eye on the two Necron witches, I crept my hand closer to it.
“The dark unknown has more important things to bother with than a silly blonde slayer,” Sylvia said.
“Not so silly to remember to come to work every day though.” I kept my gaze on her and her high heels. No way she’d be able to catch me in those, so I would aim for her boy toy, the artery in his neck to be specific. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Shifting my gaze to Detective Blake, I gripped the hilt of the seraph knife and then hurled it. Just like a stake. Just like Jacek had taught me. Its silver blade caught the glow of candlelight as it spiraled through the air. I lunged for Night’s Fall on the floor before I split toward the door, glancing over my shoulder. The knife struck home in his shoulder. Not his neck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Blake!” Sylvia shouted.
He cried out and clutched near the blooming red wound, but I was already racing out the door.
I barreled into the narrow hallway with Cleo’s bloody paw prints marking the floor. I had to go. I couldn’t look for her or the servant girl, and I couldn’t let it tear me to pieces.
The door banged open behind me. Footsteps, then a rough grip snatched at the back of my jacket, and suddenly my feet no longer touched the ground. The wall to my right came at me fast, cracking against the side of my body so hard that the wall imploded. Drywall and plaster hailed down. My lungs flushed all the air from my body on impact, but I didn’t have time to draw another breath. The grip tightened on my back, and the left wall moved into my periphery. I crumpled against it, the force of my head likely causing the biggest dent, and then I dropped. The ground smashed against me, rattling my bones so much that darkness edged around my vision.
I fought to drag in a breath, even a sliver of air. But I couldn’t. Pain wracked my body and so did a terrifying numbness in some parts, which was somehow even worse. My arms flailed out in front of my head like dying fish, grasping...grasping for Night’s Fall which lay just out of my reach.
“It’ll be my honor to bring the dark unknown your head,” Blake said from behind me.
My world was closing in on me one lung at a time. I still hadn’t hauled in a breath. My body wouldn’t behave. But I willed myself toward Night’s Fall.
“And you even let me borrow your seraph knife to do it with,” Blake said. “Where did you get this?”
I dragged myself toward the sword while blinking away the night that kept tunneling my vision. Eddie. Jacek. Sawyer. I needed to get to them. The bites all over my body buzzed with energy, an invigorating snap that pushed the darkness away. My fingertips touched the hilt of the sword, and the cool relief of it filled my lungs with enough air to clear my head slightly. I needed to grab the book. Then I needed out. I could make it. But first...
“I said, where did you get—”
I took up the sword, jack-knifed my body so I faced Blake, and brought the sword down in a wide arc. The long black blade sliced through his chest, bursting a line of red down his tuxedo shirt.
“Fucking whore,” he roared, but he was leaning at an odd angle.
Or I was.
I scrambled to get my legs underneath me, for my feet to move away, and then I shot out of the hallway and into the blood-soaked grand piano room. The keys bellowed several bassy flat notes when I collapsed against them. In the darkness, with a head that felt like it had been backed over in slow motion with sandpapered tires, I couldn’t see all that well.
So when I stumbled out into the brightly lit entryway, seconds away from the book and the front door, I didn’t immediately notice the crystal chandelier crashing toward my head. A breath away from being lit on fire and crushed with the huge contraption, I dodged. Away from the book. Away from the door. Because I fucking had to. The chandelier exploded, slicing crystal icicles through the air. Some bounced off my back, but most bit into my skin and spiked through my hair into my scalp, even when I ducked and covered my head.
“Sylvia,” Blake shouted from behind me. Footsteps crunched against broken crystals, the exact same sound as some of my bones when I moved.
I sagged against the stair banister so I could turn and see what my odds were of getting out of here alive. Then instantly regretted it. Blake held my seraph knife in one hand and was limping over the fallen chandelier toward one of the knight statues. He broke the sword free from the statue’s grip and then turned to me, a murderous gleam in his eyes.
He was bleeding terribly though. But so was I. Yet he had the advantage because he was closer to the door. Even without a chandelier to hurdle over, I doubted I’d make it past Blake in my current state before he ran me through with his sword.
Looked as though I was headed upstairs like a horror movie fail. I hauled myself up the steps, my whole body groaning, grinding, while I held Night’s Fall out for defense and kept out of Blake’s sword’s range.
He caught the direction of my gaze and grinned, though it wobbled with pain. “My sword’s bigger than yours. Five feet of hard steel.”
My next step slipped into the blood river on the steps, and I just about took a knee. “Do you measure all phallic symbols? It’s a wonder you get anything done.”
He coughed out a laugh that sounded like I’d sliced through a lung. “I have no worries in that department, believe me.”
I rose up another couple of steps out of his range. “So you do measure it.”
“He does,” Sylvia called from above.
Blake slowed his pace and lifted his gaze. I risked a glance too. Sylvia walked along the second floor toward the top of the stairs, her fingers trailing the balcony banister. The mirrored wall caught her reflection, but it looked nothing like my former boss. Her face had melted, and her movements were jerky and unnatural, her head twitching. Inky shadows dripped from her finger behind her, eating up the floor and cracking over the glass like Paul’s nightmare reality. On the other side of the stairs, her reflection on that mirrored wall did the same thing, bringing all the shadows to the top of the stairs, right where I was headed.
My stomach rolled at the sight of her, at what she’d become or what she’d always been. If she weren’t a raging witch, maybe we could’ve been friends.
I cut my gaze to Blake, slowing my ascension up the stairs to a crawl just before I lunged. He blocked, our swords clashing together so hard it vibrated my teeth. I brought Night’s Fall down and swiped. He blocked that, too, just barely, his fancy dress shoes sliding in the blood on the stairs. Our movements were jerky and slow because we were both bleeding out heavily, but I didn’t have time for an epic sword battle. We clashed again, our swords scraping along each other, and I shoved him back as hard as I could.
“It’s okay,” I said, forcing a pained smile. “I measure my dick too.”
His question-filled gaze connected with mine an instant before I lunged once again. He was too late to block, too late to keep from tipping backward even while he flailed for something to hold on to. Night’s Fall plunged into his neck, forming a perfect crimson rose against his tattoos that grew brighter and bigger. His mouth formed an O as he crashed backward and slid down the steps to the shattered crystal floor.
Something banged against the front door.
“Belle!”
I gasped. That was Sawyer. Because I’d focused on my bites, and it had brought him here. Jacek, too, from the sound of it. They were slamming against the doors at full volume.
I started to go to them, but the stairs began to blacken and crumble with Sylvia’s touch underneath my feet, and with it, a horrible, raw pain. Not the physical kind, but the emotional kind that flickered an image of Mom right in front of me. I jerked back, a choked cry strangling my throat.
“Just let it happen, Belle.” Sylvia’s voice floated from above. “She’ll be waiting for you.”
Mom looked exactly how I remembered her, gorgeous in her yellow sundress printed with cherry blossoms and a dazzling, mischievous smile on her face. The smile didn’t waver when arms snaked around my front and brought two blades up to my throat, their sharp edges digging into my skin.
Never in a thousand years would she be smiling right now.
React. Not with my sword because she’d have all the time in the world to cut my neck out before I swung it around. My stake, then. The only one I felt for sure was the one in my boot, which seemed way too far away.
“This will be better for everyone, Belle.” Sylvia kissed me on the cheek and began to cut the blades into my neck.
But I’d already dropped my sword and was bringing both my hands up to grip her wrists tight. I yanked them down hard while ducking free from her arms, and then I did something else I’d never done before. I punched my boss in the face. She went down like a sack of lead on the blackened stairs, her whole body twitching and writhing violently. Her melted face stared up at me, no longer just a reflection. I wondered if the power Paul had given her was similar to Night’s Fall’s in that it went dangerously bad after a while, or if this was normal for her when she went to dinner parties.
“You’re making this so much harder than it needs to be,” she shouted. “Just accept it.”
“Nah.” I pulled the stake from my boot, glancing to where Mom had stood. She was gone, again, making me wince.
“You’ll never win.”
Taking a deep breath, I bracketed Sylvia’s spasming body with my legs. My mouth soured. Memories of our time together at The Bean Dream dominated my head, like our shared love of sarcasm and inhaling coffee. A lot of people probably fantasized about killing their bosses, but this was ridiculous and horrifying at the same time. I swallowed hard and brought the stake down right into her heart.
“Neither will you,” I whispered as her twitching slowed and the light in her eyes faded.
The blackened nightmare she’d brought with her smoothed out to the way everything had been, leaving her slumped on the marble stairs that were slicked with blood.
“Belle!”
Jacek and Sawyer pounded on the door. But this wasn’t my house. I couldn’t invite them in. Nobody could since everyone was dead.
Tears burned my eyes as I blinked up at the top of the stairs where the bloody smear curved to the left. I had to know who it belong to see if it was too late to save them. Blood poured from my sliced neck, so I ripped the hem off my Scooby-Doo T-shirt and tied it around to staunch the flow. Then I clambered off my dead boss and went to retrieve Night’s Fall. Its symbols were almost gone. I likely had minutes. But I dragged my way up, the dark fog inside my head wobbling my steps until I dropped to my knees into a crawl.
On the top step, I peered around the thick wooden banister and followed the bloody trail to its end with my gaze. There, inside what appeared to be a bedroom, was Cleo at the edge of a bed. A thin, pale arm dangled over the top of the blankets and touched the top of the dog’s head, who sat there with a forlorn expression on her sweet doggy face. She whined, a heartbreaking sound, and I knew that it was his friend Lolly lying in that bed, murdered.
A sob welled up from my throat, and I crushed myself to that top step while my bitter tears plinked to the bloody marble. It wasn’t fair. All these people were dying, and for what? Because someone wanted me dead. How did that even make sense? Try to take me out, not Tim, the cemetery grounds man. Not an innocent servant girl. Not even the Slayer Senate, though they were far less innocent. Still, no one deserved to be murdered like that.
And yes, I was aware of my own hypocrisy. I murdered brand new vampires for a living, but only because their bloodlust caused them to murder. It was a never-ending cycle of death and murder, and oh my god, it was driving me bonkers.
Nails clicked along the marble, and then a soft tongue licked at my ear.
I angled my head to look at Cleo, and my heart made an instant decision. “You want to come fight a war with me?”
She sat by my head and puffed up her chest like a complete badass. Damn right she was coming with me.