“Vampire,” Archer announced with a remarkable degree of calm after Dragomir landed.
The five split and moved the next heartbeat in an orchestrated ballet that distracted me from the rest of the disaster unfolding on the trail. The vampire blood still sizzled through me and distorted time as I watched, until I caught snapshots from the conflict against a backdrop of blurry reality.
Giselle’s crossbow took aim. Two bolts missed as Dragomir moved too fast to track. I saw him, but to them… He must have moved with no sound. No warning. Flowing like liquid through reality and finding whatever space he wanted to occupy.
They hassled him enough he couldn’t stay in one place for long, but the vampire inflicted damage as he went. Ryan’s arm bent unnaturally. Blood stained Giselle’s back and left leg. Isidro leaned against a tree as his injured leg gave way completely. Lars lay motionless on the ground, unconscious.
And Archer.
His eyes hardened and glinted with pure hate as he tracked the vampire. He used a small plastic bottle to spray water at Dragomir, who ignored it completely. Holy water?
Archer didn’t know that didn’t always work. They still believed that relics and symbols could deter a vampire.
I took a breath to scream it at them but Dragomir’s gaze snapped to me and knocked me back with its murderous fury.
Those secrets are not yours to give.
“Don’t hurt them,” I said. My stomach turned over as I fumbled to get Lars’s rifle. Dragomir used my mask and gloves to attack the team. He might kill them because of me.
Intellectually I’d known it could happen. I made the tool but I wasn’t responsible for how he used it. Except… their blood was on my hands. They knew how to defend against a night-restrained vampire, or at least thought they did, and I’d fundamentally changed the rules by helping Dragomir walk in the day.
I choked on regret and fury as I checked the rifle.
Giselle got a bolt through Dragomir’s thigh and he hissed in pain before yanking it out and snapping it in half. She backed up, trying to re-arm, as he stalked closer. Archer jumped on the vampire’s back and attempted to break his neck, but Dragomir shoved him away like an annoying toddler.
My rifle swung around until I could send a round straight into the vampire’s ass. When that didn’t even distract him, I tried that crazy mental trick on him instead and screamed into my head Let them go.
The vampire flinched and rolled his head, clearing away my no doubt infantile telepathy. He picked Giselle up and stared into her eyes, and she went limp. She gazed at him with a soft expression, her lips parted. She smiled. Tilted her head to the side as if encouraging him to bite her.
Archer shouted and Isidro dove at Dragomir’s knees to knock him down, but the vampire remained immobile. His head lowered to her exposed throat.
I thought. I thought of every impossible math theory and quantum physics postulation and chemistry conundrum I remembered. I bombarded him with my over-active brain and noisy thoughts. I shouted it all mentally as I went to my knees, unable to stand and concentrate at the same time, and added Latin and Ancient Greek to the mix for good measure. When that didn’t work, I switched to pig Latin. Everything in ig-pay atin-lay.
Dragomir snarled as he looked over at me and tried to make me stop, tried to maybe shield himself away. I didn’t care. I had no finesse. I just had facts and questions. So many questions.
Ryan and Isidro clubbed Dragomir with their rifles and tried to pry Giselle loose. Archer broke off a tree branch, wiped the blood from his face, and set his eyes on Dragomir’s back.
I didn’t want the vampire dead. Not yet. I needed answers about Jamie and the werewolves and other cryptids. Dragomir knew too much, and I had so many questions.
“Run, Ada,” Archer rasped. “You don’t want to be here.”
He was right. But I didn’t want Dragomir to be there more, so that was the better solution.
I shrieked every pop song I knew into the mental void until Dragomir swatted at his ears and roared.
Go. Leave them alone or I won’t stop. I let that single reasonable thought get through, and went back to scream-singing a song about a baby shark and his extended family.
Dragomir threw Giselle down and knocked the men aside so he could stalk the edge of the trees toward me. “You do not know who they are. What they are.”
The mask stretched around his lips in a gaping maw with pointy white teeth. I shook my head and backed up. “I know. I already know. He told me. They’re here to hunt.”
I couldn’t admit Archer hunted cryptids. As long as he just killed werewolves and vampires, we could coexist.
Another rifle fired, then another. Dragomir didn’t blink. “But did they tell you what they hunt?”
I hesitated. How did Dragomir know so much about them? I aimed the rifle right at his face and held my ground. “Doesn’t matter.”
“They are hunting you,” the vampire said. His eyes turned into pools of red-tinged mercury. Everything around us slowed once more, until Archer and Isidro approached in super slow motion. Archer’s face distorted with fear, determination. Dragomir leaned closer to me, ignoring the rifle barrel. “They know you were attacked by a werewolf, and they are here to kill you as soon as they confirm you are infected.”
I shook my head as a roaring filled my ears. It wasn’t possible. Sure, they wanted to find werewolves and invited me into the forest with them a couple of times. As the full moon approached. While they carried serious weapons. And walked with me in the middle, surrounded and contained. Took me only to parts of the park far away from people.
But Archer sat in my cabin alone and ate dinner with me. My hands shook. While I was injured and weak, though. And made sure I passed out from painkillers, while he slept on the couch to…
Like called to like, Archer had said. Werewolves searched for their own kind or bit humans to make more. Could the wild man have possibly meant to…
I shook my head and backed up. Bile crept up the back of my throat. “Get out of here. They live or I won’t help you.”
The sharpened branch descended toward the vampire’s back an inch at a time as Archer’s face contorted in hate, driving the stake down with the full force of both arms.
“They will kill you or trap you for research.” Dragomir didn’t bother to move out of the stake’s range.
“I’ll worry about that later. Get out of here before they kill you.”
Dragomir’s eyes narrowed, then time snapped back into place and he whirled, knocking Archer and Isidro across the clearing with one sweep of his arm. The vampire loomed over them in a blink, and his voice filled my ears until it blurred even my vision. “You will leave immediately. Stay away from this park. I own this land. This is mine as is everything on it. If you cross into my territory again, I will drain you.”
And with that, he disappeared into the trees.