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Smoke emerged from Amara’s room as she and another vampire stepped into the parking lot.
With an elegant pounce and a malicious grin, Vivian watched as Charles left the sky and landed before Amara. He knocked the dark-haired male to the sidewalk several car lengths away with a pass of his hand.
Although he didn’t move to restrain her, Amara didn’t run. She didn’t fight, scream, or show fear, despite the surrounding chaos. He put his hand under her chin and rotated her face toward his, but her placid expression remained. The light from the streetlamps flickered in her dark eyes, but she exhibited no fear.
Her lack of response triggered his fury. He struck her, and Maysun cried out, but Amara didn’t fall. The carnage didn’t distract her. Her focus lingered on Charles as much as his on her.
Michael made to advance, but Vivian waved her hand to stop him. “She’s still mortal,” she reminded him. “She’s still mortal, and Charles has her within his grasp. If we move, he’s likely to kill her rather than lose her or risk death.”
“You’re prettier than I’d imagined,” Charles said. “I’m either going to be a fortunate man or very sad to kill you.”
A door crashed as a Blood Tribe member broke into a hotel room. Vivian heard a panicked human voice escalate as a silver-gray wolf jumped on the back of the vampire about to strike.
“I’m not going with you,” Amara stated.
“You will, or you’ll die.”
From behind them came a thwump as Angelo knocked Blu and Lukas off with one flex of his leathery wings and took flight. Lukas and Blu exchanged a quick, wordless agreement and bound into the air after him, Blu with a cry of pain from the use of his wounded wing.
“Lukas!” Michael yelled and pressed forward to the spot where his son had once stood. The air near him rippled like a broken water surface as a spell passed, and he ducked to avoid getting hit.
Vivian had never felt so frustrated. She knew Dunning would drag this out as long as possible, reveling in their sense of helplessness, their frustration. Meanwhile, beings were dying, wounded, miserable. It was a Maleficence banquet, and everyone was on the plate.
Several beings on the ground stood at the ready, awaiting their chance to come to Amara’s aid. Vivian considered using her power of disappearing and reappearing, but that had significant risks. Charles was no minor soldier of the Shévet ha Dam, and his ability frightened her. If she materialized behind him, there was a chance he’d snuff Amara’s life with a swipe of his hand to her throat. Unlikely, maybe, but not implausible. He’d prefer her dead to her turning to life in the Source.
To Vivian’s surprise, Amara spoke.
“You aren’t one of those who made me suffer,” she said. “You didn’t change me into one of you or give the orders to have me followed, tormented, and studied like an experiment. I do not need to hurt you. Yet. I’ve made my peace with most of the vampires who abused me.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “Back down now, and I’ll spare you.”
Charles guffawed, an amused twinkle in his brown eyes. “Listen to her! So sure of herself. Yes, I can tell by the smell that you’ve burned my boy, David.” He gripped Amara by the wrist. “I will be much more difficult.”
With that, he leaped up, yanking her skyward with him. The movement was so sudden, so violent, Vivian was sure he had dislocated Amara’s shoulder.
Vivian, Maysun, and Michael all dove for Amara’s feet as Charles moved up, nearly colliding in their zeal to bring her down. It happened instantly, yet Vivian saw it all as if in slow motion. Vivian heard Amara say, “Don’t be so sure,” and then the horrible sound of Charles screaming in agony. His clothes burst into flames.
With no wings to support her, Amara fell after him. She looked like a child miraculously chasing after a falling star.
––––––––
VIVIAN SHOT INTO THE sky after Amara with the Source alone as her means of support, swerving around Lukas and Angelo amid a midair brawl ten stories above the earth.
Where’s Blu? Vivian thought, remembering her premonition. Was he hurt, maybe killed? Her head spun, vampire-acute senses searching for her friend. Then she saw him on the ground below. One large, blue feathered wing lay apart from his body. If not for that, she doubted she’d have recognized his mangled face or tortured body. God, no—Blu!
Angelo let out a cry like a wildcat and clenched Lukas’s wing. Vivian heard an audible crack, and Lukas screamed in agony, instinctively retracting his wings to avert further damage and losing his grip on Angelo. He dropped like a falling angel.
Vivian did a one-eighty and made a nose-dive, her urgent drive to protect Amara forgotten in her need to save the young man she thought of as her son. As her fingertips brushed his pants leg, a set of firm hands clenched her ankles, adding drag to offset her thrust.
Angelo.
She kicked, but Angelo had the flexibility of a child of Cartephilus. Lukas’s pants slipped through her grip.
Vivian’s tormented cry split the midnight air, an uncanny, almost divine sound of righteous anger. Angelo’s grip loosened in fear, but Vivian didn’t wait for him to let go. Folding herself in half, still following Lukas’s descent, she griped Angelo’s hands, wrenching them from her body, her only concern freeing herself before Lukas hit the ground.
Angelo pulled his hands to his body with a woeful sound and dove to the ground after easier prey.
Vivian snapped forward and swept her hands out and under Lukas’s armpits. She barely had time to pull up before Lukas’s feet touched the ground.
Hovering, not wanting to wait any longer than she had to, she asked if he was all right.
“Fine,” he said. “Go. I’ll check on Blu. You’ve got Amara—”
She was gone.
Blocking out any distracting thought to keep her flow to the Source steady, Vivian followed Charles like a missile.
He was easy enough to spot. Even if he hadn’t been gripping the Maleficence, the flames that consumed him stood out like a comet. He descended fast, reached the ground and dropped, rolling in the dirt to douse his body.
Vivian wrestled with her instincts. She loathed the idea of battling Charles or gaining a sense of satisfaction from his death. It went against everything the Source stood for. Still, allowing him to escape only meant this battle was the first of many.
She thought of Blu, his body bloodied, perhaps dead, Michael nearly dying at Krieg’s hands, Megan’s death, Maysun now a vampire, and Amara...
Amara, who’d arrived already, seemed to be doing just fine.
Charles struggled to his feet, looking like a scarecrow dragged from a harvest bonfire. His blackened body was already recovering from the fire; charred bits of flesh dropped like ashes to the ground as Amara squared off before him, her jaw jutting forward.
“I have to know,” she said. “How did you expect me to help you? Is there a mystery about me that you can tell me? Do you know more about me than I do?”
Charles didn’t speak, his recuperating body either incapable of replying or unable to come up with an answer.
“You don’t, do you?” Amara said. Her laughter was bitter. “You don’t have to speak. I can read you. You want to control me. You want to use me. Like David. Like Thom. Like my father.”
His jaw, no longer blackened, now flexed as if each millimeter of motion was painful. “You are a beautiful—”
“Shut up,” Amara said. “Just... don’t. It’s pathetic.” Her dark eye narrowed as she watched him in horrific fascination as the flesh inched from black to red. “The sad part is that if you’d come into my life sooner, I probably would’ve fallen for it—I might have even fallen for you. You were handsome enough. Smooth, in that slick way.”
With every sentence, Charles grew vaguely more human-looking. Vivian suspected that his strength drained with the effort to repair his corpse, but did he still have the muscle to overpower Amara? Vivian wanted to intervene, but not with Amara’s cathartic dialog. She held off, looming in the distance and staying downwind, hoping the dark hid her from them.
“All you want is to make me afraid, so you can use me. Well, guess what?”
He didn’t answer. Did Amara hear his thoughts?
“I’m not afraid anymore.”
Amara dashed forward. Lifting her foot in a powerful roundhouse kick to his sternum, she sent the ashes, blood, and bone of Charles’ body scattering.
––––––––
EOGHAN AND HARMONY clung to one another’s hands, their knuckles white, their faces tight with strain. The air in the forest was cool on their faces, but their faces were lined with streaks of sweat, tears of exertion, and dust from the blowing fall air. The Maleficence, now free from its bodily form, spread its shadowy tentacles wide in search of a dark host. Invisible to the eyes of mortals, or semi-immortals, it flitted from soul to soul, but every form it touched was engaged in perilous battle, its lifespan uncertain.
Frantic for survival, the dark energy flitted from body to body like a minnow through water, but found no host. Unbeknownst to the Maleficent power, two other entities, working in unity, fought against both the joining of darkness to host and against the possibility that this may be the final battle between good and evil.
“How much longer, do you think?” Eoghan gasped from behind clenched teeth. He blinked and another tear fell from the corner of his eye.
A wave of effort poured over them like molten lead and they gripped tighter, falling to their knees but not letting go, their hands cutting off circulation but not noticing it over the agony of the fire that consumed them.
“H-host,” she said, her teeth gritted as well. “You know who. Just hold on. Hold on. It’s coming. It’s coming.”
It had to be.
