Page 51 of The Vampire King's War

DONE

Julian had never killed anyone. He had never thought he would have to. Even when he had imagined revealing the existence of Vampires to the world, he had only once when meeting Caemorn for the first time, wanted to kill anyone. But mostly since he had become a Vampire, he had shied away from the violent, predatory aspect of himself.

Until now.

When Kaly had used Officer Robbins to shoot his co-workers between the eyes, animated them and tried to use them to kill others for this little undead army, Julian just acted.

Without thought.

Without worry.

With certainty that what he was doing was right.

These undead things needed to be eradicated, not just because of the threat they posed, but because they took the people that these officers had been and that innocent boy had been--cut down so cruelly--and used their bodies against others that they would never have wanted to hurt. Kaly had turned them into things. No longer people, but weapons to be used to destroy what they had cared for. And after seeing all the innocent lives that had been snuffed out that night, Julian was simply done standing by.

The animated corpse that had been Officer Robbins was the first to go. Time seemed to slow down while Julian sped up. He had no weapons, besides, what good were a knife or a gun against the undead? No, he had to take them apart. And Officer Robbins’ head sounded like a good place to start.

Julian sliced through the air like a speeding missile while everything else moved like it was stuck in molasses. He grasped Officer Robbins’ head with both hands and almost gently ripped it off his body with one violent turn of 360 degrees. The skin tore. Blood just gushed out, though it was no longer being pumped by a heart so it didn’t spray. It more like waterfalled down his front. Julian imagined that if Officer Robbins had stayed dead longer that the blood would have settled in his legs and feet. But, for now, there was still plenty of the red stuff. But it held no interest for his Vampire senses. It smelled dead and already rotten. He would never feed off a corpse.

He then smashed the head between his hands. He felt the skull crush like a porcelain plate hitting the ground and then the jellied brain squished through his fingers. If the head could have still been animated somehow after that, it couldn’t do anything to anyone except ooze at them.

Officer Robbins’ body was still standing upright. It wasn’t moving any longer. The gun was still in the right hand. Julian didn’t know if it hadn’t fallen because he was simply moving faster than gravity could work. But he took no chances. He wrenched off Officer Robbins’ right arm and then his left for good measure. He tossed these into the long grass as if they were dead branches. Just in case the corpse could still walk even without a head and arms, he pulled off the legs as well. They joined the arms in the grass. He dropped the torso to the ground.

The other two officers were aiming their guns at their colleagues--who, having heard the shots were moving towards them--and were firing, but Kaly’s aim, thankfully, was not as good this far away. Julian grabbed the right arm of the female officer and spun her around while he did the same to her fellow male officer. They were facing him now instead of the police.

The female officer’s brown eyes looked gray as they were already covered with death cataracts though that seemed awfully quick to have happened in Julian’s layman’s estimate. She focused on him though with an evil intensity that was all Kaly. The woman whose body this had been was no longer in it and, for that, Julian was grateful. He didn’t want to cause her any pain. However, he wished to give oceans of it to Kaly.

He grabbed her gun arm and twisted it. He heard the snap and pop of her bones and joints separating as he pulled that arm--rather like a chicken drumstick--off her body. The arm fell to the ground and blood, sticky and foul, poured out of her.

To the final officer, he snapped the dead man’s gun arm violently backwards. It hung uselessly at the man’s side. But he ripped it off anyway. More blood rained down. It pooled at his feet. It soaked into his shoes and stained his pant legs. He was wading through it. But it didn’t slow him down.

He slammed his right hand against the male officer’s throat. The officer was smashed against the ground and his hand went through the flesh and bone and impacted the soil below it. He kneeled on the officer’s chest as he then ripped off the rest of the corpse’s limbs.

The female officer was reaching for her firearm. Kaly was still intent on gunning more people down. Julian shot to his feet when something jumped onto his back.

The boy!

There was a searing pain as Kaly had the boy stab him in the side of the neck. Julian had turned his head at the exact right moment so that it was only a surface cut. He felt his own blood flow down his skin and soak the top of his shirt before he reached around and fastened his hand around the boy’s slender wrist. The boy hissed, his foul breath washing over Julian, almost causing him to gag. This close to the boy there was no doubt he was a corpse.

In that moment’s hesitation, Kaly wrenched the boy’s hand back and the sharp object--a knife? Dagger? Piece of glass?--sliced across his palm. He let out a gasp of pain, which had him gulping in more of that foul rotten scent. Julian growled as Kaly tried stabbing him again. While both wounds had already healed and there was no pain from them, he was finished being a pincushion for the Immortal.

He seized the boy’s wrist again even as Kaly went all stabby once more. With a simple yank, he pulled the boy’s arm off by the socket. Kaly hissed, not in pain, but in anger. Julian tossed the arm. No blood came from this corpse. He had likely been embalmed for burial and all his blood had been removed. The smell of decay became more pronounced and that, mixed with the blood, had Julian’s stomach churning.

Julian gritted his teeth as he whipped forward, sending the boy flying from his back and impacting a tree. That was when there was the deafening sound of a shot. Julian tensed involuntarily, waiting for the impact, but there was only a whoosh of air along his side. He smelled the bitter scent of cordite. Kaly had missed.

He dashed towards the female officer’s corpse. She had the gun in her left hand. He flipped over her and landed behind her as Kaly fired another shot. Julian wrested her left arm off and then snapped the long bones in her legs. She fell forward and didn’t move.

Julian didn’t need to hear the hiss before he stretched out his arm--without looking--and caught the boy’s throat in his hand as the vile creature rushed him. He held the boy at arm’s length as he hissed, spat, kicked and reached for him with the one remaining arm.

“F-FREEZE!” A male voice shook as he shouted it. “Police! Put the child down!”

Julian’s head snapped towards the voice. What he saw had his heart sinking into his feet. To his right there were half a dozen cops and more were coming. They all had their weapons drawn. They were pointed at him.

And that was when he realized what they were seeing. He was drenched in blood, surrounded by corpses of their colleagues that he had plucked the limbs off, and was holding a boy by the neck two feet off the ground by the throat with one hand. And he was pretty sure he was all vamped out. He hadn’t felt his fangs before, but he did now. They were bared. And the red wash to everything told him that his eyes were like red coals.

Oh, no...

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! What is he?” Another male voice rose up into a whine.

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