Page 42 of Tainted Blood

“What? That could kill us all!” Sucaria screamed back.

Isaiah quickly finished up my project, then darted to the bar I had just run from, keeping low as I had.

“We’ll die either way if this keeps up!” Alexius argued. “Get him into the center of the room. Now!”

I still had the lighter, watching Isaiah find more bottles and tearing cleaning rags to use for them. I had my one Molotov cocktail that I could barely make and he was putting them together like he had done it thousands of times before.

“Everly, are you ready?” Alexius roared from the other side of the room.

Standing, I held my single makeshift firebomb. I flicked the lighter, nodding as I made eye contact with him. Alexius whistled, and the remaining vampires scattered, confusing Samas.

“Over here!” I screamed, getting his attention as I lit the Molotov cocktail. Isaiah was back at my side, taking the lighter from me once mine caught. As Samas began to charge, I tried to judge my throw. Once he was just getting to the center of the room, I threw it.

The impact was a fiery blast as the alcohol splattered on him and caught fire. His roar of rage changed to more of a screech of pain as the fire licked at his shoulders, arms, and chest. Some hit his face. A second Molotov was thrown, hitting his cheek. Samas tried to fight the fire, screeching and screaming as his skin burned.

Alexius was the first to him, jumping high in the air and landing on his back. Samas couldn’t fight the man and the fire. Getting his hands under Samas’s jaw, Alexius wrenched back, breaking the neck first. Samas fell, the fire on him only growing. Isis arrived, sword swinging before she even reached the fallen vampire, and cut downwards. Her blade didn’t make it all the way through Samas, but Alexius was there, and he finished pulling the head off with his bare hands. The body kept burning as everyone backed away. Isaiah went to the wall and pulled a lever, and the sprinklers started.

I fell to my knees.

It was over.

19

ALEXIUS

Alexius dropped Samas’s head several feet from his body. He felt weak, his legs not moving the way he wanted. He’d been in hard fights before, but he wasn’t one to be taken off-guard like this, and he had never fought anyone like Samas.

However, he wasn’t thinking about any of that as he moved, his eyes pinned on a red-haired woman on her knees, her face pale as she stared at the body of the monster she had helped kill.

When he reached her, he helped her to her feet, trying his best not to be rough. He wanted to do a thousand things, say a thousand more, but all he could do was help her to her feet, turning her away from the dead vampire, and wrap his arms around her. She was shaking, so he held her, glad she was alive. He buried his face in her wild hair and held her because it was the one thing he wanted to do above all else.

“He’ll stay dead, right?” she murmured into his chest, her words shaky and weak.

“Yes,” he answered, but since he had never seen anything like what just happened, he wasn’t entirely sure. He knew he needed to start cleaning up the dead. He needed to help Isaiah handle this, but he couldn’t get moving, not while he held her.

He could barely think. He had never second-guessed himself in a fight before, not like he had tonight. Samas had bulldozed his way through some of the most powerful vampires in the world, people who had fought and survived for at least two thousand yearseach.

And there she was, trying to help, the least likely to survive, the one who truly had no chance if Samas had gotten his hands on her.

Shehadhelped, his resourceful Everly. A lot of vampires never considered using fire because it was risky. There were other ways to win a fight without going to something that could hurt rather than help. He knew she must have considered the risks, but that didn’t stop her from trying.

“Alexius, Everly, I need to get his body burned and account for who’s survived and who hasn’t.” Isaiah was gentle. Alexius knew his old friend was just as shaken as he was because, like him, he wasn’t jumping into action after what just happened. “When you’re ready, I need your help with that, then we need to figure out what happened.”

He didn’t want her to, but Everly pulled away at Isaiah’s words.

“Ka and Aelia are in my bathroom. They were both unconscious when I left them,” she said. “Aelia was the first person I got out, then I came back. I ended up with Ka. When he passed out from blood loss, I left to see if I could help anyone else. I used…” She rubbed her eyes, making Alexius want to bundle her up and hide her somewhere so she could take a moment to breathe. “I used the staircase at the end of the hall to get upstairs. Sheba is hurt, but she’s up there. So are some of the others.”

“Thank you.”

“Caturix is dead behind the bar,” she continued, ignoring what Isaiah said. “Lucas is dead. I saw his head…”

“We saw them die,” Alexius said quickly, trying to stop her. There was no reason for her to relive it. There were enough capable, uninjured vampires in the building to manage finding out who was hurt and who was dead. “Let’s get you out of this room. Isaiah, I’ll help shortly.” He looked over her head at Isaiah, who nodded.

No one else was moving. Everyone was waiting for the first order, the sign that someone was taking control, and because Isaiah was in the room, he was the person who had to do that.

You have to get started, my friend, but for the next five minutes, you can’t be my priority. None of them can be.

Isaiah understood without Alexius needing to say the words.

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