Page 38 of The Elementalist
Crystal scooted past me to retrieve her clothes, which lay draped on the stairs. “He came out of nowhere and grabbed me from behind.”
“The mist on the second floor,” I muttered. “He’d been waiting to ambush us.”
“Oh, dammit. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to get dressed again.”
“Because people don’t walk around in their birthday suits.”
“I should just move to Wales and prance around the forests. My ancestors had the right idea.”
“So stay naked. You won’t hear me complaining.”
She smirked. “I can’t. You’ll die, right?”
“Is that what they mean by ‘drop dead gorgeous’?”
That got a laugh out of her. “Close, you silly goose. You’ll be staring at me and a vampire will rip your head off.”
“You know, that whole ‘so scared she jumped out of her clothes’ thing is supposed to be a joke.”
“For your information…” She pointed at me, bra hanging from her hand. “I was not scared. Jumping up the stairs was the best way for me to get out of being grabbed.”
“Didn’t you say something about your blood being poisonous to them? Why not let him bite you and learn the error of his ways the hard way?”
She slipped into her bra and shirt blurrily fast. “Because, then I’d have a bite wound. Unlike vampires,Idon’t magically heal in ten seconds.”
“Oh.”
Crystal swiped her jeans off the floor and put them on. “Takes me more like an hour.”
“Oh, is that all.” There might have been sarcasm in my voice.
“And being bitten still hurts, smarty pants. A lot.” She sat to put her sneakers on.
As soon as she jumped to her feet, I continued into the hallway upstairs. Out of habit, I drew my .44. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it should at least have enough punch to stagger one for a few seconds. Enough to buy me time to start a fire. Crystal grabbed another two pieces of banister, each about a foot long, and used her claws to sharpen them into points, flicking wood shavings off the tips like she peeled carrots… with her finger.
Wow, sexy and badass.
Grunting came from the third door on the left. I stepped up to it, steeled myself, and burst in all cop-style, giant revolver raised in both hands.
The room contained two twin beds, one against the wall on either side, both with people in shredded college sweatshirts andjeans tied down by thin chain and padlocks around each wrist and ankle. The girl on the left lifted her head off the pillow to stare at me with faintly glowing eyes. Barely twenty if even that, she looked like death warmed over. The boy on the other bed, around the same age, had a football player’s jersey on and didn’t appear fully conscious. He, too, had pronounced grey in his skin, though his eyes didn’t light up—they didn’t even focus. Straight in front of me, a skinny blonde cheerleader type in a peach shift dress, barefoot, sat chained by the neck to an ancient freestanding radiator. She still had the color of a living person to her, though quite a bit of blood had soaked into the shoulders of her dress.
“Help!” shouted the blonde. “Please let me out of here.”
I eyed the two on the beds… and started raising my hands, fireballs already forming.
“Wait.” Crystal grasped my arm. “They’re not fully gone yet.”
“Huh?”
“They’re still tied down. That means they haven’t turned completely. It’s not permanent until they’ve fed for the first time. If we destroy the vampire who gave them the three bites before they drink, they should recover.”
“Should. What if they don’t?”
“Then we’ll… figure something out. Not all vampires are like Derek and Piper, ya know.”
“Could have fooled me.”
Right on cue, another vampire emerged from a doorway about thirty feet farther down the hall—and pointed an AR-15 at us. I summoned a thick slab of stone in front of me as a shield and tossed a fireball around it. Crystal whirled around and threw one of her stakes. The vamp with the rifle fired, the report deafening in the closed confines of the hallway. My stone barrier withstood the bullets, even if the floor under it emitted scary cracking noises at the weight. My first fireball missed, but madehim flinch enough that I had time to concentrate on igniting the air around him.
