I pushed off the wall and blew the doors to shit, then strode across the threshold.
Cracked marble floors were stained brown-red from dried blood. Faint golden latticework clung to the walls, its former glimmer and grandiose appearance now withered and drained away.
The two female clan leaders cast a disturbing visual with gothic decayed Victorian gowns, hoop skirts wilted, satin faded, and age and blood staining the fabric.
The three male leaders, all sporting long, greasy dark hair followed the theme, wearing high-collared waistcoats, and frock coats that were stained and drained of color, even torn in places.
They sat upon five thrones, antique velvet chairs, now yellowed and cracked, stained with blood, fresher blood from their current feeding spree even currently dripping down the legs. They were each elevated on cracked dais.
They clearly thought themselves power players. But they were nothing but twisted relics. Rotting rulers drenched in degeneracy and decay in a hellhole of a supernatural drug den.
They were sharing two magic-wielders between them—a man and a woman—who they’d stripped down to their underwear, the male across the lap of three of them with bite marks all over his body, twitching as they buried their fangs in his abs currently. The female was being shared by two others at either side of her throat.
Six long banquet tables stretched from the thrones across the length of the vast space whereupon two magic-wielders were sprawled out on their backs on each, theirInhibitorcuffed handswrenched above their heads and tied to chains connecting to chandeliers that were covered with dust and cobwebs. Every time their victims squirmed in pain, the crystals jangled like a bell, making the vampires chuckle in demented glee and some even clap.
“Necromancer!” one of the leaders hissed, a woman in a decrepit navy dress, her auburn hair a mass of tangled curls.
She pushed away from the woman she was feeding on and stepped forward in an unstable intoxicated state.
Hisses and snarls sounded as she alerted the others.
Within moments, thirty of them, including the five clan leaders, were leaving their playtime and gathering in unstable bursts of speed, then facing off with me.
“You dare to enter our home?” one of the male leaders thundered, calling his borrowed power, and causing the rest of them to do the same, all thirty raising their hands at me, prepared to fire upon me in a fusillade of magic.
“Psychopathic shits,” I rumbled.
More hisses.
“Take him down! Decimate him!” one of the male leaders bellowed.
I smirked.
Let’s go, demons.
I sent a wave of my magic toward the hostages, a red film sweeping over each of them and shattering their Inhibitor cuffs.
They gasped and choked with relief as their power rolled over them, some even sobbing.
Fuck, it was heartbreaking.
And I couldn’t entertain it. Not right now.
Notever.
The army of vampires roared. Some fired at me, my shield deflecting their blasts.
Others burst toward me with vampire speed and the moment they hit, they ricocheted right off and were sent flying backward, taking out some of the gathered vampires in the process, downing them in a mess of limbs and a drug addled pathetic display.
With a twist of my hand, I snapped the necks of the vampire heaps—a dozen of them.
“You can’t hold that shield forever,” one of the leaders hissed at me.
A sadistic smile twisted my lips.
“Take your punishment, motherfuckers.”
Weaving my hands while they failed to get in a single hit, I channeled necrotic energy directly into the leaders, my crimson magic fusing with darkness, much like shadow, as it wove through one after the other.