Page 59 of Taken By Raider Kings
Darkness fuzzed around the edges of her vision.Sophie sought to push it away, taking in hitching little breaths.The faces were closer now, taking on fresh weight, almost-solidity.
They looked so, so sad.
The vampire lunged with that scary, liquid speed, and Zach froze for a split second, his gaze flicking past the threat to Sophie.Don’t worry about me!she wanted to scream.Pay attention to him!He’s coming right at you!
Zach faded aside again, somehow not there as the thing that had been Marc let out a short sharp victorious cry.The lean furred shape twisted amazingly, the ribbons of his slashed T-shirt fluttering like pennants, and made a movement almost too quick to be seen.His claws swept in, gleaming-deadly, and foul blackness exploded.The noise trickled away into shocked silence; Sophie heard her own breathing again, bubbling, each gasp a hitching agony.
The body thudded down.
Zach crouched over a defeated foe, the clicking growl fading bit by bit.His fur moved restlessly, each twitch sharply controlled almost as soon as it began.His eyes were wide, dark, and there was no trace of the man she’d kissed in them.
There was just an animal, its hide twitching, favoring its left front paw.The white streak down its side was slicked with blood and darker fluids.It paused, the clicking settling into a sort of chuffing.
Oh, God.He just killed Marc.The red pain jabbing in her ribs cranked up a notch, the darkness closing like a camera shutter.Themajirmoved between them, gossamer-thin now, and so sorrowful.They were weeping, crystal drops vanishing as they fell.
The animal sniffed.It turned, a loose fluid movement, and faced the door.Sophie tried to move, to get up, but her body wasn’t having any more of this nonsense.The pain was fuzzy, receding.
Uh-oh.
The clicks and chuffing shifted.It occurred to her, in a sideways leap that might have been intuition or the spirits whispering, that he was trying to say her name.
The single electric bulb in its glass shield overhead grew dimmer, sputtering.Or was it that her eyelids wouldn’t stay up?A bubble of wet, slick heat burst on her lips.
Just before complete blackness swallowed her, she saw the shadows at the wine cellar door.They were moving jerkily, their eyes glowing and dripping.
They were the vampires, plenty of them.
And down here Zach was all alone.
Sophie fell away from consciousness, still trying to scream.
twenty-four
It was a joy to kill.
Carcajou, among all the many Tribes, did not know what it was to retreat or surrender.Their battle rage—when it truly took hold—did not stop until muscle was shredded from bone, blood vessels popped, and the brain was shattered.
Even facing a good twentyupir,the idea of disengaging from battle didn’t even cross the sea of bloodlust now serving him for a mind.The beast in him was fully loosed, and the mate that belonged to them both lay behind him, wounded.Her bloodmusk terror filled this small space, maddening him even further.
He slunk back a few paces, the blood-trill filling his throat.The movement was only to make certain of his footing.The enemies were near, things of foulness and rancid death, more and more of them pressing through the small door.
He could hold for a long time here, since only a few at a time could fit down the stairs.If they wanted to advance into this room, it would cost them dearly.He had already thinned their numbers above, following the fading, flaring drift of light musk and silver distress.
Ofher.She was here, and behind him.His mate was bleeding, andtheyhad made her bleed.Hadhurther.
One of theupir—a female—appeared in the door.“Anotherone of these things?You’d think they would learn.”
His lip lifted.It was all meaningless noise.His growl, however, was a warning, resounding resounded from the sides of this filthy cave.
One of theupirdarted in—a youngling, and stupid.It was a moment’s work to tear through the sweet-sick rotten skin, to spill the rancidness inside.He growled again.
“Kill it, you imbeciles!”the female shrieked.She smelled old, and rotting.Not the sickness of a bad batch of blood burning up anupirfrom the inside, but a clotted reek of pale wriggling things bursting when sunlight hit them, leaving thin pale scum on every surface.
Theupirsurged in, and he showed his teeth.Behind him, his mate had gone silent, even her thin shallow gasps missing.The tortured air was hot and close, his nose stinging, blood slicking his fur and a sharp, sweet pain spurring him on.It was like wine in his blood, that agony.Strength and invincibility.
He smelled the fear on them.It teased at his nose, smarting and stinging from the thick miasma of death held close and hot in this bolthole.
He waited for them to come and die.
