Page 16 of Kiss of Light

Her first slice took out his windpipe so he couldn’t scream. Vamps hardly ever breathed but they still needed a larynx to make sound.

He staggered backwards down the hall, trying to pull her off and clumsily swiping at her with his fists. She held on grimly. Her second slice cut through bone.

The vamp’s head fell backwards gruesomely onto her shoulder, the neck stump yawning wide open. The giant body fell to its knees and then toppled forward. Tala shimmered away instantly, waiting to see if anyone had heard the noise.

The door stayed closed. Tala gave silent thanks for the architect who’d decided the block needed decent sound-proofing and thick carpeting in the hallways. She eyed the body.

Annoyingly, unlike the movies, Vetali didn’t turn to ash when they died unless they were outside in daylight. She’d have to dispose of it herself. Couldn’t let it end up at the coroner’s office where there would be awkward questions asked about its inhuman physiology.

“Work, work, work,” she muttered under her breath.

She shimmered outside the door again and laid her hand on the surface. Closing her eyes, she sent her essence into the room.

The woman named Camille was on the couch where Tala herself had lain earlier that night. A vamp was on either side of her.

Both were drinking her blood.

The male vamp was glued to her neck, his hand massaging her breast as he sucked. The female held Camille’s wrist to her mouth, her eyes black.

Camille herself had a smile on her face. She was pressing her thighs together, as if she was being pleasured. A small moan passed her lips.

Tala turned away, looking for Lemar. Several vamps were standing in a circle in the middle of the room. Tala drifted round them, trying to see what they were doing without touching them.

Vamps couldn’t be possessed. She didn’t know why. Maybe because they weren’t alive in the same way that other creatures were alive. All she knew was that any contact with them whilst in her essence state was deeply unpleasant.

She found a gap in the circle and looked through. Lemar was on his knees in the centre, two vamps holding him in place. Another was walking around him, taunting him, sword in hand.

Lemar yawned disdainfully and in a fit of temper, the vamp raised the weapon, ready to bring it down on his neck.

Shit.

She floated back to her body on the other side of the door. Raising one leg, she kicked it in.

A dozen vampires turned towards her. She grinned cheerfully.

“Hey guys, did I miss the party?”

Seven

She didn’t expect to win the fight but she was quietly pleased she took two of them out before they subdued her.

She got the bloodsucking bitch on the couch first. Her look of surprise as her head bounced across the floor gave Tala a warm feeling inside. But it was her second kill that really made her proud.

She rolled gracefully, extracting the blade from her boot. As she came up onto her knees, she flung it with pinpoint accuracy. It buried itself to the hilt in the heart of the vamp carrying the sword.

He looked down, lip curled derisively.

“Steel doesn’t kill Vetali, little girl,” he snarled.

“Yeah. But silver does.”

His expression changed as black veins snaked rapidly across his body, the poison from the silver spreading through his system in seconds. Silver to the heart wasn’t as quick as decapitation, but it was just as irreversible.

The vamp toppled face forward, the sword dropping from his grasp onto the carpet.

Tala stood and shot Lemar a smile.

“Miss me?”

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