Even after the long span of time, I felt the pull of it, the desperate need to reach for the devil that created me, but I forced myself to stand where I was.
“I’ve received all your gifts. A desperate cry for attention, don’t you think? More like a tantruming child than a sire.” I could feel the earth and rocks beneath my feet shaking from the gravitational pull of this monster, but I planted my feet and forced myself to meet the other’s gaze.
There was the briefest flash of, what? Surprise? In Volkov’s eyes before he lifted an elegant brow and chuckled. He was massive, towering a head or more above me, and I stood 6”5. Not as broad as I was but he was monstrously dense, as immobile as the ancient pines around us.
“You have been too long from my embrace, my child. You forget yourself.”
I smiled, a huge grin that made me feel shockingly young. “You’re wrong. I have just remembered.” I stepped closer, just a step or two but Steve was behind me, and the remaining vampires shadowing us. “I remember so many things about you, Volkov,” I continued, “how you kept me starved and feral. You couldn't risk making a creature strong enough to best you, could you?”
Placing those spidery hands in his expensive trousers, Volkov chuckled. “My child,” he said fondly. He made a show of looking around, backlit in the dying flames of the cabin. “Where is my dear Gisane? I was so certain your reunion would be a happy one.”
“That bitch is dead.” Steve chose that minute to speak up, much to my amusement. “There might be some of her left on the bottom of his shoe-” pointing a casual thumb at me, “if you want a souvenir.”
Volkov’s head twisted abruptly to look at Steve, tilted in an oddly birdlike way. “I do not know you,” he said thoughtfully, “but you will know me. Quite soon.” His attention turned to the vampires behind them. “Ah, a family reunion,” he said, “so many of my children.”
“They’re here to entomb you,” I corrected, and the shadows behind me shifted uneasily. “We’ll be free of you.” I smiled, and in the red light of the flames, I knew it looked horrible. “But you will never see another night, Volkov.”
Meghan…
Aura was quite literally climbing on top of me because I’d managed to wedge my way in front of the little monitor.
“What the hell are they doing? That’s James’ Sire? He’s disgusting!” Glancing down, she eyed my distinctly green complexion. “Are you okay?”
“He’s making me…” I swallowed down a heave, “I feel him in my head like an- an oil slick or something, he’s-” She was wiping my face with a cloth she’d wetted from a water bottle.
“Hang on. James and Steve will hopefully kill him-”
“They can’t,” I managed, shuddering.
Her hand stilled on my sweaty forehead. “What do you mean?”
“Those fucks were talking while they were beating on me. The Sire- oh, god-” I gagged again, but there was nothing left to come up, “If the Sire dies, everyone he created dies, too. If James kills him, he turns to ash. I don’t know what they can do to stop him.”
“Shit,” Aura said, nearly in tears, still edging my shaking form away from the monitor so she could get a better look. It was just in time for her to watch the vampires who were backing Steve and James be torn to pieces.
A dark, malignant swirl of death ripped through them in an unpleasantly graceful arc, and within moments, there was nothing but ash, flaking away to swirl in the wind with the embers from the cabin’s destruction. And in another blink of an eye, Volkov stood before the two younger vampires, enjoying their shock.
“My child,” he crooned, “how were you planning to entomb me? With your pitiful army? Most of them were my children. They live and die by my hand. As do you. Perhaps…” he began strolling gracefully through the wreckage of Aura’s cabin. “Perhaps I did not give you the proper discipline as my child. To think that you could defy me?”
Volkov’s laugh was horrible. It seared through my ganglia and made me lurch against the metal counter, which opened up the worst of my gashes again. I barely noticed, just wanting that evil fuck to STOP. LAUGHING. It hurt so much more than anything done to me earlier that night. Wiping at my bleeding nose, I tried to stop gagging. Whatever James’ derangedSire was doing to affect me seemed to be impacting him, too. James shuddered, eyes turning a baleful gold as he flinched, teeth gritted and I could tell he was trying to look calm, and emotionless. His Sire caught his reaction.
“Ah, you are displeased that I’m toying with your pet?” Volkov crooned, “Youarebonded with this flesh. Pathetic. Perhaps I shall turn her. An eternity of suffering, hmmm? I’d planned on leaving her like the others,” he mused, “but no. For her? I will tear her apart, give her enough blood to restore her and begin again. She will never rest.”
They attacked him as if they’d done it a thousand times before, and for all I knew, Steve and James had. Leaping in and out of range, tearing and rending at Volkov with a ferocity that should have decimated him. But the older vampire was strong, terrifyingly strong and his negligent gestures began drawing blood from the other two. But I knew the problem.
“They can’t kill him, and he knows it,” I groaned, trying to keep the bleeding from my newly reopened wounds from getting worse. It soaked my shirt, spread through the bedding, and pooled on the floor. “They’re trying to disable him. But it’s making it next to impossible to bring him down.”
“Oh, no no nonono!” Aura cried, “Steve- just-” He’d just been thrown into a tree so viciously that the massive pine toppled with a crash that shook the steel bunker.
James…
I gritted my teeth, watching my Sire stroll toward the battered form of my closest friend. Wielding a branch like a scimitar, Steve flew at Volkov, who turned just in time to catch the shard of wood in his arm, not his chest. The two exchanged blows so savage that the huge pines trembled and shook. Black blood flew in all directions and then as I jumped back in to the fight, my Sire gripped my arm and nearly tore it from the socket as he sent me headfirst into a boulder.
“NO!” The power of Steve’s voice stopped even Volkov, who whirled on him, hissing and claws flexing eagerly. But Steve was motionless, looking between him and my battered body as I staggered, trying to stand up and falling again in a bloody heap.
“Yes, you see the problem, do you not?” Volkov’s voice was like bile, poisonous. “You are perhaps strong enough to finish me, stranger. But you will send my child to hell with me.” He watched gleefully as the giant blond stepped toward him, then halted, looking again at me.
“Just- please don’t hurt Steve.” A small voice came from the collapsed corner of the cabin, the smoking timbers showing the glint of the steel-lined safe room. Aura was slowly making her way closer, shaking violently.
