Using every ounce of speed he had, Roger raced toward Carver. Just as his fist was about to connect with Seamus, a tendril of shadow wrapped around his wrist and yanked him away. He hit the wall instead. When he tried to move, another tendril grabbed his other arm. Their strength beat his own, but he fought them. He gained an inch, then two.
It wasn’t enough.
Carver’s attempt to pry Seamus’s hand off his throat was futile. Seamus drew him in and tore into his neck. Fresh blood scented the air, and slickness splattered to the floor underneath him. Seamus latched on and drank.
“No!” Roger tried to find his shadow among the ones around him but couldn’t. The darkness was growing too deep.
Cal’s silver blade flew toward Seamus. Before it made contact, Seamus released Carver and moved so quickly that he vanished from sight. The knife knocked into the door, then skittered across the floor toward Roger.
But it wasn’t close enough to reach.
Carver collapsed to the floor. Blood poured from the wound in his neck.
Kit screamed. Fur erupted across their face, and their ears morphed into long, foxlike ones. A shiver of magic flooded over them. More of their features began to shift, but they remained bipedal.
Roger strained to reach the silver knife.
In all of this commotion, Zack had been following the blade he’d thrown. His own dagger was in his hand, and the runes upon it blazed with white light. It repelled the darkness within a few feet of him but couldn’t entirely overcome the power flowing into the suite. Grim determination hardened him to steel. And he didn’t slow down. Like he’d done at the Chateau, he pivoted, pirouetting toward a spot at full force, and he sliced with his dagger.
Seamus grunted as he became visible. A sharp red line across his torso was already healing. Somehow, Zack had picked out his movement from the chaos and struck.
And having gotten in one blow, Zack didn’t hesitate with the next. Seamus dodged what might have been a killing strike, but he was on the defense for the moment.
Takashi blurred forward with the shotgun in hand. He shouted, “Pull!”
Roger did the best he could. The roar of gunfire told him he’d yanked back far enough. Suddenly, the tendrils holding him released. Cal’s weaponry was primed for slaying supernaturals. He’d had silver buckshot, and the blast shredded the shadows.
Roger rolled forward, picking up Cal’s bowie knife as he went, and spun to face the deepest of the shadows. Anton was powerful, but he had to be somewhere in the suite. The sort of display he was putting on was too finite in its controls.
The darkness is a fabric. I can tear through fabric. Find the lump where he’s hiding. Roger tumbled into that mental space he had discovered while fighting Nell. It had been with him all his nights. He was avampire, and that had meaning. Power of its own. His own.
And there, not where the shadows were darkest but beside them. Roger ran for the spot, shouting, and he drove the blade forward.
Shadow tendrils erupted from the floor. Multiple ones wrapped around each of Roger’s appendages and hauled him downward.
As Takashi brought the shotgun up for another blast, Anton stepped out of the darkness. The shadows released him like they’d miss him, and he rushed Takashi. He grabbed the shotgun before Takashi pulled the trigger and yanked it from him. Then, he swung it with the force of a truck. The stock connected with Takashi’s skull, and Takashi dropped to the floor.
The blow wouldn’t kill a vampire, but Takashi was knocked out of the fight.
“Silver bullets,” Anton said as if he were actually impressed. He tossed the shotgun onto the floor beside Takashi. The stock and barrel were mangled. “How veryhunterof you, Roger. And what’s this in your hand?”
In the distance, there was a cry and the shattering of glass. Roger couldn’t afford to look away, but his heart fractured into a thousand pieces. Zack. Kit. Vincent. They were in danger, and he was stuck in a mess of shadow.
Roaring, he reached for his own darkness, that piece of the shadows that belonged entirely to him. He found it and broughtit like a blade across the tendrils holding his left side. His shadow became a blade in his right hand, and he had Cal’s silver knife in his left. Using them, he cut away at the other shadows.
“My, my, my. You are interesting at last, Roger,” Anton said, his voice echoing with a sliver of ethereal power.
Launching himself, Roger aimed for Anton’s midsection. He clipped Anton’s side, and his move landed him past his prey. He turned, knives cutting through shadows that attempted to claim him, and danced to a safer spot.
“Oh, let’splay.” Anton’s eyes flared a brighter red. He stretched out his hands, and his hair flowed backward as if in a wind.
Shadows undulated across the floor and sprang into dozens of tendrils. Roger sliced and cut as many as he could while forever pursuing Anton across the suite. But Anton was always just out of reach. Every roar and strike were drips of Roger’s strength until a dam broke within him, and his power waned.
But Carver was dying.
Takashi was lying motionless on the floor.
Vincent was out of sight.
