“Join. Me,” Seamus declared, and he stretched out his hand to the remaining vampires.
The four vampires clutched at their heads or their hearts, but quickly, their eyes were turning glassy.
Seamus had to be manipulating their emotions like he’d attempted to screw with Roger’s head. Back in the ballroom, Roger had managed to counter him, but he was realizing that Seamus hadn’t used his true strength in that moment.
Or perhaps there was a flaw in his power. Mentally, Roger raced to reach the other vampires with him. Seamus was flooding their minds with fear of what would happen to them and forcing a desire to obey upon them. The fear was founded in each of them, but that desire was too small a sail to move theships in the direction Seamus intended. Seamus was having to pour energy into them.
Roger sought their instincts, their desires to survive and thrive, their longing to be rid of the creature before them. His inner tides swayed to his call, rising as he begged for more to save the ones with him. A molten bubble of warmth flowed into the tides, aiding his strength, bringing on a wind that helped him guide the vampires away from what Seamus wanted.
“What?” Seamus snapped as the vampires stood straight, the glossiness leaving their eyes. Lacey was unleashing arrow after arrow; the other hunters were unloading silver bullets. Seamus caught most of the arrows and angled his body so the bullets didn’t strike his heart or head. He turned his focus to Roger, and his eyes widened. “What are you?”
“Better than you,” Roger growled. He strode forward.
And the distraction served its purpose for this stage of the battle. While Seamus had been preoccupied with the vampires and Roger, the not-cat Lee had slunk around to the other side of the foyer so that he was opposite Bastian. As Roger stepped closer, Bastian released the spell he’d been preparing. A roaring wall of flames wrapped around one side, met Lee, who stamped a paw, and then finished out the circle by racing back to Bastian. The top of the flames met in a dome.
“Shall we dance,master?” Roger asked with a sharp grin.
“It will be your last,” Seamus promised.
Roger surged forward with a shout.
“Why aren’t we going down the stairs?” Katie asked. “That’s where all the doors to the outside are.”
“We’re vampires, we don’t need doors. We just need an exit and to not land on stakes or silver,” Takashi muttered. He was trying not to shake. Something—no, Seamus—had overcome Zack, and Zack’s eyes had mutated colors to become endless pits and ruby red. Seamus had taken control of him in some way without being in the same room. That was not good. Not at all good.He had enough presence to send us away. He is lost, not gone.
Finally, at the end of one long hall, Takashi saw a window. Holding Katie’s hand, he ran for it as fast as he could. Each step was a mile crossed, and yet the hall seemed to stretch forever.
Anton stepped out around a corner. The shadows beneath him thickened, and the ones in the hall near him grew. Darkness clouded the way, but Anton’s eyes glowed red in the dimness. The smell of burnt ozone and dead roses overwhelmed everything else.
Takashi stumbled, and then his foot caught on a tendril of shadow creeping out from underneath a console table, the vase rattling as the shadow disturbed the table’s balance. He danced backward a step only for another tendril to wrap around his leg. It cinched painfully, breaking bone, and he held in his scream the best he could.
“I offer you an escape, and you abuse my weakness for you to release my toys and then my daughter.” The dropping temperature in the hallway wasn’t as severe as the tone in Anton’s voice, and it was plummeting so quickly that ice formed along the walls. “My love is right. You are a leech.”
“Ourdaughter, you said,” Takashi gasped through the pain. More tendrils sought his limbs, and he fought to keep them from trapping him. He was losing the struggle. “She is part of me, and I cannot leave her in this hell.”
“You were rude! Filling my head with longings for you when I should have known this was all a trick.” Anton clenched his fist, and the tendrils tightened as one. “Everything you are is a lie.”
“You saw into my mind!” Takashi cried out. “You saw the deepest parts of me before anyone else. What did you see, Anton? What did you truly see when you plunged into the depths of my soul? Am I a liar? Or are you so willing to blind yourself to the terrible truths about Seamus that you’ll forsake what you know?”
“He is mylove,” Anton snarled.
“Why?” Takashi demanded. “Why defend him like this? Are you so afraid that no one else will love you that you will destroy everything for one bastard who does not see you as an equal?”
“You don’t know us!” Anton roared.
“I walled away my heart because I feared letting anyone into it,” Takashi said. “You have built a fortress around your feelings for Seamus, but it is a house of cards. You hate any wind because it would send his lies and his manipulations flat against the ground. And what you hate most of all is that I am right.”
“Enough,” Anton declared. “You will not come between us. Soon, nothing will ever hurt us again.”
A tendril twisted around Takashi’s neck and squeezed. Unable to hold himself up, he collapsed to his hands and knees, the shadows pulling ever tighter.
“Fulminis!” Katie shouted, and a streak of blue lightning soared over Takashi.
With a wave of his hand, Anton brought up an invisible shield, and the lightning bolt crashed against it. Blue sparks cascaded down. As Katie continued to blast the blot forth from her wand, it brightened the hallway.
The shadows lessened. As the light was pouring over Takashi, the tendrils couldn’t keep their strength. He broke free of them.
Katie was panting from the effort of maintaining her spell, and Takashi could feel how she was pulling power from him. They wouldn’t last like this.
