Easy. Speed and surprise would be the best method. Zack spotted a place higher up the barn, where a few boards had fallen away and left a gap. Quick and quiet, he scaled the side of the building and lifted himself up onto the gap.
Just below him was a loft that overlooked the rest of the barn. A dead man was staring off to the side. Less than three feet away from him, two vampires were fucking as if they were theonly creatures left on the planet. Their moans and slaps of flesh meeting were growing louder. One was shouting about how close an orgasm was.
Zack dropped onto the loft beside them as soft as a cat stalking a mouse. Swiftly, he moved forward and buried his dagger into the heart of the vamp on top. The other one noticed him, started to sputter, but Zack yanked his dagger free of the first, then slit the second’s throat before shoving his dagger deep in his chest. The silver burned the vampire’s heart out, and his skin grayed.
The first vampire was starting to recover, the wound healing, so Zack pinned her to the floor and stabbed her again. He snarled and twisted the blade deeper into her chest, ensuring that the silver burned out her heart. Her color drained faster, but somethingclickedinside Zack when she was truly dead. Both of the vampires had had bursts of the desire to live. Somehow, he felt when they died creeping through his hand from the dagger.
“Hey, you two finished up there?” someone called out. “Gail brought us some prime fresh meat!”
Introspect later. Zack pulled his dagger free and slunk off to a shadow. The blood on his blade seeped into the runes and turned the light to a deeper red.Nope. Not analyzing that either. Let’s see where the next one is.
He crept to the shadowy side of the loft and slipped forward to the edge to gain a better view of the party below. Three vampires were feeding on a single victim whose eyes were growing glassier by the second. Another two were standing beside the open back doors of a black panel van. Inside it were four bound and blindfolded humans. Their fear was a beacon, a bright distraction in the mess of the party. Zack put them out of mind and focused on the vampires. They were the priority. Once he killed them, he’d care about the humans.
Another vampire—mouth, chin, and clothes covered in blood—was dancing by himself beside a phone blaring out music. And a final one was roaming out from underneath the loft, shouting upward again. “Hey! We’re not going to save any for you!”
The final vampire spotted Zack. Her eyes went wide in surprise, and she opened her mouth to shout.
Zack dropped to the ground and sank his blade into her chest before she had the chance to speak. He snarled as he slammed her down and held the blade in place. Her skin began to gray. When he pulled his blade out, a thin red mist of energy followed upward and sank into the runes.That’s new.
The remaining six vampires stopped what they were doing and hissed at him. They spread their hands like each finger was tipped with a claw, but nails weren’t a threatening weapon to him. The boldest of them launched herself toward Zack.
But she was clumsy, slow, and telegraphing her strike. Zack slipped inside her attack, knocked her arm farther off target, and sank his blade into her heart. Instantly, the magic in her faded and abandoned her body.Four down, five to go.
He had been waiting for this fight for his whole life. Training. Preparing.
The five still standing rushed toward him.
He grinned.
His new strength made snapping bones and crushing flesh easy. As he relied upon his supernatural speed, they seemed to move like a video on buffer, fits and bursts but nothing that caught up to where he was. Another dropped; another heart burned out by his silver.Five down.
Everything he had ever practiced had never felt so simple. He became living ice, cold and sharp and brutal. He broke one vampire’s head clean off its body. Six down.
Then seven.
Eight.
The last vampire finally grasped how badly the fight was going and ran for the open barn doors while Zack was twisting his blade into the heart of his eighth kill. Before he could escape, Seamus sauntered into the light and plunged Cal’s dagger into the would-be escapee’s chest.
This was supposed to behishunt. Zack shouted, “He wasmine!”
Seamus smiled at him with a warm pride Zack hadn’t seen from Thomas in years.
The rational part of Zack’s mind had gone silent during the fight. Every part of him had thrown himself into that moment. Adrenaline didn’t course through him, but the come down from action still lightly shook him. He waited for some rogue thought to ruin his moment.
The only ones that circled were demands that Seamus would pay for taking what was his.
Seamus took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and cleaned Cal’s blade. “Forgive me. I’ve had a few grueling nights myself. I wanted in on the fun.”
“Fun,” Zack repeated. The word had never felt completely wrong and right at the same time. His heart was racing in his ears.
Not my heartbeat. Zack swallowed and slowly spun toward the van. Now that he was aware of the mortals again, he could hear their breathing, pick out the individual rhythms. Could taste their fear on his tongue like a rim of salt on glass.
The burning hunger inside him dried his throat and his eyes. His trembling grew, and his knees buckled. He started to plummet toward the ground.
Seamus caught him by the arm and held him up. In a soothing voice, he said, “Our strength comes at a price.”
With his arm around Zack, Seamus guided him over to the van, where the four mortals were tied up. The effort to strugglewould take too much precious energy that he didn’t have. The lore he’d learned from his family joined the growing need for blood. Vampires needed several pints of blood a night, enough that feeding from one mortal meant killing them. Younger vampires tended to need more, but Zack had always suspected that was from a lack of knowing how to drain a victim rather than the need.
