Page 45 of Peacemaker

For the first time in a long time, I longed for the sun. The darkness was no longer kind. It was no longer mine.

The city was full of blood and death and tears. Everything was magnified—the sounds, the sights, the scents—and I knew the humans were feeling it even more than I was.

They were stunned and overcome. Some of them were dying, some were dead, and some were turning. Humans stared from windows, their faces white blobs of terror, and watched me and mine try to regain some control of their world.

A woman rushed from her house, screaming, and flung herself atop a fallen man.

And the man they’d bitten—her husband, I figured—began to twitch.

The streets and tiny yards were littered with twitching bodies.

I released my rage in a hoarse scream and turned in circles, searching for rifters I could not see.

They were gone. But more would come. Many more. The damage a few of them had done was enormous. If hundreds of them poured into the city, the city would be destroyed. How could a few hunters and supernaturals defend the humans against dozens of stronger, faster, twisted vampires who could go inside homes? Who were immune to silver?

I didn’t know.

The huge horror of our reality began to really sink in.

And the humans…

The humans were my people as much as the supernaturals were my people, and their pain was my pain.

“Trinity.” Clayton’s voice was gentle when I turned to look at him. “We have to give them the true death.”

I nodded but didn’t move.

Shane was already busy, his blades flashing as he jogged from body to body, making sure they stayed down.

“How could those few have killed so many?” I asked. But it was more a statement of shocked realization than a question.

A wailing woman, huddling protectively over one of the bodies, began to scream when Shane approached her.

“Go away,” she begged. “You can’t take my boy. You can’t have my boy.”

Shane murmured something I didn’t catch and glanced uneasily my way.

“No,” the woman said. “He’s not dead. See? He’s moving. Please don’t kill him. Please don’t kill my boy.”

I shuddered, and then, with reluctance in every step, I went to help Shane.

“But why?” the woman cried when I drew a blade. I left Silverlight inside me. She wasn’t needed. Not then. “He’s still my Josh. He’s still in there. Can’t you see?”

I knelt beside her, and Shane and Clayton walked quietly away to tend to the other turned humans, some with family beside them, some alone.

“He’s a vampire now,” I said, gently, though I felt like screaming. “And he’s suffering.”

New vampires were feral and hungry. That was all they were. Without an older vampire to develop him, Josh would likely die anyway. But if he managed to survive, to “age,” he would kill anyone or anything he could grab so he could feed. He needed the immediate and sustained exchange of blood and the care of his maker—or at least an older and capable proxy—before it was too late and his baby vampire brain was twisted into something black and rotten.

Josh wasn’t in there. But his grieving mother saw only her son, and she did not want to let him go.

A little while earlier, she’d have demanded the death of a vampire without thinking twice—but now it was her child who lay upon the street, and she would never again look at a vampire with quite as much hatred, disgust, and disdain.

Bright sides.

“I’ll take care of him. He’s always been such a good boy. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Her smile was wide and terrible. “I’ll tend him, don’t you worry.”

“He’s…” My voice broke. “He’s suffering. You have to let him go.” I did not want to end him with her begging me not to. I would if I had to, but I didn’t want to.