She dropped to the ground, crawling on her stomach, using her elbows to propel herself across the floor between two columns of ice to get into a better position for attack. She came up on her knees behind a large ice formation, her gaze fixed on her target. It took her a couple of tense moments to quiet her shaking hands. She’d been afraid many times in her life, but always—
always
—her body was as steady as a rock. Facing this hideous apparition, not knowing what it was or how to kill it, was quite frankly terrifying.
He is very dangerous, especially now when he is filled with the blood of an ancient.
Traian’s voice was calm in spite of the ghastly creature tormenting him.
He is very angry with me because I killed his master, Gallent.
Joie stared at the hideous thing closely now that she could see more of it, grateful for the steadying sound of Traian’s voice in her head. The creature was tall and emaciated, the skin shrunken around its skull, almost as if it were dead. Tufts of hair stood straight out, a curious gray-white color, while the rest of the hair hung in oily, twisted ropes. He gulped down the blood, smearing it on his lips and stained teeth, all the while making growling noises in his throat. Definitely more animal than man.
My family always warned me if I hung out underground too long I could end up with a troll. At the risk of seeming shallow, I have to say he isn’t very handsome and doesn’t appeal at all to me.
She was rather proud of the fact that she managed to sound amused instead of slightly hysterical, which was exactly how she felt.
Her hand went up to the back of her neck, sliding down between her shoulder blades in a well-practiced move, and came out with one of the knives she always carried.
The creature lifted his head alertly and looked around the large gallery with suspicious eyes. Joie froze, remaining motionless, hardly daring to breathe, praying her brother and sister wouldn’t make a sound. They were still safe in the twisted tunnel, but Jubal would be worried by now. The cold air rushed through the chamber and touched Traian and the creature with icy fingers. Immediately Lamont caught at one of the stakes pinning his victim to the ice floe, pushing at it viciously.
“None of your tricks, ancient one. Your blood belongs to us now. The others will be back soon with a victim to force you to do our bidding. You are far too weak to resist.”
Joie closed her eyes against the ripple of pain on Traian’s face. She swallowed bile and forced air through her lungs.
What is he?
He is vampire. The undead. And there are several more. You must get your family out before the others return.
Traian watched his tormentor intently. The vampire leaned close to the gaping wound in Traian’s neck, his breath a sickly green vapor as he licked at the blood with a thick, dark tongue. “I just might kill you instead. A stake through the heart for what you did to my master.” He lifted a lethal-looking stake over his head and gave a maniacal laugh.
Vampires are difficult to kill. You will only get one chance. Go for his heart
.
Joie didn’t dare hesitate. She didn’t want to lose her nerve, or risk waiting and allowing the terrible creature to kill Traian. She threw the knife with deadly accuracy. It hummed as it rocketed across the chamber and buried itself deep in the vampire’s chest. The creature screamed, the sound cracking the ice so that sharp daggers broke from the high ceiling and rained down like deadly missiles. Joie flung her body against Traian’s, in an effort to protect him from the falling ice. The vampire went down hard, thrashing wildly, the sounds echoing through the cavern, and then there was sudden silence. Once again the sound of water was overloud in the chamber.
Joie moved back slowly, slipping a second knife from the scabbard on her calf. “That didn’t look so difficult to me.” She drew in a couple of deep, shuddering breaths and managed a small, tentative smile. “If you want, I’ll give you a lesson or two.”
“What took you so long?” Traian asked.
She made her way cautiously around him, kicking aside the bigger chunks of ice. “Bad directions. You know how traffic in these places can be.” She leaned close to study one of the stakes slicing through his shoulder to hold him to the wall. “I hate to point this out to you, but you’re in a bit of a mess. What was all that he-man macho crap telling me to stay away? If you ask me, you’re in serious need of rescuing.”
Joie! Answer me now,
Jubal demanded.
I’m good. You’d better come in here,
she assured him. How was she going to explain any of this to him?
Traian arched an eyebrow. His skin appeared pale, and he was clearly weak from loss of blood. Unattended wounds from a recent battle leeched away more of his precious life fluid. He shook uncontrollably, unable to maintain his body’s temperature. His hair was black and matted with blood. “I am certain I would have thought of something. He has friends. They will be returning soon, and when they see him, they are not going to be happy. And if I do not incinerate his body immediately, he will rise again.”
“Lovely thought,” Joie said and turned to keep a wary eye on the repulsive corpse. “Lucky for you I travel with a doctor. My sister Gabrielle is quite mad, always peering into microscopes and lecturing us about how we’re parasites on earth, but she does have certain skills.”
Jubal entered, coming in low, gun in his fist, his features hard and determined. Gabrielle peered into the chamber and gave a soft cry when she saw Traian’s bloody body. Immediately she started across the floor to him, but Jubal caught her arm, halting her.
“Explain.” A single word. A command.
Joie did so quickly, stumbling over the word
vampire
. The creature lay on the floor, looking foul and scary, but her brother hadn’t seen his teeth tearing into Traian’s neck as she had. She pressed her lips together, watching Jubal closely.
“We have to hurry, Jubal,” Gabrielle said. “He can’t stay like that. He needs medical attention right now.”
Joie noticed Traian didn’t attempt to plead his case to either of her siblings, he was conserving energy and leaving her to do the explanations.
Gabrielle made the first move, her compassionate nature getting the better of her. She pushed past Jubal and, carefully avoiding looking at the vampire, stepped right up to Traian, studying the wicked stakes pinning him to the wall.
“You do know the strangest people, Joie,” she murmured softly. “I don’t even want to ask where you met him.”
Does everyone in your family have the same weird sense of humor?
Joie nodded.
Pretty much. We’ve had to find humor in everything to get by. It’s that or cry. Laughing is better.
Gabrielle frowned and stepped closer. “I’m going to touch this. I’m sorry if it hurts you.” Her fingers probed gently around the wound in his shoulder where the stake had gone through his body. “Jubal, you’ll have to pull these out. They go all the way through and are buried pretty deep into the ice.”
“If I pull out the stake, is he going to bleed to death?” Jubal inquired. He had followed Gabrielle into the middle of the chamber, but stopped beside the vampire, crouching down to study the undead. “This guy is twitching. I don’t think he’s dead.”
“Twist the knife in deeper and cut out the heart. That will buy us a little more time,” Traian suggested.
Jubal’s gaze jumped to his face. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, he’s going to rise again and soon. The only way to kill one permanently is to incinerate the heart.” Traian closed his eyes, took a breath and slammed his body forward against the stakes holding him.
Blood oozed around each of the stakes and Gabrielle jumped back, nearly tripping over Joie. “Don’t! You’re going to make it worse. Jubal, you have to help us.”
“You have to cut the heart out of his body and do not get any of his blood on you. It acts as an acid and burns through flesh and eventually bone.”
Jubal’s eyes met Traian’s.
“If you cannot,” Traian continued calmly, “then your sister must. That blood will eat through the blade and he will be free.”
“I’ll do it, Jubal,” Joie said, her stomach churning madly. She wasn’t certain she could find the courage to touch the hideous creature, not now that he was twitching.
“Like hell,” Jubal said and grasped the hilt of Joie’s knife, glancing back at Traian, over his shoulder. “But you had better be telling the truth. If you lay one finger on my sisters, I’ll shoot you right between the eyes.”
Sickened, Joie looked away from the black thick goo bubbling up around the blade of the knife to look once more at Traian.
“We have to get the stakes out of him one at a time,” Gabrielle said. “I think we can do it, Joie. As soon as we do, I’ll apply pressure and you’ll have to find something to pack the wound to stop the bleeding. He can’t afford any more blood loss.”
“You’ll have to pack it with a mixture of my saliva and any dirt you can find.”
Gabrielle made a face, and pointed to her pack. “The first-aid kit is in my pack, Joie, but I don’t know how we’re going to get him to the surface.”
I think he’s in so much pain, Joie, that he’s delusional. Saliva is not going to save him.
Joie looked around the cave. “If there’s dirt, it’s under fifty feet of solid ice. It will have to be my shirt.” She opened her jacket, stripped quickly down to her Patagonia tee shirt and quickly cut it into strips before retrieving the first aid kit.
When she would have put the cream onto the material, impatience crossed Traian’s face. “I told you what to do, Joie.”
“Do you really want your saliva on the strips?” Caught between Gabrielle and Traian, Joie didn’t know what to do.
“Yes. My saliva will heal me faster. Hurry,” Traian advised. “Or we are all going to die. Vampires are very dangerous and extremely hard to kill. You were lucky.”
Joie hastily donned her jacket, zipping it up tight, and shoved the strips of cloth into his hand, his urgency catching at her. Clenching her teeth, she grasped the stake in his shoulder. “Are you ready for this?” The question was more for herself than for him. She glanced at Gabrielle, who nodded.
“Just do it.”
Her stomach lurched as her fingers curled around the thick stake. She closed her eyes, took a breath and yanked. Traian grunted, his face going white. Tiny lines appeared around his mouth. Joie felt the stake slide a couple of inches out, so it was no longer stuck in the ice behind him, but it was still through his shoulder.
“Jubal, I need you.” She looked over her shoulder at her brother.
“I’m trying,” Jubal bit out between his teeth.
The moment she saw what he rolled across the floor, she was afraid she was going to vomit. A blackened, shriveled heart left a trail of smoking acid across the ice, etching a trail of dark gooey liquid into the floor of the chamber. Jubal stood up slowly, a grim expression on his face. He tossed the hilt of Joie’s blade after the rolling heart. The metal was pitted and breaking just as Traian had warned what would happen.
“Did you get any of it on you?” Traian asked. “It will burn right to the bone.”
Jubal shook his head. “I used her knife and mine to carve it out of his chest.” There was distaste in Jubal’s voice. He moved Joie out of his way and grasped the stake with both hands and yanked hard.
Blood spurted, but Gabrielle pressed her palms over the wound hard. “Stuff that strip of material into the wound. Did you put antibiotic cream on it? He needs blood as quickly as possible.”
Joie held the material up to Traian’s mouth, ignoring Gabrielle’s gasp. She stuffed the rag into his shoulder. Traian broke out into a sweat.
“There will be others. Try to go for the heart. You will not kill them unless the heart is incinerated. They are masters of illusion. They can shape-shift. Do not look them directly in the eyes and beware of any pattern. They can trap you with their voice. If one of you becomes trapped, break off all connection and no matter how difficult, leave them. You will not be able to save them.”
Jubal grasped the second stake and yanked hard. Traian slumped forward before he could catch himself. The strain against his legs had to be excruciating. He gasped and caught Jubal’s shoulder to steady himself.
“Keep talking,” Jubal advised as Joie pressed the strip to Traian’s mouth while Gabrielle applied pressure to the wound. “Tell us more.”
Traian took a breath and righted himself. “I am sorry. They took a large amount of my blood and I am very weak.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Jubal pointed out, his hands already grasping the third stake while his sisters attended Traian’s shoulder. “Just tell us what to expect.”
“Wounds will slow them down, but not stop them. Attacking the heart buys you a few minutes at most, but it isn’t permanent.”
He indicated with his chin the blackened heart. To Joie’s horror the shriveled organ rocked. With every movement, the vampire stirred, those long talons slowly unfolding, the bony fingers beckoning toward the heart.
Jubal swore. “Do bullets stop them?”
“They’ll slow them down. You can’t allow that heart near him.”
Jubal yanked the third stake free and crossed the ice floor with long, deliberate strides. “Damn it, die already,” he snapped as he slammed the stake through the middle of the pulsating organ, pinning it to the floor of the ice cave.
The vampire’s mouth gaped open in a silent scream. He bared blood-stained, pointed teeth as he expelled his foul breath in a kind of promise of retaliation.
“Never show them emotion. They feed off of fear. They want adrenaline-laced blood. It gives them a bigger rush,” Traian continued.
Jubal glared at him. “You might have considered the danger to my sister before you decided to lure her down here,” he pointed out, grasping the last stake in Traian’s leg. “How the hell could you live through this?”
“Just get it out,” Traian instructed. “We really have to hurry.”
“Do what he says, Jubal.” Joie caught the sense of urgency emanating from Traian. Little white lines were etched around his perfectly sculpted mouth. “Vampire babe is beginning to find his legs.” To her horror, the heart, even with the stake through the middle of it, was vibrating, wiggling back and forth as if slowly emerging from the rotted flesh. “Hurry—we may have a little problem with handsome. He seems to be coming back to life.”