Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) (11 page)

Jerusa pressed against Thad. He stepped in front of her, preparing to protect her, but suddenly, the blond darted toward them, his movement near impossible to track, and grabbed Thad by the throat. Jerusa started to scream, but the dark-haired man appeared next to her, snatching her up in a suffocating embrace.

“Kole. Taos.” Foster struggled to sit up. “Let them go. Please.”

The dark-haired man laughed. “This is not your concern, fledgling. It is not I that caused this blunder. The law is clear. They cannot live.”

Without a word, the blond man pulled Thad close and bit him on the neck. Thad cried out as he thrashed against the man. The blond man’s demonic blue eyes widened in rapture before he clenched them shut.

The dark-haired man smiled at Jerusa, allowing her ample time to see the fangs glistening in his mouth before he plunged them into the flesh of her neck.

Jerusa groaned as her blood filled the dark-haired man’s mouth. He swallowed greedily as his tongue lapped at the fresh falling blood. A tingling sensation, both painful and enticing, like needle pricks of lighting, erupted throughout her body. Her fingers and toes felt as though she were dipping them in icy waters. Her vision blurred.

Alicia stood in the center of the room, her hand pressed to her mouth in horror, her eyes laden with guilt and grief.

Suddenly, the dark-haired man’s mouth released her neck with a gasp and his arms sprang open, freeing her from his strangling embrace. Jerusa fell to her knees, swooning from the lack of oxygen and loss of blood. There was a commotion in the house, but it had fused with the raging storm outside to form an indistinguishable war clatter. Hot droplets of blood spattered her face. Jerusa forced open her eyes to see the dark-haired man, his head back, his arms flailing wildly, with a bloody fist extending from his chest. The fist retracted through the chest wound with a sickening slurp, and the dark-haired man crumpled at the feet of Silvanus.

“You,” is all that Jerusa was able to say before tumbling over on her side. She lay exhausted, unable to move, confined in a body that no longer obeyed her commands. She wondered if she was dead.

“Kole,” the blond man screamed, his voice overriding the thunder. He tossed Thad to the side like a piece of trash and rushed Silvanus.

The blond’s speed was impossible, turning him into a blur, but as he lunged for the attack, Silvanus vanished and reappeared five feet to the left. The blond hit the floor, but recovered in a flash, spinning back onto his feet and coming at Silvanus again.

Silvanus did not vanish this time, but instead, rushed with even greater speed to meet his attacker. Silvanus and the blond collided in the middle of the room with all the force of the storm. The blond lashed out, swinging wildly with his fists. Silvanus dodged each blow and delivered a powerful kick to the blond’s chest that sent him soaring into the wall at the far end of the room. His back crumpled the wainscoting and he sat dazed and heaving.

The dark-skinned woman near Foster was coming out of her stupor. The man that seemed forged in her likeness crouched before her, watching Silvanus with fearful eyes. A low growl permeated the night in between thunderclaps. Jerusa swayed from side to side, while the sense of disconnection evaporated. At first, she thought the growl was coming from an engine, that perhaps Thad had made it outside to his Jeep. But Thad was still face down and still.

A sob escaped Jerusa’s throat.
Please be alive
, she prayed to herself.

The growl came again, this time louder, more organic, like the growl of a wolf somehow intertwined with the grunt of a gorilla. Jerusa scanned the room and her heart went cold when she saw the look on the dark-skinned man’s face. He was no longer watching Silvanus, but instead had his eyes fastened to the body of the man that bit her — was his name Kole? — who was lying not even five feet from her.

The growl poured from the hole in Kole’s chest like an echo from a deep cavern. His pale and perfect flesh was now the greenish-gray of rot, and the blood inside his chest wound seemed to have congealed into a thick black scab. The veins in his neck and face turned black before Jerusa’s eyes.

Thunder shook the house and the lights flickered.

A deeper, more menacing growl poured from Kole, this time from his mouth, which twitched as the noise escaped. Silvanus spun on the balls of his bare feet to look at Kole, an almost childish look of confusion upon his face. The blond — Jerusa thought his name was Taos — no longer under Silvanus’s watchful eye, stood crouched as if he meant to leap into another attack, but stopped short when he noticed the spasm in Kole’s hands.

All at once, Kole opened his eyes, the orbs no longer vibrant but dry and milky, and sat up with his lips pulled back into a snarl.

A scream poured from Jerusa that was so much more than fear. It was guttural, primal, all of her natural survival instinct rushing out in a siren’s song. Lightning filled the windows, thunder shook the very earth, and the lights in the house extinguished, leaving nothing but the flickering candles by which to see.

The monstrous form of Kole shot at Jerusa like a massive spider, coming at her on all fours. Her mind ordered her to flee, but Kole’s speed seemed amplified and he grabbed her around the waist before she could react and scurried across the floor.

Jerusa’s breath came out in great, choked screams. She beat against her captor with her fist. His flesh burned beneath his clothes as though he were overcome with a great fever.

Foster was up, rushing forward on wobbling legs, calling Jerusa’s name, but the dark-skinned woman took him by the arm, pulling him back. Thad, awakened by the calamity, pressed himself into a corner and frantically looked about at the shadows surrounding him.

The creature, Kole, heaved back and forth, leaping here and there and at one point, even scurried up the wall like an insect. The erratic motion jarred Jerusa into silence, bringing her near to blacking out. She lifted her head with great effort and saw Silvanus disappearing and reappearing around the room, each time cutting off Kole’s escape. Kole hissed in anger, made a barreling rush for the window, but Silvanus reached out and caught him by the back of the neck.

Kole thrashed in Silvanus’s grip, throttling Jerusa about, smashing her against the floor and walls. Her arms and legs were broken, that much she was sure of, most of her ribs, too. A loud
crunch
sounded in her ears and then she could feel nothing.

Silvanus released Kole, who then scurried to the center of the room. He let out another growling hiss, clutched Jerusa close as though she were a slab of meat, and drove his festering teeth into the flesh of her shoulder.

The pain was immediate and fierce, no less unbearable than having molten lead pumped into her veins. Kole, no longer satisfied with just her blood, sawed his teeth back and forth, quickly pulling away with a chunk of skin and muscle. He swallowed his prize, started in for a second bite, but Silvanus caught him by the throat and lifted him from off of Jerusa. The beast screeched and sought out his feast with claw-like fingers, but Silvanus turned and tossed him out the window.

The noise of the storm seemed deafening, now that the window was shattered. Jerusa wanted to crane her neck for a better look, to watch and see if the creature, Kole, would climb back inside and try to reclaim her, but she was unable to move. Her neck was broken. She wasn’t even sure if she was breathing.

Alicia sat on the floor before her. She caressed Jerusa’s face, though Jerusa couldn’t feel it. The only thing she could feel was the raging fire from the bite wound in her shoulder as it pushed its way further into her body. If only she could scream, cry out in agony, perhaps it would bring a release.

Silvanus sat on the floor, almost right next to Alicia, and pulled Jerusa into his lap. There was something in his right hand, an object glimmering with candlelight. It passed before her face and she saw that it was a dagger.

Silvanus slid the sharp dagger across the side of Jerusa’s neck, cutting the skin.
He’s killing me
, she thought.
Putting me out of my misery
. She wanted to thank him, but she couldn’t speak. But then Silvanus pressed the dagger to his wrist and pulled the blade across his skin with a heavy yank.

The volcanic heat issuing from the bite in her shoulder pressed even further into her system. She could feel it coursing through tiny capillaries, invading her muscle tissue, even breaking through bone walls to overtake her marrow.

Silvanus sat Jerusa upright, pulled her close, and pressed his mouth to the dagger wound in her neck. He lacked the fangs that Kole had had, but his tongue caressed the flesh around the cut, coaxing the blood into his mouth.

Jerusa shuddered, but quickly realized it wasn’t her body that was shaking. A tremor overtook Silvanus with every mouthful of blood that he swallowed. He raised his wrist to Jerusa’s face and she could see that the cut was somehow smaller than it had been. She thought for a moment that she could actually see the skin zippering closed, but before she could get a second glance, Silvanus forced his wrist into her mouth.

Revulsion sprang up like a battle cry and Jerusa wished she could pull away. Silvanus’s blood fell in thick drops upon her tongue. In her mind, she knew she should be sick, should force herself to vomit, but her mouth seemed a desert and the blood the rarest of cool rains.

The blood filled her mouth, and out of reflex, Jerusa swallowed. The terrible fire consuming her from within stopped its march forward. And then she felt it pull back, recede, retreat. She swallowed again, relishing the euphoric release of pain that came with it.

Alicia fell onto her hands and knees, her back arched as though she were in pain. She clawed at her eternal prom dress, tore at her unendingly perfect hairdo. In all the time that Alicia had been with Jerusa, she had never once revealed her mortal wounds as the other ghosts so often did. But now and then, in flashes as quick as lightning, Jerusa thought she was the young girl twisted into a mangled knot, her head crushed and lopsided.

The fire in her flesh fell away faster and faster, fleeing Jerusa’s body through the wound in her neck. Clarity came to her vision. Though the room was steeped in shadow, Jerusa could count the eyelashes surrounding Thad’s bewildered eyes. Or she could focus on the tiny candle flames, turning them into blazing infernos. She could hear the strange, slow breathing of the dark-skinned duo, of Foster and even the wicked Taos, and marked how different it was from Thad’s breathing.

Alicia scratched at the floor as she shivered all over. She raised her face to the sky, her soft features twisted. Something shifted within Jerusa, as though thousands of tiny fingers were massaging her from the inside out. Her broken bones were moving, setting themselves, the fractured ends sealing together once more. The flesh of her shoulder tingled as the skin and muscle regenerated. At the end, the bite wound stitched itself shut, leaving not even the whisper of a scar.

Alicia clasped her chest and let out a scream that Jerusa couldn’t hear, but felt all the same.

Jerusa sat up and clasped Silvanus’s wrist in both of her hands, pressing it tighter to her mouth. She rolled her tongue over the cut in his wrist, mimicking his movements on her neck, and the blood seemed to heed her call. She drank in deep draughts, lost in rapture, unwilling and unable to break free. The blood sang to her, enveloped her, blotted out all pain and strife. In the blood stood every answer. The blood was the light of all creation.

When the last of the devouring fire fell from Jerusa’s neck, Silvanus yanked his wrist out of her mouth hard enough to spin her around. Jerusa lay on her stomach, panting as the blood-rapture washed away in a moment of agony. The enlightenment, the fulfillment, the peace, all of it gone like the thunder rumbling across the night sky. She wanted to weep.

Alicia sat nearby, looking at her hands, as if for the first time. A lively blush filled her cheeks and her hair was filled with luster. She looked almost alive.

Silvanus clutched his stomach. His skin had turned the color of murky waters, his once brilliant eyes seemed diminished somehow. His chest pulsated as ragged and uneven breaths fled his lungs. He clawed his way backward, as though he could escape the fire now infiltrating his blood and pulled himself into a sitting position against the wall. Black veins slithered beneath the surface of his skin like night-crawlers surfacing after the rain. He clenched his eyes shut as though willing the black veins to recede, and they actually obeyed, though not too far.

“What did you do?” Jerusa whispered, though she knew perfectly well what he had done. The answer she sought was
why
he had done it.

Silvanus started to speak, but doubled over in a spasm of pain. “You were kind to me,” he said, forcing out each word. With much effort, he pushed a smile onto his face. And then, without another word, he vanished.

Jerusa tried to stand, but a terrible cramp overtook her, dropping her back to the floor. A tidal wave of nausea hit her and in horror, she felt her bowels release. They were all watching her. The dark-skinned twins (she was sure now that they were twins), Foster, even Thad, who seemed on the verge of fainting.

“What’s happening to me?” she asked them. But it was Taos that answered.

“You’re dying,” he said, hatred seeping into every syllable.

Chapter Ten

“D
ying?” Jerusa asked.

She did not believe it, could not believe it. Her body was wracked with pain, true enough, but nothing compared to the fire that had raged within her moments ago. She was very aware of the scent of her own evacuation and she had never felt more physically dirty in all her life. But dying? No. Impossible. She was supercharged. Quickened. Alive as no person had ever been before. She could count the dust motes dancing through the candlelight, could hear the raindrops smacking the asphalt of the road at the end of the driveway.

“It is just the mortal death,” the dark-skinned woman said. Her voice was deep and seductive, like the purring of a great jungle cat.