“I can do this,” she replied again, this time certain that Cyrus would understand that she meant it. She had understood him, she had seen it in his eyes, and he had to trust her just as much as she trusted him. With her mind so intent on finding Eunice and stopping Constance from doing any more damage, she could keep to the task at hand and move toward the objective without losing control.
“If I can hold myself together enough to put you on your ass while we’re both naked,” she grinned, “then I can do anything.”
Cyrus smiled at her sudden bravado in the face of what they were about to walk into and with Marcus standing in the room overhearing her.
“You’re incredible, Sunday. Did I ever tell you that?”
“You don’t have to.” Looking up to Marcus who was smiling at them through eyes wherein the tell-tale yellow tint of the wolf inside, readying for a fight, emerged, Sunday continued, “Now, we have some vampires to interrogate.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The wolves didn’t bother being invited in. They just kicked in the door while Sunday stood on the front porch behind them. Needless to say, their entrance didn’t go over very well. Within a second of the door crashing open, the two vampires inside the house flew onto the hunters with such velocity that Sunday hardly blinked and they were suddenly there, clawing and hissing with open, fanged mouths and climbing the werewolves. The vampire on Cyrus was female and could’ve appeared no more menacing than a high school cheerleader had her skin not turned ash-grey and her eyes not turned blood red while she gripped Cyrus’ massive height like a spider with too many legs to keep track of. The one on Marcus was male, but not built much larger than his female counterpart. He too, however, appeared monstrous with his vampire ghastliness in full effect. Both wolves flung themselves about, trying to break the bodies of the creatures who were squeezing them in vises made of dead human flesh. Cyrus smashed himself into a wall, knocking down portraits that hung in large frames. Marcus threw himself onto a coffee table that broke apart under his weight.
All the while, Sunday stood in the doorway watching. Mere seconds had passed, but given the abnormally quick reactions of both the vampires and the werewolves, the fighting was bloodier and more vicious than it otherwise ought to have been. The aggression latched onto her skin and demanded that she allow it to penetrate. Sunday, resolved against it, pushed it away and kept watching the fights taking place to find an opportunity to do something, anything, to protect the werewolves and bring the vampires down. They had to stop them, immobilize them, but not kill them.
Cyrus’ eyes were burning with irises of fire. His face contorted as he grabbed his vampire around her throat and whipped her body into the ground like a broken doll that he was intent on smashing into a million pieces. Dazed, she fell once he’d let her go, and Cyrus proceeded to pin her to the ground with his boot under her chin, making it so that if she even pretended to gasp for air, he would crush her throat.
Seeing his partner in distress, Marcus’ vampire kicked the werewolf in the back of the knee and launched himself at Cyrus, flashing before Sunday’s eyes from one side of the room to the other as though he had just teleported. He grabbed Cyrus by the hair and pulled his head back, threatening to tear the flesh from his throat with his fangs.
“Stop!” Sunday yelled, her voice awful with demand.
The vampire turned and his black-blooded eyes fixed on Sunday’s. Sunday’s eyes clouded over as they did when she rose to the seat of her Incarnate power. In that half-second of quiet, Marcus pulled a broken leg off the table that he’d had smashed and lunged at the male vampire with it, stabbing him straight through the heart. The vampire was seconds from ripping into Cyrus’ flesh, and though it wouldn’t have killed him, it would have seriously maimed the wolf. They wanted the vampires alive so they could question them, but taking on one between the two wolves proved a better ratio than Marcus taking on both of the vampires alone with the Incarnate waiting in the wings.
The vampire Cyrus held underfoot writhed with the feral rage of a wounded rabid dog. Sunday leered at her with such disdain that the vampire froze entirely, her face dropping with such shock and awe that she would have lost the words to speak had she tried to do so, even without Cyrus’ boot crushing her larynx. The time it had taken the male vampire to threaten Cyrus was all the time that Sunday had needed to harness her Incarnate potential. She stood with full control of her body and the powers that swarmed around and swam within her. No one was taking down Cyrus in her presence, and the vampire wasn’t going to get out alive if she didn’t give the werewolves what they wanted.
Cyrus and Marcus both watched as sparks crackled at the tips of Sunday’s fingers. A gust of wind blew in from behind her and mussed the hair on her head. As it subsided, the Incarnate walked up deliberately to where the three creatures were. She bent down toward the vampire, and grabbing the dead woman’s face with her hand, Sunday stared into her eyes and bade her to speak to them.
“You will speak truthfully,” Sunday commanded, “or I will tear out the dead heart from your chest and let you watch as I stab it through with a toothpick.”
Cyrus’ leg jerked as he began to release the female vamp from her bond, but Sunday put her free hand on his calf and urged it to press into the woman’s neck deeper. The vampire’s eyes grew large at Sunday’s threat, and she coughed, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of her mouth, which she sought in vain to recapture. As best as she could manage, she nodded her head, never letting her red eyes off of Sunday.
“This man’s foot is going to stay right where it is until it’s your turn to answer my questions,” Sunday informed her captive corpse. “You understand me, I can tell. And every time I’m done hearing your answers, he’s going to put it right back where it is. You pay attention to this part most carefully. If my friends and I don’t like what you’re saying, you’re going to wish you had died a long, long time ago.”
Marcus stepped back and Sunday gave him the time he needed to rip another leg off of the broken table and return to stand over her side. With Cyrus crushing the wounded vamp, and Marcus hinging on paralyzing her with the stake, she was helpless to struggle in the face of the Incarnate. Sunday bent in closer until the vampire’s face was an inch from hers. She wanted the vampire to tremble in the wake of her power. With every breath, Sunday inhaled the stench of preserved corpse that the vampire wore as her signature perfume.
“The witch Constance is familiar to you, is she not?” Sunday asked.
Cyrus eased his boot off enough that the vampire could nod her head slightly.
“What is it that she wants from you?”
“You’re nothing to me, you witch.”
At the insult, Sunday grabbed the vampire’s hair and smashed her head into the floor beneath it. The vampire did nothing but attempt a broken, gurgling laugh in response.
“You think you’re going to kill me?” she asked, her fangs pricking into her bloodstained lips. “You kill me,” she threatened, “and you get nothing.”
Cyrus put his hand to Marcus’ chest to hold him back from shoving the stake into her chest. Sunday looked up at them and smiled. The devilishness of it sent a shiver through their spines. Whatever she had become in the transformation from woman into Incarnate was altogether hideous. The vampire didn’t need to know who she was—what she was—to understand the trouble she was in. In the face of a nothing vampire, Sunday had absolutely nothing to fear. She wouldn’t touch her. She wouldn’t touch Cyrus or his werewolf friend. If that creature dared, she would be put down the way she should have been long ago.
Sunday took her hand, and again, held the vampire’s face in it, squeezing her cheeks, and pushing her chin into her palm. She moved her face close to the vampire’s again until she could smell the blood that churned in her cursed stomach from the monster’s last meal. The stench of raw flesh filled Sunday’s nose and lungs. It was nauseating, but Sunday didn’t have the time or the patience to be sick with the rot. Instead, she focused on what she needed to hear from the vampire. The woman had to tell her something, anything that would lead them to Constance and her big plans. Without the warehouse, they didn’t have a lead on where to turn. If this attempt failed, then they would have to fall onto the nest at the funeral home. There would likely be mundane casualties, innocents, who had no place in the middle of battles between angry god-like beings, men who had been cursed to live lives of wild beasts, and hollow, bloodsucking creatures who existed solely for the purpose of eradicating the human race. Intent on drawing the truth from the vampire’s mind, Sunday forced her will upon the rot of flesh she held.
“You are going to tell me now what the warlock named Constance wants with your nest. You will do this and I will let you live your pathetic excuse for a life.”
The vampire’s body eased under Cyrus’ foot, and he stepped back from her body to release her. The woman lay motionless in Sunday’s hands, her gaze dreamy and under the spell of the Incarnate’s words and will. A rush of lust poured from the vampire’s body. Thinking nothing of her own mortality, she moaned and batted heavy lashes at Sunday.
“The witch was employed by our nest for some time when our master discovered that she was attempting to raise a demon in his town,” she purred. The vampire’s eyes rolled to the back of her head in ecstasy, and she moved her hand to cup her breast over the thin t-shirt that she wore. She arched her back into it and pinching her nipple, she groaned. “Our master is a beautiful man and he is kind and generous. Our master–”
“I don’t care about your fuck buddy, you leech!” Marcus griped, “Tell us how to find the witch!”
The vampire opened her eyes again and smiled at Marcus, licking her lips with a blood-dripping tongue as she drew her eyes to his. Thinking of her master under Sunday’s compulsion had turned the once-furious vampire into a horny beast. She was gruesome in her eroticism. Sunday pulled the vampire’s face back to meet her gaze. She would rather not be in the mind of a vampire, and Sunday was trying to avoid having to do it at all cost. The intensity she brought to her magic was telling of her every wish not to delve into that pit of too-long-lived monster.
“Tell me where we can find the witch Constance. She plans to raise a demon tonight.”
“No one will raise a demon in this town.” The vampire smiled, moving her hand from her breast to the V of her groin and rubbed herself over the black fabric of her pants. She was thinking of the master again. The master vampire evidently maintained a strong sensual bond with his flock of children, and this one, in particular, was feeling the agony of sexual arousal at the mere thought of him in the abandon of her uninhibited will under Sunday’s command. In the lack of his presence, the woman turned her attentions to Sunday, nestling into her strong grip and looking into her eyes like a demon of hunger and need.
Inches away from Sunday’s face, the vampire exhaled an unneeded cool breath on Sunday’s lips. The taste of it made Sunday’s lips curl into a scowl.
“Do you mean to tell us that your master has plans to intervene with her?”
The unmistakable fantasy of her bloodletting brethren falling upon Constance during an imagined ritual of demon raising had entered her mind, and unwittingly, she was sharing her thoughts with Sunday.
“I would be there now if it wasn’t for you here with me,” the woman cooed. She brought her hand from between her legs to Sunday’s face and caressed it.
To see it made Cyrus’ blood boil. He reached for the stake and yanked it out of Marcus’ hand. As Sunday willed the woman to tell her where the ritual was taking place, Cyrus was already stepping to her side, ready to dig it into the vampire’s chest. She had crossed the line by touching Sunday. If Sunday meant to leave the vampire alive, then Cyrus was going to be the one to do her in, and he would revel in the retribution.
“They are headed to the reservoir now,” she answered. The vampire licked Sunday’s cheek, streaking a long, bloody print from the edge of her mouth to her temple. “Parr Shoals Reservoir is where the warlock said she’d be.” She laughed to think back on her vision of tearing Constance’s head off as she spoke her ritual words. “She thinks we’re going to help her, but she’s so very wrong, princess.”
As she hissed her last word, Cyrus was on her with the stake buried in her chest. As he twisted it, the vampire’s bones cracked. Blood spurt from the wound onto his face. He didn’t watch as she suffered through the final minutes of her undead existence. Instead, he locked onto Sunday’s grey eyes. The monster squealed and howled beneath him, thrashing as she held onto the stake, trying to pull it out of herself. Cyrus’ face twisted into something awful and terrible as his stern hand dug the stake deeper. The only thing that stopped him from impaling her any further was the floorboards beneath her.
“We’re decapitating them and burning the house,” he finally said when the body lay motionless between them. “Then we’re headed to the reservoir. You ready for this?”
He met nothing but the eager smile of the Incarnate, ready to rid them of some vampires and take on the warlock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Parr Shoals Reservoir in Fairfield County is a nine-mile long lake that houses water fed from the last dam on the Broad River before it breaks into Columbia. The dam was built for hydroelectric power purposes, and while it was about an hour’s drive from Oak Grove where Constance lived, it was the closest body of water that housed enough potential energy to feed her casting. Along with the power that she’d sucked from the coven over time, Sunday’s unwitting influx of potential, and the dam and Eunice as conductors for more energy, Constance was dangerously close to raising her Hell-bound friend.
As they headed out of the vampires’ house, Neal and Angel called with an update: two vampires were on the move from the funeral parlor on Millwood, and they were headed toward Interstate 26 heading west. The female vampire had said that she had been meant to go to the reservoir with her nest to stop Constance, and they were betting that the vampires the wolves were following were heading to the same destination. Constance had tipped off the vampires to her location in hopes that they would act as watchdogs while she went about the ceremony, but she was mistaken. Demon raising not only posed a threat to the mundane community, it posed a threat to the vampires too. Whatever her reasons, she had confided in them and sought their help to enact her spell. Had Eunice’s life not hung in the balance, Sunday might have stepped aside from the action and let the vampires pounce on Constance’s party freely, but as it stood, Sunday was involved.