This man was behind it all.
My smile stretched wider. “Welcome to womanhood, Dracula. You’re about to get fucked.”
Seeing the unbridled rage on his face, I burst out laughing.
Other than my laughter, the room was eerily silent. An oppressive silence. The Beast had heard me, and she was imagining all the ways she would make me pay for my insolence.
“Bring it, Beast,” I muttered, waving a hand.
Shadows suddenly danced around Dracula, sparks flaring out behind him. “I’ll show you the power of my Beast,” he snarled, lifting a lacy ruffled hand like a badass.
I squared my shoulders, ready for absolutely anything. My mother had banked everything on helping me become exponentially more powerful than her.
If she had been able to blind Dracula’s Beast…I would skin it alive.
Chapter 6
Samael ruined my fun, holding up a hand to stop Dracula from giving me the hug I knew he had wanted to deliver. Dracula visibly shuddered before rounding on Samael with a demanding glare.
“She’s been a particular pain in my ass, and I would take great satisfaction from killing the daughter of my captor. But if I can hold my vengeance in check, so can you.”
Dracula growled. “My Beast’s vengeance trumps yours, devil.” There was a hint of warning in his tone.
Samael grimaced but nodded. “I did not waste years of planning so you could get your rocks off in five minutes.” Dracula’s jaw tightened at that. “Even though she is not a vampire, I think I know a way to make this still work. Perhaps even better. To have your cake and eat it too.”
His tone was cooperative but definitely not submissive. They weren’t friends. I wondered if I could use that.
Dracula turned to him, looking guardedly pensive. “Oh?”
Samael nodded.
“And what do you propose?” Dracula asked, sounding curious. Samael leaned close, murmuring into his ear for a moment. Then he leaned back, waiting. Dracula looked like he’d just felt a questionably dangerous tummy rumble. Then he began shaking his head, smirking as if calling out Samael’s bluff. “I should very much like to see this. I will play along.”
The two turned to look at me as Samael spoke. “I’ll need to get close.”
“Step right up, Sammy,” I said, allowing my magic to crackle down my arms and fists like an electric current. I was confident that I wouldn’t like whatever Samael had suggested, but for Dracula to doubt it?
That made me expect something decidedly worse, and my imagination began to run wild with possible attacks he might use.
In all my scenarios, I hadn’t expected a tag team.
Dracula’s will suddenly struck me with a screaming, unceasing, gale force wind so that I had to lean forward in order to remain upright and keep my balance. I was so focused on not falling down that I failed to notice the skeletons suddenly swarming towards me. They hit me in an avalanche of bones, swarming over me to grab at my arms and legs, my hair and my jacket, gripping anything they could get their necromantic little digits on.
And Dracula’s perpetual blast of force—like a vampiric leaf-blower on steroids—raged on, not affecting the skeletons in the slightest. Only me.
Panic overtook me as I visualized being buried alive beneath their collective mass—kind of like when you woke up in the middle of the night, freaking the hell out because your sheets were all tangled up, firmly restraining you as securely as a straightjacket.
I freaked the hell out.
My angelic wings of ephemeral smoke and fog suddenly erupted out from my back, somehow solid enough to slice a row of the skeletons entirely in half.
Then I spread my wings wide—grateful to see that Dracula’s will slipped harmlessly through them like they were made of screen rather than them billowing out like a parachute. With a hoarse roar, I snapped them forward in a concussive clap, volleying his power back in some way that I didn’t consciously understand.
But it worked.
The force doubled back on him with a thump that shattered glasses on the table, sending him skidding back into the piano as he gritted his teeth, glaring at me. The very walls suddenly began to quake, rattle, and roll as Dracula’s Beast figuratively rolled up her sleeves to take a turn at exterminating the winged vermin causing her host harm.
My fight with her would take place solely on the magical spectrum since she didn’t have a corporeal body, so I needed to conserve my power.
But keeping the skeletons at bay was consuming all my attention, their grabby hands preventing me from simply flying a safe distance away.
So I called upon my Silvers.
Silver blades erupted out from between the fingers of my fists so that each hand sported twin, feather-light claws as long as my forearm.
The White Rose was ready to wield her Silver thorns.
And I began tearing through the skeletal horde, slicing and spinning my way clear from those closest to me, regaining some room to move. I was thankful there wasn’t much resistance. Their bones were so old that my claws ripped right through them—or maybe my Silvers were powerful enough for their density not to matter. Either way, they fell like reaped wheat all around me. I gained back enough room to use my wings, and abruptly slammed the left wing down like a shield as I used the right wing like a spear to impale a trio of skeletons.
As the skeletons fell, broke, or were sliced in two, the embers and sparks holding their bones together bloomed up into the air like a cyclone of fiery will-o’-the-wisps. Luckily, none of them burned me. I was screaming as I spun, bobbed, stabbed, tore and even stomped on my foes.
Their assault finally relented and I stood there panting, glaring at the heaps of dismantled femurs, tibias, and rib bones. I glanced down to see that a skull adorned one of the claws on either hand, and that they were silently screaming at me, their teeth rattling and clicking—still alive.
I lifted my head to look Dracula in the eyes as I kissed one of the skulls on the forehead. Then I slowly turned to look at Samael as I kissed the other skull on the forehead.
Then I let my Silver magic flow over each skull, encasing them in liquid metal. The skulls stopped trying to speak—perhaps unable to—and I lowered my hands to let them fall to the floor with heavy, metallic clangs.
Then I bent down and scooped up an errant rib bone. I hefted it in my palm. “Women, right?” I asked the two stupefied men, smiling. “God really dropped the ball on that decision, didn’t he? Should have stuck with the dirt recipe.”
I sensed movement in my peripheral vision and flung the rib bone like a throwing knife.
It sunk into the eye socket of a skeleton who had been attempting to sneak up on me. It also pinned him into the wall, shattering through the back of his skull. He struggled desperately to dislodge the rib of his fellow skeletal brother, hissing all the while.
I noticed the blood slaves meekly sweeping up the bones into neat piles and waving their hands over them. Sparks fell from their fingers to fall over the bones, and they suddenly began to twitch and move, rebuilding themselves into fully-functioning skeletons with new embers and sparks for ligaments. I narrowed my eyes. So the blood slaves were going to be a problem.
Because they were obviously necromantic field medics of some kind.
“Enough games,” Dracula snarled. I felt the pressure in the air suddenly drop—not having even noticed it during my fight—its sudden absence felt like the ground had just fallen out from beneath my boots.