A few yards away, he stood behind the bush with his camera. He had been tracking them for a while. Kyle had been watching Divina since the party. First, it started as a crush then it graduated to stalking. When he heard that Divina was missing he thought they were putting all that to cover their secret. A secret he couldn't reach. Kyle's eyes caught Divina and a tall muscular guy walking out of the house. Quickly he took his camera and took two quick shots.

Where are you going you two?

He took three quick clicks then zoomed in before taking four more.

Oh, Nice costumes.

Then Kyle heard footsteps behind. He turned, no-one. He had to get more shots, maybe it was just the wind. Then he heard another rustling sound. Quickly he brought out his pocket knife.

Fear gripped him like he was a fish on the hook. That initial shock. In an instant the being caught him by the neck. Kyle was chocking. The being was Kane's little nephew-Byrd. Kyle was definitely going to die but not without a struggle. He used the pocket knife to stab him below his ribs. Byrd just yanked it off like it was a little pin. Snapped his neck in an instant, fangs exposed he began feeding.

He stopped feeding on the spur of the moment. He could perceive a strange smell. Another being was present. Byrd turned to engage Amy. The worried mother was still looking for her daughter and was on her way home when she thought she saw something move so fast. She trailed the movement there.

Byrd recognized her immediately.

Shit.

Amy was about to blast him but he was too fast. He caught her and in one swift move- snapped her neck. Amy was far gone even before she had time to defend herself.

***

"A BITCH WITCH," SHE cursed.

"That son of a bitch was always lucky,"

She turned away from the urge to pull another flier and unlocked one of the sliders with her mind. The penthouse's three walls of glass were completely bulletproof, but they didn't filter sunlight. Not that she would have stayed there during the day even if it did.

It wasn't a home.

As she stepped inside, the place and what she used it for pressed into her as if the force of gravity were different there. After exposing herself to much danger she failed still to get the job done. What she needed now was a very good time.

The walls and the ceiling and the marble floors of the sprawling one-room spread were black. So were the hundreds of candles that she could light at his will.

The only thing that could be classified as furniture was a king-sized bed that she'd never used. The rest was equipment: The table with the restraints. The chains which were mounted onto the wall. The masks and the ball gags, the whips and the canes and the chains. That cabinet full of nipple weights and stell clips and stainless-stell tools.

All for her followers.

She took off his leather jacket and tossed it onto the bed, then ditched her shirt. She always kept her leathers on during the sessions. No one there had ever seen her completely naked. No one except for her brother and that was when they were kids.

Candles flared at her command, the liquid light rebounding off the glossy floor before it got sucked up by the black dome of the ceiling. Nothing romantic in the air existed. That place was a cave where the profane and other wild rituals were performed on the willing, and the light only existed to ensure proper placement of leather and metal, hands and fangs, legs on pegs.

"I will kill him, I would get his kingdom."

***

WALKING OUT OF THE house, they got into Pa’s truck. They didn’t want to waste any time. Divina was driving. She still had the vindictive stance all plastered on her countenance. It displayed itself in the way she controlled the wheel. In minutes they had arrived on high way. Kane could read through her thoughts. The speedometer read 210km/hr on a highway of forty miles. She was going to get herself killed even before battle.

Kane knew she wouldn't answer. He noticed a woman who wanted a lift immediately he put his hands out the window and began waving frantically at the lady when they were still miles away. Divina decelerated. She heard Kane talk to the woman but it all sounded incoherent to her. The woman got in the back seat.

As the car shot forward, Divina and Kane began noticing vamp's up ahead.

Shit

Straightaway a vamp jumped on the bonnet of the truck. Divina avoided being run off the road by a truck coming towards them. With swift sudden movement, the vamp punched through the windshield and tried to grab Divina but her hand was ready with a blade. She plunged it into his neck and twisted. It tore his throat open as she ducked down under the steering wheel while the car crashed into a house off the road.

There was a spectacular explosion of wood and brick as the vehicle smashed through the front window. The screech of metal and shattering glass were deafening. Without hesitation she leapt through the shattered windshields and rolled of her hood, flinging silver knives at anything that moved towards her. Kane knew to duck, and shouts of pain accompanied the hiss of the steaming engine, which coughed and wheezed in its death throes.

Scotch was in the remains of the front room along with approximately twenty-five other vampires. Mother of God, there were more of them than they had anticipated. The lady was shoved into a corder, hands and feet tied together. Her wide, disbelieving eyes were fixed on Divina. The red haze of fury she'd carefully controlled since she saw Melissa last remained her drive. It erupted inside her and she let it consume any terror. A snarl of vengeance from her throat and eyes blazed with emerald fire.

Kane took advantage of the distraction. He brought out dangling irons from a hidden spot and wrapped it around the neck of the nearest vampire. With a merciless jerk of the links the vamp's head snapped off and Kane whirled a blur of speed to the next one.

Three vamps jumped at Divina. Their teeth were murderously extended, but so were her knives. She darted away from their fangs while landing punishing blows with her legs, tripping one of them. At once she was on him, gouging his heart and shredding it in one slash before rolling over once more to repeat the same process with the next two.

One black-haired vamp had the presence of mind to go to the lady at the back. Launching herself airborne, she practically flew across the room to land on his back. Silver swished and buried into his heart just as his hands almost touched her. Just one cruel twirl of the knife finished him, and then she was knocked off her feet by a punishing blow and pitched forward. Instead of fighting it, she let her body curl under and the attacker arced over her head instead of stumbling her. None of them were prepared for her speed. He was skewered to the wall behind him before he had time to pounce again, staring stupidly at the silver hilt jutting from his chest.

Divina pulled the back door of the car open.

"Get outside now, go!" she screamed.

That was the first time, Kane heard her speak. No, not speak- shout.

Divina shoved her out of the way of another series of assaults and sprang straight up into the air to come down behind two charging vampires. Unleashing her expanded strength, she slammed their heads together hard enough to splinter apart their skulls. . . 

Jeez, anger could bring the best in you Kane thought while he snapped the head of a vamp right in front of him.

And stabbed both of them through the back with a blade in each fist. The force of her blows sent her hands all the way through them. With a cruel growl, she turned and used their shriveling bodies as shields. Fangs that were meant for her neck tore into dead flesh instead. She didn't want to waste her bullets on these distractions. She smashed her bloody knife into the next fiend until her forearm was past the rib cage of the vampire still dangling from it.

Before the next bunch of vamps descended, she threw the body on her other arm at them, slowing them enough to wrench free of the corpse and hurl more silver blades with hellish accuracy. One stuck straight into the eye of an advancing vamp, and terrible shrieks came from his mouth before another landed between his fangs.

It seemed She was jerking silver out of bodies just to throw more again in a morbid juggling act. Failing that, even though it was more dangerous, full-body combat was in order. She experienced the furious ecstasy of twisting someone's head around so roughly it snapped off. Then she threw it like a bowling ball across the room to beam the back of a vamp closing in on Kane. Kane had iron clamped around one wrist and he swung it so rapidly it was only a blur of gray.

Someone tried to climb past the wreckage of the car to circle Divina, and without pause she threw a knife into his skull. There was something about the sudden scream and then silence. She just killed a human. Vamps didn't go down that easy. Surprisingly she didn't feel the slightest twinge of guilt. If they were after her then they were evil, heartbeat or no heartbeat.

Sirens blared in the distance, coming closer. Obviously the Police had gotten the message. Through the crumbling wall of the home's exterior she saw the flash of red and blue lights, many of them. A small army was descending. Someone needed to do something. It was against the underworld rules to attract the authorities. The vampires left standing saw them also and began to scatter. Kane had hoped for something like this. The vamps were so much convenient to kill when they faced away from them. More silver found flesh when they sprang through the remnants of the house.

Unholy exultation filled her, and a howl of victorious slaughter erupted from her throat. It shook the remains of the glass in the windows as she prowled swiftly through the bodies to find another one to destroy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Kane, grinning evilly and tearing apart a vamp unlucky enough to be behind him. An arm sailed across the carnage to land in the pile of the body parts, followed by a head.

"This is the Police! Drop your...!"

The voice blaring from the bullhorn abruptly choked off when their spotlight lit upon the scene. About six vamps remained and three of them were pierced with multiple blades, living corpse. Shots began to ring out from the officers' guns as they fired wildly at everything that moved, not knowing what in the world they were shooting at. That made the surviving vamps to turn to the police. Divina stayed down, bullets being much more harmful than a bite. From her low vantage point she saw a particular vamp crawling away around the ruins of the car.

Seething hatred burst inside of her, she had only one distinct, crystallized thought. He wasn't going anywhere. Divina had only one knife left, but it was a big one. Her hand closed around it with the grip of the damned. She crouched, channeling all her energy, and sprang at them with complete disregard for the raining bullets. Another vamp, may be the strongest one was still in cover. Divina landed on him with all rage propelling her. Both slammed into the side of the house.

More plaster came crumbling down. The vamp went for her neck, but she shoved him back at the same time. His teeth landed on her collarbone instead. Pain sliced into her as his fangs pierced through her flesh. They were wedged between the car and crumbling wall, so Divina couldn't throw him off. The Vamp shook his head like a shark, opening the wound wider, while one arm was uselessly trapped underneath her. She kicked him brutally, but he didn't let go.

That was the worst position for her to be in with a vampire, that was the reason why she trained so hard with her knives to kill at a distance. She remembered the words of her mother. That beating pulse in your neck is your greatest weakness...She knew that hanging with the vamp would kill her, each shake of his mouth brought him closer to her throat.

In a split second, she made her decision. She might go down, but she is taking the vamp with her. With her free hand she reached for the gun. Another problem was how to shoot. He was behind her. Divina wanted to be as accurate as possible, she wouldn't want to waste bullets. First she shot his right leg, he lost his grip and she finished him with a bullet in the head. Divina found her way out of the wedge. The vamp must have taken a pint of blood from her. She felt weak but still had much strength left to fight with the adrenaline shooting through her.

"We need to leave!" Kane called from the other part of the room.

Divina didn't reply, she couldn't. She lay on the bare floor looking at the ceiling. Kane couldn't leave her. He had been dodging bullets from the police. He lured through the room till he arrived beside Divina.

"The cops, what we gonna do?" Divina asked. She sounded like the cops were more terrifying than the vamps.

"We wait",

Few seconds later, they stopped firing. Divina and Kane had never felt the importance of serenity until that day. The silence was soothing. But there wasn't much time to enjoy it. Quickly, Kane lifted Divina on his shoulder, darted out of the building to the forest. One thing was for sure, Blackclaw was scared and was a coward.