“Quit dragging your feet,” Belal barked, tugging at the metal leash he had wrapped around her neck.

“Go to hell,” she snapped back, digging her heels into the hallway of the large, if not decrepit house. It was not at all like the updated, immaculate mansion that her vampires lived in. This one was falling apart, covered in mold and forest and teeming with insects. In the corners

of the rooms were metal baskets with trash burning in them, and that was the only source of light. Broken antique furniture littered the rooms in no particular fashion, and blood-stained blankets draped over the broken out windows and door frames. It looked like a junkie house, only much worse. The stench of death was stained into the walls, telling Sam of all the atrocities that had happened there. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest, threatening to send her into a panic attack at any possible moment. She couldn’t recall ever feeling so frightened, but she would be damned if she let Belal or any of his House know that.

Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she said a silent prayer that she would walk out of the house alive. Although at that particular point, she had no idea how that was going to happen. But then, she remembered Amaa, and Aruum. She remembered Sulma, and Taas, and everything that they had taught her about her gifts and her physical strength. She could die there, she knew, but if so then she wouldn’t be doing so without a fight.

When she opened her eyes again, she realized that other vampires had come out to greet them. They looked nothing like hers. The vampires that lived inside matched the decrepit house. Taas, Amaa, Sulma, and Aruum all took care of themselves. They actively worked on making sure that they stayed updated on the times and very much a part of it so that they didn’t slip into the decay of the past. The ones that lived here did not. Many of them no longer even looked human, but more like half-morphed goblins.

She could practically feel their thirst and desperation as she was dragged through the house by her leash. These were the vampires that books and movies warned people about. They were the ones that truly had no soul or emotions tying them to anything in the world. It was a cold, sad way to live, and despite knowing that they would drain her if ever given the chance, she felt sorry for them.

Belal had dragged her throughout the entire first floor of the house, as if he were parading her in front of his followers, before taking her up a seemingly endless set of stairs that led to the attic. When he pushed her in, the floorboards beneath her feet groaned and shifted, as if they could no longer bare the slightest bit of weight.

“Watch yourself,” Belal told her, grinning. “One bad move and you’ll fall straight down to the basement. Trust me. You don’t want to be in that basement.”

Not bothering to answer or even look at him, she reached out to one of the ceiling beams only a few inches above her head for support. The moment she did, a flood of brutal images rushed into her head. This was no mere room for her to stay in, she realized. This was their torture chamber. With her new powers, she could feel things more than ever. As soon as she placed her hand on the wooden beam, she discovered it had been soaked over and over with blood and she gasped as she heard the screams of those that had spilled their blood there. All of them young. All of them women. All of them had been forced to experience a slow, brutal death at the hands of her captor and their anguish had trapped their souls within the walls of the attic.

Her mind raced, leaving the present situation and going back to her reading of spirits. Beloveds could connect with them, use them for help even, but it took an incredible amount of strength and will to accomplish it without dying. She knew what she had to do then, and immediately returned to the present. When she turned around to face her captor, she felt the rage of all of his victims well up inside her. Keeping her hand on the beam, she felt the spirits, one by one, coming to her, flowing into her from the blood stained beam and into her fingertips.

“Every bone in every body of every murderer in this house will splinter and demolish themselves,” she told him, feeling a wave of heat and power fill her. She looked at him calmly, confidently. As if she were stating a fact she thought he should be aware of. For a moment, Belal’s face paled, and he took a step back from her. He could feel the rise of power in her and it intimidated him. Frightened him. But his own arrogance ate its way through the fear, and he was soon looming over her once more.

“You’re not the first little girl to make threats,” he told her, smiling wickedly. “They all did. Before they got to the part where they begged for their lives, they promised us horrible deaths.”

Maybe, Sam thought, feeling heat begin to rise from the palm of her hand that touched the blood. But none of them had my power. Through the beam, she felt blood begin to drip from the wood. Not hers, but theirs. The spirits were gathering faster now, accumulating into the one space to help her.

“You know,” Belal said, attaching her leash to a metal loop. “The most fun I ever have is when I’m hurting people.” He took a walk around the room, pretending to inspect little things here and there as he talked.

“As a human boy, I would take apart animals while they were still living. I wanted to see how they worked, how they animated themselves. That was enough for me for a while, but then I started going through puberty.” He sighed and stared off, as if recalling a happy memory.

“I killed my first human when I was in my twenties. My parents had arranged a marriage for me to a local noble. She was pretty, and sweet. When we were finally allowed to meet each other, we actually had a good time. Then when evening came, she tried to leave me. She said she was excited for our marriage, but that she had to return for the evening to her parents’ house. I just- I just wasn’t ready to let her go. So I made sure she could stay with me as long as I wanted to. I took her apart piece by piece, savoring every bit of it.”

She stared at him coldly as he puffed out his chest, as if proud of himself.

“Did you know that my creator came to me as a human? He wanted to turn me.” He pointed to the center of his chest, looking genuinely pleased with himself.

“I was developing a reputation. It was quite a big deal.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Sam asked, letting her annoyance come through her voice.

With a quick hand he slapped her hard across the face, making her lip split and her ears ring.

“I’m talking,” he said quietly, without skipping a beat. “Don’t be rude. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I remember when we took Amaa in. He was young then, moldable. His heart was torn between good and evil, and I thought for sure we could put him on our path. But then that business with Twila happened and he went flying to the House of Rinna.” He scoffed.

“The House of Rinna. The vampire guardians. A holier than thou frat house is all it is. When I found out that they had taken in our coven brother, I knew I had to make them pay. He was going to be my protege, you know. The one I can completely transform. But the light got to him. He turned his back on the beauty of death, and that greatly disappointed me.”

So why didn’t you go after him?” Sam shot back. She was tired of his talk. His voice grated against her ears like nails on a chalkboard.

To her surprise, Belal didn’t strike her again, but merely laughed. “Because Twila gave me a final gift before she died. In the sorrow of her last breath she passed to me a very unique, very twisted gift; a one of a kind form of necromancy. With my blood, I could evolve things. Make them come alive and do as I please. Even the simplest of organic matter could be persuaded to fall under my will.”

Something clicked inside Sam’s brain. “You’re responsible for the fungi,” she murmured, her eyes flicking up towards him. “You wanted it to take over the forest.”

Belal’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“Very good!” He applauded. “You see when I brought it back to life I did so with my incubi essence, essentially allowing the fungi to drain all living things around it so that it can survive. But then that damned Aruum found a way to slow it down. So I had to move to more advanced nuisances.” He stopped right in front of Sam, and smiled as he grabbed a strand of her hair and rubbed it between his thumb and other fingers. His long canines, stained reddish-yellow from years of overindulgence, looked more like insect incisors than fangs.

“But then you came into the picture. A sweet, new beloved. A saving grace for any coven descending into hell. Normally I don’t fall in line with anything the House of Rinna believes in, but in this case I think I can make an exception.

“I’ve been keeping a close eye on your boys. They’ve developed new gifts faster and greater than any I’ve seen. With your ability to provoke those powers and my ability to sway vampires to do what I want, we could become the greatest of armies.”

He took a step forward, reaching his hand out.

“Don’t you see what I’m offering you instead of death? A chance to rule by my side, to help me bring in a brave new world.”

“That won’t happen,” Sam said, her voice steady. “That will never happen. I’ll die before I help you achieve anything, you sick, twisted, son of a bitch. Chicken shit psychopath.”

Still smiling maniacally at her, he reached down and gripped her throat tightly as his hand snatched her pendant and ripped it from her neck. He snarled as it burned his hand, and flung it into a far corner of the room.

She gasped as she watched it go flying into the corner. She had thought it was more powerful than that.

“You thought that necklace could protect you?” He shook his head. “Here I thought you were a bookworm, Sam. That you had done your research on me and understood what I was about. I am a creature of chaos, Sam!”

When she still didn’t follow, he roared, and sank his fangs into her neck, tearing at the flesh there carelessly as he took a mouthful of her blood.

Sam, blinded by the pain, lost her grip on the wooden beam for a moment and hung suspended in blinding pain as blood began to trickle steadily down the front of her jacket.

“I created the hunters!” He roared, his eyes wild. “To weed out the more annoying vampires that got in my way. You’re special because I made you that way, and I’ll return you to nothing if I have to.”

He tightened his grip around her throat, coming so close to her face that she could smell the decay of his breath. “You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he told her.

“Maybe not,” Sam replied, her voice barely a whisper. “But I could say the same.”

Sam reach up once more for the bloodstained wood, pressing her palm into it as she received a burst of all the butchered spirits’ energy that filled her and went straight from her body and into Belal’s chest.

Belal let go of Sam abruptly, dumping her on the floor as the souls of every woman he ever murdered in the attic poured into him with a vengeance. Belal let out a monstrous roar as he went flying across the room. His body twisted and warped as bones began to crack and burst out of his skin in jagged spikes. His fingers broke backwards one by one as tears erupted over his flesh, spilling out black fountains of blood across the room.

From below, similar screams of battle had risen from the rest of the house, letting her know that her vampires had indeed come for her. She could feel their anger permeating throughout the house, and she knew she had to let them know she was safe before they gave in to their more darker natures.

After unhooking her chain from its place, Sam took a running leap over Belal’s still writhing and screaming body and fled the attic. As she made her way down, she found she had to step over piles of ash all over the floor. Taas’s skill with Red Fyre had left only remnants of Belal’s followers, and she smiled in pride for him. In other rooms, she could still hear the screams of death, and it filled her with worry. She was hoping that if the screams were coming from one of hers that she would feel it, but the gash on her neck was still bleeding profusely, and she was so exhausted, that she wasn’t sure of what she could and couldn’t do anymore. Releasing the souls of the women had taken most of her strength, and she was starting to feel frightened that she wouldn’t find one of them in time. Then, when Aruum came running quickly and suddenly around a corner, she all but fell to her knees and cried in relief. She knew she was supposed to be strong, but the rate at which her wound was bleeding was alarming her more than anything else, and she knew she only had minutes left to be healed.

“Sam!” He exclaimed, the moment he saw her. He swooped her up as she ran into his arms. He held her only briefly before he held her out at arm’s length to look at her neck.

“That son of a bitch,” he growled, tearing at his wrist. “If I wasn’t going to kill him already I would definitely end him for this.” He pressed his silver wounds into her mouth, of which she immediately accepted.

“That’s it,” he soothed, caressing her hair as she drank. When she finished, her wound was starting to scab over, and her complexion had returned.

“I don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “How did you get out?”

“Sulma was right,” she told him, “the more we’re around each other the more powerful our gifts become. Speaking of, do you have control of yours yet?”

Aruum gave her a devilish grin and flicked his left wrist to the left, sending a silver laced Blood Spike through a cupboard. “Getting better with every second.”

A crash from the adjacent dining room had Aruum pushing Sam behind him before taking his fighting stance. A moment later a body flew across the dining room, crashing hard into a wall before falling into a crumpled heap on the broken floorboards. Another cry of pain and fear came from the room, and a second body went hurdling, only this time it came into the kitchen, taking out the island.

Aruum was on the body in a second, sending three well-aimed silver laced Blood Spikes into the vampire’s heart and brain.

“That you, Sulma?” Aruum called, taking his fighter stance. Sulma stepped through the entryway, his body shifting from hunter to lover the moment he saw Sam safe and alive.

“Thank the Source,” he groaned, pulling her into his arms for a passionate kiss. “Are you all right? Where’s Belal? Did he hurt you? Were we too late?”

Sam shook her head.

“Just a small bite, but I’m fine now,” she assured him. She wanted to tell them more, but it was hard to put into words what she felt from the souls in the attic, or how they had saved her life.

“I got him down,” she told them. “But he may still be alive. He’s in the attic.” Taas zoomed into the room then, his reaction similar to the others when he saw her.

“I’m so sorry, Sam,” he apologized, shaking his head. “I should have stayed with you. I should have-” Sam put her finger up to his lips, silencing him.

“Never be sorry for trying to protect me or anyone else,” she told him. “Now I am every bit as excited for this night to end as you all are so let’s kill this bastard and go home, okay? Good. Now, where’s Amaa?”

“He’s doing a final sweep of the house,” Taas replied. He switched his gaze to Sulma. “I think we got them all.”

“Not all,” Sam informed him. “There’s a hidden attic. That’s where Belal is.”

“Right then,” Sulma said, taking charge. “Taas, you and I will go take care of the trash. Aruum, find Amaa and take Sam home. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“No way,” Sam interjected, shaking her head. “I’m not leaving here without all four of you. We go home together.”

“Damn,” Aruum laughed, “is it just me or is our beloved super sexy right now?”

“And cranky,” she interjected. “By my calculations, we have twenty-three minutes left before sun rise. Let’s get this done. I’ll be damned if I’m staying in this house an entire day.”