Chapter Eleven
The first thing I noticed as I burst into the rickety building was the smell. The hot, stuffy odor of rot, mixed with the coppery stench of blood. The wooden floorboards moaned and creaked under our booted feet as we charged inside. Instinctively, we split up to better cover the space.
I sensed numerous creatures in the house, enough that it was difficult to decide just where to focus first. But Oriel charged through the entryway toward the back rooms, just as he had said he would. I spread my wings and soared up the staircase to the second floor. I wasn’t about to risk using the stairs, given their decrepit state.
Landing softly at the top, I quickly surveyed the area. I was grateful that my senses were so sharp; the dark paint on the windows kept the second floor in almost complete blackness. With it being in the late afternoon, the vampires were likely still sleeping, but they wouldn’t be for much longer. Not once we tore the doors off their hinges and awakened them from their lifeless slumber.
“Might as well do this systematically,” I murmured to myself as I headed for the bedroom door on the far left. I withdrew my sword, hearing the brilliant ring of it as it left its scabbard, and kicked the door with the bottom of my foot. It shuddered on its hinges, several large splinters breaking off as it swung back and pummeled the wall.
I immediately strode forward and smashed the window with the hilt of my sword. The large trees outside the farmhouse kept the sun from shining directly in, but it was better than nothing. There were two coffins in the room, each of them made of a dark, heavy material that I could only guess was granite. It would keep sunlight out completely, and only someone with superior strength could open the lid.
Fortunately, I was one of those people. I shoved the lid off the first coffin just in time to find its occupant beginning to stir. He turned to me with wild eyes, his mouth open and his fangs glistening with saliva as he sat up quickly. “Leave me be!” he hissed.
“Not happening.” With a strong swipe of my sword, I slashed off his head. It hit the side of the coffin and bounced down onto the floor, rolling across the faded area rug before coming to a stop facing me. The mouth was open, and the eyes still angry, but I knew that he could no longer harm anyone. The headless body fell back into the coffin with an audible thump that sent a cloud of dust up into the air.
I didn’t have to open the second casket. The noise I had made was enough to wake its inhabitant, and she now stared at me from its depths, her long white fingers gripping the lid. “How dare you disturb us? You will pay for this, Angel!”
She sprang from the coffin with surprising swiftness and charged at me with her mouth wide open. Her fangs carried russet stains from her last feeding, and she aimed to make me dessert. I swung my blade, but she dodged it.
“You killed my husband, you bitch!” she screamed as she stepped over the head of the first vamp. “Prepare for the worst death you could ever dream of!” Her howl was a screech of pain composed of numerous voices, a dreadful sound that made my skin crawl.
I went after her with my sword once again. It had sliced through the first creature with ease, barely even registering the bone and flesh that it bit into before it was out the other side again. It was a swift, clean death, something that these vamps did not deserve, but now wasn’t the time to drag it out. My sword ripped into the flesh of her shoulder, exposing the meat underneath, but the skin quickly pulled itself back together and melded back into one.
The vampiress laughed. “You’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”
In my head, I heard the voices of my teammates. We had left our psychic shields down to allow easy communication. Jonah had found a slew of the evil creatures in the attic above me. Oriel and Hannah were taking them down in the living room and parlor. Trinity was harder to access, but I hoped she was okay. My psychic shield reached out a little further in search of her energy, wanting to make sure nothing had gone wrong, but everything was fuzzy.
I had no time to worry about it as the vampiress advanced on me once again. I had turned off my Sleeplessness spell the moment we had arrived at the farmhouse, but I quickly found that the warnings Alijah had given us were very true. Even though my energy was being routed back to its original sources, I had very little in the way of magical energy.
Instead, I drove the vamp back with my sword, cutting and slashing. Her back was to the door, and I couldn’t let her corner me. I hacked at her with my right hand as I brought a wooden stake to my left, ready to bury it in her bony chest the moment I had a chance. She was quick, and she dodged my blade easily as I forced her back toward the door.
Just as she came at me, the pointed end of a stake emerged from the center of her chest. The screech from her mouth was piercing, and she stood motionless for a moment as she looked down at the wound. She slowly tipped forward and fell to the floor.
Trinity stood in the doorway, her hand still raised from the attack. Her lips formed into a smirk. “Thought you could use a little help.”
“That’s why I couldn’t find you. You cut off your mind from me, so that I couldn’t accidentally give your position away to the vampiress. Clever.”
I took a step toward the body, my toe bumping her arm slightly. I shuddered, knowing how cold and clammy the skin would be underneath her dress. I couldn’t stand the way undead flesh felt.
Trinity shrugged. “I had already cleared the downstairs bedrooms. Figured I would come and give you a hand. What’s with the coffins, anyway?”
I pulled out a vial of holy water and uncorked it, casting a glance over my shoulder at the two dark boxes. “Beats me. Just before Ember and I received our invitations to the Legion, we killed a low-ranking vamp who was using one as well. Must be the latest trend in the vamp world.”
“Going back to their roots,” Trinity retorted. “I guess if sunshine turned me into a pile of ash, I’d want to be hidden away in a box, too.”
I poured the glittering water over the body of the vampiress, as the corpse melted into a grayish puddle, her dress floating gently on the surface.
“Let’s get through these other rooms.” Trinity led the way out into the hall and to the next bedroom. She had the same idea that I had, and she bashed the glass out of the window frame as soon as we made our way inside. The vampire in this room slept in a bed instead of a coffin. He barely had a chance to wake up before Trinity used her blade to sever his head from his body with a slash so violent that it bit through the mattress beneath him.
“I love this weapon,” she chuckled. She wiped the vamp blood off the blade with the bedsheet before heading back out into the hallway.
The vampires in the other bedrooms had awoken and creeped out toward us, ready to sink their fangs into our flesh. The hall was windowless, so the only light we had, trickled in from the open doorways of the bedrooms we had already been through. Still, I could see their pale skin and gleaming fangs as they hissed. I counted three, enough to give us a challenge but nothing we couldn’t handle.
Trinity and I charged forward, taking up the entire width of the cramped landing, making it impossible for the vampires to move around us. She sliced off the arm of the first one we encountered, spraying him with a shower of holy water before the detached limb even hit the floor. I attacked the one behind him, a tall vamp with blond hair that hung in knotted hunks around his ears. He worked his jaws fiercely, but I quickly drove a stake through his heart.
Finally, we moved on to the final vampire. The creature hissed at us, his eyes filled with rage, and within seconds, he rushed at us. Trinity stepped to the side while I pierced his chest with my sword, pushing with all my might until it slid all the way through. Suspended by my blade, I lifted my boot up and kicked him in the chest, releasing my sword and sending him flying back against the wall. He slumped to the floor momentarily before he started to crawl toward us, his long sharp fingernails scraping the hardwood, sending a chill down my spine. I took a few steps toward him, waiting for him to come within range, and then with one hard blow, I decapitated him.
“Let’s check the rest of this floor, just to make sure it’s cleared,” Trinity suggested, and I agreed. We performed a thorough sweep of the last bedroom and even the bathroom, smashing out the blackened windows as we moved through the space, but found nothing more than empty coffins.
We heard Jonah and the others below us, and so we quickly flew down to the first floor. Oriel and Hannah were just coming out of the living room, their faces grim and their clothes spattered with the garnet stains of stagnant blood. I sensed the location of the remaining vamps, and moved toward the back of the property.
As I came through the door of what appeared to be a study, my blade ready, it was immediately clear that Jonah didn’t need my help. He had wrapped one of the silver chains around his sword, the kind that kept vamps from healing from the wounds he intended to inflict. The carnage around him was grisly. Several decapitated corpses lay sprawled on the peeling linoleum, their heads off in the corners of the room. Sprays of blood decorated the faded bookcases lining the walls.
“I cleared the attic before coming back down. It seemed you guys had the second floor under control. Is the rest of the place clear?” Jonah asked, wiping his blade off with a piece of cloth.
“We’ve got the second floor taken care of,” Trinity volunteered.
“The back rooms are taken care of,” Oriel announced.
Jonah nodded, gesturing with his sword toward the head of a vampire that had rolled over near the far wall. “These vamps are far more advanced than anything I’ve seen.”
I couldn’t see its face, but the back of its head was covered in long, wispy strands of white hair. “One of them mentioned harvesting humans and how I’d be next on the list. That he’d put me in the basement with the rest of them. I think I found the way in. Follow me.”
The door he spoke of, at the opposite end of the study, was hanging askew, its hinges broken. We followed him as he made his way through. We passed through what looked like a pantry, the small room lined on all three sides by shelves containing rusty cans of green beans and disintegrated boxes of rice. Jonah summoned a ball of white light in his palm, shining his beam around the room just to make sure it was clear, and then lowered it to the floor. The distinct outlines of a hidden door interrupted the pattern in the linoleum.
As soon as he lifted the old wooden door, a fetid odor hit us like a ton of bricks. It was something more than just the stench of rot and blood, and it was enough to make my stomach churn.
A steep wooden staircase extended down into the darkness. Oriel put his foot on the top step to test its strength. “Jonah, Rumor, you’re with me. Hannah, you and Trinity stay here, just in case there are others.”
Oriel was proving to be a brave and reliable leader, an Angel who would lead us to glory on our missions, but who would also keep our hides intact. I was grateful to have been assigned to him.
Jonah’s light illuminated walls that were dug straight out of the earth as we descended the stairs. Wooden timbers had been used to keep the construction from collapsing on itself. The floor was dirt as well, and the putrid smell in the air only got worse as we stepped down onto it.
“What is this place?” I asked, one hand over my nose. I kept my blade out and ready with the other, though there was little room in here for any real sword fighting. At the most, I could stake someone with my blade, or cut off a limb or two.
“It was likely a bomb shelter,” Jonah suggested.
It didn’t take long before we realized exactly what the vampires had converted this space into. The stairs had come down into a narrow hallway, but the bunker soon opened into a larger space, with a few timbers to keep it upright. It had been divided around the perimeter into numerous cells. The doors were made of thick metal bars, most of them covered in rust. Saliva built up in my mouth at the putrid stench. Pale forms were cast about inside each cell, the bodies limp and lifeless.
“What the hell happened here?”
Oriel crossed the floor of the main chamber, using his own illumination to look inside cells. His light flickered wildly as it flashed over countless corpses, and when his light landed on that of a young boy, I gasped, my heart breaking. Men, women, children, young and old, were scattered on the floors of the bloodstained cells, their empty shells left behind.
Oriel shook his head and it was clear that he was bothered by the scene in front of us. “Check all the bodies,” he commanded in a voice filled with emotion. “In case there are any survivors.”
Alijah had taught me many spells during my training. I had been grateful to him for his wisdom, his patience, and his talent, but I had no idea at the time that the spell of Luminescence would be used to find such ghastly evidence of a vampire coven’s cruelty. Summoning the same white energy in my hand that fueled the illumination spell, I curled my fingers inward, and harnessed the electricity into a powerful ball. Slowly, I uncurled them just enough to let the ball of light form. I had to be careful; straightening my fingers too much would let the energy go and the light would dissipate. But I had practiced this spell many times over the last two months, and I was confident in my ability to control it.
Jonah and I split up, checking all the cells. Tears glistened in my eyes as I swung open the rusty bars of each cell, scanning the occupants for any sign of life. Some of the cells contained a dozen bodies or more, while others held only a few. I worked as quickly as possible, anxious to get out of this dark space, and away from the smell of death.
“Over here!” Jonah called from the other side of the room. I could see his light flashing as I quickly made my way to where he stood.
A man, no more than thirty, was lying on the floor, his throat slashed. We carefully moved to kneel beside him, and I grimaced at the thought of him bleeding out slowly, suffering a death more tortuous than I could imagine. His body was pale, his skin ashen, and it was clear he’d been living down here for a very long time.
I hovered over him, gently tracing the wounds with my light, and sending the healing energy into his body. The wound tried to rejoin, but it couldn’t quite reach across the gap the vampiric knife had made. “It’s not working,” I whispered, anxiety creeping into my voice.
“I’ll help you.” Oriel laid his hand at the man’s throat, pumping so much healing energy into him that it nearly lit the room, but he shook his head. “They didn’t just cut them. The vampire’s blade must have been dipped in a poison to keep the wound from healing. There’s nothing we can do.”
The man lay on the ground, his glassy eyes dancing in the light, and he looked at each of us in turn.
“Who are you?” His voice was distant and wavering, and I knew he was in a state of delirium. It was better for him that he was. “Angels?”
Jonah knelt at the man’s head, trying to soothe him. “You’re safe. The vampires are gone. Please… try and tell us what happened.”
The man’s eyes rolled in his head, and he thrashed weakly at the mention of his captors. “No,” he moaned. “Not again. I can’t give them any more.”
“What’s your name?” Oriel let the healing light go, knowing it would do no good, and joined Jonah in trying to gain information from the human. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Greg…” He licked his cracked lips with a dry tongue and rolled his eyes up into his head. His voice trailed off again as his eyes landed on me. “Gregory.”
I took his hand in mine and rubbed his fingers gently in my own. They were so cold that I wasn’t even sure he could feel them anymore.
“Tell us why you’re here, Gregory. Help us save other humans,” Jonah insisted gently. “What were they doing to you?”
Gregory’s dark hair hung in clumps of dirt, and it moved stiffly as he shook his head weakly. “They fed on us. Every night.” His eyes rolled and closed again, but a gentle tap from Jonah brought him back to us. “They said we would make them strong. I resisted, I fought, but they are strong. I couldn’t fight them.”
“Why did they kill everyone?” Oriel pressed. “Why did they kill you if they needed you to feed on?”
Gregory’s dark brows furrowed slightly as he tried to find the answer. “Dead. Everyone is dead.” His face crumpled, and he would have been crying if he had the tears. “They didn’t need us anymore. They were leaving. They took all we had and left us for dead. All of us. My wife…my mother.”
“They’re in a better place now, Gregory.” Oriel smoothed back the man’s hair. I knew he was thinking the same thing we all were. What had happened was a tragedy, an event to be recorded and never forgotten, so that everyone would understand just how dangerous these blood-sucking creatures had become. But we had to get as much information out of Gregory as we could. “Do you know where they were headed?”
Gregory’s pupils expanded and contracted, the black circles practically pulsing. We were going to lose him soon. “Brothers. They had brothers.”
“Where are their brothers?” Oriel’s voice was less gentle now, more insistent as he tried to keep the human grounded in the moment. “Where were they going to meet their brothers?”
“The mountains,” Gregory whispered. “They have brothers in the mountains. Carolina.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us, Gregory? What else can you tell us about the vampires? It will help us find them, and destroy them all.” Oriel wiped a smudge of dirt from the human’s forehead.
“Mountains,” Gregory repeated. “They said they weren’t afraid of the light. I want to go find it.” He reached a hand in front of him, barely lifting it off his chest. “The light…”
“It’s okay, Gregory,” Oriel soothed. “Go toward the light. You’ll be safe there.”
He nodded, reaching out once again, but his hand fell back onto his chest. His head slumped to the side, and his eyes grew glassy.
Jonah reached down and closed Gregory’s eyelids, and each one of us took a moment to say a silent prayer for him and for all the others that had been slaughtered.
Oriel led the way back up the stairs and to the front door of the property. He turned to us, his eyes filled with anger, and behind that, a deep sadness. “Our journey has just begun.”