He kept on, “And she did this at a time when this energist would find them.”
Is this true? I asked him.
He ignored me, his jaw tightening. “And she was given persuasion by your vampire to pack her things, to leave her boyfriend, and to go and see her best friend, whom you insured was working at my nightclub tonight. On a night you knew I’d be there. So, yes, Quessadiline, I do fully believe that this energist was a gift from you.”
“Why would I send you an energist? They’re like toys to us.”
“They’re also used as weapons of distraction, and you knew I had kept two others with me centuries ago.”
My knees gave out at the reminder of how old Kieran was.
“You were hoping to distract me tonight because I know that while I took the time to travel to see you, you sent thirty vampires to attack Bass tonight.”
A hard glint appeared in her eyes, and Kieran was right.
I saw it. The satisfaction that rolled off of her was pure evil.
She smiled slowly as she preened. “Why would I do that tonight? Of all nights?”
“Because you knew four of the six masters would be above earth today, and it was your first move against taking charge of the underworld.”
Kieran was calm. I pricked at the inside of his head, and he shoved me out. Okay. Maybe he wasn’t totally calm, but he was giving that impression…at least his energy was all calm.
Quessadiline stood up from her throne, and she stepped to the edge of the podium.
A cruel smile teased over her face. “Maybe I have done all of that, but you said thirty before, Kieran.” A pause. “Try three hundred.”
A wave of smug and sick triumph flared around the entire room, and I could feel others’ emotions join in from the hallway. They were all listening to us. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know much about vampires on purpose, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if there wasn’t a telepathic connection between them all.
She threw her card down.
“No, Quessadiline. I said thirty because that’s how many I left alive.”
Kieran just swept the whole deck.
11
She/I
A snarl erupted from Quessadiline before she attacked.
After that, it was pandemonium.
I had no idea what was going on, but it was all happening at the same time.
Kieran met Quesadilla, as vampires from around the room launched at me.
Not aggressive: me.
Them: very aggressive.
I noticed more vampires streaming in from the hallway, but I was snatched backwards and looked up. Kieran had a hold on me.
Fight!
I don’t know how. I mean, I threw a fork at the vamp bitch who seduced my ex.
Let your creature loose.
How?!
I had no clue how he was holding Quesadilla off, but she looked frozen in mid-air. It was remarkable, and he was doing the same with the other vampires. No one could get to us, but whatever hold he had on them wasn’t going to last. They were breaking through, inch by inch. That much I could feel. And everyone here was immortal…but I wasn’t.
I couldn’t stay here for the rest of my life.
Use your energy. Take theirs.
Eat them? I was revolted.
No. You don’t have to eat everything.
There was a joke there, but I was refraining.
He kept on. You can literally take their energy.
I can?
You are so severely unschooled. How are you still alive?
You have a right to be frustrated, but I didn’t choose to walk into Vampire Quesadilla’s campus. You brought me here knowing what I wasn’t capable of.
A guttural growl was coming from him.
No.
I looked down.
That wasn’t a growl, that was the floor shaking.
I glanced outside. The wall was starting to crumble, and the trees were shaking violently.
Nope. Not the floor. The earth was shaking.
Seriously, who was this guy? I knew it was his creature rising, and here I was thinking there was no creature I knew that could rise like his could. A lot of beings were underground, but none that I knew that had a body above the surface.
Whoa!
I yelled in my head, my entire body jerking.
Stop. He was in my head, and he was speaking to my creature. She’s clueless. You need to wake and hel—
HOLY FUCKING HELL!
She rose and she rose fast.
She hurled herself from wherever I’d been storing her, and after that, I held on as things happened, things I did, things that I knew I’d never forget.
I rose in the air, or she rose in the air, and as if I was watching myself from outside of my body, she shot her hand out. A command sparked from her eyes, and she pulled the energy from every single vampire in the room. Not just the room. Energy was streaming in from the hallways, and a back door was thrown open. More energy burst from it.
As I watched, as she took the energy and seemed to harness it around us, the vampires dropped to the ground.
They had no energy left. The more they exerted, she took it, and she was using it to fuel herself/us and Kieran. Because of it, the ground stopped shaking, and whatever creature he had inside wasn’t rising any longer.
He inhaled the energy, and I watched as it went through his body.
He leapt, a sword materializing in his hand as he did, and he made one motion with it. He completed the motion at the same time that he dropped to the ground.
A second later, he waited, stepping back toward us/her.
She/I was still draining the energy from the vampires, but we watched as Quesadilla’s head slowly fell off her body.
Before our eyes, she crumbled to the ground. The rest of her vampires crumbled as well. I felt all of their hearts stop…and I was waiting.
I glanced at Kieran. “No dust?”
A flare of annoyance flashed over his face, just as the sword vanished from his hand. “This is not a fucking television show.”
“Oh.”
My voice sounded weird. It was a mix of hers and mine. Hearing her voice now, and not in my head, was surreal. As fast as she rose,
