Blood and Kisses (12 page)
No.
Thalia made her voice as resolute as she could.
I’m the Champion. It was my cousin he murdered. I can take care of myself.
I hope. She kept that final thought to herself.
Gideon turned back to her, black eyes flashing.
I can’t afford to be distracted.
Maybe it will be you who distracts me? Did you ever think of that?
Out of the corner of her eye, Thalia saw a faint blurry motion. She threw up a hand, muttering the last word of a potent shielding spell. A flash of blue light lit the area around them as something hit the shield, a huge misshapen blob Thalia couldn’t quite make out, and wasn’t sure she wanted to. It came with a foul odor and an aura so black and corrupt it seemed to stain the air it touched.
The thing reeled back from the force of the spell and howled, throwing back its bizarrely shaped head and raising unnaturally long arms in challenge. Thalia had never seen anything like it outside a horror movie. Spikes of black, pitted bone made up its skull and skeleton, which were all outside the body like an insect’s. It had glowing yellow eyes with flaming red pupils.
What is it?
Thalia’s telepathic voice trembled with adrenaline as she struggled to maintain the energy flowing to the shield. Gideon shook his head.
I don’t know. It’s not the vampire. I don’t feel any intelligence. Some sort of a golem, maybe.
The creature advanced on them again. With a horrible scream emitting from its beak-like mouth, it launched itself at Thalia and hit the shield. The shield flared blue at the impact. The creature was forced back, but not as far as the first time. As she weakened, so did the shield.
Thalia fed more power to the shield, but as the spell took its toll, her strength was fading fast. She sagged and put a hand on the pavement to stop from falling altogether.
Gideon placed a hand under Thalia’s arm and brought her to her feet, supporting her easily with his enormous strength.
To control the golem, the vampire must be nearby. I just need a few more seconds to locate him. Can the shield take another hit?
Thalia nodded her head feebly, too exhausted to speak.
Gideon tore his eyes away from Thalia’s pale face. Her eyes were huge dark holes. Her arm felt like fine china beneath his grasp. Her body shook. She couldn’t take much more of this, nor did she have the energy to get back to the building.
He sent his mind scanning for the master vampire as the golem prepared to attack. The search proved unnecessary however, for as the golem made its attack, the vampire revealed himself, leaping at Gideon in the form of another golem. The shield disintegrated as it barely repelled the simultaneous assault.
Thalia fell to her knees, and Gideon was forced to release her. The two hideous creatures hesitated briefly, shaking off the effects of the shield and attacking again. Gideon moved with the speed of lightning, kicking out at the two monsters. They fell backward, and he was able to swiftly drag Thalia to the nominal protection of a recessed doorway.
Rage surged through him and he embraced it, allowing the monster free rein for the first time in centuries. He cried a challenge to the night sky as he raced back to engage the enemy. Despite the speed of his attack, the golem and the vampire had regained their feet. They switched places several times, perhaps trying to confuse him, but the evil intelligence directing the attack could not hide behind his puppet. The vampire’s vile nature could not be hidden by mere illusion.
“Come now,” Gideon said, fury pulsing through every vein. “Discard this weak disguise. Face me as your true self.”
The vampire didn’t answer. The creatures circled Gideon. He growled as they attacked without warning, and the demon inside him laughed. It was about to be fed.
His fangs descended. Razor-sharp claws formed on his fingertips.
Appendages tipped with deadly claws of their own flashed through the air, but Gideon dodged them, flowing away from each attack while striking out with his hands and feet, keeping the golem and its master at bay. The golem, a creature made from parts scavenged from a variety of dead things, was slow by comparison, but damn distracting. He concentrated on the vampire, waiting for his opportunity.
Gideon leapt over his foe. No longer encircled, he attacked, raking at the vampire with one powerful claw and opening a gaping wound in his side. The vampire screamed with pain and defiance. The wound swiftly disappeared inside the golem illusion, but Gideon knew it was there. He could smell it. Drops of blood spattered on the pavement. The bloodlust welled up inside him. He reveled in the mindless hunger of it, savoring the exquisite pleasure of freedom unhampered by petty morality. He struck again.
The vampire slipped away, but not before landing a blow of his own. The sting of the shallow claw marks on Gideon’s arm, and the unique odor of his own blood, maddened him. He ducked the golem’s clumsy attack and lunged at the vampire, shape-shifting as he moved into the form of a massive tiger. He hit the vampire square in the chest with his immense weight, knocking the ancient to the ground.
Despite the huge mass of the golem illusion he wore, the vampire felt the size of an average man beneath Gideon’s huge paws. He flexed his claws, digging them into the vampire’s shoulders, piercing his flesh, and lowered his head to rip out the vampire’s throat. The vampire abandoned the golem illusion. Roaring, he shape shifted into a tiger of his own, twisting out of Gideon’s grasp. Without the vampire to direct it, the true golem fell to pieces on the pavement. The vampire roared again. The sound echoed off nearby buildings.
Gideon roared in return and two tigers faced each other in the dark Rochester street.
Gideon, someone’s coming,
Thalia’s words pierced the veil of fury enfolding him, and reason flooded back. He could hear a party of mayflies coming down a side street.
Can you hide us?
I don’t have the energy. I’m sorry.
Can you take energy from the things around you?
Gideon evaded a slashing paw, rolling out of the way and lashing out with a counterattack.
Gideon, that would be...
The blow landed, the vampire staggered back. More blood decorated the road. The vampire growled and padded back and forth in front of Gideon, clearly weighing his options.
Vampirism
Gideon finished for her.
What if I could feed you some of my power?
Is it possible?
Damn, he hoped so. The giggling voices were getting nearer. Without taking his eyes away from the pacing vampire, Gideon sent a burst of energy along the route of their mental communication.
Thalia must have received the power, because the air around them began to shimmer. A bubble formed. It seemed transparent, but objects outside the bubble were slightly distorted as if seen through centuries old glass.
A group of college-age girls came into view. They passed the combatants and Thalia without blinking an eye, and stepped into the Bell, Book, and Candle.
The vampire took advantage of Gideon’s divided attention and dove at him, scoring a deep gash on Gideon’s furry abdomen. Crazed with pain, Gideon charged, sinking his enormous teeth into the muscle and sinew of the vampire’s shoulder. Blood spurted into his mouth. The rich, intoxicating flavor tempted him to bite down harder, to gnaw the flesh from the bone, but blood from the Claiming was as poisoned as witches’ blood. Tiger instincts and vampire hunger wailed in protest as he released his enemy and shifted to his own form.
Thalia focused on maintaining the invisibility and sound dampening spells. The power Gideon fed her was strong and plentiful, but every being had his limits.
It seemed incredible that a vampire could feed power to a witch, but there was no denying that was exactly what was happening. Most witches guarded their powers jealously; she had heard of them sharing energy only in very rare cases as a last resort. But then it was his or her own life energy that fed a witch’s powers and vampires took their energy from others.
And taking energy from another living being without its consent was strictly forbidden in the witch world, something only done by the practitioners of the blackest of black magic, enemies of all life.
Thalia watched helplessly as the tiger she knew was Gideon stepped away from the vampire, and resumed his human form. The vampire, still in tiger form, sprang back to his feet, blood flowing copiously from his wounds, blackening his fur and dripping in puddles around his left front paw.
Gideon advanced on the vampire, but before he could attack again, the vampire dissolved into thousands of tiny black insects and flew away.
Thalia maintained the invisibility spell as she ran to Gideon. She took his arm. He turned to her with no sign of recognition, his eyes glowing coals in his strained face. He hissed at her, baring his fangs. An animal caught up in the desperate struggle of life and death.
“Gideon?” Thalia held his gaze.
He shook his head as if clearing it. The glow faded from his eyes. She could see him coming back to himself.
“I have to go after him,” he said. “Do you have enough energy left to clean up?”
Thalia nodded. She would have to find the strength. The authorities could not be allowed to find vampire blood on the streets.
Gideon took a step forward and fell to his knees, groaning and clutching his lean stomach. Thalia reached for his arm to help him up and his hand came away from his abdomen.
Thalia gasped.
It was covered with blood.
Thalia wiped her damp forehead with the back of her wrist. Her chest heaved with strain as she muscled Gideon’s large frame onto his king-sized bed. Spirit watched from the doorway, dark eyes concerned.
“Why couldn’t you have come back as a Rhodesian Ridgeback?” she said wryly to the compact familiar. A larger dog could have helped her move Gideon’s sizeable body.
He shrugged.
I’ll take that into consideration next time
.
Weakened from massive blood loss, Gideon had faded in and out of consciousness ever since they’d left the scene of the fight. Without his brief moments of awareness, there was no way she could have gotten him up the stairs.
As hard as it had been, she’d left the rogue’s victims for the police to find. Far better for the family to know what had happened to their loved one, rather than to live forever with the uncertainty of a missing person.
Gideon’s eyes, so black with pain she couldn’t see where the pupil ended and the iris began, opened slowly as if his eyelids were almost too heavy to lift. “How bad is it?” he said, attempting to raise his head to get a look.
Thalia forced him back down on the bed. “I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.” She bit her lip in trepidation as she peeled back Gideon’s blood-soaked shirt and exposed his taut belly. She sucked in a hasty breath at the wound marring the smooth perfection of his abdomen. It was deep. In a human it would have been killing deep.
With each move he made, blood spurted from the wound. She swallowed a cry of distress and hastily stripped the rest of his shirt off, wadded it up, and pressed it against the wound.
The shirt turned from white to crimson so fast it was as if it were sucking the blood out of him. The pungent metallic scent suffused the room.
If we can’t stop the bleeding, you won’t make it to dawn
, Spirit said.
The wound will have to be stitched
.