Shifter (17 page)

            “I’ve changed,” Briony said. “We all have. You haven’t. I’m the Queen of Palisor now, Aunt Sophie is the Hugtandalfer she was always meant to be, Fallon and Kevin have come into their powers, even Maisy and Steve have had to live through a lot. But you… all this, and you’re still trying to do the same things you were at the beginning.”

            “I’m a vampire,” Pietre sneered. “We aren’t meant to change. We are eternal, there when you and all your kind have gone. Ten thousand years from now, I will still be here.”

            Briony thought of the vampires from Xylyx, each unimaginably ancient. Each utterly mindless and animal. Perhaps they had always been like that, but maybe time had done it to them too. So much time that they could never be anything else except insane.

            “Be careful what you wish for,” Briony said softly. She felt Kevin move up beside her.

            Pietre looked at them oddly. “The werewolf won out then? And is that a ring I see on your finger, Briony? You’re… married?”

            Briony nodded. “I’m married, and I’m the queen of Palisor.
Fully
the queen. Where did you think the gate came from?”

            Pietre stared at her. “But that… that’s
impossible
.”

            “Why?”

            “Because if you are the queen, then the apocalypse… we should be dead! I have spent
days
trying to find enough vampires to resist it. Are you saying that I
succeeded
?”

            He hadn’t been sure. All that time he’d spent transforming innocent kids into his kind, and he hadn’t even been sure it would work. However much Pietre liked to play the part of the cunning master vampire, in his heart, he’d just been a scared, desperate creature trying to cling onto any hope of life, regardless of the cost to anyone else. Maybe he always had been.

            “You didn’t succeed,” Briony assured him.

            “I am still here, aren’t I? My power is…”

            “Your power is nothing,” Sophie said, stepping forward as though she might attack. “You’re still alive because Briony is a better person than you will ever be. She took her power, and she controlled it. She has more compassion, and more love, in her than you will ever have.
She
stopped the destruction of the vampires, Pietre, not you.”

            Pietre shook his head. “No, that can’t be. I have seen the power of the vampires on Palisor. I have
felt
some of what was rising up. I know the legends. The only way you could beat them would be to unleash that power.”

            “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Briony pointed out.

            “Briony followed her father’s path,” Sophie explained. “She drove them back. She locked them away. The way we’re going to lock you away, Pietre.”

            Pietre laughed then. “You don’t have the power. None of you do. Again and again, you’ve tried to destroy me. Again and again, you have failed. I survived the vampire apocalypse through
my
power, and so did my vampires.”

            Briony saw then just how mad the master vampire was. How mad he’d always been. Yet he could still think. Still choose. In his way, he was worse than the Xylyx vampires had been. Worse even than Marcus had been. The vampires from the chasm had been nothing more than killing machines, while Marcus… as evil as he had been, he’d really been nothing more than the product of a time when the world had been more brutal.

            Pietre didn’t have those excuses. He was old, but not so old that he didn’t understand how the world worked. He’d claimed to love Sophie once, yet he’d killed so many members of her and Briony’s family. He’d terrorized Wicked. He’d gone to war with the werewolves and tried to force her to give him a way into Palisor. He’d tried to manipulate Marcus, controlled half of the town’s council and now it seemed that he was determined to transform everyone he could into his kind.

            It was time for that to stop. Whatever it took.

            “Pietre,” Briony said. “I gave Marcus a chance. I told him that he could live. Well, I’m going to make you an offer that’s better than that. Humanity. I don’t know how to do it yet, but I believe that the scepter has the power to make you human again. Surrender, and I will try to give you that.”

            Pietre looked at her incredulously. “Do you think I
want
that?” He gestured to his unremarkable, middle aged form. “Do you think I want to age any more than I have? Do you think I want to grow old and die? Remind me, how long do the Hugtandalfer live?”

            A long time. Briony hadn’t thought about that much yet, but she had a long life ahead of her as Palisor’s queen. At least assuming nothing went wrong in the next few minutes.

            “And if you could actually do it,” Pietre pointed out, “you’d have transformed young Fallon already. We all know how much he aches to be human again.”

            “I haven’t done it yet,” Briony admitted, “but I’m sure that I can.”

            “And all I have to do is surrender?” Pietre laughed at that. He turned to the vampires he’d transformed, and to the older ones with them. “Kill them. Kill all of them. This ends here.”

            The vampires rushed forward. If they’d still been in Palisor, it wouldn’t have been close to an even fight. The werewolves would have been able to kill the vampires far too easily for that. Yet here, where they didn’t have the same deadliness in their bite, it was a different story.

            Briony felt water falling around her, and she saw that sprinklers had started around the diner. She saw the holy water in them burn a couple of vampires who came too close, but for the most part the fight was away from the diner. Away from the diner, but in the middle of the street. What would the people of Wicked think about vampires and werewolves battling through their town? About the same things they’d thought about being dragged away to be transformed into vampires, probably. The town was never going to be the same.

            For now though, Briony had more immediate things to think about. A vampire leapt at her, screaming in rage. She hit it with the staff she carried and it burst into flames. She spun, summoning up her magic and blasting another with fire. Archer, obviously taking his cue from her, transformed and strafed more vampires with flame. More than a few of the new vampires looked at the dragon in terror.

            The werewolves rushed forward, working as a pack. Josh hit a vampire low, so that Carol could tear his throat out. Jake ripped another to pieces, while Kevin kept his human form and slipped behind one who came at him, breaking the vampire’s neck. It was fast and brutal, a sudden wave of violence that was somehow worse because it was happening here. Huge battles with magical creatures involved were chaotic and terrifying on Palisor, but at least they fit there. Here, they were just
wrong
.

            Briony saw Sophie going after Pietre. She should have known that her great aunt would do that, and so far, she seemed to be making a good job of it. She was cutting her way through the crowd of new vampires, her swords swinging in glittering arcs. Even the older vampires that were left from Pietre’s group barely slowed her down, and if they did, it was only long enough that Vigor could appear by her side to lend his blade to the assault.

            Briony stepped forward into the fight, swinging the staff she held. Killing vampires. She saw that Sophie had cornered Pietre now, and the master vampire’s claws skittered against her blades, drawing sparks as though they were also made of steel. Pietre disappeared from in front of her, winding shadows around himself, and a second later Sophie cried out as a line of blood appeared on her leg. She managed to get a swift sword thrust in though, forcing Pietre back.

            The Preservation Society had joined the fight by then, their weapons adding stakes and crossbow bolts, vials of holy water and silver blades to the battle. Briony saw Maisy fire a crossbow at a vampire to get the attention of a whole group of them, only for Steve to throw a water bomb as they got closer. Briony spun then, moving to intercept another vampire as it tried to get close to her…

            …and found herself face to face with Pepper Freeman. Briony hadn’t thought too much about the other kids at Wicked’s high school in the past month or two. She’d spent her time fighting wars they couldn’t understand, in places they wouldn’t believe existed. She doubted that most of them would even remember her, given how little time she was there. Yet she remembered Pepper. After all, the head cheerleader had gone out of her way to make life unpleasant for her. Now here she was, her mouth open to reveal fangs. When had they transformed her? Had she just been walking down the wrong street? Had she volunteered? After all, her family had always supported Pietre.

She was here. She was a vampire, and just the slightest touch of the scepter would be enough to destroy her. Briony kicked her away instead, back into the melee. She couldn’t do it. She might have thought she hated Pepper once, but after all this? Pepper didn’t matter. She was just some kid who used to be mean to her. Set against everything else Briony had come up against, she wasn’t important, except as a reminder that these
weren’t
faceless, mindless beasts they were killing.

Briony slammed the staff on the ground again, sending out another wave of painfully bright light.

“Stop! Everybody
stop!”

Briony poured as much of her power into those words as she could, and almost to her amazement, they worked. Fights ground to a halt in front of her. Vampires looked around like they couldn’t quite remember what they were doing. Briony concentrated, forcing her magic into whatever space Pietre’s control over them occupied. If she could do it with the Xylyx vampires, she could do it with these.

Slowly, impossibly, the battle ground to a halt. It was obvious that the vampires were losing. Most of the older ones were dead.

“Stop,” Briony said.

“Ignore her,” Pietre countered, stepping forward. “
Kill
her.”

“Why do you have to do what Pietre says?” Briony demanded. She kept her magic pulsing out. “He’s just a foolish old man who has lived too long. If you fight, you’ll probably end up dead. You can see how the fight has been going.”

“I
command
you to kill her!” Pietre raged, grabbing a vampire and shoving him towards Briony. He struck the scepter and disintegrated.

“That’s what he’ll do with you,” Briony said. “He’ll use you up and throw you away. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t deserve to lead you. You
don’t
have to do what he says.”

There was a murmur from the vampires. While she was able to hold Pietre’s control in check, they could obviously think for themselves. At least, some of them started to drift away from the edges of the fight. Pietre looked at them in fury.

“No,” he said. “
No
. You’ll die for this. You’ll all die. And
you
…” he turned his attention back to Briony, his eyes flaring red. He started forward and Briony raised the scepter. But there was no need for it, because in that moment a second shape hit Pietre from the side.

Fallon.

F
allon hit Pietre so hard in that first clash that Briony winced. She started to move forward to help, but she knew that she couldn’t. Not yet. People had only stopped fighting because of her. If she started again, then things would go very wrong, very quickly. So she had to stand there while Fallon jumped at Pietre, lashing out at him with fists and feet while the master vampire came back at him with claws.

            When had Fallon gotten fast enough to dodge those sweeping nails? When had he acquired the strength to hold Pietre back as the master vampire tried to thrust his fangs forward into Fallon’s throat?

            “You can’t beat me boy,” Pietre said. “You’re still young.
I
am a master vampire.”

            “The only thing you’re a master of,” Fallon shot back, kicking him hard in the stomach, “is talking too much.”

            Pietre stumbled back, and then seemed to recover. He lunged at Fallon, and those claws of his drew blood. “I made you. Everything you are today is because of me.”

            For a moment, Fallon had to give ground as Pietre attacked, the master vampire’s hands moving in patterns too fast for the eye to follow.

            “Everything I am today comes from not being what
you
are,” Fallon retorted. He kicked down, catching Pietre in the knee hard enough that the master vampire cried out. “It comes from having people around me who care about me. People I love.” He glanced back at Briony then.

            “And look what has happened,” Pietre argued. “She married your brother. A werewolf. She betrayed you, the way Sophie betrayed me. We should be on the same side.”

            He lunged then, tackling Fallon to the ground and rearing over him. He hit Fallon once, then again.

            “Look at you. You’re pathetic. You go on about love, but you don’t even have it anymore. What’s left after that? Love is a lie.”

            Fallon shoved up, pushing Pietre off him.

            “You’re wrong, Pietre.”

            He hit the master vampire hard in the stomach, moving to dodge the swipe of his fingernails.

            “Briony might have married Kevin, but that doesn’t change how beautiful loving her was. It doesn’t change the fact that loving her kept me from being like you. It doesn’t change how much I care about my friends, about my brother, about everyone who still cares about me.”

            He hit Pietre again and again.

            “You’ve gained a lot of power in your trips to Palisor,” Pietre said. “But I have my own tricks.”

            He started to weave shadows around himself, but Fallon darted forward, grabbing at the spot where he’d started to disappear. He didn’t seem to care about the wounds that appeared almost all over him.