Page 65 of The Shade of Things
Emmett prodded the bloodsucker with his foot. Her eyes were starting to roll back. “Better wrap it up, toots.”
She let out a slow, gurgling exhale. “All I know is…” Her final words were so quiet, I almost missed them. “Monsters don’t stay in the dark.”
I rubbed a finger in my ear, convinced I must have heard her wrong. When Arlo heard I was looking for the Ascendant, he’d told me to leave the monsters in the dark. Now here was this vamp again with monsters and the dark. The choice of words was too similar to be a coincidence.
Was the Ascendant tied to this game?
Had Tatiana stolen the amplifier from this mysterious Consortium or did they have it now? What exactly did the damn thing do?
“Wake up!” I grabbed the vamp and shook her, but she was unconscious, all her energy diverted to regenerating, her legs already lengthening.
The elevator doors opened, and a hyena shifter barreled inside, knocking Emmett to the ground. His cane flew into the wall and the dragon’s head chipped, a piece sailing into the air next to a sliver of clay.
The golem had curled into the fetal position, but as hard as his clay skin was, the hyena gouged claw marks along the arm Emmett had thrown over his head.
“Fuuuuuck!” I screamed and ordered Delilah through our psychic link to slam the scythe into the hyena’s side.
The animal yipped and ran off, trailing blood, which attracted the attention of another vampire.
Good. Let the two destroy each other.
I grabbed the golem. “You okay?”
His sweatshirt was torn and there were bite marks on his collarbone, but he was otherwise unharmed. “Yeah.” He looked at the vamp. “You going to leave her?”
Delilah cleaved the vamp’s head off, turning the bloodsucker to ash.
“Nope,” I said.
Emmett retrieved his cane. “Dayum.”
“If I’ve learned anything from movies, it’s always take the kill shot. Let’s move.”
Delilah, Emmett, and I sprinted into the gloom and ducked behind the first car. There was no sign of the wolf, nor could I see Eli, but several people had lit their ropes and were swinging them around.
Everyone was screaming, a deafening cacophony of noise punctuated by blasts of Snapz. The scent of rusted iron overwhelmed me, the metallic odor sharp to the point of painful, and my stomach lurched.
We zigzagged from vehicle to vehicle heading for the back left corner, making it about a third of the way when Emmett almost tripped over Felix’s ravaged corpse. I spun us around, taking shelter behind a car to process that, when the stench of gas made my eyes water.
I peeked over the hood.
Rahm crouched next to the end of a rope. Its other end had been stuffed into a gas tank, the petrol flowing out of the tank and along the fibers. He pulled out his lighter, and I bit back a scream.
Eli, Teresa, and Daw had taken refuge in that car from a pair of wolf shifters, but my ex had his gun trained on the beasts and didn’t see Rahm.
I ran toward them, jolting at a burst of gunfire to my right.
Using a pillar for cover, Okeyo and Mateo faced off against two vampires. Okeyo had his weapon out, but the vampires were only bleeding, not down, and the lead vamp grabbed the gun and tossed it over an undead shoulder like it was nothing.
Mateo called out for help, his voice high and desperate.
This was bad. I cried out for Emmett, but he was wrestling the snarling hyena shifter. The golem jammed his cane between the hyena’s jaws, using it to lever the animal off of him.
Rahm lit the rope.
One of the vampires tore into Mateo’s neck, blood arcing out.
“Please! I have three children,” Okeyo begged his own attacker.
