Force of Knight Magic (23 page)

“Tell me what it said,”
Phil whispered though her mind
.
“I thought you’d tell me before now
,
but if you’re this scared, I can no longer wait for you to get around to it.”

“It’s nothing really.”
She felt his small surge of anger then his love.
She felt bathed in it.
“It said that I wasn’t as safe as I thought.”

“What did it say exactly?”

She didn’t answer him right away
,
just realizing that he was speaking to her though their link and her family too.

“I’ve had a great deal of practice handing two conversations at once.
Stop procrastinating.
Tell me.”

“Holly Force
,
I’m going to enjoy killing you and that bat you are fucking.”
She shifted on the arm of the chair before she continued.
“I don’t go by Holly Force in the company.
I’m Heather Wells.”

“There’s been a few changes in what Holly has told you,” Phil blurted out.
“She’s not just being tagged
,
but someone wants her dead.”

“What the fuck
?
” Holly said to him as she jumped to her feet and stepped back out of his reach.
“What the hell are you doing?
I told you that because I thought you’d keep it between us.”

The room around them erupted just as she thought it would.
She ignored it as she and Phil argued.
The moron had just
p
ut her family into danger and she was going to show him how pissed she was. Before she could think about what she was doing she shifted and lunged at him.

Theresa let the room’s voices flow around her.
She fed off the energy from the shouts and heated arguments. She thrived off their stupidity and also their ignorance of what they were.

They all knew they were vampires.
It would have been impossible to have hid that from them
,
but there were other things.
Things that she’d only just figured out on her own.
Like feeding off the emotions of those around her.
She couldn’t live off it
,
but she could get a quick fix.
She shifted in the chair that she had claimed for her own and waited for the high to slow as the voices calmed a little.
She opened her eyes when she took a deep breath.

“Are you all with me now or do I have to kill someone else for you to realize who’s in charge?”
She glanced over at the pile of ash that she left there every
time she’d killed one of them, all two of them.
It wasn’t
as
many as it looked
,
of course. She’d brought in some soot from a fireplace and put more and more on it daily to make herself look all “bad assed
.
” She grinned at the term she’d heard a few days ago.

“I don’t understand how you can be so calm when the big guys are looking for us.” She simply smiled at Peter, the newest vampire to the group.
“What are we being targeted for anyway? For feeding?”

Technically
,
the Trustees were only looking for her.
But she thought that if she told her posse, another term she’d learned recently
,
that she was the one they wanted, the
y
might turn her in for the reward.
She stood up and he bent at the waist before her.

“They seem to think that we’re not supposed to feed from people but each other.
They want us to drink each other’s blood and then die.”
She’d seen what happened when a vampire drank from another and she shivered with the memory.
“I think they want to be the only vampires in existence and
want
all
of
us underlings to die.”

Anye had come to her last night and told her that Holly Force and Phil Campbell were looking for her and were going to kill her as soon as they did.
Anye said she didn’t know why other than they had some sort of grudge against her.
Theresa didn’t believe her
,
but she was thrilled about having their names confirmed.
She’d known who they were from the hotel
,
but she’d not asked them if th
ose
w
ere
the name
s
they went by.
She was also surprised to find out that Holly was some sort of killer.
She’d not thought that by looking at her and Theresa thought her mother was lying to her to scare her.
Anye told her that werewolf blood was by far the best to live off of.
Theresa couldn’t wait to find out.
She licked her lips when she felt her fangs drop.

“Then we’re all doomed.”
One of the others, someone Theresa couldn’t put a name to if her life depended on it, nor did she care to, flopped down on the filthy couch.
“We might as well go on in the sun and end it for us.”

Theresa was at her throat in a heartbeat.
She wasn’t startled by how fast she could move this time
,
but was thrilled for the way it happened.
The girl was just about to die
,
only she didn’t know it yet.
Lifting the girl up, she held her high then tossed her away before she turned to the rest of them.

“We will end them before they do us.
Do I make myself clear?”
They nodded to her and she knew that they wouldn’t talk like that again.
“As of right now
,
we’re gonna find that bitch and make her pay. But the vampire?
He’s all mine.”

And he would be too. Theresa had decided that he was going to fuck her.
She knew he’d be good at it too.
Nothing like the stupid babies she’d been with
,
but a real man.
She moved to the chair again as her people dispersed.

Her people.
She’d been running this group for nearly a decade and she was tired of them.
Thinking about how she was going to get rid of this group
,
she felt the air stir around her. The second her
“
mother
”
walked into the room Theresa was ready for her.

“Who did you tell?”
The first slash of the blade hit Theresa across her cheek.
It burned like fire and she jumped back as she lunged at her again.
“Who did you tell you were my daughter?”

This time Theresa was able to hit back, not as hard as she’d
have
liked
,
but hard enough to knock Anye to the floor.
She stepped back quickly before she answered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Do you honestly think I want people to know who you are to me?
What the heck is wrong with you?”

The wound at her cheek continued to bleed and Theresa licked her thumb and ran it over the open cut.
It still bled
,
but didn’t hurt nearly as bad. She bit her palm open and rubbed her blood over the cut and could feel it begin to seal.
She wondered briefly why it hadn’t healed on its own.

“They know.
I don’t know how they found out unless you told them
,
but they fucking know.
The Trustees are asking me all sorts of questions as if I had something to do with what you are.”
Theresa had a second to be hurt by the comment
,
but Anye wasn’t finished yet.
“They are asking me to give my blood to the knight.
Telling me it would go faster for me if I cooperated.”

Theresa didn’t understand why they wanted her to spill her blood to the darkness
.
N
ight wasn’t really anything to be afraid of and
she
was about to say so when Anye ran at her again.
She was quick, almost quicker than Theresa remembered her being
,
and she was barely able to get out of the way before the blade sank into the chair she’d been standing next to.

With a roar she attacked.
Theresa ran at Anye with a pipe she’d hidden a few days ago when she’d been playing with a human.
It still smelled of blood and fear and she nearly missed her mark thinking about when she’d licked the pipe clean.
She’d had so much fun that night.
This time she was able to hit her.

The pipe broke her jaw and her cheekbone
,
if Theresa didn’t miss her guess.
There was a crunching sound and
,
for a few seconds
,
a wheezing that sounded like Anye was having trouble breathing.
Theresa didn’t go to see, didn’t even get close enough to smell.
She watched the wounded vampire as if she knew she was going to attack no matter how much pain she may or may not have been in.

“You fucking whore,” she shouted at her.
“You mother fucking whore.
How dare you hit me?
I’m the counselor of the Trustees, the highest ranking officer in the whole of vampires.”

Theresa took several steps back from Anye, knowing somehow that this woman was beyond just mad, even beyond pissed.
She was in a murderous rage.
When she picked up another pipe and held it in front of her Anye laughed.

“You moron.
You really think you can hurt me?
What do you know about power and age
?
I may be a mere few decades older than you
,
but I have been taught while you stumbled around like a babe at her mother’s tit.”

Theresa was suddenly afraid.
She hadn’t been taught. The first time she’d stumbled over her meal of the night
,
she’d been so afraid she’d not fed for over a week.
And then when she had again
,
she’d killed three people trying to figure out what had happened to her.

“My mother’s tit, as you well know
,
wasn’t there for me.
You didn’t even hang around long enough for me to be named.
Father said you’d died giving birth. But I guess the night called to you.”
Theresa attacked again.
One pipe missed its mark while the other broke Anye’s arm.
“I will break you apart one piece at a time and spit on your ashes afterward.”

When Anye rushed her this time, Theresa fell backward.
She knew she was going to die as soon as Anye fell atop her.
The claws that morphed at the end of her hand both terrified and fascinated her.
So much so that when they came toward her throat Theresa felt excitement rush though her blood.
But at the last second she moved and knocked Anye back.
The older vampire moved then, faster than Theresa had ever been able to.
First she was standing in front of her
,
the
n
she was at her throat.
Theresa tried to get loose
,
but all she managed to do was tear her fingers from her hand
,
sending her mom screaming into the night.

~~~

His phone going off woke him.
Phil wasn’t sure who it was
;
the ringer was the default one
,
but he knew for someone to call him this late in the afternoon
,
it had to be important.
He answered it cautiously.

“Anye Sabalz just came to me with her hand nearly ripped from her body.
She claims that she doesn’t remember what happened.
You should also know that we’ve got a location as
to
where the rogue and the others have been hiding.
Won’t do us much good now
,
mind you
,
because the house is burning as we speak.”
Phil heard Myles laugh and was worried for the man as he continued.
“They are trying to get it under control
,
but the entire area is going up.”

“What else has happened
,
Myles?”
The man laughed again and Phil looked over at Holly as she rose from the bed to go to the bathroom.
“Tell me.”

It was hard to compel someone to tell you what you wanted over the phone
,
but apparently
,
it worked.
Myles started crying the moment he started talking.
For a grown man to break down like this had Phil beyond worried.