Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (44 page)

With rasping breath, the reaper tried to pull away. Lena couldn’t believe he was alive let alone trying to pull away. Giving a cry of effort, the voran threw her hands wide making her aura blades cut from the center of the vampire’s chest outward slicing through flesh and bone like a pair of fiery swords.

Lena watched the reaper stagger back with both arms dangling from thin pieces of flesh. Chest bared to reveal a beating black heart as black blood sprayed from the wound, she could still see the monster’s body holding onto life even as it tried to repair the damage she had caused. Plunging her hands with the light of two blades into its heart, the girl pierced the beating pump and watched as it turned to ash like silver burning a normal vampire.

Staggering back a few steps, the creature burst into a ball of flame turning to dust during the explosion before the air began to blow it away.

Not even bothering to dodge the remnants of dust, Lena stumbled to Geni. The voran’s left hand held her wound shut as best she could a moment before taking some of the blood getting through her fingers with the right. Making sure the drops entered Geni’s mouth as Nick had told her to do for vampire bite victims; she wiped the wound on her neck quickly before pulling her phone from her pocket.

Her vision blurring, Lena pressed her bloody thumb to the screen to speed dial Nick.

“Hello?” Nick answered surprised to hear from Lena at this time of night.

“Help, Nick. Geni and I were attacked by a reaper. We’re both hurt.”

“Are you bleeding?”

“He tore my neck. There’s a lot of blood, but I gave Geni some of mine and wiped the wound while trying to keep from bleeding out. I’m going to pass out, Nick,” the girl said trying to fight the shadows beginning to darken her vision.

“Tell me where.”

She could tell that he was already running from the moment she had said that the girls had been attacked. As best she could tell him, Lena described their walk from Halsted and the name of the bar. She didn’t hear him respond as the girl toppled over next to her friend.

Voices could be heard in the darkness. She felt her body move and more voices. Someone called her name, but Lena couldn’t say anything back she was so tired.

Time passed in the shadows, but Lena’s mind was still. There was no white light, just the darkness.

Voices were talking and a slit of light slipped through the lids of her eyes. Blinking as she tried to open her eyes, Lena asked through a dry throat, “Where am I?”

The first face she spied was Logan. The werewolf had blood on his hands, but a smile on his face as he greeted, “Welcome back, Lena. Don’t try to move just yet or you’ll pull out the IV.”

Her eyes flicked from a wall and cabinets just inches above her head and then back towards Logan noticing Nick sitting in a chair. His eyes looked up at her looking tired. “Are we good, Logan? I don’t think I can do much more right now.”

A red tube flowed from her wrist to her mentor, or more accurately from him to her.

“What’s going on?” she asked as Sami suddenly moved close with a bottle of water and a straw.

“Drink up,” the girl said with a smile even as her eyes tried to hide her worry and unease.

The water was like heaven to her parched mouth and once inside her seemed to flow in a cooling stream to her stomach. Logan warned them to slow down and go easy, but Lena’s worry as she recalled what happened overrode her own needs. “Where’s Geni?”

Sami pointed towards her feet, but in reality she meant a table ten feet away. “She’s on the table, but Logan said she’ll be fine.”

The werewolf doctor loomed into view pinching off the tubes of flowing blood. He nodded in agreement with the young vampire, “You saved her with your efforts, Lena. She lost some blood, but she’ll be alright. You were our greater concern, since the reaper tore your neck. Nick said that you vorans heal almost as well as a vampire. Pushing the flap of skin against your neck started the healing almost instantly, but you still lost a lot of blood so we had Nick give you a small amount of his to help with the healing process.”

“Small amount?
I give less to the vampires in a month, even with Sami’s extra needs this month.”

Nick stood but looked wobbly. He was pale and sat back down. Nicola swooped in with juice and a plate of food.

With the tubes removed, Logan said it was safe to move, but to be careful. Lena managed to sit up on the counter in a kitchen that she didn’t recognize.

“Where are we anyway? Whose house is this?”

Logan pointed to his chest and answered, “It’s our apartment. Kate and I just moved in a few days ago and barely have any furniture. I guess it’s a good thing we picked up the dining table even without any chairs or Geni would be on the floor.

“Nick called me when he found out where you were, since I was using his Escape and
live closer than the Lair.”

Nick spoke up between bites of his sandwich, “We were visiting the club when you called. Marek and the others came with to look for anymore signs of reapers, but all we found was the one you managed to kill.”

Lena half smiled as she informed her mentor, “I was able to pull up two aura blades when I needed them.”

He smiled back looking just as tired as she felt. With his blood to help save her life, Lena knew that she owed her life to Nick and Logan. “What was it like?”

His question was somewhat vague, but the girl guessed what he meant, “He was thin, with dark hair and black eyes instead of the white when a vampire loses it to their hunger. He moved so fast that I couldn’t even react.

“Geni and I went to the bar and probably drank too much.”

“Especially since you are under age,” Nick nodded being less judgmental than stating the fact.

“Only for a couple more months,” she replied, but went on ignoring the issue. “My sixth sense didn’t pick him up until I saw him biting Geni and it was too late. If I hadn’t gotten sick in the alley, maybe I could have done better and kept her from being bitten.”

“Or you might have been attacked first and both of you could be dead instead. Don’t worry over what might have been as long as you survived. Now go on and tell us what happened after you saw him attack Geni,” the man said in a soothing voice.

“I yelled at him to get off her. What I said made no difference, so I don’t even remember exactly what I said. I just wanted to get him off of Geni before he killed her.

“He was on me in the blink of an eye from fifteen feet to biting my neck like that,” she said snapping her fingers. “When he bit me, my voran blood must have surprised him, so he pulled back but ripped my neck. If I hadn’t already killed him, I’d kill the bastard again,” the girl said feeling the pain in her neck but was too fearful to check it with her fingers, since it was bandaged anyway.

“Anyway, when he moved in for seconds I got my hands between us and stabbed him with both blades. They probably weren’t very long, but when I swept my hands from the center of his chest I took out his arms and exposed his heart. It was black like his eyes, so I plunged both aura blades into that and reduced it to dust.

“He burst into flames after that so I went to try and help Geni before I called you and passed out.”

Her eyes strayed to the table where Logan had moved. Kate and Charlotte were tending to the human girl on a wood table. Lena asked, “Shouldn’t she be in a hospital or something?”

“She’ll be alright,” Nick replied. “You saved her and with a little voran blood in her she’ll recover faster than normal.”

Logan nodded to the girl as he concurred.

“There was a lot of blood on her dress, Nick,” Lena stated less than certain that they were taking care of Geni in the best way. Maybe because she was only human, they didn’t care about her friend.

“There’s a lot of blood on you too,” her mentor stated pointing to her blouse. It had a couple tears, but was caked in dried blood. Most of it was hers. “But you’re already sitting up. If Geni needed to go to the hospital, we would have rushed her there; but your blood not only keeps her from turning into a vampire, but helped seal her wounds and regenerate lost blood.”

Worry returned to Lena’s face as she flashed back to the black eyes of the reaper and shook her head. “That thing was fast. I may not be able to fight as well as you, but my brain can usually see fast movements of vampires. He was faster than anything I’ve seen.”

Nick nodded knowing what she was getting at with the comment, “We guessed that they were both faster and stronger than the average vampire. We can only hope better training will save us if we have to fight them.”

“He crossed fifteen feet in a blink, Nick. I might not be able to react properly to fight a vampire, but I can at least see them coming. The alcohol only impaired me slightly. My eyes worked, but he was that fast,” Lena reinforced the impact of her words to make sure that they understood what they faced. She never wanted to run across something like that again.

Nick nodded and finally stood. Color was back in his cheeks already. Lena wondered just how quickly they could heal, but didn’t want to push that envelope again anytime soon.

Looking around the apartment that she could see, the girl noticed how empty it was and how plain. Nick must have thought the same thing as he spied a lonely looking couch, the kitchen table and a couple folding chairs.

“Do you want a loan to get some furniture?” the man asked using the idea of a loan knowing that Logan was a proud man and trying to provide for Kate now as well.

Shaking his head, the big man replied, “We haven’t had a chance to buy much yet, but we’re getting by. It’s enough for now. Don’t worry.”

Nick nodded and replied, “How much do we owe you, doc?”

Chuckling as he realized that Nick was trying to find a different way to help. “You already gave us room and board for free plus free food. My rate isn’t that high.”

Realizing that there was no way Logan was going to accept his help, Nick waited until the doctor felt that it was safe for them all to go home. The werewolf carried Geni down to the Escape and drove with Nick and the others back to the north commons on Halsted Street. The commons were basically part of the university campus and had a guard out front all the time since the disappearances began.

When the two vehicles stopped and Lena led them towards the building, the guard moved to stop them with his hands raised, “Whoa there, visiting hours have been over for a long time. You can’t go in there I’m sorry.”

Lena pointed to her neck and Geni being carried by Logan, “We had an accident and our friends are trying to bring us home. That doesn’t count as having guests. They’ll put Geni to bed and leave.”

Shaking his head the guard looked ready to argue, but Nicola moved forward and smiled at the man. The pretty blonde was dressed for clubbing since they had been at the Lair, but her eyes were what held the guard’s attention as she used glamour to do what they needed.

“You’re going to watch our cars for us to make sure no police come to ticket them while we’re taking this sick girl to her room. Then if anyone should ever ask, we were here bringing two sick girls home.”

The man just nodded slack jawed in the grip of the vampire’s power. With no more resistance, the group took the elevator up and with Lena and Geni’s keys placed the unconscious girl in her room. Lena debated on staying with her friend, but she was exhausted and only slightly more recovered because of being a voran and having Nick’s blood inside of her.

After the others had left and she was soaking in the shower, Lena gave a little prayer that she had been able to save them from the monster. Once exams were over, she needed to start training with Nick in earnest. The girl never wanted to feel as helpless as she had felt in the grip of the reaper.

Chapter 25- Revelations

Shedu looked to the sky seeing gray on the horizon. While the kasha could function easily enough in the daylight, they would still have to forsake the reaper’s trail before the sun rose. They couldn’t remain hidden from the world if they kept taking big risks anymore than the vampires, who seemed determined to show the humans their existence.

As opposed to the kasha, Shedu took in the small team of vampires following the trail with them. They were from the coven of a vampire called Marek and little more was shared with them, though he knew that they were the ones fostered by Nick. How his blood could keep the creatures from turning evil and giving in to their hunger, the kasha leader didn’t know, but he didn’t sense evil in the ones with him. It was the evil done by vampires that drew kasha to kill them and their senses noticed the evil before the scent of undead as they hunted.

The reaper’s scent, on the other hand, reeked of evil. It had been killed by a girl, another voran as Nick called them, and she wasn’t even trained. While Shedu knew that surprise had given her the advantage, he felt that it was a good omen. If a novice could kill one, then surely the well trained kasha could kill more.

While following the scent of a reaper was possible, it was proving problematic as well. Their vampire escort, a trio consisting of their two best trackers and fighters as well as a recent addition to their
ranks with military training, had followed the scent with the kasha and had the advantage of being able to leap farther than the feline hunters. It was a humiliating thing to have to admit, but when they were dealing with buildings that differed by several stories, the vampires could still somehow make the leaps to cover the distance and even account for the changes in height.