Void Domain, Book 05 полностью

She unhooked her fangs immediately. Her tongue ran across his arm only once before she pulled away. Licking her lips, she quickly cleared off any traces of her meal from her face.

Wayne turned the fireball on himself, cauterizing the wound. He had potions in his backpack, but that would have required rummaging through it, potentially leaving himself vulnerable to her. Cauterizing it left a brief moment of pain and an ugly mark. Nothing he couldn’t fix later with the proper potions.

“Now,” he said, standing. “You can’t leave the city. The military has the entire place fenced off and they’re killing any vampires that try to escape. I don’t know what the plan is for the city. Maybe they leave it fenced off, maybe they nuke it.”

That is, if the Elysium Order doesn’t nuke it first, he thought with a frown.

He really needed to hurry.

She started to open her mouth, but Wayne cut her off.

“Whatever. Not my problem. If you survive, don’t let your hunger dominate you.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re–”

“You might as well just kill me now then. I can’t go home, I can’t see my sister. Not like this. And if they’re going to destroy the city, you might as well get it over with now.”

Wayne tried to pinch the bridge of his nose. His hand smacked against the mask. Sighing instead, Wayne shook his head. “Fine. Do whatever you want. But cross me and you’ll wish I would just kill you.”

He didn’t bother to mention that her sister was probably dead or turned as well.

Instead, Wayne ignored whatever the little vampire had started to say to find his car.

He found it right in the center of the second cone of fire he had ignited.

There wasn’t much left of it.

Wayne pinched his eyes shut, counted backwards from ten, before grumbling out, “I should have got a rental.”

Walking through the streets of Lansing wasn’t that bad. Because of the smog, Wayne had been forced to drive at extremely slow speeds. As long as he kept up a brisk pace, walking would likely end up being faster in the end anyway.

There were a few drawbacks. Wayne considered himself far from the most athletic of people. Power walking the remaining mile or two to Sarah’s house wasn’t a huge issue, but he was starting to feel the strain in his legs. He had dropped his time dilation down several notches as well, which forced him to keep an even closer watch on his surroundings–doubly so without the protective shell of a car around him. Leaving his mental acceleration on would have made the walk take an agonizingly long time from his perspective.

At least he no longer had the rumble of the Impala’s engine drawing the attention of every vampire in the city.

After a mile and a half, he had yet to see another group of vampires. Something Wayne was immensely thankful for.

Part of that could simply be the time. Dawn shouldn’t be far off. While the thick smoke over the city would protect any vampires caught outdoors from the harmful rays of the sun, there was still a natural inclination to locate a safe area to enter a brief period of torpor. That still left ghouls and thralls wandering around, but they were a non-issue. Wayne had already torched a handful of the zombie-like slaves.

Wayne doubted he would be seeing many thralls out and about. Most vampires in the city would be sleeping until roughly an hour before sunset and their thralls would be watching over their slumber.

Sunset was long after when Wayne hoped to be gone from this place.

How exactly he was going to get out, Wayne still had no idea. Perhaps he could find a radio to call up Hicks and get him to open the gate. Then again, if Wayne were Hicks, he would have called up his superiors already to ask about the mysterious man who spoke of vampires and tossed fire around. Everyone in the upper echelon would deny his existence–those orders had been forged after all.

Maybe Hicks would get orders to detain and interrogate Wayne instead of outright killing him.

Eh, best find another way out. Sarah could just use earth magic to tunnel out, but Wayne wasn’t all that excited about being trapped underground for who knew how long–Sarah wasn’t the best at earth magic. Though, at least they wouldn’t be hounded by vampires while underground.

“So, since I’m really a vampire, that was real magic you were using?”

“Yes,” Wayne grunted, rolling his eyes. There might be one vampire underground.

He smiled behind his mask at the thought of a vampire six feet under.

“That’s so cool. Can you teach me? Please? Please?”

“Aren’t you feeling sleepy? Any instinct to go nap the day away?”

“Nope!” Serena–the name she had picked after Wayne commented that Patty was a silly name for a vampire–hopped in front of Wayne. She spun around with a smile and clasped her hands behind her back, walking backwards. “I’ve been feeling so good. I used to have an ache in my back, but it’s completely gone.”