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Meanwhile, I’m feeling the energy that’s being fed to me by my uncles. They’re feeding off whatever that power is that’s beyond blood in my father-in-law, and now it’s singing through my veins.
I attack with all my pent-up fury, letting out a scream so loud and high-pitched that it breaks the glass of the atrium’s center display surrounding the sacrificed body. Glass explodes outwards.
I fly down and grasp my father-in-law, where he squirms, surrounded by blue light that is obviously keeping him from disappearing. I can tell he’s trying, but runes have banded around his arms and legs, holding him tight.
Now to send him to the darkness.
I grab him by his neck and drag him over until he’s at the very center of the sacrificial circle inside the atrium where the body is. I understand what all of this was for now.
They made this circle to call forth more spirits from the cold so they could be embodied in my children. The succubus we thought was Ammit and spirits like her who cross over to this realm by means of a sacrifice will only ever be shadows hiding in the shell of a human body. Possessing a human who already has a life in this world is usually the only way for a spirit to gain entry into flesh.
Unless one is incarnated at the moment of conception, otherworldly spirit uniting with human flesh before there are any other souls to occupy it. I bought my way in slowly, generation by generation of blood drinkers, until I got myself incarnated.
My father-in-law and Vlad decided to speed up the process with this unholy circle magic, my womb, and Layden’s seed. I won’t know what sort of spirits my children are or where the proclivities from their realms might lead until we get to know them more. But they are mine, and they can learn to choose the person they want to be, just like I did. Or just like I’m learning to do.
I slam my father-in-law down on top of the already sacrificed body. Apparently, part of this new person I’m embracing doesn’t back down from gore as long as it’s in protection of the ones I love.
“What do you think you’re doing?” my father-in-law laughs up at me. “You can do nothing to me other than bind me for a while.” He looks up at Layden as he approaches. “You think this will hold me? I’m invincible! Indestructible. I’ve been here since right after the first garden, and I’ll be here to see the winking out of the last star!”
Layden holds up the sword he took from our son and lops off his father’s head.
Unlike Vlad, though, my father-in-law just keeps laughing as his head rolls to the side. His face grins up at us. I snatch it up and set it in place near the other head. This is a creature who grew back from a mere ember in ashes. We have to do this right so that not a single piece of him is left out. “Get his legs and arms, too. Section them up just like the body beneath him.”
Just as I’m about to carve his heart out of the center of his chest, Sabra yells, “Behind you! Phoenix!”
I swing around just in time to see my daughter, a young woman now, running full speed at me with her sword raised. Her toga barely skims her thighs at this point, not that she appears to care in her dead-eyed state.
I roll backward right as Layden lifts his sword to block her strike. She’s knocked back by the strength of his block. Layden doesn’t waste a moment. He brings the sword back down on his father, severing his right leg and then his left.
Our daughter raises her sword right as our firstborn comes in from the right like a linebacker, tackling Layden away from the severed pieces of my father-in-law.
Which is when all mayhem officially breaks loose.
Our second-born flies down, as fully grown as his brother, and rips him off of Layden. Then, the two brothers start to wrestle viciously on the ground. I hate to see my sons fighting, but neither of them has swords, so I’m hoping the damage they can do to one another is limited. I turn back toward the pieces of my father-in-law and our daughter, who’s crouched in a protective stance over what’s left of him. She’s squaring off with Layden, both of them with swords raised.
I glare at my father-in-law, who watches on with glee even as he lies in severed pieces. It’s time to end this.
I call my remaining vampires to me, and only seven hobble toward me out of the twenty who initially rushed the circle. Together, we circle my father-in-law on the floor. As one, we all grab whatever piece of him that remains intact and begin to yank him apart. It’s far more grisly than the sword would have been. If he feels pain as he’s dismembered, he doesn’t show it. We don’t stop until we’re all covered in blood and my father-in-law is in as many pieces as the sacrificed human below him.
Behind us, sparks fly from the golden swords as Layden fights our daughter.
“Sabra!” I call.
She runs up to me. We look into each other’s eyes, a thousand things we both want to say but have no time for brimming there. “Let’s do this,” she says.
We lean down as one, her hand on his head and my hand on his chest, as she begins to chant.
I could already feel the power flowing through me, but as her words call forth the channel between the spirit realms, I feel it surge. It reminds me of old times in a weird way. I’m still the battery. I’m just super-charged this time.
Which is good because I want to send this motherfucker into a hole so deep and far away he’ll never be able to find his way out again.
“It’s opening,” Sabra whispers, and I hear the fear in her voice. I’ll never ask anything like this of her again. She’s been enslaved by my family for her entire life in ways I never imagined. I hope after this, she can live free and do anything she wants with her life. Away from this darkness so she can heal from the trauma we’ve inflicted on her.
But now, it’s time to focus. I focus all the power roaring through my veins and an energy I’ve never felt before. If ever I felt godlike, it’s now. I see the haziness between flesh and spirit. As Sabra continues chanting, that line becomes even more ephemeral.
“Hear me, foolish whelp,” my father-in-law snarls, for once not laughing, “Wherever you send me, I’ll just come back. I’ll never stop coming for you. For your family. For my family. This world is mine. Wherever you send me, I’ll only conquer it. No realm can hold me. All will bow!”
I reach down with my blood-soaked hand and turn his severed head toward me so I can look him in the eye.
