I lunged, angling my dagger toward where her heart should be. The vampiress twisted aside, and my blade hissed through empty air. She clamped her hand around my wrist, nails biting deep.
The shadows released, and light returned. I pushed my nullification onto her. Without it, she could dissolve into mist or wield whatever gifts her devotees had granted.
Lorelei smiled in instant recognition, her fangs gleaming. “Little Sidney. All grown up with a death wish.”
Zane struck, but she caught the blade and tore it from his grip. She released my wrist to punch his jaw. He hit the wall, the smashing sound echoing.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the corridor. The mastiffs’ ears flattened, and a low whine slipped from one of them. Finn sprinted for the oak door. He slammed it shut, dropped the iron bolt, and then shoved a marble washstand against the frame.
Pain throbbed at my temple from the strain of magic, but I maintained my null for now. I drove my dagger into her shoulder, and the blade sank deep.
Lorelei snarled, backhanding me. The blow snapped my head aside. Stars burst across my vision.
She flung Zane away when he lunged, sending him skidding a second time. Glass shattered.
Every heartbeat was a battle to maintain my null with my head pounding. “You taught me that worthless creatures destroy beauty…” I gasped for breath. “Yet that's all I've ever seen you do.”
Zane wrestled his mask back into place, dragging the crooked eyeholes straight. Finn seized a heavy crystal perfume bottle and hurled it. The glass shattered against Lorelei’s face, and she staggered back.
“Now I've emerged from the wreckage you've created to hunt down monsters like you,” I said.
A thud rattled the door as the vampiress sneered at me.
Darkness peeled from the wall, Zane’s shadow stretched and sharpened. It lashed across the floor, hooking around Lorelei’s ankle. She lost her balance, and Zane blurred through the darkness, appearing behind her to sweep her legs out. She crashed to one knee.
I drove forward, stake raised. The weapon punched between her ribs, angling toward her heart. Before I could bury it, her hand shot out, clamping around my throat. She stood, lifting me off the ground. Spots swarmed my vision. My lungs screamed for air as I clawed at her grip.
Consciousness wavered. Dark spots flooded across my vision. But her arm trembled, and her hold weakened. The rupture from my earlier strike was affecting her. I dropped out of her hold, landing hard to the ground and gasping for air. My stake bounced across the rug.
My nullification broke, sending agony throbbing through my head. Lorelei’s skin shimmered, her form blurring at the edges. Despite the splitting pain in my skull, I threw my magic on her again in a desperate lash.
Zane’s shadow surged, pinning her down withebony spikes. His blade followed a heartbeat later, bursting through her chest but missing her heart. Blood poured from the wound, yet she kept going, claws raking the air.
Wood cracked as the door buckled under a storm of strikes. Finn threw his weight against the washstand, his boots skidding for purchase. Gasping, I scrambled forward, snatching my stake. I drove it into the wound Zane had made, forcing it deep into her heart. Lorelei spasmed once and then went still with the glaze of death settling over her cruel eyes.
I knelt beside her corpse. For a perfect moment, I felt no pain. A tightness I’d carried inside me for years unwound. Tears warmed my eyes. My breath came easier now she was gone. The jasmine and copper scent of her would never again make my stomach clench in anticipation of a sharp tongue or a calculated blow.
Blood soaked the rug beneath my knees, but I didn’t move.
“Is the bitch dead?” Zane’s voice was rough.
The sharp pain in my head returned as reality pressed in. “Yes,” I answered.
The door groaned, and its wood splintered. The barricade gave way, the washstand tipping over and knocking Finn backward onto the rug.
Shit.
The lead soldier shoved through the jagged gap, his eyes burning with fury. Halfway through the breach, Finn attacked, driving his blade clean into the vampire’s heart. The guard sagged before collapsing to the ground.
Another guard lunged in, and a sudden, unnatural wind picked up, whipping my hair across my face. I snapped my focus onto him, and the wind stopped. As he stumbled, stripped of his power, the nearest mastiff leaped,its jaws tearing out his throat in one savage motion. I finished him with a blade to his heart.
Beyond the wreckage, a man charged into the room. He had to be a devotee, wearing only thin, flowing silks. Behind me, Zane was a blur of violence, his shadows lashing out to intercept two more guards trying to scale the balcony outside.
I locked onto the devotee, and he froze, his raised hand trembling. I blinked sweat from my eyes and glanced at the second devotee behind him, who formed a dagger of crackling blue energy in his hand. Releasing my hold on the first, I shifted my null toward the second, causing the dagger to vanish. He staggered, turning his hand over in obvious confusion.
The first devotee shook off his surprise and lunged for me, but a mastiff intercepted him, jaws snapping around his forearm and dragging him to the floor. Finn finished him off.
Zane’s shadows curled up his arm like smoke as he slammed the second male back into the splintered doorframe. One clean strike punctured the vampire’s heart, and the body sagged, sliding down the wood.
