Page 18 of Slayer

All men in their early twenties.

They loomed over me at almost seven feet with porcelain skin and red-tinged lips, blocking my path like a wall.

More of my delusional vampires.

I reached out and pinched the skin on my arm hard to wake myself up from this nightmare, but it just hurt and nothing happened.

“You’re not real.” I shook my head.

The men grinned at the same time, and something about the synchronicity made my stomach churn. I noticed these ones didn’t have the red glowing eyes or the silver ones like the man did. These ones were blue.

“A hunter.” The one on the right spat. “Can’t feed from her emotions, but we can kill her.”

Crap.

On the off chance this wasn’t a delusion, I reached into my boot and pulled my stake, fisting it. My hand felt ridiculously small around it. It had stabbed two of these bastards so far, and neither one had died.

Suddenly the men split up, one staying before me and the others zipping to my left and right, surrounding me.

My pulse roared in my ears.

I looked down at my little stake. Did I think I’d stake all three of them with all the badass training that I didn’t have? What was I thinking, leaving Asher with the big old sword?

I needed something more. I needed a machine gun or…

The memory of the wafer tin in the pocket of my new baggy jeans hit me.

I quickly reached into the cargo pocket, pulling out the tin that held the wafers as I stashed my stake in my belt.

One of the vamps moved for me, but I rushed backward, flipping the lid off the tin and grasping the first wafer I could find.

If I were the same as Asher, a hunter, then this would work on me too, right?

I popped the wafer into my mouth just as the vamp plowed into my body, knocking me off my feet. My butt slammed into the ground, and the wafer tin went flying, just as a hot burning sensation poured down my throat and erupted in my stomach. I groaned, wanting to vomit the wafer back out, but the triplets were on me. Two pinned my arms while the other held my face.

“Snap her little hunter neck,” one hissed.

The burning in my stomach reached critical mass, and I was pretty sure I had just given myself an ulcer. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I screamed in the guy’s face who held me.

But no sound came out.

Only fire.

A hot stream of blue fire erupted from my throat and ignited the vamp before me. He quickly fell off me, screaming.

The other two who held me scrambled off me like I was a hot coal.

“Celestis fire,” they hissed, and then a black shadow swirled around them before they were gone.

The park fell eerily silent.

“Holy crap, did she just breathe Celestis fire?” a female voice called from behind me.

I snapped my head in that direction and came face-to-face with a man and a woman in their forties, wearing all black tactical uniforms and holding swords much like Asher’s and a stake much like mine.

My body trembled violently now that the adrenaline was fading.

I was scared to speak, afraid I’d cover them in fire. Their eyes were human, no weird colors. But they both had rune marks tattooed on their forearms, similar to the ones I had as a baby.