AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So much for stealth.
I raised palms full of fire as they met my gaze. “Going somewhere?”
Both men’s eyes went wide. Before they had time to think of turning back around, I launched a fireball in their direction. They screamed as the flames scorched through the air toward them, growing wide to encompass the entire hallway. The smell of burning hair and flesh reached my nostrils before the flames burned out, leaving nothing but two ash piles and melted guns behind.
A rush of power burst through me, sending me nearly to my knees. I leaned against the charred wall, trying to steady suddenly shallow breaths and a racing heart. A laugh bubbled over my lips as the magic within me grew, feeling like electricity zipping through every nerve ending. I felt alive. Happy. Powerful.
Unstoppable.
I pushed off the wall and made my way to where the original scream had come from. There’d be more vampires, and where there were more, vengeance was to be served. Nothing could stop me now, I was sure of it. Not with this heady sense of power building within me. More powerful than anything Mrak had made me feel. More dangerous than the ecstasy of vampire venom as it coursed through your skin.
No, this wasmore. And it had me running through the halls of Cassius’s den, burning the next vampire guard. And another. Six vampires burned to death at my fires by the time I found a spiral staircase that only led down, the halls around the staircase becoming brick and wood instead of elegant plaster.
The stairs down to the feeding rooms. To where feeders like Willa and I had spent entire years of our lives slaves to vampires and their bites. Their venom. Their bloodlust.
My jaw set hard and I set off to the stairs, utterly and unabashedly high off the feeling of Mrak’s power. He’d said nothing to me as I’d moved. I wondered if he was smiling where he was, watching me take my revenge on these vampires with the help of his magic. Was he proud of me?
Fire curled around all of my limbs as though I were a walking column of flame. I laughed every time another vampire guard stepped in my way, only to burn at my touch. Every new death felt as though I were watching these moments in third person. Every action was an unplanned reaction.
The bottom of the stairs connected with an intersection of hallways, each darker than the corridors upstairs had been. Doors lined the hallways in intervals. Behind each familiar door was a feeder’s quarters, a small room with a bed and a toilet. So much like a prison that you could almost pretend you were in jail instead of stuck in a community of vampires using you and your body for food.
I didn’t need to look into these rooms to know what they were. These halls mirrored what Lazarus’s had looked like. A clear homage to Lazarus and the giant community he’d created.
If only Cassius had remembered how that had ended.
Down here, the sounds of fighting grew. Bodies littered the hallways. There were fewer vampires to burn because several had already died and been strewn about, stakes and dagger wounds across their chests.
Someone was already here killing Cassius’s coven?
Anger bloomed within me. “They aremine!” I screamed as vengeance burned a hole through my chest.
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned with flames already lunging from my fingertips to burn my text target. Too fast.
Innocent eyes.Terrifiedeyes. Ragged clothes. Bite marks along her neck and arms.
Too late.
My magic hit, engulfing the woman in flames burning so intensely, they swallowed her scream. I felt it in my chest anyway, a hole gnawing straight through me to the core of my soul.
But my power grew. Another pulse of blooming, heady magic changing me from the inside out. It swallowed the guilt, leaving only room for more vengeance as I whipped around and continued on my way toward the center of the den. It felt like something or someone followed close behind me. Watching me. I paid it no mind. I was untouchable here and now.
With Cassius’s homage to Lazarus, I knew exactly where he would be. The heart of the den. The library. The grand hall at the bottom of the manor decorated ceiling to floor with only the most immaculate things. Furniture. Drapes for privacy. Rugs for comfort. Drinks and food and humans on whom to feast.
I made my way toward the grand hall, wondering exactly how far beneath the ground his manor went compared to Lazarus’s old den. Every step brought more flames around me, whipping in wild tendrils as though there were a heavy breeze. Smoke climbed up my body, drowning away the scent of burning flesh.
My foot lodged into something I hadn’t seen, and I tripped, catching myself on the wall. I turned back to see what I’d tripped over. A body—a man in light modern armor and half a dozen dagger sheaths across his body.
A demon hunter. And not just any demon hunter.
This man had Mrak’s ward on the back of his palm like Leif had, plus a dozen other ward tattoos along his hands and neck, and one, much larger moon tattoo on his forehead.
The Lunar League.
The sounds of fighting. All of those dead vampires.
How the hell had the Lunar League already gotten here if Leif had been on his way to file an official report about me when I’d left him lying there on the ground, burned and in pain?
I screamed, anger and confusion rousing within me until it felt as though I’d burst right along with this fire magic.
