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I laugh. “Vampires take what they want. They lie to get what they don’t already have, and they kill you the second they’re done with you.”
“Master is different,” Kellen insists.
“Good luck with that line of thinking,” I say.
Truthfully, I’m not one-hundred-percent sure about what I’m saying because vampires usually just hypnotize their servants into doing their bidding, but these guys don’t appear to have that glazed look. At least, Kellen doesn’t. I haven’t really gotten a good look at any of the others, given the fact that I’m at the bottom of the dog pile. But it doesn’t matter. All I need is for Kellen to let his guard down, and I seem to have found a way to ensure just that. “Every brain-washed vampire slave thinks their fanged master is different but vampires are all just various shades of bastard.”
Irritation flashes across Kellen’s face. He’s distracted, just barely, and just for a second, but it’s all I need. Luckily, my bobby blade is still clenched in my hand, but I’ll have to get a few of these bastards off me before I’ll be free enough to actually use it.
First thing’s first, I crack my skull against the head of the girl laying most directly atop me. There’s a sharp pain in the back of my head, but I ignore it. She, meanwhile, doesn’t. She screams and lurches back, exposing the shoulder of the man beside her.
I wish I could say I had a more graceful solution to the problem at hand, but the truth is plain and simple: I bite that shoulder like I’m a wolf tearing into a bit of flesh.
Understandably, the man screams bloody murder, pushing himself off me and to the side. Two others roll with him, and another two tumble over themselves to fall onto my other side. One tries to stay on me, wrapping her spindly little fingers around my arms, but I have a free leg now. So, I wrap that leg around her waist and pull her tight against me, using her as a human shield while I punch the last man who’s glomming onto my left leg. He takes his split lip and broken tooth and retreats to the wall with one of the other, weaker humans. Meanwhile, I jump to my feet, back myself against the wall, and face them with my scariest expression. Now they’re all a little trepidatious about attacking me, and some, having caught sight of my bobby blade, aren’t willing to come closer again.
Good.
Kellen, though, isn’t one of them. Instead, he launches into action and he’s quick for a human, but he’s nowhere near as quick as I am. He rushes me as I duck out from the corner wall and roll over the top of the human shield girl, who’s still on her knees, bemoaning her wounded face. She lets out a strained whimper while another man throws his weight at me. He catches me off balance and I start to fall as Kellen, meanwhile, reaches down toward my hair. I catch myself against the wall, but decide it might be better to be on the ground, where the difference in our heights won’t be to his advantage. So, I drop to the floor as Kellen hovers over me, reaching for me. I palm the bobby blade, then stab up with it, and catch him in the palm.
Kellen shrieks, a heinous sound that doesn’t last long, but it activates my survival impulses all the same. I jump up to my feet, then elbow Kellen in the jugular. His hands go to his throat, and his beady eyes go wide (well, as wide as they can being so deep set in his skull). He rubs his open wound against his face and the blood smears and he makes that pained sound again. I crinkle my nose and spin around to find someone running at me. I stab them in the shoulder with my small blade and push another woman away who comes at me from the other side. When I reach the other wall, I turn around to find them all just standing there, looking at me. They’re losing their confidence.
Kellen then gets a strange look on his face, something manic, wild, and almost inspired. He cups his bloody hands around his mouth as he looks straight up at the ceiling and yells, “Derith D’Orsay, I summon thee!”
Everyone then begins to skitter away, to the opposite walls. It’s as if they’re all strange versions of emaciated soldiers who know their rightful positions. The only empty corner is the one in the far front, the one where—I assume—Kellen takes up the part of sentry when he isn’t playing vampire in his master’s bedroom.
Not wanting to wait around to find out what’s going to happen next, I turn to run out through the archway, but as soon as I reach the base of it, I run smack dab into the vampire. I stumble back then, bobby blade fruitlessly in hand.
“Well, well,” the vampire bastard says as I take another few steps away from him. I make the mistake of stealing a glance back at Kellen who looks nothing but smug.
Chapter Five
“Well,” the vampire says. “It seems you are quite the trouble maker.”
A deceptively warm smile creeps across the monster’s handsome face. It makes my stomach turn.
Kellen said a name when he summoned his master and now, for the life of me, I can’t remember it. Derrin? Derek? Dartmouth? Dickhead? The last name though, D’Orsay… that name rings a pretty significant bell.
The Brothers D’Orsay ruled these woods long ago. They lived in this castle… could they be here still? Two decades after they both vanished? Is it possible my family’s killer has really been living his immortal life right under my nose all these years? The idea makes my blood boil, but there’s nothing to be done about it now.
“Thank you for keeping her occupied, Kellen,” the vampire continues without looking at the spindly little man. “I’d have hated to find her locked in the cell where I left her.”
“Sh… she got… she got out and…” Kellen stutters over his words, struggling to get out even the most basic sentiment and I wonder at the nature of the relationship between them—clearly Kellen is frightened of the vampire and yet, he’d said his ‘master’ was different than other vampires. Hmm, apparently not the case.
“And you were…where?”
Kellen looks down at the floor. The vampire, meanwhile, keeps his narrowed focus on me, talking vaguely in Kellen’s direction.
“I was—”
“He was playing vampire in your coffin,” I say with a shrug. Despite not giving a shit what happens to Kellen, it’s satisfying to watch him turn bright red before my eyes.
I expect the vampire to take immediate vengeance, which is what vampires do, but this one just chuckles and shakes his head indulgently.
“Was he, now?” He’s still addressing me, and the intensity of his gaze is suddenly too potent for me to handle, but I square my shoulders and refuse to react. He’s overwhelming to stare at, in a way that even the most beautiful monsters haven’t been. Of course, there’s something different about this one—given the fact that he’s able to take the shape of a gargoyle. Maybe he’s a new breed of vampire, a vampire-gargoyle-mist shapeshifter: something farther along the line of vampiric evolution. Then again, do dead things even bother evolving?
“Kellen,” the vampire says. “What have I told you about messing about in my coffin?”
Kellen stutters for another short while, but eventually, he swallows hard and gets on with it. “I was just making sure that no one touched the master’s crypt—”
