8

REVELATION 18:20

For God hath avenged you on her.

REVELATION 15:4

Who shall not fear thee?

~ * ~

By the time she shot up the stairs and tripped over Jasper's body, Anyelet's vision was red with fury. "What's going on here?" she bellowed. "Where are my humans?" She skidded to a stop behind Stephen and reached for him with razored fingernails, then hesitated. Crouched over someone on the floor, he ignored her as he tucked the blanket tenderly around the body. Stephen's loose clothes were dotted with blood, though he didn't seem to be bleeding himself, and instead of the usual moaning and whimpering there was only silence; inside the door of a room a few feet away sat two smelly metal tanks and an abandoned welding helmet. She shoved him angrily. “Who is this?" she demanded. "And what have you done with my humans?" When he didn't answer, Anyelet bent and yanked the blanket away; Vic's peaceful face came to view, his mouth a slack, crimson hole. She tugged harder and the blanket jerked free, splattering her hands pith droplets of the heartblood leaking from the lethal chest wound.

"You tell me where those humans went, damn you!" she twisted her fingers in Stephen's baggy shirt and hauled him to his feet. "TELL ME!" she shrieked as she shook him furiously. "Tell me or die!"

"Th-he-ey ca-ame an-nd got-t th-hem." Stephen's voice wobbled with his body, but he seemed unconcerned at her rage. "They didn't say where they were going." She flung him away before her temper made her strangle him outright; he bounced against the wall and tripped, then sat staring at her and rubbing his shoulder.

"Why didn't you go with them?" she hissed. Her fists were clenched so hard her nails were opening deep gashes in her own palms.

"Because I wanted to stay with you, of course."

She gaped at him for a moment, then whirled as Rita and four more vampires hurtled into the hall, goggling in amazement. "Get the others," she ordered, "and search for the humans. They'll head north to avoid the river and Lower Wacker."

The middle-aged woman Anyelet had raged at the previous evening looked at her apprehensively. "I think we're it, Mistress. Gabriel and Ron are usually here before us—"

"Then the four of you go!" she shouted impatiently. "Move!" They fled down the stairs.

"Stephen, snap out of it." She crouched next to him. "We have a big problem here." He just kept massaging his shoulder and smiling. “All these hungry vampires and no more food," she continued. She touched his arm, then dropped her hand. Why was he still smiling?

"You can use me," he suggested. He offered his wrist. "You can all use me. Not that it makes any difference anyway."

She stood. "You're not making sense." She resisted the urge to slide into his mind; right now he reminded her of Hugh, or Rita after her face had been blown apart, and she would deal with him later. She spun at a tumble of sound and saw Rita and the others shuffling backward up the stairs, scrambling over each other in their haste to get away from something. Werner, the last one, toppled and fell, then did an awkward crawl away from the stairs until the wall stopped him. He cowered against it, shivering and gawking with bulging eyes at the empty staircase. Rita, the scars on her face a livid purple, snarled at the stairwell and huddled a few feet away.

"What—" Anyelet's roar was cut off in mid-syllable.

A white-haired girl stepped from the shadows.

~ * ~

The taste of fear, so unfamiliar, was like acid in Anyelet's mouth. To her shame, she found herself also retreating from the girl, and she forced her feet to stop heir ridiculous backpedal.

"Who are you?" she demanded. The girl locked gazes with her, gray eyes—like Stephen's! Anyelet thought in surprise—blazing as Anyelet yanked her glare away at the stab of physical pain. Anyelet took another involuntary step backward as the girl moved closer, ignoring the other vampires as they hissed and yelped like whipped dogs, then stopped in front of Stephen where he had begun crooning a wordless hymn to Vic's dissolving corpse. Her hand slipped under his chin and raised his head; Stephen's eyelids fluttered, then his clouded eyes cleared and widened.

"Werner!" Anyelet shrilled. She stabbed a finger toward the young woman. He responded immediately, sidling around to the right to come up behind the girl. Her head turned, the movement like a slow-motion bullet, and Werner froze when her eyes tracked him; suddenly he whirled and clapped his hands over his eyes with a cry.

Turning back, the girl bent and dipped the tips of two white fingers into the blood splashed across Vic's shirt, then touched first her own forehead, then Stephen's. Her fingertips left a mark like blood-soaked holy day ashes. “It’s your burden now, Stephen," she said softly. "Time to go.”

Anyelet's face twisted as Stephen nodded, a semblance of sanity returning to his face. How had this twit known his name? The girl glanced around the hall, the only spot of color on her body the small streak of crimson on her forehead. Then she stared at Anyelet again, and Anyelet could have screamed at the swelling of pain those crystalline eyes brought to her head. The girl smiled sweetly, and when she spoke, her whisper was like the damning moan of funeral bells.

"The angel of death has been born."