Page 40 of The Vampire's Lament
I grabbed him by the head, slamming his skull into the side window. Strike one knocked him out, strike three popped his head like a melon.
An alarm sounded as the helicopter fell in a rapid descent toward the waves.
I made my exit, flying for the next one, the air thick with human terror. Good. They were scrambled and panicked and ripe for the killing.
By the time the final chopper fell into the water, my right eye had regenerated.
I rolled my neck. “Much better.”
A streak of glowing, glacial blue light slithered through the waves, encircling the final chopper.
It was the wandering waterborne frostbrood, the creature constantly swimming close to Hurlock Island. A potential threat to my palace, though it’d never attacked. If it did, it would die as any other invading filth.
For now, the frostbrood was drawn to the bodies below. Let it have them. I had more death to deliver.
I returned to the palace, the ballroom littered with many mortal corpses. But the fighting wasn’t over yet.
I killed a human before spinning to meet movement behind me.
Hal attacked me with a dagger, the metal clanging uselessly against my chest.
“You’re dying tonight!” he bellowed in my face.
A kernel of unwanted jealousy flared. This creature had touched Paris Raine. How much? Where had his lips and fingers wandered on that exquisite flesh?
I growled, shoving him back so hard he landed on his ass, sliding across the floor.
He got to his feet as the orange light of magic danced between his fingers.
“I will for protection,” he mumbled. “Hear my intent.”
Mage magic depended on the intent and the will of the caster, usually with the aid of words and other instruments for certain spells.
Hal snapped his fingers and ribbons of power curled around his body, almost mummifying him as they used to do in the ancient days of the Werewolf Domain. That had been grim reading one night while studying the mechanics of this world.
“That won’t save you,” I warned him.
“No? We’ll see, won’t we?” He sniffed, his face a storm of hate inside his bubble. “Where is he?”
“Not here.”
He balked in surprise. “Of course he’s here.”
“Well, he’s not.”
A vampire and a human rolled past us in a scrap, throwing punches until the vampire clawed the human’s nose off her face.
The scream made me smile.
I saw Hal’s throat bob in a fearful swallow.
“Do you miss him?” I stirred the pot. “Overcome with guilt and regret, are you?”
“Fuck off.”
Medusa slithered into view, an elf caught in her coiled body. She crushed him to death, dumping his body rather than eating him.
She’d devour him later.
