Oh. My. God. Andre had totally shut her down. It was Andre controlling the situation. She couldn’t help because Andre had decreed it. When he let her loose, if he was still alive, she was going to kill him. Make her own vampire-hunting kit and do him in while he slept. No. She wanted him to see it coming. She’d be the black widow and kiss him silly and then stake him.
Do not make me laugh. You are distracting me.
She couldn’t reply, which made her all the angrier. But he was reading her thoughts and that meant she could think about what a rat bastard he was. Her best friend growing up, Cheryl, had it right. Cheryl decreed a lot of men were rat bastards, and now Teagan was hooked up with one.
The very branch she was on shook and then it expanded as if it couldn’t contain the poisonous brew spreading through its main body. Instantly she saw Andre’s head come up alertly, even as he faded into the trees, behind Keith, who was on the ground, on his hands and knees, knife gripped tight in his fist as blood continued to run down his throat to soak the front of his shirt. Kirt slumped a few feet from his brother, the slashes in his neck much deeper. He gasped over and over as if he couldn’t get air.
The entire tree trunk quivered and then began to creak ominously. If she could have, Teagan knew she wouldn’t have been able to stop the owl from flying off the groaning branch. Because she couldn’t move, neither could the owl. She knew Andre saved her life. She could never have remained calm and still when insects surged up the tree, a black moving carpet, swarming over every leaf and twig, straight toward her.
Right before the insects reached the owl, the trunk of the tree began to split. Black sap erupted and rats and more insects poured out of the center as if the tree was giving birth to something malignant. The pile of rats fell to the ground, revealing the vampire. The rodents rushed toward Kirt as the vampire laughed hideously.
“What do we have here?” The creature’s breath hissed out of him. “Did you two get in a knife fight? How very sad. Brothers, I see. I will end your suffering. Not right away, but I promise . . . eventually.”
He waved his hand as the rats reached Kirt and began tearing at his body with sharp teeth. “My friends are hungry. That one is too far gone to have much fun with, but . . .” He smiled down at Keith, revealing his spiked, blackened teeth, stained with the blood of his victims. “You and I can have a great deal of fun before you die.”
Everything about the vampire was hideous. His voice hurt Teagan’s ears. His skin was drawn tight over his bones, so that he looked like a walking skeleton. Flesh seemed to slough off of him. His eyes appeared to be two burning holes in empty sockets. She didn’t want to watch as he approached Keith, but as if a horror film was unfolding, she couldn’t look away, even if Andre had released her from the paralysis.
Andre materialized out of thin air, his body between the vampire and his prey. The two came together hard, hunter and hunted. She saw Andre’s fist hit dead over the heart, punching through the wall of flesh and bone to get to his target. He rocked the vampire with his enormous strength, with that punch that penetrated deep, so deep a good portion of Andre’s arm disappeared as well.
The vampire threw back his head and howled. Spittle ran down his mouth. His eyes blazed fire. Black blood erupted around the hole in his chest and ran down his stomach and legs. Teagan also noted the thick goo that coated what she could see of Andre’s forearm.
The vampire went wild, thrashing, slashing, biting at Andre, and calling to his rats for aid. He raised his voice loudly to the wind, calling his master and his brethren for help. To Teagan’s horror, the rats abandoned Kirt and raced toward Andre.
Andre didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look at the rodents. He kept his gaze burning over the vampire’s face, staring him right in the eye. There was a terrible sucking sound and Andre withdrew his hand, whirling away from the vampire to toss the blackened, wizened organ a distance from him. He raised his hand toward the sky and a whip of lightning sizzled and cracked, hitting the heart as it bounced and rolled along the ground trying to find its way back to its body.
The whip of lightning struck the heart, incinerating it. Instantly the vampire went down, falling in the middle of the rats that had stopped just as abruptly when the rotten heart had been destroyed. The white-hot whip hit the vampire’s body, the flames jumping to the rodents.
Teagan felt her body tune to the second discordant note. It was much more muted, as if the vampire was aware it was being tracked—or if it was already stalking Andre. Her heart stammered. Andre, another one. She couldn’t reach him on their shared telepathic path, but she knew he was in her mind. She concentrated on the jarring, jangled sound resonating inside of her. She could at least give Andre a direction.
Giles and Gerard burst out of the trees as the scent of foul burning flesh mingled with the odor of blood. Giles held a gun; Gerard, a knife. They took in the fact that Kirt was lying on the ground, blood all over his clothes and throat. Keith still clutched his knife but he was unmoving, his eyes wide with shock, his mouth stretched open, a look of utter terror on his face.
Giles already had the gun up and trained on Andre, who was wielding the whip of hot energy to clean the black acid from his arms. Giles fired straight at Andre. Teagan heard her own scream, deep inside the owl’s body. She fought the paralysis gripping her, stark fear warring with Andre’s command. Forcing herself not to panic, she followed the thread in Andre’s mind back to the source of the command.
The first bullet took Andre in the arm, just below his forearm. The second skimmed his left bicep because he moved fast, whirling to one side to avoid the lead coming at him. At the same time, he snapped the lightning and the whip wrapped around Giles’s neck, turning his body to ash. Gerard skidded to a halt, his mouth open as his brother dissolved into little curls of blackened soot right before his eyes.