In an instant he realized what was happening, and he looked down at Sara, who’d grabbed his arm and leaned back into him. She had a pleased smile on her face as she looked up.
“I do believe it’s dinnertime. ” And then she moved against him. Something hard and metal poked into his ribs. “But never fear. I’ve other plans for you. ”
Tearing off her mask, Victoria burst out into the summer night, stake in hand. Immediately, she saw at least a dozen pairs of vampire eyes swimming in the dark.
As she launched herself at the nearest one, she heard screaming behind her. The first vampire poofed into dust with little fanfare, obviously not having expected an attack. But when she turned, Victoria found herself facing three more undead.
Her loose gown whipped about her legs as she leaped onto a stone bench near the edge of the patio. The smell of smoke filtered through the air. She was aware of the flood of people coming out of the ballroom, running and shouting, but her attention was on the trio of vampires who clustered around her perch.
Kicking out with one foot, she caught a vampire in the chin as he lunged for her, and followed the momentum by jumping onto one of his companions. As they tumbled to the stone paving, she slammed the stake down, missed the creature’s head, and found herself rolling onto her back, tangling in her filmy skirt and the loose length of her hair.
The vampire came with her, his red eyes angry and glowing. He grabbed her by the shoulders, pinning her arms down. His fangs gleamed as he lunged toward her. Victoria gave a great buck and twist and used his own upended weight to set him off balance, then flipped him over on the uneven stones. Her elbow planted against the ground, she made a quick slash. The stake slammed into his chest, blasting a poof of dust and ashes into her face. She took a
moment to tear away the long overlayer of her skirt, leaving a shorter, less hampering amount of fabric. Her vision had tinged filmy pink and she was vaguely aware of the harder pounding of her heart, and a sharp, driving anger.
Before she could rise, something landed heavily on her back. The air exploded from her lungs and her face ground into grittiness. Cheek scraping against the rough patio, she levered her feet up behind her, kicking her second assailant in the small of the back as he lunged on top of her. The force of her heels sent the vampire sprawling toward her head, and she used the moment of imbalance to shove him to the side.
Quickly she slipped out from under him as he closed his hand over the loose length of her hair, yanking her back to the ground. Pain shot through her scalp as she twisted toward him, her hair wrapping around his arm as he reeled her closer. His eyes were rose pink, and when her gaze flashed over them, it snagged for a moment. She felt a warm tug, and everything began to slow. The agony in her scalp eased, and the stake felt loose in her fingers.
Victoria drew in a deep breath and jerked her chin in order to strain the thrall. She was able to force her eyes closed even as the vampire’s free hand closed around her throat. She felt his fingers and their sharp nails tighten, clogging her breath. Hers steadied the stake in her hand as she fairly hung there, with him holding her by the throat. She went limp.
His fingers tightened and that was her cue: she slugged him with a foot, just enough to catch him off guard and force him to turn, and then automatically drove the stake into the target of his chest as it pivoted in front of her.
Victoria gulped in a breath as he froze, then billowed into a cloud of musty undead dust. Catching herself before her knees hit the ground, she had that split second to take stock. The burning smell was stronger, and black smoke billowed from the upper windows of the house. Seemingly unaware of the battle between mortal and vampire going on behind them, people stared in shock at the building, where, even from the outside, orange flames could be seen licking at the closed doors from the ballroom to the hall behind it. Still costumed and masked, they were shouting and calling out, and many of them were unaware of the red-eyed danger that lurked behind them. There had to be more than a dozen undead, watching, fighting, and attacking in the small clearing as the gardens became thick and dark.
As Victoria watched, a duo of vampires lunged forward and snatched two spectators away from the rear of the crowd, dragging them toward those dark garden shadows. One of them was still masked, and looked like a medieval Crusader dressed in a dark red tunic. The other was a woman in a cream-and-gold gown in the Grecian style.
She started toward them, only to be yanked backward by a fist at the rear of her gown. Stumbling, she twisted around to meet a red-eyed undead.
She rammed her elbow up under the chin of the vampire that held her gown, and heard the slam and crack as his jaws came together. He tripped back and she helped him with the point of her stake, then turned back as he exploded into dust.
Someone whirled sharply next to her, followed by a soft poof of vampire. Sebastian, with bare legs as beautiful and golden as Adonis himself, leaped onto the bench. He glanced at her with a sharp nod, and, as two undead rushed at them, Victoria spun one way and Sebastian leaped . . . and they both found their targets.
Victoria glanced around, realizing that the pinkness of her vision had eased a bit. People crowded the area, standing on the damp grass and ringing the patio, unaware that vampires lurked in the shadows, waiting to snatch them to feed. What was holding them back from rushing in en masse and grabbing their victims? Or corralling them and marching them off?
Perhaps it was the realization that she, Max, and Sebastian were there, slinging stakes about. Then Victoria stopped. She was wrong. There was no sign of Max’s tall, dark figure.
The last time she’d seen him was just as James brought her out to the dance floor. He’d been moving toward the tables of food and drink, far from the entrance to the patio.
Then she remembered with a pitch of her stomach that he no longer wore the vis.
Something shoved her from behind and she stumbled deeply. She used her forward motion to roll over in a somersault—a very unladylike technique that Kritanu had just taught her—then sprang to her feet, stake still in hand. The vampire had lunged after her, and when she steadied herself and turned, she went after him. Fool, she thought as he exploded.
As she turned back to the crowd of people, she remembered the two partygoers who’d been taken off by the vampires. With a glance at Sebastian, who seemed to have taken to vampire staking with surprising vigor, Victoria dashed off down the brick pathway where the two vampires had dragged their prey.
Down the dark path she barreled, unfamiliar with the garden. Smoke tinged the air, and large black ashes wafted and swirled like small bats. She tripped over a stone, falling half into a boxwood or some other prickly hedge. Catching her balance, she paused, listening. She’d left Sebastian to handle the group of vampires back there, choosing to go after the ones who were already feeding from their prey, and she wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do.
But she couldn’t leave them to be killed in the shadows of a rosebush.
And Max could take care of himself. Wherever he was.
A soft gurgling cry met her ears, and Victoria spun to plow through a thick bush too dark to identify. She rammed her knee into something sharp and metal, felt it gouge and drag over her thigh. She kept going, heedless of the noise as she shoved the thin, sharp branches out of the way. Then she saw the shift of movement ahead.
With a cry meant more to distract than anything else, she sprang the last few feet forward. The vampire released his victim, who crumpled to the ground in a puddle of white-and-gold fabric. Victoria launched herself at the vampire, and saw the dark drool of blood from the corner of her mouth.
The undead was a tall, corpulent female, her arms as bulky as those of a burly man. She smiled at Victoria, her fangs gleaming, and faced her, ready. “The female Venator,” she grunted.
The smell of blood tickling at her consciousness, Victoria swallowed hard. And focused. She smiled back at the female, feeling the feral curl of her own lips—but she didn’t have time to waste looking ferocious and confident. With a quick snap, she broke off a wrist-sized branch as long as her leg, and swung out powerfully.