Page 80 of Absolution

Seiran slapped the wound. “Gross, Sammie. You licked me.”

“Okay, well next time you’re bleeding out I’ll just kick some dirt in it, yeah?”

“Bastard,” he said without heat.

“Jerk.” I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe his face free of blood spatter and tears. “You need some sleep. Maybe the big guy will be back in a few days.”

“It’s probably better that we have some space,” Seiran said.

“If you say so, Ronnie,” I allowed. The pain would fade in time. But Gabe had gone willingly to ground. Would it absolve him of everything he’d done in the past few months? Was there a need to, when we knew he hadn’t been himself? It was likely something Seiran would be debating until Gabe resurfaced, but that was okay, he overanalyzed everything anyway. I was less conflicted. If Gabe came out calm and normal, the past could be left in the past. If he came out stupid and raging, we’d have to find a way to make his grave permanent. But I’d cross that bridge when we got there.

Seiran let me help him up and leaned on my shoulder. I’d always thought of us as about the same size, but in reality Seiran was smaller. Slightly shorter, a lot thinner, and much more delicate. Sometimes he was so strong that we all forgot just how breakable he was.

The shot that rang out ripped him from my arms and splattered me with his blood.

Chapter 24

Istood there for a stunned few seconds, trying to figure out just what happened. Blood poured from a huge wound in Seiran’s skull. He hit the ground as though we’d launched into a slow-mo mode of a movie, my arms stretched out toward him. His eyes were open, staring blankly upward. I had only the barest moment to think that Seiran was dead before the ground began to tremble and the release of power rolled upward. Instinctively, I reached for it, trying to put a cap on the energy, quell it before it destroyed us all, but it was just too much and I hadn’t had enough practice using power that wasn’t really mine. I could only equate it to standing in the middle of a lava field, trying to hold back the flow, while the melted rock ate away at my very being.

I pressed my hands to Seiran willing the earth back into him like it was a bottle with a leak, trying to keep it filled. The power rushed through me. Needles of pain prickling over every inch of my skin. The ivy and tiny plants climbed through my flesh like they had Seiran’s only moments before. The earth didn’t recognize me. It rejected me, jumping from me back to Seiran and crawling across his skin, headed toward the head wound. Was there any way he could survive that? Would Father Earth be strong enough?

Red pooled across my vision as the other inside me crept out to play. It offered me strength even as the raging power of the earth battered at us. I tried reaching for my link to Max. Maybe he’d know what to do. Maybe he could save Seiran, or at least redirect the earth energy. But there was too much power. His energy seemed to drown in the intensity of the flow of earth, making our link almost invisible.

I briefly thought of Jamie who’d been upstairs, maybe the power would fall to him. Or even one of the twins, and wouldn’t we all be screwed then? If I didn’t have enough control to reign in the earth, how the hell could a baby?

I only had a second to glance back, to see Tresler standing in the door of the arboretum with a gun in his grasp, aimed at me. Another shot rang out. I waited for the hit, the pain, maybe death, though bullets alone were unlikely to kill me. Instead Luca collapsed on top of me, his blood spattering me in a bright wash of crimson.

A hawk flew at Tresler as I caught Luca and eased him down beside Seiran, the power of the earth Pillar burning my skin. Luca gasped for breath, the shot having taken him in the lower back. I reached for him, hearing the squawk of the hawk as it raked its huge talons over Tresler’s face. The vampire waved his arms and tried to shake the bird off.

“Kill him,” Luca gasped. “Devour him like you did Galloway. It’s our only chance.”

I registered his words, felt the world slow to a maddening moment of chaos. Seiran dead, yet healing, the earth struggling not to tear us apart as I barely held the reigns like a mere mortal trying to hold back the tide of the ocean. Luca bleeding out at my feet and Con risking everything to buy us time.

I jolted forward, leaping the distance no human ever could have, to slam a fist into Tresler’s gut, adding to it a blast of fiery air as I felt Con’s powers awaken something familiar inside me. Tresler flew back into the wall of glass, the length of it splintering around him. His skin blistered with the heat from the blow. I’d hoped he would have dropped the gun, but no such luck. He lifted it even as he sank to his knees, aiming it in my direction.

“Take my bond, Mueller. Save your friends,” Tresler offered. “I can control the earth if you just give me your bond.”

Who was he kidding? Give another crazy control over me? Not a chance. Did he forget I was no longer that kid everyone got to abuse? I was no one’s slave. I was a fucking vampire!

My movement became magic. I wasn’t sure how it happened, just that one moment I was twenty feet away, the next I was in front of him, ripping the gun from his grasp and crushing his hand with little effort.

He gasped as though he hadn’t seen me move either. The red in my vision gave me an edge of comfort as I glanced down at my hands, talons extending from my fingertips. Sharp enough, I thought. All those years of hunting beside Matthew, learning to survive by killing things bigger and badder than me. Now I was at the top of the food chain.

Myotherand I were finally aligned in one thing. Death of the Tri-Mega. Destruction of Tresler. These things appealed to us both. For him, the release of rules and restrictions, and for me, an end to the constant attacks on my friends and life by idiots who thought their power could dominate everything. Madness, isn’t that what Seiran had said? Power drove people mad, and that’s what he feared. But we could keep each other sane. Or at least have a lot of fun bickering until insanity took us both. If we survived. First, I had to destroy the monster who thought I was still a victim.

With a flick of my wrist I took off Tresler’s head, nails slicing through him like razorblades. The first key to killing a vampire was decapitation. Ensuring he stayed dead was about destroying the body. I think it was more about disintegrating the magic that held the vampire together. Not so much physically, but metaphysically. Though that was more philosophy shit I wanted nothing to do with.

I could have done as Luca said, fed on the power. It pulsed in waves of broken energy. Stolen magic, not all that unlike Galloway. Through it I could see an endless web of ties cast into the distance in the thousands, other vampires. Galloway had not had such ties. Perhaps he had created or bonded so few vampires that he was truly alone in his power. Tresler had built up his web like a barrier around him. Hundreds, if not thousands, of threads woven together like a tapestry of slicing strands to keep anyone who got close away. He also wasn’t dying, despite his head coming off. Instead it snarled and gaped at me while the body twitched convulsively, each movement bringing it closer to the head. The power seemed to stretch between the severed parts like it could somehow metaphysically bind it all back together.

Fuck.

That chaotic web of power wasn’t something I wanted any part of. The strands of it darkened and dripped as though covered in blood. Was he pulling energy from the vampires he was bonded to? If I fed on him like I had Galloway would that make those vampires mine? Fuck, no. I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. I hated people on a good day, tied to thousands? Yeah, I was pretty sure I’d go mad and kill them all.

I screamed and kicked the head into the opposite corner. It landed with a sick thud. Tresler’s power stretched like taffy over the distance, his web of vampire ties trying to pull him back together. Damn it!

I called the earth, willing it to take the vampire, return it to the soil as nutrients, devour the power and spread it back across the universe. Seiran had described it a time or two. A well of particles that made up all the energy of the earth. Sometimes it glowed with the power, sometimes it was quiet. I shoved at whatever my power was, begging the earth to feed on Tresler if that was what it needed to take him back permanently.

The link of energy from the earth felt like worms crawling through the dirt and rising up. Only it wasn’t worms, it was branches, vines, roots, and trees. They wrapped around Tresler’s body and began to rend it to pieces. The head was pierced a second later, spearing it between the eyes and sprouting new growths that broke up the head, despite Tresler’s stunned expression, into a thousand tiny grains of compost. The body decomposed that quickly, feeding the earth and releasing the last hold on Tresler’s stolen power. All those tiny webs spanning into the distance shattered, as the power of the earth ripped them apart, flinging small daggers of energy outward. I felt them hit me like shrapnel from a bomb, cutting into my soul in places that really fucking hurt.