Page 105 of Obsidian and Frost

I forced myself to step back.

Personal satisfaction and my version of brutal justice wasn’t on the menu tonight.

I had a job to do. For somebody else.

Just a little bloodshed. No killing. And no real torture either.

It wasn’t just that there wasn’t time for that, or because Charlie had laid out how he needed it to go down. It was honestly—as much as it vexed me that it had gotten to me—his warning he’d spoken earlier.

“We must be careful that we do not become those we fight, Sylas.”

I grunted, then snapped my fingers and broke the necks of all the remaining vampires in the foyer vicinity. It would keep them unconscious for long enough.

Then I clothed the magic-wielders in robes with another spark of my magic.

These, with it only being a handful at a time, I could simply teleport out to Charlie and his people.

“Go. You’ll be safe now and cared for. Help is waiting,” I told them, as they gathered around me in awe and confusion. I had to help two off the floor because they were so lethargic after being fed on and abused. They were all fucking shaking with it, it was that fucking horrific. I stepped back once they were all together, then I swept a cloud of teleportation around them, watching as they dissipated, and were sent along to Charlie.

A low growl rumbled in my throat as I glared at the unconscious vampires.

And then I started down the main corridor to the left, headed for the Banquet Hall.

The corridor stretched, long and shadowed, flickering with muted light from a couple of bare bulbs above. Doors lined either side.

Vampiric energy pulsed from within.

It was absolutely no surprise to me, as I was sure they’d been counting on, when the doors burst open from either side when I was halfway down the corridor, and two dozen vampires burst out, snarling, hissing, fangs and talons bared.

Imbeciles.

While a vampire’s speed was a magic-wielder’s greatest weakness, a necromancer was right up there with a vampire’s greatest fear.

I was the monster they whispered about in the shadows.

The nightmare they cowered from.

A blight they’d do anything to avoid coming into contact with.

But these members of Clan Thalbraxus were far too hopped up on stolen power and arrogance to have the good sense to run.

I thrust my glowing palms out either side of me, my red flame exploding forth. Screams sounded as it tore into them, blasting them through the doors and walls alike, decimating the stonework as it propelled them back into the rooms in bloodied, beaten, and unconscious heaps. The couple who darted out of the way, I broke their necks with two twists of my wrists.

As I passed on by, I trapped the ones among the wreckage either side of me in stasis, ensuring I used a non-necromantic specific spell so that the Guardian Movement wouldn’t immediately associate it withmywork.

I stepped around the wreckage and stormed down the corridor, eyeing the yellow-stained ivory double doors ahead.

I stumbled in my step for a moment as a wave of lightheadedness assaulted me.

No. Not now. Not fucking yet.

I knocked into the wall, my shoulder taking the brunt of it.

Fortunately, adrenaline surged, helping me out, as I heard commotion from inside the Banquet Hall up ahead behind those doors.

The vampires within had finally been alerted to my presence.

The fact that I’d already taken out several of their clan members and even decimated part of the building and they’donlyjust registered an attack really spoke to how out of it and fucking high they were on magic-wielder blood.