Page 159 of Taming the Beasts

Elias kept choking.

This time when I lifted my knee, it collided hard with Elias’ junk because he was too busy dying or something.

He rolled over and groaned.

I pushed myself up off the grass. The sudden movement caused a few vampires to turn in my direction.

I could see Emma in the distance playing with the mic. She’d figure it out at any moment. But I wasn’t sure my boyfriends had any moments left to spare. And maybe I could draw the vampires’ attention away from them and toward me. Maybe it would give them just enough time to be cured instead of dead.

I whistled. “Over here!” I waved my arms around in the air. “Look at me, you blood thirsty vampires!”

A few started running toward me.

“Come bite my neck! I want it!”

More started running in this directions.

And I realized I’d really misjudged how terrifying this would be. I started running. Which I think just made them want me more. I jumped over one of the knocked over ceremony chairs as I tried to get away from them.

But it was impossible. They were too fast.

One tackled me from the side, slamming me into the hard body of another. The first one tried to bite my neck and started gagging.

The second tried to do the same, with the same result.

But a third seemed to learn. She grabbed my wrist instead and pulled it to her mouth.

Yeah, I really hadn’t thought this through. And I hated that I recognized her. She was the sassy barista from the café. I hated that I was going to die because of her. Idefinitelyshouldn’t have invited her to the wedding.

She opened her mouth and was just about the bite my wrist when I heard the metallic clanging of the sistrum.

It was even louder than I thought it would be.

The barista lifted her lips from my wrist which gave me the opportunity to kick her hard in the face.

She screamed in pain and fell backward.

I waited for all the vampires to start changing somehow. But more started running toward me instead.

Kebe really was full of shit! I was hoping that it was a volume issue. But the sistrum just wasn’t a cure. Baset was probably a wonderful, smart cat that was way smarter than Kebe’s preconceived notions.

But then the noise coming from the sistrum changed. I turned to see that Kebe had grabbed the instrument from Emma. And she was playing it in a way that actually sounded quite beautiful. It wasn’t sporadic clanging like Emma or I had done. She was actually playing a tune, swaying her hips to some song I didn’t know.

The screams echoing around the town square stopped. And soon all you could hear was the tune coming from the sistrum.

An eerie calm had descended all around us. The vampire closest to me blinked and his dark eyes grew a shade lighter. He blinked again and they turned blue. He looked around like he was confused. And then he madea disgusted face, probably because of the taste of blood on his lips.

Oh thank God. It’s working! It’s really working!

I looked around at the carnage. Everyone was standing or sitting still, in a complete daze. But all I was focused on was the five huge heaps of fur that weren’t moving. Why wasn’t the cure working on my boyfriends?!

Chapter 31

Saturday

Zoey

The clinging of the sistrum kept going over the speaker system as I ran toward the closest heap of fur.Bennett.He wasn’t moving. Not even a little.