Page 68 of Vampire so Virtuous (Boston Vampires #1)
“Go for their heads!” Antoine shouted, dropping the wounded feral to be finished off.
He caught the arm of the one he’d stunned, swinging it in a wide circle to smash it with all his strength into a sharp corner of steel infrastructure.
Its chest exploded in a spray of blood and gore.
Antoine let the arm fall from his hands, disgust curling in his gut as he turned to the next threat.
He blocked the blow from another feral with his forearm, barely catching its snapping jaw in his palm.
The force behind the strike sent a flicker of realization through him—they were getting stronger.
The thralls’ blood had made them more formidable, and if they fed on him or Gabe…
Yet, even as the feral pushed against him, Antoine still drove it backward, slamming its head into an HVAC unit.
The back of its skull was caved in, and it left a sizable dent in the frame.
Air conditioning might be in short supply for the near future.
Gabe wasn’t doing so well. He knocked away a feral but stumbled back from two more. The first recovered swiftly and sunk its teeth into his thigh. Gabe screamed as two thralls tried to pull the feral off, but a second later one of them was torn apart.
Antoine’s path was choked with ferals, and the few thralls still standing were far too occupied to help.
He couldn’t reach Gabe in time. He leaped anyway, but a feral met him in midair, wrapping its arms around him, and together they crashed down amid the thralls.
Antoine fought to disentangle himself, knees and fists flying, and for what felt like an eternity, he was buried beneath bodies, almost as if entombed.
The thought gave him a boost to his strength, born of desperation. He came up fighting, punching away the feral clinging to his back, but not before it sank its teeth into the side of his neck and ripped.
Pain lanced through him as hot blood gushed down the inside of his collar and spilled over his chest. The wound was large, the bleeding extensive. But he had a grip on the feral, its neck crushed in his hand.
The vampire spawn was still alive, and it was more instinctive than deliberate to bring it to his mouth, to extend his fangs, to bite.
Hot, fresh blood ran over his tongue, down his throat—and it tasted foul. Yet there was power in it even so, and as soon as he’d swallowed, his wound began to knit back together. It reminded him of Minh’s blood, which only confirmed that these were his spawns.
A flicker of thought crossed Antoine’s mind: What would the Curia think of siring so many spawns, leaving them to turn feral, and then unleashing them as weapons? How was that ‘staying in the shadows’?
Behind him, Gabe screamed, two ferals sinking their teeth into him, feeding.
Antoine snapped the neck of the feral and flung it away. His heart skipped a beat as he thought he’d misjudged his strength so greatly that the feral would clear the side of the building, falling to the street below. But it landed just shy, crashing into the low rimming wall.
He leaped again, this time landing unimpeded beside Gabe.
The first feral he ripped off him, and a chunk of Gabe’s arm came with it, the wound raw and open through his jacket.
Antoine grasped the feral’s head in both hands and crushed it, his strength swelled with the new fresh blood, and the feral dropped, its legs twitching.
That left one more, and Antoine plucked it from Gabe’s back by the scruff of its neck, pinning it against the wall next to the entrance door Gabe had been defending—and the route to Cally.
Gabe staggered, collapsing to the ground, his thigh shredded into bloody ribbons, a vicious wound gaping at his neck, another jagged tear slashed across his shoulder.
His once-pristine white silk shirt was now a blood-soaked ruin, clinging to him in tattered strips.
He cradled his arm to his chest as if it were too heavy to move.
“Feed, Gabe.” Antoine held the thrashing feral tight. “It’ll heal you.”
Gabe stared up at him, dazed, his eyes unfocused, mouth agape.
“Feed, damn it,” Antoine gritted through clenched teeth. “Now.”
“The Code—”
“—Has been smashed apart by the Curia, and by what Minh has done this night.”
Still, Gabe hesitated. His good hand pressed tightly to the gaping wound on his neck, bright crimson rivulets spilling through his fingers. He wavered unsteadily, and Antoine reached for him with his spare hand, picking him up and thrusting him toward the feral he held.
“Feed,” Antoine commanded again, guiding Gabe’s face to the feral’s neck. “But I warn you—it tastes like shit.”
This close, Gabe couldn’t resist his natural impulses, and his jaw fell open, his fangs sliding into place. He sank them into the back of the feral’s neck, his throat working as he gulped down mouthfuls of blood, and the feral’s body spasmed in a silent scream.
Gabe pulled back, then grabbed the feral’s head, twisting it viciously until its neck gave way with a sickening crack. “Tastes just fine to me. Powerful blood.” His voice was noticeably stronger.
There were only two ferals left, and they both leaped for one each. Antoine killed his quickly, but when he turned, Gabe was feeding again, his teeth locked in the last feral’s neck.
Antoine cast his eyes around, checking the battle was over. A feral twitched on the floor, and he finished it with a crushing boot to its head. Five of Gabe’s thralls had survived, none without injury, though they would all heal in time.
He reached up to the wound on his own neck, and it had already mostly gone, the flesh knitting back together.
But his leather coat was past saving, ripped and torn and covered in blood.
He’d rather not see Cally while in such a state, but that came secondary to seeing her at all—and it had been too long already. She’d been in danger all day, and now, at last, it was over.
He pulled up the mark, reassuring himself she was alive and well and waiting for him below.
And then he froze.
“Gabe.”
The other vampire pulled back, licking his fangs, and snapped the neck of the last feral before he replied. “Yeah?”
“Where’s Cally?”
“Below.”
“No,” Antoine bit out, icy fear and burning fury clashing within him. “She’s not.”