Cornel was the first soldier to react to the attack. He picked up the large axe that rested at his side and swung it around directly into the chest of one of the vampires that tried to escape. Between the velocity that Cornel imparted to his axe, and the momentum of the vampire’s mad dash away, the axe was lodged deep in the vampire’s chest, piercing through his rib cage and slicing open his lungs. A fine spatter of blood was thrown into the air and Cornel turned to avoid it. Blood continued to pour out of the great wound onto his chest as Cornel struggled to remove the axe. More blood poured into the vampire’s lungs drowning him from within. When Cornel finally dislodged the axe, the vampire, collapsed to the ground.
Cornel next tried to attack Bai, since the third vampire had already escaped, but Bai leapt out of his reach, leaping into the crater in front of him. Cornel pursued indirectly, by running around to the coven entrance, but he trailed far behind.
Bai seemed to float to the ground as he arced through the air towards Vasile. He landed within steps of Vasile, who was running away into the tunnel. Bai reached forward grabbing Vasile from behind, and took him in his arms. He opened his mouth, preparing to take Vasile’s life.
Bai couldn’t just give Vasile the quickest possible death. He had to savor it. The hunter that had plagued the coven for years was in his arms, and he would take the opportunity to drain him from the neck. He forced Vasile to the ground, discovering that the old hunter was uncommonly fast and strong. But Bai was finally able to latch his mouth onto that pale neck and drink his blood. He relished the long gulps, even as the soldiers from above tried to fire down upon him, even as an arrow was lodged in his back and a bit of metal ripped through his shoulder. Finished, he tossed the pallid body aside and ran towards his vampire companions to help them push the humans back into their place.
But as he approached the vampires he saw a sight he never thought he’d see. A tiny vampire, still the size of a youngster, not even fully grown, crawled over the crowd and dived on all three of the vampires. Two of them she so forcefully threw against the wall that they fell limp to the ground, and she latched onto the neck of the third and eagerly drained his blood. After the tiny vampire was finished, she looked up, and Bai saw the radiant face of Lina, savage and stained with blood.
Bai sensed immediately that he couldn’t overpower her. He turned around and ran from her as fast as he could. She darted after him immediately. Bai had never known a young vampire to be so fast. She caught up to him within moments. The two of them chased across the Great Hall and Lina grabbed him by the cloak and shoved him against the wall just behind the throne. The soldiers directly over their head looked down at them, and she shouted up at them, “Don’t shoot.”
Lina held Bai there, staring into his eyes. He couldn’t free himself from her iron grip, as much as he tried, as much as he struggled. He turned away from her in anticipation of her bite, but instead she said to him, “Help me kill Asha and rescue Sim and I’ll let you live.”
At that moment a loud cluster of gunfire was heard from above. A shout of, “We got the other one,” could be heard. The third vampire sentry had been laid to the ground with several individual pieces of shot lodged in his chest. Bai looked at Lina and he simply nodded.
Lina led the way through the Great Hall, grabbing Bai by the hand. The humans of the pen were now in full flight, and the great masses of them poured out in a panic. Lina and Bai had to fight with difficulty against the crowd, though people tried to keep a distance from these two black-cloaked vampires approaching them.
When they found the three vampires that Lina had left behind, she pulled them aside into a room, since they were in the midst of the stream of people. Lina bent down and made sure to finish off the two others by draining their blood.
After she’d drunk her fill, she leaned back and took a long gratified breath, relaxing from her feast. The way that the blood of the vampires, freshly plucked from their bodies, seemed to engorge her strength was intoxicating. It felt like the intermingled blood flowed through her body in a river of lightning; the humming of her life force felt amplified to the ear-splitting volume of a thousand barrels of gunpowder ignited at once; her body felt like it was on the verge of transforming into flames. She took many long moments to savor the sensation of the blood within her before she stood up and looked at Bai.
“Sim’s in his room,” Lina said to Bai after a moment’s pause, “I expect that’s where we’ll find Asha too.”
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