Rotted flesh and old blood meant one thing. Vampires.
I ran to my closet, hoping I still had it. The search cost me precious seconds, but as soon as I had my backpack in hand, I ran after Dastien. I was exhausted, but he wasn’t facing a fight without me.
Dastien’s cabin was in the woods behind St. Ailbe’s Academy—a not-so-secret-anymore, currently defunct boarding school for werewolves. Trees surrounded his cabin with only a small trail leading to the main campus, but vampires were gliding through the trees as if they were floating above the ground. They didn’t make a sound as they moved.
Goddammit. I paused in the doorway for a second counting. I gave up at twenty. The moon was new, but my hint of wolf gave me enough sight to see through the trees. More were coming.
I wanted to be glad that it wasn’t demons or fey, but I couldn’t exactly be happy that we were now adding vampires into our nightly fun.
I grabbed vials from the backpack as I stepped outside and jumped down the three steps to the ground. Dastien was fighting in wolf form. So was Mr. Dawson, and four other wolves—Cazadores that stayed on campus to help us.
One of the Cazadores yelped as a vampire grabbed his muzzle and bit him.
Damn it. I was moving too slow.
I threw a vial at the vampire holding the were. “In th
e name of Jesus Christ, I purify you!” The vial exploded, turning the vampire to dust, and the whimpering werewolf hit the ground hard.
He was alive. We’d help him later.
I tossed another vial toward the largest group of vampires and repeated the words to activate the spell.
Three vampires turned to embers and then dust, and then the rest of them broke apart.
Double damn. I hadn’t used this backpack in a seriously long time. I didn’t have a ton of vials in it. There was too much room for them to do their fast glide into the woods. Too much space. If it was one vial per vampire, I was going to run out.
I threw another vial and winced when I hit only one.
Shit. I reached for another vial, but suddenly wolf-Mr. Dawson was there.
He shifted for an instant, punched through another vampire’s chest, and ripped out its black heart. He threw it on the ground, then shifted to wolf again and leaped at another vampire’s throat—thick black blood spewed as the vampire fell to the ground.
I gripped the vial in my hand, searching for a cluster of vampires to throw it at, but—
Twigs snapped behind me.
I spun with a vial ready to throw but stopped myself just in time. Lucas—in human form—was running toward us with Claudia on his back. It’d taken a few weeks for the magic that linked us all together to settle down. Now, I didn’t hear their heartbeats anymore, but when we were together—our magic was stronger. We were stronger.
Even if I’d wasted my exploding spell, it wouldn’t have hurt Lucas. If fire exploded around him, I was sure the Peruvian’s Alpha could heal something like that in seconds, especially now. But my cousin Claudia was a witch. She’d heal nearly human slow. The magic had made her stronger, but not like other supernaturals.
Lucas set her down carefully, and then pulled off his clothes and shifted to his wolf form, racing into the fight.
“Claudia!” I tossed her a vial, which completely went through her hands and hit the ground.
If we weren’t surrounded by vampires, I would’ve laughed. She dropped down to get it and then waved me away. “Go! I’ll take this one, but you keep the rest. I’ve got other magic!”
Good enough.
I ran around the edge of the fight to get closer to Dastien. He was fighting a vampire, and another one was coming at his back.
Not today, asshole.
The vampire’s arms were reaching for his throat. It’s long, white nails glinted in the moonlight. I threw the vial at it. “In the name of Jesus Christ, I purify you!”
Fire burst across the vampire’s back, igniting it just before it reached Dastien.
I heard Claudia’s words echo mine a second later, and then another explosion.