But she’d broken the deadlock, and Damon was already moving. Blood spattered the ground and Lysander’s face as Damon wrenched his arms up and broke the Nightsider’s hold. Suddenly it was as if Damon had never been compromised at all, and Lysander was falling back, crouching with an incredulous expression on his face.
Then Damon was on him again, a whirlwind that could cut down everything in its path.
It was a ruthless, brutal fight, but the Nightsider was almost completely on the defensive now, quivering prey caught between the deadly claws of Damon’s relentless predator. Each of Damon’s blows was precisely aimed to do the most damage, and soon Lysander was scrambling away, intent only on survival.
Alexia knew they couldn’t let him go. She ran to retrieve the VS and spun around to find Damon with his teeth sunk into Lysander’s shoulder. The Nightsider screamed.
“Damon!” she shouted. “Get out of the way!”
He maintained his hold, biting harder, and Lysander began to flail like a madman, his eyes vivid with terror. Alexia knew Damon wasn’t hearing her, wasn’t feeling anything but the implacable need to kill.
And she had to stop him. She had no idea if Damon had ever killed anyone before, but this wasn’t simply a matter of self-defense. This was the kind of bloodthirstiness Enclave soldiers and civilians had witnessed in rampaging vampires at the end of the War, when the leeches had finally realized they had lost their bid to enslave all humanity. Alexia knew in her heart that if Damon killed Lysander this way, like a beast—like an Orlok—
he could never fully return to what he had been.
It was up to her to finish it. She was more than ready.
She advanced another meter, keeping the Vampire Slayer aimed at whatever part of Lysander she could see. “Damon,” she said. “You’ve won. Let me take care of this.”
Lysander rolled his eyes in her direction. “Stop,” he gasped, blood foaming around his lips. “I will—” Damon pulled back and struck the Nightsider across the face, and Alexia knew the only way she could stop him was to hurt him. She hesitated, holding the VS tight against her side, drew her knife and threw it directly at Damon’s shoulder.
It bit through his bloodstained jacket into flesh, and Damon twisted to slap the knife away, his face streaked with blood like war paint. His eyes focused on Alexia, and she saw in him more than fury, more than hatred, more than the intensity of will that had driven him to keep her safe no matter what the cost.
It was the way Michael had looked at her the last time. The rage, the loss, the profound sorrow.
With a high-pitched scream, Lysander lunged up to clamp his teeth around Damon’s neck. Damon felt behind him for the knife he had tossed aside, snatched it up and buried the blade in Lysander’s back.
The two men broke apart, Lysander scraping his hand across his back in an effort to remove the knife, Damon shaking the blood from his throat and prepared to strike the final blow.
Alexia ran to the side, searching for a clear shot to Lysander’s head or chest. Any other part of his body and the projectile might not kill him. But if she hit Damon instead—
Something moved on the edge of her vision, a tall, almost spindly shape that darted toward the combatants before she could alter her aim. It lifted Damon by his shoulder with one skeletal hand and tossed him a good three meters away. Then it grabbed Lysander and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. Alexia heard the Nightsider’s neck snap.
The Orlok met her gaze. Safe, it said in her mind.
She ran for Damon and dropped to her knees beside him. He was dazed and injured, but sanity was returning to his eyes, and when he looked at her it was with the bewilderment of a man who miraculously survived a fatal accident. His wounds, even the deep punctures and slashes in his neck and face, had stopped bleeding, and Alexia quickly returned her attention to the dead Nightsider and the creature that stood above him.
Michael.
The Orlok released its hold on Lysander’s hair, red now rather than white, and started toward her. Damon scrambled into a crouch, moving stiffly as he put himself between her and the Orlok.
“It’s all right,” Alexia whispered. “He won’t hurt us.”
“He?” Damon asked, blinking the blood from his eyes.
She continued to hold Michael’s gaze, so heavy with grief that she thought her heart would break.
Thank you, she thought, hoping Michael would hear her.
The Orlok inclined his head and began to shuffle backward, away from her and the Nightsider he had killed for her sake. And perhaps, even, for Damon’s.
Don’t go, she thought. Let me help you.
“Sires’ blood,” Damon swore hoarsely. “It knows you.”
Michael’s stare swung toward Damon. Alexia heard nothing, but suddenly Damon’s face went blank with astonishment. He began to rise, but Michael melted away into the shrubbery, and Alexia knew he was gone.
Half stunned by the bizarre and violent turn of events, Alexia turned back to Damon, who was sinking down again.
“Hold still,” she commanded. He obeyed, still staring after Michael, as she pulled his blood-saturated jacket away from his skin and helped him remove it, taking care not to jog his broken wrist any more than necessary. She knew he was completely back to normal by the way he winced, ever so slightly, at her gentle probing of his neck and shoulder wounds.
“What in the Human Hell just happened?” he asked hoarsely.
Alexia let out a long breath and closed her eyes. “What do you remember?” she asked.
“I was...fighting Lysander,” he said.
Alexia almost laughed. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at Damon’s neck. Even though the bleeding had stopped, the smell of blood— his blood—was ripe in the air, so strong she could taste it.
She swallowed and looked at Lysander’s broken body. She could smell his blood, too, but it had no effect on her at all.
Damon’s blood. God help her.
As if he had guessed the course of her thoughts, Damon raised a finger from his good hand to brush at the deepest wounds in his neck.
“Leave that alone,” Alexia snapped, slapping his hand back down. “Let it heal.” She swallowed again, trying to ignore the bitterness on her tongue. “What else do you remember?”
“Almost nothing, except he...threatened you,” Damon said, spitting the last few words through his teeth. His skin began to flush with fresh anger. “Alexia—”
“Easy,” Alexia said, lightly touching the uninjured part of his arm. “Do you remember how the fight started?”
“I...think I started it,” he said. He covered his mouth with a bloody hand.
“Something...went wrong. I should have forced him to tell us—” He broke off again and raised his head. “What did I do, Alexia?”
She didn’t know how to answer the agony in his voice, the knowledge that he had to ask someone else what he’d done because his memory was a blank. He saw the blood on himself, on Lysander, and still he didn’t realize how he had transformed, become something for which Alexia had no name or explanation.
“You kept him from trying to kill us,” she said simply.
He glanced at her and quickly looked away, his torn face drawn with confusion and pain.
She needed him clearheaded after all this. She needed to be clearheaded, and it wasn’t going to be easy. There were too many issues clamoring for her attention, including finding out where Damon’s “spells” were coming from and what to do about them. If anything could or should be done about them.