And it did confirm Wayne’s suspicions that vampires were entirely capable of thaumaturgy. Serena ought to be happy about that.
If she survived.
Thanks to her little invisibility trick, Serena was performing quite well. She would blink out of sight before appearing on the back of an attacker.
Wayne didn’t know what effects a vampire drinking vampire blood would cause, but he expected that he would be finding out shortly. So long as she survived.
Thus far, the two had remained on opposite sides of the vat from one another. They weren’t working together. Luck had kept them apart so far.
Testing who was stronger between the mediocre earth vampire-mage and the invisible vampire was not a current desire of his.
Wayne stood, cracking his neck side to side.
He’d just have to get them to stop.
“Nice mask. Yours go crazy too?”
Keeping a firm hand on Zoe’s shoulder, Wayne glanced to his side.
One of the thralls had the gall to walk up to him. A scrawny type with wide-rimmed glasses.
“No.” And that was it. Nothing more needed to be said. Wayne didn’t know how the kid came to be a thrall. Probably another sob story; not a thing Wayne cared to hear about. He already had enough sob stories on his hands between Zoe and Serena.
Zoe pressed close to him, holding on to the hem of his suit jacket. “What are you going to do?”
“We,” Wayne said, uncaring as to whether the thrall heard him, “are going to destroy all that blood. It was set out by vampire hunters and I’m not interested in sticking around for their trap.
“You are going to stay right by my side.” Wayne wasn’t about to trust the thralls not to kidnap the kid. “If I say jump or duck or run, you are going to jump or duck or run. No complaints. No hesitation. Understand?”
The kid nodded.
Wayne was fairly certain that this was the point where someone else would give her a confidence boosting ruffle of her hair. Wayne wasn’t someone else. He was Wayne Lurcher. Affectionate displays were far beyond him.
Besides, she had a mask of her own over her head.
“A trap?” The thrall moved closer. “Do you need help? I’m sure some of the others–”
Wayne silenced him by igniting a fireball. “And you can leave. You’ll wind up as nothing more than mince-meat if you come with me.” Wayne wasn’t about to trust the thrall anyway. It was too beholden to his vampire. If, even in the midst of their frenzy, his vampire shouted out some order or another, Wayne held no doubt that the thrall would die to carry the order through.
The thrall backed away, not taking his eyes off the fireball in Wayne’s hand.
After ensuring that the kid was keeping up with his movements, Wayne started wading out into the center of the park. For several steps, none of the vampires so much as glanced in his direction.
Twenty-five feet from the vat, something changed. Two vampires broke off their fight with each other and charged at him.
Slowing his perception of time to a crawl, Wayne had all the time in the world to step to one side, keeping Zoe with him. He nudged the closer of the two ever so slightly as the vampire ran to his side.
Amazing how a slight redirection of momentum can send a vampire crashing into another one.
With both vampires on the ground, shoving and struggling to disentangle their limbs from one another, Wayne was free to burn another prepared page.
A column of fire erupted around the two like a miniature volcano. It lasted only a few seconds, but by the time Wayne extinguished the flames, nothing but ashes remained. Ashes that the fans kicked up into more dust to fill the air.
Wayne took an instant to appreciate his mask. Breathing in vampire remains couldn’t be good for his health.
He felt a slight tremor at his side. Zoe had started shaking. Reaching a fireball-less hand down to her shoulder, Wayne gave her a reassuring squeeze.
“Don’t worry. Vampires of this caliber are not a threat.”
Unfortunately, more vampires were taking note of his presence. Three-way fights were harder to break away from, to Wayne’s great relief. Day old vampires might not be troublesome, but he wasn’t immune to being overwhelmed.
Wayne started forward again, increasing his speed even with Zoe hanging off of his clothes.
It would have been simple to launch a fireball from afar. Multiple fireballs, even. That ran the risk of destroying the vat and spilling the blood. Not something Wayne wanted. It would be much harder to destroy spread around the park.
Burning two pages, Wayne created walls of flames extending out and around the vat. It was a long shot, but he was hoping that the vampires would maintain some semblance of sanity and stay away from the fire.
Pushing Zoe into the fastest run her tiny legs could manage, they reached the vat.
A vampire burst through the firewall to his side. So much for that idea, Wayne thought with a groan. At least the vampire wasn’t Sarah.
It was, however, on fire. Wayne didn’t need to spend much effort in fanning the flames. Soon enough, the woman was a pile of ash.
Not wasting any more time, Wayne tossed a fireball up onto the center of the vat. As it flew, he burned another page.
Flames exploded outwards, doubling, growing, and heating. By the time the ball reached the top of the vat, he had a miniature sun bearing down on the liquid.
Foul and vile scents penetrated his mask as the blood vaporized under the heat. Zoe audibly gagged, though managed to hold down her lunch.
Then again, who knew when the kid last ate. She might not have anything to throw up.
“Come on,” Wayne said, breathing solely through his mouth, “we should back away until they calm–”
Wayne stumbled forward. His foot got caught in the ground as the earth lost solidity. He sunk into the ground up to his ankles before the dirt hardened.
A figure emerged from the flames. Trails of hot magic licked her clothes as she moved through.
Wayne immediately extinguished the fire. Vampires regenerated from just about anything, but fire damage took the longest by far.
While Sarah would probably forgive him even if the scars lasted a century, it wasn’t a chance he was willing to take.
Sarah opened her mouth in a scream. Her twin fangs protruded from her teeth, dripping with ichor. With blood-addled eyes, Sarah charged.
Unable to move his feet, Wayne was forced to hold his ground. He swung his heavy tome, making contact with her outstretched arm. Something snapped as her elbow bent the wrong way.
Not letting his sympathy get the better of him, Wayne followed through with an elbow-strike to her ribcage.
Again, something snapped.
Pain shot up Wayne’s arm. He accelerated his mental process to the max to take a good ten minutes worth of time just to scream internally.
His arm was broken. No doubt about that.
The only consolation was that he was fairly certain something snapped inside her as well. It wasn’t so much her durability that snapped his arm, it was her sheer speed that broke both their bones.
Working through the pain, Wayne brought his raised tome down on Sarah’s head. She crashed into the ground, face smearing into the dirt.
Wayne was a fire mage. Through and through. He had never cared about dalliances of air magic or the complexities of earth magic, and water magic was sealed away from him due to his affinity for fire. That didn’t mean he hadn’t learned anything from school or his sister.
Using the little earth magic he knew, Wayne freed himself and Zoe–who was in the midst of screaming–from the ground.
Sarah was in the middle of using her arms to push herself up. One arm, mostly. The other didn’t look like it would support much weight anytime soon.
Wayne directed a portion of magic over to his wayward sister. Her arm sank into the ground up to her shoulder.