“Look,” Wayne said, pulling a fresh mask out of his backpack. “It will help you breathe easier.”
“Mommy,” she said between coughs, “was keeping the smoke away. She hid me in here, but those people…”
Great, Wayne thought. The girl was starting to cry. Unlike Serena, this kid had working tear ducts. Why does it always have to be kids? Handling kids was not his strong suit.
Wayne backed up, standing once again. Glancing down at the woman lying with a broken neck on the couch, he had a sinking suspicion that she was the mother. Probably shoved her kid into the fireplace and was setting up the grate in front of her when she was ambushed from behind. Without the thralls’ flashlights, the kid might have been overlooked.
Circling around the couch, he frowned. According to the kid, she had been keeping the smoke away. A mage perhaps?
It would explain the shuddering of the air.
But she didn’t have any foci on her that Wayne could see. There was a wedding ring, but touching it revealed that it was perfectly normal.
Stepping over the gaunt corpse of the female thrall, a glint of light caught Wayne’s eye. He reached down underneath a chair. His fingers found the cool touch of metal. Pulling the partially hidden object out, he found a short silver dagger in his hand.
This was definitely a focus. A decent one too. He conjured an experimental fireball at the tip and extinguished it a moment later. It was well crafted despite being somewhat old. Probably an ancestral foci, handed down from a generation or two back. Unless it was extremely well cared for, it wasn’t old enough to come from much further than that.
Wayne had always found daggers to be odd choices for foci. They really didn’t offer much over a wand save for an edge and a price tag. Their users tended to be the violent sort.
Shrugging, Wayne moved back to the fireplace. He flipped the dagger over, offering it out hilt first. “Here,” he said, “I’m–”
The girl reached forward and yanked it out of his hand, just barely managing to avoid cutting him. “That’s mommy’s!”
“I’m sorry. Your mother…”
Wayne trailed off as the kid started wailing.
Movement at the corner of his vision caught his attention. Serena strolled out of the other room, shirt absolutely soaked. With water, this time. She must have found a water bottle or a working sink.
“The kid is still under there?”
Wayne nodded. “Please help. I can’t handle kids.”
“Move aside,” Serena said.
Wayne complied without hesitation. “Careful,” he said, “she has a knife.”
Serena knelt down, brushing a strand of brown hair back behind her ear. “Hey there,” she said. “I heard some of the conversation. Your mom, huh? I lost my mom too.”
Wayne winced. He was fairly certain that he had more tact than that, but Serena’s words got the other girl to slow down in her crying. That Serena’s face looked to be on the verge of tears only made Wayne feel disgusted with himself. Forcing a sixteen year old girl to discuss her own hardships didn’t sit right with him.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure. My house is right in the middle of the fire. Even if they made it away from there… Well, there are bad people in town.”
“You’re a vampire.” The kid’s voice came out as a definite accusation. “Mommy said vampires are monsters.”
Serena just smiled, gliding a finger over her elongated teeth. “I am. But I’m a good vampire. I just made it so that the people who hurt your mom can’t hurt anyone else.”
“You killed them.”
“I ate them. They made a tasty snack.”
From his position next to Serena, Wayne watched as the kid’s eyes turned wide as dinner plates. Wayne immediately let out a sigh. At this rate, the kid would stay in the fireplace out of fear. He didn’t have the time to fish her out. If a mage here could be taken out from behind, Sarah could be in just as much trouble.
“You don’t look fat enough to have eaten two people. Where did it all go?”
Serena opened her mouth. She paused, patting her belly with a glance towards Wayne.
Wayne just shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Bottomless stomachs weren’t covered in any books.”
“Well,” Serena said with a slight huff, “it is true. But, the point is that you can’t stay here. Your mother would have wanted you to get out of this city. She would have wanted you to live.”
Serena held out her hand. “And we can help you.”
“You’re going to eat me too.”
“If she tries,” Wayne said as a fireball blossomed on his hand, “I’ll incinerate her.” He let the fireball linger for just a moment before he crushed it in his hand.
“Y-yeah. See?” Serena’s smile twitched slightly, not quite managing to keep it sincere. “I don’t want to be incinerated.”
Wayne felt somewhat bad about scaring the poor vampire. But as long as she didn’t try anything, they’d get along just fine. A little reminder wasn’t a bad thing. Especially with her little disappearing trick.
He wasn’t entirely sure how she had managed that. Stress induced power incontinence was all that came to mind. A day-old vampire shouldn’t be able to do anything like that. Then again, several things were odd about Serena. Aside from not being tired despite the smog starting to get a little lighter, she had said that she hadn’t ingested any vampire flesh to become a vampire in the first place.
Now he was regretting allowing Serena to eat the other thrall. He might have been able to answer a few questions. Unlikely, but the possibility had been there.
The kid crawling out of the fireplace interrupted his musings. Wayne moved to position himself between the girl and her mother. She didn’t need to see that.
“Okay,” she said. Wiping a huge smudge of soot on her cheek–smearing it with tear-stains–the kid looked to Serena. “I’ll believe you. I–” She broke down into a fit of coughs.
Wayne tossed the fire mask at the kid. “Put that on. It will help.”
Following his own advice, Wayne replaced his own mask on his face.
Serena put her hands on her hips. “You never offered me one of those.”
“You don’t breathe.”
She frowned, but nodded.
“Let’s get out of here. We’re almost to Sarah’s house, then we can get out of this city.”
As they started moving out, Wayne dropped a spark behind. In ten minutes, the house would be nothing more than a smoldering pile of charcoal, taking the two potential ghouls along with it. There was a chance the ghouls would rise before his spark went off–Wayne wasn’t sure on the exact time it took to ghoulify–but he doubted it.
Besides, he couldn’t exactly stick around to ensure the job finished. He’d rather spare the kid the sight of her home burning down.
“What’s your name, kid?” He couldn’t keep calling her ‘kid’ after all.
“Zoe.”
“That’s a nice name. I’m–”
“What?” Serena said with a huff. “Zoe’s nice but not Patty?”
“I never said that,” Wayne grunted. “Just never heard of a vampire calling themselves Patty.”
She huffed again, but didn’t stay that way for long. Zoe let out a small, muffled giggle that forced Serena into a sad smile.
“Call me Serena.”
“Wayne,” was all he said.
Chapter 004
“Sarah!”
Wayne hammered his fist against the heavy oak door.
“Sarah! Open the door!”
He rattled the handle to no avail. It was locked.
“Maybe no one is home,” Serena said, arms clasped behind her head as she leaned against the wall.
Zoe clung to the vampire’s shirt, pressing her mask up against a curtained window near the two.
Since rescuing Zoe from the thralls, the younger girl had stuck close to Serena. At first it had been mere holding hands. After about ten minutes of walking, Serena put her enhanced strength to good use by giving Zoe a piggy-back ride.