Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

Nine. Tails. I shit you not.

It let out a yip-like sound that might have been a laugh before dipping its muzzle back to its gruesome business.

I turned away, putting a hand to my stomach and breathing through my mouth to keep the meaty scent and ripping, tearing sounds from making me toss my cookies. Arnold was sitting in the snow next to me, staring, gone a sickly shade of green.

“Kumiho. Kitsune. I should have known,” he said, voice hollow.

“Kitsune?” I asked. The term was vaguely familiar, like something I might have known before but forgot.

“What, you thought Soo-Jin’s name was Kumiho?” Fane’s derisive voice startled me. “That’s what she is, not her name. She got her pound of flesh. Let’s get ours, aye?”

“Aye,” Angus affirmed.

He reached out to pull Arnold to his feet, helping him on his way toward the mansion. I avoided looking at Soo-Jin, or Kumiho, or whoever she was, and her impromptu meal as I trudged past, focusing as best I could on our target. Every rip, tear, and crunch made me flinch, but I managed to keep the bile down, and not to run screaming from the demon-fox Soo-Jin had turned into.

Once Kimberly caught up with us, gasping for breath, she barely managed out a “Hey, what’s happ—” before she spotted what the rest of us had already seen and barfed.

Fane surprised me again by staying behind with her, waiting to one side for her to collect herself while the rest of us moved on. I didn’t want to be the one to tell the young mage, but chances were high she would see much worse before the night was through. Her reaction did not bode well for how she would handle the fight to come.

I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was getting used to seeing carnage like that, and knew to expect worse.

Arnold pointed up. I tilted my head, scanning the sky—and soon realized those little sparkles weren’t stars. They were from a crystalline shield far overhead, colors swirling like you might see on a soap bubble in the sun, arching over the property and surrounding the building. Our two-hour mark had begun.

It didn’t take long for some of Max’s men to rush from the building to meet our charge. Arnold’s splayed hand threw one of them back with some kind of unseen force, a guttural war cry from our would-be assailant warbling into a scream of pain, soon cut off as the figure ... dissolved? Christ, whatever Arnold had cast, it turned that vampire, or whatever he was, into ash right before our eyes.

There was no time to stop and consider what the mage had done. I focused on the three people still coming in our direction, not realizing until I was already four or five strides closer that I had let fangs and claws extend before thinking to reach for my gun.

I shouldn’t have bothered. Long before I was close enough to be in any danger, Angus and four other vampires shot forward with a burst of inhuman speed. One moment they were all around me, and the next they were halfway across the field, tearing into the remaining vampire and two humans who had come out to face us. The fight was over before I, Arnold, Kimberly, Fane, or Soo-Jin ever reached it.

Soo-Jin had joined us and was close at my back. There was something oddly comforting about that—though Arnold didn’t seem to think so, giving us a wide berth once he noticed how close she’d come to him.

We slowed down and took a more cautious approach once we got close to the side door we were planning to enter. This was close enough to where I had escaped that I thought I could figure out how to get around once we were inside.

Angus put his shoulder to the door, the other vampires crowding around us and shoving me and the magi behind them. A vampire whose name I didn’t know gave me a nervous, fang-filled smile. For the first time since my escape, I thought to look— really look—at my allies.

Arnold’s brow had a sheen of nervous sweat, and Kimberly was not only green around the gills, but her gloved hands were visibly shaking. The glint to Soo-Jin’s fox-eyes and cant of her head gave me the idea that the kumiho , or kitsune , or whatever she was, wasn’t bothered in the least by the thought of the battle to come. Most of the vampires, though they didn’t fidget the way the magi did, showed other signs of nervousness. Their quick, unneeded breaths and slight flicks of their fingers, like they were flexing claws they didn’t have, worried me more than the thought of Kimberly’s squeamishness.

If the vampires were afraid, then they weren’t as certain of the outcome as Angus and Soo-Jin appeared to be.

After the doorjamb splintered and cracked, the door popping open under Angus’s weight, we all shuffled inside. It opened into a game room. A series of billiard tables and a wet bar on the far wall took up the bulk of the space. Angus was grinning ear to ear, beard bristling and eyes glinting like rubies, clearly enjoying this. He wielded a sword with a long, broad blade like a baseball bat as he scanned the place for any foes lying in wait.

Aside from the first rush, there was no sign of any defense prepared against us. Still, I was nervous. I knew how many people Max employed for security and we hadn’t seen a fraction of them. There was also Gideon to contend with, not to mention Max himself. Then again, this place was so big, the rest of Max’s security might have been focusing on something on the other side of the building and we’d never know.

“What’s the heading? Which way?”

I started to take the lead, but Angus’s hand on my shoulder stopped me.

“Just tell us the way, lass. Ye nae take point.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, reddening. I should have known better. I gestured to a set of doors at the far end of the room. “That way, I think. We should go upstairs first. If Arnold can free Iana, she can help us.”

Angus went first, cracking the door open and glancing either way before moving into whatever was beyond it. I recognized the next room. I could figure out where to go from here, thank goodness.

“Hey, I know where we are. The way to Max’s room is that way. The way downstairs is over there.”

Arnold gave Kimberly his familiar, Bob, the tiny black mouse, so that he had a way of keeping tabs on the other half of our little war party. She had no familiar to trade him, but didn’t seem to mind letting the mouse settle himself between her neck and collar, its twitching nose and whiskers barely visible between strands of her long, blond hair. Kimberly and three of the vampires, including Fane, broke away to find and free any captives in the underground rooms after I gave them directions and explained how to find the hidden door. The rest of us hurried to find the stairs.

Arnold and a couple of the vampires boggled at the opulence and glitter, but I knew all the beautiful furniture and art had been bought with blood money, funds raised on the suffering of humans and Others alike. Besides, the stink of rot and formaldehyde was too strong for me to enjoy anything about the view, considering how badly my eyes were watering. No question, Gideon and his zombies were still here, and close.

The others must have been noticing the stench, too. Soo-Jin was the only one who didn’t seem bothered by it. Aside from Angus, all of the vampires had that just-bit-into-a-lemon face that said they had gotten a whiff of something rotten. Arnold had his arm up, his nose pressed into his jacket. His hunched shoulders, little furrows between his brows and narrowed eyes told me he was more determined than ever.

It was a good thing, too, because when Angus threw open the wide double doors leading into Max’s bedroom, there were half a dozen zombies waiting for us. The sting in my eyes wasn’t just for the smell when I saw Tiny was among them.