are?”
“Ebony.”
“Ebony. Such a beautiful name.” He held out his hand. “Arise.”
Ebony pushed back her sheet, placed her feet on the floor and stood before him.
“Do you know how long I searched for you?” he asked.
“Forever,” Ebony said. She knew that. Anthony had searched far and wide for his one true love and now he had found her and she had found him and they would be joined for all time. It was a love that no man could tear asunder. It had been said that love was a drug. If it was, she was an addict.
His eyes continued to bore into her and now she knew she had to offer herself to him completely. She had to be owned by him for their love to be consummated and there was only one way for that to happen.
She tilted her head, offering her neck to him. Anthony smiled and she smelt his breath. One part of her mind told her his breath was rotten. Fetid. Like road kill on the side of a busy highway in the middle of summer.
She didn’t care.
Love was like that.
“Time to -.”
Before Anthony had a chance to complete the sentence, a fist appeared from nowhere and collided with the side of his head. The impact was so massive his entire body slammed into her bedside table and continued into the wall until he was jammed into the gap. He let out a shriek of rage as he struggled to escape the wall.
Ferdy pulled him out of the gap and with no effort at all, threw him through the window. He fell into the night beyond.
Ebony regained her senses just in time to understand Ferdy’s words.
“Vampires,” he said. “Originating from the early Serbian word vampir meaning a dead creature known to drink blood.”
Chapter Ten
By the time we reached the house we were just in time to see a figure being thrown through the window. A man. He rolled twice leapt to his feet and yelled in a foreign language. He leapt up from the ground and jumped.
Straight up onto the roof.
“What the hell -.” I started.
“He yelled something in German,” Chad said. “Something about us returning. There must be others in the house.”
The man raced along the top of the roof as nimbly as a cat. I started after him, landing a few feet behind him. He turned around and aimed a fist at my head.
Smack!
I didn’t even see it coming. One second I was reaching for him. The next the blow almost took off the top of my head. I hit the roof, rolled off and only just threw up a shield in time to stop myself from slamming into the ground. As soon as I righted myself I felt the impact of something landing on my back. An arm encircled my neck.
The man was trying to bite me!
I focused on creating a blast of air and hit him firmly in the face with it. He flew backwards into the darkness.
By now lights were coming on all over the house. I saw Ebony through her window struggling with another of the figures. It was a girl clad in a leather bra and shorts. Ferdy was holding another of the creatures around the neck.
The man came racing towards me from the darkness. He had his mouth open. I could see large incisors -.
Fire leapt out of the darkness and engulfed him.
He shrieked in agony and I felt someone pushing me down.
“They’re vampires,” Chad said.
“How do you know?” I asked, watching the figure rolling around on the ground.
“What else would they be?”
I remembered the teeth.
Okay. They were vampires.
He gave the burning vampire another blast and then turned to climb through Ebony’s window. I followed him. Ebony was trying unsuccessfully to turn her vampire to salt. Where her hands touched the creature, I could see large patches of salt, but the substance was not spreading to the rest of the creature.
The vampire turned its head and I saw her eyes.
I suddenly wondered why we were fighting them. Especially this girl. I felt I had been searching for her my entire life and now -.
Chad engulfed her head in a block of ice.
The spell faded.
“They’re vampires,” Ebony shouted, breaking me free of the
Learning to Kill: Stories