Richart, she called mentally. Even though he wasn’t telepathic, she would hear his reply as long as the two were in the same state.
What? came his rather distracted reply.
Do you have any of the sedative on you?
Yes.
Can you get it to Étienne and Krysta at UNCG?
Jenna and I have come up against quite a large number of vampires at Duke.
Skilled vampires?
No, the usual fare. But I intended to use the sedative on some of them in hopes that they had heard something.
Save it for Étienne. He and Krysta are facing the new breed of vampires there and could use it.
All right. We’ll be there as soon as we can.
Is Jenna fighting alongside you? Lisette asked as an afterthought.
Yes, he groused, and I swear she’s turning my hair gray.
Lisette laughed as she reached UNCG’s campus. Taking her Busa up onto the sidewalk, she followed the sounds of battle to her brother and his wife and plowed right through the vampires.
Bodies flew through the air. Blood splattered.
Krysta laughed. “Nice!”
Grinning, Lisette parked the bike, drew her shoto swords, and leapt into the fray.#p#分页标题#e#
A quick head count yielded over a dozen vampires. At least three bore thickly muscled physiques and brandished weapons with expertise. Étienne fought one and kept trying to engage another to keep him from joining the third, who battled Krysta.
Krysta, Lisette noticed, held her own better than Étienne did, thanks to her ability to see auras. While the auras of humans told her little beyond the man or woman’s mood or health, the auras of vampires behaved differently. According to Krysta, they shifted and moved before the vampires did, alerting her to the vampires’ intentions. So she could anticipate a vampire’s every move and kick his ass. As she did now.
With a speed and strength that matched her husband’s, Krysta dodged every strike of the muscled vamp she fought and inflicted wound after wound after wound with her own weapons.
Étienne didn’t fare quite so well.
Lisette swung her swords in sweeping arcs as she raced forward, cutting the carotid and femoral arteries of a couple of the standard deranged vamps. Reaching Étienne’s side, she then took on the second muscled vamp he struggled to keep away from Krysta.
Once more, battling the vampire proved to be a challenge. Had she, Étienne, and Krysta only fought the skilled vamps, Lisette thought the three of them would have triumphed more easily. But the damned psycho vamps proved to be dangerous distractions.
The large vampire Lisette fought was so adroit that she had to keep her attention focused on him at all times, which left her vulnerable to attacks from the other vamps. While she met the muscled vampire strike for strike, the less practiced vamps darted in and drew blood with wild slashes and stabs. If she took her gaze away from the adept vampire for even a second, he scored a hit.
Étienne swore.
They all did, encountering the same dilemma.
Their frustration mounted as wounds multiplied and stung. But they kept their cool as their training dictated.
Lisette spun away from the muscled vampire long enough to swipe the head from the body of a gangly vamp attacking her from behind and was rewarded by her primary foe with a cut across the neck. She hissed in pain and repaid him with two swift slashes to his right arm, hoping to hinder his swing.
Lisette? Étienne asked.
He nicked my carotid artery, she said, but I’m okay.
Okay and losing blood. Unlike a vampire, she wouldn’t bleed out if a major artery was slashed. If she lost too much blood, she would simply slip into a sort of stasis or hibernation until a blood source came along. Fortunately, the cut the muscled vamp had inflicted was minor enough that the virus was able to seal it.
Her movements slowed, a result of blood loss.
From the sounds of it, Krysta was kicking her vampire’s ass.
A lanky vamp shot forward and slashed at Lisette’s legs. The sharp blade went right through her coat and sank into her thigh.
Stealing herself against the pain, she bent her knees, leapt up, somersaulted over the muscled vampire’s head, and landed behind him. Her blade sank deep into his back before he could spin around. Leaving her shoto in place, she drew a dagger and tore into two of the slacker vamps as the muscled vampire struggled to reach behind him and remove the sword.
“Mine’s down!” Krysta called and took on some of the vampires circling her husband.
As Lisette finished off the two vamps she fought, she scoured the muscled vampire’s thoughts and found a chaos of rage and pain. She could see nothing of the one who had turned him or trained him.
She dipped low and cut the femoral artery of the last slacker vamp facing her. As she straightened, a blade sank into her side, narrowly missing her heart.