Sealed With a Curse(48)

My eyes narrowed. “Don’t get any funny ideas.”

Only Misha could smile with nasty green slop smearing his strong jaw. “I would never dream of it, my darling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Celia.” Taran’s voice told me she wasn’t in her happy place. She glanced at my arm, Misha, and the trees. “What the hell are you doing?”

My voice hardened. “We need bait.”

I ignored my sisters’ gasps and Taran’s gangsta-like tirade. Did I like being the proverbial virgin to the bloodlust volcano? Hell. No. But a strong offense beat a cowering defense.

Misha’s BFFs stayed close at my heels, smacking their lips as I hurried through the trees. My blood worked on vampires like Doritos did on me. I’d traveled only a few yards when a bloodluster leaped on top of me. Misha ripped off his head before I could react. He helped me to my feet, flashing enough fang to prod me forward.

More yards. More vampires. Six kills before we finally reached the clearing.

“Wait here,” I said quietly.

Shayna scrambled to my side. “Dude, please don’t do this,” she urged.

I avoided Taran’s glare and placed my hand on Shayna’s back. “We need to lure them out. Just…well…when you see anything, get ’em.”

Shayna widened her large blue eyes. Perhaps we could have come up with a better alternative, but the monsters were picking us off one by one. I shoved my debilitating fear behind my inner hysterical female and crept forward.

The field expanded to about an eighth of a mile. Overgrown grass poked through the wide boards of the collapsed white fence. Festering horses lay against the borders. The poor things had probably attempted to flee the infected vampires. They’d been gutted and left for the bugs to devour.

My insides lurched; I was nauseated by the smell of rot. I inched to the center, fighting the urge to run away screaming. No cape waved behind me. No S covered my chest. And it wouldn’t take funky green rocks to bring me down. But I wasn’t helpless and I had to try.

I reached the middle of the clearing and forced more blood from my wound. I’d once read that deer hunters often waited hours for the perfect buck to appear. Well. Goody for them. In mere seconds, I had more company than my tigress, nerves, and bladder could handle.

Infected vampires popped up from behind bushes, trees, the barn, and its rooftop, barely covered by the torn, blood-smeared rags they wore. Sickly glowing green eyes sparkled with gluttony as they fixed on me. Tongues flickered with growing anticipation. Twisted smiles spread across eager, jagged mouths. And Celia Wird just about peed.

My new admirers were, hands down, the most infected I’d seen. Their skin was a mere film, barely keeping in the bulging green fluid pulsating beneath. Their stomachs had bloated to the size of watermelons. They’d fed well. Yet their insatiable appetites were far from satisfied. And now they hungered for me.

Rattled hisses thundered in my pounding ears as they charged. I searched the thick brush, unable to spot my allies as the bloodlusters closed in.

Oh…crap.

I shifted until my lungs begged for oxygen and surfaced right in front of a bloodluster. Shots fired, detonating the bloodluster’s head, spraying chunks of skull and ash. His torso collapsed on top of me, spilling the nasty infection from his severed neck as rifles boomed and Taran’s fire roared. I couldn’t catch enough breath to shift, but a charging voracious female motivated me to shove the dying bloodsucker off me.

I rolled—fast—over a broken fence post and onto my knees, hauling the jagged timber into the soaring vampire’s chest.

The female’s leftovers spurted as javelins of broken tree branches rocketed through the misting rain at the herd of bloodlusters sweeping the field. Emme nailed every infected vampire, popping through their bulging muscles like algae-filled water balloons and impaling them to the ground.

We hacked through hearts and tore off heads until everything fell silent, except for the panting from our exhausted group.

I collapsed to my knees, landing on a pile of disgusting ash. Taran bounded to my side, shaking my weary shoulders violently with each word she shrieked. “Son of a bitch! Don’t you ever fucking pull another goddamn stunt like that again. Do you hear me? I’ll kill you; I swear to God I’ll kill you if you ever try that crazy-ass bait shit again!”

“O-kay,” I moaned.

My uncharacteristic compliance only freaked her out more. She shook me harder, screaming and cursing.

“Taran, Taran!” Shayna yelled, trying uselessly to pry her off me.

“What!”

“It’s not over, dude.”

“The hell it’s not. We killed the bloodlusters. Time to take our toys and go home.”