Chapter 101

It was the bony crunch of bodies shifting that made Lucille’s heart beat faster in her chest in the semi-darkness of the vampire’s manor.

She’d only seen the Demon Prince tearing out of his brown human skin as the heavy sound of his hind legs pounded furiously on the vinyl wood board before Edwin Kane flipped the table switch and the room was plunged into sepia darkness.

Lucille’s eyes widened when the spongy feel of a cold hand grazed her back lightly, whipping her sword in a half arc and connecting only with air.

The bloodsuckers were taunting her. She could see their shapes and the bright gleam of their undead eyes as they watched her, hanging upside down from the low ceiling of the living room as another vampire dug a hand Into her shoulder blade like lightning, making Lucille scream with pain before whirling around and sinking her sword into the bloodsucker’s neck in the same breath.

Baa Baa black sheep, have you any prayers? Yes, sir, yes, sir, let me live. Saint’s mocking voice peppered Lucille’s mind, and she mentally stomped on the snake.

The girl had only ever seen a demon fight once, from the highrise window of her apartment complex, with an eager-looking Saint hissing excitedly and damn near strangling her as his thick middle twisted around her neck.

Beelzebub had been one of the notorious rebel demons under the reject prince, who’d been stirring shit up downtown and was finally getting his ass handed to him by a silver-backed, true-blood werewolf.

Everest was one gigantic meat hound, the silver fur of his back catching the moonlight as he stood on his muscular hindlegs, his body twisting and turning to avoid the fire darts the Demon Beelzebub shot at him through dirt-packed fingers.

“Call me Bub for short,” Lucille snorted, remembering his trademark intro. She reckoned that literally no one ever called him that. It would have made the short barrel of a ghoul sound cute when he was anything but a red-skinned ogre through and through.

The fight was the kind of thing any resident with a working head on their shoulders watched from afar to avoid getting their soul matter husked away in the action.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life.” Lucille heard the unhurried treble of the Vampire Leader’s voice.

He'd managed to catch the Demon Prince with his long claws, but Lucille heard the fleshly swish of tendons growing over cuts on Damon’s Minotaur-like body as the shrill scrape of his curved horns on the ceiling temporarily deafened her.

“You must’ve been waiting your whole life then, a bit of a fan girl, aren’t you?” Damon snickered, snapping off the bald chunk of a vampire’s head between his teeth as he roared, a circle of flames surrounding the two princes.

“Kind of misreportable if you ask me.” Lucille taunted, panting, before sending another Skin Walker debutante flying with a kick in the abdomen as more bloodsuckers closed in around her, slapping ice-cold hands on her ankles and raking their talons through the soft flesh of her back, and she recoiled screaming.

Lucille had only just managed to avoid getting her neck chewed off by a particularly drool-happy vampire. The squelch of his luminous blue eyeballs made Lucille gag as she pushed the long blade of her pocket knife deep into the socket, and she felt the weight of more bloodsuckers piling on top of her.

“We have to get out of here!” Lucille screamed over the snarls of the porcelain-skinned bodies that snapped disjointed bones back into place as they swarmed her, their venom-coated canines snapping. The tang of liquid metal running down the gash on Lucille’s forehead made her dizzy; the luminous blue eyes above her blurred as she held them back with the edge of her sword; the pressure on her chest made it hard to breathe. She wasn’t sure the demon had heard her.

Lucille realized with horror that she could hear nothing past the ringing in her ears as dark spots clouded her vision and the tremble in her hands brought the sword and the army on top of it closer and closer to her scrunched-up face.

She felt lighter suddenly, the vampire zombies that had been snapping their half-rotten jaws at her face scurrying back into the room only moments before the large fur of a werewolf broke through the glass window as Damon backed into her head, nearly crushing the girl’s head under his hot foot before Lucille screamed out a warning, her life flashing before her eyes.

“Late to the party?” Benedict growled, rising to his full height as the yellow gleam of his Alpha eyes swam over the crowd and Lucille struggled to her feet.

“This is most improper detective work; I’m afraid I’d have to sue for property damage and trespassing.” The Vampire Leader’s raspy voice was saccharine as Lucille watched more of the bloodsuckers and crawling zombies with translucent white eyes snarling behind him.

“Apologies, Mr. Kane, the district received an assault complaint; word was you were holding a couple innocents hostage.” Benedict growled, the wet foam of his tongue licking across his blackened lips with what Lucille thought was blood thirst.

“Are you okay?” Lucille whispered to her best friend, but Damon only sniffed haughtily. He’d shifted back to being half human, a clawed hand covering the open gash on his side with his brown spiral-ringed horns still standing large on his dark mop of hair.

“Lemme get ‘em, boss; I can take the dog!” A skinwalker vampire hissed beside Edwin, the navy blue of his eyes flashing as he hovered on all fours, the blackened veins running like threads through his mottled skin.

Benedict’s light chuckle reverberated through the manor as Edwin backhanded the creature enough that he flew into the cream-colored wall behind, whimpering in the semi-darkness as the vampire leader stepped closer to the trio, unaffected by the light that cast a sickly glow on his almost handsome face.

Lucille thought there was something unnatural about his angles, the gaunt hollows of his cheeks a bit too dark, the lines on his angular face stretched tight, and those luminous dead eyes.

Lucille recoiled behind the heaving Demon Prince when the vampire leader suddenly flashed her a grin full of fangs, his black cape billowing in the evening draft.

“Get out of my house, Wolf.” Edwin hissed, fists clenched by his side, as Benedict shifted back to his tan human skin, the wisps of fur whisking into his toned flesh, and Lucille averted her eyes until the telltale scent of magic sifted through the air.

Lucille knew fashion was the only magic the werewolves possessed; it was why they could shift fully clothed.

“Gladly,” Benedict’s cheerful baritone rang through the house as Lucille trudged off in front of them, looking over her shoulder at the swarm of undead watching them eerily as they cut through the forest.

“Fuckers stole my whip, I just know it.” Damon hissed, still limping, as he slapped the wayward cobweb of branches out of his face.

“Be glad that’s all they did!” “What were you guys thinking?” The werewolf Alpha thundered at the back of Damon’s head, making Lucille wince.

“It was lucky I’d gotten there when I did; Edwin had his claws in the demon’s chest, and you just about had the swarm inches from that stubborn neck of yours!” He hissed, wrapping the girl’s arm gingerly with a strip he’d torn off her chest as she opened and closed her cracked lips with surprise.

We were in the thick of it now, and the Forest of Crawlers on the outskirts of Armagetton was quiet.

Lucille realized with a sinking feeling that this only meant one thing: the creatures were watching them. Listening. .