This is it. He's going to die, and I'll be free.
At the last second, he moved, and I was suddenly pinned up against the wall, the silver dagger now in his hand. He pressed the blade to my throat, a sadistic grin creeping across his face.
"Oh, Reese...
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Dimly, I remembered hearing a scream. It was only later that I realized it had come from me.
Then, seeing my little brother gazing at me, wide-eyed, fear shooting out from his every pore, something snapped inside of me. I saw the predator behind him, draining Thomas of his life, not paying the least bit of attention to me. Clearly, it didn't see me as a threat.
A big mistake on its part.
The stake fit firmly into my hand, the wood pressing comfortingly against my palm as my fingers tightened around it. Raising it high, I made to aim for the vampire's heart - it was just barely visible behind Thomas' shoulder.
I rearranged my feet, widening my stance in order to gain as much power behind the throw as I could. But my foot scuffed against the pavement, and the vampire, its augmented senses picking up on the movement, glanced up and saw me preparing to kill.
In one swift movement, it attacked Thomas again with a renewed frenzy. Blood sprayed, and without thinking, the stake left my hand, flying through the air and burrowing itself into the vampire's chest. With a screech of pain, the vampire jerked away from my brother and began to crumble into dust. All that was left was its skeleton, still in decent shape. The vampire had only been a century or two old, then.
I didn't bother grabbing the stake, jutting out between the vampire's rib cage. My attention was fixed solely on Thomas, who had crumbled to the ground the moment the vampire was no longer supporting it.
I slammed to my knees beside him, blood soaking into my jeans. There was so much blood, but I barely noticed it, barely acknowledged where it was coming from.
"Tommy," I whispered, bringing my hands up to his neck, pressing down gently on the wound to prevent any more blood from escaping. "Tommy, are you all right?"
He didn't respond. He must have still been in shock since he was staring at me, his eyes wide with fear, his mouth slightly agape.
"It will be okay, Tommy," I murmured, brushing a hand through his hair. The dark strands shone in the gloomy glow of the streetlight, the blood matting and clumping it together. "Just focus on breathing, okay? When you feel up to it, we'll go back to the safehouse and bandage you up. We'll have you on painkillers until the venom leaves your system, okay?"
Vampire venom was an annoying side effect of being bitten. Once it reaches the bloodstream, it causes an intense pain that feels like you're being burned from the inside out. It dies down after about three days, but three days is a long time to spend writhing in agony, feverish and hallucinating. There was an ointment that could be put over the wound that counteracts the venom, but the ingredients were hard to come by and were often in the hand of magic-wielders.
The wielders were the most neutral of supernatural beings, but it was impossible to know if they would take advantage of human weakness or were actually decent beings. A few weeks ago, when Cedric got bit on patrol, Anya went out to find a witch who had a wide assortment of antidotes for numerous things. She never came back, and Cedric was incapacitated for days. There have been two more bites since then, but nobody was willing to entangle with the wielders, on the slight chance that they'll become a magical experimental subject.
