Kate Daniels 01 - Magic Bites

corner two furry bodies were down, with Curran standing over them, beset by three bloodsuckers at once.
    I saw Jennifer and someone spotted like a leopard battling back to back, pressed by four vampires. She dropped and kicked the first one, her claws ripping into its side, wrenching free the bloody shard of a rib. Her partner fell onto the bloodsucker, tearing into its neck. More vamps swarmed on top of them.
    Nobody paid me any mind. In the battle of monsters, I was just a human. I kept moving.
    The east wall shuddered. Dusty plaster exploded, scattering across the floor and something huge charged through the gaping hole, roaring like a tornado. It hit the clump of the vampires with awesome force. An undead body flew through the air, slamming against the wall. The vampire twisted on reptilian feet and leaped back. A colossal paw swept it from midflight, snapping the spine like a dry twig. The Bear of Atlanta had arrived.
    Olathe’s blood wall shimmered before me. She stood within the barrier, watching the slaughter. The blood from her forearm slid onto her fingers, dripping to stain her dress. She looked at me and smiled. What the fuck was she so happy about?
    She kept grinning, her face bright with sick glee.
    “You like blood?” I snarled. “I’ll show you blood.”
    Slayer’s blade slit my arm and across the hall the bloodsuckers paused for a single beating of my heart. They knew the blood, knew whose power flowed through my veins. They stood still, mesmerized, paying homage to the magic, and then slashed back into their victims.
    I thrust my bloody arm into the red fire. It seared me and solidified, cracking like a fractured windshield. The smile bled from Olathe’s face. The carmine fire shattered. A myriad of tiny flames fell at my feet. I leaped into the circle and thrust.
    Olathe made no move to counter my sword. It sliced into her stomach with a wet sucking noise. I dragged it upward, cutting through the intestines, cleaving the liver. She sagged forward on the blade, and in her eyes I saw the satisfaction of recognition. She knew my blood, too.
    I jerked the blade free and let her fall. She sagged to the filthy floor and lay on her back, drawing hoarse short breaths. A dark stain blossomed on her dress above her navel and spread through the fabric. She possessed an unnatural vitality, but soon the magic that sustained her would dissipate. She expelled it from her body with every labored breath.
    I watched the blood stain grow. My anger died. I was tired. My thigh hurt and my stomach felt like someone had taken a red-hot rake to it.
    The bloodfire had surged anew after I had passed through it. It would burn until the last of Olathe’s blood dried or decomposed, and the banquet hall shimmered red past the translucent wall of ruby flames. It was almost over.
    I rolled my head back, cracking my neck, and saw why Olathe had been grinning.
    The ceiling teemed with vampires.
    Dozens of them, nude, twisted, wriggling obscenely against each other, packed tighter than sardines in a can. They covered the plaster completely, like a medieval painting of hell that had somehow sprung to life, and more were coming, squirming one by one through a dark hole in a corner.
    How many? Forty? Fifty? A hundred? How many of them were pre-Shift, pre-magic? I tried to feel and was swamped in the wave of icy hate. At least twenty.
    The undead blanket writhed. A sweet surprise Olathe probably planned to spring on us when we thought we had won. Except that in a moment she would die, releasing all of them from her control, leaving them to blood frenzy.
    A horde of ravenous undead left to their own bloodlust. We would all die here. Curran, Mahon, Jennifer. Me. And death would spread, when the undead monstrosities burst into the streets after they finished us off.
    Across the room Curran tore a vampire in a half, throwing the mangled pieces to the floor.
    Dozens of now peacefully sleeping people would perish. They would see their children torn to pieces while they screamed.
    I dropped to my knees and cleaved Olathe’s chest. The flesh and cartilage parted before the blade and I pulled her rib cage open like a bear trap. She hissed at me. I reached into her chest and grasped her heart, forging a link between us. Through her blood I felt the multitude of vampire minds, drowning in their own madness.
    That’s the wrong way, my father’s voice said from my memory. Don’t give in to this.
    There is no right way.
    I cut my arm