Magic Rises

against the wall. They dashed past me.
    “Vampires!” Andrea yelled as she passed me.
    Undead magic lashed me, swelling like a tidal wave around the corner. Damn it all to hell.
    I did a one-eighty and followed them. Next to me Christopher was smiling, running with a now-human baby in his hands. “This is so fun!”
    This had to be some kind of twisted nightmare.
    We made a sharp left, then another, and burst into another hallway, parallel to the first one. The revolting undead magic washed over me. The bloodsuckers were coming from behind us and from the right, trying to box us in. One, two . . . Fourteen. Fourteen undead minds.
    We had Desandra, who was barely conscious; two infants; Doolittle, who couldn’t walk; and George, who was out like a light. There was no way we would win that fight.
    I stopped and turned.
    “Mistress?” Christopher called.
    “Kate?” Andrea crashed to a halt next to me. “What are you doing?”
    “The vampires are chasing me, not you,” I said. “Go. I’ll lead them off.”
    “Don’t even think about it,” Andrea said. “I’ll carry you if I have to.”
    “I’m your alpha.”
    “The hell you are.”
    I drew Slayer across my left forearm. Blood swelled, its magic sharp. “Take our people and Desandra out of this castle. Secure the panacea. That’s an order.”
    She hesitated.
    “I know what I’m doing. Go.”
    “I’m coming back for you.”
    “Good. Go!”
    She ran. Who said I wasn’t a good liar?
    The undead were drawing closer. I turned and walked into the side hallway, moving slowly, shaking my left arm once in a while. Come on, sharks. There’s blood in the water.
    * * *
    The short passage ended in a stairway. Might as well. The more time I bought the guys, the better.
    I reached the next floor. A round room lay before me, the top floor of a low tower under a simple roof. Arched windows turned its wall into a latticework of stone and night sky. As good a place as any.
    The air smelled of thick smoke. To the left and to the right, the castle burned. Flames shot out of the fissures fracturing the stone walls.
    The vampires were almost at my heels.
    I stopped in the center of the room and raised my sword. I could probably grab a few of the undead with my mind, but any trained Master of the Dead would be fighting for control, and Hugh’s guys were unlikely to be weak amateurs.
    The first vampire scuttled out of the opening and moved to the right of me. It moved on all fours, as if it had never walked upright. A thick pallid hide shielded its body, the network of lean muscle running over its back and limbs. I could count every rib. A spiky ridge thrust along its back. Its head stretched forward as if someone had taken the bones of its skull and pulled them to support the oversized jaws. A pre-Shift vampire.
    The older the vampire, the more the Immortuus pathogen transformed the original human body. This one was really far gone. No traces of a person remained.
    The bloodsucker stared at me with glowing red eyes, like two coals in an old fire. I’d encountered pre-Shift vampires before and always in connection with my father. They shouldn’t have existed. Before the Shift we had no magic, but there it was, a lethal, undead abomination.
    Another bloodsucker joined the first. They stared at me with starved eyes, filled with mindless, endless hunger. Given free rein, they would slaughter me and keep going until they ran out of things to kill. Only the steel cage of the Masters of the Dead would keep them in check.
    The undead horde spilled into the room.
    The first bloodsucker unhinged its jaws and a clear cold male voice issued forth. “Lay down your sword. Put your hands on the back of your head.”
    I simply looked at him. I could feel the undead mind, a hateful penlight in the nearly empty skull.
    “Lay down your sword or we will be forced to subdue you.”
    Subdue me, huh. “Why don’t you try?”
    A vampire lunged for my legs. I cut across his neck. My blade barely grazed it. The bloodsucker withdrew. Undead blood dripped on the floor. It called to me, the magic in it shivering and twisting, alive on its own.
    “There is no need for violence.”
    I laughed. The glowing sparks of the vamp’s mind taunted me. I’d always wanted to crush one. Just squeeze it with my magic until it snapped like a flea caught between two fingernails. I’d never tried it. I always had to hide my power.
    The undead shifted in place, moving into position. They would