Security Breach

Part Two of "North of Midnight," A Spell Weaver Novella

Sergei Kochetov/Shutterstock

“Antonio, hold me up!” said Winn, sounding distracted. He rushed to her side as her face went blank and her eyes closed.

“What’s happening?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the entrance. I’d gotten into my carryon and pulled out a stake and a vial of holy water. Neither would be much good against a vampire army, but they were better than nothing.

“Ms. Winn is the center of a psychic network with all of her security guards. It allows her to see through their eyes and even cast spells through them, which I suspect is what she’s doing now.”

I’d already seen Carrie Winn use magic, but what Antonio had described was a whole other level of sophistication I’d never even heard of.

Outside, I could hear loudspeakers blasting a message: “Emergency protocols are in effect. Please return in your homes and shelter in place until further notice.”

“Citywide system,” said Antonio, still keeping Winn on her feet. I’d never seen anything like that, either, but I was beginning to get the feeling that this town had more than its share of emergencies.

Well-hidden speakers in the hotel made me jump when they started broadcasting. “Attention, all hotel guests and staff. Emergency protocols are now in effect. Please proceed to the nearest elevator and go to the penthouse level.”

I looked at Antonio and raised an eyebrow.

“That’s for when evacuation to the street isn’t practical. The penthouse has heavier magic protections than the building as a whole. Also, Ms. Winn lives there often enough for it to be classified as a home.”

“And vampires can’t enter a home uninvited,” I said. “But I thought you guys had never had a vampire attack before.”

“We haven’t,” he replied. “The penthouse thing is just a lucky accident. The precaution of having people stay in their homes was initially designed partly to keep them from seeing anything supernatural. If we’d prepared for this situation, the message would include something about not inviting strangers in. For this specific problem, we aren’t prepared.”

Winn cried out, convulsed for a moment, and then went limp in Antonio’s arms. My hands gripped the stake and holy water harder—for all the good that did.

“The guard she was using as a conduit must have fallen,” said Antonio. “I’ll carry her. You take care of Janice.”

I wanted more explanation, but I knew there wasn’t time. He picked up Winn in his arms and headed toward the elevators. I scooped Janice off her chair and did the same, thought I kept the stake and the holy water awkwardly clutched in my hands. Luckily, Janice wasn’t too heavy.

A mailbox which must have been freshly ripped from where it had been anchored in the sidewalk crashed through one of the front windows. Glass sprayed in all directions, but we’d moved enough already to be out of its path.

I could hear the sound of running feet approaching, but nothing else. It didn’t sound as if any of the guards were still fighting.

My breath caught for a moment in my throat as I realized they were likely all dead—or worse.

“Keep moving!” said Antonio. He might be wearing a bellhop’s uniform, but his manner and the general circumstances suggested his real position was far higher. I didn’t need his prompting to pick up my pace, though. I could already see the first vampire jumping through the broken window.

Vampires could move faster than ordinary people, and, encumbered with Janice as I was, I couldn’t wield my weapons effectively. We could flee to the elevators, but unless they were superfast, we’d be dead before the doors ever opened.

Setting Janice down as carefully as I could, I stepped forward, holding both stake and holy water. The room was well enough lit that I knew my cross would shine.

“Don’t!” said Antonio in an urgent whisper. The vampires could doubtless hear him. So could I, but I ignored him, taking another step forward.

My heart was beating too fast, something the fifteen vampires I faced would easily notice. But they hadn’t charged me yet. No doubt, they’d seen the cross.

The first vampire had been in street clothes, perhaps to retain the element of surprise. This group were dressed like Dracula stunt doubles—classic black suit, black opera cloak with a blood-red lining, white shirt and white tie. Aside from the cloak lining, their look seem to be modeled on Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. I’d occasionally seen more than one vampire at a time, but never in what looked like matching uniforms.

More important than their dress was their general demeanor. Some of them had fangs still extended from the battle, but none of them seemed crazed by blood lust. All of them looked at me in a calculating way, working out how best to overcome me. Such a use of strategy suggested that they were not new-made vampires. They were older, more disciplined—and far more dangerous.

“Step aside, little girl,” said one of them, who had been middle-aged and distinguished looking when he’d been turned. “We may let you live,” He looked beyond her to where Antonio stood with Carrie Winn in his arms. Why hadn’t Antonio tried to get her up the elevator? His eyes were closed. Was he praying? Faith was important when fighting vampires—but couldn’t he pray and keep moving?

“You’ll kill me regardless of what I do,” I replied, proud of myself for keeping my voice steady. “And right now, you’re in a tighter jam than I am. Everyone else in the hotel is in a home, out of your reach. And more security guards, better armed against your kind, are only about two minutes out.”

I was making the second part up, but I’d bluffed vampires before.

The distinguished one smiled, letting his fangs show. “We can hear, see, and smell far better than you can. There is no one in the immediate area.”

I recognized the way the others were moving. Any moment, they would jump at me. I could take down one, maybe two, before I was too injured to fight on. Others could get around me even before even before I had fallen and take out Antonio and Winn.

Just before that fatal leap, an arrow appeared as if from nowhere and plunged into the distinguished vampire’s back. The arrow burst into flames, wringing a scream from the vampire’s lips. But the arrow wasn’t destroyed by the fire. Instead, it emitted a burst of sunlight that made all the vampires scream and cover their eyes. A third burst didn’t manifest physically, but I could feel something washing over me, comforting me and lightening my mood. Whatever the energy was had the opposite effect on the vampires, making them wail in eerie unison.

But the arrow wasn’t done. A final burst of pure white light blasted what was left of the distinguished vampire into ashes. I’d been so focused on that one vampire that I hadn’t noticed the launching of at least four more arrows in such a short time. As they unleashed their various types of energy, the vampires still standing fled out through the broken window, screaming.

“What the—” I began. Before I could finish, a boy appeared out of nowhere. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen, though he stood with enough poise for someone much older. His brown eyes looked us over as if checking for injuries. His life had been a hard one if he’d had to acquire that skill. His hair color and skin tone were much like Antonio’s, but the kid looked more Middle Eastern than Latino—Arab, if I had to guess.

However, his bow and his clothing were much more eye-catching than he was. The bow glittered like gold, though I figured that had to be a magical effect or dye of some kind. Gold wouldn’t have been a sensible material for the bow or its string.

He wore a long-sleaved shirt of some reddish brown material, but across his chest was a moving image. I blinked a couple of times, but it kept moving.

Looking more closely, the image portrayed a figure flying through the air over a city that looked like medieval Baghdad. The flyer could have been the boy wearing the shirt.

I wondered for a second if this boy was somehow the answer to Antonio’s prayers—an angel, or something close to it. That sounded silly—but was it any more ridiculous than vampires?

I should have stared a little more discreetly. The kid noticed my stare, gave me a little bow and said, “Khalid Sassani, at your service. I’m sure you have questions, but let’s get to a safer place first.” He glanced over at Antonio. “Were you thinking the penthouse?” Antonio nodded. “There’s no reason for vampires to attack the hotel—unless they want Ms. Winn. They may not be able to enter the penthouse, but if they know she’s there, they might try to force an evacuation by setting the place on fire. I’d suggest Awen instead.”

“We have no way of getting there,” said Antonio. “Unless you intend for us to fight our way across the city. You’re the only one of us who can fly.”

Khalid shook his head. “Have a little faith. Umbra’s right outside. She can travel us through shadow.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I wasn’t about to complain as long as we got out of here. My psychic tingling was behaving weirdly. It was now more like a dull ache running all through my body than a tingle. I was pretty sure that meant that it had been overloaded—something that had never happened before.

Antonio didn’t seem inclined to argue, either. He followed Khalid’s lead as the kid headed for the broken window. I picked up Janice and followed behind them.

Right outside the hotel, a girl I figured must be Umbra stood waiting for us. Nervous as I was, I did a quick check to make sure she wasn’t a vampire. No psychic alarms went off, and I could see she was breathing. I was a little reassured—because from a distance, she could easily have passed for a vampire. She had long black hair that moved slightly in the wind. Her skin was so pale I couldn’t believe the sun had ever touched it. She wore an unflattering black garment that made her look a little like a Hollywood ninja.

“What happened to the other vampires?” asked Antonio, looking around as if he expected them to come charging out of the shadows.

“They fled as fast as they could,” said Umbra. “Let us move away from the hotel’s lighting just a little, and I’ll get us out of here.” Her tone was flat, emotionless—but I found it comforting, anyway.

“Wait!” said Khalid. “Did I hear a cry for help?”

I hadn’t, but his question made me uncomfortably aware that the ground just a little distance from us was littered with fallen security guards, their bodies twisted and mangled. I imagined the smell of blood, even though only a puddle or two was visible. The rest was hidden by the darkness.

The vampires were so eager to get into the hotel that they hadn’t taken the time to drain their victims.

They hadn’t drained my parents, either. They just—

No! I had to stay focused. We weren’t safe yet.

But it was hard to stay focused on the present when it involved so much carnage. These poor guys had come expecting to overpower one vampire by sheer force of numbers. They could have done enough physical damage to keep a single one down. But they hadn’t had the right equipment to take on fifteen of them. From what little I could see, the creatures of the night had slaughtered them easily.

Khalid nocked an arrow—and vanished.

“He can become invisible,” Antonio whispered to me. I could have figured that out myself, but I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t hear Khalid’s footsteps, but if he could fly, he could certainly float above the ground to avoid making any sound.

“Help,” whispered a hoarse voice.

“I heard that one,” said Antonio. “There must be survivors.”

I didn’t want to argue with him, but triumphant vampires never left survivors, at least not in my experience. “Kill ‘em or turn ‘em,” could have been their slogan.

I heard a hushed expletive right behind and spun around, ready to stake the vampire that I thought for a split second had snuck up on us.

“We come in peace!” said a young man as he raised his hands. Since he held a sword that glowed with pale sunlight in his right hand, I believed him. No vampire could have wielded such a weapon.

He was blond, tanned, tall enough to be a basketball player, and generally looked like the all-American boy from Central Casting, which made his sword seem incongruous. He wore reddish-brown clothing like Khalid’s, but without any moving image across the chest.

Next to him stood another young man in a loose-fitting white outfit that looked like capoeira gear and made me think he might have come from an Afro-Brazilian background. Black-haired, dark skinned and lean muscled, he looked poised for battle. He probably worked out a lot, and he had a grace uncommon in men his age. But after all, capoeira was the martial art that most closely resembled dance.

Around his neck, he wore an odd piece of jewelry—a necklace with what looked like an ordinary stone hanging from it. I was willing to bet there was a story behind that, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

Realizing I still had my stake aimed at them, I lowered it. “Sorry,” I muttered. I’m not sure what was more disconcerting to me—that I hadn’t noticed the sunny sword glow before hearing the expletive, or that these guys already seemed attractive to me. I felt as if I had walked into a bizarre photo shoot—well, except for Umbra, who wasn’t at all reminiscent of a fashion model.

“It would be weird if you weren’t on edge,” said the basketballer. “I’m Jimmie Stevens, and this is Lucas Santos. Sorry it took us so long to get here, but we can’t fly like Khalid.”

“You could have driven,” said Antonio, looking at them as if he thought they were a little crazy.

“Lucas was showing me a few moves at the local gym,” said Jimmie. It’s only a couple of blocks from here, and a car might have made a good death trap.”

A disturbing image popped into my mind—vampires crushing in the car doors, trapping both men. Jimmie’s wouldn’t have had much room to wield his sun sword from inside the car, and the UV protection in a typical modern windshield would have shielded the vampires somewhat from its effects. Then, all the vampires would have to do would be to have flip the car over and—

But none of that had happened. I needed to focus on what was real—which was more than bad enough. However, I couldn’t stop wondering how rough Jimmie’s life must have been for him to be able to figure out how vampires could kill people in a car even though he’d never fought them before.

Jimmie swished the sword back and forth as if he were eager to use it. “Where’s Khalid?”

“Out there,” said Antonio, tilting his head to indicate the approximate direction. “We heard someone crying for help.”

Jimmie squinted as if he were trying to see Khalid. “Anyone alive out there?” he asked as if he were talking to the air. Whatever he was doing intensified the ache in my body. I wondered if my psychic tingling would ever return to normal—if I could call such a thing normal in the first place.

Jimmie stiffened abruptly. “Khalid! It’s a trap! Get out of there!”

Did Jimmie have psychic powers of his own? I couldn’t tell, but I looked frantically around to see if I could spot an obvious trap. It would be easy for vampires to hide among the bodies.

Jimmie advanced, sword held out in front of him. Lucas moved behind him, doing some variation on the jinga, a back-and-forth defensive move in capoeira designed to make someone harder to hit. Only he was doing it much faster than he should have been able to, so much so that he was motion blurring.

No, I wasn’t in a photo shoot. I was in a superhero movie. If vampires hadn’t forced me to accept the supernatural, I would have thought I was crazy.

Maybe I was crazy, and this was all a hallucination. Maybe I was straightjacketed somewhere in a mental institution.

In some ways, that would almost have been a relief.

Khalid was still invisible and silent. But I knew vampires could hear his heartbeat, see his heat signature. He must have approached fast enough before that the vampires in the lobby didn’t notice him. But he’d lost the element of surprise now. It would be easy for them to surprise him—

Just at that moment, the fourteen-year-old appeared far up in the sky, well out of reach of any vampires, who, despite all the movie lore, couldn’t generally turn into bats.

“Guys, back off!” he yelled at Jimmie and Lucas. “I’m safe, see?”

I could hear the arrows flying in Khalid’s direction more than I could see them. They struck him with enough force to push him higher—but they didn’t pierce his clothing.

“We need to take cover!” I said, my voice quiet but intense. I’d never seen a vampire archer, and I had no real protection against arrows. Jimmie might be as well protected as Khalid, but the others certainly weren’t.

“Come this way,” said Umbra. She had somehow moved into the nearest shadow without my hearing a single footstep. I couldn’t see her at all, but weirdly, I could make out a deeper shadow within the normal one.

Antonio, whose arms must have been tiring from holding Carrie Winn all that time, walked as quickly as he could toward the shadow. Jimmie and Lucas looked uncertain.

“There aren’t any survivors out there!” I said, though I didn’t know for sure. Khalid had a good aerial view but was stuck dodging arrows while trying to get off a shot of his own.

“Wait a minute!” said Jimmie, again squinting at something I couldn’t see. He turned to us after a few seconds. “There aren’t any survivors. Let’s get out of here!”

An arrow whizzed past me and smashed through another one of the lobby windows, flashing as it did so.

“Faerie magic!” yelled Lucas.

I looked out across the corpse-ridden street, but I saw no sign of faeries. Of course, I had no idea what a faerie looked like. I couldn’t see the vampire archers, either—unless the archers were faeries. I was losing track of what was happening.

Keeping my eye on the street, I backed away in the general direction of Umbra. Antonio might have already taken advantage of whatever escape she offered. Lucas And Jimmie were running in my direction. Lucas held back a little so that he didn’t get too far in front of Jimmie. Khalid continued to trade arrows with whoever was shooting on the ground. He made no move to retreat with us, but perhaps, he intended to fly to wherever we were going and was just covering us.

I watched, still spotting nothing, until Jimmie and Lucas reached me, at which point, I grabbed Janice and followed them into darkness.

I didn’t understand the mechanics of traveling through shadow. The darkness around me was complete. Jimmie must have sheathed his sword to avoid disrupting the process. I felt cold and disoriented, but Jimmie and Lucas kept me moving in the right direction, and suddenly, we were standing in a relatively dark room, though a little moonlight flowed in through arched windows.

Lucas, moving as if he knew the layout of the room, walked over and flicked on a light switch. I blinked a little against the sudden brightness. We were standing in what looked like an infirmary. Antonio had already laid Carrie Winn on one of the several beds. I put Janice gently on another one.

As if the light had summoned her, a doctor in a white coat popped into the room. Noticing her blonde hair, even though it was pinned back, her deep blue eyes, and her model-perfect face, I again felt as if I’d walked into a photo shoot.

“Dr. Florence, Ms. Winn’s been hurt,” said Antonio.

“I know. Khalid told me,” replied the doctor. Khalid was nowhere in sight. These people had some method of communicating with each other, but I had no idea what it was.

The doctor started her exam, which was anything but conventional. She put her hands on Winn’s chest, roughly above Winn’s heart, and closed her eyes.

“Vitals are a little low. How long has she been like this?”

“Twenty minutes or so,” said Antonio.

“What happened? Khalid wasn’t clear on that.”

“I’m not sure,” said the much-more-than-bellhop. “But I believe she was using one of the guards as a conduit when the guard fell.”

Dr. Florence stared at him. “Dead?”

“No question,” said Jimmie. “No survivors.”

The doctor shook her head. “She may be trapped. But this kind of injury is beyond my experience. All I can tell clearly is that she’s cut off from the network—and seemingly, from her own body. We need someone like Tal or Magnus to reach her mind. I can’t contact either of them, though.”

“You mean—” began Lucas.

“Yeah, there’s interference of some kind. The same is true of opening portals. I tested a little while I was waiting for you. Travel within the city is possible. But if I try to go anywhere beyond the city limits, I hit a barrier of some kind. Something subtle but solid. I haven’t had a chance to study the magic more closely. All I know for sure is what you might guess—that anyone who could do something like that would have to be extremely powerful and skillful.”

At that point, the doctor noticed me for the first time. “I see we have a guest.”

“Don’t worry,” said Antonio quickly. “She already knows about the supernatural.”

“Well, if she didn’t before, she does now,” said Khalid, striding into the room as if he owned the place.

“Alexandra Luminitra,” I said, offering my hand. The doctor gave me a firm handshake.

“And you know about the supernatural?” she asked.

“I’d had more experience than I’d like with vampires,” I said. “I’ve heard about other things but never really seen anything else—until tonight.”

“Quite the coincidence that you arrived in town during a vampire attack,” she said, eying me as if she wished she could read minds.

“Before, actually,” said Antonio. “She arranged for a room at the hotel earlier this afternoon.”

Dr. Florence was no one’s idea of threatening, but something about the way she looked at me sent cold chills down my spine.

“She also saved my life and Ms. Winn’s,” Antonio added. Perhaps he had picked up on the same vibe I had. “She held the vampires off long enough for Winn to get there.”

“It should be helpful to have a vampire expert in our midst right now,” the doctor said slowly. Having dealt with vampires, I understood her skepticism—though I’d have been happier if it wasn’t aimed at me.

“I’ll help in any way I can,” I replied, hoping I sounded sincere.

The doctor nodded an acknowledgement. “What about Janice?” she asked, switching her attention back to Antonio. I guessed she’d decided I wasn’t an immediate threat.

“She fainted when the vampire attack on the hotel started, but I caught her before she hit the floor.”

“Keep on eye on her for a minute. I want to see if I can reach….Ms. Winn.” She put one hand on each of Winn’s temples and closed her eyes again.

I could tell she was keeping something from me, something to do with Carrie Winn. But I could hardly expect her to trust me on sight. I didn’t need to know everything right now. But I might need to know a little bit more about the people fighting by my side. Maybe the guys would be a little more forthcoming.

“What kind of cloth is that outfit made from?” I asked in the quietest voice I could manage. “I notice arrows bounce off it.”

“Don’t worry about disturbing Dr. Florence,” Khalid said in a normal voice. “When she’s doing that deep a probe, she’s in a trancelike state only imminent danger could knock her out of.” He looked down at the image of himself flying across his shirt. “Anyway, It’s not cloth. It’s dragon skin,”

I didn’t see that coming.

“The Welsh faerie smith, Govannon, cures dragon skin and makes something like leather, but much tougher, out of it. It’s harder to pierce than steel but as light weight as cloth.”

Dragons were real, too? Well, why not? I had the urge to laugh, perhaps tinged a little bit with hysteria. I shoved the impulse as far down inside me as I could. Now was not the time to lose control.

“But you don’t all have dragon leather?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t touching a tender subject.

“Only the original core group,” said Jimmie. “It was put together by Viviane, uh, Dr. Florence, and Tal—Taliesin Weaver, who unfortunately isn’t here right now. The original few have dragon armor and specialized weapons custom made for them by Govannon. Those of us added later have somewhat less personal stuff, which is why my dragon armor doesn’t have a movie playing across it. But my sword, custom or not, looks as if it’s going to serve its purpose pretty well.” He put his hand on his sword hilt as if I’d forgotten that it could generate sunlight. “Forged by Hephaestus and blessed by Apollo.”

My head started to throb in tune with the rest of my body. “You mean, the Greek gods actually exist?”

“They aren’t really gods,” said Khalid. “Currently, they and most of the other ancient pantheons are confined to their own planes of existence. That’s what they get for pretending to be gods. The Greek ones been good to us when we found our way to Olympus, though. I have a dagger from Govannon for close fighting, but my bow was actually custom made by Hephaestus, as was the quiver, which refills automatically. The arrows have blessings from Hestia, who gave the power of the hearth fire; Eros, who gave the power of love; and Helios, who gave the power of sunlight. The archangel Israfel added a blessing from Allah.”

“The perfect weapon against vampires,” I said. I wasn’t sure how much more unbelievable information I could take. If I hadn’t had so much experience with vampires, I never would have believed any of it. But I’d seen the various magical effects he was describing.

“Actually designed for demons,” said Khalid. “We had to fight Asmodeus at one point. But vampires have a lot of the same weaknesses.”

I looked into his eyes. I supposed I was searching for the young teenager he might have been if the supernatural hadn’t intruded into his life. I might have been seeing what I wanted to see, but I thought I glimpsed some adolescent exuberance in his eyes. It was hard to be certain, though. He remembered the sight of all those mangled bodies in the street just as clearly as I did. I was sure of that.

Dr. Florence still seemed entranced by whatever she was finding in Winn’s head. Maybe if asked a few more questions, I’d have enough information to get the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle of a town to fit together.

Or maybe I’d run screaming from the room. But I had to try.

“Jimmie, how were you able to tell there were no survivors so quickly? Who were you talking to?”

Despite Jimmie’s tan skin, in the light of the infirmary, he looked pale. “I can communicate with the dead. Unfortunately, there were a lot of spirits around to choose from at that point.”

I could see the pain in my eyes and knew I shouldn’t push. I needed to switch topic.

“Lucas, how can you move so fast?”

“On my Portuguese side, I have some faerie blood—a little encantado, a little xana. On my African side, I have some Yoruba blood that connects me to Chango, the orisha of war, dance, and formerly prophecy. I’m not always sure who contributes what ability, but I can move really fast, and I sometimes get little glimpses of the immediate future. In the right mental state, I can also dance up magical energy to share with our spell casters.”

“And under the right circumstances, he can channel Chango,” added Khalid. “Like he may need to do soon.”

“You know that’s forbidden,” Lucas replied with a sharp edge in his tone. “Chango got drawn out accidentally a couple of times. These days, the orishas work with God, but that gives them sort of the same restrictions as angels. They can intervene very little and only under specifically defined—”

“This is the biggest emergency we’ve had for a while,” said Khalid. “And we’re short-handed, outnumbered, and maybe out-magicked. It’s not just vampires we have to worry about. You must have picked up on the faerie energy out there.”

Lucas’s mouth narrowed to a thin line, and a vein in his temple throbbed. “Well, in that case, why not get your buddy, Raphael, to come down here? Oh, wait—you can’t.”

Raphael? The archangel?

“Easy, Lucas,” said Jimmie. “No one is going to try to force Chango out. Khalid is just worried, same as the rest of us.”

Dr. Florence cried out and fell to the floor. I expected Lucas to get to her first, But Khalid could apparently also move faster than normal. he reached her a fraction of a second faster.

“She’s got a pulse, and she’s still breathing!” yelled Khalid.

“But what’s wrong with her?” asked Jimmie.

“We aren’t going to be able to tell,” said Lucas. “None of us left standing can scan someone’s physical condition. Nor can we read her mind to see what happened. We need Tal or Magnus for that, and neither of them are here.”

“Where are they?” I asked. I had no clue who Magnus was and only a vague idea of who Tal was. But they were clearly important.

“College mostly,” said Khalid, as if college were some kind of abomination. “Lucas is only here on midterm recess from Julliard. Jimmie has spring break. Antonio attends the School of Culinary Arts and Hotel Management at SBCC, so he can work at the hotel during his down time. Everybody else has spring break at different times—and some of them are far away. Without being able to portal in, it could take them a long time to get here. And apparently, we can’t even let them know we’re in trouble.”

Focused as I tried to be, the part about Antonio being in college stuck in my mind. He wasn’t as young as I thought. But that wasn’t what was important right now.

“How about just calling some of them?”

My suggestion hit them like lightning. These people were too accustomed to solving problems with magic and too stressed-out to look for other ways. A regular old cell phone would probably bring their comrades running, at least the ones who were close enough.

Jimmie whipped out his cell phone and then stared at it as if he had never seen it before. The pressure must be taking its toll on him.

“That won’t do you any good,” said a voice superficially like Janice’s but utterly cold—the voice of a sociopath.

I looked over to see her sitting up. Her eyes were as inhuman as her voice. Her lips turned up in a serial killer smile.

“Who are you?” asked Lucas. I wasn’t surprised. I didn’t have to be magic to see that Janice had left the building.

“I am Dracula,” said whoever—or whatever—controlled Janice.

“Dracula is just a fictional character,” said Khalid. He had an arrow nocked already—but what was he going to do? Shoot Janice’s body? He was caught in a nasty dilemma.

I remembered that most of the vampires who attacked the hotel had been dressed like Dracula. Apparently, that wasn’t coincidence.

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not,” said the voice. “You will surrender to me, immediately and unconditionally.”

“Not going to happen,” said Jimmie.

The smile on Janice’s face broadened.

“The souls of Vanora and Viviane are now mine, to do with as I wish. If you choose to fight me, I can inflict unendurable pain upon them. And you have obligingly told me much about yourselves. I have been listening through Janice this whole time. I know your strengths and weaknesses. If you fight me, you will lose.”

Vanora? Was another name for Winn?

“What do we do?” asked Antonio, looking to his friends, who clearly had no answers. If I had to guess, Dr. Florence and Ms. Winn—and Tal, when he was around—did most of the decision-making. These guys were brave. I’d seen that. But were they leaders?

“You can’t give in,” I said. “Think about it. Unconditional surrender. ‘Dracula’ isn’t offering any terms. You can surrender, and he can torment the captured souls, anyway. He can also kill every living person in this town—and make you watch while he does it.”

“You won’t be alive to watch,” said whatever possessed Janice.

The unknown puppeteer raised her hands, and magic poured from them in waves. I felt disoriented, as if were standing outside my own body.

Our unknown enemy was trying to draw out our souls.

I managed to look around enough to see that the others looked as disoriented as I felt. Their eyes looked glazed. They were still moving, though sluggishly. But like Khalid, arrow still shakily aimed at Janice, they didn’t have a way to shut down the magic without hurting her.

Umbra drew a dagger that, if not for its metallic gleam, would have looked like solid shadow. But, though she looked relatively emotionless, she too hesitated.

I was closest to Janice, but I felt myself getting weaker by the minute, and my perspective continued to shift. I now felt as if I were looking down on my own body rather than just being outside it.

I didn’t want to kill Janice, either, but maybe nonlethal force would get the job done. I couldn’t move well, but I managed to stagger over the bed, raise my arm, and punch Janice in the face.

She fell backward, nose bleeding, and I immediately felt the malignant energy coming from her diminish. I was still wobbly enough that I needed to put one hand on the bed to steady myself, but at least, I wouldn’t be losing my soul tonight.

“We need to find a way to keep her unconscious,” said Jimmie. “Apparently, our adversary can’t channel magic through her while she’s out cold.”

“That’s eerily similar to the way Ms. Winn uses magic,” said Jimmie. “It makes me wonder if someone has been spying on her, picking up some secrets.”

“Janice has been in town for months,” said Umbra. “Theoretically she didn’t know anything about the supernatural, but if someone else was pulling her strings—”

“We have a more immediate problem,” said Khalid. “Can you feel that?”

“What?” I asked, checking in with my psychic senses. I was still getting a constant ache rather than a more nuanced tingle.

“The defensive magic around the property is shuddering. I think whoever has a hold of Winn’s soul is trying to force her to shut everything down. If that happens—”

“We’re all dead,” finished Jimmie, his voice sounding hollow.