It’s much more personally satisfying to create than to destroy but even more satisfying than that is to make things explode. Now that I’m armed with a knife of tempered steel with silver worked into a lovely filigree pattern along the edge (lucky me the vamps locked me up with 75% steel, 25% silver restraints…or maybe they just have a ‘one size fits all’ policy) I start prodding the walls in order to locate the area with the least amount of stone to make my way through.

Unfortunately it’s a no-go, everywhere I probe is at least twice as thick as the steel-clad door so I sit crosslegged in front of it and lean my forehead against it. It takes a long time to convince stone and forged iron that ‘living’ again would be really worthwhile and personally helpful to me. Once I DO manage it a torrential rush of molten rock pours forth and but for the grace of its gratitude toward me I would have been killed. Instead, the molten rock sluices away to either side of my body and cools just as quickly, forming a smooth passageway just large enough for me to wriggle through.

Crouching in the dimly-lit hallway I pause as my eyes adjust before padding down the hallway. The whisper of my feet as I tread down the hallway and the creaking of the leather cloak make less noise than my breathing and I fight to keep myself from panicking. Picking up the pace, I flip the cloak’s hood over my head and hide my face within its shadows.

A T-junction forces me to stop and consider my options but each way looks the same so I base my decisions on the voices I hear from the right. As much as I want to carve a little satisfaction out of today’s tormenters, I stop five feet from the light flooding out of the room and listen to the meaty thuds issuing from within.

“DAMNIT TADEO!” screams a shrill, new voice. I wince and wish I could post a memo to all would-be villains:

Please, when considering who should have the pleasure of interrogating-torturing someone, don’t use women as their voice goes up by octaves, not notches, when they become legitimately distressed. Thank you.

“How does she do it? How can we get it from her? HOW CAN WE STOP HER?!?” I’m tempted to run into the chamber just to stop that nails-on-chalkboard wailing of hers but luckily self-preservation kicks in and stays my hand. Or my feet, as the case may be. Every one of the woman’s questions are punctuated by the sound of meat pounding meat and it alerts me to the fact that there are at least three people in the room, as there’s no way that a tiny woman could get that much mass behind a blow.

What am I doing? I ask no one in particular as I sneak a peek around the doorjamb and see Tadeo—would-be warden-extraordinaire—another vampire acting as random thug and a tiny vampire woman in the room. Am I going to try to be a hero? My feet are whispering across the floor before I realize I AM going to try to be a hero, and if I survive this I need to write a revised edition of the Hero’s Handbook and I’m going to take “must repay all debts, whether real or imagined” right out.

The first vampire who notices me is the thug—who outweighs me by at least a hundred pounds of solid meat—and I thank god he doesn’t notice the knife laid flat against my arm before I duck, twist, and slice him from left to right. Howling, disemboweled, and somehow still on his feet I have to turn my back on him as a shrill wailing emanates from the female before she uses that vampire-speed trick to attack me from behind. I reverse the blade in my hand and lunge up, sliding the silver-edged blade up under her sternum without any resistance as she shatters into ashes before my arm encounters any resistance.

Muscle-man-mc-disemboweled has shuffled into the corner and is wailing as he tries to keep his guts in his rapidly healing abdominal cavity. Shrugging, I turn around to face Tadeo and am taken aback by his look of quiet disapproval.

“Solaine,” my name sighs out of his mouth and I wonder how someone who was just recently getting the snot beat out of him can look bedroom-rumpled and perfectly at leisure while tied to a chair. 

Damnit, I risked a lot to save him and the bastard didn’t need any saving at all…flitters across my mind as a tart,

“Glad you know my name,” passes my lips. I stride to the doorway and check the hall for potential reinforcements that have yet to start tromping toward us. Returning to Tadeo I pause only momentarily to kick the still sniveling thug and he just rolls over while holding his squishy parts inside his healed-yet-translucent belly. While I’ve never actually seen someone survive a gutting I suppose that the first time would be traumatizing, immortal or not.

“Solaine,” Tadeo repeats more forcefully as I’m considering the necessity of fully incapacitating the former badass.

“What?” my absentminded question refocuses my attention on Tadeo just as my vampire-enhanced hearing picks up a faint, rhythmic thumping. I slide my knife between his hands and the razor-sharp edge parts his bonds without any effort on my part. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming?” and it finally hits me that I bothered with this whole ‘rescue operation’ with the expectation that Tadeo was a victim and going to need my continued protection. As much as the offer shocks me, it knocks him completely off kilter as he looks up at me with eyes bled completely out into a Jupiter storm of chocolate, lavender and bitter orange.

“You would take me with you?” and I have to wonder if ‘melancholy past’ is a prerequisite for exquisitely attractive men. Maybe suffering is good for more than just the soul… “Solaine?”

“Yeah,” I say, forcing my musings into the background as the sound of approaching feet grows even more noticeable. But at least they’re not strong enough as vampires to fly, so I’ll take whatever slight comfort I can offer myself. “Yeah,” I continue, adding assurance to my voice that isn’t really inside me, “see, I’m the good guy here. I have to rescue people who offer to help me because that’s what the good guys do. How long have you been alive that you don’t know that yet?” I ask, and hold my hand up as he opens his mouth. “No, never mind. Doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is the truckload of angry vampires stomping down the hall that I need you to help me with, will you?” Even as his eyes dial back down to human I see him calculating frantically before he answers,

“Yes. Yes, I’ll help you,” tone laced with inner resolve, I realize I’ve just gotten more than the five minutes of help I bargained for as Tadeo rises from his chair and pulls the now only whimpering vampire thug off the floor.

“What???” Tadeo stops me before I can even finish thinking of what to ask him.

“Would you like to come with us?” he asks the other vampire and I hiss,

“I’m not taking him with us!” from between clenched teeth.

“I don’t know how to get us out of this particular part of the mansion,” Tadeo says, voice quieting as our impending doom thunders toward us. “It will take time to navigate that we don’t have.”

“I’m not taking someone with me I’ve personally disemboweled!” Tadeo hushes me and pushes me down into his recently vacated seat.

“Just sit here,” he mutters, folding the cloak back from my nakedness, “don’t whine. They’re not expecting you, and they’re certainly not expecting naked. It will give me and Blas an edge we need.”

“This is ri-goddamned-diculous,” I mutter under my breath as I resentfully kick a leg over one of the chair’s arms and attempt to lid my eyes in some simulacrum of pin-up-sexy as I cross my arms over my chest in defiance. No fucking laughing, I think as loudly as I can while wondering if Tadeo’s one of the mindreading gifted vampires, knowing that he is as a silent smile quirks one corner of his mouth.

The new batch of bad-guys piles into the room ready to pounce on any perceived threat and stops cold when they see me lounging in the chair with smoldering eyes. In the moments it takes them to recover Tadeo and Blas dispatch them with differing techniques; Tadeo silently snapping a neck in each hand and Blas clubbing two others together so hard that their skulls explode in a shower of bone and brain before everything explodes into ashes.

“Look, what’s your name,”

“Blas,” Tadeo supplies and I shush him. I’m talking again before I can wonder if vampires ever have normal names like Todd or Keith,

“Blas. Out of here quick, that’s the plan.” He takes the lead and Tadeo slips into place behind me, sandwiching me between them as we take off running through the mansion. It’s all I can do to keep up, and every time we reach a corner Tadeo picks me up for a fraction of a second, turns me ninety degrees and keeps on running without breaking stride.

It’s almost dawn whispers though my mind in swirling ribbons of velvety ganache and Tadeo retreats as stealthily as he entered. He has to be fairly powerful to enter my mind without my consent—brief tenure as a vampire or not—and I file the information away for later scrutiny.