Page 39 of Slaying the Vampire Conqueror

I had never seen anything like it. There was no twitch, no hint of anticipation, not even when Aaves’s men came flyingat him from around corners. Every other fighter naturally revealed glimpses of their anticipation, and good ones were thinking several steps ahead of their opponent.

Not Atrius. It was as if he didn’t anticipate anything at all—didn’t even try. He simply responded. To do that while sparring with me was one thing. It was another to do it here, in battle.

It was incredible.

We fought through the tunnels, deeper and deeper. The walls grew tighter. We continued to split off into smaller and smaller groups as the paths deviated, rocks slipping beneath our feet. It was dark—an advantage for us, since vampires could see without light and I didn’t need to see at all. My sword was bloody, the hilt slick with gore. I’d long ago lost track of how many I’d killed. Surely Atrius alone had taken down dozens.

Eventually, we reached an area of strange silence. We pushed forward, tensed, waiting for more attackers.

When several minutes of stillness passed, Atrius glanced back at me, asking a silent question. I’d already found the answer, reaching out with my magic to sense movement in the threads far above us. Too distant for me to make out individual presences, but something was there.

“There are people ahead,” I said. “Lots of them.”

Atrius nodded and readied himself. The sensation grew closer as the path dipped sharply, bringing us to the apex of three tunnels… and a morass of people. A wall of them—far more than the warriors Aaves had been throwing at us so far.

Many more than our dwindling group.

Behind me, Erekkus muttered what I could only imagine was an Obitraen curse.

“We fight through them,” Atrius commanded, his sword raised in anticipation. “No hesitation.”

But my steps slowed—because something here wasn’t right.

The presences were now close enough to sense. And it was difficult to feel the emotions of such a large group, but these… they overwhelmingly reeked of fear. And these people were coming for us, yes, but it was a lurching, stumbling walk, like they were being packed into these hallways and forced down?—

Just fear. Just?—

I grabbed Atrius’s arm just as the crowd of people was almost upon us.

“They aren’t warriors,” I choked out. “They’re innocent. They’re civilians.”

Typical of these warlords. To use their starving, homeless populace as shields when he was starting to run out of warriors. Use them to flush us out.

Realization fell over Atrius’s face in the same moment that the wall of bodies surrounded us.

He spat a curse. For a moment, I was absolutely certain I was about to ruin my cover—because Atrius, I was sure, was about to cut through all these innocent people, and I’d have to stop him.

But to my shock, Atrius lowered his sword just as the mass closed around us, shielding its sharp edge from the flesh jammed into every crevice of the hall.

He turned back and screamed a command in Obitraen. Then he lifted his sword above his head, high enough to avoid the bodies, reached back to grab my wrist, and pulled me forward, as if to keep me from getting swept away by the sea of people.

“Hold onto Erekkus,” he told me—not that he had to, because Erekkus was already holding onto my other forearm, tethering us.

There wasn’t enough air to speak. My head pounded, a nasty side effect of being surrounded by such an overwhelming quantity of people—and emotions—in such close quarters.

Neither Atrius nor his men killed a single person.

We just fought our way past the tides, pushing through the morass of sweaty, terrified flesh until it thinned, then disappeared.

Atrius and Erekkus released my arms, and I let out a shaky breath. My headache throbbed, but subsided. Sweat plastered my clothing to my body. Distantly, I sensed that mass of innocent people continuing down the tunnels to Weaver-knew-where, blind with terror, like a herd of panickingcattle.

Atrius muttered something in Obitraen to Erekkus, who nodded. It was harder than ever to sense Atrius’s presence now, with my abilities so exhausted by the pack of people, but I glimpsed a faint whiff of disgust.

“Good to know that human kings have so much respect for life,” Atrius muttered to me, and I couldn’t help but let out a ragged laugh at that.

“I’m sure vampire kings are very kind to their subjects.”

His lips thinned. “Maybe kings are the problem,” he remarked. Then, before I could answer that, he lifted his chin down the hall. “How much farther?”

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