Page 65 of Blood Submission

I’m going to drown.

The thought echoed in her head as her struggles became less and less frantic. This shouldn’t be happening, she was an excellent swimmer. Suppressing the panic, Laney relaxed her body and let it do what it would naturally in the water. A few seconds later, she floated to the top and her back broke the surface of the water. Raising her head, she coughed up seawater, barely catching her breath before she was hit by a swell and sank back under again.

“LANEY!”

She heard his bellow of fear right before she went under. This time she let the water do its thing and help her rise to the surface again. Treading water, she coughed the last bit of seawater out of her lungs, pushed her sopping hair out of her eyes, and searched for the dock, swearing to herself that she was going to shave her head to match Dante’s if this was the life she was going to be living from nowon.

A body landed in the water next to her. Or rather, a part of a body. A leg, to be exact. After assuring herself that it wasn’t Dante’s, Laney started swimming toward the dock. She tried not to think of what might be lurking beneath her, attracted to the smell of her blood and the rotting carcass floating nearby. She headed to the hull of the ship, and the ropes skimming the surface of the water. The loose ends looked like they were tied to the dock. Maybe she could pull herselfup.

As she got closer, she heard the leader shout, “Sorry, vampire, but play time isover!”

Fear for Dante tightened painfully in her chest. Her vision flickered, and for a moment, she was afraid she was going to pass out, but then everything became clear and sharp. Energy surged through her and her strength returned as she was filled with a renewed purpose—to save hermate.

Grabbing one of the ropes, she braced her feet against the side of the dock and climbed up. Her wet sneakers slid on the slick surface, and the rope burned her hands, but somehow she made it to the top and flung herself over the side. She landed on her stomach and lifted herhead.

The scene unfolding in front of her was like something out of a movie. Dante held one of the creatures two feet off the ground with a hand around its throat. Its eyes bulged from its head and its mouth flapped soundlessly as it clawed at his arm with skeletal fingers. Blood ran down Dante’s arm as he squeezed. The visible tattoos on his face and arm pulsed with power, adding to the terrifying picture he portrayed. If Laney didn’t know better, she would think he was the devil himself, risen from the depths of hell to avengeher.

As she watched, another one came running up from his right. Before she could warn him, Dante whipped his head around without releasing his hold on the first one. Fangs bared, he roared with rage and slashed the air with his free hand. Without even touching the thing, he sent it rocketing through the air and impaled it on a metal spike sticking off the railing of the ship. With an evil smile, he went back to the first one, squeezing his fist until there was a sickening pop and the creature’s head tumbled to the ground.

Dante turned his focus to their leader.

“Enough,” Steven shouted. “As amusing as this has been for us all, vampire,”—he glanced at the bodies littering the ground—“well, at least for me, I have things todo.”

Dante hissed at him and took a step forward. That was as far as he got, however. His mouth twisted in pain, he slapped his hands to either side of his head. Laney screamed as he fell to his knees, his eyes wild, searching for and finding her. He closed them briefly at the sight of her safe on the dock, then they popped open as his body was flung into the air by an unseen force. Back arched, he roared with pain, hovering mid-air while the leader calmly walked up to stand besidehim.

Steven turned the box over in is hands. “Thank you for bringing this,” he told Dante as he opened it up and peered inside. “It saves me a lot of time and trouble.” Snapping the lid shut again, he looked over at the second two Dante had shot and sighed heavily. “Get up, you fools. And finish him.” With a flick of his wrist, Dante crashed to the pavement so hard the concrete busted beneath him, cracks appearing in a spider web design all around hisbody.

Laney struggled to keep it under control, staring in disbelief as the last two zombies, or corpses, or whatever the hell they were, slowly slid their hands under the front of their shoulders and staggered to their feet. Their faces, what was left of them, were gone, replaced by something that resembled the gore that littered a butcher’s floor.

“I can barely fucking see,” one of them complained.

“At least you still have your nose,” the othersaid.

Dante got his arms and legs underneath him and rose to his full height. Watching them shuffle toward him, he cracked his neck, pulling a knife from an unseen sheath on his thigh.

The fight that ensued over the next few minutes moved so fast that Laney couldn’t really keep track of what was happening, but she’d never been more terrified in her life. Occasionally, she would hear grunts of pain and catch a glimpse of a flying fist or the glint of a blade. Blood flew in all directions to spatter the pavement around them. Dante’s roar of rage failed to drown out the sound of popping bone just before one of his attackers went skidding across the ground. It jerked its broken leg back into the correct position, then it rose and went back to the fight.

Laney felt like she had been thrown into a horrifying version of The Walking Dead. Dragging her eyes away, she searched for Dante. When she found him, he was face down on the pavement with a booted foot shoved into the back of his head. He was covered in blood, one of his arms lying at an unnatural angle. She covered her mouth with her hand, but he twisted away and sprung back up to his feet with a growl that made the hair rise on her arms. Throwing his head back, he head-butted the thing behind him, then swung his left fist, catching the other one in the jaw. The temperature seemed to drop in direct proportion with his rage, and Laney began to shake violently, her wet clothes doing little to protecther.

Before he could do anything else, the two were on him, taking him to the ground as the leader laughed at his efforts to throw them off. As she watched him go down, Laney no longer felt the cold. When the leader tilted his head and pronounced dramatically, “Off with his head!” her fear turned to rage, and then transitioned to a dead calm. It descended over her like a layer of armor, a purple haze that filled her vision and tuned out the world around her other than the sight of her vampire. A buzzing filled her head until she couldn’t hear the grunts of pain coming from the male that was now a part of her. The male that was about to die before her eyes trying to protecther.

The colors around her shifted, converging on each of them in turn, picking out each of the creatures murdering her male. She focused on the one with its hands wrapped around Dante’s head. Words came to her lips, words she didn’t understand and didn’t remember learning. On her knees next to the water, Laney chanted, her voice gaining in strength, yet never rising above a whisper.

Suddenly, the creature dropped Dante as its head whipped toward her. The one eye that was still in its skull widened in fear. “Steven! She’s doing something!”

The leader searched the area around them. When it found her kneeling there, it gripped the small, wooden box until its knuckles turned white. Baring its fangs, it snarled, “Do what needs to be done. We’ll re-group. I must keep this safe.” Then he spun on his heel and wasgone.

The one Laney focused on wrapped its arms around itself, like it was trying to hang on to its own body. “Stop her!” it yelled at the otherone.

Laney widened her line of vision until they were both included. She’d only felt this way once before, when she was but a child, angry at what her grandfather was doing to her grandmother. Now that it was happening again, she remembered whispering something then as well, though it had escaped her memory until now. Words that she didn’t understand, yet were a part ofher.

They backed away from Dante in confusion. “What the fuck is she doing?” one of them cried. The words were garbled coming from the destruction of its face. One-Eye started shaking its head in answer. “Ah, fuck. She’s a Protector. Fuck!” He fell to his knees and the other one soon followed. Laney focused on the first one as a ball of cold energy rose up inside her. With a softly spoken word, it shot from her to him. Its head fell back and its mouth opened on a scream, then the body it possessed fell to the ground as the demon was forcibly evicted. The second one quickly followedsuit.

Laney watched the disembodied souls fly toward her. Their rage hit her first, and if she hadn’t been prepared, the force of it would have knocked her back into the water. Their ghostly forms came next, swirling around her, their violent intentions clear by the red of their auras. But they couldn’t harm her. With a snarl and a softly spoken word, she sent them scattering into themist.

When it was over, Laney swayed in place before toppling forward, managing to catch herself on her hands before her forehead smashed into the cement. She was exhausted, but she crawled over to Dante with her heart in her throat. Pushing and pulling, she finally managed to roll his large body over. When she saw what they had done to him, her hand flew over her mouth to stifle her cries.

Besides his broken arm, one side of his face was smashed in, the tattoos sunken into the concave that used to be his cheekbone. A large portion of his throat was torn out, and blood poured from the wound to soak his shirt and the pavement beneath him. Air was rasping through the tear, the blood bubbling up from his windpipe until his breathing slowed down and finally stopped altogether. Everywhere she could see, his skin was cut and bleeding, like it had been lashed with shards of glass.

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