Wyverns of Mass Destruction

Shawn II, Part 2

The shirtless one flew through the air. Shawn dropped to his knees and flicked his sword up. The vampire crashed into a stack of iPads, clawing at the gash through his spell-vein. It was a lethal blow, but one that took days to kill.

Shawn pressed his hands against the Apple boxes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Orange flames blossomed under his fingertips. He willed them outward. The acrid smell of burning electronics brushed his nose as the boxes twisted into ask.

Anais fired a crossbow bolt through the woman's head. It cracked like an eggshell. Donovan and Rashida, armed with heavy police batons, surrounded another man. The remaining vampire, obviously the most experienced, grabbed a machete engraved with a pattern of diamonds and charged at Shawn.

Enchanted machete, Shawn thought. Diamond. Unbreakable. He blocked the vampire's blow and aimed a low cut at his ribs. The vampire darted backwards, nervously hopping over debris. Shawn grinned as he advanced, driving strike after strike into the sharp edge of his machete, forcing the spell to draw more and more the energy from the vampire's blood. This creature was no match for him.

Rashida touched the wall. Gashes tore themselves into the concrete. Rock flew, pinning down a target that Donovan had in a chokehold. Street noises filtered in. "Careful!" Shawn yelled. "No power!" Had anyone on the street heard him use the p-word?

His vampiric opponent laughed. "Scared, agent? Don't they call you the Living—"

His machete shattered. Shawn decapitated him.

Blood splattered. The body dropped into the flames.

"You could have let him finish his sentence." Anais dealt the deathblow to the vampire Rashida and Donovan had crippled.

"I knew what he was going to say." Shawn ran a hand down his blade, boiling off the blood. The Living Flame. Scourge of New York's Descendants. A fairy tale to scare kids into hiding their power. What bullshit. Shawn might have killed that vampire, but he'd only been doing his job. Only upholding the law.

The vampire with the sliced spell-vein leapt off the iPads and dove at Anais. She fired her crossbow, but the bolt went wide. The vampire buried his razor teeth into her leg.

Anais's scream cut through Shawn's senses.

"Watch out!" Rashida screamed as he ran for his wife.

Two more vampires dropped down in a clatter of ceiling tiles. Shawn felt the air move and flicked his sword upward, impaling one though the heart. The impact jolted through his shoulders. Shawn swung the sword down, dropping the body, and in the same motion, ran the other vampire through.

Their bodies pressed together. The vampire's little gasps filled his ears, reminding him for all the world of a fish plucked from the bowl. Three decades of practice, Shawn thought, before withdrawing the blade and letting her die.

Anais was cursing in French. Blood flowed freely from her mauled thigh.

"Hold on!" Shawn grabbed her hand with slick, bloody fingers. "Listen to my voice!"

"Fucking rebound!" she gasped.

Power had evolved with one core purpose: keeping its users alive. It poured energy into your flesh, and when you had energy to spare, you could use the magic that set the different Valvic lineages apart. But when healing an injury required all, or maybe even more than all, of the energy you had left, you would lose the ability to consciously use magic until your energy reserves regenerated enough or the wound killed you.

Anais was fourth generation. Her reserve capacity was innately lower than Shawn's, and her energy regenerated at a much slower rate. Despite the gauze pad Donovan was now pressing against the wound, it was entirely possible for her to bleed out right on this dirty floor.