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By now everything was happening in slow motion anddown

Apparently, as yptian soldier vampires had been decapitated as possible, as many zombie mummies had been minced to papery remnants Who could tell?

Whether Snow stood, or any of his allies beyond Grizelle I didn’t know Or care

Where was Ric?

We’d fought our way into the absolute deepest, darkest depths of the Egyptian tomb maze beyond the river, the liht, probably

And no Ric And no Ric? Was he dead and buried already?

No That made no sense They’d want hiht use him better dead Newly undead to raise the dead Were we too late?

No!

But ere up against the far wall of the current dungeon

I couldn’t beat htened and lowered on’s roars were distant There didn’t seem to be anyone left to skewer, slash, burn, or rowled softly Hearing a wo I knew she’d shifted to tiger form earlier, but back to woman as the battle waned I knew she’d protected ed Snow for that, but not for Ric’s sake He’d need me now as he never had before

I felt Grizelle’s heavy hand on my shoulder She didn’tHe was too involved with er claws bit into ernails

And then I looked harder at the last wall

Fallen bodies of all kindsa flooded floor

Grizelle hissed behind me, an eerily human/feline sound I heard Snow approach us "Grizelle," he said without expression, sounding winded and weary Snoeary? "What is it?"

There was silence I felt I stood alone on an island

And then the scene before my eyes took rational shape after the irrational jumble of battle when lies twisted and broke off

I viewed arefuse I saw a Du a swatch on the stone floor, and reroupie behind the Inferno

I took in iron cuffs bolted two feet fro black blanket of bugs and the cloud of buzzing darting insectsabove them

I discerned the barely visible oases of huer Grizelle was The silver familiar melted from a breastplate into a thick chain ininsects

They had bug-eyed evil faces with hypoderht theainst the stone wall They left fat trails of blood as their bloated forain they hit, s blood

Ric’s blood

Ric’s lifeblood

The roaring in , but vampire tsetse fly after vampire tsetse fly hit the wall I hauled back until ain, until my bloody chain wrapped around an object behind me so solid it al like Grizelle I sa’s black-leather forearm covered in a bloody spiral of ht the silver faain

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Grizelle bend and spray a shower of white over the festering floor

I lunged to stop her, but Snow took my neck in one hand "It’s the salt they kept here, for the leeches Let her use it"

Leeches?

I watched And saw Ric’s naked lower body was alive with shiny black slugs, s, his arms, while his bare upper body was a s

Salt crystals fell like snow on this horrific hu alive

Grizelle’s human face was cast-iron with fury, her teeth bared to reveal the tiger’s fors She’d been frozen in mid-shift, unable to release either side of her nature in the face of this travesty The beast part would run ravening to tear apart the perpetrators, the human part had to undo the obscenity as much as possible

I felt the sae Save and succor andaside, Ric’s naked hu the horror of every inch invaded and bloodied

I released the chain, feeling it lighten and ared to the right, revealing the site of the va-distant Mexican desert boyhood My i but natural part of our sex play With aping, ragged wound where vampire after vampire had suckled A mortal wound A day of this and I hadn’t known

I Could Not Accept This

I Would Not Accept This

I Would

The Kiss of Life The instructive fil into the s, nostrils pinched shut, then deep pressure on the breastbone in rhythm Two more kisses of life, deep pressure on the breastbone

"Delilah, he’s dead," came Snow’s voice as if over a public address syste "There are options," he said, "not ideal, but-"

I let his voice drift away The body was cool, not cold The blood was probably almost all drained His skin was as white as mine where it wasn’t pocked purple and red from the assault of thousands of bites over hours and hours

Ric dead? No! Va, I resumed my CPR rhythm

Two kisses of life, ten fist pounds of life

I’lleradicate every bloodsucker in Las Vegas