“I’ll take good care of him,” Father Mulligan assured her. “There’s no need to worry, my dear.”
Destiny nodded, biting her lip as she turned away. She could feel Sam watching her as she walked away, so she smiled at him over her shoulder and lifted her hand. She felt her mind tuning itself to Nicolae as it seemed to do every few minutes. Her need to know that he was alive and well was a further annoyance to her. She valued her independence highly, and it didn’t sit well that she had to continually reach for him.
She chose to walk down the street, needing the normalcy of human life. The time it took to walk would help her gather her thoughts. She had promised Velda and Inez and Helena she would help John Paul. She needed to investigate further. It was difficult to force her thoughts away from Sam. She hadn’t really thought that there were human monsters in the world. She had focused so completely on vampires, she hadn’t given a thought to other kinds of threats.
Deep in thought, she barely registered the change in the wind as it shifted direction, blowing away from her, stirring dirt in the street. A streetlight blinked, faltered and abruptly went out in a shower of sparks. She lifted her head alertly, looking around her warily. John Paul was just entering The Tavern, his head down and his feet shuffling along the walkway, his body posture betraying his despondency. Farther down the street, a second streetlight shattered as if hit by a rock, raining glass on the ground.
John Paul hesitated as he went to pull open the bar door, looking up at the streetlight with a small frown. He glanced down the street at the other shattered light on the corner near Destiny. John Paul allowed the door to close as he shuffled along the street toward Destiny. He was looking not at her but at the shattered glass. He seemed drawn to the pieces of the large lamp.
Destiny observed him, the way he seemed drawn to the glittering pieces. His expression was blank, his eyes slightly glazed. He stood over the glass, his great shoulders shaking, his chest heaving with every breath as if he’d run a race. His hamlike hands were opening and closing into tight fists.
She searched the skies. The skies were darkening as gray threads spun wildly to spawn larger, more ominous clouds. Small dust devils spun in the street, dissipating as cars roared by. A fog bank began to seep onto the street, hovering a foot above the ground. First streamers, just tails of vapor that thickened quickly into a murky soup.
John Paul continued to stare down at the glass, his gaze narrowing as he studied the sharp pieces scattered on the sidewalk as if they held some deep fascination for him. Destiny glided closer, scanning while she kept a wary eye on the hulk of a man. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t detect a surge of power. The storm had come in a little too fast to be a legitimate weather front. There was no movement in the whirling, darkening clouds. The blanket of stars disappeared beneath the storm. Black clouds moved across the moon to completely obliterate it, a lacy black shawl wrapping the orb in a thin dark fringe.
“John Paul,” Destiny said softly. She didn’t want him exposed out on the street. He made far too big a target.
John Paul whirled around, silent and deadly, impossibly fast for a man of his size. Her shocked astonishment held her motionless for the few seconds it took him to attack her. It felt like the hit of a charging rhino, his body slamming into hers with terrific force, driving her to the ground. As she hit the sidewalk, the air rushed out of her lungs. A part of her wanted to laugh as his body landed on top of her, slamming her body into the sidewalk.
Destiny fought vampires, creatures of immense power and strength. It was ludicrous to think a human had managed to knock her off her feet. The fog was swirling heavily around the two of them, as if it had suddenly been given life. The vapor streamed over and around them like jungle vines.
John Paul sat on her stomach, his giant hands around her throat, his face a grim mask as he began to squeeze. His fingers dug into her windpipe, cutting off her air, crushing her throat.
Destiny hit him hard, her palms flat, carefully positioned high on his shoulders to keep from injuring him even as her enormous strength sent him flying backward. “Get off, you oaf! Sheesh! You weigh a ton.” She leapt to her feet, landing lightly, hands up, her eyes glittering with warning. “Back off, John Paul. Do you even know what you’re doing?”
John Paul had landed on his backside. He sat on the sidewalk, stunned, shaking his head to clear it. Destiny watched him carefully, aware he was not in his right mind. She could only read the need for violence in him, violence aimed at her. She wasn’t certain she had been the original target, but he seemed a puppet doing someone else’s bidding. There were no blank spots in his mind to indicate a vampire, but she didn’t believe John Paul was aware of what he was doing.
A wisp of fog swirled around her neck, tugged at her ankles, bit deep like tiny teeth. She felt a fiery pain lancing unexpectedly through her leg. She looked down and saw tiny drops of ruby-red blood. The air left her lungs in a rush of shock as she attempted to dissolve into mist, but the vapor held her fast. She was locked in the mysterious circles as surely as if they were shackles.
Her heart broke into a thudding rhythm, but she blocked out the pain and fear, concentrating on her imprisoned ankle where the white tails of vapor were solidifying into tiny wires with serrated edges, digging deeper and deeper into her flesh. Her ankle and foot contorted, thinned so that the coils slipped off.
She looked up just as John Paul attacked again, slamming her to the ground with the force of a human freight train. Destiny didn’t give him much thought other than as a nuisance. She could handle John Paul, but her unseen enemy was another matter. The fog was alive with tendrils, little wormlike creatures rushing toward her, alive with teeth and seething with hatred. Again she tried dissolving, but the holding spell she was caught in could not be broken.
The worms ignored John Paul, rushing at her with ravenous appetites for her blood.
As if her blood drew them to her.
The answer hit her hard. Her tainted blood was once again betraying her. Worse, they reminded her of the microscopic creatures she occasionally caught glimpses of in her own blood. They sickened her. She hissed her defiance at her enemies, hastily throwing up a barrier between her body and the wriggling worms. Some had already gotten through, biting at her arms and legs viciously.
John Paul swung his hammer like fist at her face. Before he could connect, he was jerked backward, his huge body tossed through the air as if he weighed no more than a child. Nicolae’s grim features stared down at her.
“You look as if you could use some help.” He pulled her to her feet, ignoring the worms slithering around her.
“Don’t flatter yourself, hotshot,” she snapped, yanking one of the creatures and hurling it off of her. She kicked another as it tried to crawl up her leg. “I am perfectly capable of handling these things.”
“Hmm, I can see that,” he said, one eyebrow arcing as he lifted his hand toward the sky. At once the dark clouds swirling overhead lit up with veins of white-hot lightning. “A little out of sorts this evening?”
“You’d be cranky too with these
things
sinking their teeth into you.” The truth was, the ugly creatures turned her stomach. Shuddering, she pulled viciously at two more, hurling them away. The fog was flowing around the barrier she had erected, the worms erupting into a frenzy as they tried to get to her. “They’re disgusting.” The white worms boiled up out of the fog, writhing ferociously, smashing into the invisible wall, their teeth tearing at it.
“Women.” Casually Nicolae lifted his arm to direct the whips of lightning to the fog. Black ashes burst from the spinning vapor, and a foul odor permeated the air. Destiny plugged her nose against the stench.