Chapter 10: "Black Eyed"

In the same moment that Murlough and Steve shot forward to attack Darren and Gillian, Gillian jumped several meters high into the air and pulled the knife from her boot shaft in one fluid movement.
In the corner of her eye she noticed how Darren did flit away, and Steve shot into empty space, then the gravity pulled her back down, where Murlough awaited her with bared claws and teeth.
She stabbed him with the knife, but caught him only on the surface in his chest. He snapped up, startled, because he had not expected this, but got not distracted long enough by the unexpected pain, so Gillian got a punch, which blew her away.
As Gillian hit with force against the stucco wall of the theater, so that dust and dirt trickled down on her, she transformed her anger and her pain into darkness.
She had just enough time to see how Darren and Steve hit against each others, as Murlough came back on her.
Gillian pretended that she was still dazed, and remained lying with closed eyes on the floor.
She hoped that her old trick might work one more time.
But Murlough did not fall on it again.
At the last second he did flit and Gillian did not have time to dodge him.
He grabbed her with his sharp fingernails at the throat and Gillian screamed, before her breath was cut off.
Tentacles of smoky darkness had begun to spread from Gillian, but she withdrew it.
Too late for darkness.
She ignored the fact, that she needed air to breathe and that hot blood was running down her neck and slammed her knife into Murlough chest to the hilt.
He grunted, dropped her and stumbled backwards.
Gillian cursed.
She hadn`t staked him correctly.
Soon he would simply pull out the knife, and would be back on her in no time.
"I hate you!", Steve screamed somewhere and pinned Darren at the other end of the auditorium against the wall, the half-vampire caught in a stranglehold.
Gillian couldn`t do anything for him, she had to get rid of Murlough.
She blinked, a red veil had fallen over her eyes.
Gillian's body was full of delicious adrenaline that caused her blood to rush through her body and put her crazy butterflies in the stomach. Gillian repressed all anxiety, she gave herself up to the intoxicating feeling of danger and rage and hatred, and clenched this dark force to a strand in her right arm.
Where she had carried the knife, she now felt a tool of darkness.
Murlough had pulled out the folding knife and hurled it angrily. He held his fingernails as if they were blades and stared snarling at the halfvampiress.
Ooooh, yes. This will be fun, he thought.
Murlough grinned and pranced forward and backward, flitted now here and there, so that his opponent would have no chance to guess from which side he would attack.
Gillian was focused on him, and tried to follow his movements with her eyes.
Then she swung her right arm.
In her hand appeared a strip of darkness and lashed the air snapping like a snake.
She made an elegant semicircle, and caught Murlough at the shoulder, who cried out in pain. He stared at the wound incredulously, which was smoking like it had been burned with sunlight. "What ...?" This was something he had never seen before.
What did the halfvampiress do?
Could she form a weapon made of shadows?
Gillian attacked him again, this time, pointing to his face.
Murlough responded fast as lightning and attacked with his right paw, hissing through the air.
He caught Gillian across the chest and tore it open, leaving behind deep cuts, from which blood flowed immediately. The sight and smell made him furious.
He flitted forward and grabbed her and before she even could start screaming.
The dark streaks in her hand disappeared.
He clutched her with both arms and held her in a straitjacket.
Gillian looked at him with horror in her eyes, and his hot stinking breath grazed her face.
"The time has come", he breathed and his pointy teeth flashed as he struck his fangs into Gillian's delicate porcelain-white neck.

The pain was unbearable and Gillian wriggled helplessly in his merciless grip. The vampaneze took deep gulps and sucked with all his strength, and Gillian felt the precious life-blood was sucked out of her. Everything swirled and looked blurred.
Suddenly the vampaneze let go from her and spat out in disgust. "You taste horrible!" Angrily, he stared down at her. "What is this?" He stuck out his tongue as if he had tasted something particularly bitter. "It's like ..."
"Snake," Gillian whispered and her head jerked and bit the vampaneze Murlough in the neck.
Her teeth went through his skin effortlessly and immediately a jet of hot blood shot Gillian in the mouth.
She greedily gulped it down.
It went tingling through her throat and foamed in her stomach like sherbet.
This was not just any blood.
It was vampanezeblood.
Heat shot through her body and Gillian was about to take another greedy gulp.
But was pulled away from the vampaneze.
Since she refused to let go of his throat, she tore the muscles and veins in his neck to shreds.
It was a gruesome sight, how the vampaneze pulled the halfvampiress with an enormous effort from his throat, while she had sunk her teeth into him, and refused to let go like a bulldog.
Blood covered her own chest and dripped from her mouth.
Murlough held the little woman at arm's length from him, while his throat was half open.
He lifted one knee and let Gillian crash down on his leg, as if she weighs nothing.
With a horrible crack her spine broke.
Murlough threw the woman away like she was a rag doll.
She landed somewhere in the auditorium, her limbs twisted, and didn`t move anymore.

Gillian felt nothing.
She was aware that the blood of a vampaneze rushed through her body, but she could not perceive anything of it.
It came to her mind, that this should not be that way.
From her neck down, she couldn`t feel anything.
It was as if she floated in the air, and didn`t have any body.
That was not right.
Gillian stared astonished at the ceiling, unable to lift her head or to look to the side, or even stir a finger.
She heard the sounds of a fight in the room, heard wheezing sounds and hard thuds, but couldn´t see anything, except the cobwebbed chandelier tingling above her.
Now I`ll die, she thought and felt only a gentle regret about it.
Meanwhile, the sounds of the battle died away in the auditorium.
Gillian wondered vaguely, whether Darren was dead.

Then she heard his voice: "Gillian!"
Darren's face appeared above her.
Concerned, he looked down on her.
"What is with her?"
He looked over his shoulder at someone in the room behind him, whom Gillian couldn't see.
She assumed that someone was there, and had the vague idea that someone touched her body, without really feeling it.
Then orange-red hair slid into view.
Tears filled Gillians eyes.
"Larten ...", she whispered, but her voice was so low that she hardly even heard herself.
The vampire, however had heard her, and a relieved smile spread across his face.
She felt that he laid a rough hand on her cheek, and stroked her face.
He tried to smile encouragingly, but scanned at the same time her body with his eyes, as if he wanted to determine the extent of the damage. "Her spine is broken ...", he whispered.
"But you ... you can still save her, right?", Darren begged and sounded like a frightened child.
Larten Crepsley looked at Gillian: "I don`t know. She is already half transformed ... "
Gillian felt like an icy stab touching her heart. He wouldn`t ... would Larten let her die?
"Does that mean ...? Does that mean you cannot cure her?", Darren asked in a strangled voice.
"I can. But when the blood reaches her heart, she becomes a vampaneze."
The scarred face of the old vampire expressed grief and despair.
Gillian looked him into his eyes and whispered: "Forgive me my weak heart…"
She tried to smile.
A slight tingling began to spread in her fingertips.
Larten Crepsley swallowed. Then he slid his arms under Gillian's battered body and lifted her up.
"Maybe there is a way," he said.
"There is just not much time anymore."
And he disappeared with Gillian in the arms, not more than a blurred dark shadow in the old abandoned theater.