Christina and MacPherson make their final move. They have David, and they're quite happy to kill and mutilate little kids. Myka, Helena and the gang try to save the boy and stop the vampires from hurting anyone else.

Leena's voice was calm, and somehow it helped Myka to remain calm. She acknowledged the call and called Helena a few seconds later on her cell.

"Helena, my house. It's on fire. It has to be Christina and James. We need to get there, to help David," Myka said, and she heard a whooshing sound that she assumed was Helena running at top speed before the line went dead. She had already turned the car around, nearly wiping out an SUV coming the opposite way. She made it to the house in less than 3 minutes. The flames were visible from the north end of town. She could hear the fire service's sirens, but it was clear that they were not going to be able to save the house – already, the flames were eating through the roof and…

She hoped no-one was in there. She was out of the car before it had really stopped moving, her gun in her hand and her silver spray in the other. She already had silver chains near all of her pulse points; she had done that as soon as she left the house earlier. She ran around the side of the house to the back, watching as the porch swing fell in a gust of flame and black smoke.

"Myka!"

It was Tracy, her nostrils black with soot and a blanket around her shoulders. Her face was bruised and misshapen - it looked like her cheekbone was fractured. Pete and Sameen had made it to the house before Myka; Pete was standing next to Amanda, who was holding her ribs as if she, too, was injured. Pete's arms were around her shoulders and he was looking at her in concern. Sameen was standing behind Tracy, a shotgun in one hand and what looked like a silver glove on her other hand.

"They took David. Helena went after them. We couldn't stop them," Tracy rasped out.

"Okay," Myka said, looking at Tracy carefully. "Are you okay, Trace? Do you need to go to hospital?"

"No," Tracy said, in a voice that verged on a growl. "I need to find my son."

Myka nodded, turning just in time to see the structure of the house clearly, highlighted by the overwhelming brightness of the fire, just before it collapsed in on itself. Something in her broke, then. This was the first place she'd ever really felt at home. The place she'd fallen in love, the place where she'd discovered her new family. She drew in a shallow breath, taking a second to calm herself, to slow her thoughts, to focus on what was important. There would be time to grieve later.

Now she had to save her nephew and put an end to Christina Wells, one way or another.

"Did you see what way they went?" Myka asked, and Tracy was answering her when her cell rang. It was Helena. She picked up and froze when she heard an English voice that wasn't Helena's.

"Sheriff Bering. I have your nephew and I have your lover. Christina is most eager to spill the boy's blood. I suggest you get here before that happens."

He barked out an address, an abandoned house near the outskirts of town. Myka called out to Pete and Sameen and ran back to her car. Pete followed in his squad car with Amanda, while Tracy and Sameen had jumped into Myka's car. No-one spoke, but there was an intensity in the air that spoke of violence, of death to come.

The house was boarded up, an old cabin that some of the local kids sometimes used to drink and take drugs and do the other things that kids did in abandoned buildings. Sameen made a small gesture as they climbed out of the car that Myka interpreted to mean she was going round to the left side of the house, so Myka took the right, Tracy close behind her, while Pete and Amanda followed Sameen. Myka heard a small sound beside her as Tracy transformed into her part-were form. As she rounded the side of the house, she saw Helena first, her skin glowing whitely in the darkened back yard. She appeared to be chained to a post of some sort. She was alive; Myka could feel that. Plus, she was pretty sure that vampires dissolved, or something, when they died. She waited for a second before stepping forward, her gun out and moving.

"Sheriff. Welcome," James MacPherson said, appearing suddenly to her right, near Helena, standing with a struggling figure in his arms. Myka couldn't make out who it was for a moment, but then it became clear. It was Claudia Donovan. How had she come to be here?

"Let her go," Myka said immediately. "Take me. It's me who hurt Christina. Let her go."

"I'm sorry, Sheriff, but since my child here has refused to rejoin us, even with… extra motivation, I need to make a new companion," MacPherson said, before pulling Claudia's head to one side and sinking his fangs into her neck. Myka screamed something and tried to find a shot, tried to do something, but she couldn't stop him. He was draining Claudia to death. Myka holstered her gun and ran forward, barely noticing the blurring of the yard around her, and sprayed silver into his face. She figured it shouldn't harm Claudia, or at least not yet. But it could and did hurt MacPherson. He screamed, a high-pitched noise that sounded wrong coming from a man's throat. He dropped Claudia and clawed at his eyes, and something in Myka rejoiced in his pain. This man had caused so much death, so much anguish, and he didn't care. She stepped forward again, spraying the silver deliberately into his open mouth, watching his flesh melt and run, and a dark and thick something oozed up in her chest, filling her with an intense pleasure.

"Myka. MYKA!" It was Helena's voice, and it snapped her out of her reverie. She left the squirming vampire and moved to Helena, pulling off the silver chains that were tying her to a thick post. Helena's skin was smoking, and she let out a choked cry as Myka removed the silver chains that had adhered to her flesh.

"She can be brought back," Helena choked out, blurring to Claudia's side. "There is still a spark. Should I do it?" she asked Myka urgently.

"I… I don't know if she'd want that," Myka stuttered, looking at the fallen figure of Claudia Donovan, her face a bluish white in the near-blackness of the abandoned property. She thought for a moment, then made a decision.

"Do it," she said, suddenly. Helena wasn't a monster, or at least any more of a monster than a lot of the people Myka had met during her life. Claudia could live, in a different form, but she would live. She might not thank Myka for this, but she would live.

Myka left Helena kneeling over Claudia's prone form and went to James MacPherson, whose face was dissolving in a bloody foam. Sameen had somehow managed to turn him over and cuff him, and he was making a bubbling noise that sounded like he was attempting to scream through a mouthful of syrup. Myka fought down the urge to vomit.

"Where is David?" she asked him. "Where is Christina?"

The noises he made in response were not even vaguely recognisable. Myka stood up and looked around with her 'other' sense, finding Pete, Amanda and Tracy looking around in the woods nearby, all in their animal forms.

"Sameen, will you chain him to the post? I want him under arrest and in our cells tonight," she said grimly, and the small woman nodded before dragging the prone man across the yard effortlessly.

Myka looked a little further afield with her mind and came into contact with David's mind, suddenly, and they connected with what felt like an audible click.

"David, are you okay?" she asked, and she felt his mental shrug.

"I'm a little bored, Aunt Myka. This girl is sick. She doesn't make sense," he said.

"What do you mean, kid? Did she hurt you?"

"No, she didn't hurt me. I mean her mind is all messy, like someone put a spoon in it and swirlied it around like an ice cream."

His thought was accompanied by a clear mental image of rippling ice cream. Myka's breath stuttered in her lungs. David could hear Christina's thoughts. He was so strong he could hear a vampire's thoughts. If anyone ever found out – he would be dead before he could open his mouth. Him and anyone else with any sort of familial link to him or Tracy.

"Where are you, David?" she asked, and he sent her a picture of his surroundings. It wasn't far from where Helena had described her sleeping place a while back, near a lightning-struck oak. Myka had taken a photograph of that oak when she moved here. She'd spent days waiting for the right conditions, right before it rained. The sky was black behind and the tree bark was stark white, the branches reaching up blindly like hands, seeking the light. She'd had it framed and put it on her bedroom wall. Her bedroom wall was gone, now. Her home, everything she owned. All gone. She gritted her teeth and focused on the present.

"Guys, follow me," she said, and Sameen and the weres followed her immediately, their supernatural senses letting them hear her even from deep in the woods. Helena stayed behind, still feeding her own blood to Claudia. Helena would have to bury the girl, Myka remembered, before she could do anything else. Bury her so she could rise again as a vampire.

"Jesus," she whispered to herself, but her mind was on Christina, on David – on getting him safe. She arrived at the spot David had shown her, her gun out and her other hand holding the silver spray that had proved so effective in her previous encounter with Christina. The girl vampire was wandering around a small clearing in the woods, her dress and skin bright white against the almost complete blackness between the trees. David was tied to a tree but his bonds didn't look particularly tight. Christina was barefoot, her back to them, muttering to herself as she walked around aimlessly. Myka moved carefully across the clearing to her nephew, untying him quickly and gesturing to Tracy to take him. Tracy grabbed him up in her arms, her eyes shining, emeralds against her sleek fur.

"He's my human," Christina said suddenly, turning to look at them. Her face was pocked with half-healed wounds; probably from being shot by Sameen. One eye was missing.

"He's my nephew," Myka said. "You can't have him, Christina. I'm sorry."

"But I need to kill him. You burned me and my mother fixed you!" the little girl spat, suddenly infuriated.

"She doesn't want to hurt you," Myka said, trying to make her tone gentle.

"She left me," Christina hissed.

"She's sad," David said, suddenly, in Myka's head. "She's like a baby. All she knows is that her mom left her."

Christina was still pacing around, her tiny white dress swirling around her.

"My mother saved you, but she left me. I have to kill you now, Sheriff, and the fairy boy, and then she'll come home to me," the girl said, with a strange gurgle in her voice. It was as if she was suppressing a sob and a giggle at once. Myka had time to raise up her gun and fire a shot, but then the girl was on her, her teeth in Myka's neck, and she somehow had Myka's hands immobilised; she couldn't reach her silver spray and her gun was gone. It was hurting, burning Christina to touch Myka – she had silver chains around her neck and wrists, but the girl was so insane that she didn't react to the smell of her own flesh burning, to the incredible pain it must have been causing. The girl was dragging her away, using Myka's body as a human shield so that the others couldn't shoot her again. Myka felt the familiar sensation of her blood draining, but instead of being pleasurable as it was with Helena, it was painful; it was too much – she could tell that she was dying. Her thoughts were becoming vague. She managed to project a thought to David – I love you both, kid – tell your mom – but then she was sinking into darkness and cold.

"No, Christina. Not her. Please…"

Helena's voice was raw with anguish. Myka felt the fangs pulling back, cutting into her even more as Christina drew away to speak. She remembered being taught first aid when she was younger, and being told to never take a knife out of a stab victim. "Cuts on the way out, too," their moustached instructor had said, gravely. She figured that went for fangs, too. It hurt like hell.

"You love her more than you love me. I have to, Mummy," the little girl said. Myka couldn't see, she could only hear, but she could hear Tracy running, the strange half-lope she had adopted when she changed, Pete and Amanda flanking them, making sure that the girl couldn't hurt David. She hoped they made it to safety.

"I love her and I love you, Christina. I don't love either of you more. I have always loved you, my darling girl," Helena said, and her voice was throbbing with anguish.

"You left me!" the little girl screamed, and Myka felt her heart lurch in sympathy with the girl's pain.

"I had to," Helena said, her tone beseeching. "You and James kept hurting people. I knew it was wrong, and I had to stop," she said.

"You left me, Mummy," Christina said again, and it was clear that she was crying.

"I didn't have a choice," Helena said, and Christina screamed with rage.

"You left me, and now she has to die!" she screamed, and the teeth were at Myka's throat again. She threw another thought out into the ether – love you, Helena – and gave up. She was so tired…

The noise that came next was a harsh one, wood striking flesh, wood striking wood, and a scream. Helena's scream. Pure anguish, despair. And then a splashing noise, and something was raining down on Myka, filling her mouth and nose and then she was floating away on a sea of red, thick and sweet.

Sorry for the cliffhanger - hopefully won't be too long for the next part. Only a couple of chapters left, I think.