All of a sudden I heard the crackling, static words: I’m back. My eyes widened as I looked around the room and reassured myself that the voice was coming from inside me. “Vincent,” I whispered.

Quickly, Kate. Will you let me come in?

“Come in?” I puzzled frantically for a split second and then, realizing what he was asking, said, “Yes.”

All of a sudden, my body was no longer my own. It felt like a door had opened in the back of my head, and a powerful surge of energy poured through it and ricocheted through me, filling me until I felt I was going to burst.

Although I was still aware, my limbs began to move without me willing them to, and I lifted the massive sword with ease, swinging it high with both hands in an elliptical curve. It remained poised there for a second, motionless in midair, until I brought it down with a powerful sweep, slicing cleanly into Lucien’s left arm.

He roared with anger and dropped his sword, cupping the wound with his hand. Spinning on his heels, he stared at me in shock and then lunged at me, his wounded arm dangling by his side and spurting dark blood onto the tile floor.

I leaped aside, catlike, pulling the sword up into a vertical position, and crouched for a second before running toward Lucien, who had lurched back near the sword he had dropped on the ground. Bringing my weapon up, I swung again at his right side, underneath his outstretched arm. He let out a howl and swung around with sword in hand.

He stood for a second staring at me, uncomprehendingly, as blood gushed out of the wound in his side. Then with a staggering gait he charged at me, but wavered at the last second, thrown off balance as he tripped over Vincent’s body.

I skipped to my right, away from him, and then, lunging again, took another swing at his head, missing as he ducked to avoid it. He leaped aside from his crouched position, squinting as he looked at me, and then all of a sudden his eyes widened in surprise. “Vincent. Are you in there?” he asked incredulously.

I felt myself laugh, and Vincent’s words came out of my mouth, in my own voice. “Lucien. My old foe.”

“No,” Lucien said, shaking his head and holding the sword up defensively with his good arm. “It’s not possible. You’re at the Catacombs.”

“Looks like you’re wrong there,” Vincent said through me. “You never were the brightest zombie in the graveyard.”

Lucien roared and charged at me, but I leaped nimbly to one side as he stumbled to stop himself from ramming into the bed.

“So what exactly were you trying to accomplish here?” my voice said smoothly. “Were you going to take my head back to Jean-Baptiste and then set to work slaying the rest of my kin?”

“I’m just finishing some old business,” hissed Lucien. “I couldn’t care less about your kinsmen, although now that you mention it, it might be fun to hold a little revenant barbecue once I kill Kate and bring your head back to use as kindling.”

“It’s the ‘kill Kate’ part that I think you might find difficult,” I heard myself say, as I ran at him, feeling a strength coursing through my body that was several times my own. Lucien held up his sword to meet me, but I arrived faster than he could react.

“This is for all the innocents you betrayed to their death,” I said, and cut deeply into his already wounded right side.

His sword went clattering to the floor, and he howled, lurching toward the fire. Blood dripped into the fire as he leaned over it, falling to his knees to grab the dagger he had set next to the fireplace. Then, with incredible speed, he jumped to his feet and threw the knife at my head. I jumped out of the way, but not quickly enough, and the blade sliced cleanly into my right shoulder.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t have time to. Transferring the sword to my right hand, I took my left and pulled the knife out of my shoulder. Then, without hesitating, I threw it back at him with superhuman force, knocking him back a step as the blade lodged deeply through his left eye into his brain. “And that’s for all my kindred you destroyed,” I heard myself say. Lucien’s remaining eye rolled upward, and with mouth hanging open, he stumbled toward me, as if in slow motion.

I turned and leaped onto the coffee table. Holding the sword in both hands, I swung it high into the air and brought it down toward his neck with a powerful horizontal sweep. I felt the blade slice cleanly through, sending his head flying off in a bloody arc.

The headless body held its position for a couple of seconds before collapsing to the floor in a heap. “Burn in hell,” Vincent said as I picked up the head by its hair and strode with it to the fireplace.

Just then the door flew open, and Ambrose burst through, yelling like a madman and swinging a battle-ax in one hand. His other arm was torn by a mean gash, and his shredded clothes were stained crimson. A rivulet of blood ran down his face from a scalp wound.

His crazed eyes fixed on Lucien’s decapitated body and then swung toward Vincent’s body, lying in a heap next to the fireplace. He looked at me, standing a few feet away, holding an enormous sword effortlessly in one hand and Lucien’s head in the other. He nodded silently, and I nodded back. Turning to the roaring fire, I tossed the grotesque head into the flames.

“The body,” I said, and grabbing Lucien’s corpse by the arms and legs, Ambrose and I carried it to the fire, swinging it slightly backward before heaving it on top of the burning logs.

“Vincent, that you in there?” Ambrose said, stepping away and looking at me. My head nodded. “Well, it better be, because if that’s you alone, Katie-Lou, I am officially afraid.” I smiled at him, and he shook his head in disbelief.

“Come out of there, Vin, you’re freaking me out,” he said.

Ready? Vincent asked me.

“Yes,” I replied, and immediately felt the whoosh of energy leaving through the back of my head. My body felt like a balloon deflating, and Ambrose stepped forward to catch me as I fell. He set me carefully on the ground.

Kate! Are you okay? came Vincent’s words immediately.

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

Your mind. No confusion? Panic?

“Vincent, I’m no different from before, except I don’t think I’ll be able to budge for a week, I’m so exhausted.”

Amazing.

“Gaspard’s body’s outside,” I said, turning to Ambrose.

“We saw. Jean-Baptiste’s got him. He’ll be okay.”

“What about everyone else?” I asked, staring at the blood on his shirt.

He nodded. “We all made it back.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “And Charles?”

“We got his body,” Ambrose responded, and then, gesturing toward the bed, asked, “What’s your sister doing here?”

“Oh my God, Georgia!” I cried, and looked over at my sister. I used the last bit of my strength to crawl over to her and touch her bloodless face.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I think so. It just hurts to move,” she replied, her voice weak.

“She needs help,” I said urgently to Ambrose. “She might have a concussion—she really slammed her head hard and was unconscious for a while. And I’m pretty sure her hand is broken too.”

Ambrose crouched over her and, being careful not to move her neck, pulled her out of her crumpled position and laid her flat on the ground.

“We need to get her to the hospital,” I said.

“She’s not the only one needing medical attention,” Ambrose replied, pointing at my shoulder.

I looked down to see my shirt soaked in blood. Although I hadn’t felt it before, a burning pain now raced through my arm, exploding as it reached the open gash. I grabbed my shoulder, and then just as quickly, wincing in pain, dropped my hand.

Hearing running footsteps in the hallway, I looked over to the door just as Jules burst through. “Kate?” he asked, panic in his voice.

“She’s fine,” called Ambrose. “Sliced up her shoulder and leg a bit, but she’s alive.”

Jules looked around the room wildly, and seeing Vincent’s form near the fireplace, fell to his knees in relief. Holding his hands to his head, he said softly to the air, “Vince, oh man, I’m so glad you’re still here.”

A pungent, acrid smoke began to pour out of the chimney as Lucien’s body caught fire. Looking in that direction, Ambrose said, “We should get out of here if we don’t want to suffocate on the fumes.”

Jules got to his feet, opened the windows, and then squatted down next to us. “How’s she?” he asked, nodding in Georgia’s direction.

“Alive,” I said.

“And how about you?” he said, cradling my face in his hand.

Tears clouded my eyes. “I’m fine,” I said, and quickly wiped them away.

“Oh, Kate,” he said, and leaning toward me, wrapped me in his arms. It was exactly what I needed: human touch. Okay, not human, whatever. Since Vincent wasn’t there to hold me, Jules made a more than adequate substitute.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

“Hospital,” Ambrose said simply, and stood to pull a phone out of his pocket. He walked to the other side of the room to make the call, and Jules released me to follow him.

I looked down at my sister. She seemed dazed. “We’re going to a hospital. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Where is he? Lucien?” she asked numbly.

“Dead,” I said simply.

She looked at me and asked, “What happened?”

“How much did you see?” I asked her.

She gave me a weak smile and said, “Enough to know that my sister is one badass sword fighter.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

THE OTHERS ARRIVED HOME JUST AS OUR AMBULANCE pulled up. Ambrose had called their regular contact, who agreed to take us to a private medical clinic without filing a police report. The paramedics didn’t want to move Georgia’s head, so she was fitted with a neck brace and carried to the ambulance on a stretcher. After they put temporary wrappings on my wounds, Jules and I climbed into the back, sitting next to her.

I had to wonder what the paramedics were thinking about us: two fragile-looking teenage girls who looked like they had been in a gang fight, and Jules dressed up like someone from The Matrix. I was a hundred percent sure that if they hadn’t been paid off, we would be on our way to a police station to be questioned.

Even though I was dying to know what had happened at the Catacombs, we didn’t talk, since one of the paramedics was sitting in the back with us. He was obviously using discretion with the questions he asked, and after glancing at Jules for approval, I answered simply that Georgia had hit her head really hard on a wooden bedpost, and that someone had stepped on her hand. I told him that the cuts on my shoulder and leg were knife wounds. I hoped that providing him with basic information, no frills, would be enough, and judging from his satisfied nod, it was.

Once at the clinic, Georgia was inspected and judged to be fine, except for a few broken bones in her hand, which were set. My leg wound wasn’t deep, but my shoulder required a dozen stitches. After testing my hand’s mobility, the doctor said I was lucky that the blade hadn’t touched any nerves.

He followed that with a regular checkup, light in the eyes, blood pressure, and the like. Finally he sighed and said, “Mademoiselle, it looks like you’re suffering from extreme exhaustion. Your blood pressure is dangerously low. You’re running a slight fever, your skin is ashen, and your pupils are dilated. Are you on any medication or taking any drugs?”

I shook my head.

“When you were hurt, had you been taking part in . . . intensive physical exercise?”

“Yes,” I said, wondering what he would think if he knew exactly what type of physical exercise it had been.

“Do you feel faintness, fatigue, or nausea?”

I nodded.

Actually, since Vincent had left my body, I felt like a rag doll, with barely enough energy to walk. Knowing that the well-being of both my sister and myself depended on my being able to put one foot in front of the other was the only thing that had kept me going.

“You need to rest. Your body needs to recuperate from whatever it is that you’ve just been through. You and your friend”—he nodded at the bed Georgia was lying on—“have had quite an evening. Rest and recover, or you’ll end up hurting yourself even worse.”

He gestured toward Jules and lowered his voice. “You can answer me by nodding or shaking your head. Should I let you leave the clinic with this man?”

I realized how dangerous Jules appeared in his steel-toed boots, leather pants, and layers of black protective clothing. I whispered, “It wasn’t him. He’s a friend.” The doctor looked me in the eye for another second, and, finally convinced, he nodded and let me step down from the table.

As Jules was talking to the doctor and handing him cash in exchange for the treatment, I whispered, “Vincent?”

Yes, came the immediate reply.

“Have you been here the whole time?”

How could I leave you at a time like this?

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine his arms around me.

We returned to a house that felt like a general’s headquarters post-battle. There was a muffled movement from room to room as people visited one another and helped tend to the others’ wounds.

I had explained to Georgia that we had to spend the night at Vincent’s house. We couldn’t go home like this. I led her up the stairs and helped her into Charlotte’s bed, guessing that Lucien’s body was still burning in Vincent’s room. Even if it wasn’t, I couldn’t imagine going back to the scene of that gory bloodbath. Still mute from shock, Georgia was asleep by the time her head hit the pillow.