“Well, that went surprisingly well,” Naomi said, looking across the battlefield of overturned racks and scattered clothing.

With the centaurs gone, the scared shoppers were starting to venture out of their hiding places. A few of the braver ones were already showing one another their videos of the fight. New shoppers were filtering into the store from outside, and a bedraggled woman with a ‘manager’ bar pinned to her blue blouse was giving the mountains of mess a weary look.

The respite didn’t even last a minute. Before Naomi could show Sera another dress, a horde of vampires flooded the store, their eyes gleaming crimson.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Vampire Apocalypse

THE SHOPPERS SCREAMED and scattered like the vampire apocalypse was upon them. They stumbled over snapped coat hangers and rumpled clothing. Of course the vampires took chase. The only thing that got a vampire riled up as much as blood was fear. And the Sunday shoppers were giving these vampires a real tasty appetizer.

“Stop!” Sera shouted over the shrieks and the thumps of stampeding feet. “Your hysterics are only making the vampires’ bloodlust worse. Hey, stop! Listen!”

Unsurprisingly, they didn’t stop, and they didn’t listen. They were too busy panicking. Or shooting videos. Again. Sera glared at the group of teenage boys following the vampires around, their phones recording the mayhem. Those kids had a death wish. Their silly hats weren’t the only thing they’d put on backwards today.

A fist swung toward Sera’s head. She ducked and spun, giving the vampire a solid shove as she turned. He threw out his hands to catch his fall, but Naomi hit him with a blast of Fairy Dust. His body went limp, and he smacked hard against the floor.

Three more vampires charged forward, drool dangling from their fangs. As Sera dashed past the first, she landed a knife in his back. She launched another knife over his falling body, at a vampire chasing a little girl across a tabletop of scarves. The blade sank into his forehead, and he crashed down onto an umbrella display. Sera drew two more knives and downed the vampires creeping up on Naomi.

“Hey, are you going to leave any for me?” her friend protested.

Sera shrugged. There were plenty more vampires in the store, twelve by Sera’s count. No, make that sixteen. Four vampires had just stalked out from the shadows, slinking up behind a group of mages shooting lightning bolts and high-heeled shoes at any and every monster in sight. For a bunch of men in sleek, custom-cut business suits, those mages sure were efficient monster slayers.

As for the vampires stalking them…well, their behavior was downright odd. All the other vampires in the store were sporting gleaming blood-red eyes and some serious fang. These four had neither red eyes nor big, pointy teeth. Their magic didn’t smell like rotting meat either. It didn’t smell like anything. Odorless magic? Sera had never come across anything like it before. The pale sheen on their skin, though, was undeniable. Those were vampires.

There was a sense of purpose to the four vampires’ movements. Vampires caught in the throes of bloodlust didn’t stalk with purpose; they pounced and bit and tore.

“They’re not together,” Sera said as she slammed a vampire face-first into a glass display case. It shattered on impact.

“Who?” Naomi asked.

“All these vampires.” Sera indicated the blood-thirsty bunch. “And those four over there. The ones going after those mages.”

By now, the mages had noticed the sneaking vampires. One of them shot an enormous fireball at those vampires, but the magic just bounced off their bodies.

“Well, that’s new.” Naomi pushed her hands forward, giving the two vampires she was fighting a face full of Fairy Dust. On their way to dreamland, they tripped over each other and fell to the floor in a tangled mess.

“Nice.”

Naomi grinned. “Thanks.” Her eyes shifted to the business suit mages. “Should we help them?”

There were now two mages shooting fire at the stalking vampires, but whatever they were doing wasn’t working. The vampires continued stalking forward, the mages’ magic simply bouncing off of their armor. Fear was slowly whittling away at the arrogance on the mages’ faces.

“Yeah, we probably should. Just a sec,” Sera said.

She threw an umbrella at one of the raging vampires tearing through the store. It clunked hard against his head. But rather than going to sleep like a good little monster, he turned his crimson eyes on Sera and roared, splattering the nearby teenage boys with monster drool. The boys shouted out in disgust and scrambled off the battlefield. The drool succeeded where common sense had failed. Monster video-making hour was finally over.

Sera launched a knife at Mr. Spittle, and this time he did go down. “Ok, ready. Path is clear.”

She ran toward the mages. They had abandoned their cool-faced extermination of the raging vampires. All five in front were now shooting magic at the armored vampires. Their faces weren’t calm anymore either. Panic speckled the heavy cloud of first tier magic brewing around them. Their unease grew with every spell that bounced off the vampires.

“We need to get the vampires out of that armor,” Sera said.

“How do you suggest we do that?” Naomi asked.

“I’ll think of something. Can you handle the bloodlust crowd in the meantime?”

Naomi’s eyes scanned the area. There were still a few vampires left. They were chasing the human shoppers from one end of the store to the other. They hadn’t hurt anyone yet. It was as though they were only meant as a distraction.