Shattered Pentacle

Lyra braced for an attack she knew might be coming with any second. Her limbs tensed, but Rainbow's grip was so strong If she tried to make a single concerted push, would the vampire decide she wasn't worth the risk and break her neck? Lyra had only seconds to think, maybe less.

Not enough for her human self to consider some rational calculation of her situation and her odds—but her animal instincts could. She had months of time as different creatures now, enough to know how to manipulate those senses.

Small, weak, useless. She remained pinned, as though trapped under the blade. She strained without really trying, flopping backward and forward.

Her captor's face turned from grim determination to smug satisfaction. Bullets flew overhead, and one or two seemed to strike the woman holding her down—but Rainbow barely reacted. Some dark blood sprayed, without much effect.

“You stay here, cat. The mistress won't be killing you so easily.” She brought her arm down hard, directly into Lyra's ribs. With a life shield, the strike wasn't instantly prevented—she screamed as the bone snapped, briefly distorting her view with a splash of incredible pain. The skin split, and more red blood soaked through her robe.

Rainbow bent down, running one finger over the wound, then holding it up to her tongue. “Strong stuff. Don't bleed out while I'm working.” She brought her elbow down again, this time on Lyra's forehead.

The blow could've killed her, if that was the vampire's intention. But Rainbow wasn't trying to smash her brains open—only knock her out. She rocked against the floor, body spasming.

Few could perform such a convincing imitation of being knocked out than a life mage. Lyra collapsed to the side, apparently incapacitated.

She counted the painful seconds, still feeling the weight of the vampire over her. At any second, Rainbow might decide to do something genuinely fatal. The vampire was probably strong enough to decapitate her—she couldn't imagine any mage with enough power to heal from that.

It's okay, she wants to take me for punishment.

Sure enough, the blade ripped out of her shoulder a second later, and Rainbow stood. “Got the bitch!” she called, rejoining the others. “You people done yet?”

Lyra remained still, breathing slow and heartbeat even. That level of bodily mastery was a spell, technically—one so simple that she cast it without even thinking. Let them think she was totally unconscious.

While she lay there, she focused on her magical senses, and her other ones. The gunfire had stopped.

“She's dead,” said one, followed by a meaty sound of impact, then something sliding across the floor.

“Redhead vanished before I could get a shot off,” said another. “Swear I must've clipped her. But she vanished.”

“Pale one broke like a doll,” said another vampire, disappointed. “Blood was already cold. Think she might've been a revenant or...”

“I got one alive here. Looks like she was their prisoner or something. Didn't lift a finger to fight. Think I might recognize her.

“What about the other?” Volita demanded. She was much closer, probably a few feet from where Lyra lay in mock-unconsciousness. “I count one missing.”

“Six?” Rainbow asked, from nearby. “I didn't...” Then she moaned. “Maybe you're right. The light purple hair. Came to meet you... did we fight her? I thought she wasn't here.”

“Never saw her.”

Lyra listened in silence as the kindred spoke with cold ambivalence about how they'd gruesomely murdered the most important people in her world. She might've lost control completely, if it wasn't for her Life senses.

Lyra didn't sense a room full of corpses. In fact, there was something off about the only dead mage. Tabitha's pattern, except—instantly decayed by several days? Lyra wasn't the only one playing possum.

Her Life senses couldn't tell her where the vampires were standing, she could only use sound and motion for that. Two were closing on her, while another group lingered by the broken elevator. Several mechanical sounds reverberated from that direction, along with the grinding of rubble. They were trying to dig their way out.

“Sunrise in two hours!” Rainbow called, now standing directly over Lyra. “Tick tock!”

“Helicopter can be here when we're out,” said one of the distant vampires. “No reception down this deep.”

“I have... informed them of our position,” Volita said. “Dig quickly. It is not the sun we need to fear.”

She stopped only a few feet from Lyra. A boot smacked into one of her wings, hard enough to bend it over. Lyra kept perfectly still, ignoring the pain. The limb flopped back a second later. “If only another of the Willworkers was the killer. A tragic waste of interesting powers, this one.”

I can't fight seven of them. From the feel of it, her friends hadn't lasted very long either. They might not be dead exactly, but they were still completely outclassed.

Then Lyra heard another voice. All turned at the same time towards the speaker. But none would understand as Lyra did.

Akiko's voice, coming from the same direction as the strange vampires. “Pressure, heat, confinement!” she yelled, in her piecemeal Atlantean. “Tunneling, orbital, fusion!”

Light and heat filled the mine, washing over Lyra. Something struck into Volita, followed by a heavy impact from the other direction as they rolled away.

Lyra abandoned her unconscious illusion. She bid her body to mend, weaving torn muscles together and closing skin. Her eyes were drawn to the light from the opposite end of the room, where Akiko held a star between her hands.

No other name was adequate—this was no conjuration of light, or even captive flame. This was an impossible sphere of hydrogen, collapsed down to a single point of incredible density. The mage's Awakened will overpowered nuclear confinement, screened aside the radiation that might be destructive to human life, leaving a stream of naked yellow sunlight to fill the room.

She advanced steadily around the corner, where a team of several vampires had been working to excavate an exit.

The undead evaporated.A few had the strength to scramble away—but Akiko extended her other hand, then pressed downward.

Physical strength was fleeting and feeble. Their agonized voices echoed in the cramped mine, then fell still. Only bleached bones remained where they stood.

“You will not be leaving here until we are paid for our service,” Akiko said. The star dimmed, then blinked out. “I see you cowering there, vampires. Stand up, and do as you're told.”

Lyra stumbled to her feet, backing away from that shadowy place behind some broken rock where Volita and Rainbow had sheltered.

To her eyes, the shattered ruin looked far closer to an even fight now. Tabitha lay broken and splayed somewhere in the camp, her skin pale and body lifeless. Reagan and Starlight were both gone, leaving only little patches of blood on the stone.

Akiko's convincing corpse lay not far from where Lyra had first fallen, one of her limbs broken and her neck twisted too far. Phantasm, and a convincing one at that.

Lyra retreated towards Akiko, who was just then helping Tempest to her feet. Three of them, where there had been six.

I hope Starlight is okay. Did she use a hedge door?

“Those five were upstanding members of the Camarilla,” Volita said, indignant. “You've killed them in cold blood.”

Akiko shrugged. Her hair was wild now, extending behind her in a wave. “That's not what those words mean,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Cold blood was what you did when you attacked and possibly killed the Arrow standing watch on the surface. This is self-defense.”

She advanced, stepping over the bones of the slain vampires. They crumbled to ash where she stepped, as though they'd somehow aged a thousand years. “The Concilium’s laws are quite clear about the response to violence. If the man raises arms against you, he shall be punished. If the beast lifts claw to the Awakened, it will be destroyed.” She waved her hand, and the same touch of telekinesis swept over the bones, turning them into a faint wind that blew across the ruin.

Akiko pointed at the locked ruins. “You will open it, now.”

“Should've just burned them...” Lyra had no more room to fly in the confined space, not with the ceiling collapsed in several sections and huge piles of rubble clogging the opening in others. She kept the spell anyway, if only for the added strength and height. Let the Kindred see what they were fighting. We're not prey anymore. Never again.

“Your demands mean nothing,” Volita said. She kept her voice disciplined, exactly as confident as she had been in the safety of her home. Even with most of her troops slain, she was somehow calm. “When the Prince ordered your danger culled, it was done. What should we care what 'Concilium' law says? I was old when the first Concilium was founded, and your kind were scattered barbarians.”

She stood more confidently now. Rainbow was just in front of her, handgun pointed at Akiko.

Tempest stumbled, toppling sideways over the rubble. Without magic to enhance her vision, she must not've seen.

The vampires both laughed at the display. That sound was a little stiffer than Lyra remembered, forced. “Your strength is a bluff!” Volita called. “Yours either fled in terror, or fell. Your two aren't equal to us.”

Akiko bent down, offering her hand to help Tempest again.

Everything happened at once. A shotgun blast echoed through the room, briefly deafening Lyra. Akiko went flying backward, spraying real blood through the air this time. She fell to her back, gasping with pain.

Tempest turned the gun on her again, but by then Lyra had closed the distance. She took the blast instead, ripping through her chest.

Lyra wasn't trying to convince the vampires of her weakness this time. She started healing while the wounds were still open, ignoring the pain and diving directly for Tempest. She wrenched the gun out of her hands with ease, then smashed it down on the mage's face.

“Traitor!” she yelled. Flesh tore, filling the air with a sickening sound. She wheeled back, then smacked the butt of the shotgun directly into her face a second time. Something even louder cracked then, bone? She lifted it for a third blow, hard enough to kill the traitor before she could strike again.

Something gripped her hard, one hand on her wing, and the other on her shoulder. “Stay down this time,” Rainbow said, voice low. Then pain exploded through her, pain so great that any spell Lyra might've tried turned to fuzz in her mind.

Rainbow tossed the severed wing to one side, and Lyra to the other. She brought her knee down on her neck, pressing her face into the stone floor. She could've crushed her neck then, but the blow wasn't that hard. She wanted to let her breathe, barely.

The wound sealed closed, muscles knitting back together where they were torn. But the missing wing would not grow back—that was a far more powerful magic.

In front of her, Volita offered her hand to Tempest, helping her to her feet.

Lyra watched the traitor stand, helpless to stop her. The broken collar tumbled away from her, locks shattered from Lyra's attack. Then her face knit back together.

Wounds sealed, and the bones popped into place. Tempest bowed to Volita, head down. “This mortal knows her place. Perhaps your brother spoke of Tempest before his passing.”

“He did, as it happens.” The vampire smiled, no longer needing to merely act relaxed. “He spoke highly of you—one who served well to accomplish tasks others could not. I see you remain as useful as you once were.”

“I would be, if you permit it,” Tempest said. “It would be my honor.”

“Start by seeing the suncaller is properly dead this time.”