“Where…?” Ben shook his head. “I probably don’t want to know.”
Tenzin held the punch dagger in her left hand, the scimitar in her right, and drifted backward toward the tornado. “Happy hunting, Benjamin.”
Ben felt a burst of bloodlust in his veins and knew that while part of what he was feeling was Tenzin’s thirst for battle, he was also feeling his own. Myung was a skilled warrior, and three human guards had joined him along with his two vampire conspirators. They weren’t going to win, but they were doing an admirable job of causing chaos among the mortals before they died.
End this. End Myung.
Ben arrowed himself toward the water vampire, whose back was against a scholar’s stone where a dancing fountain had once filled their air with tranquility. Now Myung was using the water like spears, one arm slicing through the air, guiding the water that cut the guards who approached him with razor-sharp edges while he battled another vampire who was carrying a ceremonial spear.
He was old, the son of an elder, and far more powerful than Ben had realized.
“Myung!”
The water vampire turned toward the sound of his voice and Ben reached out, wrapped the air around Myung’s water, and yanked hard. The liquid spear shattered into mist as Ben shoved another wall of air toward it, pushing the water away from Myung and draining him of his element.
But Myung turned the water back and the mist enveloped Ben, dampening his amnis and pulling at his energy. They were on an island, the air was rich with the sea, and Myung was an experienced warrior. He dragged Ben to the ground with the force of the mist, but Ben wrested the air into his control and shoved it back. The skin of water that Myung had forced around him shivered and collapsed to the ground.
Ben took to the air again, arrowing toward Myung with his sword out. He wasted no energy on flourishes, aiming his blade directly at the vampire’s neck, but Myung ducked out of the way and Ben’s sword and shoulder scraped against the rugged limestone column.
“Stop this!” Ben shouted as Myung grabbed a sword from the fallen body of a human guard. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t get away!”
The vampire said nothing but lunged toward Ben, aiming the tip of his blade at his throat. Ben shoved a hand out, and the air forced Myung’s blade upward. The vampire stumbled but quickly regained his footing and twisted to the side, slicing the side of Ben’s leg with one sweep.
Burning pain lanced up his left side, and he pulled his element to himself, lifting away from Myung’s reach, into the air where the water vampire couldn’t get to him.
Ben attacked from above, swooping down like a bird and slicing Myung over and over again, dodging his arrows of water, keeping him distracted from weaker foes.
He felt his mate in the distance, the hunger in her blood and the jolt of satisfaction when an enemy perished. He turned and looked for her, but she was battling in the clouds, keeping Myung’s accomplices busy while Ben attacked the stronger opponent.
Myung had twin blades, and he swept through a clutch of human guards who charged him, leaving a chaos of blood, fallen bodies, and twisted limbs.
Ben felt helpless at the carnage. He was the son of Zhang, but Myung was the son of an elder too. Ben’s amnis might have been more powerful, but Myung had centuries of experience, ruthless cunning, and nothing to lose. Myung was keeping him busy battling spears of water while he made his way toward the gates of the palace.
If he could get out of the walls and into the sea, he could escape, and then all this carnage would have been for nothing.
The air pressed close to him, whispering secrets and guiding the sound of Myung’s grunts to his ears. The constant attacks were wearing on the water vampire, and Ben sensed a chink in his armor.
He closed his eyes and reached out with his amnis, his elemental sense breaching the distance between him and Myung. He felt the air within the water and the space within Myung.
Ben kept his eyes closed, and the image the wind whispered to him was the darkness in the world. He saw the earth below him like glowing gold riven with air. The water was a silver mist threaded with space, and the torches that surrounded the garden sucked the darkness in, transforming it into light.
He saw Myung in the middle of the chaos, a creature of gold and silver, of matter and fire, but within every particle of the immortal was the space that Ben recognized, the air that was within all things.
He pulled the darkness with his amnis and heard the strangled scream of anger before he snatched the air from Myung’s lungs and felt the breath within his enemy kiss his own lips.
Tenzin watched with wide eyes, her enemies both vanquished, their blood staining her lips. She gazed in amazement as Ben rose higher and higher in the sky and drew Myung to him, pulled as if Ben was drawing the air between them into himself.
The human guards on the ground gaped in amazement. The elders watched with keen interest. And Zhang?
Zhang was looking at her, a half smile gracing his lips.
You knew.
I knew.
Tenzin’s eyes returned to her mate, and she fed his energy with her own.
He didn’t need it.
She saw Myung rising from the ground, his body locked. The swords fell from his hands and clattered to the ground as Ben excised the space between them.
Her mate somehow appeared bigger, as if the matter that made him had expanded, grown, as his amnis pulled the air from Myung and added it to himself.
One day he will be infinite.
Ben opened his eyes, and Myung was before him, floating in the air over the palace. He could feel Myung’s element in the distance, batting at the space Ben controlled, like rain spitting on a metal roof.
Myung’s eyes were pure hatred.
“Why?” Ben asked the vampire, who seemed to shrink before him moment by moment.
Myung opened his mouth, but nothing came out.
He can’t speak.
Ben allowed air into the vampire’s lungs.
“N-not a servant.”
Ben glanced down at his sire, then at the other elders, then at Tenzin. His eyes returned to Myung. “We all serve.”
The air whispered around him, the darkness caressing his face and asking him what he wanted.
“What did you want?”
Myung gasped for air and Ben allowed it.
“Money. Power. R-respect.”
“You could have had all those things without stealing from the elders, without killing that man.”
“Be…” He gasped and reached for his element, but there was nothing but what Ben allowed.
Space. He finally understood what it meant.
He allowed Myung more air.
“Be a servant for centuries and see how respected you feel.”
Ben cocked his head and realized that Myung’s shallow reasoning was the truth. He felt smaller by serving the elders. He used the humans on the island to make himself feel bigger. He stole from the treasury to see if he could. All of it.
All of it was because Myung himself felt small.
End him.
The wind whispered it, and Ben drew his sword back. It was the only end to a vampire who had manipulated so many and risked so much. He’d betrayed the elders, abused his power over the humans, to the point of murdering a man for threatening to expose his secrets.
Myung knew it was coming. “Finish it.”