Burn For Me

Taste of Heaven

Crap.

Taking several steps back, she drew out her daggers from behind her waist.

"Fell into one of your holes again?"

Vesna narrowed her eyes at him. “Came here to die just like those before you?”

The hunter laughed. The sound boomed through the cathedral. “I don’t know how you managed to stay afoot, but that ends tonight. Boys,” he gestured to the other six in the cathedral. “Tear her apart limb by limb.”

And all too eager, they stepped forward. Then fell upon her.

She dodged. Struck. Fought with all of her power, wit, and courage. But having not fed, her strength absconded Vesna too speedily, too desperately, and she collapsed to her knees.

Her daggers clattered onto stone, inches away from her grasp.

Blood coated her lips, her clothes. The newly healed wounds were shredded open by fangs and claws.

Still. She made to reach for her weapons. They were all she had in this world. But they were kicked away by a booted foot.

Hands suddenly grabbed at her arms, pulled taut as she was made to bow.

Vesna bared her fangs in a hiss, beastly but vulnerable.

“Put those embarrassments away,” the hunter mocked. “You don’t even know how to use them. Abomination,” he whispered, crouching low. He put them face to face. While his eyes glowed red, hers remained dark. “At long last, your days have come to an end. You, the stain to our legacy.”

Ire flickered awake alongside fury in the hunter’s eyes, and then—

Vesna screamed as he bit into her neck with the sharp jerk of his head.

His fangs, sharper, longer, thicker, pierced through arteries and muscles, purposely grinding them together to cause her unparalleled anguish.

“Stop!” she screamed in agony. She thrashed, fighting against her bindings. “St— Please, stop it—!” Too much! Too painful!

Tears burned and blurred her vision.

A bit more pressure, and he would completely bite through her neck to the bone. She would die. She would—

A vision came before Vesna. One of fire and vengeance. For right behind the hunter, materialized the Guardian. My Guardian.

Maybe she dreamt. Maybe she had died and saw an angel. But judgment was upon them. And judgment needed to be passed.

***

There are moments—fractures in time—where the world holds its breath before it dies.

This was one of them.

The cathedral had once been silent. Then bloody. Now, it would burn.

Vesna’s scream carved through the night like a dagger through velvet, raw and real and agonized. Her body was pulled taut, fangs buried deep in her neck, her strength leaking from her with every cruel twist of the hunter’s maw.

But before death could close its jaw around her throat—

The veil violently ripped open, and a golden rupture split through the cathedral’s ceiling, cascading in flames of molten white and silver. Embers streaked through the sky like shooting stars gone mad.

Through came Zacharel.

Wings ablaze. Blade drawn. Eyes alight with holy fury.

He descended like vengeance given form, every inch of his seven-foot frame radiating a light so pure it scorched shadows off the walls. His silver gaze locked on the vampire crouched at Vesna’s throat.

And time… stopped.

No roar. Not even a warning.

Just obliteration.

Zacharel's sword—light-forged and soul-bound—pierced clean through the vampire's chest, splitting bone and ancient arrogance in one strike.

The creature didn’t even get to scream. Just a whisper of shock before it crumbled into dust around his fangs.

Zacharel stood above Vesna, wings unfurled in an impossible blaze. His face was thunder. His eyes were stormlight.

And now he was angry.

The other six vampires hesitated. Trembled. Too late.

Zacharel turned.

His voice broke the air like a holy decree:

"You have transgressed upon my troth.”

He stepped forward once. The floor cracked beneath his boots.

“You have spilled blood under my watch.”

Another step. A heartbeat like a war drum.

Far worse, “You have touched what the Crown has claimed.”

Wings stretched wide. Light devoured shadow.

He moved—faster than any mortal eye could track.

The first vampire lost his head. The second, his heart. The third turned to run, but Zacharel’s wings slashed out like flaming blades, severing his legs from under him before turning his body to ash.

By the time the fourth fell, the fifth had dropped to his knees.

“Mercy—!”

There was none.

Silence.

The sixth vampire turned, feral and furious, lunging for Vesna one last time in desperation.

But Zacharel was already there—between them.

One hand gripped the creature’s throat. With the other, he plunged his sword straight through its mouth.

Chocked screams. Then nothing.

Only her.

Zacharel turned to Vesna.

Her body trembled. Blood spilled from her neck and lips. Tears glistened on her cheeks.

He dropped to one knee before her—not out of reverence, but urgency.

His hand reached forward, hesitating for the first time as he hovered just over her skin.

"Vesna,” he said, voice low, strained. “Look at me.”

She was fading.

He touched her face with one hand—light rushing into her like a breath of heaven.

“You are not dying. Not yet. Keep your eyes on me."

Her dark gaze, after much effort, focused on him. Good. She was coherent. For now.

His other hand pressed to her chest—and he gave.

Light poured from him into her in a single, blinding stream. It burned, seared, healed. It wrapped around her wounds, fought off the venom, stitched her torn flesh back together with strands of raw divinity.

“Stay with me,” he growled. "Do not let them win.”

She released a pained cry when her throat had healed enough to produce sound. She shook her head, her bloodied locks sliding against stone.

Zacharel's light entered her body, and he felt it. But while her flesh, human and mortal, reveled in the divine essence filling her, her blood, vampire and immortal, rebelled violently.

Only blood could sustain her immortal side. He knew that too. It needed recompense for the one she lost. Zacharel knew his light was not blood. Was not tainted. Damned. It was pure.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Zacharel’s brow furrowed as another of her scream echoed through the cathedral, soft and raw and wrong.

Her body was healing—yes—but her soul was splintering, being torn in two between the mortal and the immortal.

Vesna sobbed weakly. Her gaze blurred, unfocused. And her heart beat slowed, her body growing cold.

She was losing the battle.

She was shaking. Pale. Cold. Her lips, once red with fury, were now bloodless and trembling. Her tears slid like glass over her cheeks.

Before her last strength left her, Vesna, with all her failing might, whispered, “Blood. Need blood.” Her dark eyes found his. “Your…”

Zacharel froze.

His breath caught in his chest—something he had never known could happen. His hand still cupped her face, rigid now with the weight of her request.

Your blood.

No Guardian had ever given their blood to a creature of shadow. It was sacred. It was consecrated. To offer it to a vampire, even one born half-human, was…

It was heresy.

It was damnation.

And yet...

He looked down at her. Vesna Nightingale. Broken and bleeding. Defiant and dying. And despite the wars he'd waged, the sins he'd judged, the evil he'd erased from existence—

Zacharel had never seen anything as tragic. Or as undeniably alive as her.

The Crown had said she was worth saving.

But now, it was his choice.

His mouth pressed into a thin line. His jaw clenched. Then, slowly, he brought his hand to his chest.

And slashed.

The blade shimmered from nowhere, just a kiss of steel across the palm—clean, controlled.

Golden blood welled from the wound. It shimmered like liquid light, like starfire kissed by creation itself.

He looked into her dark, fading eyes.

“This is not given lightly,” he murmured. “Not even in war. Not even in love.”

He leaned down, close enough to brush her lips with his words.

“But you are not theirs to take. You are mine to guard, and I do not take lightly the trust assigned to me.”

He brought his bleeding palm to her lips.

“Drink, Vesna. Before I damn us both.”