Facing the Damned

[KAELIA BRYNN HALLOWAY]

The blistering wave hit first, rolling down the corridor with the stench of sulfur, boiling tar, and charred marrow.

Every drop of air vanished from my lungs. The temperature spiked twenty degrees in a single heartbeat, warping the linoleum beneath my sneakers. At the far bend of the hallway, right beneath the flicking fluorescent tubes, stood a waking nightmare.

A Dark Fanged.

It was a Burner, straight out of the forbidden manuals my father kept locked beneath our basement floorboards. Its hide looked like cracked basalt over a bed of active coals, split by jagged fissures that pulsed with molten orange magma. Half its face was scorched down to black bone and exposed sinew, its lips burned away to reveal rows of needle-thin fangs dripping with dark slag. Its right arm hung long and deformed, trailing down past its knee—not made of flesh, but of liquid fire and half-solidified rock that dripped onto the floor, hissing and melting the synthetic tiles on contact.

I shoved my twelve-year-old sister behind me, driving my heels into the softening floor.

Liora whimpered, her fingers knotting into the hem of my jacket so hard the fabric strained. Her breath came in short, jagged gasps against my shoulder blades. I did not blink. I did not shift my weight. When you faced a Damned, any sudden movement triggered the hunt.

The creature’s neck snapped sideways with an audible crack of gristle. Its jaw unhinged, clicking like stones grinding inside a mill. From the depths of its glowing, volcanic throat, a sound tore free—a wet, guttural rasp that scraped along the walls.

"S-S-Sworn..."

The word hung in the stifling air, vile and hungry.

My pulse hammered against my ribs, sending cold adrenaline through my limbs despite the blistering heat. A Burner was a subclass of the Dark Fanged, born during the aftermath of the Fang War. They did not hunt ordinary human blood, and they did not care for cattle. They fed on raw supernatural energy. They existed to consume the Sworn.

I kept my voice low, speaking straight ahead without turning my head. "Liora, listen to me carefully. The exact second I give the word, you run back toward the courtyard. Do not look behind you."

"Kaelia, don't," Liora sobbed, her fingers digging through my jacket to pinch my ribs. "Please, we have to stay together. It will kill you."

"You can't have her," I said toward the beast, pitching my voice flat and cold. "Turn around and rot in the dark where you belong."

The Burner’s hollow, coal-bright eyes fixed directly on my face. Its ruined mouth twitched upward into an asymmetrical sneer. A bubble of superheated air swelled in its throat, making the skin of its neck billow outward like molten glass. It did not care about my defiance. To a predator forged in shadow and hellfire, I was nothing more than an insect standing between it and its meal.

My right hand slipped deep into my coat pocket. My fingers closed around two glass cylinders cushioned in foam sleeves.

I was no soldier. I had no fangs, no claws, and no magic coursing through my veins. I was just a girl who spent her weekends sorting mineral salts, pulverizing crystals, and measuring boiling points in an eccentric researcher’s underground workshop. Dad always said that in a world ruled by blood drinkers and monsters, knowledge was the only armor a mortal possessed. If his formulas failed today, Liora and I were dead.

The creature bent its knees, the cracks across its shoulders flaring into white-hot incandescence. The air warped around its frame in rippling thermal waves.

I shoved Liora backward with my forearm. "Run, Liora! Run now!"

The beast shrieked, an ear-splitting howl of metal tearing against metal, and launched itself down the corridor.

It moved with unnatural speed, closing thirty feet in a fractional blur. The heat washed over me like a furnace blast, scorching my eyelashes and blistering the skin of my cheeks. My fingers locked onto the glass in my pocket, but terror struck my muscles like a lead weight. My boots stayed glued to the floor. The molten claw reached for my throat, four-inch talons of glowing slag poised to shear through flesh and bone.

I shut my eyes and braced for the fatal impact.

A concussive detonation tore through the hall.

The air pressure shattered. A shockwave tossed me off my feet, sending me skidding across the linoleum until my spine slammed against the base of the lockers. Ceiling tiles crashed around me in chunks of plaster and dust.

Down the corridor, the Burner went flying through the air as if struck by a battering ram, smashing straight into a row of steel lockers with a deafening crash. The metal crumpled inward like wet cardboard, the extreme heat melting the surrounding lockers into dripping gray sludge.

Coughing against the thick plume of smoke, I wiped the grit from my eyes.

Liora scrambled across the ruined floor, dropping to her knees beside me. Her face was chalky, streaks of tears cutting clean lines through the soot on her cheeks. She grabbed my arm with both hands, shaking me. "Kaelia! Get up! Please, you have to get up!"

My ears rang with a shrill, piercing pitch that muffled her voice into distant underwater murmurs. I scrambled up onto one knee, shaking my head to clear the haze, coughing as burning dust filled my throat.

Through the billows of gray smoke, a slender silhouette advanced toward the fallen beast.

She wore a charcoal skirt and an ivory silk blouse, but her hands were raised in sweeping, rhythmic arcs. A sphere of pure, blinding white light spun between her palms, crackling with static energy that pushed the sulfur smoke away in concentric rings. Her eyes, normally a soft hazel during morning homeroom, were solid voids of midnight black.

Miss Blythe.

My mouth hung open in shock. Our soft-spoken literature teacher was a witch.

True witches were supposed to be extinct, hunted down to the last bloodline decades ago because the Damned craved their raw, concentrated magic above all else. Those who survived had slipped into hiding, masking their scent among ordinary humans. Yet here she stood, weaving an offensive spell with absolute authority.

The sphere of radiance expanded, casting harsh, stark shadows across the battered corridor.

The Burner peeled itself from the molten wreckage of the lockers. It shook its charred skull, snapping its jaw with vicious fury. Seeing the witch, the monster gave a guttural roar of pure greed. It surged forward.

Miss Blythe thrust both hands out to release the spell. "Be gone, creature of the void!"

Before the white projectile could strike its chest, the Burner dissolved.

Its physical form collapsed into a swirl of liquid shadow, dropping flat against the floor and gliding beneath the beam of light. A split second later, the smoke surged directly in front of the teacher, reforming into solid magma and ash.

Miss Blythe gasped, but she was too late.

The creature’s superheated left hand snapped shut around her throat.

A sickening hiss of burning skin rose into the air as the beast hoisted her off the ground with one arm. Miss Blythe choked, clawing weakly at the smoking wrist clamped around her windpipe. The brilliant white glow around her hands flickered, breaking apart into shimmering threads of energy that were forcibly pulled into the fissures along the monster's chest. The Burner’s wounds began to seal, its magma veins glowing brighter as it siphoned her magical life force like a parasite.

Her dark eyes rolled toward me, filled with agony. Her lips shaped a faint, silent command through her crushed airway: *Run.*

"Stay right behind these lockers," I whispered to Liora, pushing her into the hollow space left by a collapsed bench.

"Kaelia, no!" Liora begged, reaching for my wrist. "Don't go out there!"

I yanked my arm free and stepped out into the open hallway. My hands were shaking, but cold clarity washed over the panic in my chest. If Miss Blythe died, the beast would take its time cornering us next. There was nowhere to run.

I pulled the first glass cylinder from my coat. Through the transparent glass, a dark, viscous compound sloshed with heavy density. A volatile blend of sodium silicate, pulverized obsidian, and endothermic chemical binders. Dad called it The Freeze. It was designed to react violently with high-temperature materials, triggering an immediate, rigid petrification.

I planted my feet, drawing on every scrap of breath left in my burning lungs. "Let her go, you filthy pile of ash!"

The Burner did not even turn its head. It continued drawing the witch's light, its throat pulsing as Miss Blythe’s legs kicked weaker and weaker.

I reeled back my arm and threw the cylinder with everything I had.

The glass shattered dead center against the creature's broad, red-hot back.

For half a second, nothing happened. Then, the liquid flashed into a white-gray reaction.

A sound like water hitting a searing skillet exploded through the corridor. Dense plumes of white vapor billowed outward as the compound ate into the glowing magma cracks. The bubbling red fissures turned gray, the liquid fire petrifying into hard, jagged stone in a matter of seconds. The crust seized its joints, locking the vertebrae in its upper back and neck into solid rock.

The Burner shrieked in agony, dropping Miss Blythe to the floor.

It spun toward me, its body moving with stiff, uneven jerks as it fought the petrified stone encasing its spine. Its volcanic eyes burned with raw, murderous intent. It snarled, spitting globs of molten saliva, and lunged straight at me.

I ripped the second vial from my pocket and hurled it, but the monster jerked its head to the side. The cylinder zipped past its ear, smashing against the far wall and coating the paint in harmless gray foam.

I had nothing left.

The beast closed the distance, its remaining claw raised to tear me apart. The heat washed over my skin once more, the stench of its breath suffocatingly close.

A dark blur crashed out of the dust from the side hallway.

The impact sounded like two freight trains colliding. The Burner was knocked clean off its feet, skidding fifteen feet across the tiles before flipping against the baseboards.

A tall figure stepped between me and the monster, broad shoulders blocking the creature from view.

Principal Belmont stood with his posture straight, his immaculate gray suit coat dusted with debris. His lips were peeled back to reveal elongated, ivory fangs, and his irises had bled into a terrifying, luminous crimson. Behind him, two other faculty members dropped into combat stances—Miss Gemma from the administrative office, her claws extended, and Mr. Gideon, the track coach, clutching a heavy crowbar.

Principal Belmont did not look back. "Gemma, secure Blythe and clear the airway. Gideon, take the flank. Do not let the beast slip into the shadows."

"Understood," Gemma said, darting across the scorched tiles with supernatural speed to drag the unconscious witch out of the blast radius.

The Burner shoved itself upright, the petrified stone on its back cracking open under the raw power of its rage. It snarled, spitting embers from between its crooked teeth.

Gideon lunged from the left, swinging the iron bar in a sweeping arc. The Burner shifted, partially dissolving into smoke, allowing the weapon to whistle harmlessly through empty air before its solid fist struck Gideon across the chest. The impact lifted the track coach off his feet, tossing him through a row of lockers, metal screeching under the strain.

Before the beast could close in to finish Gideon, Belmont closed the gap.

The vampire moved with terrifying grace. He ducked under a sweep of the creature's molten arm, the heat singing the fabric of his lapel, and drove his palm straight into the center of the Burner’s chest. The force sent a dull thud through the corridor floorboards. The Burner staggered backward, but its claws lashed out in a blind arc.

Belmont sidestepped the primary strike, but the razor-sharp molten tips clipped his left forearm, tearing through the fine wool of his sleeve and carving deep, smoking furrows through his pale flesh.

Belmont did not flinch.

Using the creature’s overextended momentum, the principal snatched a fallen piece of heavy silver structural piping from the ceiling debris with his right hand. In one fluid, brutal movement, he drove the pointed silver rod straight through the monster's sternum, pinning it down against the concrete foundation beneath the tiles.

The Burner arched off the floor with a harrowing, high-pitched scream.

Silver smoke hissed from the entry wound, eating through its molten core like acid. The fiery cracks across its hide dimmed, turning to dull charcoal. Within seconds, the frantic thrashing slowed. The creature’s flesh collapsed in on itself, disintegrating into a putrid slurry of thick, black sludge and smoldering ash that pooled around the base of the silver pipe.

Silence descended over the ruined hallway.

Belmont stood panting slightly, his crimson eyes slowly shifting back to their natural dark brown. With a firm jerk, he ripped the silver rod free from the floor, tossing it aside with a heavy metallic clatter.

I stayed crouched against the wall, one arm holding Liora firmly behind my back. My knuckles were white where they gripped her sleeve.

Gideon dragged himself out of the dented lockers, rubbing his bruised chest and coughing up gray dust. He limped toward Belmont, his eyes dropping to the principal's left arm.

"That was too close," Gideon grunted, resting his hands on his hips. "Take a look at your arm. It tagged you good."

Belmont raised his forearm.

I leaned forward slightly, curiosity momentarily overriding my terror. Normal vampire wounds healed within seconds—their accelerated cellular regeneration knit flesh and muscle back together almost instantly. But Belmont’s wound remained wide open. Thick, oily black venom seeped from the lacerations, sizzling softly against his pale skin and preventing the edges from closing.

My father’s words echoed in my mind: *The venom of the Damned is designed to counteract Fang blood. A high-ranking vampire can survive it, but it will not heal naturally.*

Belmont pressed two fingers against the side of the wound, his jaw tightening as he suppressed a grimace. "A surface gouge. The dark venom will take a few hours to burn itself out, but it will hold. We have larger concerns."

He turned slowly, surveying the devastated corridor. The melted floor tiles, the shredded lockers, the scorched ceiling beams hanging down like broken ribs.

"A Burner inside the academy grounds," Belmont murmured, his voice dropping into a dangerous, thoughtful rumble. "In broad daylight. The Damned do not break cover without a target. They never risk exposure unless drawn by something extraordinary."

The air went dead still.

From beneath the safety of my coat, Liora took a trembling breath. Her voice was barely more than a terrified squeak, but in the quiet of the hallway, it carried.

"Kaelia?"

The single word cut through the silence like a dropped blade.

Every faculty member froze.

At the far end of the hall, Gemma’s head whipped around. Gideon turned his entire body, his eyes widening. Principal Belmont turned slowly, his sharp, aristocratic features settling into an expression of absolute focus.

Three pairs of predatory eyes locked directly onto my sister.

The vampires had smelled the Burner’s scent, but now, with the monster dead and the smoke thinning, the true target became obvious. The Damned had not broken into Eclipse High for human cattle, and they had not come for Miss Blythe’s hidden craft. They had crossed the ruined city borders for the girl trembling behind my back.

I pulled Liora tighter against my chest, shielding her completely from their sight, my throat aching with a cold, hollow dread.

We had survived the monster from the dark. But looking into the unblinking, calculating stare of the vampires before us, I knew our nightmare was only just beginning.