Free Fallen Ever After by A. C. James

drinks were beginning to be served throughout the bar as Arie and his friend were reminiscing.
    - Please, Arie. The Puncture. -
    I wondered if any of them had taken a sip. Maybe it wasn’t too late to stop whatever our waitress had planned.
    Arie searched my eyes. - What about it? Tell me what you saw? -
    I shot him a panicked look. - You can’t let them drink it because it’s been altered. She put something in it. I don’t know what. -
    I must have looked terrified. And I could tell from his expression that he understood the gravity of the situation.
    “You need to do something now. Please, Arie. You can’t let them drink it because the faerie did something to it. Something bad. I think it’s some sort of poison. Please, you have to hurry.”
    Arie got up and started to make his way over to the bar. But it was too late. A vampire ten feet in front of me leaped from his barstool and clutched at his throat. Then all I could hear was screaming as vampires around us rose from their seats, clawing at their skin. It blistered as if it were being burned from the inside out. Arie and the bouncer started yelling and herding the humans toward exits to clear the bar of human clientele.
    But all the screams sounded the same.
    Julian followed Arie’s lead and started ushering a half-naked brunette onto an elevator. No one knew what was happening. It took me a minute to react as I took in the mass hysteria and chaos. A female vampire at a table behind me started shrieking, her skin blistering and melting onto the barstool. Her skin dripped like plastic and smelled worse than anything imaginable. Bile rose in my throat, threatening to retch forth.
    Oh, God.
    I didn’t know how to help her, or if I could, but I felt compelled to at least try to do something. I swallowed the bile about to surface, ignoring the horror of the situation and forced myself to take action.
    She fell to the ground, moaning as her skin continued to melt like a grilled cheese sandwich. Her eyes rolled in her head and I could tell she was about to black out. Kneeling next to her, I ignored the smell of burning flesh, and wrapped my arms around her. I didn’t know what I was doing. I tried to remember what it felt like when I’d defeated Katarina.
    As I closed my eyes to block out the pandemonium, I remembered Rue’s words. Instead of feeling warmth pricking out from my core and through my fingertips, warmth was being drawn in—from her to me. When I opened my eyes I could see the blisters on her skin being absorbed into her body. Her face looked as unblemished and pale as I imagined it did before her face started melting off.
    Sharp pain like pins and needles coursed through my body. The poison circulating through my bloodstream burned my veins. I rocked forward bracing my arm against the floor to support my weight and keep me from falling on top of the vampire in my lap. Multicolored spots, followed by gray, twirled in front of my eyes. I felt dizzy and weak. Had I not been kneeling, I felt sure that I would have collapsed onto the cold, hard sheet of marble supporting my knees. The vampire began to stir and opened her eyes just as everything faded to black.
    An envelope of unconsciousness descended on me and I fell sideways onto the floor. The last thing I felt was pain as my head hit the marble with a thud.
     
     
    Chapter 5
    Someone was shaking me. Just a little longer. Just let me sleep a little bit longer. My head hurt like hell. It wasn’t the mind-numbing pain I’d felt when I died and became a vampire, but just the same it would be nice if the disco pulsating through my head would melt into the slower-paced trippy rhythms of the previous decade. I didn’t want to move, but I didn’t have a choice because someone was shaking me as if they were trying to rouse the dead. Vaguely, that thought amused the hell out of me.
    “Holly… Holly, come on, snap out of it.”
    “Mmmm…what? Just lemme sleep.” My words slurred on my tongue, which felt