Free Bleeding Out by Jes Battis

shattering one of his molars. He swears and spits out blood, which is the same color as the black water. I reach for a strand of earth materia and let it slip into the blade, which becomes a singing blue candle. I level it at the vampire.
    “I’ve been fighting your people since I was thirteen. You think you can intimidate me? I’ve looked into the eyes of a Manticore. I stabbed an Iblis, right in the middle of his flaming fontanels. You’re nothing but a drunk moron.”
    He leaps. His feet push him off the sand, like the beach is his trampoline. He slams into me, and we both fall into the water. The shock of the cold makes me gasp. Before I can move, his hands are around my throat. It takes only a few pounds of pressure to strangle someone, and he has the strength of an insane wrestler who’s tweaking on PCP.I start to see spots. My athame is in the water. I search for it, but my numb fingers find only wet sand and lichen.
    He leans in closer. That’s the nice thing about vampires. They love what they do a bit too much. The desire makes them vulnerable. When he’s close enough for me to smell his breath, I reach up and drive my thumb into his right eye. I push hard, until the sclera yields and warm fluid bathes my hand. The eye breaks like a split fruit. He screams, and the pressure around my throat lessens, enough for me to kick him and crawl away. My wet hand comes down on something hard in the water, and I pull out the athame, still shining.
    “I’m not sure how the vampiric healing factor works, exactly,” I say, “but I feel like it’s going to take a while for you to grow a new eyeball.”
    He stands up. His face is covered in blood. He screams a word that I can’t understand, then runs at me again. I spin to the side and slash just above his kneecap, opening the popliteal artery. A fan of blood soaks my jeans. Why do I never think to wear a damn slicker until it’s too late?
    He howls and reaches for me. I kick him in the chest. He stumbles, but keeps coming. It’s not as if vampires have a lot of blood in them, and he’s already leaking like a sprinkler. Why is he so stubborn?
    I slash again, aiming for another artery—a nice brachial one—but he catches my wrist. His hand moves swiftly. I feel a bloom of pain, as if someone has just set fire to my hand. I drop the athame. My brain registers the fact thatmy wrist is broken, but for a second, all I can do is stand there, like a cartoon coyote, perplexed by the impact of the falling anvil. Still holding on to my broken wrist, he pulls me to him. The pain makes me sick. He grabs my hair and yanks my head back, exposing my throat.
    “You have beautiful circulation,” he says.
    I stare at the moon. The fire trick won’t work this time, not in the middle of the ocean. Water is my mother’s element, not mine. But she’s also inside of me, just like he is. For every demonic protein running rampant through my body, there’s a piece of my mother, a mitochondrial knight streaming along embattled vessels. The water in my blood calls to the water around me.
    I feel the something coalesce in my hand. A stinger of ice. A blade of astonished liquid, seaweed, and shell matrix, which I drive through his heart.
    He stumbles back with the icicle stuck in his chest. Blood streams from his mouth, nose, and eyes. He’s laughing, but the sound is like rent cloth. His skin is already beginning to slough off. His fingers curl as they decompose. I smell the sweet reek of cadaverine, the tincture of decay, as it spreads through him.
    “You don’t even know.” He laughs. “You idiot. You don’t even know what’s going on. That’s the funniest thing of all.”
    “Tell me, then. What are you on? What was the point of this?”
    “He’ll destroy you.”
    “Oh, please. Did Arcadia put you up to this? Look, I know that my father is a crazy mofo, but this is getting old.”
    He falls to his knees. His face is mostly gone now, a steaming crater of broken