Free Vermilion Kiss by Elisabeth Morgan Popolow

were glazed with death like two cloudy marbles. Sang turned his head to me; a frown creased his face as he stopped drinking and realized that the shifter was dead. He struggled to his feet and clambered over to me.
    “Lily! Are you all right? Wh-what happened? Did I…kill that man?”
    “Sang,” I choked.
    “Oh God, Lily, I have to get you back ASAP! Here, drink my blood, it’ll help you.” He sliced his wrist and offered it to my mouth.
    As my fangs clicked from their sheath, I saw two people coming our way. One was rubbing the elongated spine of a shotgun.
    The little color that was on my face must’ve washed away to a pure white of terror as the two people approached us at a casual stride.
    Run! Run! Run! My voice echoed urgently inside my head. Get up and run! I struggled to move my legs but I was becoming dizzy with blood loss. The bleeding from my stomach was not stopping at all in the least and I wondered if maybe that shifter had coated his claw with some kind of anti-coagulate. Whatever it was, the blood rushed from my wound in a wet cascade of vermilion.
    Sang gazed ahead, the wrist he had given me dropped to his side like a heavy bag of stones. His fingers were individually shaking and tears streaked down his cheeks.
    “Lily,” he wheezed. “I don’t think I can take them on. I’m exhausted from using so much power. Oh, will Dari freak when he finds out I released the seal without telling him! If I make it back, that is.”
    “We are making it back!” I hollered angrily at him. I tried to move my legs again and they felt numb, so numb, and when the bottom of my foot met the pavement it slipped on the sticky mess of blood puddled around me.
    I jutted my chin up and saw that the two people were only about thirty feet from us. One was a woman in a blue flannel shirt, about in her late twenties, with a hawkish face and short brunette hair. The other was a little girl with a curly blonde tumble of hair, a heart-shaped face, and robin-egg blue eyes, wearing in a frilly white dress with matching shiny white Mary Jane shoes. She clutched to her chest a stuffed white teddy bear. The way she looked at us though, was that of an evil origin. A completely dark and dangerous aura permeated the air as they stepped closer and closer and I lay helpless on the ground while Sang panted heavily and crouched down in a striking position.
    The little girl broke away from the woman’s side and started toward Sang. I could hear the lioness inside me snarling and snapping her teeth, ready to battle. But I was too weak the summon her. Too weak to stand up. Too weak to do anything.
    “Emilia.” The woman’s voice was hoarse and stern. “You’re to be beside me at all times.”
    The little girl, Emilia, smiled coyly. “Rebecca, you’re clearly forgetting something. I’m two hundred years older than you, which makes me your superior.”
    Rebecca clamped her mouth shut with a pout and raised the gun to her right eye, pointing it directly at me. “Don’t worry, little lamb. It’ll be quick and over with if you let me get a clear shot of your head, honey.”
    I turned my head to the right to see that Sang had jumped at Emilia and was swiping at her with his nails. She expertly dodged his attacks and then, before Sang or I could comprehend what was happening, she grabbed a handgun from inside the frills of her dress and shot at Sang five times. Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
    I screamed in horror as Sang dropped to his knees, five bloody holes scattered across his chest, shoulders, and abdomen.
    The sweet, intoxicating scent of his blood reminded my body of the extremely intense painful and burning fire that roared through my throat like a sandstorm. Blood still dripped quickly from my wound. It made a light tap tap tap sound as it hit the ground.
    My vision was overcome with gold and red and I started to rise from my pitiful place on bloody cement, hair wild and sticking all over my face.
    Emilia shrieked, “What are you