Blood Vengeance [COMPLETED]

Chapter Thirty-Two - Satiety

"Don't you dare walk away," shouted a voice from the upper balustrade.

Selene and Hector both turned to look up simultaneously, seeing Xander, both hands gripping the banister, leaning over it. Behind him stood Virgil, who dragged Arthur with both hands, gripping him, his head limp and blood still bubbling around the wound in his chest.

"Why shouldn't I?" asked Hector.

"You can't abdicate responsibility for this. If you don't want her, you have to release her," shouted Virgil, the strain of holding Arthur's body evident in the wavering of his voice.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You did this to her. She can't be free with that soul inside her. If you truly don't want her, then you need to take us to the witch who can release her."

Hector seemed to consider this.

"You don't know if you can give up on her, do you?" shouted Virgil. "If you were sure you would undo what you've done to her. All of this is your fault. You are solely culpable for this."

"I don't care," said Hector. He turned to walk across the hall, but just then Xander raised his fingers to his lips and whistled; a piercing sound.

And suddenly the place was alive with the marching of feet; human feet. Every prostitute, every slave, had been freed and they marched together in unison, pouring from every door, every corridor. In moments Hector was surrounded.

"I could kill them all," he said. "This is foolishness."

"No," said Xander, his voice loud, booming over the sound of the humans, who had stopped marching and begun to wait, still, for their orders.

Selene was amazed that all these people marched to a drum that Xander beat. They looked up at him in admiration, afraid to breathe until he spoke.

"Not these humans. Each and every one of them has tasted my blood this very day; this is an army bound to me by my own blood! If you shed that polluted blood, you will certainly die."

Some of them held stakes, fashioned from broken splinters of furniture, not unlike the one that Hector had driven through Arthur's chest.

"We can't let you leave," said Virgil.

"Would you leave her to your brother's mercy?" asked Xander, moving round to look at the slumped body that Virgil had heaved from the bedroom.

"He can have her. She wants him."

"Would you let him kill her? Would you walk away knowing that next time he could kill her?" Xander pointed to the body that Virgil struggled to drag and prop upright.

"If you're worried about that then you should kill him. What else is that stake for?" asked Hector, nodding to the weapon that hung at Xander's belt.

Selene watched, feeling the tension, wanting to move to Hector, to stop the humans from harming him; for each of them looked at him with murder in their eyes.

But a movement up on the balcony distracted her and she snapped her head back to look. Xander had taken his stake from his belt and moved round to stand before Arthur, whose eyes rolled back in his head. He held the stake over his chest as Virgil held him up, poised and ready to thrust it deep into his heart.

"No, Xander! Please don't kill him!" Selene felt her legs give way beneath her and to stop herself sliding to the floor she leant over the banister, clutching the railings with two hands.

"I'm doing this for you Selene, can't you see that?" he shouted.

The human forces assembled around Hector and began to shout, demanding Arthur's death, shouting tales of how he had treated them, and things he had done to them.