As I forced the door open and stepped free, the outer door shook like it had been hit by a runaway Buick. Whatever was trying to get in here, they weren’t human. Another hammer-blow dented the door inward. Gray mist flowed through the crack below. I squinted, trying to read the magic as it filled the room. This particular vampire appeared to be Sanguinarius Machalus.

The bastardized Latinization of D. J. MacHale’s name made me wince to this day, but I pushed my linguistic annoyances aside and concentrated on the death spell. I could still feel the book in my hands, its magic in my blood, waiting to be triggered. I couldn’t hold it for much longer, but I needed this to be believable.

The vampire reformed into a young man in a turquoise New Millennium shirt. He pulled a JG-367 and pointed it toward me. “Don’t move!”

I studied the particular passages that had allowed him to transform into mist and back, and pulled those strings of text around myself.

He punched the keypad by the doorway. The door started to slide open, but jammed after three inches. All that pounding must have dented or damaged the track. Thick fingers wrapped around the edge of the door and pulled.

Metal squealed. I moved my attention to the weapon.

The door ripped free and slammed across the hallway, tearing chunks of plaster and drywall along with it. It was like someone had fired a cannon through the building. The floor shook, and the glass walls behind me shivered.

In that moment, I activated the death spell, dissolved my body into mist, and triggered the JG-367.

The gun shot fire and electricity through me. Even in gaseous form, it felt like I’d gone walking on hot coals after bathing in lighter fluid.

The second vampire stared from the doorway. He’d gotten through just in time to see me disintegrate in a blast of flame. “Holy shit, Darren. What the hell did you do?”

“I didn’t—I was only trying to stun him.” Darren stared at the JG-367 like it had twisted around and bitten his balls off. “The dude was trying to get free, and then you started smashing everything and the damn gun just went off.”

A third figure appeared in the doorway. This one appeared human, though it was hard to be sure. My senses were rather dulled at the moment. I wasn’t sure how a cloud of mist could see or hear at all, for that matter.

“What happened?” she shouted, standing a few paces back from the vampires. “Where’d he go?”

I flowed toward the doorway, blending in with the smoke pouring from the walls.

“Oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit,” whimpered Darren. “It was an accident.”