She’s going back down to the pier, back to...I bet she’s looking for Efa.
There’s a part of me that hopes she’s alive; maybe Zeta will be more lenient if her daughter is okay, but then there’s a part of me that hopes she’s dead.
What have I become?
I am leaning against the kiosk and I cannot even turn my head and although people go past in cars nobody looks my way. I wonder if she has made me invisible.
Maybe she’ll forget all about me, rescue Efa, and I’ll just die here, alone and invisible and unable to move.
I could not feel sorrier for myself and in fairness, I think I have every right. I know what Zeta wants to do. She cannot do it herself; apparently another witch cannot kill me. I laugh, remembering how Ember wanted to kill me when I was first made a witch.
She’ll have to get one of her henchmen to kill me, and I’ve seen enough of them. They are scary looking and mean.
I slow my breathing right down. If I am due to die and my magic will not help me, then I cannot do anything. And I will not cry or beg or bawl like a baby. I hate her so much; I won’t give her the satisfaction.
My mind wanders away while I wait for her to come back – if she’s going to come back. Of course she’s going to come back. I’m kidding myself if I think anything else. This is the culmination of her plan. Maybe the original idea was to kill Fletcher, have Efa take his place, but now I’m the lucky one.
I get to die.
Here she is. She lands beside me, Efa in her arms, dripping wet, shivering and shuddering from the cold, uncontrollably crying. Alive.
She does her magic and sets Efa right. Dry, safe, breathing normally, looking pretty perky actually for a girl who almost drowned. I have no idea how she survived. Maybe the witch in her. What does it matter?
Now I have two deranged maniacs looking at me, sneering, jeering, ready to hurt me.
“Let’s go.”
Zeta steps towards me, ready to fly us off to my ending.
Efa holds a hand to stop her, and for a ridiculous minute I think I’m going to get a reprieve. Is Efa about to talk sense into her mother, tell her to spare me, has she suddenly found a conscience?
Then she comes at me at full speed and delivers a kick to my side that has me screaming out in pain, groaning in agony and actually wishing I was dead, because then nothing could hurt me. She lifts her leg again, but Zeta stops her. “Horses kick, Efa. We kill.”
The tone of her voice is chilling, and I make my peace. Or I try to.
I run through every person I love, and I say goodbye to them. I tell them, silently that I love them. Instead of looking at Efa’s sneering face or Zeta’s smug one, I close my eyes and I let them take me away, but in my head and my heart I am with the people I love. I’ve already left.
We land with a bump and the pain from Efa’s kick rips through me again, making me fall to the floor and cry out before biting down on my lip. I don’t want them to know how much it hurts or how petrified I am.
I get to my feet and feel a surge of hope. Tentative hope. We are at John’s house.
Zeta drags me inside, into the room where I had my heart to heart with John. The fire is still blazing, even in the warmth of the day. She stalks out of the room, telling Efa to watch me. “Don’t let her try anything,” she says as she ducks out of the room.
As if I would try anything with this one.
“I’m so glad you’re the head witch. That you’re the one we get to kill,” Efa says, sincere and sweet as I’m sure she is, underneath the murdering psychopath she pretends to be.
I smile, well, I grimace. What does she expect me to say? Thanks, I can’t wait to die so you can be head witch and continue in whatever crazy, power-hungry dream world you’re living in.
I close my eyes and she slaps my face. “Ow!” My eyes snap open and she laughs. “Wake up, lovey. You don’t want to miss this. After what your friends did to John earlier, he’s going to love getting his revenge – and vampires can be nasty.”
She’s loving this and I wish I could get my magic to work. Just to shut her up.
The door pushes open and John follows Zeta into the room. I look at him, hopefully, waiting for a signal, a wink or a raised eyebrow, some way of him letting me know that I’m okay, that he’s not going to kill me.
“John’s a little hungry,” Zeta says and then cackles. I break out in goose bumps. Come on John. I argued with Fletcher defending you.
Efa pulls me to my feet, squeezing my wrist painfully, twisting it around and gripping it so tight that despite my efforts I cry out.
John says nothing and I’m crying now, pleading with my eyes. I don’t dare say anything out loud. I just repeat the word please in my head. Please. Please. Please.
Zeta holds my other wrist and I try to get away; it’s a pretty pathetic effort. Even if my magic was playing the game, if I could get it to work, three against one is never going to work, especially as I’m so inexperienced. Tears are flooding down my face and Efa twists my wrist again, trying to get me to stand up straight. I hear and feel the bone break and I howl. I actually howl.
John isn’t saving me. Efa and Zeta are holding me up so he can kill me.
This is it.
This is the end.
18
John nods at Zeta and Efa and they keep hold of Ellis, but lean away so that he can reach her, so that he can lean in close to her neck, get the angle right, so he can bite into her neck like he would an apple.
He covers her body with his, chest to chest, and then tucks his head close to hers. He whispers in her ear. “Ellis, get ready.”
Before she can even figure out what she’s supposed to be getting ready for, he twists his body, grabs her and hoists her over his shoulder, ripping her from the grip of the two women in his life. And then he runs.
Vampires can run.
Zeta and Efa scream at him, swear at him, try to stop him with magic, but he’s gone. He carries Ellis out of the house, down the drive, around the corner, in a flash of movement so fast, that nobody mortal would be able to see him.
He sets her down and she hugs him so tightly it causes her pain.
He smiles. “Apart from your wrist, are you hurt?”
She shakes her head.
He looks sad. “I cannot fly you anywhere. I cannot help you. Can you call the witches? Quickly.”
She nods and he turns to leave her. Then he turns back and kisses her forehead. “I’m sorry.”
She wants to argue, protest that he has nothing to be sorry about, but he’s gone, fleeing into the road and running to who knows where.
She looks around in a mad panic. She needs help. She closes her eyes. She needs Fletcher.
When she opens her eyes, he is there. Like an apparition and she falls to her knees. If it is him, he will help her, if it’s not real she will die. Zeta and Efa will find her and she will die. She is too scared and exhausted to do anything else.
It is Fletcher, the other witches behind him. He envelopes her in a huge hug and then pulls back when she cries. “Is it really you?”
He nods, crying.
She’s crying too. “I think my ribs might be broken. And my wrist.”
“Are they in John’s house?”
“Yes, just Zeta and Efa.”
“Mum, go!”
They sink onto the floor, arms around each other, as Elodie and Ember run to the house. Ellis sobs, head on his shoulder and Fletcher kisses her hair. They are both exhausted and dirty, spent.
Sally and the twins join them. “I’m glad you’re okay,” Talia says. The three girls look awful, obviously tired, but plainly fresh from a fight too. They have blood on their faces, scrapes and bruises colouring their skin.
“Is everyone okay?” Ellis asks Fletcher and he nods. “I think Sally’s dad got a nasty burn from Zeta but we’re all alive, and so are you.”
“John saved me. Efa broke my wrist and kicked me in the side.” She starts to cry again, and Fletcher hugs her closer.
Th
ere’s a clatter of feet and they look up, but it’s only Elodie, Ember, Jane and David.
“No sign of them. And no sign of Vann, either.”
“He wasn’t on the pier.”
“Well, he’s not in there. Nobody is. They’ve vanished.”
Elodie sighs and smiles at Ellis. “How are you lovely? Did they hurt you? How did you escape?”
“John helped me. They thought he was going to kill me, but he rescued me instead. My wrist is broken, and I’m pretty sure some ribs are too.”
“Do you think you can fly back to ours?”
“I think so.”
“We can get you fixed up easier at home than we can here.”
“And then what?”
Fletcher takes a deep breath. “And then we try again. None of us can rest until Zeta and Efa, and maybe Vann, are taken care of. She’ll just call on more demons or more minions to attack us. Until Ellis is safe, none of us are safe.”
“Let’s go.”
They are an exhausted and bedraggled bunch, bloody, bruised but not broken as they leave John’s mansion behind and fly back home.
Fletcher is as gentle as he can be holding onto her, but she’s still crying with pain when they land at home.
Ember undoes the protections and they troop inside. They all need some sort of medical attention, even if Ellis has the worst of the injuries. Battling demons isn’t easy.
“Home and dry,” Fletcher says, gently settling Ellis on to a chair and covering her in a blanket. “Luckily, my mum is an expert in mending bones.” He kisses her cheek and sits beside her.
Elodie comes back from the garage with a bag full of lotions, potions, herbs and tinctures. “I’ll start with you, Ellis. We thought we’d be too late.”
“If it wasn’t for John you would have been. I know you all hate him for all the other stuff he’s done, but he saved my life. Efa had one arm, Zeta had the other and they were holding me so he could kill me.”
“With a bite?”
Ellis nods and Fletcher sighs. “I’m grateful for him.”
“Me too.”
They are silent, all watching Elodie minister to Ellis. Her wrist is purple and swollen, and sitting at a funny angle but Elodie gently rubs a bright green ointment into it, while muttering a spell under her breath. Ellis’s eyes widen as she feels the magic working. “It’s hot and tingly.”
“That’s the bones fusing. It doesn’t take long. It’ll still feel sore for a while, tender, and maybe not as strong as it was, but it’ll be completely normal in a day or two. The ribs will take longer because I can’t touch them so easily.”
“You know she’s not finished, don’t you?”
“Neither are we. We won that battle today. I know it didn’t feel like it when we realised that Ellis was gone, but she’s safe. All of us are alive, and Peri and Layland are dead. All the followers they brought there today are dead. I can’t even imagine how many demons we finished off. We did well. You all did well.”
“That was a battle won,” Ember says, touching both her girls on their cheeks. “A hard battle.” The twins are crying, and Sally is sniffling too.
In the middle of something like that you cannot stop long enough to appreciate the awfulness of what you’re in the middle of. It’s only afterwards that you can see how incredibly hard they’d all fought for their lives.
“What will we do?”
“Sleep,” Elodie says, almost laughing. They are all shattered. “Fight again. Get more back up. Never give up. Her numbers have dwindled massively. She will find it difficult to win an out and out battle with us, like they tried today. We all have to be more vigilant. She may have to resort to sneaky tactics.”
A knock at the back door makes them all jump. Elodie and Ember stand in front of the door, Jane and David beside them, the teenagers all sheltered.
Fletcher squeezes Ellis’s hand.
Ember kicks the door open and they all have their hands up ready to attack, or counter-attack, but there’s nobody there.
Nobody alive, anyway.
Ember rushes to the sink and is sick again and again and again.
Fletcher pulls Ellis into his chest, trying to shield her eyes, but it’s too late.
They have all seen it.
Vann.
Dead.
On the door step.
The word traitor written on his forehead in blood.
There’s a cackle and they all jump, but it’s just Zeta’s voice, they can instinctively tell that she’s not there; it’s just a message for them. “A traitor to you and useless to us. You can have him. And tell Ellis, next time we see her, she’s as dead as this one is.”
Elodie pushes the door shut. They will deal with him later. They need to make up a fire for Griff and Mya anyway, they might as well burn another body while they are at it.
“That was nasty,” Thea says, tears staining her face.
“This whole business is nasty, and it isn’t over yet. We won’t let them hurt you, Ellis. We won’t let them hurt any of you. There are only two of them left.”
“And magic always wins in a fair fight.”
The End!
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The Accidental Invitation (The Chronicles of the Accidental Witch Book 2) Page 17