by R K Dreaming
His eyes, which had been green a moment ago, now looked entirely black. A glimmer of light glinted off the incredibly sharp tips of his fangs.
I felt like telling him that I was Esme Westbrim and he had better not mess with me or my granny would show him a thing or two about what it meant to be powerful.
But granny had always warned us to be careful. She would not be glad if I brought a war with the vampires to her door.
“You heard me,” I said. “Sugar.”
“You little nobody,” he hissed, the corners of his mouth turning down in contempt.
I had the distinctive feeling that if we weren’t surrounded by law enforcement that those fangs might have been making a meal of me.
I glared back at him defiantly, equal disgust over every inch of my face.
It was him! He was Lily’s older guy. I was absolutely sure of it now.
Had he killed her in a jealous rage? Or had it been an accident? Or had it just been an act of contempt, since he clearly thought so little of every other creature except himself?
“You,” I hissed. “You’re the one. I know it. You dirty old toe rag.”
The vampire’s entire face contorted with rage. He looked like he was going to explode.
A hand seized me by my upper arm and dragged me away from the vampire.
It was Agent Constantine. I glared at him in disgust.
“That’s Willie The Shank!” cried an astonished voice, distracting us all.
The second security guard had come over to the side of the pool for a quick peek, and was leaning over it with a look of absolute shock on his face.
“Who?” asked Agent Constantine sharply.
The security guard immediately looked like he regretted his outburst. He was looking at Oberon Senior apologetically, and muttered, “Sorry, boss.”
Agent Constantine was writing down the name Willie The Shank in his notepad.
“Did he work here?” he asked the security guard.
The security guard didn’t say anything. He looked at Oberon Senior nervously.
“We’ll find out soon enough when we dig him out of there,” said Agent Constantine impatiently. “Am I going to find that he’s wearing a uniform like you?”
The security guard looked down in dismay at his own black uniform, which had the club logo on it. And then he nodded.
“He was part of the team. Didn’t show up for work a few days ago. But Willie never was reliable.”
“What day?” I asked sharply. “Was it Wednesday night? Or Thursday?”
Thursday was the day I found Lily in my garden.
The security guard looked like he was scanning his brains. Then he nodded. “Yeah, Thursday. He didn’t show up for work.”
“You weren’t suspicious when he didn’t show up?” demanded Agent Constantine.
The security guard shook his head. “Nah, we thought maybe the boss had fired him because of the… er, fight…”
His voice trailed off, and he shot a very frightened glance at his boss.
“What fight?” Agent Constantine demanded.
The security guard swallowed hard, but refused to say anything more.
“Did you fire him?” said Agent Constantine turning to Oberon Senior.
The vampire shook his head. “I should have. The damn fool was selling product in my club.”
By product I knew that he meant drugs.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d mind a bit of product,” I said. “Anything that helps your customers have a little fun and spend more money seems to work for you.”
Oberon Senior bared his fangs at me.
“Tut tut tut, naughty vampire,” I said, waggling my finger disapprovingly.”
“You shut your filthy mouth,” he said.
For some reason I did not feel particularly frightened. I had lost my sense of self-preservation it seemed. Or maybe it was my inhibitions that had gone out of the window with that drink that Lorcan had handed to me. He had put something in it to try to make trouble for a Westbrim. The sneaky git. I knew it for sure now, and yet I couldn’t stop myself.
“Somebody’s in trouble,” I said in a singsong voice to Oberon Senior. Then I turned to the security guard. “Was your buddy Willie The Shank here on Wednesday night?” I asked.
“I’ll ask the questions,” said Agent Constantine to me.
He turned to the security guard and was forced to repeat what I just said. “Was he here on Wednesday night?”
I sniggered.
I felt Agent Constantine stiffen up a little beside me.
It was all I could do not to burst into laughter.
“Yeah,” said the security guard, scratching his head. “I think it was Wednesday when I last saw him.”
“Ha!” I said. “That matches my theory. You need to take this pervy perv perv in for questioning, Agent Constantine.” I pointed at Oberon Senior.
“What did you call me?” the vampire hissed.
“Pervy perv perv,” I said a little more slowly.
Allegra and Jasper couldn’t help but snigger, which they tried to muffle with their hands.
“How dare you speak to me like that?” said Oberon Senior. He looked at his security guard. “I want you to escort these three off the premises at once.”
“You will not,” said Agent Constantine. “They will be staying right here until I have finished with them.”
The security guard nodded, but shot a nervous look at his boss.
“Sorry, sir,” he mumbled.
Oberon Senior looked like he was going to fire the guy immediately. Either that, or rip his head off.
The security guy swallowed hard.
I grinned at Oberon Senior, even though I knew it would goad him to the point of no return.
“So perv, are you going to admit you knew Lily Silverswift too?” I said. “Don’t even bother denying it, because I bet this entire club is full of people who must have seen you together.”
Agent Constantine did not even object to my line of questioning. He looked like he wanted to know this himself.
“She was nothing but trash,” snarled Oberon Senior.
My eyebrows shot up towards my hairline. “Oh really? Your son was very interested in her. He didn’t think she was trash.”
“She was a good-for-nothing nobody,” he sneered. “A mediocre witch. My boy had no real interest in her.”
“Liar,” I said. “Liar, liar, pants on fire. I bet you had the hots for her. I bet it really peeved you off that she preferred your son. After all, he is better than you. Younger, more handsome, a daywalker. He’s a dhampire and you’re just a nothing vampire.”
I had gone too far. Oberon Senior went for me. One moment he was standing there, the next moment he was a blur coming at me. So incredibly fast it took my breath away.
Allegra shouted. Her wand swerved up towards us. There was a blast. A shield charm. And it saved Chris Constantine from some serious damage, because he had thrown himself between me and Oberon Senior.
The force of the shield charm threw Oberon Senior onto the ground. Agent Constantine was already on top of him, shackling him with special restraints.
He looked up at me with disgust.
“You are all under arrest,” he said.
16. The Oncoming Dawn
“Oh no, no, no,” I muttered quietly to myself.
I was inside a holding cell at the police station all alone.
I paced up and down its length, glancing at my watch what seemed like every few seconds, watching the minutes tick by.
Things were no longer a laughing matter.
I had been here for a couple of hours now. Jasper and Allegra were not with me. As it turned out, they hadn’t done anything that Agent Constantine considered an arrest-able offence.
But neither had I. And yet here I was. Apparently Oberon Maltei Senior had insisted on pressing charges against me for trespassing and property damage.
Not against Jasper and Allegra, just against me. Beca
use I was the one who had goaded him into attacking an officer of the law. I was the reason why he had been placed under arrest.
I was lucky I wasn’t in the same holding cell as him.
And I was also darn unlucky that I wasn’t in the same holding cell as him.
Because they knew that he was a vampire. So he was in a completely lightproof holding cell, where the coming dawn wasn’t going to fry him into bacon.
Me on the other hand? There was a window in mine. A narrow strip of window all the way along the top of the cell, letting in nothing but a glimpse of starry night sky for now, but that was going to change the moment dawn arrived.
I had until seven o’clock in the morning. Dawn would arrive at seven.
I checked my watch. There were still many hours to go, but that was little comfort to me.
The police station was emptying of officers. All around me I heard nothing but silence. The little bed in the corner of my holding cell was ominous. Clearly I was supposed to go to sleep in it and spend the night here.
Agent Constantine had as good as told me that. Oberon Senior was a big fish in this town, and Agent Constantine couldn’t just let me go. He didn’t have the power to do it.
If Chief Raine had still been chief I would have begged Agent Constantine to call him and prayed that Gulliver Raine would take pity on me.
Chief Hardwick would have no pity for me. In fact, I was glad that it was the middle of the night and he was safely at home tucked in his bed.
Hawke Hardwick’s arrival in the morning would only make matters worse, but the sun would arrive before he did, so that was one less thing to worry about.
I had begged Agent Constantine to let me go home and that I would face the charges tomorrow. It was only a trespassing charge after all, but he had refused.
The thing was that Agent Constantine didn’t know that come the morning, I would be fried to a frisp. Or something like that. I didn’t want to find out.
And so I paced the cell in a panic.
The only good thing was that whatever drug had been in my system was gone now. Damn that Lorcan Hardwick for spiking my drink. I wanted to throttle him.
Lorcan had probably thought it was going to be a harmless little prank. Make one of the Westbrim girls into a raving loony for a night. Make her feel sick enough to want to go home.
I threw back my head and groaned loudly. I wanted to scream, but I didn’t think that was going to help my cause. It would make Agent Constantine think I was even madder than I actually was. And what I most needed was for him to listen to me. For him to think I was reasonable and logical and that he could let me out and I wouldn’t leave town.
Why couldn’t he have let me face my charges on a new day? Or preferably a new night. Because I didn’t want to face any day at all.
I let out a groan, and sat down with a thump on the sorry excuse for a bed in the corner of my holding cell and buried my head in my hands.
What the heck had I been thinking? Why did I not think that this could happen to me? Why had I been so reckless?
It wasn’t an excuse that I hadn’t been in control of myself, because it was me that had put myself in a position where I hadn’t been in control of myself. I was too old to blame other people for my own mistakes.
It was me who had decided to chase after clues when what I should have been doing was finding a cure for my own malady. That should have been my number one priority. Instead I had got wrapped up in this whole malarky, and now I was in a world of trouble.
Soon Agent Constantine would go home and there would be no one left to help me.
I went to the bars of my cell and was about to shout for him, but then I stopped myself.
I had to think. I had to make a plan before I started babbling things at him again that wouldn’t help my situation.
What was I going to say?
The only way to stop the dawn from getting me was to admit to him what I was. What had happened to me.
But that option was just as bad as being trapped in here.
There wasn’t a single vampire-witch on this planet. Or not any that were known of, because if there had been any that were known, the entire global Conclaves of Magic would have hunted them to the ends of the earth. To stop their evil.
How was I going to explain that I thought that my vampirism was being held at bay by my magic somehow?
My vampirism.
I shuddered.
There, I had said it. I had admitted it to myself.
No one would believe my story. Throughout history there were accounts of witches and wizards that had been turned into vampires. They’d had magic too, and more magic than me, and their magic hadn’t stopped the vampire virus from turning them into full vampires.
I had been sick for a week after my attack, but as far as I could tell I wasn’t a full vampire yet. My transformation had not been completed. But that would mean nothing to them. They would classify me as a vampire-witch and that would be the end of the matter.
And so I couldn’t confess this to Agent Constantine. Because he was such a stickler for the law. He would tell Chief Hardwick, nephew of granny’s mortal enemy, and I would be done for.
Well done Esme for getting yourself into such a palaver.
The truth was that even if Chief Raine had still been in post, the situation would have been as bad for me.
The Raines were an ancient and highly respected witching family. Chief Gulliver Raine’s own Aunt Amirah Raine was the guardian of Magicwild Sanctuary. She was one of the most famous witches in the world. She had battled the Chaos and the Scourge alongside the hero Gideon Knight and won. She had fought off the greatest threats to the magical world in recent decades and she’d survived to tell the tale.
Cheif Raine might be a friend of the Westbrim family, but his first duty was to his oath to safeguard against evil. He would have done what he had to do — report me to the Conclave of Magic, who would have come to take me away.
But at least he would have kept things quiet for granny’s sake and my mum’s sake, so they did not have to suffer the shame. Hawke Hardwick would do no such thing.
He would use me as an example. Look, everyone, at the pink-haired Westbrim witch, the once great hope of their family, gone bad. Look and be afraid.
I drew in a shaky breath. Angry tears had come to my eyes.
It wasn’t fair. None of this was my fault. I hadn’t asked for this to happen to me. I wanted it to stop. I had come the Brimstone Bay for that reason, and now it was all over. I wasn’t going to be able to stop it because the dawn was coming. The sun was going to destroy me, or I was going to have to admit to Agent Constantine — or whoever came on watch after he went home — what I was.
Still clutching the bars of my holding cell, I found myself sinking on to the ground. I was shaking. I bowed my head and pressed it against the cold steel.
Even if I’d had my wand I wasn’t going to be able to etherhop out of here. I was so poor an excuse for a witch that they didn’t even need the safeguards that they had put on here to protect against magic.
The sound of a throat being cleared made me jerk upright.
To my shock, Chris Constantine was standing on the other side of the bars watching me. He had a strange expression on his face.
I blushed bright red, mortified at being caught wallowing in my misery.
I stood up hastily, and was glad that the tears had not fallen from my eyes and I wasn’t having to wipe them away.
“What do you want?” I asked in a small and resentful voice.
I wished I had sounded strong and defiant, but unfortunately I had not and it was too late to take it back.
He unlocked the door of my prison cell.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
17. An Unexpected Discovery
“Why?” I said staring at him in astonishment, relief flooding through my body.
“Would you prefer to stay here?” he said, still holding the door of the prison cell open. Hi
s expression gave nothing away.
I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I scrambled out of there as fast as I could, without even thanking him, and nearly ran out towards the front of the police station where I found Allegra and Jasper sitting on a bench near the front door, waiting for me.
They both leapt to their feet the moment they saw me, relief washing over their faces.
“Oh thank goodness!” Allegra said, rushing towards me.
She grabbed me and wrapped me in a big hug.
She must’ve seen how awful I looked.
“You look terrible,” she said. “Are you all right?”
I felt terrible. I had been frantic in there. I’d thought the game was up.
But I couldn’t tell her that.
“The life of a convict will do that to you,” I joked weakly.
“Stop it,” she said. “It’s not funny. We were worried for you. We didn’t know who they might have you in there with.”
I laughed weakly. “Yeah, me too. I thought he was going to toss me in with a bunch of miscreants, but it turned out I was the only miscreant in the place.”
Allegra had finally let go of me. But now that I was free, it seemed it was Jasper’s turn to hug me.
He wrapped me in his rather strong arms and pretended to wail, “Poor baby.”
It made me laugh.
“We thought we’d lost you for good,” he said in an overly dramatic tearful voice.
“Shut up!” said Allegra, swatting his shoulder.
But she looked mollified that he had made me giggle.
“Me too,” I said. “I thought my days were numbered. Truly, I didn’t know how I was going to survive the long dark night.”
“You two are so cute,” said Allegra. “If only I had my camera.”
I pushed Jasper away.
“To capture me in my moment of infamy? Thank goodness you don’t!”
“It’s not funny actually,” she agreed. “I was on the verge of calling granny to see if she could do something about it. You know that granny wouldn’t have hesitated in kicking up a fuss. But then I thought maybe I ought to…”
Her voice trailed off. She looked embarrassed and a little worried.