by Holly Ryan
I charged toward her, gripping my stake tightly. As I neared, though, my stake raised for the kill, my steps slowed as if I were wading through the bottom of the caramel coffee syrup at The Bean Dream. The air turned cold, heavy, freezing my lungs together until it hurt to draw a breath. A prickly sensation dragged down my body and sapped every bit of strength I had. I dropped to my knees, unable to hold myself upright.
“Lovely...” Paul’s voice, right next to my ear and somewhere far away at the same time.
My skin shrank along my bones at the sound. I didn’t dare look around because the vampire was almost upon me, and I hardly had the energy to turn my head.
Something blurred to my left. Another pair of red eyes and fangs. It barreled down on top of me, knocking me down flat, and punching the air from my frozen lungs. Fangs snapped at my face within centimeters of my nose, but I held the vamp at bay with my forearm, my other hand grasping at empty air. My stake. Gone. Now lying at least a foot away.
I zipped my hand to the back of my jeans and the stake looped through the belt loops. Or I tried to. My arms felt like they’d become nothing but sludge. Finally, I snagged the stake and brought up for a killing blow. But the other vamp, the female one, crushed her booted foot to my arm. My elbow bent at a weird angle when it hit dirt, flaring up pain to my fingers and loosening the stake so it tumbled through them.
Fucking. Hell.
With a frustrated, pained yell right into the vamp on top of me’s face, I twined my legs around his and tried to whip him off.
“Sunshine!”
I gasped at the shout. The vampire on top of me stopped snapping in my face long enough to look up and sniff. I used the distraction to lift my leg up as high as the hundred-pound limb would go so my third stake would pop out of my boot. It did and landed within reach.
The female vamp ground her foot into my arm, still pinned underneath it. The male vamp on top of me looked down and drooled all over my face.
Yeah, I was done with this. Whether my body had given up on me or not.
Moving in slow motion, I brought my knee up between the vamp’s legs. At the same time, I twisted around and pierced my stake up through the bottom of the female vamp’s shoe. She snarled as she fell hard to the ground.
The male vamp had already climbed to his feet, holding his crotch like his balls were now sitting on top of each other. The female vamp was struggling to stand with part of a stake protruding from her shoe. Her eyes burned with anger.
“Suckers,” I said, willing my body upright. “I can beat you lying down.”
Except maybe not. All of my stakes weren’t within reach, and I could hardly move.
A third vampire appeared suddenly about five feet away, a painfully beautiful one, his red eyes sparking behind adorably geeky glasses, and a massive sword between his legs.
“Catch,” he said.
The two vamps’ heads swiveled toward him.
Night’s Fall soared toward me, and I lifted my hands as quick as I could to meet it midair. As soon as the hilt touched my palms, I swung like a baseball bat. It moved at regular speed, even as the rest of me didn’t, and sliced clean through the chests and hearts of both vamps within seconds. The red light in their eyes died, and blood erupted out of them until there was nothing left. I dropped the sword back to the ground, no longer able to keep my arms up.
Gravity was balls when it was crushing me.
“Whoa. Hey.” Eddie swept to my side and cradled my head in his hands, his fingers gently wiping away the blood and dirt from my cheeks. “What’s happening? Talk to me.”
“I can barely move. The air is so heavy.”
“He’s here, isn’t he.”
“He is, but...” I shook my head. “I have my slayer powers back, but I can’t block this out. He’s either getting stronger or this is something else.”
Eddie’s eyes narrowed. “Like the Necron Brotherhood.”
“A last-ditch effort to do me in. I’m sure of it. Paul’s just pissed that he has to go through all this trouble. He’s wasting his power instead of saving it up to open that trapdoor because he’s a fucking cocksucker. Eddie,” I growled, staring up at him, “I will kill him.”
“I have no doubt,” he said, catching a few angry tears sliding down my cheeks. “But first do you think you can get up and walk? Do you want me to carry you?”
Even though that sounded like heaven, to be tucked away safely in Eddie’s arms, I shook my head. “I have to finish my patrol. And I have to show him and everyone else that he can’t keep me down. It’s time for him to cry, not me.”
“It’s okay for you to cry.”
“Not on the job, it isn’t. This is my destiny, chosen by the Senate who supposedly know what they’re doing. I need to be like...the slayer version of a hair mullet—business in the front and crippling doubts and emotions way in the back.”
A crease formed on Eddie’s forehead, but then he laughed. It was such an odd sound for a graveyard, but it lightened my chest, reminded me I wasn’t all alone here. “I was around during the height of the hair mullet days, and you are not a mullet.”
I chuckled, too, forcing out the end of my tears. No more of those. I needed to become a blade as sharp as Night’s Fall, edged down one side with brawn and courage up the other if I wanted to survive this shitstorm.
“Ready?” he asked.
Not really, but I nodded anyway.
He helped me to my feet, supporting much of my weight by circling my arm around his neck. His arm went to my hip and pulled me flush with his body, so close it was hard to tell who was touching who. His cool skin kissed mine, fueling my first step so I could finish my patrol faster and then press my whole body up against his afterward.
After collecting my stakes for me, he handed me Night’s Fall, and using it like a cane, I guided us toward the mausoleum, searching the rest of the cemetery as we went. From outside the cemetery gate, Detective Appelt’s man he had parked there would see us go into the mausoleum, but as soon as he looked away, he’d forget all about Eddie. I was still allowed to go in because I said so.
With my flashlight app on my cell, we entered through the open door into the mausoleum, its darkness so thick it stifled the breath in my lungs. Goose bumps broke across my skin, and a shudder rolled through me from front to back, repelling me, pulling me away.
“This feels horrible,” Eddie said. “You actually slept in here?”
I shined the light down on the stone coffin leaning against the stairs in front of me. “It actually used to be nice in here. Quiet. Safe, even. I kind of envied Mr. Appelt. Now I think we should take him home with us.”
Eddie chuckled. “Only if he sleeps with Jacek.”
“Mr. Appelt’s a sound sleeper. Bony though. Not the good kind.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” After making sure I was propped up by the wall and Night’s Fall, Eddie jumped from the stairs onto the landing below, his feet kicking up a cloud of dust around the trapdoor. “This must be it.”
“Yeah.” I shined the light around the floor, up the walls, and across the ceiling. “We’re looking for something that might be weakening the Appelt spell on this place. Maybe. Something to do with witchcraft?”
Eddie shook his head as he gazed around. “That’s not my area of expertise.”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Only as it applies to my immediate situation.” He turned toward me and quirked his lips. “I’ll fix that though. Book Delivery Day will be here again soon.”
“There’s also Google.”
He made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat. “If my information can’t be bound, sniffed, and delivered, I don’t trust it.”
“That’s why you trust me, then.”
“You catch on quick.” He smiled big then, rare for him and radiant enough to light up the pit of doom we were currently standing in.
Trying not to swoon myself into a coma, I switched my light to the other hand because my a
rm had become too heavy to lift. The toe of my boot hung off the top ledge of the stairs slightly, and straight down from it on the ground, tucked into the corner, sat a rock no bigger than my fist that I’d already spotted a hundred times. But my light made a strange shadow on the wall behind it, like there were porcupine quills poking out of the rock.
“Eddie, porcupine at two o’clock.”
He turned in the wrong direction. Actually the right direction according to my instructions. Stupid analog clocks.
“I mean ten o’clock.”
He faced the rock and searched the area. “I don’t see anything.”
“In the corner. Be careful. Don’t touch.” Those were words to live by according to the Appelts, and they were starting to rub off on me.
Eddie peered closer, and I dropped into a squat at the top of the stairs, checking over my shoulder for anything creeping up behind me, and shined my light down farther.
“There’s something underneath it.” He prodded the rock with his dress shoe.
“Eddie...” But the rest of my warning died on my tongue at what was revealed.
He used his foot to straighten it out.
Not porcupine quills. But little bones knotted up the length of several strands of what appeared to be human hair. Blonde and curly, just like mine.
Witchcraft. Had to be.
“Well.” I swallowed hard and met Eddie’s worried gaze. “This isn’t creepy at all.”
Chapter Four
“Witch’s ladder,” Sawyer announced at the kitchen table after my patrol. “A charm knotted together with specific intent, often a curse or other spellwork, the effects of which have to do with the items knotted and where the witch’s ladder is placed.”
“I would say the effects are pretty damn clear.” Jacek leaned forward to look once again at the photo I’d taken of the bones and hair on my phone. I hadn’t dared to take the thing out of the mausoleum since I no longer touched anything I didn’t understand. It was weirdest thing, though—after Eddie and I had left the graveyard, I’d been immediately able to lift my arms and twirl and everything instead of feeling like I was swimming through caramel.
The witch’s ladder was definitely meant for me.
Sawyer continued reading from an internet page on my laptop. “Witch’s ladders can be undone if the knots are untied.” He reached over and glided his hand up my thigh. “I’ll take care of that tonight.”
“Thank you,” I said, threading my fingers through his. “Maybe look around a little, too, if you have time. There might be another one that’s weakening the Appelt spell.”
Across the table, Eddie leaned over and pointed at the pic on my phone. “I don’t think those are bones tied into the hair. They look too uniform, too...”
“Pointy?” I pushed the empty plate away from me, not even remotely regretting the second slice of pie Sawyer had given me. He’d drizzled glaze over the top, the perfect sweet to the slightly tart apples. Every bite had been an orgasm in my mouth. “I agree. After further inspection, I’d say those are wooden stakes. That witch’s ladder was definitely intended for me, a curse to drain me and keep me away, which only proves that whatever is in the mausoleum has something to do with me.”
“I wish I could tell you that you were wrong, Belle, but...the Necron Brotherhood doesn’t deal in witchcraft.” Sawyer removed his hand from my thigh and scrubbed his hands down his face, all of the revelations from today surely eating away at him since they pointed right at the past he was so desperate to forget.
He’d already confirmed that the tattooed officer at the police station did, in fact, have the exact same sun and moon tattoos as the Necron Brotherhood. He could tell by the curvature and the placement. The tattoo pic I’d sent Eddie, who’d then sent it to him, lay right next to my phone with the witch’s ladder.
“But it makes sense that the Necron Brotherhood would help Paul since they both have the same end goal,” Eddie said.
“No.” Sawyer shoved away from the table and stood.
Jacek frowned. “But they do.”
“Yes, they do, but...” Sawyer raked his hands through his black curly hair and faced away from us, tension pouring off of him like steam.
There was something he wasn’t telling us. If my life wasn’t on the line, if my countdown clock hadn’t begun spinning down my time in fast-forward, I would’ve waited for him to talk when he was ready. As it was, I didn’t have that luxury. Paul wanted that trapdoor open yesterday. Sawyer knew this, of course, and I suspected that was part of what was holding him back. That, and our reactions after he told us whatever it was he didn’t want to.
“Please, Sawyer,” I said softly to his back.
The tension along his back loosened a fraction, and he sighed as he faced us once again. “Right before I left the Brotherhood, there was talk. Talk of summoning something, not from hell, but from someplace...else. Something powerful enough that could eradicate slayers for good. It didn’t have a name. No one knew hardly anything about it, which was a huge red flag for me, even though I’d already decided to leave.”
Jacek leaned back in his seat next to me, his eyes on Sawyer. “Paul.”
“At that time, I’d never been formally introduced, but I’m guessing yes. The Brotherhood was gathered all together to summon this...thing, and that’s when...” He took a breath and exhaled, searching for the words, and then his gaze ticked up to mine—tortured, heartbreaking. “You have to understand something, Belle. The Brotherhood, their tattoos, was a symbol of light and dark, good and evil, vampire and slayer. To them, they were the good guys, the light. Not you. You were the darkness. You were who they blamed for them being cursed to walk in your shadows, for being hunted and killed by you. That was why they wanted the slayer to die. And now, especially now that I met you, I see that I was right for leaving. You are the light, not the Brotherhood, and your powerful sunshine smell is you broadcasting your rays. You’re a blindingly beautiful sign that I did the right thing several hundred years ago.”
“Leaving the Brotherhood?” I whispered, the power in his words knocking the air from my lungs.
He sighed. “Not just that. Before the Brotherhood summoned the unknown thing, I destroyed them. I did kill, just not who they’d wanted me to. I stopped the real darkness so slayers could live and the real light could eventually shine. I hadn’t known for sure that was the best decision until I met you.”
I took in a shaky breath, considering. “So...slayers exist because of you. I’m alive because of you.”
“No, Belle.” He came closer and touched my cheek. “I may not have a heartbeat, but I’m alive because of you.”
I stared up into his conflicted amber eyes and felt a burning in the backs of my own. “You three’s compliments are better than pie. Keep them coming.”
Sawyer sank down in his chair again, cradling my cheek as he did so, and then leaned in. His kiss tasted like relief, sweet and pure at first, and then deepened straight to my heart. When he pulled away, it wasn’t just desire sparking in his eyes, though there was plenty of that too. But warmth, the kind that hurt me with its power because I’d ached for it so much before I’d met my favorite vamps.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Jacek said, tracing the long crack down the center of the table, “because I love kissing, but we’re far from done talking about all this. If the Brotherhood are back, with Paul”—he waved at the two phones on the table—“then they’re not just vampires anymore.”
“But how?” I asked. “If the Brotherhood died, how did anyone know about them and Paul?”
Eddie sat back in his chair, his messy blond hair falling across his forehead. “Because knowledge doesn’t die. Not completely, anyway. There are books written and borrowed, stories passed down or overheard.”
Sawyer nodded down at his tattoos. “The Brotherhood does have a thing for ink, including the kind in books.”
“So someone heard about the Brotherhood somehow,” Jacek said.
“Not someon
e,” I said. “Someones. Pretty sure that hair in the witch’s ladder is mine, and I would know if someone took some scissors to it. Yeah, I wear it in a bun, but it’s in a particular bun with every curl just so. But I also shed like a cat, and I haven’t noticed any one person following me around plucking stray hairs off of my clothes. But it could be done with lots of different people over lots of different days.”
Eddie caught my eye from across the table and frowned. “Or someone’s been digging through your trash, Slayer.”
“Oh...” I shuddered. “I liked my theory better.”
“Okay, so...” Jacek pointed to Sawyer’s phone. “That guy for one. Who else?”
Sawyer loosed a rush of air like he’d been holding it much too long, and his eyes widened. “They’re not vampires, but this might still work.” He chanted something in a language I’d never heard.
“What—whoa!” Jacek shouted.
A glow blazed off of Sawyer and saturated the entire kitchen in golden light. I cried out and threw up my arms to block it from scorching my eyeballs.
The chair to my left crashed to the ground.
“Shit!” Jacek shouted.
“Sawyer, what are you doing?” Eddie yelled from across me.
The glow soaked back into Sawyer’s bronze skin. The ink along his arms was moving, twisting. Most of the suns and moons blinked out into nothingness, leaving only a few. They crept along the veins in his skin and then stopped, their shapes curling and waving as if in an underwater current.
“A little warning next time, Sawyer!” Jacek shouted, picking himself up off the floor and slamming his chair upright.
“Three,” Sawyer breathed.
“Three what?” Eddie demanded.
“Suns. And a moon,” I answered, pointing to Sawyer’s arms. On his left arm, a moon orbited around one sun, protecting it, and on his right, two suns pulsed, the flames on their edges licking outward.