Tempt

by Claire Farrell

  His shoulders tensed. “Don’t fool yourself, Esther. She’s quick. Quicker than any vampire I’ve ever seen. You might not get the chance to shift.”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. Safety first.” Her mocking tone convinced me she wasn’t taking it seriously. I’d quickly learned that Guardians were kind of up themselves, thinking they were the untouchable elite. Shifters were pretty proud, too, so it wasn’t surprising that Esther underestimated the situation. The fact her protective big brother was both her alpha and her boss probably didn’t help her awareness of danger.

  I had expected a little humility from the Council’s soldiers when their ranks had been decimated by Becca, but Peter had warned me it only made the others more competitive. Maybe it was good Esther had joined us. She might see it wasn’t a game.

  We drove for a few minutes in silence before Peter gave Esther a pointed look. “Try not to let Becca get close enough to bite you, or you’re screwed. She’s after blood, any blood. She’s not picky. She drinks from as many people as she can, night after night. It’s all she wants. There’s no talking, no persuading, no hesitating. She’s all about the blood, all of the time.”

  “So, she’s stocking up?”

  He pulled over and turned in his seat. “Stocking up?”

  “You know, for hibernation. Or another mutation.” She touched the cross Peter had given her with a thoughtful look on her face.

  “Wait. What now?” I interrupted.

  Esther looked back at me. “Blood’s her only food source, and it’s coming up on summer. Hibernation time for the nightwalkers.”

  I glanced at Peter for confirmation.

  He shrugged. “Back in the day, vampires buried themselves in the dirt during the summer months, after overdosing on blood for weeks. Maybe some vampires still hibernate, but most just go abroad during the summer months. The rest stay put and deal with the shorter night hours, especially because they would have to officially apply to the Council to up their quota pre-hibernation.”

  “How did I not know this? Wait, you said mutation as well.”

  Esther nodded. “She’s already mutated once. Maybe she’s due for another. Some kinds of shifters need to drink blood before they change, but they’re the type who stay in their animal forms for a couple of days at a time. Not quite the same.”

  Something in her voice triggered my suspicion. “You know something I don’t, Esther?”

  Her face remained blank as she shook her head. I didn’t believe her, and I definitely didn’t trust the Council. Thoughts of what had happened to the leftover formula and the human candidate who had been arrested still bugged me.

  Peter cleared his throat. “We’re close to the last place she was spotted. Ava can work her magic and figure out where to go from there. And Esther, don’t get in Ava’s way.”

  Esther looked as surprised as I felt, but she nodded. I half-expected her to ask about working magic, but she kept quiet. The focus on her face was a far cry from the giddy girly persona she gave off most of the time. Maybe I had underestimated her, too.

  We all got out of the car and stood in a circle, their eyes directly on me. The air was taut with tension and filled with the nauseating scent of anticipation. Trying to ignore them, I focused on seeing that other plane. My skin tingled… but nothing happened.

  Esther hovering there made me more nervous than usual. Tracking Becca while people watched always felt awkward. They seemed to expect fireworks and flying unicorns, not me staring into space.

  I tried again.

  Nothing.

  “What’s taking so long?” Esther blurted.

  I glared at her. “Just wait in the car.”

  Peter led a reluctant Esther back to the car. I sighed heavily as soon as I heard the car doors close. Their expectations crippled me, and Esther’s excitement was stifling. How was I supposed to relax when everyone else’s emotions ramped up my own? Eddie had mentioned finding another empath to help me control it, but being out of control was almost preferable to asking him for a favour.

  I took a minute to calm down. I seemed to need to do that more often lately. Pretty much everything about me was frayed, unravelling. That made me think about the ‘not yet matured’ bull. A conversation with Carl about the things he had learned with his research might have been overdue. I had already wasted too much time in the dark.

  Sniffing the air, I tried to make out Becca’s scent on the wind. For weeks, I had regularly woken with that scent under my nose, so obsessed with it had I been. Tracking her was hard because she literally vanished during the day. We were left with me chasing her scent at night and hoping she would come into the scope of my senses in order to see her essence. Not exactly convenient.

  Before long, I resigned myself to the fact I wasn’t going to find a fresh trail. Obviously, Becca had already moved on to another spot.

  The problem with Becca’s movements was the unpredictability. She didn’t appear to have a plan, her path was random, and she was so easily distracted that even being chased by me didn’t stop her from looking for a new hunting ground. What Esther had said about hibernating—and mutating—had been interesting, but it only served to put even more pressure on me to catch Becca.

  Since she had turned into… whatever she became at my trial, she had pretty much left a path of dead bodies in her wake. We might have been able to find her sooner if she left witnesses—or even someone alive long enough to call for help—but she tended to kill in clusters, and it was rare for anyone to walk away.

  Deciding I wasn’t close enough to find her by scent only, I moved back to my other skill, seeing things on a different plane of existence, except I was going to put my back into it. I’d been pushing my abilities further and further, wearing myself out, but it seemed to get easier the more I tried.

  At first, I had only been able to reach one other level. It felt like a web surrounding me, preventing me from moving further. As time went on, the web started to break, and I pushed through to another plane. I could see further, differently than before. The energies of humans and monsters alike were so vivid there, I could almost reach out and touch them. Yet another item on the list of things I badly needed to find out more about.

  I stared at the ground and concentrated. My skin tingled, and it felt as if my head were lifting off my body. Soon, a whole other world opened. Esther and Peter’s energies pulsed nearby, their heart rates higher than normal. Slowly at first, more and more red pulsing human energies began popping up on my radar, then the empty spaces that meant soulless vampires.

  I had started to see other things without trying, energies that I couldn’t name. But some types of energy seemed naturally easier to spot, such as human and vampire… and the beautiful glow that marked an angel.

  The range of my vision expanded slightly. The borders pushed outward, but it still wasn’t enough. Gasping for breath, I pushed harder, feeling as though I were leaving my body.

  My ears popped, and everything changed.

  I stopped feeling the rain, or the wind, or hearing any noise. Neither warmth nor cold touched my skin, just a disturbingly empty vacuum that closed in on my body. In the distance, I saw shadows moving, but the street where I stood had turned to a murky shadowlike consistency, too.

  I moved my leg, feeling as though I were pushing myself through deep water. Not unpleasant exactly, but not a natural kind of feeling for me—too heavy and slow, as if I were weighted down by an unseen force.

  I glanced at the car. It blew in and out of a shimmery existence, and although I knew Peter and Esther were in there, I could no longer hear their heartbeats.

  I tried to make a sound. Something tacky pressed against my tongue, and no noise came out. Fascinated, I started to try again but was distracted by a movement ahead. I glanced in that direction, and suddenly I was there, on a different street. The movement was gone, and I was nowhere near the car anymore.

  Behind was charcoal shadow, but as I stared ahead, I grew accustomed to the different lig
ht and realised that everything was coloured a muted burgundy and violet.

  Sensing something to my left, I tried to spin around, wavering as a bout of dizziness struck. Again, I was somewhere else. Someone, or something, was nearby, but I had no idea how to find them without jerking my body another mile away.

  My head ached. The air was too heavy. Or maybe it was the lack of air. I realised I wasn’t breathing, and that shocked me into action. Steadying myself, I tried to move slowly the next time I saw movement. A figure. Of sorts. Looking down at myself, I realised I didn’t exactly look like a person anymore, either. Ethereal, I had transformed into a wispy entity on a plane where I didn’t belong.

  The figure moved on, and I tried to follow its path with my eyes. I practised that for a while, looking around without being sucked across town.

  I saw more figures as I explored, and realised I was seeing things I didn’t usually notice. One was different to everything else—not empty, but not living, either. Becca’s presence was so bizarrely unnatural that it wasn’t hard to spot her.

  I could zone in on her from far away, whether I wanted to or not. Her presence was a mass of red and black squirming energy that looked as if, given the chance, it might explode in all directions. I badly wanted to see what my own energy looked like to others.

  I recognised the surrounding buildings. I stood outside of the city, but still in a highly populated area. The curfew was a blessing. It cleared out a lot of places that would have otherwise been teeming with people. Places I could drive Becca to, if the opportunity arose.

  Satisfied I had Becca’s location, I tried to step back… and got stuck. Letting go of the other planes had always been easy, but I was held tight. I struggled with it, felt the atmosphere grow tighter against me. Breathing was impossible, and I was pretty sure I needed to breathe no matter what plane I visited.

  Panic overrode every other sensation. I was trapped, couldn’t move, couldn’t help myself. The more I struggled, the tighter the filmy air held me. The hooded figure was in my face before I realised it had moved. I tried to speak, to ask for help. It lay what felt like a surprisingly firm hand on my forehead and pushed.

  I fell backward, slowly, still unable move my hands. Suddenly, the world flooded with colour and air again, and I was on my feet right in front of the car.

  “Whoa,” I whispered, staring at my palms. Trippy. Two drops of blood fell from my nose, an unusually crimson stain marring the white bandage on my hand. Feeling as though I could see everything more clearly, I remembered I knew Becca’s exact location.

  Making a firm decision to ignore the weirdness, I jumped into the car, hoping Esther and Peter hadn’t seen me do anything whacky while I searched for Becca. They looked pretty bored, so I figured I hadn’t moved at all.

  “Drive, I’ll give directions on the way.”

  Peter wasn’t surprised, having been given the same order numerous times before, but Esther stared at me, her eyes sparkling with intrigue.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  “How do you shift into a bear?” I replied.

  A slight frown creased her forehead. “Maybe you are in a bad mood, after all.”

  Peter drove as fast as the limit allowed, and I finally scoped Becca on my normal radar. She kept moving, not stopping to feed. I gave Peter changes in directions over and over again.

  After an hour of driving in what amounted to mini-circles, it dawned on me what might be happening. “I think she knows I’m coming.”

  “How on Earth can she know that?” Esther asked.

  I shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe the same way I know where she is. Maybe she has a really good sense of smell. Maybe somebody warned her tonight is my shift. I’m not the psychic.”

  “Neither am I, Ava. What’s with you?”

  I might have snapped back, but I caught the worry in her voice.

  “She doesn’t want to talk,” Peter said, silencing us. I just wasn’t sure exactly who he was protecting with the statement.

  After another half-hour of erratic driving, my impatience got the better of me. “I’m going on foot. I’ll try and herd her toward the racetrack. It’s still empty.”

  Peter grunted in reply, but Esther caught my hand before I got out of the car. “Be careful.”

  I squeezed her fingers and nodded. Peter managed to step out of the car before I did.

  “What?” I asked, itching to run.

  “I didn’t want to say it in the car, but there’s something on your forehead.” His usual frown deepened as he stared at me. He reached a half-second before me, batting my hand out of the way as he brushed my skin. A little cloud of dust flew away from me, and I jerked back, wiping frantically. Staring at my hand, I saw a weird residue on my fingertips. A deep mauve-coloured texture that had an almost sand-like quality stained my fingers.

  “Is it gone?” I felt a little frantic for some reason, as if I had to get every single particle away from my skin as quickly as possible. He frowned and used his clean hand to rub roughly at my skin.

  He shook his head, still staring at me in wonder. “It’s a bruise. A handprint. That wasn’t there when I picked you up.” He took another step toward me, and I broke into a run in the opposite direction, playing with numbers to distract me from the overwhelming panic.

  Whatever had sent me from that other plane had physically marked me, yet Peter and Esther had acted as though nothing untoward happened, as though I hadn’t moved at all. I mouthed numbers in multiples of seven—skipping fifty-six just in case—freaked out by my lack of understanding of the things I dabbled in.

  I had grown up using numbers as a way to deal with stress, then with my thirst for human blood, and I was back to using numbers so I wouldn’t think about unpleasant things. A point for regression.

  I stretched my legs and ran faster, pushing my body past the limits of comfort, mostly due to my leg still aching from Becca’s bite. It had healed well, though it was still stiff. I wasn’t fit, but my body could do things it shouldn’t have been able to do. Once I let go of human fear, I was fast. Really fast. If I fought for my life, I was strong. And if I believed in myself, I was smarter than I acted. Once I stopped caring like a human, the world opened up to me.

  As I ran, I made a decision. I wanted to live without fear or regret. I wanted to know myself and more about my abilities.

  But I had to beat Becca first. The doubting voice in my head was loud. How could I beat Becca? Last time, she almost killed me. She’d killed better fighters. How could I survive without killing her first?

  I kept my eye on Becca using my other sight, but she kept moving. At least if she was running then she wasn’t murdering anyone. But how did she know to run? I had acted as though it didn’t matter in the car, but it bothered me. Maybe she found herself connected to me as much as I felt connected to her.

  Knowing she could somehow sense me helped me drive her toward the racetrack, but so much running had me wheezing, and the ache in my leg increased until a bit of a limp kicked in. By the time I began to close in on her, I was exhausted and running on the fumes of a final adrenalin rush.

  I texted Peter to let him know she was close to him. The racetrack was practically abandoned with the country on alert. The entire island had been burdened with curfews, daily warnings, and extended police patrols. With lots of open space and a decent lack of humans running around, the racetrack was the perfect place for a battle, and hopefully, a capture.

  Watching Becca’s energy move was strange. Sometimes she ran in random directions, and at others, she zoned onto a path like a bullet. Those times were when she spotted a human, like when she caught Peter’s scent at the racetrack.

  My stomach dropped when I sensed her on the hunt, and I sped up as much as I could. By the time I caught up, the bonnet of Peter’s car was all but crushed, and he was swinging a gigantic sword over his head like a madman. His rage was overpowering, flooding me with the same emotion. Score for the empathy.

  But Becca was
n’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes were on the bear towering over her, the bear in Peter’s way. As I closed in on them, Esther swiped a paw and snarled ferociously, but Becca remained unflinching. Peter hesitated, unwilling to risk either hurting Esther or murdering Becca. Either way, the Council would be pissed.

  Wrapping one arm around the bear’s throat in one speedy motion, Becca swung herself over Esther’s shoulder, clung to her back with her knees, and was about to attempt a neck break when I unclipped the silver chain belt around my waist and threw it around her neck. I yanked it back, falling to the ground and managing to take Becca down with me. Esther clawed at Becca, who was too busy twisting and grabbing at me to notice.

  “Back off!” I shouted at both Esther and Peter, who came running to help. I couldn’t catch a crazy, mutated vampire and worry about other people getting hurt at the same time.

  Peter listened. Esther didn’t.

  Becca let out a howl of rage and reached for Esther, breaking the chain. I kicked Becca aside to give me enough space to jump in front of Esther. I punched Becca in the face, throwing all of my strength and Peter’s anger behind it, then screamed at Esther again. She swiped at me with a rumbling growl, so I punched her, too, knocking her back. I ran after Becca, who had fled. Swearing, I caught up to her and kicked the back of her knee to trip her. She fell, and I toppled over her.

  We rolled together, my head smacking the ground. I flashed my fangs, and she sort of bounced over me before getting up to run again. I was too sore and exhausted to keep going, so I lay there and watched the stars, my fingers brushing against moist blades of grass, until Peter and Esther caught up to me.

  “What the hell were you doing?” Esther shouted, back in human form. She wore Peter’s shirt, displaying most of her bare legs. “I almost had her!”

  “You had nothing,” I huffed back.

  Peter grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet. Doubling over, I wheezed out my next couple of breaths and ignored Esther’s griping long enough to sense out Becca’s location. She was still running, and I would never catch her.