“You didn’t answer Liv’s question.” Jack says, interrupting the hundred apologies I owe Liv. I narrow my eyes to shoot him a dirty look when I see the same crazed, wide-eyed expression Liv’s been wearing reflected on his face. “Is he back? Is he coming after you to finish what he started?” His fingers twitch at his side, his whole stance ready to bolt for the door depending on what answer comes out of my mouth.
“Um.” I bite my lip, unsure of how Liv or Jack will take what I’m about to say. I’m still wrapping my head around it myself. “Like I said, it’s complicated, so please listen to everything I have to say before either one of you runs off to confess everything to Aunt Claudia and Uncle Caleb.”
Liv gives a slight nod. Jack is barely holding himself in place.
“I had a run in with him this morning in the park, and—” Liv grips onto my arm, her fingers clenching so hard they’re about to push through bone and muscle to meet her thumb on the other side. I pry a finger away, the rest of my sentence hissing between my teeth, “—it would appear he’s human now.” She lets go all at once, and I shake my arm out before rubbing over the throbbing pain left in the indents her fingers created. “He has a heartbeat and everything. I felt it. He said I’m the reason why.”
The room is so silent I can hear the grandfather clock downstairs, ticking the seconds away. Jack picks his jaw up off the floor, slamming his mouth shut while Liv’s mouth seems to be stuck in a permanent O.
Biting his fingernails down to stubs, Jack paces back and forth from one side of his room to the other. He comes to a sudden stop in front of Sebastian. “Is what Indi said true? Did you see it for yourself? Can Indi really turn a vampire human? Where is Seth now?” He runs a hand through his hair. “How is any of this possible?”
“I see bombarding people with a slew of questions all at once is a family thing.” Sebastian flicks his gaze to mine, a half-smile teasing at his lips. It helps cut the tension in my shoulders, but only by a little. Most of my muscles are still locked in knots, waiting for the preverbal shoe to drop the moment Jack snaps out of his stupor and runs out to find my aunt and uncle. “To answer your questions, Jack, yes, it’s true. Yes, I saw Seth with my own eyes. Yes, Indi appears to be able to turn vampires back into humans. And I have Seth being held for questioning at an undisclosed location.” He holds up a finger. “Before you ask, no, I don’t know how she’s able to cure them of vampirism. We’re in unprecedented territory here.”
“I want to speak to him,” Jack blurts.
Now I’m the one whose jaw is grazing the carpet. “You don’t want to go straight to Aunt Claudia and Uncle Caleb?”
“Not if my life depended on it.”
“What? Why?” Jack’s response is the complete opposite of what I thought he’d say. Honestly, it’s scaring me more that he doesn’t want to tell.
Jack bites his bottom lip with a grunt, his eyes suddenly glued to the floor.
“You should just tell her,” Liv says.
My stomach does a flip. Guess I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets. “Tell me what?”
He shares a look with Liv that conveys an entire conversation before he finally turns back to me. “I overheard Mom and Dad talking with some of the other coven members about the increasing amount of people being reported missing in the city. They think it’s vampires, and since no bodies are turning up, they think they’re recruiting.”
“We’ve been getting similar reports at the center.” Sebastian’s eyes flick to mine. “It’s one of the reasons I was sent here, if you remember?”
How could I forget? The first time I questioned him about his motives, he’d told me he was sent here for two reasons. One, find out why vampires and dark witches are flocking to this area. And two, figure out the source of the intense bursts of magic the seers who work for the chasers have been picking up on. He also told me he thinks I may be the reason for both. Maybe he’s right, or at least partly right. Both supernatural groups are targeting me for one reason or another, and my magic had been seeping through Aunt Claudia’s suppression spell. But I definitely don’t think I’m the only reason. I think there’s something bigger going on. I just don’t know what yet.
“Night Life is at the center of it, isn’t it?” I ask, already knowing the answer. There’s no way Ludvikas isn’t pulling some of the strings, especially since he’s the one sending vampires after me.
Sebastian nods.
“And you can’t investigate there because you blew your chance at being inconspicuous when you saved me.” A fact Chester, the chaser with the crazy, creepy eye stationed at the security desk at the center, alluded to the first time Sebastian took me there.
“I’d blow any cover a hundred times over if it meant you were safe.” Standing in front of me now, he tucks my hair behind my ear, his thumb brushing softly over my jaw. “My only regret is not getting to you sooner.” The way he looks at me has the room falling away around us. No one has ever looked at me the way he is right now. Like I’m the most important thing in the world and he would do literally anything to keep me from harm. He leans in, his breath whispering over my skin, causing my heart to skip several beats ahead. “I—”
A throat clears from somewhere behind him, interrupting whatever he was about to say.
“Want us to leave the room?” Liv waves her thumb between her and Jack as she nods toward the door. “’Cause you know, it’s not like we’re talking about anything important in here.”
I stick my tongue out with an added eye roll. “Does anyone in the coven or any of the chasers have any clues as to why vampires are recruiting?”
“No.” Both Sebastian and Jack say at the same time.
“Maybe Seth will have some insight.” I’m not really looking forward to seeing him again, but at the moment he’s our best lead.
I take hold of Jack’s arm, holding him back as Sebastian and Liv head out into the hallway. “Not to push my luck, but why don’t you want to tell Aunt Claudia and Uncle Caleb? It can’t just be because vampires are increasing their ranks.”
“It’s not.” He jams his hands into his pockets, and takes a deep breath, biting his lip. “There’s always been… animosity and war between vampires and witches, so if the coven ever knew you were a cure, they wouldn’t hesitate to use you as a weapon against them.” He flicks his gaze toward Sebastian out in the hall, then leans in a little closer. “It’s obvious he’s into you, but promise me you’ll be careful. Taking out monsters is what chasers do and if the rest knew…”
“They wouldn’t hesitate, either,” I say, finishing his sentence.
A loud pop slices through the silence of the car.
Jack jerks the wheel to the left, causing the Tempo to swerve violently toward the other lane. A horn blares and tires shriek so close outside my window, I can literally see the cringe lines of the other driver’s eyes as he squeezes them shut. By some miracle, our cars narrowly miss colliding, though it doesn’t stop my shoulder from slamming into the car door. Blinding pain ricochets down my arm and across my back as I bite the inside of my cheek, the taste of blood filling my mouth. Without a seatbelt on, the force of the cars spin sends Sebastian sliding over the seat, heading straight for me. He throws his arm out, flattening his palm against the window, slowing his momentum down just enough to keep from crushing me between him and the door.
A panicked string of curse words fly from the front seat as Jack decelerates and straightens the wheel. The car comes to a stop and a door slams, while in front of me the rapid pulse at Sebastian’s neck throbs in tandem with the pounding beats of my heart. Chest heaving like he’s just ran a marathon, quick breaths move in and out through his parted lips. His eyes are wide, the spot of brown in the blue of his iris holding my attention and keeping me from completely freaking out. Because if we’d hit that car…
“You okay?” Severing our stare, Sebastian’s gaze roams all over my face.
“My shoulder is throbbing something fierce, but I can already fe
el it mending with my new self-healing abilities—which is kind of freaking me out a bit. But other than that, I’m okay. You?”
“Well, I won’t be riding with your cousin again anytime soon, but I’m okay.”
I crack a smile, and he returns the gesture before moving back to his side of the vehicle. I wish I could find humor in near death experiences as easily as he does. It would certainly make the daily death threats more bearable. He rolls his neck to work out the tension in his muscles and exposes the edge of a dark purple bruise hidden beneath the collar of his shirt he likely got while out hunting vampires.
On second thought, maybe I don’t wish to find humor in nearly dying. I don’t know how Sebastian does it. How he can live his life on the edge, never knowing if today might be his last? Never having moments where he can just breathe and enjoy life without worrying about all the scary things waiting to rip him to shreds in the shadows. It has to be incredibly lonely and depressing trying to find the bright spots in all the dark.
Catching me staring, his dark blue eyes hold me in place, giving me a glimpse of the vulnerability he hides beneath the badass chaser he projects to the rest of the world. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t like living his life on the edge. He was just never given the chance to live it any other way.
The passenger side window squeaks as Liv rolls it down, pulling my attention from Sebastian and back to the reality of having been in a near accident.
“Is it bad?” Liv leans half her body out of the car to get a look for herself. “Do you have a spare?”
“This is the spare. And yes, Liv, it’s bad.” Jack kicks at the car then spins in a circle, taking in our surroundings. We’re not exactly in the best part of the city.
“How far do you think we are from the center?” I ask, sliding out of the backseat after Sebastian. I really should pay more attention when he takes me there.
“Not too far. Maybe a couple miles or so.” Sebastian crouches down, examining the tire. It looks like someone took a saw blade and had their way with it. It’s completely shredded.
“Should it look like that?” I nudge a flap with the tip of my Chucks. The last flat Jack got didn’t look like this. This is bad bad. Could have killed us bad. Nearly did kill us bad. Thank the stars we weren’t going any faster, or Jack would have rolled us when he jerked the wheel, and we’d be dealing with a whole different situation right now. A shiver creeps down my spine as I imagine our broken bodies splayed across the pavement in a heap of twisted metal.
“I’m not getting any cell service.” Jack lifts his phone up into the air, waving it back and forth, pulling me from my gruesome thoughts.
“Me either.” Liv walks up and down the sidewalk, holding her phone out in every direction.
“Maybe the diner over there will have a phone we can use.” Sebastian nods his head toward a short building squished between two taller ones. An open sign made of bright red neon lights hangs inside a large picture window, the O flickering in and out. “I’ll have Chester pick us up.”
“Who’s Chester?” Liv asks.
“A friend.” Without elaborating any further, Sebastian takes my hand and heads across the street, leaving my cousins to follow along or be left behind.
A bell chimes over the door as we enter while the floor sticks to the bottom of my Chucks, making squeaky sounds every time I take a step. Stale coffee and hamburger grease permeate the air, wrinkling my nose with the assault. My belly, however, growls at the thought of food. I’ve barely had anything to eat since waking up this morning. Uncle Caleb’s breakfast preparations were questionable at best, so it doesn’t count, and I barely got to eat the donut from Hammond’s.
A lone customer at the head of the counter eyeballs us over the rim of his mug before he turns his attention back to the newspaper held in his hand. I hope he didn’t hear my belly rumbling.
Sebastian leans against the counter, waving a hand to get the waitress’s attention. She’s dressed in a lime green uniform, the color way too cheery for a place so dingy. Buttons span from the white collar to the bottom edge of the skirt, resting just above her knees. She pulls a small notepad from a white apron tied around her waist, and a pen from the messy bun secured at the back of her head. “What can I get you?” Her dull gray eyes barely register him standing there, a shocking difference from the way everyone looks at him at school.
“Do you have a phone we can use?” Sebastian asks while Jack and Liv slide into a booth.
She points her pen toward the back of the building. “There’s an old payphone around the corner by the bathrooms. Help yourself.” Turning away, she busies herself pouring the man at the counter another round of coffee.
Sebastian pokes me in the gut. “Order yourself something to eat. My treat.”
Heat fills my cheeks. “You heard.” So much for hoping my growling belly wasn’t too loud.
“I think everyone in here heard.” A flirty smirk tugs at his mouth as he takes a few backward steps. He crosses his fingers. “Here’s to hoping the payphone works. Who knew those things still existed?”
“Want me to order you anything?”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having. As long as it’s not salad.” He pats his stomach. “Salads are nothing but a tease.”
While Sebastian makes his call, I slip into the booth across the table from Liv and Jack. Flipping a section of the counter up, the waitress makes her way to our table. She places down four menus, then pulls out the pad from her pocket and the pen from her hair. “Can I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?”
A deluxe cheeseburger depicted on the menu cover catches my eye. It looks delicious. Another growl emerges from my stomach. “Two Mountain Dews, please. And two deluxe cheeseburgers with fries.”
She jots down my order then glances over at Jack and Liv. “How about you two?”
“We’ll have the same,” Jack answers for him and Liv both.
“Add a strawberry sundae to mine,” Liv calls out to the waitress who’s heading back behind the counter. “I hope she heard me.”
“I think the entire block heard you,” I tease.
Liv pulls out a napkin from the dispenser, wads it up into a ball, then throws it at me. “What can I say? Having my life flash before my eyes has made me hungry.” She throws another napkin, this time hitting me right in the forehead with it. She snorts, then ducks to the side to avoid getting hit with the two packs of Sweet-N-Low I throw at her. “And I wasn’t that loud.”
Sebastian slips in beside me, resting his arms over the tabletop. “Chester’s on his way.”
“What’s it like at the center? Jack and I don’t have to be worried, do we?” Liv swallows hard like she’s suddenly got a rock stuck in her throat she has to force down. “I mean, the other chasers there aren’t going to try to do anything to us because we’re witches, are they?” She fiddles with the bracelet around her wrist, her whole demeanor suddenly on edge. She’s cool with Sebastian now, but I remember how scared she was when he first told us he was a chaser. I never did ask her why she was so afraid. It’s not like she practices dark magic or anything.
Unlike me, a voice whispers in the back of my mind.
What I did to the vampire on the jogging path when he and his goons attacked Sebastian and me was definitely dark magic. I could feel it in my soul. The way he bled out from his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears—from places I couldn’t see—until his veins split open… It wasn’t right. I knew it wasn’t right from the moment I cast the sanguinary spell, and I should have stopped sooner than I did, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t intoxicating. To hold that much power over someone…
Then there’s whatever I did to Evan when I messed with his emotions. I’m sure dark magic played into that somehow too, whether it be from the spell Ivy gave me, or something I did on my own. Maybe it’s me who should be even more afraid of going to the center. I’m the one who keeps getting closer and closer to being something they need to chase.
“
You two have nothing to worry about,” Sebastian says, pulling me out of my dark thoughts. “I’ve got a sixth sense about people, and you two are as squeaky clean as they come.” He winks at me with a sly grin, obviously referring to his ability to tell who’s supernatural and who’s not, along with who’s potentially supernaturally evil and who’s not. An ability I likely gave him when I brought him back from the brink of death when we were children. Another secret Liv and Jack know nothing about. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to try to explain it to them since I have no idea how it happened myself. Was it some kind of fluke? Was it not? Would it happen again if I were to save someone else? Like Seth? Does being the living dead count since he didn’t have a heartbeat and now he does?
A shudder courses through my entire body at the thought of sharing any kind of connection with Seth. He might be human now, but he’s still the former vampire who attacked me, and the face of the boogeyman fueling my nightmares. I’ll never be able to scrub the memories of what happened at Night Life from my mind. To be potentially connected to him now the way I am with Sebastian, would be torture.
Sebastian arches an eyebrow, his gaze narrowing in on me as though he knows where my thoughts have digressed. I’m really starting to think he does. He says his sixth sense doesn’t allow him to read minds, but he always seems to be attuned to mine.
I shrug off Seth and any supernatural gifts I many have given him as something to stress about later before I give myself a panic attack. With a smile, I lean to the side, nudging Sebastian with my shoulder. “Are you going to pretend Liv and Jack are from a center in England too, like you did me the first time you took me there?”
A Cheshire grin spreads across his face. “The thought had crossed my mind since civilians aren’t supposed to know about the center. You being the only exception.” He gives me a wink then leans on his elbows over the table, his gaze bouncing back and forth between my cousins. “Give me your best British accent.”
The bell above the door chimes, pulling my attention away from Jack’s horrible attempt at trying to sound British. Not a single person in the entire world would believe he’s British.
Of Darkness & Light: Blood Descent Book 2 Page 5