by L.H. Cosway
“I’m just glad I could help,” I finally replied.
Pamphrock turned to thank Rita but was distracted when Rebecca let out a desperate cry, “Daddy!”
In the few moments we weren’t paying attention, Emilia had taken the rope we used in the spell, cut it in two, and used it to tie up Rebecca’s hands and feet. She didn’t look like a particularly strong woman, yet she had Rebecca thrown over her shoulder like she weighed nothing.
She was kidnapping her!
Emilia held a squirming Rebecca in place with one hand while raising the other to us. The electrical fire that was just like mine spilled out, holding us all at bay.
“Emilia Petrovsky! What do you think you’re doing?” Pamphrock demanded furiously.
Rita used both of her hands to throw a ray of white light at Emilia, but she kept it from touching her by flinging a bunch of sparks that disintegrated the light on contact.
“I’m taking the child. You don’t deserve her,” Emilia spat, desperation in her eyes.
I freaking knew she wasn’t to be trusted! Why hadn’t I listened to my gut? Then again, I suspected Emilia hadn’t come here with the intention of taking Rebecca. How could she when she hadn’t even known of her existence until a few hours ago? No, it was simply that my grandmother laid eyes on the little girl and fell in love. Now she wanted to take her for her own.
“She doesn’t belong to you. Hand her back,” Pamphrock said, making a clear effort to stay calm. When he tried to step forward, Emilia burned him with her sparks.
“She’s my chance to make things right,” Emilia wailed, tears suddenly streaming down her face. I’d been correct in my suspicions. Emilia wanted to take Rebecca and keep her as a daughter because her real daughter ran away all those years ago.
“She’s not yours,” I said, leaping into action and throwing my own sparks at her.
Emilia began muttering a spell. The sparks spread out around her and Rebecca, like a mini tornado. It formed a spinning, glittering shield that was impossible to get past, and the force of it caused us all to fall to the floor. I blinked, trying to find my bearings, and looked up just in time to see Emilia spinning out the back door, both her and Rebecca still contained within the sparks.
12.
The moment Emilia left all the doors and windows slammed shut. Finn and Pamphrock tried in vain to get the back door open, but it wouldn’t budge. Rita muttered a spell to try and release the locks on the windows, but they wouldn’t open either. We pushed and shoved, trying to get out of the room, but we were locked in tight.
“She’s locked us in,” Rita exclaimed, stating the obvious.
Finn shot her a look. “If brains were dangerous, you’d be the only one safe.”
“Piss off.”
“Quit squabbling!” Pamphrock commanded. “We need to find a way out of here.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, hitting a number on speed dial. He began giving orders down the line, explaining what happened and telling the person on the other end to get a squad of slayers to Finn’s street immediately.
Finn picked up the toaster and threw it at the window, but instead of smashing the glass, it bounced right off it like rubber.
Rita tried a whole range of spells, but none of them worked. Now Pamphrock’s angry gaze cut to me. “You should never have involved that woman. She is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. Believe me, you have no idea how sorry I am. But I don’t think Emilia wants to harm Rebecca. She’s clearly just infatuated with her. You saw how she looked at her. Her daughter ran away when she was a teenager, and now Emilia wants a second chance at motherhood. She’s taken Rebecca because she reminds her so much of her real daughter. Besides, if she meant her harm, she wouldn’t have been able to take her in the first place. The spell we just cast ensures that.”
Pamphrock ran a hand over his face, looking exhausted. “If that really is the case, then she must have taken her to the Petrovsky Manor. I’ll send another squadron of men over there right now.” He began hitting buttons on his phone and making more calls.
About five minutes later a DOH guy was standing at the back door with a crowbar. The spell must’ve only worked from the inside because he managed to break through within seconds. We all ran out of the house and around to the front garden.
A slayer was lying unconscious by the doorstep. Emilia must have taken him down with a spell on her way out while he was standing guard.
Pamphrock jumped into one of the two DOH vans that had just arrived, ordering, “We need to get to the Petrovsky Manor as quick as we can.”
Having heard all the commotion, Noreen, Alvie, and Gabriel emerged from the RV, asking what was going on. Across the street, I spotted Ethan, Lucas, and Delilah had come out, too. It appeared Finn told Pamphrock about our vampire allies because he didn’t seem at all surprised to see them.
I walked out onto the road, glancing back and forth, but it was obvious that Emilia was long gone. Finn’s street consisted of two parallel rows of houses that went on for nearly a mile. It was dark out now, with street lamps lighting up the area. As I stared into the distance, my eyes landed on a gang of people marching our way about half a mile down the road. That was when I realised we had a much more pressing matter on our hands than chasing after Emilia.
There were about twenty of them, all walking in a straight line, filling the street from one side to the other. Vampires. They’d crossed over onto the north side of the city, marching directly towards us. Speechless, I grabbed Finn and simply pointed. “Look.”
He swore loudly.
“Vampires!” shouted one of Pamphrock’s slayers. “A crap load of them are headed this way.”
“This is an attack,” Pamphrock yelled. “Slayers! Arm yourselves.”
The dozen or so slayers present began grabbing for their weapons, a selection of stakes, knives, and guns. Finn rushed into his house, emerging moments later with his bow and arrow and a bunch of stakes that he tossed to Gabriel, Alvie, and Noreen. I pulled out my razor, smoothing my thumb over the carved handle.
“Oh crap,” I said, panic rising when I looked behind me. More vampires were approaching from the other end of the street. They had us fenced in. Pamphrock ordered half his men to line up facing one end of the street and the other half to face the other end. There weren’t enough of us though, especially going up against so many vampires. I heard a slayer speaking into a radio, calling for all active squadrons to get to Finn’s house ASAP.
I should have known this was coming, especially after Eliza sent her blood donor here to scope the place out. Now I regretted that Rita hadn’t poisoned the bastard when she had the chance. Someone came to stand behind me, and I saw it was Ethan. Both he and Lucas were armed with swords, while Delilah carried some strange projectile that appeared to be loaded up with stakes.
Ira stood next to her. I hadn’t even realised he was around. A second later, he disappeared. His clothing fell to the ground, and his animal form emerged.
The vampires were close enough for me to be able to make them out now. At the head of the group stood Whitfield and Eliza. The vampire governor was armed with a sword similar to Ethan’s. They seemed to be the weapon of choice for older vamps. I suspected because swords were what they started out fighting with.
I heard the fighting begin behind us, with Pamphrock shouting orders and the sound of guns firing. Bullets wouldn’t kill vampires, but they’d slow them down long enough for someone to stick a stake in them. I think Finn told me that once.
Whitfield and Eliza’s group stopped a small distance away from us. Eliza stepped to the forefront. “Hand over the witch and we can avoid any further fighting,” she called out, her caramel-coloured eyes landing on me with cat-like slowness. Damn, so I was the one they’d come for. In her sharp gaze, I saw the many fantasies she’d had about my death for the last few weeks. By the looks of it, she was already salivating at the prospect of being the one to serve it up to me on a si
lver platter.
“What witch?” Finn shouted, pointing an arrow in Eliza’s direction.
“That one,” she answered with a hiss, pointing a long, red fingernail my way.
“You’ve your shit in bucketfuls if you think that’s happening,” Finn shot back as Ethan seethed, “Never.”
His stern defence of me took me by surprise. Butterflies fluttered through my stomach, even as I winced at the sound of bullets firing behind us, making my ears ring.
“Have it your way,” Eliza replied. “If you won’t hand her over, then we’ll just have to take her.”
She raised a gun, which I hadn’t noticed until that point, and fired it at the slayer by my side so fast I hardly had time to register what happened.
Whitfield laughed with wicked joy, levelling his cold eyes on Ethan.
My attention went to the wounded slayer, and I stared at him in shock. Eliza didn’t pull any punches. She shot him right in the heart. Undiluted anger spread through me like a virus, encapsulating my every pore. Grabbing a stake out of Finn’s back pocket, I made to run at Eliza. With one hand holding his bow, Finn reached out and pulled me back, shaking his head at me before the vampires noticed I was about to run at them in idiotic, suicidal rage.
Surprisingly, Delilah was next to launch an attack. She aimed her projectile directly at the vamps before pulling a lever. The thing began spinning around, shooting out stakes like a vampire killing machine gun. The sharp wooden spikes took down several vampires at once.
That was when all hell broke loose, and both sides charged for one another. Finn advanced at a steady pace, effortlessly shooting arrows like it was second nature. Rita spread out both palms and released the same light she’d thrown at Emilia earlier, only this time there were no magic sparks to fight it off and it knocked the vampire she’d been aiming at unconscious.
Noreen, Alvie, and Gabriel joined hands, chanting a spell in unison. I recognised this one from my recent studies with Rita. It was a glamour spell. They were ensuring that the fight remained unseen by human eyes.
I couldn’t keep track of everyone, but I was vaguely aware of Ethan and Whitfield facing off with their swords. They didn’t even seem worried about being hit with the vast array of projectiles that were currently flying all over the place.
Amid the carnage, all I could focus on was a head of honey blonde hair and a mahogany silk dress with nails as red as blood and high heels to match. She came for me, and something deep inside of me—something feral—relished the fight to come. This ended here and now. One of us wasn’t walking away, and I was going to try my hardest to ensure that person was Eliza.
She reached up and ran a hand over the side of her face that I’d burned with my sparks.
“See how I’m all healed up?” she asked, a cruel slant to her mouth. “Your little trick didn’t keep me hurt for long.”
I lifted my hand, summoning my sparks, or as Emilia called them, electrical fire. “Maybe I’ll leave a longer-lasting mark this time,” I replied, doing my best to match her casual tone. She wanted me to fear her, but I was coming to learn that, although I still feared vampires and what they could do to me, I was also something to fear. I wasn’t a defenceless human. I was the granddaughter of a sorcerer who was discovering new abilities each and every day. I could take Eliza.
Good God, I really hoped I could take her.
“I’m going to pull out your heart and feed it to you,” she threatened.
“Has anyone ever mentioned you have issues?”
She swiped her claw-like hand at me, and I backed away. Okay, I had a stake in my pocket and a razor in my hand, but which to choose? Remembering that I now possessed Finn’s knife fighting skills, I decided the blade was the safer option given my lack of experience with stakes.
Taking a chance, I lunged at her with the razor, slicing into her femininely muscled arm. She actually did a double-take as dark blood dripped down her bicep from the wound.
“You stupid little bitch,” she seethed. “You’re going to pay for that. You will pay for every strike.”
Did she just call me a bitch? Well now, that wasn’t on. Summoning all the magic I could muster, I threw a lightning bolt of sparks, and they burned right through her dress, singeing her skin. She wailed in pain before diving at me, and I jumped away fast, falling to the ground with a painful thump. Before I knew it, she was on top of me and my nostrils were filled with the scent of her flowery perfume. It was so pungent it practically stung my sinuses.
One hand gripped my throat, her nails digging into me and breaking the skin. Oh, no! She broke my skin. I was bleeding. I expected her to turn crazed and ravenous, but she stilled completely, a glazed look in her eyes. It was like my blood hypnotised her. I took advantage of her momentary distraction to slice a gash down the exposed, burnt skin at her ribcage.
Her eyes widened at the attack and then they weren’t caramel anymore. They were black. Her fangs jutted out, and she hissed at me like a python. I needed to get the stake out of my pocket, but her entire body pinned me down, and it felt like she was made from pure steel. I struggled beneath her, trying to get at my pocket, but it was no use. One second her black eyes were eating me up, and the next, her fangs were slicing into my throat and all I could do was lie there as she ravaged me—and not in a sexy way.
I used to think that vampires consumed blood in mouthfuls. But now that it was actually happening to me it felt like they could suck out litres within seconds. And right now, each second felt like an eternity. I never knew blood loss could be so painful. Each and every part of me ached.
In the next moment, she pulled away, and her eyes were neither black nor caramel. They were silver. In fact, her skin was turning silver, too. Her body trembled and I could almost see her skin tightening—transforming. This was it. She drank my blood and now she was going to turn into a stronger vampire. An indestructible one who could walk in the sun. Just as she was about to sink her fangs into me again, somebody yanked her away from me.
I looked up to see Ethan standing above me, one hand clutching Eliza’s throat and the other pulling down hard on her hair. She was weak because she was still transforming, and Ethan kept a hold of her easily. I felt helpless and weak, too, unable to think straight. It was only when Ethan locked his eyes with mine and commanded, “Stake her,” that I realised what I needed to do. Struggling to my feet, I reached inside my pocket and pulled out the small piece of wood.
Eliza tried to wriggle from Ethan’s grasp, but he only yanked down harder on her hair, and she cried out in agony. I held Ethan’s gaze as my magic swirled inside me, healing my blood loss. My strength resurged, and I pounced on Eliza like an animal. I was outraged that she’d bitten me. I’d never felt more violently angry in my entire life. I’ve never felt more unlike myself, as though I was some other scary person who was capable of killing easily.
My voice didn’t even sound like mine when I spoke. “You did this. You dug your own grave. You could have walked away, but you didn’t, and now it all ends here.”
I locked eyes with Ethan one last time. He watched me, his eyes full of passion and fascination. With a force I didn’t know I was capable of, I plunged the stake right into Eliza’s heart. Her silver eyes flashed back to their original colour and the silver that had started to tinge her skin vanished. Her body slumped. I was still holding the stake in my hand, and I swear I felt it the moment her heart stopped beating. Her body slipped from Ethan’s grip and fell to the ground.
Ethan and I had all but forgotten about her now as we stared at one another. I’d never killed before. I thought about what it would feel like and the emotion I’d always associated it with was guilt. At this moment, I didn’t feel any guilt. I felt righteous. Indestructible. Something passed between me and Ethan then—a connection, an understanding.
“You’re magnificent,” he breathed right before Whitfield let out an almighty roar.
“Eliza!” he cried, speeding to the body at Ethan’s feet and pulling he
r into his arms. His dark eyes lacerated me. “You killed her. Her blood is all over you.”
I’d never heard two more gut curdling sentences in all my life. I guessed having a vampire who was hundreds of years old focusing all his rage on you would do that.
Ethan grabbed my arm and pulled me several feet away from Whitfield before placing himself in front of me.
Whitfield stared at him like he was an idiot. “You defend the one who betrayed you? Have you no self-respect?”
“I have plenty. You’ve lost this round, Jeremy. Walk away,” Ethan said, his voice sharp.
“I will do nothing of the sort,” Whitfield retorted, swinging his sword at Ethan, and we backed away farther.
It was only now that I had a chance to look around and see the carnage. During the time I’d been fighting Eliza, many vampires and slayers were killed. The evidence of their deaths coated the ground in a sea of blood and lifeless bodies. As quickly as I could, I scanned those still standing, ticking off each person I lay my eyes on and making sure all my friends were okay.
Seeing that Whitfield was gunning for us, Rita galloped over, flashing her white light on him. He noticed her coming though and managed to glide out of the way before the light could hit him.
“Ah, is this the witch who flooded my lovely home?” Whitfield asked.
Rita stood before him, a little cocky. “Yeah, what of it?”
Whitfield’s eyes passed over her, travelling to Noreen, Gabriel, and Alvie, before focusing on Rita again. The moment his eyes locked on Noreen, I saw them light up in recognition like he somehow sensed she was Rita’s mother.
“What of it?” he repeated back at her with a bite to his words. “Well, now let me see. I do believe I have torn men limb from limb for lesser crimes.”
Rita’s cocky stance grew wary. She levelled her palms out in front of her, preparing for an attack. “Just try it and see what happens,” she goaded, unable to help herself.