Sam gritted his teeth, baring his fangs.
He couldn’t touch the flask…. He couldn’t touch it….
An idea occurred to him like parting clouds after a monsoon, and his snarl became a smile. He felt lighter. Perfect, he thought, as relief washed over him like a blessing. Yes. That will do.
The plan was two-part. One part would deal with Lehrer and the witch. The other would help him with that flask.
Sam reached out for his newly acquired power and began to draw it in. It was like winding up a slingshot or cocking the hammer of a gun. He pulled what he needed into himself and focused it in preparation for what lay ahead.
Then he combed through the store of knowledge in his mind, the words and scenarios and creatures he’d stolen from Logan’s prolific pen. He straightened when he found what he was looking for, and his wicked smile broadened.
The plan would take some finessing, and he would have to be convincing. Much of its success depended upon his ability to make the unreal seem real.
Sam turned to the vampires who stood waiting in silence, their backs straight, their eyes glowing red. He approached them slowly. “When Logan arrives, one of you will pretend to be me,” he began. “This is what we’re going to do.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Meagan!” Dietrich gurgled around the word, coughed up the residual blood remaining in his throat, and hurriedly spit it out. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and rose to his knees while Meagan slumped beside him. He was restored; there was no more pain in his chest, and no more blood building in his throat, but as the final words of the spell had shifted him into full health, it seemed to have sapped the very same from Meagan.
He took her by the upper arms and pulled her up to brace her against his chest, knowing even before he placed his hand to her cheek that her skin would be ice cold. The rain had all but stopped, but they were already soaked, and the night was crisp with Autumn. He’d seen this happen before; her body temperature would continue to drop unless he got her warmed up fast.
The words to a spell were slipping past his lips before he’d given them conscious thought. He continued to speak, casting quickly and under his breath, until he felt Meagan begin to warn under his touch. He looked down, noticing the return of color to her cheeks, and almost breathed a sigh of relief.
Almost.
It was the haunting baying of hounds that brought him up short, stilling the air in his lungs. The sound traveled over the hills and through the forest like a dawning nightmare, the yipping and yapping of some hellish creature that Dietrich absolutely knew was not natural.
“That doesn’t sound good,” he whispered.
The hounds drew closer, their howls and growls wrapping around the tree trunks to reach out toward them on fingers of fog. He could feel something impending, something approaching, and he knew he needed to get Meagan to safety.
“They’re coming for us,” he said. He looked down. Meagan’s eyes fluttered and opened.
“Who is?” she asked, her voice slightly hoarse as if from disuse.
“Not who,” he corrected as he shifted under her and put his weight back on his feet. “What.”
Meagan frowned and, as if she too could sense that the situation was dire, she found the strength to sit up on her own, placing her hands palm-down in the dirt to brace herself.
The baying sounded again. The clouds parted slightly before the moon.
“What the hell is that?” she asked, her purple eyes wide.
“I don’t know, but I have an idea, and I’m guessing Sam has sent them just for us. I’m also guessing they’ll be here any minute now. Can you get up?”
Meagan nodded, albeit hesitantly, and slowly pushed herself up onto her feet. She wobbled a little; Dietrich steadied her. The smell of something burning wafted toward them. It was laced with the stench of sulfur.
Terror spiked through Dietrich’s chest like a poison-tipped arrow. His guess had been right.
He grasped Meagan’s arm in a vice-like grip and began to run. “Run!” he yelled, even as he felt her trip beside him. He steadied her, pulled harder, and in a few short seconds, she was keeping pace.
The baying became a steady yipping. He could hear a deeper sound now, as well. It was a kind of chest-deep rumble. It was breathing. Rumbling breathing. And it was gaining on them.
We need a car, he thought. If they could get into a vehicle, they could lock the doors. He could use a spell to start the engine.
The ravine for the most part abutted the city’s outlying neighborhoods. It moved around the south part of town like a half-circle river.
The houses on the outskirts of town were newer than those deeper within the city limits. They had garages. But people inevitably spared those garages for junk and tools and parked their cars outside, where the elements would wreak havoc on them. Bad for the cars, good for Dietrich and Meagan. If they’d come the right distance in the flash flood, they would be near a neighborhood right now, which meant that they would be near parked vehicles. He only had to hope that they had gotten out of the ravine on the correct bank and were running in the right direction.
Something snapped behind them, underbrush being crushed and branches being torn in twain, and Dietrich became desperate. Without thinking, he sent out a pulse of magic, spoke a few short words, and waited.
Within seconds, the sound of horns honking erupted in the darkness. What looked like ground lightning flashed through the trees up ahead.
His spell had worked; the vehicles parked outside nearby had answered his magic. Their headlights blinked on and off and their horns blared. Meagan didn’t need to be told to head for the nearest of the signaling automobiles. She swerved beside him, blazing the trail through the nearest underbrush to break through to the other side, Dietrich right on her tail.
They came out in a cul-de-sac, one of the few on a street that had actually been completed in the abandoned development south of town. This particular street housed six total homes, each one inhabited, each yard tended, and each driveway boasting a relatively new four-wheel-drive vehicle.
The nearest was a four-door Jeep. Lehrer shouted another magic word, let out another burst of rarely used power, and the front two Jeep doors popped open and swung outward.
Dietrich and Meagan reached the white Jeep just as a crashing resounded behind them, and Dietrich could feel the heat of the beasts’ breath. The smell of sulfur grew stronger. He clenched his teeth and grunted as he launched himself into the driver’s side of the car and slammed the door shut behind him. On her side, Meagan attempted to do the same, but having to move around the car had slowed her progress just the wrong amount.
She shot into the seat on the passenger side and grappled for the door handle, but a fur-covered appendage ripe with gut-ripping claws shot out of the darkness and swiped across the back of her forearm. Fortunately, she was wearing thick leather, and due to the odd angle the claws barely made it through the hide. With Dietrich’s help, they pulled the door shut, trapping the arm in the gap. A second arm shot through the same gap, claws slicing back and forth, growls now emanating from somewhere in the confusion.
“Pull!” Dietrich commanded, knowing that there was still a certain amount of trepidation in Meagan as far as slamming someone’s body in a door was concerned. She flinched and did as she was told, letting the door go slack for a fraction of a second before they both yanked with all of their combined strength.
A spell might have helped, but in the heat of the moment, what a person needed most often fled from their mind like butterflies on a strong Spring wind. Still, they managed; the door came crashing inward to the sound of terrible cries of pain and yips of maddened agony.
A severed limb hit the floor of the jeep, and a puddle of blood spread across the rubber mat. Meagan and Dietrich sat there a moment, breathing hard into the muffled quiet.
And then one of the creatures jumped up on the car’s hood. Dietrich gasped and Meagan screamed, both of them jolting back in their
seats. A second beast followed the first, its claws scraping the paint as it scrambled up onto the car’s hood and glared at them through the glass.
“Holy hell,” whispered Meagan now that they finally had a clear view of what had chased and trapped them.
“Good guess,” said Dietrich.
The massive Hell Hounds crowded the Jeep. There must have been at least a dozen of them, twice the size of mastiffs, black as night, and corded with unnatural muscle. Flames flicked from their be-fanged maws, something like acid dripped from their jowls, and their eyes burned a Satan’s fire red.
Outside, the car alarms died one after another. Porch lights began coming on. It was time to get out of there and get rid of the Hell Hounds before they brought harm to anyone else.
“What are we going to do?” Meagan asked. There were dark circles under her eyes. Healing him really had drained her. But if they wanted to get out of this alive and spare any others in the process, she was going to have to pull some strength from somewhere deep right now.
“Magic,” Dietrich replied. “We’re going to do magic.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
About a mile and a half before the turn-off that would take them to the intersection of the city’s south road and the train tracks, Logan’s phone chimed and vibrated with a text notification.
She pulled the phone quickly out of her denim jacket pocket and read the message on the screen. Sis im wih mom and jsmes ar the er. Tsylor agsin. Sad has him at home.
Logan automatically translated the text speech in her head. Sis, I’m with mom and James at the ER. Taylor again. Dad has him at home.
She felt instantly sick. And then she felt angry. Really angry. What the hell? What had happened? When she’d left the house, every light had been off, every bed full, and the house had been slumbering in peace.
It was the calm before the storm, she realized. We will never have real peace. Her family would never truly know what it was like to get along without the constant, violent struggle. They would never know what it was like to sleep through the night without fear or fury.
She texted back. Is he okay?
She translated the reply. Broken jaw and dislocated shoulder. But the cops are here because of the murder earlier, and they’re suspicious.
Logan stared at the screen as a numb sort of cold stole through her. In the space of seconds, she saw her family torn apart, she saw her sick older brother alone in a padded room or strapped down to a table as apathetic strangers administered electric shocks. She imagined him in a dark place rocking back and forth, tears dried on his cheeks, hair falling out from stress, body gaunt from malnutrition and too many forced drugs. She thought of the silence that would fill the spaces in her home where yelling and screaming used to reside. She thought of the awkward “hello’s” and the unspoken worries and the regrets. She saw her loved ones un-beaten physically, but mentally and spiritually on their hands and knees.
She had often wondered when the authorities were going to get involved in what was happening with their family. She’d also often wondered whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing. Her parents touted the benefits of privacy and dictated that what went on behind their closed doors was their own business. They could handle it. They were blood. Government and family were oil and water. They didn’t mix.
But at the same time, her parents continued to allow their children to be abused by another of their children. And maybe Logan wasn’t trying hard enough, but she just couldn’t ever manage to see how that was too terribly different from her parents doing the abusing themselves.
“Logan?” Katelyn had slowed the car just before the turn-off. There were no other headlights anywhere in sight, so they were alone, and the car came to a crawling near-stop as Katelyn gave her a questioning look. “What’s going on?” she asked, nodding toward the phone in Logan’s hands.
Logan felt the usual shame that came when her family troubles nudged their way into her school or friendship life. She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Personal crap again. Don’t worry about it.” She turned the phone off and re-pocketed it, not bothering to respond any further. What was the point? James would heal, and hopefully without any long-term complications. If the cops interfered… so be it. Maybe it was kismet. And she was glad she wasn’t there to witness the drama for once. She had enough of her own to deal with anyway.
“Keep going,” she instructed softly, nodding toward the turn-off ahead.
She didn’t have a plan for dealing with Sam once she got to the tracks. She’d had no time to come up with one. During the drive down here, though her thoughts had been spinning and her mind had been working overtime, the result had been a jumbled, terrified mess of mental activity without any fruitful outcome. She still had no clue what she was going to do.
She only knew she had to help Dominic.
“Are you okay?” Katelyn asked as they made a right turn and moved down another long stretch of dark road.
Logan stared out the window and licked her lips. Katelyn was a good friend. They’d been through a lot together. When Katelyn had her appendix removed at the age of eleven, it was Logan who stayed with her at the hospital and then slept in a sleeping bag beside her bed at her house for several nights. Almost a year to the day later, Logan had suffered an appendicitis as well. As if it was fate, both Katelyn and Meagan had slept beside Logan for the next week. The three girls were close.
Logan knew things about Katelyn and Meagan that no one else knew. Katie was “that blonde girl” who was so much more than she seemed. Meagan was the outwardly smart girl, the dark-haired one that everyone figured was “deep.” But Katie was the one who said what everyone else was thinking or who came up with an idea that no one else had thought of. There was much more to her than met the eye. And Logan appreciated her beyond words.
So she understood that Katelyn had to ask what she’d just asked. But the question was retarded to Logan. Of course she wasn’t okay. Her brother was a one-man walking genocide, and the Lord of the Dead wanted to kill her and take her home to his land of darkness and despair.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, realizing how easy it was to lie when the world became overwhelming. No wonder her mother drank. No wonder she shrank from reality the way she did. It was just so much fucking easier.
Up ahead, the paved road ran out and potholes began to dominate the grated dirt path. Logan felt sorry for Katelyn’s little VW Beetle; such a vehicle was not created for these kinds of “roads.” She glanced over at her friend.
But Katelyn didn’t seem bothered by the bumps or potholes. She stared straight ahead, handled the swerving and maneuvering with skill, and kept her expression neutral. She was being strong.
Logan kicked herself mentally for her standoffish behavior. Good friends were hard to come by, and because she was in a foul mood, she’d been taking this one for granted.
“The tracks are there,” Katelyn said, pulling Logan from her thoughts. She pointed, and Logan turned to squint through the rain-smeared windshield at the space of ground illuminated by the Beetle’s headlights. Sure enough, a row of metal intersecting with columns of wood stretched into the darkness.
“Stop the car,” Logan instructed. Katelyn brought the car to a halt and a few straggling rain drops plopped against the glass. She turned off the engine. Silence filled the night. Darkness pressed in against the windows.
After a brief hesitation, Logan grasped the door handle and pulled it. The door swung open and she got out of the car. The cool, moist air kissed her cheek and left damp drops on her eyelashes. The humid, black expanse was quiet.
On the driver’s side, Katelyn got out, her shoe crunching the gravel beneath it. Logan spared her a glance and turned her attention back to the darkness.
“Dom?” she called out. There was no answer but for the occasional rain spatter and the sounds of the night. She licked her lips. “Sam?” she called with a little less volume.
“Yes, Logan?”
Ch
apter Twenty-Four
Logan spun. When she did, it was to find that the car was gone, as was Katelyn. All that remained was a moonlit clearing, a long stretch of train tracks, which she herself stood in the middle of, and a young man. He stood maybe fifteen feet away, his wide stance placing a boot on either metal rung of the tracks. She recognized him as one of Dominic’s friends, Nathan McCay.
Nathan’s normally too-long blond hair was longer now, and seemed thicker as well as a little darker. His eyes were different too. They burned like the fires of some god-fearing hell, and pulsed with every beat of what Logan assumed was Nathan’s now unnatural heart.
“What did –” Where was Katelyn? The car? What the hell?
“What is happening between us has nothing to do with Katelyn Shanks,” Nathan told her. Sam told her. “She’s only in the way.”
“Nothing is happening between us,” Logan told him, wondering how he had managed to get rid of Katelyn and the car the way he had. She blinked and hastily looked around, realizing that the area was different as well. There were fewer trees here, as if they’d moved a little more down along the tracks.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Sam said, “if it makes you feel better.”
Logan’s gaze narrowed. She straightened as much as her lack of courage would allow her to and lifted her chin.
Well, now at least she knew whose body Sam had taken over when he had left Alec’s in the cornfield. Nathan must have been somewhere nearby, perhaps already knocked out and tied up by Alec just in case. There was no way of knowing, and it didn’t matter. Not really. Not now.
“I’m here, Sam. Where is Dominic?”
“There,” he said easily. He smiled, flashing the gleaming white set of the fangs he seemed so fond of, the same fangs he’d pressed deep into her throat only a few short days ago. Then he turned and lifted his left hand, gesturing to the stretch of tracks behind him. The moonlight illuminated the expanse, revealing a dark, sprawled form that lay unmoving across the tracks.
Secretly Sam Page 10