Secretly Sam

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “There,” Meagan said, taking Lehrer gently by his uninjured arm and steering him in that direction.

  “It killed more than a hundred thousand people,” said Lehrer.

  Meagan’s gaze cut to him, her brow furrowed. “What?” She noticed the drops of sweat along his forehead and the red tinge to the brown of his irises. He was fighting something more than pain now, and he was babbling. “Hang in there, Mr. Lehrer. We’ll have help soon.”

  “Do you know why the earthquake killed so many the day after Halloween, Meagan?” he asked, his voice guttural.

  Meagan of course had no idea, and she wasn’t sure that she cared. She was desperate to keep him talking, if that helped him deal with the pain, but more so to keep him moving toward the building that had the phone. They would have to break the window….

  “Why?” she asked, placating him as she moved them along.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted with a harsh laugh. “But my guess is the door hadn’t been closed right,” he gritted out. “The door to October Land. I think that time, it hadn’t quite swung all the way shut.”

  Meagan stopped in her tracks, frozen by what Lehrer had just said. The sound of her teacher’s ragged breathing filled the damp night air. In the distance, thunder rolled over the hills like a lazy juggernaut.

  She swallowed hard. “October Land?” she asked.

  “The realm between this one and Samhain’s. It surrounds us like….” He closed his red-rimmed eyes and swayed on his feet. She steadied him with a tight grip on his bicep. He opened his eyes and focused on the coffee shop several yards away. “Like a donut,” he finished.

  “You’re losing it,” Meagan muttered. But despite the bizarreness of his words, she couldn’t ignore him. Mr. Lehrer was their grove leader by way of merit. He’d earned his place at their head. He was a smart man, a capable man, and an excellent wizard. If he was telling her this right here and right now, maybe there was a reason.

  “Go on,” she prompted reluctantly. “Tell me about October Land and the door.”

  “The pain,” he hissed, shutting his eyes tight again. “It’s taking over.”

  Meagan nodded and swallowed hard. “I know.”

  “The door you already know about,” he suddenly said, waving his hand dismissively. “But October Land, you don’t.” He opened his eyes once more and zeroed in on her. His pupils seemed warmed at their centers by some kind of firelight.

  Hell fire, Meagan realized.

  “Our multiverse is round,” he told her hastily. His words were scratched through his throat like nails across the chalkboards of agony, but she didn’t stop him. She knew instinctively that she needed to hear this.

  Lehrer seemed to marshal himself, skin pale and damp, darkness blooming beneath his eyes, fire rising within them. He straightened a little and took a deep, shaky breath. His level gaze became serious. “Surrounding it is a world that acts as a conduit between realities. Because we feel and hear and see it the most during October, we’ve named it October Land.” He stopped, gasped as some of the Hell Hound poison no doubt found his heart, and held up his hand to stop Meagan when she reached out to grab him once more.

  “No,” he said. “Let me finish. The door has always been closed, Meagan. Always before the end of October, that’s what our books say. But I think there’ve been other close calls. Times when something went wrong. Like in 1755. And a close call could cause some of October to slip out. Some of Samhain to be left behind. Then things happen.”

  “Like earthquakes?”

  Lehrer nodded. Then he stumbled back, and this time Meagan made it to his side, righted him with effort, and steered him toward the dry cleaners.

  “Okay,” Meagan said. “I get it.” When Sam returned to his realm on October 31st, they needed to lock up after him. “Shut the door, shut it on time, and shut it tight.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Logan’s hand was shaking. Her fingertips were going numb where they squished against the ridges of the yellow wooden pencil. Katelyn and Dominic were quiet, breaths all but held, neither moving a centimeter. The car had become as still as a tomb.

  Katelyn had pulled a backpack from the trunk of the Beetle and extracted a dull pencil and math notebook from its rather messy entrails. Pieces of torn paper stuck out of the notebook at odd angles and eraser shavings decorated the coils on the left-hand side. Not that Katelyn ever bothered to erase her math problems. Normally, she either scratched them out impatiently or left them incorrect. Unlike languages and science, which Logan knew Katelyn secretly adored, math was not her thing. Rather, the shavings most likely came from the white doodles Katelyn had erased into the colored cover of the notebook.

  Logan worried her bottom lip with her teeth until a dull ache pulsed through it. She didn’t know what to write. She felt that the slightest squiggle or dotted “i” would condemn them all. But if she wrote nothing, they would never find this potion bottle Sam was looking for, and then he would find it.

  And Logan would die.

  She swore softly under her breath and pressed the pencil lead to the first line on the paper. Normally, this was the moment in life that she enjoyed most. It was this split second of endless possibility that flooded her system with a feeling of omnipotence. She lived for this beat in eternity when all seemed to slow and hush and wait – to see what she would create. It could be anything. Anything. No other freedom could compare.

  But now the hushed world was filled with monsters, and they weren’t waiting to see what she would create. They were waiting to see which of them she would let in.

  Very slowly, she wrote. The lead left a silver gray trail behind it, like a gemstone snail dancing across a field of white. One word, two, a sentence. At the end, she placed the period with a sense of finality she’d never before known.

  “Let me see it,” said Dom, who held out his hand from where he gazed at her over the back of the driver’s seat.

  Logan studied him. His aqua green gaze was so bright, so vivid and stark against his handsome but notably pale features. She picked up the notebook and handed it to him. He turned it around and read what she’d written.

  “It won’t work,” he told her. He looked up, leveled his gaze on her hands, which held only a pencil, and added, “Clearly.”

  Logan began chewing on the inside of her cheek.

  Dominic went on. “Maybe in Samhain’s realm, your bard powers would be rooted enough to work like this, but not here. This is too… umm….”

  “Magical?” Logan offered sheepishly. Her voice almost cracked under the strain of her embarrassment.

  Dom caught her eyes with his. She felt a strange pull, as if she were being drawn into the stormy seas of him. Slowly, he smiled. “Yes.”

  Logan waited a beat, if only to continue staring at him, and then she held out her hand. “I’ll try something else.”

  He passed the notebook back to her and she pressed her pencil once more to its paper.

  She had tried the simple route the first time, so as not to write too many unnecessary words. However, Dominic was right. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking with, The potion bottle appears in Logan’s grasp, safe and unopened.

  Samhain had changed the chemistry of her world enough that her writing could make things happen, but not like this. This was a realm of mathematics and science and mental disorders, and words held power only because of the way they drew the reader in, painted a picture, and evoked emotion. They created.

  That was what she needed to do now.

  “Okay,” she said, sitting back and closing her eyes to clear her thoughts. “Give me a sec.” Then she began writing again.

  Time slipped into the background, the sound of her pencil scratching on the paper grew fainter, and Logan sank inside of herself, inside the story she was telling. When she was finished, she realized that she could breathe deeper now. Her head felt clearer.

  She set the pencil down and handed the notebook to Dominic with absolute confidence. Ther
e weren’t many things in life Logan could do absolutely right.

  But damned everything else to hell, this was one of them.

  Dominic began to read, Katelyn reading over his broad shoulder. Normally, it would terrify Logan to have someone reading her work. But this was no essay she was thinking of submitting for a contest or an article she’d sent to a magazine. This was no manuscript, unedited and pure, set before the scrutinizing eyes of an agent. This was just her, hopefully saving her own life.

  “It’s perfect,” Dominic whispered. He looked up from the paper. “You really are good at this.”

  Logan recognized the sincerity in his voice and felt her skin heat up – in a good way. She felt a warmth spread through her belly and a sensation of lightness throughout her entire body. She smiled. She couldn’t help it.

  “He’s right,” Katelyn agreed as she finished reading herself. “But you already knew that, and I’d hate for your head to swell back there. It’s hard enough getting out of that seat.”

  With speed and flourish, Dominic proceeded to rip the newly written page out of the notebook, turn in his seat, and open the driver’s side door. Katelyn and Logan exchanged looks. Then Katelyn turned and got out as well. A second later, she was pushing her seat forward so Logan could climb out of the back.

  The forest beside the ravine had that freshly washed scent to it. The air smelled like wet dirt, the pine needles dripped rain remnants, and the ground was spongy beneath their feet. The moon hung low over the distant mountains, its bottom crescent tip brushing the peaks of the closest Rockies. An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, and otherwise it was quiet but for the occasional muffled drip and rustle in the damp leaves.

  It was exactly as Logan had described it in the notebook only moments ago. Her tiny story was already being woven into reality.

  She held her breath as the three of them made their way together to the water’s edge. Logan noticed the way her companions moved, the way they surreptitiously peered into the darkness and stepped lightly so as not to make too much noise. Just as she’d written they would.

  They stopped at the lip of the ditch and peered into the murky, muddy water. The water had been raging past a few moments ago, but now the ravine appeared as if it were settling down after throwing a fit. The edges of the ditch were slimy and dark, and twigs and leaves had carved paths in the peat to prove the tremendous height and speed that the water had reached with the storm. Autumn leaves floated on the murky surface, along with clumps of moss and tangled vine.

  Again, just like she’d written it.

  And suddenly, there it was. As they watched, a bubble rose to the surface of the slow flowing water. Then another. The third was bottle-shaped and shimmered like slime on metal. Which was what it was.

  “I’ll be damned,” Logan whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Remnants of glass unstuck themselves from the large front window’s frame and tinkled to the ground to join the other shards. Meagan glanced at them, feeling a bit sorry, and lifted the phone’s receiver to her ear. She began to dial a number.

  A few feet away, Dietrich Lehrer sat against the cupboard doors on the inside of the front desk, his knees curled to his chest, his head bent and hidden. His body shook visibly as it rocked back and forth. Meagan eyed the skin on his hands; the pallor had changed. It was not only pale now, it was turning gray.

  The phone went to voicemail, and Meagan pressed the little white pegs on the cradle to hang it up. She sucked her lip in, bit down on it, and tried to think of another number. Mr. Lehrer’s ragged breathing filled the brief silence, niggling at her to hurry.

  Just as she began to try another number on the pad, a wind picked up, shooting invasively through the broken window to rush through the small space of the shop and whip through her hair. Meagan shielded her face with her free arm. The wind grew stronger, lifting papers and receipts off of the pin they were tacked to on the desk and sending them about the office like white bats. The last few shards of glass remaining in the window fell from their frame to shatter below. Plastic wrapped clothes on hanging racks behind Meagan began to sway lazily back and forth.

  Eyes shut tight against the debris, Meagan ducked behind the desk in self preservation. She could no longer hear Lehrer; the wind was too loud. Meagan pressed herself to the wood of the cupboard and waited.

  A few seconds later, the wind died down. Seconds after that, the sound of boots on glass pricked Meagan’s ears. She lowered her arm, opened her eyes, and held her breath, listening intently.

  “Hello Angel Eyes.”

  Meagan screeched in surprise and jumped to her feet, spinning around to face the source of the deep voice.

  Shawn Briggs leaned casually over the counter behind which she’d been hiding. His inhuman red eyes locked onto hers, his expression slightly amused. “My, aren’t we jumpy.” He pushed off the counter and slowly stepped around it, the glass crunching under his boots.

  Mr. Lehrer was still curled into a tight ball, but his head was raised now, and Meagan couldn’t bear to look at him. She’d never seen anyone fall victim to a Hell Hound before, but by the looks of the stone gray tone of her teacher’s skin, the red in his eyes that almost matched a vampire’s, and the tips of the fangs that now rested just behind Lehrer’s lips, she could imagine the beast’s poison had nearly finished doing its evil deed. Lehrer was turning into some kind of monster. She even wondered whether it was too late to save him now.

  “Someone looks a little worse for wear,” Shawn said as he kneeled in front of Mr. Lehrer and pretended to look him over. He pressed his forefinger thoughtfully to his chin. “Hmm. Had a little run in with a Hell Hound, I see.”

  Meagan said nothing.

  Shawn glanced at her over his shoulder. His fanged smile was reprimanding and coy. And… hot?

  Oh gods.

  It hit her hard and strange. There couldn’t have been a worse time to notice, to be reminded of how he and his band mates were all tall and broad-shouldered, how they were the objects of so many students’ desires that it was like something out of a teen romance. Now that he was a vampire, the angles of his face were harder, he seemed older, more grown-up. His voice was deeper and more melodious. He was certainly stronger. And the fangs weren’t exactly unattractive.

  She was as bad as Logan was with this shit.

  Get your head in the right place, Meagan, she told herself firmly. Alec Sheffield is dead and Shawn Briggs is a real, honest-to-angels vampire. He’s going to kill you. She tore her gaze from his, which was admittedly difficult, and glanced down at Lehrer. And your teacher.

  “Why would I kill him?” Shawn asked, cutting through her thoughts with his somehow amplified words. He turned his attention back to Lehrer and she could see from the side that his smile broadened. “He’s about to become Sam’s little pet. He’s probably never been more useful before in his life.” With that, he stood and turned. “I wouldn’t lay a finger on him.”

  He leveled her with a hard, red gaze and continued toward her. Meagan stepped back. Advance – retreat. Advance – retreat. Wasn’t that always the game between cat and mouse? Vampire and victim?

  “And you, Meagan.” He shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you before that I have no desire to kill you?”

  She was never going to be able to look at her classmates the same way again.

  “I’m giving you a chance to be something greater, Meagan.” Step forward.

  Step back.

  “Allow me one bite, one taste, and nothing in the mortal world will have any control over you. Nothing will be able to stop you.”

  “The running water in the ravine seemed to do a pretty good job with you earlier,” she retorted. She stepped back again, and found herself flush with the wall.

  “A minor setback,” Shawn admitted smoothly. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  He so much sounded like one of the bad guys from Logan’s stories. He sounded like Sam.

  “That’s because I’m an exten
sion of him,” Shawn told her. He chuckled as he added, “and because it was Logan’s words that made me what I am now.”

  “That girl writes too damn much,” Meagan muttered, barely hearing her own words over the hammering of her heart and the swirling rush of her own blood. There was nothing left. She couldn’t use the phone, she was out of magic, and Lehrer was out of commission.

  This was it. For real this time.

  “Don’t worry, Stone,” Shawn said, taking that last step that closed the distance between them and left her breathless. She stared helplessly into the fires in Shawn’s eyes. He raised his hand and very gently cupped her face. He was deceptively tender. He lowered his head until his next words were whispered intimately across her quivering lips. “It’ll only hurt for a second.”

  Oh…. She just knew he was going to say that.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “I’ll be damned,” Logan whispered.

  Sam’s gaze shot to her, his soul memorizing the curve of her chin, the smoothness of her skin, the sound of her soft, soft voice. You have no idea, he thought.

  But he said nothing as he turned and knelt at the water’s edge. Very slowly, the metal flask containing the second half of the spell protecting Logan floated to the side of the ditch.

  He couldn’t touch it. He could feel a kind of force field around the receptacle that acted as a repellant toward him. Lehrer and the young witch had been thorough in casting the spell. He wasn’t going to be able to come into contact with the bottle any more than he could come into physical contact with Logan herself.

  His blood felt like magma in his veins. He was burning up inside, for so many reasons. His inability to touch Logan’s skin while she was so close to him acted like salt on an open wound. He could also sense that his Hell Hounds had been destroyed, though he was slightly placated that Lehrer had been bitten and Briggs was now taking care of the second witch.

  Maldovan’s strong spiritual presence in Sam’s stolen body was a constant struggle, perpetually draining him and making him edgy. Still, the boy’s guise was invaluable. He’d used it to get Logan to write so many things, and all he’d had to do was look at her. Ask her to do it. Show that he had faith in her.