Terrifying Love: A Halloween Anthology

by Serena Nova

  Her claw was ripped from my face and a crashing sound had me snap my eyes open. The rogue vampire’s face connected with the boulder repeatedly. Kayla stood behind her, face grim as she smashed the rogue’s head against the mossy stone. Blood and pieces of skull rained down on me, but I couldn’t move, frozen stiff, watching the brutality unfold before me.

  Kayla wound her whip around what was left of the vampire’s head and pulled, slicing it clean off. She wasn’t even out of breath. Crouching down, she rummaged through my bag, got out a few vials and filled them with blood from her kill. “This should be enough,” she mused, having filled and sealed three vials. She pulled me to my feet, dusted me off and checked me. Her face darkened when I winced as she touched my chin, where the vampire’s claws had dug into my skin. “I am sorry about that. I shouldn’t have let her touch you. I was too slow. It won’t happen again.”

  She unwound the chain from the boulder and reconnected it to her wrist. “Whereto next, Mina?”

  Chapter Nine - Kayla

  The witch was either grumpy, or deep in thought, I couldn’t tell. But we didn’t speak much as we portalled from Estonia to the Amazon, to get tree-sap and bark from some special tree. I didn’t remember the name, even after she’d mumbled it twice. A pair of felinnes – cat shifters, in this case jaguars – had been circling us, growling and warning us away from their territory. After I let my whip crack and growled in return, they kept to the shadows, their neon-green eyes shining from the dark.

  Next, we travelled to New Orleans and I watched a very interesting exchange between my witch and a pack of crocodile shifters. Without my help, she got them to fetch her some unreachable plant after she waved a pack of those disgusting worms around, offering them a few in exchange. I watched her back for snakes in the meantime. She seemed to draw them to her, as they emerged from the bayou in droves, slithering up to her.

  She looked a little worse for wear when we got back to Trinity late that night. I watched her lining up her new ingredients with some of her own, and finally, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. It had grown too loud, grating on my nerves at an unbearable rate. I was unfamiliar with wanting to talk, being prone to long spells of silences myself, but I enjoyed speaking to her, and had no idea why the – normally so vocal – witch wasn’t talking to me.

  “Do you need help?” I asked to start a conversation.

  “Nope,” came her clipped answer.

  “Want something to eat?”

  “No.”

  My frustration grew and I leaned my hip against her table, very close to her, as she was sorting and moving around stuff on it. “What is the matter?”

  “Excuse me?” Her brown eyes flitted to mine for a second.

  “You haven’t spoken more than a sentence worth of words to me since Estonia.”

  “Hah!” she snorted, crashing a glass containing some sort of powder a little too forcefully against another. The resulting sound was a sharp crack. Powder spilled from both jars, but she ignored the mess. “I thought it was rather obvious.”

  “It isn’t. Will you tell me what is wrong?”

  “You took me into a forest full of rogues, left me tied to a boulder – most likely as bait – and only came back to save me at the last second. Then you act like nothing fucking happened, like you didn’t just bash some woman’s head in, raining the blood and brains all over me.” Red blotches grew on her freckled cheeks and bloomed up her neck. “But I shouldn’t expect anything else from the Huntress.”

  “I am confused,” I uttered truthfully. “What exactly are you angry about? That we went there, that I saved you, or that you got a little dirty?”

  She pivoted, glaring at me with violet-turning eyes, while stray curls tumbling from her bun were swept back by wind I could not feel. “All of it!” She huffed out a breath. “None of it. You confuse the shit out of me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to like you.”

  I blinked, not knowing what to do with that statement. “Then don’t.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You force me to help you, yet you make me breakfast, you drag me off into danger, yet protect me. You pluck away snakes at my feet and you call me ‘Mina’. This might come as a shock to you, but other than binding me to you, you have treated me better than most people in my life. And I feel myself starting to think – She isn’t so bad, then that image of you smashing the vampire’s head against the stone comes back, and I have to ask myself – Will that happen to me when she got what she wanted?”

  I contemplated her words for a few seconds, unable to fully follow. Particularly that statement about me being one of the kinder people she’d met, which – if true – was downright criminal. But I knew one thing for sure – The thought of her coming to harm angered me. Even if she was one of them.

  “I will not hurt you. As I have told you before, so long as I am here, no harm shall come to you. And to put your mind at ease, I plan on leaving you completely intact and alive.”

  “Even though you normally hunt my kind?”

  “Even so. We made a deal. It is as simple as that.”

  Chapter Ten - Minette

  As simple as that. As simple as that? No. Nothing about this was simple. Maybe for her it was, but certainly not for me. I wished I could have taken back my outburst and had made up some excuse for my brooding instead. But stupid me had to go on and tell her the truth. She didn’t want to know that the people in my life were grade-A shitfaces. She didn’t need to know that I was growing fond of her, in a weird way. She was scary, sure, but she also let me glimpse beneath the mask. Let me see who she was, besides the boogieman everyone knew her as.

  Still, I was relieved to hear her say that she would not harm me, it was what I’d fought with the entire night. But not as much as I had fought with the memory of those mercury eyes looking at me, calling me Mina. That had sent tingles throughout my body. Idiot! Leave it to the freak-witch, the abomination, to develop a crush on the deadliest creature around. Kayla screamed unhealthy, as far as relationships would go. Not that I had thought of that. At all.

  I chided myself as she went back to sitting on her stool, carving while I mixed, sorted, and measured. Truth be told, I would never have traveled to the Amazon without her, too many territorial shifters to be safe. She had kept them at bay, with a growl. I had never kept so much as a fly at bay. Because I was pathetic.

  “What would we gain by taking you in?” I remembered one of the coven witches asking when I tried to join them. “Your magic would be barely noticeable in the collective. No, we have no use for weaklings like you, for freaks.”

  Angry with myself, I glowered at the powder I had spilled across my table. Freak. Weak. Abomination. I knew what they called me behind my back, mainly because they also said it to my face. What really grinded my gears about that particular encounter was that I had learned to stand up for myself, to use my brain, to make up for my lacking power with skill. But had I fought? No. I had felt like a little girl. Helpless. And I had left to live on my own, always scared, always ready for the worst. Well, the worst had walked through my door and I was still alive. And she was nicer than my own kind – once one got over the whole ‘threatening my life’ deal and got to the ‘breakfast making, snake snatching’ person beneath.

  *******

  We tricked the daylight and portalled to the Namib Desert as soon as the sun had set in Namibia, otherwise Kayla would have gone all stony on me when the sun in Trinity had come up. I was tired as hell, but we had to use the time difference to our advantage. This desert housed a very rare and fascinating plant. The Welwitschia. A beautiful two-leafed plant, that could grow hundreds of years old. The male’s leaves had magical properties, as did the female’s cone-shaped inflorescences.

  The night was lit by a spectacular sky of stars, the Milky Way as clear as I had ever seen it. The dunes we trudged through glittered in the starlight like a sea of sand. The air was cool and would grow colder as the night went o
n.

  “What are we looking for?” Kayla asked, picking up the chain connecting us and shortening it, so we could walk side by side without it dragging through the sand.

  “A rare plant, only found here or in botanical gardens, but only here it develops its magical properties.”

  “What kind of magical properties does it have?”

  Our footsteps were muffled by the soft, sliding sand as we descended a dune. “The leaves of the male plant are used in potions, depending on the rune you mix it with, it can be a catalyst or an enhancer. It can up to double a potion’s strength. The female seeds can be used in a variety of ways too, most commonly to cleanse a space of bad energy, or – as in our case – as a stunning agent in our bombs. Your kind reacts to them most peculiarly.”

  “So, it’s dangerous to me?”

  “Not on its own, no.” I tapped my lower lip in thought. “Well, I supposed if you ate it…” I threw a grin her way and was answered with a small smirk. Since our talk – as much as my outburst had angered me – she seemed even more relaxed around me. Not that her eyes weren’t scanning every inch of the horizon, or her hands wandered to the hilt of her flail ever so often, but regarding me she let more emotions through and seemed genuinely interested in what I did. And why I did it. When I had drawn the portal for example, she’d asked about the combinations of runes that I used (travel, space, time, distance, and coordinates) and if the order in which I drew them mattered (it did).

  “I like it better when you talk to me,” she uttered softly. “The silence wasn’t… easy.”

  I stumbled a bit in surprise, but caught myself before I went down the dune ass over ears. “I was under the impression that you are pretty good at silence.”

  “I am. When I’m alone. But talking to you is interesting. More interesting than the thoughts in my head. That’s for sure.”

  With no idea what to say to that, I walked on, finally reaching the bottom of the dune. Down here the ground was littered with small stones, the sounds of our steps different from before. I gathered my courage and asked what really interested me. If you can’t share stuff beneath the endless African night sky, where can you? “Why did you join the Order of the Gauntlet? And why keep on killing myres after becoming one?”

  Chapter Eleven - Kayla

  Simple questions, and I wasn’t surprised she’d asked them. They had complicated answers, though, and I hadn’t expected them so soon.

  Had anyone else asked me, I’d have shortened them by about a head. Maybe it was because I had been alone for so long, and she was easy to get used to, maybe it was how she said she liked me, against her – and my – better judgement. Or maybe it was this place. The atmosphere was unlike anything I have ever witnessed. Wild, yet calm, alive, yet silent. I felt like this desert would hold our secrets, like it was okay to bare my soul out here.

  “I was engaged once. To a man I loved dearly. Two days before our marriage, we went for a stroll in the park, it was late, and we emerged from making out behind a couple of rose-bushes.” I smiled at the memory, god, it felt like a lifetime had passed. Then it hit me that it had, more than one to be exact. My love for Michael had become a fond memory, but I still remembered the evening as though it had been yesterday. “It was near dark and we hurried through the park, laughing and talking about how much trouble I would be in if he got me home late. A stranger stepped into our way – by now I know he was an incubus, drawn by the smell of our arousal – and he just started talking. It was the most curious thing. He opened his mouth and spoke, wove words of affection and persuasion until we both shivered with need and want.” I kicked a pebble sideways. “Long story short, he used both of us, fed on our sexual energy and then tried to kill us. Michael he… he fought him to protect me, but he was killed. He died in my arms and the demon stabbed me while I cradled Michael to my chest. He left me for dead, but he missed my heart. I recovered, but now knew there was something out there, something unnatural and evil. I spent five years researching, traveling, and hunting for every piece of information I could get my hands on. That is how I found the guild one day. I explained what happened to me and they took me in. They gave me a home and a purpose, along with a family of sorts.”

  Which was the reason why I had done much to be a part of them again. I longed for the days when I had been a part of a unit. Had a reason for living. I still made sure they found targets, protected them from the shadows. I was one of them and yet, I could never go back.

  It was easy to talk to the witch, she didn’t interrupt, and her presence was in no way intrusive. She kept silent as we walked on, until we stopped next to what looked like a huge salad growing out of the sand. Seeds that looked like cones crowned long green leaves, spilling over the sand like hair. Mina crouched down next to the plant and cut off a few of the cone-like seeds.

  “The elder vampire captured me, after we raided one of his covens and killed some of his kin. He tried to turn me, so I would be loyal to him and showed him our hiding places. He wanted to eradicate my guild, and use me as added muscle and an insider to help.” Just like my last evening with Michael, the night I had been turned had seared itself into my memory. While having my love die in my arms had been traumatic mentally, I have never lived through pain as agonizing as my sire’s turning bite. I felt like burning alive. For hours. Both experiences combined left me scarred, body and soul. And I have never come back from it.

  I looked at Mina, who was still crouching, her eyes big but trained on her plant, waiting for me to go on. “The two most terrible things happening to me – one of them enough to change a life forever – were done by your kind. That is why I still hunt them. So, they can’t do to others what has been done to me.”

  She placed the seeds into a pouch and stuck it into her bag, then got up. Dusting her hands off on her pants she led the way to another sand-salad, not far away. This time she took a part of one wavy leaf, her fingers skimming along until she came to a place where the leaf split. Very carefully, she ripped off the smallest part of the split leaf.

  “What happened to you was awful,” she finally said, folding the leaf into cloth and placing both into her bag. “And I am sorry it did, no one should go through what you had to. But – and don’t kill me for saying this – maybe you have been looking at it wrong.”

  I crossed my arms. “This should be interesting.”

  She faltered a bit beneath my gaze, but pressed on regardless, “Those who did you wrong where monsters, no doubt about that. But not every myre is a monster. Yes, there are dickheads among us, but we’re not all evil. For most of us, you are the monster.”

  I said nothing to that, ire racing through my veins like fire. My control snapped shortly thereafter. “How can you say that? How can you think I am wrong for killing—”

  She blushed profusely, the blotches evident even in the scarce light, and looked down.

  “You… you mean yourself? You think I view you as evil?”

  Sporting that adorable blush, she pushed her chin up. “You did call me filth, and an abomination.” More to herself she muttered, “Not like I haven’t heard the latter enough times already.”

  “True. I did. I believed it to be true at the time.”

  She cocked one brow. “Not anymore?”

  I thought on that question for a few seconds, and as I did a sharp pain in my right calf had me jumping up and yelping. I shook my leg and something small and black sailed from the top of my boot into the sand. Mina gasped, looking from the critter crawling away to my leg and back. “Shit,” was all she said before my leg gave out and I fell soundly on my ass.

  Chapter Twelve - Minette

  Parabuthus villosus. Kayla was in trouble. The sting of that particular scorpion was dangerous to lesser vampires like her. Truthfully, it was dangerous to most creatures, supernatural or not. For her, it meant an aggressive form of rot, growing from the sting. Her vampire blood reacted to the venom in the most disgusting way. She needed treatment right away.

  I
turned from her, and drew runes into the air as fast as I could. Within seconds I had opened a portal back home. I hurried to her side, pulled at her arm and got her to stand. “Come one, we need to get back, so I can treat the sting. We don’t have much time.”

  She stopped short, looking at the portal with fear in her eyes. “The sun,” she whispered, the blue glow of the portal casting shadows on her features, making the scar on her cheek appear like a deep groove.

  “Yes, I know. That’s why the portal opens into the bedroom. Curtains and blankets cover the windows, remember?”

  “Are you sure?” She stumbled a little and leaned on me some more.

  “My portals are very precise. But you have to sever the chain before we go. Being a turned vampire, you will fall into your day trance and I need to go down to my shop.”

  Kayla eyed me while hobbling on one leg undecidedly.

  “Trust me,” I begged her.

  With jerky movements, she severed the chain woven around my wrist. She gave me a small nod and we walked into the blue swirl. Not fazed in the slightest by portalling, I found my footing immediately as I stepped into my bedroom and pulled Kayla with me. The moment she was through, she petrified and fell, taking me down with her. I cursed like a sailor, wriggled out from under her and yanked her dead-weight over to the bed. It took me a few minutes to heave her on top of it, and by the end, I was sweaty and out of breath.

  I turned and raced down to my shop, mixed a paste infused with magic, strengthened it with a small part of the leaf we just got and stormed back up. Standing in front of the bed I didn’t hesitate for a second before pulling off her boots, followed by her pants. Her right leg had a green tinge to it around the sting and I went to work quickly, dabbing on the salve and wrapping her entire calf in salve-soaked gauze. I finished off my work with laying her leg on a towel. Now, all I could do was wait.

  My gaze fell on the golden chain wrapped in her fingers and I softly slid it from her grasp. I was free. Free to leave her and fuck-off to wherever! The thought didn’t bring the excitement I thought it would. A nagging voice in my head told me to do it, to leave and save myself the trouble and pain. She was after an elder vampire, there was no telling how that would end. Actually, without me, there was a pretty straightforward outcome. She’d die. Or be used to eradicate her former guild.