I sank from my crouch to the carpet and took a moment to catch my breath, but when I saw Meg lying on the rug a few feet away, sprawled on the floor, it was all I could do to stifle a scream. I hadn’t even realised she had snuck into the room. The bolt meant for me had hit her squarely in the chest and, judging by the hole it left behind, Meg was quite clearly dead.
Kitty gripped my hand. “She would have wanted it this way.” Before I could twist my neck to glance at her in bewilderment, Meg’s corpse began to shrivel and disintegrate, her body sinking into itself. Her pretty, aged features collapsed and became nothing more than ash, enveloped in her cardigan and long floral skirt.
“What the fuck?” I didn’t usually curse but after seeing an old lady’s bones crumble to dust in front of my eyes, it seemed to be the appropriate comment.
“Well, she was a vampire,” muttered Kitty. “That’s how they, you know, go.”
“She was a vampire?” I repeated incredulously. Sweet old Meg? It would have been hard for me to believe if I hadn’t seen her ashes still smouldering slightly in front of me. What else didn’t I know?
“Yes, not particularly by choice, but out of necessity.” Kitty was huddled up next to me now as the air crackled over our heads. I wondered where the rest of our household was. I hoped they had the good sense to hide or find a way to break the hold Eleanor had over the house.
“Why would anyone consider it necessary to be a vampire?” I asked.
Kitty hurriedly explained. “Well, her only daughter was really sick and had two little children of her own; then Meg got sick too. Cancer, I think, though they couldn’t diagnose it back then. The daughter died and Meg knew her poor health would jeopardise her being able to raise the little ones. So one night, a vampire was passing through and Meg asked to be turned so she wouldn’t die and could survive to look after her grandchildren until they were grown. It was an awfully brave thing to do, losing her life just to bring up those kids. What would have happened to them otherwise? They might have starved or been put to work.”
“Wouldn’t social services have looked after them?”
“Not a hundred years ago, honey.”
“Where are the grandchildren now?”
“Oh, dead a long time I think. Lived until they were old and had grandchildren of their own, thanks to Meg.”
“And she still kept on living?”
“She wasn’t sure how to end it, but she sure was fed up of it. Especially when Dynasty finished.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Meg did not joke about Dynasty. Whoa... incoming!”
Kitty and I hit the floor at the same time as the sofa exploded in a heap of foam and ticking fluff. We scrambled to hide behind the last intact sofa, my hands nudging Kitty along until she squawked at me.
“Stella.” Eleanor’s voice boomed over the melee in a curious mix of venom and cajoling. “Stella, I know where you are. There’s no point in hiding. There’s no time for hide and seek. Let’s end this, Stella. Let’s end it now. This should have happened years ago. You’re on borrowed time.”
I surveyed what I could see. Evan, bleeding, and totally out of it, Meg’s ashes, Kitty trembling next to me but whether from fear or anger now, I couldn’t tell. The part of the house I could see from the side window was in flames and I could hear shouting. I hoped no one was inside that wing. I pressed myself down and sent out a pulse into the room. Just like before, the strength of Eleanor and Astra’s magic made it like walking through jelly, slow and awkward; but I found traces of other beings in the room. We weren’t alone. Quickly, I drew back into myself. After a moment, I craned my neck slightly to the left and could just make out Marc and someone else. Yes, the Chinese print jacket sleeve I could just see told me Étoile had returned with Seren and was standing next to him.
“Étoile and Marc are on the other side of the room,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, but Kitty nodded.
“Come out Stella and they can all go,” coaxed Eleanor.
My eyes connected with Marc and I could just see him give a single shake of his head and my heart went out to him. How appalling it must be to see your mother, the person who raised you, murder your father, attack your friends as well as her own son, and worse, not be able to do anything about it. For the first time, I felt lucky that my powers were already part of me and only needed to be tamed to do my bidding.
“The hell you will,” I yelled back. “You won’t leave any of them alive.” I didn’t add, not even your own son. It seemed too cruel and I hardly wanted to rub Marc’s face in it.
Eleanor laughed and strangely there was a note of joy in it. I had to catch myself from gasping. She was actually enjoying the murder and mayhem and if I wasn’t certain before, I was now. I had to end this. Eleanor couldn’t be left to destroy any more lives.
I stood and faced the devil.
She grinned at me, the sardonic smile dancing on her lips, her eyes steady but somehow not there. The Eleanor that I had first met in New York was the same twinset and pearls Eleanor here now, but all shreds of humanity had vanished. This one was sinister and destructive and hell-bent on annihilating me. My heart clamoured in fear.
“Come here, Stella.”
“Not a chance.”
“We should be friends, my dear.”
“I refer you to my last answer,” I replied caustically.
“We could change the world. Your power and mine. Imagine! There is nothing we couldn’t do.”
I nodded at Astra who was rocking on the balls of her feet. “Look how your last experiment turned out. No thanks.”
Eleanor didn’t even spare a glance for Astra. My friends’ sister stood behind the older woman, shifting so that she was swaying slightly instead of rocking, but otherwise not doing anything. She wasn’t even eyeing up the opposition. Instead, she looked faintly bewildered, like a puppet whose strings had fallen now that the puppet master was looking for a new toy. I struggled to pity her after what she had done to Evan.
Eleanor’s smile fell and her face took on the ghoulish air of someone utterly possessed. I couldn’t understand why she was bargaining with me; perhaps she was under the same delusion that caused her to think my father would love her after she disposed of my mother. Perhaps, in her deranged mind, she really thought I might consider joining her.
“Last chance,” she crooned.
“The answer will always be no.”
“Oh Stella, what a mistake you have made. You will have to watch your friends die. One by one, each and every one of them. I’ll let you determine the order, if you like?” The words slipped out like she was offering me something delicious.
“You won’t hurt anyone anymore.” My voice was firm. I think. Inexplicably, I noticed a mist was rolling through the room, rising from the carpet. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Kitty sitting with her eyes closed, muttering a spell. She said she could control the weather and now she was trying to blind Eleanor with it. Smart.
“Is that a question, dear Stella?” Eleanor laughed and behind her, Astra shrieked in echo until Eleanor swatted her and she recoiled in silence, a tear rolling down her pallid, mask-like face. Eleanor looked at the mist coiling about her feet with amusement. “Let’s start with Kitty, the little weather witch, shall we?” She extended a hand towards our hiding place and began to mutter an incantation. Kitty was drawn into the air, her chin pointing to the ceiling as her legs flailed. She clawed at her throat, her spell shattered, as an invisible hand squeezed and held her mid-air.
“Shall I tear her limb from limb? Or strangle her? Maybe, I should turn her inside out.” Eleanor let the various tortures drip from her tongue like she was reeling off the specials of the day. “Or shall I save that for last?”
Kitty screamed. The pitiful shriek drew Astra’s attention and she smiled wanly at her as Kitty’s left arm stretched above her and cracked. Her legs jerked in the air.
“One down, three to go,” Eleanor warbled in a sing-song voice, wagging her fin
ger at Kitty.
Kitty whimpered and her face lost all colour as her right leg bent at an unnatural angle.
“No. No!” I cried. I could feel the electricity coursing through my veins as my fury rose. “You. Will. Not. Do. This!”
I focused the way Evan taught me. I obliterated the room from my consciousness, taking no note of the pain and fear in the room. I shut out Eleanor’s mocking laughter and Kitty’s terror. I found Astra’s madness and pushed her back. I vaguely registered her shout as I hurled her into the television, knocking DVDs off the shelves to clobber her one by one. The flames and ripped furniture, the glass, the ash and Kitty’s mist retreated to the edges of my peripheral vision. I locked my gaze on Eleanor and reached out with my hand to summon my essence. I called with my mind, my heart, my body and my soul. I had never felt more connected to my magic as it rushed through me, light shooting from my fingertips and burning through every pore. I felt the air hot and heavy around me as I glanced off the blows Eleanor aimed at me like they were nothing more than static electricity.
I thrust my hand further forward and yelled. The magic streamed from me into the open and after a moment of horrified silence, the screaming started.
It could have been seconds or eternity for all I could tell of the time passing. I felt the last of the magic fade around me and recede from my fingers. I blinked and when I refocused, Eleanor was kneeling, her head thrown back and her face ashen and lifeless. She began to slide down until she crumpled on the floor, with her head coming to rest at Robert’s feet. Astra hadn’t moved from where she landed, her legs splayed under her. Her mask was slipping and she looked more perplexed than frightened as if she didn’t quite know how she had come to be here. Slowly, she started to move her lips. It took me a moment to realise she wasn’t reciting a spell but instead, singing a nursery rhyme. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star...” she whispered in her soprano tone.
I barely registered the flash of blue as Étoile darted across the room from her hiding place and threw her arms around her sister, crushing her arms at her sides. It was more like a straightjacket than an embrace. She nodded at me and they vanished.
“Stella. Stella,” Kitty moaned. She had fallen from the invisible grasp of Eleanor’s incantation, now that the magic had died with its issuer, and was slumped against the armrest of the sofa. Her skin had taken on a puce green hue and her whole body was convulsing with shock. Marc rose from his hiding place, visibly shaken and scrambling towards her. I wondered if he could feel the magic simmering around him. No, not around him, I corrected myself, coming from him.
He wouldn’t look at me as he dashed past and when I finally turned my eyes from the devastation and rested them on my outstretched hand I could see why.
There sat Eleanor’s heart, the red pulpy mass of muscle in my palm, the arterial tendrils draping over as blood dripped to the floor in a staccato rhythm.
It beat for a few moments more, then, very decisively, gave one last shudder and stopped.
Finally, Eleanor’s sadistic, vindictive heart was just as dead as the rest of her.
THIRTEEN
I let Eleanor’s lifeless heart slip from my hand and fall to the floor with a dull thump.
With bile rising in my throat, I forced myself to look at my outstretched hands. They were stained with her blood. My stomach turned over and I hastily wiped my hands on my jeans as I stepped away from the organ. I reached for Kitty just as Marc vaulted over the sofa. He caught her before she collapsed.
“She needs help,” he said, his face was agonised and at last, I understood something else; how much he truly loved Kitty. The pain he must have suffered was terrible. He saw his father die and then the one person he adored being tortured by his mother. His world had collapsed in less than an hour, even if the events that brought us here had been put in motion almost twenty years ago.
Marc eased Kitty into his arms and lowered her to the floor. His hands groped over her sweater and found the mess of her shoulder and arm through the thin jersey, before running down to her leg. Her face was beaded with sweat and pain, her skin ghostly pale. “I think her collarbone and shoulder are broken, her leg too.”
I nodded, mute and horrified. “Where did Étoile go?” I breathed finally as I stepped further away, stumbling and almost falling over a broken lampshade. They didn’t need me anymore and now that I knew Kitty was safe, I had a more pressing urge. I edged through the debris to Evan and sank to my knees beside him.
“She said she’d take Astra somewhere safe. Somewhere where she couldn’t hurt anyone else again, or herself.” Marc was cradling Kitty in his arms, her face lolling against his shoulder. Any other time they would have looked serenely content but not now, with their faces torn and scorched. I felt fleetingly glad that I was not envious of the comfort they found in each other’s arms. It seemed somehow fitting that they might gain something when so much had been lost.
Evan still hadn’t moved. I brushed hair away from my face where it had broken free of its ponytail and shrugged off my sweater so I could press it against him to stem the bleeding from his head wound. I laid my ear on his chest and his heart seemed faint and uncertain as I willed myself not to cry. Of all the people I had come to love and like over these past few weeks, he was the one I couldn’t bear to lose and now, he was slipping away at my fingertips. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t healing. A salty tear coursed over my smudged face and dripped on him. I felt a little burst of energy echo from me. It was like wearing nylon and getting an electric shock that tickles at the skin, creating sparks.
My back was against the door into the hallway and I could hear other people stumbling through. Whatever magic Eleanor had spun to set up barricades to enclose us in the house had fallen when she did and I breathed a sigh of relief. The air was whispering to me. Help was coming.
I compressed my bare hands harder against Evan’s wound, my fear of losing him turning to desperation and felt the current again, but this wasn’t the white hot anger I felt when facing Eleanor. I reached inside myself for the last ebb of energy and poured myself into him, not understanding what I was doing but knowing that if I didn’t try to fix the internal damage, in some small way, Evan would die with me by his side, never knowing that he saved my life and we won the battle.
He told me I could take power from him and now I was giving it back. Light flickered from me and seeped around my frame and his. It seemed to stream from me to him and, for a few fleeting moments, I felt we were one and the same. I cried with the pain of the work I didn’t understand and the pain losing him would cause me. When I could not send any more of my energy to him, I crouched over him and rested my head on his chest, my silent sobs shaking me. I could feel him; not just his skin or his fading warmth but the magic welling in him. I could see it. It was like a light cord had been yanked thrusting me into the sun after a lifetime of darkness. The magic trickling through him was white hot but it was fading too. My heart thumped. He was so weak.
It was Étoile who lifted me off him, then pulled me to her and let me finish weeping dirty tears on her favourite jacket. I didn’t even realise she had returned and I briefly wondered where Astra was.
“He’s alive,” said Étoile, pushing me away gently so she could rest her long fingers against the pulse on Evan’s neck. A haze of pink seemed to trip languidly over her. “But we need to move him now. Eleanor’s magic has interfered with ours and he can’t heal here.”
“Stella, darling, we’re going to get Evan some help.” Seren delicately pried my fingers from where they were coiled around his shirt’s placket.
“I’ll come too.”
Seren shook her head. “We aren’t strong enough. It will take both Étoile and I to move him and we can’t manage another. We’ll come back for you, I promise.”
Before I could say anything, she and Seren were holding Evan with one hand while clasping each other’s hand. They locked eyes and vanished, leaving the air charged with magic for a few plaintive moments. I c
ould see, feel and smell magic everywhere around me. I felt like I was drowning in it.
Exhausted, I stayed on my knees where Evan had fallen, the debris forming a makeshift marker around the place where he lay. Choking back the last of my tears, I wiped the few escapees from my smudged face with my sleeve. I tried to feel relief that Evan would soon get help, but all I could feel was a desperate sadness. My throat felt raw from the sobbing as well as the acrid taste of burning and Kitty’s mist. My body was shattered. I knew I couldn’t do this anymore. I never expected to have to fight for my life. I never expected that I would have to kill. In self defence, a weary part of my mind reminded me. I never wanted to kill. Or be a killer. It was self defence.
I fully expected to die in this room, I suddenly realised and the panic started to rise in me.
Kitty groaned behind me and the noise brought me rushing back to the present. When I turned to them, I saw a faint sheen surrounding both her and Marc. Marc was brushing his fingertips at the colour around his coat in wonder.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Your magic,” I said simply.
A thought had been niggling at me for a while, never quite becoming a fully formed idea but now I knew what had held Marc back. Eleanor had spellbound her own child so that his magic could never come to fruition. It was illegal among witches, so her reasons for doing it to her own child were beyond me. I could never be sure, but I suspected jealousy and bitterness had a lot to do with it. She resented Robert’s lack of intuitive power, considering him weaker than she, and I wondered if she might’ve been frightened of Marc’s potential, just as she had been frightened of mine.
Instead of nurturing her son, she caged him in a life which had no value in her world. She continued to resent him, and taunt him, because she planned to leave him behind. Perhaps there was no rhyme or reason to it. Perhaps it was just another act of her cruelty.
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