by C. C. Hunter
“Miranda?” Burnett said her name.
Oh, yeah … Did she feel anything? Hell yeah. Emotions did jumping jacks in her gut. After her dad had left, Kylie and Della had come and let her cry on their shoulders. If not for them, she was pretty sure she’d still be facedown in her bed wallowing in self-pity. As it was, her eyes were puffy from crying. She dreaded the meeting that was going to take place after the practice. Dreaded it with a passion. And part of that dread was facing her mom. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was going to hurt.
Perhaps her mom felt the same thing. It would explain why she hadn’t already visited Miranda.
“Do you feel anything?” he repeated, as if impatient that she hadn’t instantly replied.
The answer echoed back. She felt as if her heart had been used as a pit bull’s play toy. Then someone had found the damaged organ and stuck it back in her chest, but it wasn’t working.
Not that Burnett wanted to know this. He was concerned about whoever it was trying to knock off the competition. He wanted to know if she felt any doom and gloom premonitions.
“No, not yet.”
“Do you have your cell with you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Good. Take it with you. If you feel anything, anything at all, call me, right then. I don’t care if you’re in the middle of practice and have to piss off one of those prima donna highfalutin witches out there. You call me. Got it?”
Miranda couldn’t help but wonder if he’d told Tabitha the same thing. Probably. Thankfully, Tabitha had already left the apartment when her dad … correction … their dad … had shown up. Facing her was going to be as hard as facing her mom. Hadn’t she called Tabitha a liar last night?
Burnett started to walk out and then turned. She looked up at him. His scowl faded. “You okay?”
She nodded.
He swung back to the door, but darted back around with vampire speed. “I have a feeling if Holiday were here, she’d give you a comforting hug. She’d probably be able to know exactly why you look so sad. Maybe you’d even confide in her. I’m not nearly as good at the counseling sh—stuff as she is. As a matter of fact, I kind of suck at it. But if you need to talk, I can listen. I have a few minutes now.”
As tempting as it was, she was afraid if she talked she’d start crying again. She shook her head.
He looked almost relieved, and turned around.
A small hiccup of emotion left her throat. He looked back again. His expression was uncertain and almost painful. “You need a hug?”
She ran into his arms like a scared child. Hugging wasn’t Burnett’s favorite pastime, and the fact that he’d offered meant the world. As tough and hard as this man could be, he cared. Cared deeply. Holiday and his daughter, Hannah, were two very lucky ladies.
He patted Miranda on the back. The slow tapping of his right hand felt awkward. His posture tense. Sensing he was uncomfortable, she pulled back.
He studied her. “Did that help?”
“Yes.” She smiled with emotion.
He nodded. “Is this about Perry and—?”
“No.”
He tilted his head to the side and frowned as if he’d heard the lie.
“Okay, maybe a little. But it’s only part of it.” But since he’d brought the subject up, she asked. “Is Perry here?” He had told Miranda he was coming, but less than a month ago he’d told her he would never walk away. And he had.
Her ability to trust him had been damaged. Maybe the shape-shifter had changed his mind again.
“Yes, he’s here. I don’t think I could have kept him away.”
She nodded and Burnett raised his brows. For some reason she suspected he was recalling Shawn’s half-assed confession of being interested in her.
Burnett continued to stare. “Is this … the tears, somehow about your dad’s visit this morning?”
She nodded.
“Anything I can do to help?” he asked.
“You did.”
“I did?” he asked, confused.
“The hug,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat.
“Oh.” Then suspicion tightened his brow. “But this … problem isn’t anything I need to know about, is it?”
“It’s not about the murders,” she assured him, sensing that was what Burnett meant.
“Okay,” he said, hearing her truth. “But like I said, if you want to talk, I suck at giving advice about personal issues, but I’ll be happy to listen.”
“Thank you,” she said and couldn’t stop herself. She hugged him again.
As she released him, he moved toward the door, but sent back one parting comment. “Remember, any sense of danger, even if it’s tiny, contact me immediately.”
* * *
Miranda stood in the circle of twenty competitors—constantly aware of Tabitha standing four girls down on Miranda’s right. She didn’t look at her. But every few minutes, Miranda could feel the girl’s gaze on her.
Did her half-sister really hate her? For one crazy moment, Miranda tried to see this from Tabitha’s point of view. It would be easy for Tabitha to blame Miranda and her mom for destroying her cozy little family. If not for the conception of Miranda, perhaps her mother and father would have made the marriage work.
Damn, if Miranda couldn’t see how it would be easy for Tabitha to hate her. And her mom. Who wanted to share your father with an offspring of “the other woman”?
Trying to concentrate on the council’s words, she stood frozen in one spot. She felt several other gazes zeroing in on her from the audience. Scanning the spectators, she found the onlookers. Her mom sat in the first row. Alone. The seat beside her … empty. Where was her dad? Rumor was there had been an accident on one of the major streets and it had delayed several of the attendees.
Miranda noted the worry and fret tightening her mom’s expression. Was her mom dreading the meeting after the practice?
Join the crowd, Mom!
In the back of the audience, she spotted a blond shape-shifter. He watched her with the intense stare of a bodyguard. His protectiveness would have been appreciated if he hadn’t dropped her like a hot potato and let her fry in misery. And she didn’t care why he’d broken up with her, it still had been so wrong!
In the opposite corner of the room stood Shawn. He smiled. The slight nod of his head seemed to say he had her back. Her gaze eased back to Perry and she saw him glaring at Shawn. Okay, that felt awkward.
She focused on the high priestess speaking. She appeared French, her accent made her sound almost lyrical, but her pronunciation was spot-on.
The practice consisted of how the competition would go down. They weren’t told what the spells would be, but there were hints that they would return to one of the four elements. Miranda sent up a prayer that it wouldn’t be fire. Especially with her father here. His scars on his buttocks would no doubt itch if she started playing with fire again.
The memory of his teasing throughout the years scraped across her mind, and somehow it seemed tainted. Or at least different now that she knew his secrets. Tears stung her eyes and she wondered if all her memories would feel like a lie.
The sound of the heavy auditorium doors opening echoed in the large space. A crowd of around fourteen came bustling in. Miranda spotted her dad and Mary Esther, Tabitha’s mom, walking beside him. They almost got to her mother’s row.
Her mom looked back and scowled. Oh friggin’ great! Were Mary Esther and her mom about to cause a scene?
Dread and embarrassment ran through her. No one wanted their dirty laundry played out in front of a crowd. Her feet itched to hightail it out of there, but then the strong sense of danger chased away all thoughts of being humiliated.
She heard Burnett’s order: If you feel anything, anything at all, call me. She reached in her pocket to pull out her phone and spotted Tabitha doing the same thing. Both with cell phones in hand, their gazes clashed.
Obviously, Burnett had given Tabitha the same orders. She f
elt exactly what Miranda did.
Some bad shit was about to go down.
Fog, thick as mud, fell from the auditorium’s rafters. And nothing but screams followed.
Chapter Fifteen
“Miranda?” a voice, a deep male voice, called her name.
It took less than a second to recognize it was Shawn. Blinded and disoriented by the fog, she called out, “Here. I’m here.”
“Get away from me!” Another shrill voice echoed above the other screams.
“Tabitha?” Miranda called. Something was happening to her half-sister.
“Stop!” Tabitha screamed again. “Help!” Her plea seemed to fade in the distance.
“Tabitha! Where are you?” Miranda called out, but only the screams of others filled the thick mist.
The next thing Miranda knew something from above wrapped around her forearms and lifted her up. Up to the rafters, up away from the fog.
She glanced to the ceiling at the same time the large tan bird the size of a horse with a hooked beak glanced down. Its familiar light blue eyes met hers. Perry. Her next breath came easier, then she remembered.
“Find Tabitha,” she yelled at him.
“Can’t see shit,” she heard him say.
She glanced down. The menacing-looking fog continued to rise from the floor and drew closer like fingers trying to pull them in.
Perry flapped his wings. “I got you. Relax.”
Her breath caught when he swooped down, down into the thick white cloud, and she was again blinded by the dense mist. Blinking, she saw what looked like a tunnel of light ahead.
A second glance and she realized it was the entrance to the auditorium. The doors were open. Perry swooped down lower to clear the exit and she could hear people scurrying out like rats. Her feet hit a few heads of the escaping crowd. “Sorry. Sorry.”
She pulled her knees up. Moving like the wind, with her in tow, Perry shot through the exit, his talons holding her tight, but not too tight. Perry would never hurt her.
Seconds after clearing the door, her breath caught as Perry took her up. All the way up, higher than the top of the auditorium. She saw him cocking his head one way and then the other as if searching for a place to land.
Then with the dark sky glaring down at them, and distant thunder roaring, he began his descent to the roof’s edge, just a few feet from an evil-looking gargoyle. “Not here,” she said, but he obviously didn’t hear her.
“You okay?” His beak moved. Then his gaze shifted toward the streets below. “Damn.”
“What?” she asked.
“Stay here,” Perry ordered.
Like she could leave! Then his wings widened as if …
“No,” she screamed, feeling as if the statue stared at her. “Don’t leave me.”
He leapt off the ledge. Air from his wings flapping stirred her hair.
He got only a few feet away when she saw electric bubbles exploding around him and he turned into a small black crow. Where the hell was he going? Why was he leaving her … here?
She was ten stories up, and sharing a space with a huge, nasty-looking concrete beast. Wasn’t this just like her childhood nightmares?
Then she remembered Tabitha.
“Come back,” she screamed. Her mouth hung open as she pulled in big gulps of oxygen and watched the crow grow smaller, abandoning her once again.
A strike of lightning hit the roof, shaking the building and sending another wave of panic over her. Glancing down at the people below, she considered screaming, but sensed her voice would go unheard. Heart racing, realizing she still clutched her phone, she went to finish dialing Burnett. She lacked one number to complete the call when a scary-sounding chuckle sounded and the cold wet air hitched in her lungs.
Her gaze shot to the gargoyle. She shook her head, forcing herself to breathe. “You aren’t real,” she said.
“Yes, I am.”
Chills whispered down her back, the only thing that kept her from taking a dive off the ledge was that the voice hadn’t come from the beast. Slowly turning her head, she came face-to-face with a rogue vampire—a rogue vampire smelling way too pungently of dog poop.
“Oh, damn!” Before Miranda could react, or even think of a spell, the vamp charged. Her phone fell to the roof with a clatter. He caught her around her waist, pulled her back against his front, and leapt off the building.
Free-falling, the ground rushing up to her, her thoughts went to dying. Was she ready? No. So much she wanted to do. Why did it have to end?
Then the vamp started flying, the wind slapping her hair into her face, stinging her cheeks. His arm cut into her middle, making it almost impossible to feed her lungs air. But she welcomed the pain in lieu of death.
“Wiggle that little finger or even think about using your stupid magic on me again, and I will rip out your jugular and paint Paris red with your blood.”
To make his point, he pressed his sharp canines to the curve of her throat.
* * *
Miranda hadn’t dared move her pinky, but she spent the few very long seconds in flight coming up with spells that she would throw at the foul-smelling bloodsucker as soon as they landed.
Her heart clutched when her abductor started descending. He swooped down into a castle’s courtyard and through some concrete arches. She prepared herself to fight, but her feet had barely hit the concrete when a heavy door opened and she was tossed into a pit of darkness. A darkness so black, so thick, that it brought on instant isolation.
Before she even hit the bottom, a clanking sound echoed behind her, telling her she was locked in.
Landing on her knees, her hands scraped into the rocky ground. She moaned as the sharp gravel cut into the fleshy part of her palms. Tears stung her eyes. The coppery smell of blood singed her senses.
Fear tasted like metal on her tongue and the dank smell of wet earth filled her nose. Where was she?
Crawling to her feet, she held her hands out to feel her way in the blackness. She went to twitch her pinky to bring light, but nothing happened. She did it again. The same results slapped her in the face. Why wasn’t her magic working?
Beneath the smell of aged dirt, she caught the scent of sage, burning bark, and then something really foul—the scent of death. Decay.
Tears filled her eyes as horror turned her stomach rock hard. At first she considered she was locked up with a corpse, but then logic intervened. She’d smelled the combination of scents before, a black spell, a curse to prevent any other magic from working.
She slid her feet, an inch at a time, in hopes of not falling again. The sound of her breathing seemed too loud. Then she heard it, a slight moan. She wasn’t alone. Someone was in here with her. But was he/she friend or foe?
Fear told her to be quiet. Logic forced one word to the tip of her tongue. “Hello?”
She stood in the dark silence, breathing in scents that were keeping her from using her powers. Tilting her head to the side, she listened to make sure she hadn’t been mistaken.
Only a dead silence filled her ears. Her stomach knotted. Part of her wanted to fall to the ground and sob. Part of her thought of Kylie and Della and how strong they were and how she longed to be more like them.
She took another step and heard it again—a slight intake of air. Swallowing the knot of fear down her throat, she stiffened her backbone.
“Is someone else in here?” Her words seemed to echo and terror again spidered down her spine.
Chapter Sixteen
“What do you want with me?” the voice answered.
Miranda recognized the voice.
“Tabitha? Is that you? It’s me, Miranda.”
“Are you doing this to me? Are you—”
“No, I’m in here, too.” She inhaled. “A dirty vamp, one that was at the Eiffel Tower, he grabbed me, brought me here, and tossed me in.”
“Me, too.” Her voice shook as if she’d been crying.
Miranda didn’t take any points off for that. Her c
heeks were still damp with her own tears. “Where are we, do you know?”
“I think it’s a dungeon,” Tabitha said.
Miranda slowly started inching toward the voice. “Keep talking so I can find you.”
“It looked like a castle from above,” her half-sister said.
“Yeah, I saw that, too.” Miranda’s foot hit something. Something that didn’t feel like a rock. She knelt down and touched the object, quickly recognizing it as a foot. With a boot on it. Had Tabitha been wearing boots?
“Is that you?” Miranda asked.
“Is what me?”
Tabitha’s words send a wave of panic through Miranda and she bolted back, tripped over her own feet, and landed on her butt.
She scrambled to get up, to get farther away from the foot she’d just touched.
One step.
Two.
Tabitha’s thin voice rang out, “Miranda, what happened?”
Trying not to hyperventilate, she spit out the question, “Did I just touch you?”
“Nooo,” Tabitha said, sounding confused.
A whimper escaped Miranda’s lips. “Then I just touched someone else’s foot.”
“What? Are you saying … that someone else is in here?” Her voice sounded winded.
Miranda swallowed. “Yeah.” She brushed off her fingertips as if to wipe away the touch.
“Who are you?” Tabitha demanded.
No answer came back.
“Are they dead?” Tabitha asked.
Dread hit Miranda like heavy smoke. “I … I don’t know.”
“Were they cold?”
“I just touched a foot … with a shoe on it.” The thought of touching death had her rubbing her hands on her jeans.
“I hate this. I want to go home.” Tabitha started crying.
“Me, too,” Miranda said, but then realized panicking wasn’t going to help. “Don’t cry. Talk so I can find you.”
“I’m here. Against a wall. What do you want me to say?”