“Why did you even invite me here?” I struggled to hide the emotion in my voice, and it came out strangled.
“We told you already,” she said. “In case you might have seen something.”
They’d basically used me. I contemplated lying to them, telling them that I’d seen Dana die and not come back. But what was the point? I didn’t want them to hate me, but I’d done what I thought was best.
I looked at Dana. Her expression was hard, lips thinned, her jaw taut. “I’m sorry if I screwed things up for you, but I’d be even sorrier if you were dead.”
Getting to my feet, I turned from the coven and ran from the cove. I climbed out through the tunnel of rock and onto the main beach. I fished in my pocket for my cell phone. The metal was hot to touch and a white streak marred the screen. I held down the ‘on’ button for a few seconds, hoping a miracle might happen and the phone would flash on, but it was dead. Unlike myself and Dana, it hadn’t survived the lightning.
“Shit.”
I wasn’t having much luck with technology today.
I left the beach and headed up onto the road, brushing sand off my feet as I went. I wondered what to do now. I had no idea what Riley’s number was off the top of my head—all my contacts were saved to my phone. He was expecting me to call him to come and get me, but I couldn’t do that now. I would have to walk, though now it was dark and after my experience walking to his trailer earlier, I wasn’t exactly relishing the prospect.
My dorm building was closer, but he’d worry if I just didn’t show up. I felt so responsible for Riley having given up his home and the closest thing to family he had. I couldn’t pretend that didn’t affect the choices I made with regards to him. Maybe it was too much pressure for us, but it was the situation we’d found ourselves in, and we couldn’t do anything to change it. I didn’t want to worry Riley for no good reason.
With a sigh, I started the walk. Stupidly, I wanted to cry. I’d finally found a small group of people who I could be myself with—totally myself, no secrets about who I was or the things I could do—and I’d managed to extradite myself from them.
“Hey, Beth! Wait up.”
I turned to see Laurel running up the road toward me.
She caught up to me, breathing hard. “I’m sorry about Dana back there. She’s obviously been through a lot, and it’s her birthday and everything. She’s just bummed out about not feeling any different. She doesn’t remember the whole lightning show thing, so in her mind she just stood by the ocean and then woke up. We saw a lot more. For her, it was a bit of a non-event.”
I nodded. “Sure, I get it. Don’t worry about me.”
She gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. “I do, though. Can’t have my favorite half vampire thinking her friends have turned on her.”
A wave of relief washed over me, and I reached out and pulled her into a hug, tears burning my eyes again. “Thanks, Laurel.”
She gave a shrug and untangled herself from my embrace. “You know you’re heading in the wrong direction to go back to the dorm?”
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause I’m going back to Riley’s. He was supposed to come pick me up when I was done, but my cell phone is fried, and he’ll worry if I just don’t turn up.”
“I’ll give you a ride to Riley’s.”
My heart lightened. “You will? That would be awesome, Laurel. Thanks.”
“No worries. I can’t have you wandering around on your own.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “I’m a big girl.”
“Yeah, and you have the whole vampire thing going on, I know.”
Laurel’s car was parked in the lot adjacent to the beach. We walked down to it, and I climbed in the passenger side while she got behind the wheel.
“What are the others doing?” I asked, as she took the beach road and followed the same route I’d taken earlier that day.
“Trying to comfort Dana. She’s pretty cut up about the whole birthday ascendance thing not happening.”
Guilt swamped over me. “But something did happen.”
“Yeah, but not in her mind.”
I didn’t know what else to say. Instead, I looked out of the passenger window and watched the road go by. Within a few minutes, Laurel left the coastal road and headed inland, toward the track that would take us to the area of farmland where Riley’s trailer was located.
He must have heard the engine or seen the headlights approach, as his figure was standing in the trailer doorway as the car pulled up in front.
I climbed out, and he ran down the couple of small metal steps leading to the ground. “Hey, I thought you were going to call me?”
“Sorry. Phone died.”
He kissed me on the mouth and then bent to Laurel still sitting behind the wheel. “Thanks for bringing her home.”
I noted the use of the word ‘home,’ though technically I didn’t live here. I wondered what my parents would say if they had any idea I’d given up their huge house in the Hollywood hills for a trailer on a piece of farmland.
“No problem,” said Laurel with a smile. She craned her head to look at me. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow, yeah? And don’t worry about Dana. She’ll get over it.”
I nodded my agreement, but I wasn’t so sure. Dana had seemed pretty pissed.
Riley frowned at me. “Get over what?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
Laurel pulled away from the trailer, and we stood and watched as her brake lights vanished into the dark. Riley pulled me to his side and kissed the top of my head. “Is it later yet?”
I gave a grim smile. “Let’s go inside.”
He led the way, holding the trailer door open for me as I passed through. I dropped onto the narrow couch and put my head in my hands.
“So what happened?” Riley asked, sitting beside me.
I lifted my face to him. “Did you see anything while I was out?”
“Is this about the fog again?”
“No, something ... different.”
His thick, dark brows drew together into a frown. “Like what?”
“Dark clouds? Lightning?”
He shook his head. “Nope. Not a thing. There hasn’t been any lightning here.”
“Well, there was down on the beach, and it hit Dana.”
His blue eyes widened. “What? Is she okay?”
“Apart from being pissed at me, I think so.”
“Why is she upset with you?”
I sighed. “The lightning was part of some special witchy thing that happens on a witch’s twentieth birthday.”
“Ascension,” he said.
I blinked in surprise. “You know about that? I didn’t think you knew witches’ business?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was too intelligent,” he said with a cheeky grin.
I didn’t smile back and the grin faded.
“I only know a little,” he admitted. “I don’t think it happens to all witches, though.”
“Well, something happened to Dana, only I got in the way. She was being struck by lightning. I thought she was going to die, so I interrupted it.”
“You did what? Why would you even do that?”
I shook my head in amazement. “Err, because of the whole ‘I thought she was going to die’ thing!”
“Jesus, Icy. When are you going to learn not to interfere in things?”
I felt like he had slapped me. He was supposed to be the one person I could rely on to take my side. “Would you still be saying that to me if Dana had died? No, you would be questioning why I didn’t do anything!”
“I just mean that witch business should be left between them.”
“I thought I was going to the beach to celebrate Dana’s birthday. If I’d known all this other shit was going to go on, I would have stayed away!”
“You do have a habit of attracting trouble, though.”
“Yeah, just like you.”
I was fuming. I wanted to turn around and storm out of the trailer, but
that would mean having to walk all the way back to the dorm, which I didn’t want to do, and also spend the night in the same room as Brooke. Plus, if I stormed out, Riley would insist on giving me a ride back to my dorm room, and that would involve me sitting with my arms around him while he drove the bike, and I wouldn’t be able to resist him then.
“I’m tired,” I said in the end. “I want to go to bed. I’ve got class in the morning.”
His cocky smile was back and he took a step toward me. “You want to go to bed, huh?”
I pushed his arm away. “To sleep!”
A smile threatened to tweak my lips and betray me, but I felt myself soften. I was tired, though. I had inadvertently been hit by lightning that night, not to mention my panic from earlier that day, and I was drained.
He grew serious and reached up to touch my face, his eyes studying my features. “You do look tired, Beth,” he said, using my real name, which was unusual for him. “And even paler than normal. Are you sure you’re not feeling anything more than just tired? A bolt of lightning should have killed you.”
“I’m half vampire, remember. It takes a lot to kill me. It should have killed Dana, too, but it didn’t. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t regular lightning.”
I did, however, remember how Dana’s heart had stopped and how she wasn’t breathing. I remembered the smoke rising from both our bodies and how the screen of my cell phone had seared white. My stomach churned. Things could have ended up a lot worse than they had. My friends being annoyed with me should be the last thing I was worried about. I should be grateful everyone had walked away from the events that evening with no permanent damage.
Or at least I hoped we had no permanent damage.
I used the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I peeled off my jeans, and pulled my bra out from an armhole, but left my t-shirt and panties on so Riley didn’t get the wrong idea. As much as I normally couldn’t keep my hands off him, tiredness had seeped down to my bones, making my limbs so heavy I could barely move them. I slipped into bed, and my head found the softness of the pillow. I could hear Riley using the bathroom to ready himself for bed, and my eyes slipped shut, comforted by the sound. This would be the first night since we’d properly gotten together that I’d slept here overnight and we hadn’t had sex. I wondered if this was the start of it—the comfortable part of our relationship. I couldn’t decide if that was something I was pleased about, or disappointed.
Even as Riley slipped into bed beside me, the weight of his arm winding around my waist, sleep claimed me.
Chapter
5
I pelted down the coastal road, willing my legs to move faster, but frustratingly, they wouldn’t. The beach stretched out in front of me, moonlight glinting off the small waves like beams of silver. I took no comfort in the beauty of the scenery. Panic shot adrenaline through my veins, my breath gasping painfully in and out of my lungs. I wanted to turn around and see if I was still being chased, but I was too frightened to turn back in case I saw something I didn’t want to and it made me lose my balance and sent me flying to the ground.
My frightened run had brought me closer to the parking lot that served the beach. I wanted to hide, and the only place I could think of was the cove. I could hide in the cliff face, in the passage that led through to the smaller beach. No one ever went there.
But as I left the road and ran down onto the beach, my vision suddenly went white. Fresh terror burst through me, and I was forced to stop my run, though I still staggered forward. Blind? Had I gone blind? But then I recognized the damp, cold touch on my skin.
The fog had returned.
Confusion swamped my senses. Where had it come from? Hadn’t I been looking at the ocean only moments before? Surely I would have seen it approach, as I had earlier that day. It had been that day, hadn’t it? My confusion deepened, and so did my fear. I thought I’d been at Riley’s trailer before coming to the beach, and yet I had no memory leaving his bed and coming here. Had I imagined going back to Riley’s trailer, and I’d stayed on the beach all along? Yet I was sure Laurel had given me a ride, and my memory of that time seemed so much clearer than anything preceding me running along the coastal road.
Something moved in the fog.
I suddenly remembered something had been chasing me.
Letting out a little cry of fear, blindly I started forward. As before, the sound of the ocean had vanished in the bubble of fog I’d found myself in. I had no way of orientating myself and figuring out which direction I headed. I only wanted to get away from whatever lurked in the fog with me.
I ran, soft sand sinking beneath my feet, making every step a struggle. I would either hit the water or the cliff, I had no other option.
My bare feet hit a rock and I stumbled, falling forward. Pain shot through my toes, making my eyes water, and I bit the inside of my mouth to stop myself crying out in pain. I didn’t want whoever was out there to know my location. My hands planted in the sand, and I scrambled to get back up and brush it off. I hated the feel of sand on my skin.
Movement grew closer and closer, so near behind me I could almost feel the pressure of another body taking up space in the atmosphere. I ran and fell, got back to my feet, only to run and trip again, resulting in a strange stumbling which slowed me greatly. My balance appeared to have vanished together with my view of the beach. I could hear the person chasing me—their breath on the cold air, which would create a fog if there wasn’t one already.
Closer and closer, my pursuer gained on me.
Suddenly, cool fingers wrapped around my throat from behind. My lungs already burned from my run, my chest tight, unable to take a deep breath, but now fingers choked me. I made a strange, strangled sound, and tried to fight back.
But the fingers tightened—long, cold, and frighteningly strong. Why wasn’t I able to fight? I had a dhampyre’s strength, and should be able to throw off a man, if, in fact, it was a man who had me in their grasp, but my strengths failed me. I bucked and struggled, but as the last few bubbles of oxygen left my system, I weakened further. My legs went first, crumpling out from beneath me. Only the hands around my throat prevented me from falling to the sand. The fog encroached my mind as well as my vision, my thoughts becoming jumbled and confused. But beneath the confusion was a baseline of panic and sadness—this was it. It was all over, and I’d never see the people I loved again. Goodbye Mom and Dad, goodbye Riley. I’ll never get to see you again, but I loved you all so much ...
I woke filled with terror, bolting upright in bed, my heart hammering in my chest. I wanted to scream, but I felt the same way I had in my dream, as if all the air had already left my body and I had no reserves to scream with. I managed to take a long gasp of breath, my throat and lungs still feeling like they were burning, and I fell to the side, a coughing fit wracking through my body. Had I been holding my breath in my dream? My throat hurt badly enough to feel as if I’d been strangled, and I was dizzy and nauseated, as if I’d been deprived of air. I had long ago gotten used to having incredibly vivid dreams—sometimes when I wasn’t even asleep—but I’d never experienced anything physical before.
Outside the window, the sky had grown lighter, a kind of grayish purple, as it did right before dawn. The hour must still be early, but I wouldn’t be falling back to sleep any time soon. I only needed a few hours’ sleep a night as it was, so I was done for the night.
I glanced over at where Riley still slumbered. Even my gasping and coughing fit hadn’t woken him. I’d never known anyone sleep so deeply. I’d grown up in a house where my father was a vampire, and my mother tried to keep to his schedule as much as possible, so sleep wasn’t something that happened often in my home. Riley, however, was a different species altogether. Where, when I woke during the night, I found myself tossing and turning for hours, my brain unwilling to shut off from all the thoughts running through it, Riley was capable of waking up, using the bathroom, saying something to me, and then falling back asleep, all within the space of three minut
es. I envied him his easy entry to dreamland.
But what was I to make of my own dream? Was it one of those dreams, where I had seen something that was going to happen? I wasn’t sure. It certainly had the energy of a premonition, but did I really think someone was out to kill me? I didn’t think I’d done anything to upset anyone that badly—even Dana would forgive me eventually, I hoped. And somehow, though I had experienced being strangled, I wasn’t actually sure it had been me. I remembered some thoughts, some feelings I’d experienced during the dream that hadn’t quite matched my own, and I wondered if I’d had the dream about someone else.
My blood felt like ice water in my veins and I wriggled closer to Riley, taking comfort in his body heat and peaceful expression as he slept. His dark lashes lay softly against his cheek, his full lips slightly parted. I could see the shadow of stubble right beneath his skin, highlighting the square of his jaw. He was so beautiful my heart clenched, and emotions powered through me, making me want to cry. I was terrified his part in my life would be fleeting—that he’d soon grow resentful of me and what he’d given up to be with me.
I snuggled closer and pressed my lips against the ball of his shoulder. I tried to forget the dream, hoping it had simply been a result of the events of the previous day. After all, I had watched my friend almost die. The experience affecting me was hardly surprising.
Not wanting to close my eyes because I didn’t want to risk falling asleep again, I lay in bed and watched Riley sleep, waiting for the hours to pass until it reached a reasonable time to get out of bed. When it did, I slipped out of bed and went to the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast. My appetite was nowhere to be seen, but I didn’t want Riley worrying about me. Plus, he always enjoyed a decent breakfast, so I whipped together some pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup.
Drawn by the smell, he walked into the kitchenette, his dark hair mussed from sleep, wearing only drawstring pants. My eyes raked his naked torso, my heart pattering. He slipped his arms around my waist and kissed my neck.
Twisted Magic (The Dhampyre Chronicles Book 2) Page 4