by Leigh Kelsey
“No!” I screamed, kicking out and thrashing with every bit of strength I had left. “No! Oisìn!”
He dropped to his knees with a sickening sound, his face still set in shock. I began to shake uncontrollably as I watched him fall onto his face on the cobblestones, the pale tip of a stake jutting out of his back and tearing the grey wool of his jumper. Beneath, blood spread across the ground.
He didn’t move.
“No,” I gasped, emptied of every bit of strength I’d ever had.
I didn’t fight as Glen wrenched me away and out of the alley. When he jostled me too hard into the back of a car, it was a blessing when the pain in my shoulder howled and I blacked out.
IMPRISONED
Howling cold pain had filled my chest by the time I woke up, thrown over a man’s back, my mind rattling inside my skull with every bouncing step he took through a near-dark hallway. My chest felt like it had been punctured by a massive shard of ice, the way it had when Oisìn had been taken across the portal. Now … now he was gone for good. And I would never stop feeling this way.
The world around me felt different, something I couldn’t name that made me think I’d been taken back to that world on the other side of the portal. I didn’t care.
I cried out as I was thrown into a cold, stone cell but I didn’t really care about that either. My shoulder was screaming with pain, and it had to be dislocated. When the bars rattled as the man who’d carried me—Glen, I distantly remembered—locked them, I just curled into a ball on the frozen stone floor and sobbed.
Silence, for so long I couldn’t begin to measure the time, or even care to. I knew, deep down, I had people I loved, who loved me. My mum, Finn, Allen, Scarlett. Hell, even Sinclair probably cared that I was gone. But with Oisìn … gone, I couldn’t begin to care. I pushed them far down in my consciousness until only silence existed.
Silence, and then the sound of someone shuffling through the wall beside me. “Who is it?” a velvet-deep voice asked. “Who’ve they taken now?”
I ignored the voice, curling tighter around myself. I couldn’t stop seeing Oisìn’s mouth falling open as the stake broke through his chest. His jumper ripping, his blood pouring, and then pooling on the cobbles as he fell onto his face. I hadn’t been able to stop it. And now he was gone.
The world blurred around me again as I shattered into sobs.
When I finally stopped crying, what must have been hours later, I felt hollowed out. Like someone had erased everything inside me until I’d become one big black hole. I felt, for the first time, like I was truly soulless. I had no feelings, no heart, nothing human left in me. Just howling quiet, and the stark absence of my sobs. I’d run out of tears, but it was somehow worse. Instead, everything inside me ached, the mess where my heart had been torn into shreds.
Gods—I’d hurt him. That was the last thing I’d done before he… I savaged his arm with my fangs, desperate for his blood. What was the last thing I’d said to him? I couldn’t remember. Why couldn’t I remember?
I skittered upright at the sound of a fist thudding against the other side of the wall to my right, a different voice than the velvet-cool man who’d spoken before.
“Hello? Done crying?”
“Fuck you,” I rasped.
I expected an amused laugh but instead there was nothing, a pause. And then, “What did they do to you?”
“Nothing,” I whispered, staring into the blackness of the cell. I could barely make out the bars at the front, or the walls covered in moss and mould, or the rat scurrying in the far corner. I watched the little animal, thinking how much simpler life would be if I was a rat. No one could break my heart if I was a rat. No one could kill my … what was Oisìn? My boyfriend? I hadn’t even had the chance to find out.
I laughed, a bitter broken thing that didn’t sound like me. “They killed someone I love,” I finally said.
Had I told him I loved him? I hadn’t. I’d told Finn, and Allen, but not him. Why? Why, when I loved him so badly it had ripped something vital from inside me to lose him?
“I’m sorry,” came the subdued reply from other the cell. “I’m Kwame.”
“Elara,” I replied weakly, and said nothing else. I didn’t have anything else to say, didn’t have anything in my mind except the sight of Oisìn’s death on replay.
“Wait,” I said sluggishly minutes or hours later. “Kwame?”
“Yes?”
“No. I mean. Your name’s Kwame. Do you—do you know Finn? Finn Mac Cumhaill?”
“Yes,” he replied instantly, sounding more alert. “Elara—the one he took in? How is he? Has Fear Doirche got to him yet? I came back to Whitby to help as soon as I heard what had happened up at the abbey, but I was careless. One of the hunters captured me, brought me here.”
“Why?” I asked, a flicker of interest breaking through the dull pain inside me. This man knew Finn—my Finn. That couldn’t be coincidence.
Kwame didn’t answer for a while, so long that I thought he’d forgotten to answer. The darkness and quiet of the cells did that, swallowed words and time until they didn’t exist. But then he said, “He wants information. He’s collecting Finn’s weaknesses.”
“Trying to collect Finn’s weaknesses,” corrected the voice in the cell to my right, and I jumped. My slow heart sped a little. I pressed myself back against the wall, forgetting about my injured shoulder. Pain spiked and I cried out, my dry eyes spilling tears again as the touched-nerve feeling raged through my whole body.
“Elara?” Kwame asked, concerned.
“I have—I think my shoulder’s dislocated. It doesn’t matter,” I added in a whisper, mostly to myself. What did matter anymore? “They just—he just died. Right in front of me. I watched him—he just—fell.”
“Bastards,” hissed the man to my right. “If I had my magic, I could help with the pain.”
I shook my head. What did it matter? I screwed my eyes shut but then all I could see was Oisìn’s red hair spread out on the ground, blood growing in a pool under him. The sobs returned with force and I pressed a hand to my mouth to push them back.
“Leave her be, Sceolan,” Kwame said gently.
I was grateful they left me alone as I watched my world end over and over again behind my eyes. I’d done nothing. The stake had driven through his chest and I had done nothing. I had vampire strength, I had a knife, I had—I should have done something. I should have seen the vampire move. I should have stabbed his neck over and over again until it detached from his neck. I should have made sure he was dead. And now Oisìn…
I pulled my knees to my chest and cried until I fell asleep.
HOPE’S CRASH
When I woke up, I felt awful. My shoulder was blazing a constant pain, the muscles burning, and my chest was worse. A dense, blistering ice had set up home inside me, veins spreading across my body in a chilling network. My eyes were dry and scratchy, my throat sore, and various parts of my body felt bruised from the fight and being thrown in this cell.
I wished I was still asleep.
“Kwame?” I rasped.
“Yes, Elara?”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Not sure. A day at most.”
I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “Thanks.”
Silence stretched across the cells, and I strained for any sign of the time—day or night—but it was as black as when I’d fallen asleep. If I pressed myself to the bars, I could make out a stone staircase leading up, but that was all. I was … trapped. Oisìn’s death flashed behind my eyelids and I flinched away from the sight.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, desperate for distraction. I remembered the man in the cell to my right. “Both of you.”
“I arrived in Whitby three days after your fight at the abbey,” Kwame answered in his deep voice. “I don’t know how long has passed since then.”
“About four weeks,” I breathed, imagining being locked up here for a whole month, “What do—what do they d
o with us?”
“Torture us,” answered the second man in a harsh crack of a voice. “Like Kwame said, they want Finn’s weaknesses. Here’s my question, Elara—did they just capture one?”
My mouth went dry. “They’ll use me against him,” I breathed, the ache in my chest getting worse somehow.
“They’d do the same with me,” he answered, quieter. “But they can’t figure out who I am.”
“Who are you?” I asked hesitantly.
“Sceolan,” he replied, his voice harsh. “You will tell no one that name. I don’t care if they torture you, if they peel your skin back until you pass out from the pain—”
“Enough,” Kwame snapped.
I couldn’t breathe. That’s what they were going to do to me? To get me to tell them about Finn? Could I hope to fight when they did things that horrific? I’d rather die than give them something to use against Finn, but they wouldn’t let me die, would they? “What do I do?” I whispered. “How do I—how do I not tell them everything?”
“You don’t,” Sceolan replied. “You’ll tell them everything and endanger Finn.”
I shook my head, expecting tears to fill my eyes but not surprised when they didn’t come. I was empty. But still deathly afraid to get Finn hurt. “I could—I could use the pain from my shoulder so I black out,” I whispered.
“That,” Sceolan replied slowly, “would be a good idea. You want to protect Finn’s secrets that badly?”
“Yes.” My throat was swollen, making my words thick. “I’d do anything to keep him safe. I can’t—I can’t lose—”
“Anyone else you love,” Sceolan finished gently, his whole voice changed. “You love Finn?”
“Yes,” I replied, my heart beating faster.
“Good,” he said abruptly. “So do I. He’s my cousin.”
“So do I,” Kwame added. “He’s my sire.”
The word sire made my stomach lurch. My heart, slowly easing, wound back into the tightest pain. “He’s my—family,” I breathed. “My sire’s father.”
Kwame’s voice changed. “He found Oisìn?”
I nodded, which was pointless since he couldn’t see me and all I did was jostle pain through my shoulder. “He was with Fear Doirche. He’d … he’d made him into a hunter.” My throat closed around that final word and I couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. “I can’t—I can’t talk about him. Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Sceolan replied, surprising me with how gentle he sounded. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Elara.”
I shook my head, trying to block out the words, my own memories. “How do we get out?” I grasped onto the topic of escape.
“You don’t,” replied a new voice. Welsh, judging by the accent—and familiar.
Him.
Oisìn’s killer.
“You,” I seethed, on my feet in an instant. My shoulder and the pain killing me became non-existent. “You’re dead for what you did.”
The dark-haired, pale vampire stepped up to the bars of my cell. I saw him through the dingy light, bloody and injured, a scar on his throat. I smiled. Good. I wanted to mar him forever.
“I might be dead,” he hissed, moving close enough to grab me through the bars. He lowered his voice to a whisper, softer, “But Oisìn still lives.”
“Get your fucking hands off her,” Sceolan said in a dangerous tone.
“Made friends already?” the vampire asked with amusement, stepping back and letting me go. His voice was entirely different. Harsher again.
“No,” I breathed. “No! What did you mean? Please!”
But he just walked away, then ascended the dark stairs. I grabbed the bars and threw myself against them, hissing. “Come back!”
“What did he say?” Kwame asked, his voice much closer than I’d expected. He must have been right against the bars, like I was.
“He said Oisìn was still alive,” I whispered. “He has to be lying.” I wiped away a tear as it rolled down my cheek, my chest caving in on itself. “He has to be. I saw—I felt—he died.”
“Are you sure?” Sceolan asked urgently. “Are you sure, Elara?”
Was I?
“I watched him fall,” I whispered. “His blood spread across the floor, and he looked—his face—”
But…
Hope spread through me, fragile and smoke-like, quickly filling the dark parts inside me. “But I felt the stake that bastard had, and it didn’t feel the same as the hunter’s stakes. And Oisìn is old—really old.” I spoke quicker and quicker, desperate for it to be true. “He could survive it, couldn’t he? Only one of the hunter’s stakes could kill him. Right?” When neither of them answered, everything inside me sank. I pressed my forehead to the cold metal bars, the pain returning in my shoulder. Or rather, I felt it again now my hope had firmly crashed.
“He’s lying,” I said, my voice as empty as my hope. “Isn’t he?”
“I’m sorry, Elara,” Kwame said gently.
I returned to the back of my cell, curled up, and waited for sleep to claim me again.
REFORMED
I thought I’d woken up, but even though it was dark and a cold wind brushed over my bare arms, the ground was soft beneath me. Emotion choked me as I realised grass fluttered around my face. I didn’t feel trapped anymore. There was air around me, wind, and space. I could breathe properly again.
I pushed myself up and cried out, collapsing back to the ground as pain sliced through my shoulder. I was free—but still in agony. I thought I heard my name on the wind but when I listened, all I heard was my muffled whimpers as I struggled to sit and then get to my feet, tears springing to my eyes and my teeth gritted the entire time.
Where was I? Not in the cell, that was for sure, but where else? It wasn’t Whitby Beach near the Fair House, wasn’t anywhere I recognised. I waited for panic to hit but the pain blurred even my curiosity, my unease.
“Elara!” I heard again, and spun tentatively, scanning the wind-torn grass for a figure. I didn’t see anything until he called my name again, and then my heart threw itself into a sprint. I knew that voice. I tried to shout his name but a sob tumbled out instead, and then I was breaking down. It was just a dream—it wasn’t real—but I couldn’t help it. Something in my soul was trembling, folding in on itself.
“Oisìn,” I managed to gasp, but it was enough. I pushed tears out of my eyes and then I could see him, pale and ragged, sprinting towards me. I began to stumble across the grass, my shoulder blaring agony, but I didn’t care one bit as we slammed into each other. It didn’t matter that this was a dream and when I woke, it would be to the cold reality that he was dead. Nothing mattered except he was solid and warm and alive under my shaking hand.
I lifted my head off his shoulder only to scan the long grass for Allen’s broad shoulders, Finn’s lithe shadow. Nothing—but I had this. I had him.
“I wish this was real,” I sobbed, my face to his chest. I knew, beneath his form-fitting jumper, there was a raw, bleeding wound where a stake had carved into him.
“Elara,” he said, pulling back. “Elara, look at me.”
I did, blinking until I could fully see him. “You look terrible.” His face and arms were red and splotchy, like he’d been out in the sun too long—like when he’d used it to harm himself before I rescued him from that island.
“Exactly.” He kissed my forehead, making my heart thump. The pain in my chest … faded slightly. “Wouldn’t you dream of me looking better than this?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “I think I’d dream of your death. I see it every time I blink.”
He held me tighter, and comfort filled me at the same time pain lanced through my shoulder. I tried to muffle my cry but failed, judging by the way he stiffened.
“You’re hurt.” His voice promised retribution. “Where?”
“My shoulder,” I whispered. “Why does it matter? This isn’t real. It’s a dream. I don’t want to waste time talking about my dislocated shou
lder.”
Oisìn stood back and gripped my arm gently, assessing my injury. “This is going to hurt. Magic can’t put your shoulder back.”
I huffed, irrationally frustrated. “For god’s sake,” I half-sobbed. “This is my dream. I should be able to control it, and all I want is for you to shut up about my shoulder and hold me.” My voice broke, my face heating as tears rolled down my cheeks. Oisìn kissed my cheek once, gripped my shoulder, and jerked my arm back into place.
I screamed, so loud I was scared I’d wake myself up, but though I swayed and fell against Oisìn’s body, I didn’t wake up. Warmth spread through my shoulder and down my arm. Faerie magic. I sagged as, for the first time since I’d been thrown into the cell, the pain eased completely.
I fell silent, just leaning against him as my brain tricked itself into feeling his warm arms around me, hearing his heart beat under my ear, and smelling his scent of leather and embers.
“This is real, sweetheart,” he said after a long silence. “I don’t know how I can convince you, but it’s real.”
My throat squeezed tight. I wished he hadn’t spoken, so I didn’t have to say, “You’re dead, Oisìn. You died.”
He held me tighter to him, trailing comforting kisses down my neck to my healed shoulder. “I should have died,” he said gravely. “I should have died instead of letting them take you.”
I shoved away from him, anger blazing to life inside me. “They put a stake through your heart, Oisìn!”
“And they stole you away from me, Elara!” he fired back. Oh, he was angry. His green eyes were on fire, narrowed, and he was flushing with anger. “I told you I’d never let us be separated, and still I did.”
“Because you had a stake in your heart,” I repeated fiercely. I couldn’t get past it. “It went all the way through—I watched it—and then you—you bled out on the ground and I couldn’t do anything.” The dam of my tears broke. “I couldn’t do anything, and you just—died.”