Sam I Am

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Seconds later, the pleasure arrived. Like waking up after a nightmare. Like morphine for a broken bone. It dulled the agony at once, smoothing out the sharp angles of pain that ached and throbbed until there was nothing but a distant sensation – a pull and a swallow and a building desire.

  Moisture pooled between Logan’s legs, just beneath a coiling, tightening need. She moaned as Sam swallowed again and the pleasure spiked, a hard knife-like influx of endorphins and liquid aphrodisiac that flushed her with warmth and dizziness.

  She was going to die. The knowledge was there, somewhere in the back of her fevered brain.

  But it felt so good.

  Suddenly, Sam went still against her. His body tensed even harder, even more painfully than it already was, and Logan’s eyes fluttered open.

  At once, he was yanking his fangs from her neck and releasing her. Logan cried out again at the pain this removal caused, and she hit the ground hard, the world tilting around her.

  She was back in the gymnasium. She could smell burning pumpkins, chemicals from the fog machines, and Halloween makeup. People were moving all around her. Someone was chanting. The lights flickered in and out. Lightning crashed and thunder rolled.

  Logan blinked against the confusion. It was chaos – dizzying, nauseating, terrifying chaos.

  She couldn’t take it. So she stopped blinking, laid her head on her arm, and closed her eyes for good.

  Dominic had never been so frightened before. Not when his scrambler had careened out of control underneath him on the washed-out back road in Pinos Altos last Spring. Not when he’d broken his arm, his leg, and two ribs falling off of the Carlsbad aqueduct the summer of his fourteenth year. Not when he was eleven years old and his mother had suddenly and rapidly wasted away in a hospital room that smelled of rotting things and antiseptic and vomit – not even then – had he been as terrified as he was now.

  At first, he had no idea why he was so much more frightened. And then he realized it had to be Logan. She was the only thing that was different. And she was all he could think about.

  He’d only really met her, in a manner of speaking. He had yet to hold her hand or kiss her or even have a decent conversation with her. A part of him wanted to let her drive his car. He wanted to show her the tree house he’d built on his father’s sprawling land; the one that no one else knew existed. He didn’t want to lose her.

  Not yet, God damn it.

  So when Mr. Lehrer approached him while the girls were changing, gave him the piece of paper with the spell written on it, and told him what to do when the time came, Dominic’s stomach took up residence in the left ventricle of his heart and stayed there.

  “But,” Dominic said, shaking his head, “I’m not a wizard or warlock or –”

  “It’s witch, and I know you’re not, Dominic. But it doesn’t matter for this spell. Just say it right, and it will work.”

  It made the situation so much worse when Dom looked out over the crowd later to see Logan standing there – in that tiny Slytherin school girl uniform – looking more tempting than she had any right to be looking. What the hell was she thinking?

  He wanted to cover her up, mess up her shiny hair, drape her in curtains. Because he knew that when Sam Hain laid eyes on her, she would be lost to him. No man in his right mind could pass up something like that.

  Dom felt undeniably sick. Like he never wanted to eat anything ever again.

  Just as Mr. Lehrer had said it would, a nightmare scene unfolded below the stage. The students became monsters. The dead walked among them. Ghosts haunted the fake cemetery and fog smothered them all with its icy fingers. He took off his guitar and slowly stepped back off of the stage as the wood pyre appeared out of nowhere and they dragged Meagan Stone toward its waiting death.

  Dominic slipped back behind the bleachers and used a pen light to read the words scribbled on the small scrap of paper in his hands. It was gibberish to him. But it was supposed to be magic. And it was supposed to weaken Sam Hain, debilitate him, long enough for his hold over the students to wane and Meagan Stone to finish her spell.

  A roar went up through the crowd beyond the bleachers and Dom knew his time was running short. Someone lit a torch; he could see it through the slats in the stands. He read the words again, trying to get them right. It was important to get them right. Mr. Lehrer was adamant about that.

  But they were so impossible. What fucking language was this, anyway?

  The crowd fell into an ominous hush and Dominic’s gut clenched tight. It was now or never.

  Very slowly, so as not to draw the attention of any of the crazed students in the gymnasium, Dominic made his way through the shadows behind the bleachers toward the opening at the other end.

  Logan’s piercing cry sliced through the silence, and Dominic broke into a run to come out from behind the bleachers, his note crumpled in his closed hand.

  There he stopped, his gaze locked on the image of Logan Wright, trapped in Samhain’s arms, his fangs in her throat, her eyes closed in agony, ecstasy, and a dawning death.

  I can’t do this, Dominic thought. I can’t stand here and talk when I could just stab him in the back right now.

  But Lehrer had been adamant about that, too. Nothing – nothing – would stop Samhain but the words on that piece of paper.

  Dom quickly unfolded it, his fingers trembling beneath the weight of his task. He ruthlessly shoved aside his repulsion and terror and began to read aloud. He went slowly, to make sure he got it right, but he spoke clearly and loudly. A few seconds after he’d begun, he glanced up to see that every student in the gym was now watching him, and not Sam Hain.

  He swallowed hard and went on. A few seconds later, Sam pulled his fangs from Logan’s throat and let her fall to the floor.

  I’m going to die, Dominic thought. This is it. He’s going to kill me now.

  But Sam wasn’t looking so good. Despite the blood he’d just consumed, he looked pale. Pained. His blue eyes were glowing ominously and their pupils had dilated to tiny pinpoints. He looked crazed suddenly, and Dom found himself reading faster.

  A growl went up through the room, rumbling like thunder and Sam was suddenly striding toward Dominic on long, strong legs. Dom backpedaled until he was up against the padded gym wall. He started a word, felt as if he was going to fumble over its complexity, and forced himself to stop. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were constricting.

  And then a second voice raised in chant. It was a girl’s voice and Dominic knew it was Meagan. Her words were different than his, and when she spoke, her voice echoed throughout the decorated chamber as if born and raised of magic. At once, Dominic realized what a real witch was. It was someone like Meagan Stone.

  In that moment, Dom could have kissed Meagan, because Sam stopped in his tracks and his eyes went wide. He bared his fangs and spun to face her where she’d been released by teenagers no longer under his twisted spell.

  In a flash of light that temporarily blinded everyone in the room, his vampire form was gone. Red swirling mist rose from where he’d been standing and coalesced near the ceiling.

  Dom frantically looked from the mist to the unconscious figure of Logan, lying on the hardwood floor several yards away. She was circled by a ring of students who gazed down at her unmoving body. They didn’t touch her. They didn’t even bend to check for her pulse.

  Dominic realized that they were guarding her. They were guarding her from Dom, from Lehrer, even from Meagan – but not from Sam. They were still under Hain’s spell.

  Dom wondered if she were alive. He refused to believe otherwise.

  His gaze skirted from Logan to Meagan once more. The witch looked nervous. Actually, she looked like she felt as sick as he did. She stumbled over a word and shook her head, her fingers twisted nervously in her Ravenclaw uniform skirt.

  Dominic wondered where her piece of paper was.

  She could have used one. He could tell. He recognized the fear in her eyes because he’d experienced t
he same brand moments earlier. She was afraid she would mess up. But she also looked dreadfully determined. He had to give her that.

  The red swirling mist that was growing and pulsing and becoming as dense as blood above them boded very ill. Lightning flashed in the gymnasium, but it was red instead of white. It slammed into several of the speakers on the stage and sent the three remaining Lost Boys diving for cover. The thunder that accompanied it was deafening. Dom hastily covered his ears, instinctively curling inward at the mega-hard thrumming violence of the electrical blast.

  When he could, he glanced at Meagan again. He noticed that her necklace was gone. She was defenseless against Sam now.

  Dom rose and darted toward her a second too late. The swirling mist above had condensed to the point of a solid and it dove for Meagan with searing speed. Dominic cried out, trying to warn the witch.

  Some primal survival instinct must have kicked in, because at the last second, Meagan dodged to the right, hitting the ground hard and rolling. Students backpedaled to get out of her way and the mist rose once more, darting to an empty spot a few feet away. It convened and coalesced, shrinking and becoming more dense until a second flash of light discharged and then receded, leaving behind the enormous black wolf from earlier that night. Its rows of fangs were bared and its growl reverberated off of the walls of the gymnasium. It sounded like a motorcycle, it was so loud. Dom could feel the vibration in his bones.

  The wolf gazed darkly at Meagan, its eerie yellow eyes glowing like the eyes of the jack-o-lanterns. Meagan tearfully rushed through the words of the spell, obviously desperate to complete it before he managed to come at her once more. She raised her hand to her chest as if to feel for the protective necklace, and sobbed loudly when she felt that it wasn’t there.

  And then the wolf leapt.

  Dominic leapt as well.

  Dom was well aware that there were moments in a person’s life when time changes. It either slows down or speeds up or, in the case of a few of his drinking buddies, disappears entirely. Time had slowed when he’d wrecked his bike and when he’d broken his bones.

  I did the same now, as he met the massive wolf a split second before its jaws would have clamped around Meagan’s throat. Dom’s tall, strong body slammed into the wolf’s side so hard that he both felt and heard the impact. It was hollow and it echoed inside of his head, and Dominic knew that he was trapped in time.

  Finish the spell…. The thought drifted through him, a slightly more solid form than all of the other semi-transparent thoughts that now scattered inside his mind.

  He was pretty sure he hit the ground, then. His body was engulfed by pain and immobility. There was a strobe-like flashing of lights behind his closed lids and a mish-mash of sound. Somewhere, far away, he could make out the distant sound of chanting, harried and rushed and barely comprehensible.

  His chest felt hot – and then cold. The coldness spread, until his fingers felt frozen and numb. The blackness opened up before him, and he willingly let it take him away.

  Chapter Ten

  Two days in the hospital left Logan absolutely positive that she never, ever wanted to go back. Not for any reason. If she ever had kids, she would damn well give birth to them in an alley filled with trash bins instead of ever heading to a hospital again.

  Her phone rang. She frowned and pulled the cell out of her hanging backpack, reading the LCD screen. It was her mother. She opened it and put it to her ear. “Hi mom.” This couldn’t be good. Her mother never called her during school unless something bad had gone down.

  “Sweetie,” her mom’s voice was drained and yet filled with worry at the same time. “We’re back at the hospital. James and Taylor fought again.”

  Rage coursed through Logan hot and hard and sudden. She imagined James, a mere ten years old, beaten and bloody and she suddenly wanted to kill her older brother.

  Really kill him.

  “No, mom. James and Taylor don’t fight. Taylor beats the shit out of James. That’s it,” she hissed into the phone.

  Her mother sighed. “Okay, honey. I have to go. Please come to the hospital when school is out.” She hung up on her daughter, leaving questions unanswered.

  Was James okay? How badly was he hurt? But, surely her mother would tell her if it was serious.

  I hate it when she hangs up on me, she thought. Logan knew it was because the woman possessed neither the energy nor the inclination to fight about Taylor just then. Or ever, really. Logan was no psychologist, but after nearly two decades of the same behavior, she was fairly sure that her mother was an enabler. And in denial. And when she was drunk, she was a drunken, in-denial enabler and Logan’s respect for her drained as quickly as the bottle of Red Rose her mother sucked on.

  Tiffany Preston and her giggling gaggle of fellow cheerleaders passed by the end of the hall, temporarily drawing Logan’s attention. Tiffany looked up and caught Logan’s gaze. She smiled a smirk of a smile, and tossed her hair over her shoulder before disappearing around the corner.

  Logan threw the phone back into her backpack and zipped it shut. Nothing has changed, she thought. After all that – nothing’s changed.

  Then she sighed, ran a hand over her face, and leaned her head against the inside of her locker door. She thought about the last week and all that had happened.

  Sam. The spell. The dance. The killings – and the reversal of it all when Meagan had finally completed her spell in the nick of time, thanks to Dominic Maldovan’s judicious interference.

  Logan had been unconscious for the miraculous event, but to hear Meagan and Katelyn tell it, it had been pretty amazing. Meagan’s spell had been incredibly powerful. It was meant to close the door to the realm of the dead and send Sam back through it. There were few spells known to any grove of witches that were more potent than that one. Apparently, it had caused unexpected but very welcome side effects.

  Sam’s wolfen form had vanished, every person he had killed was suddenly alive again, the jack-o-lanterns disappeared, the mist in the room cleared, and apparently the students thought it was all an act – part of the dance, ingeniously conducted by Principal Kaboren, who was rumored to love Halloween just as much as his students did.

  It was as if the door had never been opened.

  As far as Dominic and Logan were concerned, Logan had been quickly discovered by a teacher and whisked away to the ER due to a deep and inexplicable unconsciousness. When Meagan had completed her spell, not only had all of Sam’s previous dirty deeds un-done themselves, the vampire bites in Logan’s neck had vanished. The doctors found her several pints low and had no explanation for it. In the end, they ran test after test and then chalked it up to a deficiency.

  Dominic, on the other hand, had been relatively unscathed. Though he seemed to have been knocked out during the fray, just like Logan, he’d woken up shortly after Sam’s disappearance and seemed to display no ill effects. He underwent a brief check-up by the high school nurse, just to make certain he hadn’t suffered a concussion and then he was left alone with Mr. Lehrer.

  Dominic’s fans and friends begged him to finish his band’s set from the stage. According to Meagan, he’d had a brief, rather fierce and furious discussion in the school hallway with Mr. Lehrer and then, in the end, he had acquiesced and returned to finish with the band.

  She wondered how he was feeling now. She hadn’t had a chance to talk to him yet, and he hadn’t come to see her in the hospital. Of course, why would he?

  You never learn Logan, she chastised herself. Why would Dominic Maldovan care one whit about how you’re doing? He was out of her league. She was an idiot to think that anything had changed. If her mother’s phone call was any indication, life was just as grand as it had always been.

  Silently, she wondered whether she’d truly made the right decision. Was this kind of life really better than Sam’s kind of death?

  “Hey, how are you feeling?”

  Logan lifted her head and turned from her open locker to find Nathan McC
ay, the drummer for Dominic’s band standing just behind it. Paul, she thought, remembering Nathan dressed up as the vampire Saturday night. He’s talking to me?

  “Better,” Logan said, blushing a little under the sudden and unexpected attention.

  Nathan smiled and nodded. Shawn Briggs came up behind him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. He was looking at Logan. “Hey Logan. How are you feeling?”

  Logan blinked. “Umm… better?” she replied. Why are they talking to me? Why do they care?

  “Dom’s looking for you,” Nathan told her.

  Logan’s heart skipped.

  “He wanted us to give this to you if we saw you first.” Shawn brought his other hand around and showed her a long white, rectangular box. Logan recognized it as a flower box.

  She felt her eyes widen and her blush deepen. She hesitantly took the box and looked back up at Shawn and Nathan.

  “Happy birthday.” Nathan nodded at her again and turned to leave. Shawn smiled and left as well. She watched them go, marveling at the way the students in the hall moved aside for them as they passed through.

  Then she looked down at the flower box. My birthday.

  Holy shit. She’d totally forgotten about it. She turned eighteen today – October 6th. She’d forgotten. Her family had forgotten, but that was understandable given the circumstances – and the fact that her family was basically dysfunction incarnate. It looked like even Meagan and Katelyn had forgotten.

  But Dominic’s band knew?

  This isn’t real, she thought. No way Dominic Maldovan knows my birthday.

  She opened the flower box and gazed down at twelve tall white roses. Their stems were straight and strong, their petals were perfect, unmarred snow. Their scent was heady and superb. Logan set the box against the locker and deftly lifted a single rose out of the group. She placed it to her lips, feeling the silken softness of the petals against her. She inhaled.