Staked!

by Candace Wondrak

  I stared at him for a moment before saying, “I’m ignoring what you just said and going for a run.”

  “Ooh,” he perked up. “Let me come with.”

  “No.” I held my hand up. “No, you better stay here, just in case Michael needs one of us for something or Raphael comes early.”

  Gabriel stood and crossed his arms. “Fine. But don’t you run into any handsome strangers.”

  “Okay,” I said mockingly, “I’ll try not to.”

  Chapter Seven – Vincent

  The main park in this town was nothing like the ones back home, across the ocean. Though there was a massive lake in the center, which provided for a nice track. It was full of green trees and geese, their droppings everywhere, even on the pathways.

  As I ran, I noticed two jogging women, chatting easily with each other. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought this was a great place to run. As it happened, the other joggers were predominantly women, which was a nice sight to see. These American women were pleasing to look at, and yet they still couldn’t distract my thoughts from him.

  From how I wanted to kill him.

  Well, torture and then kill him. I couldn’t think of the perfect way to do it.

  It was twenty years in the making, and I still hadn’t come up with the right way to kill him. Nothing seemed to compare to what he did to me, how he irrevocably shaped my life.

  Seventeen years ago, I was five. I was only a little kid who lived with his mother and father. Sure, we weren’t exactly normal. We were not the kind of neighbors you’d want to invite to your dinner party, that’s for sure. But we were amicable. We were polite. We didn’t go around killing people in our free time.

  All I could remember was hiding in the closet. I remembered seeing the man bend over my parents. I remembered him choking the last breaths out of their lungs. I could recall seeing him stand after taking something from my father’s corpse, and, worst of all, I recalled him walking out of our apartment as if nothing happened.

  His face was burned in my memory.

  I rounded a corner, my gaze skywards as I relived that horrid day. I didn’t bother slowing down as I took the curve, figuring that there was plenty of space between me and anyone else who was running on the same path. But I was wrong.

  The whole front of my body slammed full-force into someone before I could react and avoid the impact. I turned my head down and noticed a small girl who fell on the ground as a result of our collision. I was fine, of course. Running into her had just slowed me down a bit. But, obviously, the force was more damaging to her than it was to me.

  She was sprawled on the pavement, like she wasn’t sure what just happened. And I wasn’t, either. Last time I looked ahead of me no one was there, so where did this girl come from? Either she was fast or unnoticeable. Possibly both.

  Her light blue mp3 player—a nameless, blocky cube—had slid across the ground and her ear buds had fallen out of her ears. Her green eyes landed on it and then slowly made their way to me. Though she was young, she had nice eyes.

  Eyes I wished I had.

  Not saying a word, I knelt down to her level as all the other runners ran around us, giving us weird glares. But I didn’t care. “Sorry.” I finally managed to say something, and all I could come up with was an apology? Not like me at all.

  I was so much better than sorry.

  A small smile came across her face. “It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking.”

  I felt a gigantic smile appear on my face too. “Neither was I.” My eyes glanced to her mp3. “Is your, uh, thing okay?”

  Is your, uh, thing okay? My brain was frazzled too, apparently.

  “Oh,” she laughed out, “yeah. It’s fine. These things are pretty much indestructible.”

  We both reached for it at the same time, touching hands. It was like something you saw in the movies, but now that I was in the situation, I could finally understand what the big deal was.

  I meant when we touched, I felt my breath disappear.

  What a pathetic thing to say, but it was true.

  Without warning, she tore her hand away and stared at me, like I said something that offended her, and I didn’t think I did.

  “Um, sorry again.” She stood up and grabbed her mp3 player. “I…have to go.” And with that, she was gone, leaving me to wonder just who she was.

  After a few seconds of recollection, I shook off the strange feeling that rose when I met her eyes. I wasn’t wanting her in a sexual way. No, she was far too young for that. But there was something about her that drew me in unwillingly.

  We were kindred beings, in a sense.

  Chapter Eight – Kass

  Normally I didn’t go on runs, but after today I felt like I needed to do something besides purify some Nightwalkers tonight. Around the lessons Raphael gave us, I figured running was my best and easiest option.

  With big, dorky tennis shoes, I made it all the way to the town’s park before breaking a sweat. I had lost the armband for my mp3 player, so I had to settle with carrying it the whole way. After a few minutes, I got used to it and practically forgot I carried it.

  Technically, nothing really happened today. Well, besides the fact that I saw Koath for the first time in years since he dumped me with Michael and Gabriel. And that I met Max. And that I got a mean tutor for physics.

  That’s not even mentioning the fact that I saw a vision that didn’t make sense. Besides all that stuff, nothing happened.

  I decided on the park because I hadn’t been there yet, but I heard that it’s pretty, and that the big lake in the center was gorgeous. I wasn’t a big fan of water, but occasionally its serenity did soothe me.

  As I ran, I noticed that there were many other runners who had the same plan as me. There were tons of people running and walking around the lake. People of all shapes, sizes, and colors. A great variety, really. Some were mothers pushing their babies in strollers while others were well-fit athletic folks who must run on a daily basis.

  I rounded a corner as I saw two chipmunks chasing after each other. How cute. I loved chipmunks. Their little feet, their small eyes, their pink noses. Everything about them was freaking adorable. I didn’t stop running while I gazed at their game of tag because I didn’t think that I’d be stupid enough to run into someone.

  But, as it turned out, I was wrong. Way wrong.

  As I began to turn my head forward, I slammed into a man. Due to the intensity of the hit and the hardness of his chest, I bounced backwards and fell to the ground, hard on my backside. Even my Purifier reflexes couldn’t save me from this fall.

  My mp3 slid out of my hand, scraping on the sidewalk. My eyes landed on it while I sat there, thinking how completely stupid I was for not watching where I was going. Aware of the man’s stare, I was slow to look at him. He simply stared down at me quizzically.

  His short brown hair was ruffled slightly from our crash, his dark blue eyes very passionate. He was attractive at this angle. No, I chided my mind. Stop thinking that right now.

  God. What was wrong with me? These teenage hormones. They made me think such crazy things.

  I blinked, and next thing I knew he’s kneeling down to me, saying, “Sorry.” His voice was rough and low, and for the first time I noticed how unnaturally blue his eyes were. And by unnatural, I meant unnatural.

  And since I meant unnatural, that probably meant that this guy was evil and that I’d have to stab him and he won’t really be dead and…

  Wait. No. That already happened with John.

  Without meaning to, I smiled and said, “It’s my fault. I wasn’t looking.” It was true. But it came out so much lamer than I intended it to. At least it was cooler than me saying sorry, I was watching these two adorable little chipmunks. They were running around and chasing each other and I just couldn’t stop looking at them.

  Yeah. That would have been lamer. Definitely.

  “Neither was I. Is your—” The man’s dark blue eyes flicked over to my mp3 for an
instant before returning to me. “—uh, thing okay?”

  Thing. That thing would be called an mp3 player.

  His tempting lips drew into a small frown at my silence, so I quickly said, “Oh, yeah. It’s fine. These things are pretty much indestructible.” I faked a laugh because his little frown was making me insanely nervous for some weird reason.

  I reached for my mp3 player, not realizing that he was doing the same thing. Our hands touched.

  A sharp breath flowed from my mouth as I flashed into a dark place. It took me a few seconds to recognize that I was in a closet. Hardly any light illuminated the cramped space. I peeked through the crack.

  This closet…was a witness to a very gruesome scene.

  A woman lied, dead on the ground, a gigantic pool of red liquid surrounding her body. A man—which I chose to assume was her husband or partner—lied beside her, still alive, but barely.

  A second man entered the picture, blocking my view slightly. I only saw his back as he kneeled down to the man on the floor, who was gasping frantically for air. I tried looking from a different angle but wasn’t successful. Soon the second man stood up and walked out.

  But not before I noticed some things: the man on the floor was suddenly dead, the man who left had his hands covered in the dead man’s blood, and he took something off the warm corpse.

  An orange necklace.

  I took my hand away and stared at the man, whose extreme gaze was focused intently on me. What the hell was that?

  “Um, sorry again.” Standing, I grabbed my mp3 and said, “I…have to go.” And then I ran away, not bothering to put my earplugs back in. After all, how was I supposed to listen to music and relax after seeing what I saw?

  I wasn’t sure if it was a vision, like the ones I had about John, or if it was something else. But if it was something else…what was it?

  In about ten minutes I made it back to the house, sighing to myself.

  That was the crappiest run I had ever gone on. To think that I saw some kind of vision that I couldn’t make sense of and that Gabriel and I still had to wait thirty minutes for Raphael to get here made me want to scream.

  This was not that great of a day, let me tell you.

  Chapter Nine – Raphael

  A creak reverberated through the dilapidated church. It was loud and sudden, a sound even those hard of hearing would have heard. But I barely noticed. I sat on the pew that was nearest the altar, staring down into my lap, into the book I had stolen from Michael’s library.

  The diary I thought I destroyed.

  I ran a finger around my neck. This priest’s uniform was beyond constraining.

  I had burned this book. I had thrown it into the fire as I watched her burn. As I watched my lover burn. Her skin sag and drop off. Her eyes swell, pop and dry up. Her bones break apart from each other, enabling me to crush them and dispose of them by force-feeding the ashes and bone dust to a Vampire and then stake it, its burnt up body leaving absolutely nothing of her behind on this world.

  I was angry and upset. That was not the way things should have ended. I should have been more humane, but after what she did…she deserved nothing less than being burned at the stake.

  Behind me, the doors to the church flew open. With my fingers closing tightly around the book, I glanced over my shoulder. No one was there. In seconds the doors swung shut of their own accord.

  I stood, clutching the book. I felt a short burst of wind on my neck and heard someone whisper the words “I know what you’re hiding.”

  I had heard that voice before. Once. A long time ago. He was here. I should’ve known all along.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, entirely ignoring his statement.

  “Why else? To have a little fun. To kill some people. Most likely not in that order.”

  His voice still came from nowhere, so I said, “Show yourself.”

  A man appeared at the altar, with his back to me. He stared at the large cross, at Jesus who was unceremoniously nailed on it. He brought his hand to his chin, as if he was lost in thought. “You know, I met the guy once. Wasn’t that much fun to be around.”

  He spun on his heel and grinned at me. His black hair was too long; it almost covered his eyes. But not quite. I could still see his bright green glare from thirty feet away. “Still going about this whole…priest thing? You’re no fun. It makes me wonder why she ever chose you.”

  “Leave,” I growled. “Or I will kill you. Like I killed her. You can count on that.”

  A white smile flashed across his face as he materialized a few inches from me. “I let you kill her.”

  “Really?” I had a hard time believing that. After all, he was the one who made her. He was the one who told her all the secrets that were now written down in her journal, the one I held onto. The one that needed to be destroyed for good.

  “Yes. Turns out, turning people isn’t as fun as I thought it would be, so I’ve stuck to just killing.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I did save that book for you.”

  “You.” I glanced down to the book and back at him. “You’re the one who took this out of the fire? Why?”

  “You know, you ask a lot of foolish questions. I took it out because I like to stir up trouble. Speaking of trouble—” His severe emerald eyes stared into me. “—how is that girl you’re teaching?”

  I took an angry, defensive step toward him. Shoving a harsh finger into his chest I said, “You don’t even think about it. Stay away from her.”

  His dark eyebrows lifted somewhat as he glimpsed down to the finger I had just pushed into him. “If only she knew,” he stopped when I persisted in shoving him back. His head flipped his hair out of his face. “Oh, I understand. She’s yours. I get it. She’s yours.”

  Jaw locking, I responded hurriedly, “She is not mine.”

  “I can see it in your eyes. You want her,” he said, nailing me down with his words.

  “No,” I shook his words off. “No,” I repeated, a little more firmly.

  “It’s okay, you know. She does have something about her that’s just…” He licked his teeth. “Fascinating. And she does look appetizing.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  But he held up a hand and disappeared. Before leaving for good, he whispered into my ear, “It’s three years too late for that, Raphael. And besides, I’m sure you’re dying to find out how she feels underneath you. Softer than your first and only, I think.”

  With a gust of wind he was gone, and I threw the diary across the church with all my strength behind it.

  In all my years, no one incited me the way he did. No one was as monstrous as he. No one could state the truth so plainly that it hurt.

  I buried my face in my hands, tired of life. Tired of hiding things. Tired of lying.

  Alas, the lies must continue.

  Chapter Ten – Kass

  “Raphael’s here,” Gabriel’s voice entered my room.

  Fantastic. It wasn’t like I was doing anything. All I did for the last thirty minutes was sit next to my window and stare out of it, like I was waiting for something to happen. Maybe I wanted to see some more chipmunks.

  Or maybe I wanted to see that guy I ran into at the park. There was something different about him, something I couldn’t put my finger on quite yet.

  Heaving a sigh, I got up and started walking out of my room. But I stopped myself short as I caught a quick look at myself in the mirror. I was still dressed in my running shorts and a flimsy tank top.

  Eh. I was too uncaring about to change.

  Gabriel waited for me outside my door. “You look sexy in those shorts, seriously.”

  I eyed him up, thinking of a witty thing to say back. However, I couldn’t think of anything, so I ignored him and walked down the stairs. I was going to go to the first floor, but Gabriel pulled me aside on the second floor, where Michael’s room, the library and the sparing room were.

  “He said to wait for him in the library,” Gabriel informed me.


  “I have a feeling this lesson is going to be—” I stopped as I pushed open the door to the library room.

  Gabriel started to finish. “Really, really bor—” His gaze landed on the boy sitting in the midst of fallen books. Max. “—ing,” he finally managed to say. “Did I miss something? Did an earthquake strike just this room, or are you just—”

  I put my hand on his arm. I gave him a don’t-you-dare-finish-that-sentence-meanly look. Then I realized that I could have just said it directly in my thoughts and he would have gotten the picture. Ah, well. Too late.

  “Uh,” Gabriel searched for the right words to say, “looking for a book to read while you wait because…you’re here, and not at home…with…the person you’re living with, because you’re here, in our house…in a pile of books—”

  Oh, my God. Gabriel, just stop talking.

  But did he? Oh, no. No, he did not.

  “I just don’t understand how that happened.” Gabriel pointed to him, just in case Max was having trouble with establishing what he was talking about.

  Max’s troubled face stared down at the pile of books that were sprawled all around him and in his lap. He adjusted his overly-sized glasses and replied, “I don’t know how it happened either. I reached for one and…they all came down.”

  “We can see that, since the whole library is on the floor,” Gabriel said.

  Max’s eyes looked from Gabriel to me. His gaze fell down to my legs and suddenly I was very aware that I was standing in front of Gabriel and Max while being hardly clothed. I wasn’t worried about Gabriel. It was Max who I just met today. Plus, Raphael was going to be here.

  I definitely needed to go change.

  I did a three-sixty with the intent of going to go up to my room, but Raphael was pacing up the stairs at the exact same moment.

  His eyes narrowed. “Where are you going?” He seemed oblivious to the sheer amount of exposed, slightly shiny-with-dried-sweat flesh before him.