Enlightened (Love and Light Series)

by Melissa Lummis

  “Modore.”

  “Yes, dear.” His smile crept across his face like pooling blood.

  She shivered. “Let me see him.”

  “This is far enough.”

  He stepped to the side, and Wolf sat ten feet away. He lifted his head slowly, the curtain of black hair hiding half of his bloody face.

  “Take the silver off of him,” she instructed.

  The two lycanthropes looked to Modore, who gave them one curt nod. They approached as if expecting something, and Wolf hissed, baring his fangs. They glanced at Modore, who waived a dismissive hand. The shaved-head guy put a hand to Wolf’s forehead and pulled a length of silver chain, like the kind you’d hang a heart locket on, from a long gash. Loti clamped a hand over her forehead as it ripped from the wound. The skin and tissue knit itself back together before her eyes; the burning subsided to a throb which faded to nothing. She ran her hand over her forehead while keeping her eyes on Wolf.

  The one wearing the Yankees baseball cap reached for Wolf’s chest, and he snapped like a dog. Yankees-Cap jerked his hand back, growling, “I’ve been bitten too many times, boss.”

  “Shut up and do what you are told,” Modore snarled.

  Loti glanced at his eyes flaring with a strange light, boring holes through her. Yankees-Cap took a noisy breath and dug his fingers into the wound on Wolf’s chest. Wolf hissed through his teeth, but watched warily as the silver pulled free one link at time, the wound healing behind its egress.

  “He heals wonderfully!” Modore exclaimed and Loti jumped. “Much faster than any vampire I have ever known.”

  Loti ignored him, speaking to Wolf. “I’m sorry, Wolf.” Her body juddered with the need to hold him, at least touch him, and she let her shield evaporate.

  His eyes hard, his jaw clenched, he stared at the door behind her, but his shield dissolved until they were naked in their minds—exposed and vulnerable.

  “I love you,” she said.

  He looked at her then, his eyes yielding.

  “I know you can’t say it. It’s okay. I know how you feel.” She smiled sadly. “Whatever happens, just know that I know.”

  His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  “All right, you can take me back.” She turned to Mr. Jeans, who escorted her out the door and back to Patrick.

  Patrick waved her into the middle of the circle, his face taut like he was holding his breath. Once she was inside the circle, he chanted a spell, some of which Loti understood. He was calling on the effulgent Light. Mr. Jeans, the shapeshifter, stood by the metal door, arms crossed and staring at them as if they were holding him up.

  The plain room was longer than it was wide, with unpainted cinder block walls. No windows. The door opened and Modore breezed in, his unnatural gate emphasized by his rigid arms. His fingers and thumbs chafed in mindless circles and his translucent skin hinted at a network of veins and capillaries. His washed-out eyes glowed with madness, and his dark hair was tussled like he just rolled out of bed.

  “We need to hurry, Patrick.”

  Patrick did no more than glance at the vampire, intoning the entire time. A grimace burst through his controlled face, and Loti narrowed her eyes. His prana flowed like . . . her eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth, but Patrick shot her a warning look. She closed her lips and her eyes softened as the air pressed against her skin, thick and oppressive. Unsnapping her jacket, she shrugged it off and dropped it on the floor. Sweat trickled down her back. She pulled the blue fleece over her head and dropped that, revealing the long-sleeved white thermal underneath.

  An acrid, meaty, rotten smell filled the room, like . . . ah god. She gagged. She’d smelled it once before, imbued with sandalwood, in the thick greasy clouds of smoke that rose from the funeral pyre by the Ganges. She trembled as Modore stepped into the circle, and Loti stepped away.

  “No need to be afraid, my dear. We will be quite enamored with each other very soon.” And he bit his wrist. The blood welled sluggishly, tinged with purple. She repressed the urge to yell out, curling her hands into fists.

  “I won’t.” She clamped her mouth shut.

  Modore smiled. “Of course you will. If you don’t, you will die.”

  Loti cut her eyes at Patrick, who kept his gaze on the floor, still chanting. A sweat stain bloomed on her chest. “Then I’ll die.”

  “That would be a shame, after all of this effort.” Modore’s voice quaked with a bit of hysteria.

  He moved faster than she could see, and he crushed her back against his front, his wrist in her face. Jerking her head sideways, she strained to get her face as far away as she could from the oozing wound. She pressed her ear into his chest to get away from his bloody wrist that reeked of a sweet rottenness, like overripe banana.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Bathe lately?”

  He laughed too hard, his head flinging back, his mouth abysmally wide, revealing long, wet incisors. Loti dug out the bag of vervain she had stuffed in her jean pocket back at Nan’s house. She tossed it over her shoulder and into Modore’s open mouth. He gagged and coughed a plume of powder like ash and dirt exploding from the side of a collapsing volcano.

  His scream ricocheted around the room, inhumanely loud. Loti’s ears rang and her nose and eyes burned as she bolted for the door. The air itself caught her as if it were a sticky trap. Pushing as hard as she could, she only managed to pull one foot up behind her, her chest straining against the hot thickness. The room heated up like a brick oven. Modore collapsed in the circle, falling on lit candles, his white silk shirt catching on fire. He let loose a strangled scream.

  Mr. Jeans tramped toward her with no apparent difficulty and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her back to the circle. Both arms limp by his side, Patrick stopped chanting, his prana flowing fast, pulsing irregularly. Loti pleaded with her eyes and his pleaded back just as dreadfully. Mr. Jeans slung Loti at Patrick while Modore beat out the flames. Patrick caught her, both of them almost falling. Modore wheezed as he stood with difficulty, his hands shaking with violent spasms. His lips red and raw, his face blistered in blotches like he’d been sprayed with acid. He stalked toward Loti and stumbled. Lifting her chin, she glowered.

  He grabbed her and sank his fangs in her neck in one swift movement. She screamed. It hurt, just hurt. No peace, no pleasure, no soft easeful flow. He gulped her blood, and her eyes fluttered, a pale awareness of Wolf trembling in her mind. There were no words between them, just a diaphanous touch of minds, a pulling apart. He was moving. Where are they taking you?

  But he was gone.

  Her throat tightened, her eyes burned, and not from the vervain. Modore yanked his fangs from her neck and backhanded her, sending her flying across the room. She slammed into the block wall and fell forward, smacking her face on the cement. There was an audible crunch and a stabbing pain flared in the middle of her face, hot blood running down her lips and the back of her throat. She coughed as she tried to breathe through her wet, bubbling nose.

  Modore staggered toward the door, still wheezing and coughing. “I need to go to ground. Finish it.”

  “She’ll die without your blood, once . . . ”

  Loti crawled toward Patrick, who reached down with tentative limbs, and she clasped his forearm with both hands, her face a bloody mess. Purple stains spread across her cheeks.

  “I will send someone with a bottle. She can choose. Live or die, I don’t care,” he rasped, and slammed the door behind him. The ringing echoed.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  “There they go,” Fiamette cupped her eyes as she peered through the Jeep glass. “Come on.” She leaped out slamming the car door. Marcus and Korinna were already outside, glancing nervously at the dark clouds.

  “Sunrise is—” Korinna started.

  “I know, coming. We’ve got to hurry. Take us to wherever they’re going and fly back to the ashram.” The two vampires looked at Fiamette with disbelief.

  “How are you three going to save Wolf all by yourselves?�
� Marcus asked.

  “We don’t have any options. We have to try.” Camille snaked her arms around his waist. He wrapped one arm around her and kissed her forehead.

  “Let’s go!” Fiamette barked. “We’ll lose them.”

  The couple wrapped their arms around her, lifting off into the clouds. Korinna and Justin held hands and took off like Peter Pan and Wendy. They flew over the blue work van that wound its way through the back streets of the Lewiston warehouse district by the river. It took an entrance ramp to the main highway and sped along heading east. After a few miles, it exited into farm country.

  The van turned down a long dirt road in the middle of miles of plowed fields dotted with the occasional outbuildings and long lines of trees. The van trundled along the dirt road, stopped at a gate. An occupant jumped out, yanked the lock off its chain and swung the gate open. After another few minutes, they pulled over by a freshly plowed field and opened the back doors.

  Three men drug a bundle of silver netting out and let it fall to the ground. It wiggled while they hoisted it onto two of their shoulders, steadying it with both arms. The two men carried it out into the field, the third one on the other side, supporting Wolf. They dumped their load with a thunk. Wolf lay still. Two of them pulled the netting away, revealing Wolf curled into a fetal position, wrapped in thick links of silver. Fiamette and the others landed by a wooden outbuilding, a few hundred yards away.

  “They haven’t spotted us,” Justin whispered.

  “We have to go,” Korinna muttered in a choked way.

  Marcus nodded, his eyelids struggling against the day sleep.

  “Then go.” Fiamette crouched by the corner of the building, peering around at the three men who sauntered a safe distance away from Wolf. She waved Justin and Camille forward. “Okay, I don’t see any other way than to try to nab him and bring him back here. At least we can get him out of the light, somewhat, until we can track down Katie. She’ll know what to do.”

  “I know a spell that should keep him from burning . . . at least until we can get him to ground,” Camille offered.

  Fiamette nodded. “Okay, so we have to get him away from the goons.”

  “Fiamette, be careful,” Marcus touched her shoulder.

  Fiamette glanced over her shoulder, a shrewd look in her eye. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  Camille rubbed the back of her neck and face. “Go. Now.” She shoved Marcus away and Korinna and Marcus fled the rising sun.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  Margarite, Guided, and Professor stood outside the warehouse, waiting while Hammer talked on his cell phone.

  “Right.” He pocketed the smartphone. “They’ve got Rachel and are five minutes away.” He glanced at the brightening sky. “I wish witches could fly.” He laughed nervously. “And we had some werewolves.”

  “No, you don’t,” Professor slapped his shoulder. “Too unpredictable. When they change you never know who’s going to be kibble.”

  The air shimmered around them.

  “There’s some powerful magic going on in there.” Margarite scanned the sky. She closed her eyes, reaching out and sighed. “I can’t get through whatever it is.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  Loti lay on her side, curled up in a fetal position. An amber pint bottle with a flip-top stopper sat beside her, and Patrick stood over her, gazing sorrowfully down. His face contorted in pain, wrinkles deepening around his eyes and mouth in an agonized grimace.

  “Your heart, Patrick,” Loti mumbled. “If we can get to Wolf, we can . . .” Her voice faded into a whisper.

  “You have to drink the blood, Loti. When Wolf—”

  “No. You and I know this was pointless.” Her swollen eyes opened into tiny slits.

  “But there’s always a chance-” Patrick moaned as the spasm faded, rubbing his arm. “I have to go. Katie and the coven are almost here.”

  Loti strained her eyes to look up at him. “Why fight them? Just let them help you,” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “I can’t take that chance. The consequences—” He stared unseeing at the block wall. “Well, she would have understood.” He shook himself. “But that’s neither here nor there. Choices.”

  Zigzagging across the floor he said, “Drink the blood, Loti. You can figure out what to do next, but you have to stay alive.” Without looking back, he left her bleeding out on the floor, the door clicking shut behind him. Loti’s eyelids spasmed as her eyes rolled back in her head.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  She opened her eyes, not sure how long she’d been passed out, and lay in silence, the amber bottle filling her vision. Reaching out, she grasped the warm, dry glass. She thumbed the top open, the white and red rubber stopper making a hollow pop. Lifting it, she studied the line of dark fluid half way down. It could have been a pint of beer, except for the thick movement as she tilted it. She flung the bottle across the room, blood spattering along the way to the floor where it shattered into a thousand pieces, the liquid oozing over the sharp edges. Her skin burned, and she writhed as it turned into a constantly increasing sear.

  “Wolf,” The ragged scream reverberated in the shadowy room. She strained to push herself up, but she was too weak. He was too weak. She reached out and somehow found him through the strangling magic Patrick had set in motion.

  Wolf

  Loti

  That was all they said, but she could feel him, his soul touching her soul as they lay together, miles apart. She wondered if this is what it felt like to burn on the funeral pyre by the Ganges, and as the image of the burning corpse filled her vision, a red, hot fury blazed in her mind. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  “DAMN IT!” Her throat felt like it was tearing open as she screamed. “NO!”

  Wolf’s essence melted away like thin ice on the surface of a puddle as the day warmed.

  A little girl again, she squatted by the puddle outside their log and stucco house in Geigertown, poking the melting sheet of ice with a finger. She squinted up at the brilliant mid-day sun, then back down to the paper thin sheet. It was almost gone. She smashed it with her little fist. Then without warning she was inside crisscrossing tubes of pearlescent white, just like the ones in Wolf’s lair. Too weak to move, her cheek sank into the cushion of energy. With a dawning horror, she understood the thrumming was the last thread of Wolf’s existence.

  “NOOOOOO,” she yelled. And the anger exploded in her like a nuclear bomb, mushrooming through the tubes, through the room, through the warehouse, down the lines of energy all through the ground and air and world and sky and universe. It found Wolf lying in the middle of the furrowed field, his exposed skin charring in the inching light of sunrise, smoke streaming and skin cracking black.

  The Jeep and Ford pickup screeched to a halt as the cloud of magic swept across them. Bodies leaped from the cars as Patrick pushed open the warehouse door. To the average human, there was just a shiver, like any one of the random shivers average people experienced all the time. But to the healers and witches and warlocks, it was a bone-rattling burst. Every magical being for a radius of one hundred miles paused as if on cue, gazing around them in wonder.

  Katie and Patrick’s eyes met in a cloud of anger and confusion, both determined and sad. Patrick threw his hands up at the exact same time she lobbed a net of energy at him. It fizzled out of existence as it met his opposing oscillations. The coven joined in, attempting to subdue him, not kill him. He was one of them—they had worked with him. Katie learned magic side-by-side with him, from those youthfully proud days at Clark College to the tenured professorships at their alma mater.

  And Patrick fought them all off.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  “He’s sick.” Guided crouched behind a dumpster with Margarite. Hammer and Professor dived for the SUV when all hell broke loose.

  “I know. It’s his heart.” Margarite peeked around the edge of the container. “He’s going into cardiac arrest.” She sent healing energy, trying to
sooth his spasming prana, but he threw a protective shield between them. She blinked in surprise. “I was just trying to help him.”

  “I think we should leave well enough alone.” Guided held her hand. “We need to give the coven the advantage.”

  She gave him a horrified look, her mouth partway open in shock. “We’ve taken an oath to help all—”

  “But not at the expense of the greater good, Margarite,” Guided warned.

  She closed her mouth and frowned. She knew he was right, of course, but she didn’t have to like it. “We can help him, later.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  The lack of oxygen padded the space between Patrick and the rest of the world as his heart stuttered, unable to contract fully, unable to pump oxygen rich blood to his body and brain. He threw one last burst of energy around him, creating an impenetrable cage of vibrating interference and collapsed on the asphalt, puffing breaths. Katie rushed to him, slamming against the field.

  “Patrick, please,” she cried.

  He turned haunted eyes to her as she fingered the air, as if clinging to a chain link fence. He waved a weak hand, and she fell through, followed by a tearful Rachel. Then he waved again, his head falling back to the pavement.

  “Patrick, let Guided through,” she pleaded, grabbing his hand, her thumb rubbing his palm.

  “No,” he whispered. Her hand felt hot against his papery, cool skin.

  “Please. No matter what you’ve done, we still love you.” Rachel sobbed.

  He fixed his eyes on her. “Love is no excuse,” he wheezed, his vision blurring. “Do you remember . . . what I told you?” Rachel and Katie leaned close to hear him. “In the cave?”

  “Yes,” Rachel whispered.

  “Good.” His voice faded as he stopped breathing. The world swam out of focus, and he saw his mother and father. The lonely days at the boarding school on 18th Street in Washington paraded by. Then Katie came into his life and a euphoric wave lifted him up and left him there, stunned and wide awake for the first time. The dark room in the basement of the Metaphysics Building—the moment that changed his life forever. Joe. Wolf. Rachel. David. Loti. Katie. His dear, sweet Katie. How he tried not to love her. White light, sweet, clear, white light.