“This doesn’t come close to making up for stealing the first present I ever got from Lawrence,” Amy said, grabbing his sneaker. It was several sizes to big and a clown shoe on her, but she wore it anyway. If nothing else, she would take some pleasure in watching Tony navigate the woods barefoot.
“Listen, we’ll be to the house soon enough. When we get there, I’m going to ask you to write a letter to your daughters. They’re hoping you give something away in the letter. I’m to tell you it will be sealed and unread by any of our group, but I promise you, it will be. They want you to sign paperwork that will turn the daily running of the shop over to one of our agents.”
“I won’t do that,” Amy said.
“I get it, but if you don’t, they’ll have a whole team watching your daughters. You could counter with a few things, either ask for Martha and Bill to be the ones to watch the shop or in your letter to Jade, have her hire the name the Keepers provide to you.”
“Why would I do any of that?” Amy flopped along feeling like a child in overgrown shoes.
“To protect your children. As long as the Keepers think they’ve got the person with the power, they’ll only watch the house. The minute you prove that you don’t have the Time gift, they will take your daughters. For now, they are only watching,” Tony sounded so slick when he presented the reasons, but Amy knew her children weren’t safe.
Still, it sounded like she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. With the letter, Amy could give Jade some hope until she could find a way out.
“I’ll write the letter, but no one is touching my business,” Amy said. As they walked back to the house, she thought about Tony’s words a few weeks after the funeral. He must have been a captive on the island for seven years. Maybe there truly was no escape.
~~ Claire~~
It had taken Claire’s last ounce of strength to climb out of the tunnel. Water splashed back and soaked the grass. Claire wobbled a bit, but managed to walk to the van. Claire hadn’t seen Raven grab the bottle for the pure water to save Jade. She thought she had to get back into the van and find it.
She walked in a circle around the van first. It was still dark. The idea of crawling into the van at night was too much. The windshield was broken out now and their boxes and suitcases and duffel bags strewn everywhere. It looked like the vampires went back in after the sisters were gone.
She found sleeping bags and pillows a few yards away from the van in a pile. After yawning for the bazillionth time, Claire changed into a clean t-shirt and sweatpants, climbed into a sleeping bag open to the sky, and closed her eyes. Water promised to watch for trouble.
At first Claire didn’t sleep. She worried about Mindy and Raven, wondering if the vampires had killed them or turned them. Claire closed her eyes but opened them at the smallest rustling sound in the woods. Finally her anxiety gave up, and she fell asleep.
When Claire awoke, the sun had already crested over the mountains and was shining between the trees. She climbed back into the van through the windshield, but didn’t find the Keeper’s bottle.
When she found Mindy’s teddy bear, Claire held onto it. Of all of the items in that van, Pebbles was the most beloved. The bottle was necessary, but the teddy bear was also important.
She asked Water if she had been able to find pure water and if she seen the bottle. Water found pure water, but didn’t know where to put it.
After hours searching, Claire gave up. She didn’t want to leave the site until she knew for sure that they could save Jade.
“Can you find Raven?” Claire asked Water, “See if she has the bottle.”
Claire gathered necessities into a single duffel bag. Mindy’s teddy bear took up precious space, but Claire couldn’t bring herself to leave it, even if it meant less food or clothes. She considered a second bag, but decided against it.
Finding the box of food overturned, Claire righted it and dug into the contents. While she waited for Water to report back on her sisters, Claire ate.
~~ Raven ~~
Raven sat in an arm chair yawning. The door was locked and two guards stood inside the room. Mindy was unconscious on a bed. Raven wanted to join her and get some sleep, but Raven didn’t trust the vampires.
At some point in the night Raven fell asleep anyway.
She woke up with a sore neck, not from the vampires but from sleeping at a bad angle. Her first thought was of Mindy. Feeling groggy, she forced herself to stand up. She was tired and sore and hurt where she’d been bitten and bruised. Shaking her sister, Raven tried to wake Mindy. There were no vampire bites on her sister, but Mindy was still out.
Raven sat heavily down on the bed. It was hard to think straight. Mindy needed to get to a doctor, but the vampires had no intention of letting them go. It wasn’t like Raven could carry her. She could ask Air to help with Mindy, but it wouldn’t take long until she would have to rest. She was so tired now.
Air was as lost as Raven. The Element had lots of suggestions, but none of which were practical or that would really be useful.
Raven was still thinking about it when Water contacted Raven and Air.
Raven pulled out the bottle and unstoppered it. That was what Water wanted. Water released its prize inside then Air dropped the stopper in. Don’t open the bottle until the Jade is ready to drink it. Water instructed.
“Agreed,” Raven said. She felt shy around Water. It was like that when an Elemental spoke to an Element that wasn’t a connection. Raven thanked Water and Water disappeared with a wave.
“But…” Raven was going to ask what she should do next, but Water was long gone. With a sigh, Raven wondered what to do next.
~~ Jade ~~
Foolish girl. That was Gladys speaking through the vampiric telepathic link. Apparently she didn’t like her newly minted vampires spending time in the sun.
Jade was certain that at any moment she was going to spontaneously combust. Her skin itched like a thousand red ants were crawling under it. Ignoring Gladys, Jade found the gate and passed through.
The beast was terrified and that fear bled through to Jade. She could hardly think straight.
Gladys spoke through the link. The house is just to your left. Don’t go wandering off. You need to get inside.
For once Jade was grateful that Gladys was speaking to her.
Jade couldn’t see through the comforter. Her only view of the outside world was the ground at her feet. It occurred to her that this wasn’t the most intelligent thing she’d ever done.
For one thing, she didn’t have hands. The minute she removed the comforter to grasp something, she’d burn up. For another thing, she couldn’t see anything. She had no idea where the house with Mindy and Raven would be now that she was outside. Somehow, she thought she’d have better luck and less of a tendency to turn into a crispy vampire fireball.
She heard a door opening and someone shouted, “In here.”
Jade followed the voice. Rough hands grabbed her and dragged her in. She screamed in pain, her arms in flames. Jade struggled, bumping into a couch and falling.
The beast roared.
Jade stayed on the ground. She didn’t trust herself to move.
Someone ripped off the comforter. Jade blinked. At least thirty vampires surrounded her. She thought they would leave her alone. She was wrong. Grabbing her hands and feet, they carried her upstairs to a bedroom that looked more like a torture chamber. The floor was wood and had a drain in the middle. An iron bed with chains and handcuffs stood in the middle of the floor over the drain.
Struggling, Jade didn’t even come close to an escape. They bounced her down on the bed so hard that her teeth jarred and she felt sick to her stomach. She tried to slip her hands out of their grip but they clamped the metal around her arms.
The cuffs would have been uncomfortable enough, but Jade’s skin was blistering where the sun had filtered through the comforter. The skin actually tore where it stuck to the metal.
Jade didn’t think the situation coul
d get worse until one of the vampires grabbed her. He ran his fang along the fleshy inside of her arm opening a blood vessel. He drank from her.
The beast rose and Jade found herself watching from the ceiling again. She couldn’t bear to watch. Instead, Jade floated away, through the room and into the sky.
Air whispered to her. Not too far.
Jade was beyond caring. She was tired of fighting the beast, tired of struggling against the vampires and terrified of Gladys.
Air said, Follow me.
Just one house over, Jade and Air slid through the roof and down down down to the first floor bedroom. Raven and Mindy were trapped in a room with two vampires. Raven was curled up on the bed next to Mindy asleep.
Air said, They plan to have a sacrifice tonight. To kill Earth and take Air as their own. Go back. Be strong.
Leaving Jade back in the room where the vampires fed from her, Air disappeared. Air would never stay long in the room with Jade, almost as if she feared too much interaction. Jade forced herself down into her body.
She endured the vampires, refusing to drink when they offered. The movies romanticized vampires, making them misunderstood lovers. They were worse than serial killers. At least serial killers had a human life span and most of them weren’t cannibals.
She blocked out what they did to her, tried to shove it deep into the recesses of her mind, but all the while her sense of injustice grew, her sense of rage grew, and her determination that she would wipe every vampire off the face of the Earth grew. And if they turned up in other dimensions, she might just wipe them out there, too.
Time stretched like taffy. An hour turning into a lifetime. A night spanned into eternity. Jade detested the slice of teeth on her skin, the cool tongues and the sense of invasion. She grew up modest. Some people would hug strangers. Not Jade. She didn’t want people she didn’t know touching her.
Jade focused on the fight. She focused on the beast. She imagined sunlight, sunlight on the beach, a warm afternoon strolling through the park, sweating in noon-heat while she painted a fence. Any memory she could recover of the sun, she did, pushing it on the beast until it was insane with fear. She didn’t stop thinking of sunlight, not until they stopped feeding. Not until nightfall…that was when the vampires stopped.
She heard Gladys in her mind, Now you’ll learn what happens to those who disobey.
The vampires dragged her to a stone altar standing in the middle of the field. More than a voice in her head, Gladys was standing in front of the altar like an Amazon woman, tall and self-assured with a stone knife in her hand.
The vampires dragged Raven out kicking and screaming. She got a few good kicks in, but by the time they dragged her to Jade’s side, she was bleeding from her nose and her eye was starting to swell. She wore bruises upon bruises from the last few days’ adventures.
Raven spit at the nearest vampire. Seeing Jade she fairly growled, “They’re going to sacrifice Mindy. Are you going to help now that you’re one of them.”
Jade’s intention was to say that they would never touch Mindy, but the beast, strengthened by the presence of powerful vampires rose. With fangs extended, Jade found herself saying, “I’m going to drink from Mindy. It will be my first act as a real vampire.”
When the vampires brought Mindy out she was conscious, but stumbling and clearly in a stupor. Jade wanted to tell Raven that the beast was controlling her, making her say all those things. That Gladys was feeding the creature lines telepathically, but she was too weak.
As they marched Mindy to the stone altar, and two vampires lifted her to lie on the slab, Jade found herself floating in the air again. She was desperate to return as she watched Raven struggle. She watched vampires tie Mindy’s hands. Her body left its place beside Raven to join Gladys who stood at the altar, knife in hand. All the while, Jade watched helplessly from above her body.
“Tonight we welcome a new vampire in our midst,” Under the starlit night, Gladys’ voice boomed.
The vampires cheered.
Gladys continued, “Tonight we sacrifice purity. We sacrifice faith. We sacrifice loyalty. Step forward.”
Jade watched as her body stepped forward. Raven screamed for her to stop. A tornado swept through the clearing, shoving vampires aside. Jade knew Raven wouldn’t be able to sustain it. That kind of power exhausted an Elemental and Raven looked wiped.
A chill swept through Jade as she watched herself raise the knife. The tornado tossed vampires away from the altar, but just as it reached Jade and Gladys the tornado stopped.
One of the vampires struck Raven hard across the face. Jade watched as Raven crumpled to the ground. She was stunned. There was nothing left between the beast and Mindy.
Never had Jade felt so helpless, never so frightened.
A voice intruded on her thoughts, “It’s almost too late. Let me help.”
Jade knew who it was. The sharp smell of ozone shook her from her panic. “Yes. Yes. Let me save Raven and Mindy. Burn them all. I don’t care,”
It wasn’t almost too late. It was too late. Jade realized that in an instant.
Mindy was lying on the altar. Jade’s body and the beast inside hovered over her. The knife came down.
Jade screamed.
She had killed her little sister, at least her body had. The beast had thrust the knife through Mindy’s center.
Jade’s echo of pain and fear, her echo of rage bounced through the forest carrying flame. Lightening struck in a dozen places at once, frying vampires. Gladys screamed as she became a living vampire torch. With Gladys out of the picture, the beast weakened.
As she floated back to her body, she saw Raven push herself off the ground. Jade wrenched control of her body away from the beast. Her anger rose, as deadly as a viper. Lightening struck again and again. Air joined the fury and wind whipped the burning vampires away from the altar. Fire and Jade worked tightly together. Fire relishing the freedom so rarely found in the little balls of rock circling the Great Fire. So seldom was she allowed a true blaze.
Again and again, vampire after vampire burst into flame. Every structure in the field was on fire, whether house or shed, car or lawn mower. Only the Elementals were safe from the inferno.
The moment triggered a memory, a harsh moment that Jade had long ago shoved into the recesses of her mind, a kind of amnesia. She remembered the death of her beloved father. She remembered the cause.
Jade’s legs wouldn’t hold her. She wobbled, collapsing to the ground. She sobbed, the memory of the Fire seven years ago, and how it jumped from her father’s attacker to her father, how he howled and then suddenly it was over. She couldn’t remember what happened next, only that he had been on fire and it was her fault.
When the beast took her body once more, she told Fire, “End me. I can’t control the beast, and I’m tired.”
Fire waited. She didn’t listen to Jade. There were other plans in motion.
Raven dragged herself to Jade. Jade was barely aware of the world around her. She stayed in her body, sharing it with the vampire, but she had no control. Raven’s nose was bleeding. She wiped her nose on her hand and held it out for Jade.
Not Jade, the monster.
But Raven didn’t know that. Did she?
The monster stood, moving to feed on Raven. Jade was so tired. She should care, but Mindy was dead. Jade lost herself in the beast’s hunger, losing all sense of time and space.
The beast shrieked.
Jade came to her senses as Fire struck.
A Time To Kill (Elemental Rage Book 1) Page 19