by Unknown
No one moved, the silence in the room thick with tension. Fear played visibly on all their faces. The corner of Cain’s lip twisted upward.
“See? I told you I’d strike fear in the hearts of vampires once again.”
He leaned forward. “I said to sit.”
In unison, chairs scooted across the floor and the entire coven sat. They waited, glasses in hand, for Cain to take the first drink. Of course, that meant from me.
Cain snatched my wrist and sniffed again.
“You, my dear, are one of the most tantalizing creatures I’ve ever laid lips on. I must keep you for myself.”
I pressed my brows together in confusion, still speechless.
“You’ll only be mine and come with me wherever I go, child. It will be fun.”
Heat spread from where he touched me, relaxing my muscles as I mulled over his invitation, flattered. All the vampires before him only wanted to use me, remake me, steal from me, or murder me, but not Cain. He was the first who saw me as something to be treasured and only wanted to enjoy me. I’d live to see another day.
A strange release flooded my bones. Seer duties could be postponed when I was stronger. And maybe someone could erase my memories, too. I didn’t want to care anymore about what happened, or feel any more sadness. Anything to end this horrific day
“Please. Just release my father and my brother,” I begged.
“Of course. Now can we get on with it? I’m starving.”
Chapter Thirty
As Cain’s teeth sunk deep into my flesh, the room collectively sighed. I bit my lip at the initial sting, but relaxed once the mind-tingling euphoria took over, covering my skin with pinpricks of joy.
The fact I’d failed melted from my being and all I wanted was to stay here connected to him forever. We tumbled in bliss as my legs gave way and I collapsed into his waiting arms.
“Far too delicious,” I heard him whisper in my mind as he groaned in pleasure. “Just a bit more.”
I didn’t want him to stop either, but my lips were frozen, probably with an ecstatic grin. Entwined, we sunk onto his throne together in a heap. He kept drinking, gulp after gulp and I didn’t care. The thought he’d drain me soon and my heart would stop didn’t frighten me. No more pain. No more agony over the loss of Sam and Phil. No more nagging about the prophecy or overcoming Nicholas’ amnesia. No worry about the future or if I’d marry. No more anything. Just a sweet white light with wings attached. I wanted to go, into the far beyond. Heaven. And effortlessly, my feet floated towards the starry rift in the sky, suspending in space. I was almost there. I just needed to take one more step.
But the air under my feet began to vibrate and the joy crumbled into pain. Somehow, I came to. Cain stopped, his blue eyes swirling with a nebulous smoke. Then the bubble previously withholding the room’s emotions popped, flooding me with his formidable fear.
He coughed, then clutched his throat. Fire erupted under his skin, licking through his veins, singeing his luminous face.
“What did you do?” His voice crackled through parched lips. “What are you?”
I watched as he doubled over onto the floor, his skin shriveling into leather and his black hair streaking with white. Someone grabbed me from behind and a slap across my cheek doubled my vision. Rachel. She cursed and ran to Cain’s side before she started wallowing in pain herself.
The goon quickly released my arms. Then the suffering whipped my psyche with a backlash of pain and confusion, doubling with each passing second. Every vampire rapidly aged before my eyes.
The blood slaves watched in astonishment then darted for the exit, gaining courage one by one. Amanda stood in shock, her hand holding a cage to her side. She released the spring and tilted the edge carefully to allow the ball of fur to fall free. Amanda stroked the cat and prodded it to run. Her face saddened as she stood. Then she turned to me. She mouthed a “thank you,” and disappeared out of the hall.
The cat slowly lifted her head as her fur began to streak white and then thin.
I stepped forward, conflicted to go to her.
“I did my best to help you stay focused,” Scarlett said breathlessly. “I blocked all the emotion. But once the girl came in from the lab and died, I knew the secret. She drank your blood. It’s poisonous.”
“My what?” I clutched the spot Cain bit me and scanned the hall for Nicholas. They were all dying because of me.
“You did it,” she said before she took what looked like her last breath. “It is finished now.”
I scanned the sea of writhing vampires to find Nicholas. He lay curled up on his side.
“No.” I stumbled toward him and took his hand. “Please …”
He looked back with knowing eyes, no longer shrouded in ignorance. He gasped for air. “My memory, it’s back. I’m so sorry,” he said, reaching for my cheek.
“Shhh… don’t talk. I’m the one who’s sorry.” I wished for water to quench his thirst, to stop the burning, and thought of the fountain.
I moved to leave him, but he gripped my arm hard.
“Please, I have to tell you how sorry I am. I treated you horribly on the beach … said cruel things. I wasn’t in control. I couldn’t stop the demon within.”
“I know.” Tears washed down my face.
“I love you and I’ve always loved you. And I’ve failed you. I’m so sorry.” He gulped down air into his lungs. “But now you’ll never be hunted again.”
“No, don’t say that. I love you, too. I—”
A rush of something warm pelted my brain and weird pictures suddenly popped into my mind—memories of wearing the talisman and Alora demanding it from me for Luke’s life. And then Nicholas’ words of how the necklace worked. The last owner of the talisman could take it back.
My gaze found Alora as she entered the hall unaffected, her face revealing her shock as vampires writhed and died all around us.
I stood up.
“Give me the talisman, Alora,” I yelled. “I was the last owner and I demand it back.”
Horror crossed her eyes and she clutched the necklace. “No.”
“It was mine. I am entitled to it.” I looked at the stone the same time she did.
Alora wheezed as the brilliant crystalline stone dimmed and faded into a deep onyx. Smoke rose up from her skin and she shrieked, yanking the necklace off. It fell to the floor between us with a heavy thud.
“No!” she cried out. “You can’t do this to me.”
She fastened her fingers over her throat and fell to the ground, gasping for air. I pursed my lips as I approached her, fighting my guilt in her suffering. She looked up at me with sunken eyes, her sallow skin retreating into her face, accentuating her skull.
“It’s too late,” I said, taking the talisman off the ground.
She grabbed my arm with spindly fingers, begging I give it back. I pulled away, ripping off a few of her phalanges. They skittered across the floor like dice.
I turned from her and closed my eyes. Remorse couldn’t hit me now, especially after all she did—turned my friends, erased Nicholas’ mind, and threatened to kill my brother. The stone warmed and radiated a luminous blue again. I ran to Nicholas’ side.
He looked straight into my eyes, pained. “How did you do it? Kill everyone?”
“It’s my blood. I’m poisonous.” I mopped his brow with my sleeve. “Here…take this.”
I clasped the chain around his neck. It glowed under my fingertips and changed to a luminous green again, just like when we met—the fateful night on my porch after he’d rescued me. It would save him, protect him from my deadly blood.
He sighed, deliverance flooding his face. The energy radiated out from the talisman like a cool glass of ice water. He laid his head in my lap and a peaceful smile tugged at his lips. I wove my fingers behind his neck and bent over to kiss his cheeks, my heart overflowing with thankfulness. His lips puckered momentarily and searched for me. I brushed mine over his, but his body went slack as he drifted o
ff to sleep, exhausted. I tried to focus on his peaceful aura, not listen to the vampires dying around me. We’d survived, though I didn’t know how I’d lug him out of this cave by myself.
Alora’s screech drew my eyes away. She repeatedly morphed from cat to human, fur falling out of her body and bones protruding from graying skin. My heart pinched at the sight and I searched for Scarlett.
She didn’t move, curled in a ball. I opened my feelings monitor to find she wasn’t resisting. She’d accepted her fate and wanted to move onto her next life.
I marveled in how right she’d been all along, that I was the one to end everything, and do it innocently like she and the fortuneteller predicted. But my worst fear happened. People I loved did die in the process—Sam, Phil, Katie, and even Scarlett—and I didn’t know how to bring them back. The only vampire to survive had been Nicholas. My heart tore in sadness, missing Phil and Sam. I hoped, somehow, they’d earned a place in heaven for choosing to be good and helping me in my battle.
God, please be merciful to them.
Someone grunted in the corner. Luke and I locked eyes with one another. He hadn’t been freed, tied and gagged still sitting next to Dad. Tears streamed down his cheeks.
My heart clenched as I studied Dad’s still and lifeless body on the floor. I reached out internally and felt nothing.
“No!” I called out, my voice echoing over the sound of death.
I attempted to get up when a hiss came from the dais. Cain dragged his boney form against the floor, clawing towards me in slow, jerky movements. Paper wisps of skin clung to his bones in ragged sheets. His blue eyes, the only color, electrified out of hollow sockets.
“You’ll regret this,” he snarled. “The talisman was mine, only mine.”
My heart jerked as I looked down at Nicholas’ neck, expecting the stone to change. I held my breath, but nothing happened.
Cain kept advancing towards us. I grabbed a broken chair leg and held it firmly in my hand as a warning.
“Don’t come any closer.”
He glanced up at the raised piece of wood and before I could plunge it into him, his bones splintered apart into a million, tiny pieces. I exhaled and tossed the wooden leg away, hugging Nicholas with all my might. With Cain’s demise, the source of the vampire power turned off at its inception. And like a line of dominos, one by one the vampires puffed into pillars of dust.
Alora had been wrong. Cain couldn’t take back the talisman by sheer will. He’d lost ownership a long time ago, and luckily, it had spared Nicholas’ life. But to my horror, Nicholas started to moan. Then the talisman disintegrated before my eyes. I grabbed it as the sandy filaments slipped through my fingers.
Nicholas looked up at me, his green irises clouding over, dissolving to an eerie grey. “What’s happening?”
“I…” I gulped down my fear and pushed off his hair from his forehead. “Nothing, you’re fine.”
“It hurts.” He tore open his shirt and clutched at his heart. The pink skin on his chest began to fade from white to a shade of grey. My nightmare was playing out for real.
Panic surged inside me and I buried my head into his shoulder. “No,” I moaned. “Fight… please… for us… for me. You’re part human. You should live.”
“Whatever happens—” he said in raspy breaths, “remember I love you.” His hand found the nape of my neck and he held onto me, loosely.
I wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t let him go. I’d fulfilled my part of the deal. God couldn’t take the best part of my life from me.
“Please,” I begged. “Don’t leave me.”
“I don’t want to,” Nicholas gulped back. He brushed away my tears. “But you’ll be free now. They won’t hunt you anymore. No one will.”
The tears slipped down my cheeks and he pulled my lips to his. His tongue, warm and soft, teleported me to another place, far from the pain. To our cliff where we met. Where fate brought us together finally. “I will never forget you, Julia,” he whispered. “I’ll always be with you in your heart.”
I wrapped my arms around his torso, and sobbed as his body chilled under my touch. Then he slid through, eroding into a pile of dust around me, like a sand castle hit by a wave.
“NO!”
I grabbed at the pieces that were once him and tried to collect them in my fingers.
I can bring him back with Alora's blood! Of course!
My eyes, wild and crazed, searched the room for her. And then pain gripped me once again as I remembered. There was nothing left of her either. I pounded my fists into the ground and wailed. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be the end. But I was there, alone in the icy silence, surrounded by the stench of death. Bile rose up my throat. I puked. Dizziness took over. I crumpled onto the cold, marble floor, wishing for death to take me, too.
The ground beneath me began to tremble. I sat up as stones fell from the ceiling, crashing all around me. Luke let out another muffled cry from the corner. How had I forgotten him? Pushing away my grief before it killed us both, I picked myself up and fluttered to his side to untie his arms and remove his gag. A large boulder broke free from the ceiling and smashed down in front of the exit, blocking us in.
“What’s happening?” he asked, terror in his eyes.
I couldn’t speak. I still tasted Nicholas on my tongue. He couldn't be dead. This couldn’t be real.
I gasped and looked at Luke. But the assault wasn’t over. A hum of energy reverberated over our bodies, standing up the hairs on our arms. My limbs became weightless as a strange wind blew from the hole and swirled the dust in a whirlwind up and outside. My hair whipped around my face, sticking to my cheeks. I held tight onto Luke, expecting to be pulled out of the cave as well, maybe pulled to heaven, maybe to Nicholas. Instead, a sonic pulse, as if from a bomb blast, ricocheted out from the dais and disintegrated everything in its path. Just as the wall billowed and threatened to slam into us, I screamed and everything went dark.
Chapter Thirty-One
August 25
Today is Julia’s sixteenth birthday. She was having a great time at dinner with her friends until another close call, this time in the public restroom. Of course I couldn’t stake the vamp without making a scene, so I yelled “Police” and pulled the bloodsucker outside. Luckily the restaurant is dark because everyone saw me, including Julia. But I worked fast and kept my head down. And actually, it made the evening exciting for her. She’s still giggling over it with Sam on the phone right now.
But it’s becoming a bigger problem than I imagined and I don’t know how I can stay out of her life completely. ‘Cause the older she gets, the more enticing her scent becomes and the attacks have been happening more frequently to where I can’t leave her unguarded after dark for even a minute. Maybe I will put up those beacons like Harry suggested.
But it just hit me. That that’s all I’m going to be for her—a nameless stalker. I hang out in this stupid redwood tree night after night and watch everything she does. I know her hurts, fears, secret desires… and though I could make her happy, there’s nothing I can do about it. Because I could never be him—the guy that wraps her up in his arms and makes her feel safe, the one who loves her unconditionally, the one she spends the rest of her life with. Not with my heritage.
And the idea of her eventually getting married and growing old sickens me. What am I going to do on her wedding day? Am I going to stalk her on her honeymoon of all places? Or what about when she does eventually die? I would have protected her her entire life and she’d never know it, or me. The pain will kill me, like it does daily for not saving her mother. Julia’s beautiful smile will be gone forever. Her light she brings to so many, gone. And then what? I protect her children? I protect someone else just to repeat the process?
I’d rather find Cain and slaughter him for all the pain he’s caused everyone for his sin. If only I knew where he was exactly. I’d just do it. I’d stake him without any regrets. Then I could die happy knowing Julia will live out he
r life in freedom. Then I’ll be free too.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Julia,” a familiar woman’s voice said. “I’m serious. It’s time to get up or you’ll be late.”
I pried my eyes open and sucked in a deep breath, amazed nothing ached. The peeling glow-in-the-dark star stickers on my bedroom ceiling looked down upon me. Was heaven supposed to resemble earth?
The woman snatched my dirty laundry off the floor and turned to me with big hazel eyes and soft blonde hair. She looked like my mother, only older, wearing jeans and a pink tee-shirt. I sought to feel her out and came up empty. I blinked again. She couldn’t be real. A figment of my imagination.
“Up,” she said a little more firmly and tugged on my comforter, touching my skin.
I jerked my foot back. I’d been using my gift long enough to know figments don’t touch people. I had to be dreaming.
“Mom?” My voice crackled out of my throat.
Her brow wrinkled as she met my gaze. She sat down on the side of my bed and brushed aside my hair with her hand. I felt tears well up automatically. I’d wanted to dream her into reality so many times I couldn’t believe it was finally happening.
“What’s wrong?” She put her hand on my cheek, warm and soft.
I sat up and hugged her as hard as I could.
“What’s this all about? Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I sniffled. “I just… miss you.”
Mom petted my hair like I’d always imagined she’d do. “I was only gone for the weekend. Did something happen? Did you and Dad have a fight?”
“No,” I said and drank her in, her smell, her smile, her beauty. “I had a really bad dream.”
She patted my knee. “It was only just a dream. Now get up. I’m tired of getting those tardy warnings from your PE teacher.”
As she disappeared from the room, my feet made contact with the carpet. The arrangement of my furniture appeared the same, but the bathroom door was missing. I poked my head into the hall to find I’d been moved into Dad’s old room.