by Marian Tee
He had his answer, and she knew it.
Even so, she gave him a tremulous smile as she said, “In case you need to hear it…” She wiped her tears. “I love you, Master. Alexandru. I love you.”
She bent down, and their lips touched.
But they didn’t kiss.
Because she started to see.
~~~~
“You sure you want to do this?” Erou asked as, at his nod, his enforcers cut the yellow tape that barricaded the room where the demon’s host had been found and killed this afternoon.
Zari nodded.
Stepping aside, he warned, “We’ve cleaned it to escape human detection, but there are sure to be remnants that you’ll notice.”
When Alexandru opened the door, Zari was immediately hit by a rotten smell that wafted out of the room. She shook her head in dismay. It was such a bad odor, she couldn’t believe most humans wouldn’t be able to smell it.
Alexandru and Katarina stepped inside first. There was no jealousy in her heart as she watched the two working together, checking all parts of the room before Alexandru came back for her. “It’s clear.”
Accepting his hand, she followed him inside and found the smell even worse, making her feel like throwing up. Nothing looked untoward about the room at all, the enforcers having done a good job at cleaning. The host’s possessions remained in their place, and those were what she was most interested in.
“Do you think she’s been its host from the start?” Zari asked shakily.
“Most likely,” Alexandru answered grimly. “If you check the shower, you’ll see dozens of bottles of hair dye. Hosting a demon will take its toll on a body, even a vampire’s, and this one had to dye the hair black constantly to avoid unnecessary questions.”
Her gaze strayed towards the host’s ID, and she recited a quick prayer for the soul of the vampire whose life the demon had stolen. It had been the professor assigned to her class’ bus, and she had been the reason why the demon had been able to sink its claws into Zari. It only needed one touch, and the host had managed that when she took the consent form from Zari’s hands.
Now, the vampire was dead, the demon was dead, but the danger wasn’t over.
Zari’s orange-colored visions were proof of that.
Taking a deep breath, she touched the ID.
~~~~
The school was burning. The hospital was burning.
People were dying all around her, but she had to be saved because she was the soul seer, and she hated it.
“Go!” It was Katarina, screaming at Zari to leave.
“Go!” It was her Master, desperate to see her out of harm’s way.
And both of them were being burned alive.
Chapter Nine
ZARI
I was alone when I stole out early in the evening. I had told Alexandru that I needed to talk to Katarina, and I wanted him to pretend he didn’t know anything about it. I told him it was to keep Katarina from feeling awkward even more, but it was all a lie of course. More and more, I was convinced that I could be the world’s best liar as long as the situation called for it.
And this one definitely did.
Zipping my jacket up to my neck, I quickened my pace and prayed to God that I wasn’t lost. Only the sound of my feet hitting the pavement broke the silence around me. Everything else was deadly still.
Fear enveloped me when I finally came to a stop at the foot of the stairs leading up to the hospital entrance. Still abandoned, old, and decrepit, but I saw the place with new eyes. Now, it was more terrifying because in my visions, this was where Alexandru and Katarina would both die.
For me.
Taking out the book I had borrowed from Rhapsody, I opened it to the page I had bookmarked and reread the passage about turning a demon into a familiar, a practice that offered an individual almost infinite power but required huge sacrifice in return.
Erou had told me that they had suspicions about the demon not working alone. It had been too methodical, he said, for a lower demon. It was either a high-ranking demon masking its powers or it had been working under the command of another being.
Tonight, I would know for sure which one of it was.
The hospital doors created an eerie sound as I pushed them open. Pulling the torch out of my pocket, I switched it on and beamed the light on my surroundings. It was still hard to see the place, but at least I could slowly find my way without having to bump into a lot of things.
Retracing my steps in my visions, I circled around the stairs and, bending down, I ran my hands over the asymmetric wall under the steps. Finally, I found it, a tiny button that vandalized drawings had caused to disappear.
Pressing the button had the concealed door under the stairs swinging open, and the silence of the motion unnerved me. I almost wished it had made the same eerie creaking sound as the other door. Silence was too terrifying because it could mean so many things.
Crouching, I stepped inside and, looking around, I made sure it was the same passageway I saw in my dreams. Straightening to my full height, I fumbled my way to another set of stairs, which should lead to the basement. I had already taken the first step down when I saw that someone was waiting for me below.
She was missing one eye, her lips were the same grisly shade of red in the photo I had seen of her, and patches of her vein-less skin had been burnt to a crisp.
Elsa.
Once, she was a mentally abused girl whose parents had killed her by encasing her in a wood, turning her into a doll, before burning her alive.
Now, she was a ghost who left her wooden shell every night, not understanding that her little games had turned the place she grew up in into a ghost town.
Behind her, the shadows moved.
Elsa was not alone.
Whirling around, I ran as fast as I could, but Elsa suddenly popped up in front of me, in the way only ghosts could.
I stumbled back with a scream and felt myself falling, tumbling down the stairs.
Then everything went black.
~~~~
I woke up with my hands and feet bound on the floor. A fire roared from the fireplace, and the sight arrested me. I could almost feel the whole world turning orange as I continued looking at it.
“I knew you’d come.”
My head snapped towards the sound, the hairs in the back of my nape standing up as I tried to search for the voice’s owner in the shadows. It was a female’s voice, but that was all I could tell.
Alexandru? Master?
“Don’t bother contacting your Master with your blood bond. It won’t work here.”
I tried not to show how her words terrified me. I really was alone then.
“You’re quite the headstrong girl,” she remarked in a chillingly pleasant tone. “You remind me of someone I hate. You’re also remarkably, irritatingly selfless, and you know what that makes you?” The woman in the dark chuckled, the sound making my skin crawl. “Predictable. It makes you predictable, and so I knew, if I kept to the plan, it was only a matter of time before you’d have your visions and you’d come to try and save everyone alone.”
“Who are you?” I squinted my eyes, trying to see her, but she was one with the darkness. In the periphery of my eye, I saw Elsa in the opposite corner, playing with her hair, watching us speak with a bored expression on her disfigured face. I forced myself to look at her, making contact. She was my Plan B in case something happened and I needed someone to help me.
When the woman in the shadows didn’t answer, I said, “You made the demon your familiar, didn’t you?”
A hiss, and I knew I had guessed right. This woman, whoever she was, sounded too bitter for a pure demon. It was too human a feeling, and pure demons only typically knew of anger and greed.
“Why would you do something like that?” I asked, buying myself time as I put Plan B into action. “It requires so much sacrifice and—”
“And yet you ruined it,” she hissed.
Something in the shadows
started to move.
“It was a great sacrifice, a risk I took because there was something I needed.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” the faceless woman spat.
“Because I’m what I am?”
Another cackle. “You mean a soul seer?”
I didn’t answer.
The cackle turned into a soulless laugh. “How naïve you are. You think not answering will confuse me? I wouldn’t have come this far, Zari Baltimore, if I were unsure. You are a soul seer—”
“You won’t be able to make me speak of my visions—”
She laughed again. “Ah, but that’s exactly why I want you dead. You, soul seer, are destined to see, but I don’t want you to see. And the only way to stop you from seeing is to kill you.”
It made perfect sense, even if it did involve my death. “If you want me dead, then why burn the school down?”
I could feel rather than see her smiling at my question, as if knowing that she’d cause so much death pleased her. “Why do you think, soul seer?” she taunted. “Can’t you see the reason?”
I shook my head.
A dark blur of movement and then I was screaming as I felt someone crouch behind me. Whispered words crawled into my ear. “See for yourself.”
Hands from the back crept forward and covered my entire face.
I saw.
~~~~
Red.
It was the color of her hair, a beautiful shade that had everyone in the small village she was born to gasp in wonder for they had never seen such a thing.
Red.
It was her favorite color as she grew up because she realized it was the color of blood.
Red.
She was fifteen when she painted her entire village red, killing them all single-handedly. She invited everyone to supper, and they all came to celebrate the day she was born, not knowing that it would also be the day they would die. For everything had poison in it and one by one they dropped to the ground like flies.
When it was over, she slit their necks for the blood to run and turn the nearby river into the same shade of red. Then she threw her hands in the air and forsook God before throwing herself prostrate on the ground and offering her soul to the Devil.
There was no rhyme or reason to what made her evil.
Some people just were.
When she left, she thought it was all over. But she was wrong. A child had been left at home for her parents thought she was too young to join such celebrations. And so that saved her life. When she came to look for her parents found death surrounding her, she, too, fell to the ground, crying.
She prayed to God, asking Him to use her line to deliver justice.
And God said yes.
A day would come when one of her descendants would be His weapon, destined to deliver justice and put an end to the Red Witch.
ALEXANDRU AND ZARI
Zari was in grave danger. His instincts told him so, and he had learned to trust it over the centuries. He searched for Katarina and found her dining with the enforcers. They were the only patrons in the restaurant, and the entire resort felt empty with all professors and students on their way back to the school.
“May I speak with you?” He wasn’t quite able to keep his voice from being harsh with worry.
“Yes, of course, my lord.” Katarina excused herself as she stood up. As they walked away from the table, she asked, “What is it?”
“How did your talk with Zari go?” He knew he wasn’t supposed to ask about it, but Alexandru thought it might give him a clue about where his pet was now. He had tried contacting her through their bond but while he could feel her presence, it was all he was able to glean.
She had effectively blocked him out, and she had never done that before.
Katarina appeared confused. “My…talk? But I haven’t seen her since we were all together.”
Alexandru whitened.
Zari? Answer me, Zari.
But there was no answer.
Stiff with tension, he thanked Katarina for her help and spun around wordlessly. He called to his men in his mind. Be ready to leave.
“Alexandru, wait!” Katarina caught after him. “What’s happening?”
“Zari’s gone,” he said curtly without pausing in his stride. “I have a feeling she’s gone back hunting on her own so I’m going to the hospital, where she had her first vision.”
She paled. “On her own? Why wouldn’t she tell you? Or any of the others?”
“She might have told others. I’ve let Sir Richard know about what’s happening and he’ll let me know if he’s find out something.” His jaw clenched. “But if she’s lied to me then she must have seen me in her visions.”
Katarina was able to read between the lines. “And she saw you, like she saw me, didn’t she?”
He didn’t have to answer.
Goddamn you, pet. I’m going to kill you for this.
CHAPTER TEN
ZARI
The burning heat woke me up. The visions had tired me out, the senselessness of the killings making me unconscious. I screamed when I found myself surrounded with fire. It was everywhere, my nightmare come to life.
I looked around and saw that the Red Witch was gone, probably so she could watch LSL burn to the cinders. And while the school had all kinds of spells protecting it, I knew it might not be enough.
The Red Witch was strong, and she had unfinished business there. The one destined to kill her was studying in LSL and she wouldn’t stop until every student in the school died.
Knowing I had little time left, I turned towards the shadows, where I knew she lurked, watching silently as she always did.
“Elsa.”
The ghost appeared before me, her disfigured face becoming more ghastly as she gave me an inquiring smile.
I forced myself up, which was doubly hard with my hands and feet bound. She watched me struggle, not offering to help. I wasn’t sure she even knew how to speak. None of the case studies ever recorded her speaking, but most of the studies reported that she did understand when people talked to her.
“Elsa.”
She looked at me again.
“I need you to come inside of me, like you did before, with the boy. You remember him? His name was Jeremy?”
The single eye she had lit up.
“Help me. Come inside of me.” With her inside of me, I would be free from the pain. It was the only way I’d have the courage to go through the fire and save myself.
I closed my eyes.
Something cold blew.
She was inside of me.
Elsa and I walked through the fire. She didn’t feel it because she was immune to pain, not because she was a ghost but years of parental abuse had made her so. My body was wracked with coughs as we finally made it to the stairs, only to find the door locked.
No!
Tears from smoke stung my eyes.
It couldn’t end like this.
With Elsa’s help, I slammed my shoulder into the door, again and again, hoping it would give way.
ALEXANDRU AND ZARI
Fire. It rose in the night, swaying and roaring like a hungry beast.
Alexandru broke into a run, using his speed as a vampire hunter, no longer caring if humans might see him. The others followed him, Katarina just behind him a few steps. They found the entire hospital in flames, and Alexandru realized that if this was happening then her other vision might happen, too.
Everyone, go inform the enforcers about what is happening. Accompany them back to the LSL and tell them to prepare for an attack. Someone will try to burn the school down.
His men bowed and disappeared into the night.
Katarina was aghast. “But Lady Zari…”
His jaw clenched. “She would want it this way, too, Katarina. Too many lives are at stake for me to be selfish.” His gaze went back to the hospital. This was no ordinary flame. This was Hellfire, something that could kill even immortals like him.
“Stay
here,” he told Katarina.
“No. I’m going to help—”
“She saw you die—”
“And if it will happen, it will happen. I won’t just stand by if someone needs my help.” Katarina looked at the hospital. “Just like old times, right?”
“Just don’t die on me,” he said grimly.
“Same to you, hunter.”
They looked at each other.
On the count of three, Alexandru murmured.
Katarina nodded. Three.
They burst into the broken windows, both of them wincing as the fire licked their skin. Immediately, they heard the banging on the door.
“Zari!” Alexandru shouted.
“Alexandru!” A coughing reply.
Relief slammed into him. He sped towards the door, his only thought saving his pet. But the moment he touched the knob, the spell on it came to life, blowing him straight into the fire.
The door swung open, in time for Zari to see Alexandru’s back hitting the opposite wall and falling in the middle of a burning hallway.
“Alexandru!” she screamed.
She and Elsa ran towards him, and when she reached her Master, Katarina was there, too. Together, they helped Alexandru up, who was shaky on his feet, his back badly burned.
“Hellfire,” Katarina explained shortly. “It’s fatal to immortals.”
Carrying Alexandru slowed them down, and with each second that passed, fewer passageways were left for them to travel unscathed. The last one that Katarina and Alexandru had used was already completely gutted with fire.
“There!” Katarina pointed to a window to their left. It required them to balance on a plank of wood that had so far escaped the fire, but they both knew it wouldn’t last long.