by Karen Greco
I smiled. "Surprised?"
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "Who did it?"
"Gramps," I said, my smile broadening as her own face twisted in rage. She loosed a bellow that shook the entire house. Anger made people sloppy, vamps and witches included, and Leila was already unhinged to begin with.
"That man, that man, that son of a bitch man!" she muttered, pacing the kitchen, aged floorboards groaning under her weight. "He loved my sister. But me, he treated me like a disease all because I married a vampire. Didn't even want to marry a goddamn corpse. Forced my hand. That son of a bitch. Forced. My. Hand."
She slammed the knife into the kitchen table, just barely missing my leg. The surviving witches, still stuck in their positions, shrieked as the table rattled.
"You didn't want to marry my father?" I whispered, backing off the table slowly. Leila looked at me, her face wet with tears. She shook her head. "So why did you?"
"Why don't you ask Bertrand?" she snapped. Turning her wrath towards the witch to her left, she twisted the woman's neck in one swift move.
"Bertrand?" I breathed, staring at the slumped over witch, her head lolling at her chest. Dammit, I had to break her spell on these witches, but she kept pulling my focus. And where the hell was Gramps? I changed tactics. "Come on, Mommy Dearest, you know that's not the witch you want to kill."
I scrambled back, focusing on the undulations of my snake tattoo, allowing its feral magic to work its way into my body. My fingers went numb, the telltale sign that they were about to shoot sparks. But I didn't want sparks. I wanted fire. I focused my energy on building the sparks into something more lethal, but my hands had other ideas. My hands reached towards the witches who were still alive and Leila’s spell oozed out of them, my hands like a set of magical magnets. The spell manifested itself in my hands as a ball of goo, and, once the witches snapped forward in release, I chucked the ball of energy at Leila.
She shrieked as the magic hit her, freezing her in a rather unflattering position, her face twisted in anger.
"Run!" I yelled at the dumbfounded witches, snatching up Casper's mom and pulling her towards the door. I heard Leila muttering Latin and knew that the spell wasn't going to hold. I wanted these witches out of the house before she was free.
Just as Mariana scrambled for the threshold, I felt the heat of a fireball behind me. I gave Mariana a shove to the floor and dove after her, the spell splatting into the wall. The old, dry wood was like kindling and fire engulfed it on impact.
"Get out," I screamed at Mariana and the other witch who clutched onto each other, frozen in terror. They stared at me, wide-eyed, and for a split second, I wondered if Leila's spell on them didn't break. Then Mariana screamed, and I ducked and summersaulted towards them in one fluid move, narrowly avoiding a fire-engulfed ceiling beam as it crashed to the floor. I snatched them both by their armpits and gave them a shove through the doorway into the living room. Another fireball narrowly missed my head, and I leapt onto the witches' backs to drop them to the floor before it pegged one of them. The spell landed at the far end of the room, but the rising odor of singed hair told me that it was a near-miss.
I scrambled to my feet and started dragging the fear-frozen women to the door. I kicked at the old door, its wood splintering under the force of my boot. I pushed both witches through the jagged hole. I tried to step over the threshold to the not-yet-torched porch, but my foot landed against an unseen barrier with a thud. I tried again, this time shoulder first, and bounced back as if something solid was there.
I turned and watched Leila emerge from the kitchen, the fire licking at her back, her copper hair wild. Her lips moved in some unheard incantation, and a line of yellow-orange flames streamed across the ceiling like an ocean wave. I shook my left arm and a blade released and dropped out from the cuff of my jacket. I reached behind me with my right and pulled the etched stake out from the holster nestled in the small of my back. She had bested me as a witch, but I was the better vampire. Right now, I had to be.
I pushed off the balls of my feet and flew a good seven feet off the ground. As I came down for a landing, I brought the sharp blade down towards her chest. She angled away, her own vampire speed a match for mine. I missed my target but sliced her across the face with the holy water imbued blade. She scuttered backwards, the pungent smell of her burning flesh hitting my nose through the acrid smoke of the burning house. She dropped the green ball of oozing magic that she was forming. She pressed her hand to touch the gash along her cheek as the skin around it erupted in angry, red bubbles. I smiled, my sharp fangs showing. She wasn't used to getting hit with consecrated items. They wouldn't kill her, but they would slow her down. And I was supposed to bring her in alive.
Leila’s hand launched out and grabbed the arm that held the stake. She shoved a spell into me. I shrieked and fell to my knees and she dropped down with me, refusing to release my arm as magic surged into my body. I heated up rapidly, my stagnant blood beginning to boil. Waves of nausea overtook me as I tried to rip myself away from her. Hand firm on my wrist, Leila turned the stake towards me and pressed it against my chest. I panted as her magic burned into me, the realization slowly coming over me that she was probably doing magic outside of a protection circle. I focused on the energy flow coming into me, cringing as I felt my core temperature spike even further. My scream of "novis" shook through my body and she dropped my wrist fast, giving me a split second of opportunity to reverse the stake and plunge it into her stomach.
Leila loosed a bloodcurdling scream. She put her own hand over mine, trying to pull the stake out while I continued to push in. She drove another pulse of magic into me, and this time the energy clamped at my dormant heart, threatening to force it to beat again. But I only clutched the stake harder, refusing to release my grip. Leila sent another wave of electricity into me. Each time she fried me, my brain went fuzzy and the room went black, only to come back to myself as the voltage pulled out of me. She was trying to restart my heart by pulling electricity through me. But her ability to draw an unending arc of energy was stymied by the rune-etched stake leaching her magic away. If she succeeded in jumpstarting my heart, there was a good chance I'd come back brain dead.
She cried out as she pushed a huge force of energy into me. I felt a flutter in my chest and then my heart surged. I tipped my head back and opened my eyes, staring at the fire licking at the ceiling above me. I struggled to turn Leila's spell back at her again, but my eyesight was rimmed in black as my brain began to fail. I took a gasping breath, my first since my grandfather took my human life from me, and my lungs filled with acrid smoke, choking me. My body weakened, and I felt myself slipping away.
"Mortis eius reversus," a feminine voice shouted above the roar of the fire that engulfed the house.
I came to, blinking rapidly as my eyes readjusted to their vampire vision. I braced myself as I felt another surge of electricity, but this time it beat a path out of me and into Leila's hand. My benefactor, whoever it was, reversed the spell so it flowed into Leila.
"Deus habitat in medio eius," a deeper voice cried out. The spell called on a higher power to enter my body, and a sense of grace drove through my psyche before it turned in on me. I matched my shriek to Leila's as my body became a holy weapon and waged war against the vampire in both of us. Leila dropped my hand and careened backwards, sending me sprawling to the floor.
"Deus dimittere illam."
The pain of consecration lifted and I turned to see Mariana and Gramps standing in the threshold, hands clasped together, waging a magical battle together.
"You okay, kid?" Gramps called out, and I nodded, ducking as Leila regained her composure enough to throw another ball of fire towards us. Her aim was sloppy, but the attack still caught Gramps in the arm, smoke wafting up his colorful Baja hoodie as he slapped the flame out with his hand.
Mariana gave Gramps a sideways look as he muttered what I recognized as a dark spell, but she held onto his hand and the potency of their paired
up magic sent Leila backwards. She careened towards the impenetrable flames leaking out of the kitchen.
"We can't hold this long," Mariana warned as the ceiling behind me partially collapsed. Leila was on her hands and knees on the floor, flames shooting around her as she lifted her head. Vengeance was etched on her face as she pulled herself up, magic rising, snuffing out the fire in her path as she stalked towards me.
"This ends now!" she cried out, her low voice shaking the house, more of the ceiling coming down from the vibrations. Her fingers twisted and she muttered a spell, then in a fast motion, she pushed her hands out. A wave of energy blew through the room and I hit the deck. Gramps and Mariana weren't so lucky. Pushed backwards by the force of the curse, it lifted them off of their feet, pushing them out of the house and onto the dirt driveway.
"Nina, catch!" Frankie called out, throwing me a stake. He was still stuck on the porch, the ward around the door holding strong. I stretched out my hand and the wood smacked into my palm. I twisted the sharp point as Leila came driving at me. My arm arced down, ready to plunge, but she dove at the last minute, tackling me at the knees just as I sank the stake into her. Both of us splayed out on the floor. I twisted my legs around her neck, tightening the grip. I flung her over my shoulders as I rolled onto my back then used the momentum to jump to my feet.
I turned in time to see Leila’s face screwed up in pain as she pulled the stake out of her side. Panting, she palmed it and shouted a spell. The impact of the magic coated me, causing me to move like molasses. I struggled to push through the spell as she came at me, the point of the stake headed straight for my chest. Still moving in slow-mo, I arched my spin and collapsed into a back bend, the stake sailing an inch above me. I snapped back up once Leila and the stake cleared, the spell broken once she passed me. She pivoted around before I turned, and I howled when she embedded the stake in my shoulder blade.
I felt the energy drain into the wood, like a slow leak in a tire, as the rune in the stake dampened my magic. I stretched my arm around to pull it out, but I couldn’t reach it. I was in a world of shit without my magic. And judging from the cat-that-ate-the-canary smile that spread across her face, Leila knew it too.
She looked wild, the room almost completely engulfed in fire, the flames tickling at my skin as I watched her mouth move in a silent spell that promised to knock me on my ass. The house beams moaned and crackled as more of the ceiling leaked down in streams of hot ash and flame. Leila was standing between me and the door, and the house was collapsing in on us.
The roar of the fire silenced her words, and I braced myself for whatever she was throwing at me. But instead of slamming into me, I felt her curse slip around my body like an ice cube barely brushing against my skin. Casper stepped through the flames and materialized beside me.
"How'd you like that for a counter-curse?" he shouted over the road crackling fire.
"What are you doing here?" I responded, glancing between him and my mother.
"Saving your ass," he said.
"Thanks for that," I said, eyeing Leila as she worked a new incantation. She looked pissed. "So what now?"
Casper’s hand took mine and gripped it firmly. When the hell did he learn to grip something? His energy shot through my fingers and up my arm, popping the magic dampening stake out of my shoulder with its force. The energy reversed its course back into Casper. He muttered a bunch of Latin and squeezed my hand hard as Leila stepped towards us with no hesitation.
The fire burning on the ceiling pulled down towards Leila as if it were in a vortex. The flames covered her body, churning and swirling in an angry, red-yellow sea. The control Casper had on the fire was awesome, changing its size and shape with the flick of a wrist, as if he were conducting an orchestra.
Leila roared and shook as she wailed out a counter-curse, the fire finally extinguishing. She emerged from the lingering smoke without even a first-degree burn.
"Damn," he muttered. "Now I know why you can take this inferno."
I nodded, understanding washing over me. Leila was immune to fire. It was how she survived the fire that we thought killed her and my dad. And since the flames shooting at me didn't seem to have any effect, I probably was too.
Leila licked her fingers, as if tasting the spell. "This one tastes like something my father made." She raised her eyebrows. "You're not just a witch. You're a ghost too."
She kept creeping towards us. I watched her mouth move, trying to decipher her unheard chanting. What the hell spell was she pulling?
"Hang on!" I yelled at Casper as I felt his grip weaken. Shit, Leila wasn't spelling us, she was exorcising him. His opaque body became effervescent. I clutched his wrist with my other hand, as if that alone could keep his soul here on Earth.
"Nina," Casper called out to me, panic rising in his voice. "You're going to have to do a summoning spell to keep me here."
"Is that safe?" I asked.
"It's better than a banishment," he yelled back. He doubled over from pain as bits of his skin began to tear away from his body. I searched my brain for a spell that called the dead.
A faded memory popped into my head. When I was in Blood Ops training, an instructor tried to call a spirit without the use of a spirit board. The memory of the spell lingered even though no ghost appeared. I had to trust it would work.
"You who lived yesterday, come into the light," I started. "Step out of the shadows and remain linked to our lives."
Casper sucked in a breath, and I watched his magic rip through his body like a Tesla coil. But instead of entering mine, our energies merged where our hands touched.
"Do it again," he said, his voice sounding stronger.
I repeated the spell, and this time Casper joined me, his own voice lilting above the din of the inferno swirling around us. I felt another surge of power shoot through me.
"Again!" Casper yelped, and I felt his grip get tighter. We launched into another round, and as his spirit grounded itself onto the earth, I heard a new chorus of voices behind us, chanting the spell.
"Do you hear that?" I asked Casper when we finished the spell.
He gave me a quick nod. "We'll worry about them later."
"Them?" I asked.
Casper’s face screwed up with worry. He simply stared at Leila, who was glaring at the wall behind us, her forward march towards us finally halted. I shot a quick glance over my shoulder and my stomach dropped. There were all manner of spirits, most dressed in 1800s garb and in varying stages of decay, stepping through the back wall and into the burning house. The spell didn't only keep Casper bound to the earth, but it also raised the restless spirits in the graveyard behind the house. Double damn.
"What the hell did we just do?!" I yelled to Casper.
"Whatever we did, we can't undo it right now!" he replied, ever the pragmatist.
Leila didn't look happy to see the ghost militia at our back. Frankly, it unnerved me too. But like Casper said, that was a problem for another day.
Leila was today's — and yesterday's — problem and she was making her way to the exit. The woman was going to cut and run, and if we lost her again, Rhode Island would face an atomic Armageddon.
Desperation licked at the back of my neck along with the graveyard ghosts. I released Casper's hand. "Get the hell out of here," I called out to him, snatching the bloody stake off the floor before I rushed forward. I slammed my head into Leila’s solar plexus like a football linebacker, propelling us both outside. She sprawled under me on the dirt as the house collapsed in on itself, and the night air filled with ghostly shrieks and moans. I raised the stake in my right hand, ready to bring it down into her.
"Don't kill her!" Max shouted as he sprinted up the drive from the car. "Do! Not! Kill! Her!"
I paused, the stake hovering just above Leila's heart. Her white tooth grin stood out in sharp relief from her soot-smeared face, giving her a clownish, macabre appearance. She chuckled again. My eyes went wide as I felt her take in a bundle of power.
I closed my eyes as the magic pushed out from her like a force, but instead of letting it streak through me, threatening to fry my synapses, I focused on welcoming it instead, opening my body to its raw power. It set my teeth on edge, leaving a metallic taste on the tip of my tongue as energy vibrated through me, filling my body with a relentless pulse of power that threatened to consume me. When I couldn't take it any longer, I pushed it out, shoving sorcery into the night sky where it manifested as bolts of lightning that crackled just above the tree line. Then I slammed the stake down into her heart, its force ten times greater than anything I'd ever thrown, and her eyes went wide.
"Stupid girl. Now you'll never know the truth of what you are," she said, a small giggle escaping her lips before her body went limp, her energy sinking out of me and dropping into the ground.
I rolled off of her and knelt beside her body, the murderous glee on her face frozen in a death mask. It was the same expression she wore when she dropped a torch into the pile of kindling and burned Babe on the stake.
I shook my blade loose from its holster and before I could think it through, I brought it down across her neck, severing her head in one fast move.
"What the hell did you do!" Max shouted, his footsteps heavy on the ground behind me. He dropped to his knees just as Leila's body ignited and turned to ash. The wind picked up to carry it across the dirt. "What the hell did you do?" he asked again. This time his voice was barely above a whisper.
I spit out thick soot from the fire that still burned bright, the wood still cracking and splintered behind me. "No choice," I said with a shrug. I won. And winning meant that I killed my mother. And I had to wear that fact like an ill-fitting suit for the rest of my immortal life.