“I’m so sorry,” he said, squeezing tight.
“Finn, what are you doing here?”
“I heard what happened in town today. Ronnie, are you okay? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he pulled away and looked Tabitha up and down, searching for any signs of injury. He put his hand under her chin and gently lifted her face until their eyes met. “Ronnie? I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”
“It’s not your fault,” she said, nuzzling against his chest. “I should have fought harder for you when they were taking you away, but I didn’t. I was so confused, Finn,” she said, slipping her hand into her sweater pocket. “With everything going on, I didn’t know what to believe or who to listen to.” She turned Finn’s face away from hers and leaned closer to his ear as she slid the syringe out of her pocket. “Can you ever forgive me?” she said quietly.
Before Finn could answer her, she stabbed him in the neck with the syringe and pushed down on the plunger. His entire body froze and his grip on Tabitha loosened. He reeled backwards on his feet, and Tabitha made no move to catch him or slow his fall. He hit the ground with a thud, and his body gave a few small twitches, before he went completely still.
Tabitha smiled, taking a minute to enjoy seeing Finn helpless and vulnerable on the floor. The syringe was still in his neck, and she leaned over his body. As her fingers touched it, he gasped and she jumped back, so startled she tripped over his legs and fell back, hitting her head on the corner of the dresser nearby.
“What did you do to me?” Finn croaked. His lips moved, and his eyes darted around rapidly, but the rest of him remained still and unmoving.
“I injected you with a potion specifically designed to keep you mongrels under control,” Tabitha said with a sneer. “You’ll be unable to move for the next hour or so, I think. And that should give me just plenty of time to have my fun and then kill you before you can fight back,” she added, dropping to the floor and straddling his waist.
“Ronnie, what’s wrong with you? Why would you do this?”
Tabitha pouted her lips and ran her hands across Finn’s broad chest, which creeped me out more than most of the things she had done. Evil I could handle, but now she was trying to act seductively towards my boyfriend, who was much more mature than she was. What could she possibly gain by acting this way? Was she doing this to torture Finn, or was she doing this to torture me?
She leaned closer to his face, kissed his cheek, and purred, “What makes you think I’m Ronnie?”
His eyes flicked over to hers, and I could see the recognition in a heartbeat. Everything was coming together so quickly it was leaving him stunned and speechless, and more than a little furious. His eyes fluttered closed, and he sighed. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”
“Mmm, nobody did,” she said, arching her back and flipping her hair over her shoulder, giving him a full view of my chest. He kept his eyes closed, refusing to even look at her. “I had you all completely fooled. And you guys call yourselves her friends. You couldn’t even tell that she was being possessed!”
“Tabitha, why are you doing this? What could you possibly get out of this?”
“I’m just having a little fun before finishing the rest of my plans. I already hurt those loser friends of yours; I needed to make sure I didn’t leave you out.” She slipped her hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a small pocketknife. “I saw you slip this in there the other day while I was spying on you all—before I took over Ronnie’s body—so I factored it into my plans.”
“What are you gonna do with it?” Finn asked.
I was surprised by the strength in his voice, even while under duress. Knowing how proud and fierce he was, he would never show Tabitha any signs of weakness. He would stare her down until she lost her nerve or she was done with him. If she was going to try and get a rise out of him, she was in for some bitter disappointment.
Instead of answering him, Tabitha took the knife and set it against the soft skin of Finn’s throat. My heart stopped in my chest, and for a breathless moment, I was left wondering if Tabitha would have the guts to do it. Please, don’t. Don’t do this, Tabitha. Just put the knife down and walk away! Finn’s never done anything to hurt you.
Tabitha moved the knife away from Finn’s neck and slid it down, sawing into the fabric of his shirt. Once she had a small tear, she set the knife aside and gripped the shirt with both hands. She pulled, and with a shredding noise, the tear grew until Finn’s entire torso was bare and the shirt was in tatters. She ran her fingers down the tan skin, and his chest quivered at the strangely gentle touch. “I can be gentle if you want,” she said softly, surprising me with how sane she sounded.
“Get your hands off of me!” he shouted, startling her.
Immediately her features hardened. She reached over and grabbed one of my dirty shirts off the floor, balled it up, and shoved it in his mouth. “We can’t have you shouting and giving me away. Now you can yell all you want, which you just might wanna do.” She picked up the knife again and twirled it in her fingers slowly, her eyes searching over his entire body, as if she couldn’t decide where to begin.
Tabitha, please don’t—
“Be quiet!” she snapped.
Finn mumbled something through the gag in his mouth, and Tabitha smiled. “Oh yeah, Ronnie’s still in here. That’s what you’re wondering, right? She’s trapped in her own mind, unable to get out. She’s been fighting me since I took over, but she’s too weak, and too good. She won’t use the power in her hands because she’s scared of what might happen. She’s scared of ending up like me and our father.”
She leaned closer, peering into his eyes. “And she should be scared. The darkness is coming for her. I’ve seen what it’s doing to her. Her thoughts are getting darker and darker the longer I’m in control. When that vampire on the Council attacked her and her buddy Marcel did nothing, she wanted to leap across the table and destroy them all. She wanted to make them suffer. The same with the Mayor after he took us. Our father would have been proud…”
Tabitha pressed the knife against his chest and pressed down. Her hand trembled as she slowly dragged the knife down, cutting easily through the flesh. Finn grunted through the gag, and Tabitha giggled at the sound. She lifted the knife away and examined her handy work. She pressed her finger against the bleeding wound, exerting pressure. When she didn’t get a reaction from Finn, she dug her nail into the cut and gouged a sliver of flesh from his chest.
She picked the flesh out from under her nail, and by the time her finger was clean, the wound in his chest had already healed. All that was left was a red smear across his skin. Tabitha licked her thumb and wiped the red away, staring at his chest in amazement. “Wow, you do heal fast. I knew werewolves were quick healers, but that’s crazy! Let’s see what else you can heal.”
Finn flinched when she brought the knife close to his face. She carved a deep line in his left cheek, scraping all the way down to the bone. Blood welled up around the cut and dribbled down the left side of his face, dripping to the carpet below. As she watched, the cut stopped bleeding, scabbed over, and soon here was nothing left but fresh pink skin. It looked like there had never been any damage done to the flesh.
She slid the knife across his collarbone, making a jagged line from shoulder to shoulder. Slicing down his chest, she stopped just above his navel, making a large “Y” shape in his skin. Without giving him time to heal, she moved back upwards, making deep nicks along each of his ribs. Finn’s face screwed up in pain, but he couldn’t scream and he couldn’t fight, leaving him totally helpless. And I was practically as helpless as he was.
I was trapped and unable to free myself without delving into a part of me I was too terrified of. If I didn’t do it, I might not ever break free from this prison, but if I did, I might not ever be the same. What if I came out even worse than Tabitha? I would be in control of my body again, but my friends might still be in danger. Would they be able to fight me like they were willing to fi
ght Tabitha? Could they take out a friend if they had to?
She’s going to torture Finn until she gets bored. Then she’ll kill him, and it’ll be all your fault. I couldn’t shake that thought from my mind, and it was scaring me. How would I be able to live with myself if I let Finn die because I was too scared to take a risk? I had to do something other than sitting around and waiting to see what would happen to my friends next.
But how could I find the courage to act when I knew from looking at Tabitha exactly what failure looked like?
*****
“You know, when I was a child, Andrew was pretty much all I had,” she said, wiping the bloody knife with part of Finn’s shirt. “My grandmother died when I was about seven, and it left me alone—more alone than you could possibly imagine. I had nobody to nurture me or love me, at least not in a way that was healthy. That’s probably the one positive thing Ronnie did for me—convincing me that Andrew was a horrible father.
“He was so focused on getting his revenge he was willing to sacrifice anything or anyone to get it. If my death would have furthered his plans, he would have killed me himself. He wanted to use me to his advantage, but no matter how much he forced me to train, I was never strong enough to be useful. I couldn’t raise any army large enough for him, so I took a backseat in his plans. When he told me he thought he found a necromancer strong enough for the plan to work, he become obsessed with her.
“I never thought for one second she was family, and neither did our father. He didn’t figure it out until it was too late. He was too far gone—too absorbed in his plans to turn back. If Ronnie wasn’t going to help him succeed, he had no need of her, and he would have gladly killed her. He would have done the same thing to me; I just didn’t know it until after I met Ronnie. I finally saw the side to my father everyone else did, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.
“And speaking of Ronnie…” She looked down at Finn and smiled—a genuine, almost heartfelt smile, or at least as close as she could get. I was reminded of the girl I had first met and had breakfast with, before she became hell bent on finishing our father’s plans.
“You have no idea how happy I was when I found out who she was. At first, when I learned her name, I was going to just kill her and get her out of the way, but when I heard the rumors about a necromancer killing her father, I couldn’t believe it. For days, I sat alone in my home, torn between screaming at the walls and wondering what I was going to do with myself now that my father was gone.
“Finally, I decided that I needed to at least meet with Ronnie, to see if she could be talked into helping me avenge our father. I knew almost right away there was darkness inside of her, waiting to be encouraged. I could feel it deep down inside of her, and I knew she could feel it, too. She was trying to ignore it—to pretend it didn’t exist so she could feel normal—but she couldn’t fool me. I had struggled with it in the past, and I knew how close she was to giving in, even if she never did.
“That’s the thing about our powers. We always walk the line between good and evil, and every tiny, insignificant experience pushes us one way or the other. Betrayal, pain, heartache…it all grows inside of us like a weed. No amount of pruning will ever get rid of it for good; it always comes back stronger than before. And Ronnie’s had been growing inside of her for some time, her pain and confusion about you only made it worse.”
That’s not true, I said, speaking up for the first time. Nothing that happened between Finn and I ever made me want to be like Andrew. The things he said or did hurt, but it was never worth betraying my friends over. Not all of us are as weak as you, Tabitha. We don’t let such tiny things ruin our outlook on life, and we don’t let them affect our morals. It would take a lot more than boy drama to turn me into you.
She laughed. “Oh, Ronnie. You’re far closer to me than you think. It won’t be long.” She pulled the gag out of Finn’s mouth and he inhaled deeply, gasping for air like he hadn’t been able to breathe in years. “What do you say, Finn? Ready to go again?” She backed away to look at her handy work, unfazed by the defiant look in his eyes.
She had a smile on her face as she took in Finn’s pallid complexion. His broad chest heaved with each ragged breath he took, and sweat dripped down his face. His shirt was in tatters, and scarlet blood soaked through the remaining fabric. It clung to his body as the blood began to dry, and she pried it away so she could examine the flawless skin underneath, which was a healthy shade of light pink.
The places she had cut him weren’t tan like the rest of his body, making it perfectly clear where she had marked him with the knife. And just looking at Finn was enough to break my heart. He was in so much pain and he was incapable of fighting back. It had been over half an hour and I was officially out of options. With Tabitha’s taunts echoing in my ears, I took one final look at Finn and set about gathering the power I would need to destroy the prison Tabitha had erected around my mind.
As I called out to the power within me, my heart began to race in my chest, and I could feel myself come alive as power raced through my veins. It flowed from my core to the very tips of my fingers, filling me from head to toe with strength. I felt strong and invincible, like I could take on the whole world and nobody would be able to stop me. I shuddered at the feeling, but I knew I couldn’t back out now, not with Finn’s life on the line.
Try it all you want, Tabitha taunted. You already know you can’t break through. You’re too weak to beat me.
I would show her. I would break free from her hold, and the second I did, I was going to banish her. And when she was finally gone for good, I could start repairing the damage she had done to my friends and my life. When this was all done and behind us, I could finally relax and get my life back to the way I wanted it—stress free and less dangerous.
Careful, Tabitha cautioned. Don’t lose yourself.
I won’t, I promised myself.
My entire body felt like a live wire, like it was crackling with electricity. Each of the fine little hairs on the back of my neck stood up on edge, and goose bumps rose along my arms. All of the power inside of me throbbed impatiently, waiting for any kind of command. With so much power at my fingertips, there was no way Tabitha’s shield could withstand an attack for long, and once I was free, the first thing I was going to do was punish her for everything she had put me through.
My hands clenched into fists as they began to glow a strange, dark green color. As that color slowly deepened from an emerald green to black, my hands began to shake uncontrollably. The palms of my hands began to sweat, and it felt like the skin was being repeatedly pricked by a thousand tiny needles. But I pushed all that away, focusing on the power instead of the pain and discomfort.
A ball of light gathered in my hands, no larger than a tennis ball at first, but growing larger by the second. In no time at all, I had a massive ball of swirling, angry power between my hands, ready to do my bidding at the slightest urging. It writhed and twisted between my fingers, picking up like a thunder storm overhead. It threatened to overpower me and explode, consuming me just like it had consumed my father before me. Like Andrew, I could feel it draining me, and it wouldn’t be long before I lost control.
I felt Tabitha’s gleeful taunting turn to worry, and before she could switch gears, I hurled my gathered energy at the wall of energy around my mind. The sound as my energy hit was nearly deafening, like a gasoline explosion confined in my mind. The tiny cracks that appeared through her shield like latticework spread and deepened until they resembled chasms left in the aftermath of an earthquake.
I could feel her walls slamming down, but I knew it was too late. The cracks were still spreading, and it would only take one more powerful shot for the whole thing to come tumbling down. The second blast was even louder than the first. My ears rang and my vision blurred, leaving me scrabbling to regain my composure. All I could feel was a harsh draining sensation throughout my entire body as the power flowed from me, but I knew the exact instant the wall cracked. I forced my w
ay through, shoving Tabitha from her place.
No! She screamed, struggling to keep her hold on me.
I knew she would never give it up without a fight. If she lost now, her plans were ruined. It was a battle of wills, and we clashed, struggling to outdo one another. Panicked, she gripped the knife in her hands, aiming for Finn’s chest. She was directly above the left side of his chest, and even though he healed fast, there was no way he could survive a knife to the heart.
My heart stopped as fear ripped through me, and I saw red. My rage slammed into her, and I wrestled back control of my body, forcing her to retreat. In an instant, our situation had flipped, and I had momentary control of my body. I brought the knife away from Finn’s chest. “Finn!”
His eyes widened, but he still looked so sleepy. “Ronnie?”
Tabitha snarled, less like a girl, and more like a rabid animal that was backed into a corner. I could imagine her with her hackles up as she eased her way back into my body, trying to force me out again. I gave up too early last time and just accepted my fate, but this time I would not give up without a fight. Even if it killed me, I would not let Tabitha have control over my body ever again.
“I won’t let you win!” I screamed.
She wrenched control away from me with one violent shove, but she didn’t get me out for good. I refused to budge totally, and she struggled to bring the knife down over Finn’s chest. She gained an inch and I took it back. Neither of us had any other option; it was like a perpetual case of stalemate. Slowly but surely, I started gaining my body back. The knife moved away from Finn’s chest and closer and closer to my own.
If I leave, you’re coming with me!
The knife jerked violently toward my throat, nicking the skin. My throat stung, like I had just gotten a dangerously serious paper cut, and I could feel a tiny trickle of blood as it dribbled down to my collarbone. I tried to rip the knife away from my body, but Tabitha’s fury was overwhelming, and I could feel myself start to be pushed aside. Slowly but surely, she was overpowering me just like she had before. She’d have total control of my body, and I couldn’t let that happen ever again.
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