Dark Heritage Trilogy

by Hoffman, Samantha

  “Necromancers have control over the dead, which includes vampires. What did Tabitha have to fear from Holly?” Marcel asked, frowning.

  “I know we have power over vampires—I saw what she did with Kevin. But, I think she was still scared of vampires. After she chained Holly’s coffin closed and set it on fire, I convinced her that she needed to donate blood to save Holly, or it would look suspicious. I could feel how intense her fear was as Holly was feeding from her. She was terrified.

  “After her attempt to kill Holly failed, I think she started to get a little frazzled. She was worrying that her plans might not work out they way she originally thought. Her temper was starting to get the best of her, and each of my little jabs affected more than the last. When her anger spiked, I tried to overpower her. The cracks in her prison began to grow, but I knew I would need more power if I wanted to escape.

  “I knew where that power would come from, and I was too scared to use it for fear of how it might change me. But when we were in the graveyard, and she was trying to warp Beth’s mind, I couldn’t just sit idly by and watch. So I did what I had to do; I dove into the darkest parts of me that I’ve forced down. I called forth the kind of power that Andrew and Tabitha have used in the past, and I tried my hardest to fight it and remain pure. I nearly broke free, but I got tainted in the process.”

  “What do you mean by tainted?” Marcel asked quietly. He leaned forward, inspecting me as closely as he could. He may have been a shape shifter and a part of the supernatural world, but he was still the only current Council member without any magic abilities, and understanding this kind of power and the effects it had probably didn’t come easily to him.

  I took a deep breath. “In order to break free from her, I had to let the darkness in. I fought it for so long, but now it’s a part of me, just like it was a part of Andrew and Tabitha.”

  “I see,” Marcel said, leaning back. He was silent as he studied me, as if he was looking for any perceptible changes. “Should we consider you dangerous?”

  “Probably,” I answered truthfully. “But no more dangerous than I was before. I have it under control. I’ve seen what this power does, and I have no interest in it, especially after seeing what happened to Andrew and Tabitha because of it. I won’t ever let myself become like that. You have my word.”

  “We’ll have to inform the High Council of this, but that can wait. Please, finish.”

  “While in the graveyard, Tabitha and I were abducted by the Mayor’s sorcerer bodyguard. He let Beth go and told her to tell you. He promised to keep us in one piece until Finn could get there, which he couldn’t do since he was being wrongly held for a crime he didn’t commit.” Finn and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about the damage Tabitha caused to our relationship, and unfortunately, it would have to wait some more. “Tabitha injured herself to cast suspicion away from herself and on to Finn, knowing it would get him out of the way.

  “While at the Mayor’s Tabitha revealed herself and promised to cooperate. She wanted to tell the Mayor about the sorcerer’s betrayal, but in the end, she just blew apart the shed we were in, killing his other bodyguards and scaring the Mayor. He fled, and the sorcerer let us go.” I looked at Marcel. “I was out of it for awhile. How did the raid go?”

  “We caught the Mayor red-handed. He was there at the time of the raid, in the middle of a business meeting with a group of witches who were trying to buy some illegal potions. We apprehended them all—six in total—along with the Mayor. We were also able to rescue the supernatural children he was holding hostage. The sorcerer and his daughter have been reunited, and they’ve since dropped off the radar. He probably won’t turn up again anytime soon—not that I blame him.”

  I nodded, silently going over this new information in my head. The Mayor had been taken, and the sorcerer had his little girl back. The other children were no longer in danger and being used as pawns, but what was the price for such a heinous act? “What will happen to the Mayor? Is he here?”

  “No, he’s being held by the High Council. They held a meeting that lasted nearly four hours, but finally they all came to a joint consensus. They’ve decided to hold him until this all blows over. Then they’ll execute him however they see fit, unless another option presents itself. He won’t be running this city anymore, that’s for sure.”

  “What do we tell the townspeople? Don’t you think they’ll notice that their Mayor is missing?”

  “The High Council will probably release some kind of statement that hints at his illegal dealings with our kind while simultaneously keeping our affairs private. What the city does after that doesn’t concern us. Hopefully their new Mayor will be much more competent than the previous one. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Finish your story,” Lisa ordered. “We’ll have time to discuss the Mayor later. For now, our focus should be on Tabitha.”

  I continued. “After talking to you guys, Tabitha snuck into Lisa’s room and took the potion specially designed to stop a werewolf in its tracks. She knew Finn would break out of wherever he was being held once he heard about the Mayor and me being taken. She got close to him and used the syringe to paralyze him. She was planning to take her time and torture him, to make him suffer. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let anyone else be hurt because I was too weak to stop Tabitha.

  “We were fighting over the knife. I knew that death made her more powerful, and that it would do the same thing for me. So, I let her overpower me, and the knife jerked back, and I let her cut me.” I heard Lisa’s sharp intake of breath and continued on. “I started to bleed, and Tabitha started to freak out, but I couldn’t let her keep using me. I thought I was going to die, but I didn’t. I lost consciousness, and Lisa saved me.

  “When I woke up, I was tied to a bed in the infirmary, and Tabitha was still hidden away inside of me. Annie was preparing for the exorcism, while Tabitha began taunting them, telling them I was too weak to fight. When the exorcism started, Tabitha pulled away and closed herself off with her power, making it nearly impossible to penetrate her defense and get to her.

  “We thought we were making progress, but before we even knew what had happened, Tabitha dropped her shield and latched on to me, threatening to take me with her. She was pulling me into the Outer Planes with her, and I was too weak from the exorcism to stop her. I called out to Annie, and she stopped fighting Tabitha just long enough to free me from Tabitha’s grasp and save me.”

  “And Tabitha got away in the process,” Annie finished. “Her soul is still out there at this very moment, and she’s not alone. She now has another vessel to aid her in her plans, one that’s much younger and less capable of fighting back. Beth may not be nearly as powerful as Ronnie or I, but her body will do if Tabitha is the one in control of it.”

  “You should have banished Tabitha instead of saving Veronica,” Lisa said, surprising nobody.

  Her words should have angered me, but during my story, I had started to feel oddly numb. After hearing about all of the horrible things that I had unwillingly been a part of, combined with all of the equally horrible things I had willingly done, I was finally realizing there wasn’t must left that could hurt me. I didn’t have much room left to care about anything as simple as anger or hatred anymore, and I wondered if I ever would.

  I had survived the death of my mother, along with the subsequent disappearance of her soul forever. I had met my murderous raving lunatic of a father—and had killed him shortly after. I had befriended my half sister, only to learn that she was perhaps more of a monster than Andrew ever had been, and I had killed her as well, even if it had been an accident. I had survived being possessed by a malevolent spirit who tried to murder and torture my friends. I had survived a four hour long exorcism that had nearly ripped my soul apart.

  There really is nothing else. I’ve seen and experienced the worst this world has to offer…but I’m still here.

  “Arguing over whether I made the right call or not won’t solve an
ything. All it will do is waste time we can’t afford to squander. Our time is better spent coming up with a plan to find Tabitha. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am getting very tired of this little psycho brat.” Annie looked at her co-council members. “Our best bet of finding her still lies with Ronnie. The two of them share a bond that the rest of us don’t.”

  “Ronnie,” Marcel said, leaning forward. “Do you have any idea where Tabitha might have gone? Think hard about this.”

  I started going over all the information in my head, trying to remember if Tabitha had ever accidentally blabbed about her future plans during one of her angry outbursts. She had told me about her life with Andrew, and it certainly hadn’t been a happy one. I couldn’t see her going back to Andrew’s house, especially since that had been where she died the first time.

  She didn’t have many happy memories in her life that might inspire her, but she had plenty of angry ones to draw on. But Andrew’s place was out of question, and I didn’t know where else she might go. Wherever she was, it would no doubt be chosen to hurt me the most, since that was the final part of her plans. But what options did she have in those regards?

  It hit me so suddenly I nearly dropped to my knees. Finn was right there, holding me and steadying me. He squeezed my hand gently, silently lending me his unconditional support. In that moment, I promised myself that I would find the time to talk things over with Finn, to fix the damage Tabitha had done to our relationship.

  “Ronnie?” Annie asked. “Do you have any idea where she is?”

  “She’ll be with Alan and Susan—my foster parents.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  After explaining to them about sending Alan and Susan away from the city, and Tabitha calling them back while pretending to be me, they were convinced I was on the right track. They promised to send someone out to confirm my fears, and once they got the information they needed, they would send me in to deal with Tabitha once and for all. This time there would be no more going behind the Council’s back to do what was right—they understood me well enough now that they trusted me to do what was right, and they weren’t going to hold me back.

  I left the Council meeting room, followed by my silent friends. My nerves were alive, feeling like downed power lines. Electricity crackled through me, agitating me and making me more worried than I had been since this whole ordeal first started. I wasn’t sure how I was going to wait for the Council’s surveillance to finish, but I knew my friends would be there to help calm me down. They were on the road to recovery after tasting Tabitha’s wrath, and they were as anxious for justice as I was.

  …but they didn’t have the same things on the line as I did. They didn’t have any family in the area that was in danger because of the choices they had made. I did. I had family, even if it hadn’t ever really felt that way in the past. And now I had to sit here and wonder what Tabitha might have been doing to them at this very moment. Were they in pain? Were they frightened? Was Jessica confused about why Tabitha hated them so vehemently?

  “Are you Veronica?”

  I stopped, surrounded by Finn, Ezra, Holly, and Tanya. They closed in around me just a bit, ready to protect me if they had to. And I loved them for that.

  “Who wants to know?” I asked, peeking around Finn’s broad shoulder.

  I found a young boy, only a little older than me. The boy was shorter than average, with shaggy blond hair that fell across a pair of light bray eyes, eyes that I had sworn I’d seen before. Butt these were different in their own way. They looked so tired, with light purple circles under them, like he hadn’t slept in days. And they looked haunted, like he was nothing but a wandering soul, trapped here for all eternity.

  I knew this had to be Cory—Beth’s older brother. I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see him, since I knew that Annie was back. That had to mean she had either killed and banished him, or she had talked him down from his rage and convinced him to come back with her peacefully.

  But he didn’t look very peaceful at the moment. He looked as agitated as I felt; his hands were shaking, his eyes were wide, and his chest rose and fell with each drastic breath he took. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was a drug addict, but I figured he had somehow already heard about his sister’s fate, and it looked like he blamed me.

  I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did…

  “Yeah, I’m Ronnie,” I said, stepping up to him. “And you’re Cory, Beth’s older brother. I wish we didn’t have to meet under these circumstances,” I said, deciding to just get straight to the point rather than play dumb and try to save face.

  “What happened?” he asked tightly, eyeing me and my friends with obvious distaste. I had to remind myself that his family had been murdered by the people that ruled this place and he was a captive here. “I left her so she would be safe from harm and a negative influence, but it looks like that didn’t do her much good, did it?”

  “I’m sorry about your sister. I tried to stop something like this from happening.”

  “Well you didn’t do a very good job, did you?” he asked with a sneer. “What are you doing about it? Has anyone found her yet?”

  “We think we may know where they are,” I admitted slowly, “but we’re waiting for some kind of confirmation. Then we’ll make a plan to get your sister back.”

  “You’ll get her back, bring her here, and the Council will execute her, just like they did my parents. I won’t let that happen. Tell me where she is so I can go get her myself. I don’t want or need your help.”

  “No,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Tabitha is too dangerous for you to take by yourself. All you’ll do is get yourself killed, and then Beth will be even more vulnerable to Tabitha’s manipulation. Don’t be stupid about this.”

  I could see my words had an immediate impact on him. His entire body relaxed, and he looked away from me, letting out a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said quickly. “You’re worried about your sister. It’s understandable that you’d be a little testy. Just try not to be too much of a dick—it’s not gonna help us any.”

  He almost smiled. I could see it in the way his lips twitched and his eyes crinkled at the corners. But the weight of the situation quickly brought him crashing back down. “So, tell me what’s gonna happen to my sister.”

  “Right now, Tabitha has control over her, and Beth is at Tabitha’s mercy—which Tabitha doesn’t have,” Finn said gravely.

  “Unless cats are concerned,” I said. “She let Two Socks live, even though she didn’t have to. Of course, she would spare animals instead of people.”

  “The animals never hurt her,” Ezra said, acting as the voice of reason among us.

  “Neither did we,” Finn said tightly, getting defensive in a heartbeat. Now that I was out of the woods, he could stop being the soft, vulnerable Finn and go back to being the indifferent, standoffish jerk.

  And I loved him that way all the more.

  Finn always kept me on my guard, constantly challenging the way I thought. Who wanted a boyfriend that let you walk all over him? I wanted one that would pick a fight with me if he thought I was wrong, one who would always fight to prove how much I meant to him. That was what was important to me, more than obedience or perfection.

  “It’s not our fault Tabitha is a nut job. She brought this all on herself. She’s an injustice collector—she collects all these perceived injustices and magnifies them in her mind until something small and harmless to most people becomes big enough for her to murder for.”

  “An injustice collector?” I asked slowly. “That sounds familiar. Is that from Criminal—?”

  “Shhh…” Finn said quietly. “I don’t want them to know I let you talk me into watching that show, even worse…that I actually paid attention to it.”

  Turning, I flashed Finn a quick, private smile that was just for him. “When this is all over, you and I are going to catch up on the new season, and you’ll love every minute
of it.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said, returning my smile.

  Cory cleared his throat loudly. “If you two are done making goo-goo eyes at each other, can we please get back to my sister? It’s a little more important.”

  “Sorry,” I said, looking away from his accusing stare. “We haven’t had any personal time together in a long time, it feels like.”

  “Except for when you tortured him,” Holly pointed out dryly.

  Cory froze, eyes going wide in surprise. “Oh, it wasn’t really Ronnie,” Tanya said quickly, wings fluttering anxiously behind her. “It was Tabitha. She had possession of Ronnie’s body.”

  Cory still looked freaked out, which was probably better than being angry. He shook it off though, ready to get down to business with a group of freaks, all for the sake of his little sister. I really admired that a lot.

  “The Council trusts Ronnie to take the lead on this,” Ezra said, putting his arm around Tanya’s thin shoulders. “She decided it would be best to wait for more information. If Tabitha really did go after Ronnie’s foster parents, we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Your foster family might be in danger, and you’re just sitting here?” Cory asked incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  “There’s no guarantee Tabitha will go after them now that her plans have been disrupted,” I said defensively. I had thought long and hard about what to do while in that meeting room. “If they’re not in danger and I go to them, it could put them in danger. Right now, I’m operating under the assumption that her rage at me will force her to hurt me directly rather than waste what little time she has left going after the people I care about. That plan didn’t work out too well the first time…or the second time.”