I whispered, “You okay, Anna?” The cat looked up at me and blinked twice, as if reaching a decision.
She dipped her head once, then turned back to the ringmaster. For the moment, we had established a fragile peace
“Thanks,” I muttered, and she flicked an ear at me in the most perfect imitation of Gus I’d ever seen. So all cats were buttheads, no matter how large. Good to know.
The ringmaster began to sidle toward us while his mind ran through the geometry of our unpleasant situation. He knew we were tired, and he knew he could win. How to make that happen without any further loss on his part was clearly giving him fits. Sure, they could rush us again, but we would make them pay. There was no middle ground in terms of a bloodless victory, and he knew it. Looking at his smug expression, I knew that arrogance would come into play, and I was proven right a mere second later.
He stopped ten yards from us to draw up in an operatic stance. There was no mistaking the gloating spread across his angular face, which was now free of the stage makeup he’d worn during his performance under the glare of the tent lights. I knew that when alive, he’d been a tall man, well made and muscular. He had the bearing of a soldier hidden somewhere under the glib arrogance marking him now. With long fingers, he smoothed his hair with one hand while unbuttoning a burgundy vest with ivory buttons. He wore no shirt underneath, and his skin was milk white and hairless.
“Wait where you are.” His voice radiated complete authority, causing every vampire to freeze in place without hesitation. “I’ll not have our meal spoiled with bad manners.” He grinned to reveal fangs of perfect symmetry.
Gran made a low hmph and waggled a hand toward him in distaste. “You’ll do no such thing, and you know it. You must be very old, and I urge you to do the only logical thing and leave our lands this instant.”
“Good lady, I suspect that you’ve gone daft.” There was a touch of old Britain in his accent, but I couldn’t place the rest of it. It was likely his age had erased his original accent, leaving him sounding like a snide yacht salesman. My dislike of him went even deeper. When Gran said nothing, he gave a tiny shrug, as if powerless to discuss matters with someone who was dense. He was a master of gestures, I’d grant him that. He’d also just insulted Gran, which did not sit well with me at all. In fact, I felt a column of anger rising in me and idly wondered if I now had enough power to cast another spell. One well-placed bolt in that arrogant face would set him right, but I wasn’t sure, so I let my charms hang silently next to my palm. My teeth were clenched so tight I was getting a legendary headache, or maybe I was just too mad to see straight. Either way, my grump level was skyrocketing, but Gran’s silence was troubling. I cut my eyes and saw perspiration glistening on her face. A pallid complexion and spots of high color on her cheeks told me something was wrong. When she felt my gaze, a smile curved her lips.
“I’ll be alight, dear. Just a bit sore from that first creature. Although, we might consider things other than magic right now. I seem to be a bit tired.” Gran’s voice was pained, and I knew that our problems had just gotten much worse. My allies were winded and wounded. There were dozens of vampires hissing in the darkness, and three lieutenant fangers waiting for orders from an undead ringmaster who seemed to want us as supper.
Great. That launched us into Worst Day Ever territory. I looked at Gran and then upward to the mute stars spattered across the deep night sky. It was a perfect view, just like every one of the nights I’ve lived here in the mountains. A grim sense of purpose closed in around me because, at that moment, I knew my life had been as full as my heart. Both were charmed, even pure. I’d been lucky to have—well, all of it.
So the next minute was easy.
“Anna, Alex. Cover Gran.” My voice cracked with fear, but I lifted my chin as high as I could and placed both palms up into the night air. I had no magic, but I had my own spirit left, and that told me that I would not let these monsters harm the woman who ushered me from scared novice into the witch that stood before them. “Do it,” I hissed, wanting no argument or loss of time. “I love you, Gran. You have to get away and stop them.”
Gran looked at me with eyes brimmed full of tears, and opened her mouth to protest, but the ringmaster had seen enough of our plotting. “Moving, to be sure, but I’ve things to do elsewhere. You know, savages to cull, and lands to be purged.” His smile was pure malevolence as he raised a glowing finger to me. I was left with the decision of offense or defense. I had one spell, and Gran stood next to me, her shoulders slumped in pain.
Defense, then. That’s all I cared about right then.
A breeze ruffled my hair to the right as a black streak went past me into the night. I looked around wildly, only to notice a circle of lights approaching us from the darkness. They grew larger in the seconds it took me to peer closely at their dancing varicolored shapes. Before I could ask Gran what was happening, one of the male lieutenants was lifted in the air, screaming. His body suddenly doubled with a savage thud as his skull rang against a stone in the ground.
Poised above him, Wulfric smiled at me in the night. “I thought we might need help from the Everafter. So I brought them, love.”
Maggie the ghost materialized, along with half the dead population of Halfway. Next to her stood Rene’ Meunier. Every spirit held hands, walking inexorably toward our fight with the vampires. “They can’t break the ring, honey. Contact with this much of the Everafter will pull them through to our side. The bloodsuckers don’t want that at all,” Maggie cackled, her bawdy laugh buoying my heart like a rising tide. I’d never been so happy to see a dead person in my life. In that instant, Wulfric snapped the second lieutenant and moved on before the vampire’s body hit the ground. His speed was inhuman; his focus, lethal. I loved him even more for honoring our needs.
“Why is Rene’ here, Mags? Didn’t you have enough help in the town cemetery?” Gran teased.
Maggie’s ghost blushed, a feat that I hadn’t thought possible. Her glance at Rene’ explained everything, and I felt my own cheeks color at the possibility of ghost booty happening in my hometown. Maggie saw my reaction and said, “Just because I’m dead, doesn’t mean I stopped being a woman.” Her wink glittered in the night as I snickered at her unquenchable vigor. Rene’ took the high road, despite being French. He merely tipped his fur cap in our direction, deeming any commentary beneath a gentleman, be he living or dead.
“Alex, Anna,” Gran said, her voice flatly decisive. “Take Collette.” In a snarling blaze, the panthers accelerated away from me to strike Collette, who had dropped into a stance of defensive fear. She shouldn’t have bothered, because the panthers were grabbing at empty air. Wulfric arrived first, his arms striking Collette in the base of the neck like an avenging sword. Her body flamed into ash as he slowed to a stop, favoring me with a brilliant smile. My heart leapt again, knowing that Gran would be safe. Our land, and our town, safe.
Wulfric flashed into motion again, and this time there was no doubt as to his target. But the ringmaster was no ordinary vampire, and he met Wulfric’s attack with a savage blow of his own. The impact was colossal, causing each man to stagger away from the other like a drunken sailor. The fight was relatively even, given the ringmaster’s age and Wulfric’s hybrid blood, and the next few seconds descended into a whirlwind of blows that were too fast for the human eye to follow. The fire from raging caravans still illuminated the area all around us, making the low fog into a sheet of dim purplish light that hid the combatant’s legs.
No one moved, save them, and in bits and glimpses I could see ragged flesh healing, even as the two vampires wounded and re-wounded each other in a swirling array of attacks.
“We’re going to win,” I told Gran, raising one hand to unleash my final spell as soon as the ringmaster was held immobile for a second. That was all I would need. I felt it.
And then Wulfric bellowed in pain as the ringmaster drove his fingers deep into my lover’s side. I screamed in terror as Wulfric’s back arched wi
th raw agony, and the ringmaster broke out in sniggering laughter. My skin prickled at the noise and I wanted more than anything to cross the gulf of space between us and fight his enemy myself, but I couldn’t get there in time, because Wulfric’s free hand did.
He drove one massive fist into the sneering face of the ringmaster, then began a superhuman spin of such speed and grace that his shape blurred before our eyes. The ringmaster’s coat flew awry as his legs flailed outward in spastic kicks that said, more than anything, he was being pushed into the Everafter by the sheer will of Wulfric’s power and skill. A vampire can kill one of his own kind, as can a hybrid. But to do so with physical strength only means overcoming a healing ability that draws on the darkest parts of magic. Wulfric did so, and when he slammed the ringmaster into the ground with a final howl of rage, the ancient vampire’s body disintegrated in a storm of light and sparks.
“Stars above, he did it.” Gran’s voice was awed.
Maggie, Rene’, and the ghosts stood mute, and the panthers dipped both muzzles in appreciation of a fellow hunter. Wulfric picked up a gleaming gold button that had broken free from the ringmaster’s gaudy vest, and casually flipped to me as a token of our victory.
“I wonder . . . who was he?” I asked, turning to the remaining vampires, who looked at the glowering ghosts with increasing nervousness. Their position had just gotten considerably iffier.
“Captain John Smith,” said a voice from above. She descended toward us on a column of magical resistance, neatly avoiding the inconvenient ring of spirits who stood guard around our group. It was the dead girl pulled from the lake, but she certainly didn’t look dead now. If anything, she was terrifying. Her strawberry blonde hair moved about in a fitful halo as she waved one negligent hand to end the spell of levitation. She began to fall like a dandelion seed, slow and graceful.
“The explorer?” I asked, dumbstruck. John Smith had been friends with Pocahontas. Five centuries ago. Oh, and he was dead, and not a vampire, or so I’d learned in history class.
She smiled at me like a parent might regard a struggling child. “Conqueror, more likely. We’ve controlled vast lands since I brought him into the fold, you might say. Turning him was the finest act of my five hundred years—not counting what I’m about to do now. You’ve interrupted my purge, Carlie, and I can’t allow the”—she searched for a word, her eyes going bright at finding it—“purification of such great lands to remain unfinished. The French are marginally acceptable, as are the Canadians. But so much of the seaboard lands were held by natives, who had received the gift well before it was forced upon me as a child. You understand, of course. So many creatures of lower blood. They simply cannot be allowed to hold power, let alone remain unpunished for what they did to me.”
“What kind of—wait, just who the hell are you, lady?” I asked. I smelled a bigoted tyrant inside that pretty little exterior she wore, and I liked her less by the second.
Gran made a noise of disapproval as the ghosts flickered in anger. Whoever she was, no one was going to invite her to Thanksgiving dinner. That much was certain.
“My manners. Pardon me.” The vampiress gave a mocking bow and flicked a bolt of shadowfire at Maggie, who vanished before the spell could hit home. She winked back into existence and shouted an apology as the ring of ghosts began to move back—whatever had been thrown at them, the ghosts couldn’t stand. I waved her off. There was no need for them to be sent into a state of energy on our behalf; they’d done their duty admirably.
“Alex, can you and Anna fall back and pick the vamps off in the dark?” I asked.
The answering growl faded into the night as both panthers melted into shadows, leaving Gran, me, and Wulfric to face the woman who had come back from the dead.
“A wise decision,” cooed the dead girl.
I really needed a name. It seemed silly to keep calling her Dead Girl, when she was clearly neither.
“I can smell half of the blood in his veins, but that’s enough to pass judgment upon. As for you witches, I shall have to think. I ordinarily avoid killing those who are worthy of serving my purposes.” She made a show of thinking, then smiled. Her fangs were small and bright, her eyes wholly black, and her skin a luminous white under the tattered remains of a primitive robe. It looked like something a child might wear to bed in the year 1600. If anyone needed a fashion update, it was her and the goobers she had working for the circus.
As if reading my thoughts, she said, “My name is Virginia Dare. I am the first settler child born on this land, and I was stolen away in the night by beasts, to be used as a glorified feedbag. But their lust was my bounty.” She laughed, and began to walk toward us, with slow and delicate steps like a fine horse in a ring. “John understood my special needs, so I saved him from the noose and began a private crusade to rid this continent of savages. I’d reached an impasse until John suggested the circus.” Her sigh was genuinely bitter. “I shall miss him.”
She unleashed a spell that slammed into Gran and me with the force of a hurricane. We toppled backward into the dew-slicked earth, rolling to a groaning stop, and right then I decided I’d had just about enough of this demonic little ginger who hated Indians and ruined clowns for the few people who didn’t already hate them. Who was she to trespass on our land? I checked Gran and jumped to my feet, feeling the reserves of magic simmering at the ready. I had one massive spell left for certain, and I meant to put it square in the black heart of Virginia Dare.
I didn’t wait. She was vampire, I was witch, and the beam of sunlight snapped forth from my hand to strike her directly in the stomach without any deviation at all. The radiance struck her shift, setting it ablaze in magical fire that flared outward like a turtle shell.
“Stars above, that’s new,” I shouted. She was shielded in some ancient arcana I’d never seen, and though injured, she was quite capable of fighting back. That left me with exactly zero mojo, no hope of finding any, and an injured Gran on the ground next to me. I didn’t even have a stick to throw at her. Naked again, Carlie, I mused. That was twice in one night, and it wasn’t even in Wulfric’s arms.
Virginia fixated on Gran, and I saw that she was going to take the weakest target first. Her lips began moving in a sing-song spell of old magic, formed long before my family had begun to reach into the bonds of the Everafter. I braced myself in front of Gran, mind screaming in frustration, and raised my hands like a boxer. I may as well go down swinging.
She didn’t complete her casting. Wulfric rushed her to deliver a savage blow, just as he had moments earlier, but the result was frighteningly different. His hand slowed to pass through the shield, tapping Virginia in the chest with the force of a child’s slap. Her laughter pealed out as claws of ragged lengths shot forth from her hands to rake at Wulfric’s sides. She curled around him in a sinuous embrace and began methodically tearing him apart before my eyes.
I screamed, but there were no words. An orgy of magical light began to flood my senses as the ghosts started killing the remaining vampires. Maggie knew the score—if they were left alive, no one would be safe. The caravans raged into purple pyres as Wulfric caught my eye, smiled, and did the only thing that could be done to save us all.
There are many ways a vampire can kill another of their kind. They can use brute force, or fire, or holy magic, but there is another way, and it’s almost always fatal.
Unless you’re a hybrid.
Wulfric sank his fangs into Virginia’s porcelain neck and began draining her with a ferocity that made the air around us stink of rage. She howled and bucked, but his enormous muscles held her tighter than a lover. She shrank visibly, her legs and arms gyrating in wild spasms as she let out a long, piteous cry of defeat and anger. When her skin began to shoot through with red lines, I knew it was over, but Wulfric’s mouth was fastened on her as he drew greedy draughts of black blood that turned him from the love of my life into a monster.
He dropped her body as it began to sizzle into ashes. His body was shaking
with the ecstasy of transition.
All grew quiet. I made to approach him, but he looked away, his noble profile lit in the dying embers of the remaining caravans. His braid was loose, and I reached out to pat the blonde hair back in place as I’d done only hours before.
“Wulfric?” I put the weight of my life in that question.
I lifted his chin, sticky with blood. He was shaking. I was scared. My love hung in the balance, and then he opened his eyes.
They were fully black and lit from within by the hunger. “I cannot.” And with my tears hanging between us, he fled into the night, taking the monster inside him away.
Epilogue
Gran broke a bone in her wrist, which made me take a long look at exactly what kind of granddaughter I’d become, but she healed, and the town forgot that there was ever a circus once the last of the magical marks faded from their hands. Alex and Anna were wounded, but whole. They live in town now that I can’t find any legitimate reason to hate her, and she’s given up on the idea of Wulfric ever being a part of her or Emilia’s lives. It’s sad, but he is undead. There is little, if anything, left of the man that she seduced, and I like to think what little good of Wulfric is left resides in the tiny soul of his daughter.
The heart of winter is here. I cook, and come home. I cry a lot. Brendan keeps me company, and Alex stops by to lend a quiet presence. Gus is never far from me, even going so far as to sleep with a paw on my cheek like a benediction.
I’m thankful for all of them, but I miss Wulfric. I worry about him out there, alone, hungry. Conflicted.
He’s the love of my life, and the one thing that could take him after a thousand years has come between us like . . . like a saw-toothed mountain range made of fear and despair. Even with his dead heart, there is a flicker within him that I pray can be reached. How, I don’t know—but I’m going to try. I know he’s still in there, somewhere, because he glides through the night to put things in my mail. Last week, it was a slice of raw honeycomb wrapped in linen. I saw him at the edge of my property that night, wraithlike and ravaged with his secret war of desires.
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