by Clare Kauter
My eyes widened. Interesting. Even though he’d somehow corrupted one of the companions to work for him, the others wouldn’t even let him touch them. They were loyal to me.
Pierre clutched his chest with his uninjured hand and swallowed. It looked like he was having chest pains as well. He turned to his minion, who was staring at his master’s hand in shock. “What – I – I don’t understand,” spluttered the minion. “It was cold when I touched it, I swear.”
Pierre took a couple of deep breaths before pulling himself up to full height and addressing the group at large. “It must have reacted that way to me because of my immense power.”
The onlookers nodded as though that made sense.
“Nice save,” I commented.
Pierre snarled at me.
“What shall we do with the witch, sir?” asked a vampire-goblin to my right.
Pierre looked back at me and gave a slow smile. “Burn her.”
Chapter 24
Ten minutes later, the cold chill of winter was the last thing on my mind as I sweltered on a stake atop the bonfire. Luckily the fire had died down a little and it was taking the minions time to find more appropriate wood to get it raging again. They kept bringing green and wet wood, and the only things burning were my throat and eyes thanks to all the smoke.
It hadn’t taken the wolves too long to sniff out and capture Henry, who was now trapped inside the cage with Honey. Pierre had finally told us how to get someone out without his help, though it wasn’t particularly useful.
“A ghost could escape that cage,” he said, squatting down to talk to Henry, whose face remained expressionless. “Doesn’t really help you, though – unless you feel like killing yourself.” Then he started laughing like he’d made the funniest joke in the world. His minions gave him awkward pity laughs, but Pierre didn’t seem to realise they weren’t genuine.
Honey did her best to convince Pierre that he was being crazy, but he wasn’t to be swayed. I could see in his eyes that he still loved Honey deeply and was killing me to try and help her. It was kind of sweet, but it didn’t really fill me with joy seeing as I was about to be burnt alive and all. Still, it was romantic in a psycho kind of way. (Psychomantic, maybe? Pierre was a sweetcopath? I don’t know the technical term, but you get what I mean.)
As a last ditch effort, I tried to call Satan, but she must have still been in her meetings because she didn’t respond. Death clearly hadn’t checked his texts yet. I tried summoning Ed, but without any materials to focus me, I couldn’t get through to Hell to contact him. Pierre was blocking my efforts.
I was a bit put out by it all, to be honest. I’d thought I was supposed to be some big powerful bad guy – more powerful than a measly vampire at least. Yet here I was, tied to a stake and completely helpless. Without my magic necklace I was nothing.
I couldn’t even talk to Henry properly because I was hoisted up so high, like a flag on a pole. We certainly couldn’t collude to form an escape plan. Not that I had any idea what that would be. I was bound by Pierre’s magic and without my necklace on me, I was having trouble fighting against it. He’d been a strong magician before he fused himself with the talon, and now that he had it, he was more than a match for me. I’d had the Doomstone for so long that I’d forgotten how to unlock my powers without it. Actually, I’d never really learned how to unlock my powers without it. They usually just kind of burst forth when I got angry.
OK. Maybe that was an idea.
“Hey, Pierre!” I called. “Do you think you could keep telling me how dumb I am while I’m waiting to be burnt alive?” Maybe if he kept being a meanie it would activate my powers.
Pierre frowned. “Excuse me, what?”
“Roast me,” I said. “While you roast me.”
Even though he was a distance away, I heard Henry groan. “Really? A pun? Now?”
“Shut up, Henry. That was a great pun. I’m on fire.” Then I began to cackle.
“You’re an imbecile,” said Pierre.
“Beautiful,” I said. “More like that. Keep them coming.”
He gave me a look of exasperation. “What on earth is wrong with you?”
“This is gold, Brother Pierre,” I said. “Pure gold.”
“You realise you’re about to die, right?” Pierre said. “No one is coming to save you.”
I nodded. “Yes, I’m aware.”
He frowned. “Then why do you seem so chipper?”
“How should I seem?”
He threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know! Sad. Vanquished. You can’t be totally OK with it or it’s unsatisfying.”
“Sorry about that, buddy,” I replied. “That must be super frustrating.”
“It is!”
“So let me have it! Be as mean as you can!”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Oh, too many things to list,” I said. “But I bet you could come up with a couple, right?”
“I’m so utterly confused by this,” said Pierre.
I sighed loudly. This wasn’t working. I was going to have to annoy him into retaliating.
“Look, minions!” I called. “Your great leader is getting all stroppy because I’m not sad enough about being murdered! How pathetic.”
“You take that back!” said Pierre.
“I can’t believe you guys follow this moron. He couldn’t even pick up that necklace,” I said. “You guys could touch it, and yet your supposedly all-powerful leader started blubbering the second it made contact with his skin.”
“I did not!”
“He’s weak,” I said. “And scared. The only reason he locked Honey up is because he’s scared of her power. There’s nothing wrong with her. You can all see that. She can go out during the day! She’s stronger than him! One little ray of sunshine and your mighty leader turns to dust. Pathetic, that’s what he is.”
Pierre’s bottom lip began to wobble. “That’s – that’s –”
“Honey didn’t catch anything from my blood. If anything, it’s probably the other way around.” I turned to Honey. “Sorry.”
She nodded. “But surely you’ve been checked out?” said Honey. “I could have given you hepatitis or malaria or any number of diseases that vampires are common carriers of.”
Now that she’d said that, my neck began to itch in the exact spot she’d bitten. I really needed to make an appointment with a doctor. While I was looking in Honey’s direction, Henry caught my eye. He gave me a look and I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but then he looked over at Pierre and I was pretty sure he wanted me to continue talking to keep Pierre and the minions distracted.
Thank Satan. Henry had a better plan than ‘get angry and hope for the best.’ I had no idea what his plan was, but I was going to play my part with gusto.
“Daytime is better than night time!” I announced.
The entire congregation sucked in a shocked and scandalised gasp, giving me an ‘oh no you didn’t’ look.
“Sunlight is great,” I continued. “There’s a reason people say ‘you’re a ray of sunshine,’ and spoilers, it’s because the sun is the best. It’s warm and happy and superior to night time in every way.”
I knew if Satan heard me saying this she’d never speak to me again, but I could only hope she knew I was bluffing. She was forever extolling the virtues of eternal darkness.
“Take it back, crone!” cried an ork-vampire.
“I can’t!” I retorted. “Your leader’s Talon of Truth compels me!”
The flames below me had finally managed to latch onto the new wood and my feet were beginning to grow pretty hot. In fact, I was getting uncomfortably hot all the way up to my knees while the flames limped lazily towards me. It wasn’t a great fire by any means, but it would do the job. Whatever Henry was doing, he needed to do it quickly.
“Night time is beautiful!” called one of the werewolves.
“There are stars at night!” cried another vamp.
“Pfft, stars. They’re jus
t like useless little suns but without all the good things the sun has.” My insults weren’t even good, but I seemed to be hitting them where they hurt.
“I love night,” whined another baby vamp, less than convincingly.
“Sure you do,” I said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Henry flicker. Yes, flicker. He went from his solid monkey form to his human form, but for some reason his human form looked weird. Was the cage interfering with his powers? He flickered again, and this time I was sure about what I saw. Henry wasn’t shifting into his normal human self. He was becoming transparent. See-through.
He was shifting into a ghost.
Chapter 25
The others hadn’t noticed what was going on yet. My heart was racing. What the hell? Henry could turn into ghosts now? Since when? That was not in the normal shifter repertoire. Shifters changed into animals, not other magicals. Wait – a ghost! That meant he could escape from the cage! OK. I guess I knew what Henry’s plan was. I just needed to keep the others distracted while he put it into motion.
“The moon sucks!” I yelled.
Every vampire werewolf in the place shifted into doggy form and began to growl as one. It would have been a lot scarier if I wasn’t literally being burnt at the stake already. They started to bark and howl, their wolf brain taking over and making them lose their temper.
“Brothers and sisters!” called Pierre. “Please, remain calm! She is a creature of great evil, and she’s obviously trying to upset us. Do not succumb!”
But it was too late. The moon comment had tipped the wolves over the edge, and now the other baby vamps were freaking out about all the barking and frothing at the mouth the weres were doing. The other babies were getting scared by the rowdiness and their eyes darted around in unease. Pierre was trying to get the wolves under control, but they were too busy dogging at me about insulting their precious shiny thing in the sky.
As much as I wanted to see if Henry was making good use of the distraction, I didn’t dare look at him in case I tipped off the vampires about what was going on. Instead, I watched the disaster unfolding on the lawn below. The vamps were splitting off into factions – well, mostly just the wolves and then everyone else. The non-wolves were backing away slowly while the growling wolves bared their teeth at me and advanced towards the fire.
“What are you doing, you idiots?” I asked. “Are you going to climb up the fire and attack me? Because honestly, that seems like overkill. Ha, overkill. Get it? Because you’d be killing me more.”
No one laughed.
“Why don’t any of you have a sense of humour? How are you all so joyless?”
I tried to shift my feet a little, seeing as I was pretty sure that burning plastic smell was coming from the soles of my shoes. It wasn’t going to be long before the flames began to do permanent damage to me. Pierre, having abandoned his attempts to corral his troops, rounded on me. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just pointed out the obvious inferiority of night time. Maybe you should tell everyone to have a little nibble on me. Then they’d be able to see the sun again. Remember the sun, Pierre? Honey does. She loves it.”
Now Pierre was stalking towards me, baring his teeth just like the wolves. I wondered whether if I goaded them enough they’d walk right into the fire. Unlikely, but worth a try.
“Here, little doggies,” I called. I glanced at Pierre. “And the dog walker.”
When they reached the edge of the fire, they all paused for a moment, looking up at me. I honestly thought Pierre was about to lunge at me. Apparently so did Honey, because she chose that moment to tackle Pierre out of the way.
And then all hell broke loose.
Henry, now in hawk form, flew around the camp swooping and clawing all the vamps assembled, who were super freaked out about being attacked by a giant bird. Honey wrestled with Pierre, attempting to subdue him. The wolves and other creatures who weren’t under attack from Henry tried to pull Honey off Pierre while Pierre screamed at them not to hurt her.
I didn’t know what Honey’s game plan was, but I didn’t really care. The bottoms of my jeans were beginning to get singed from the licks of flames and I was fairly sure the skin at the tops of my boots was blistering from the heat. It was starting to get pretty painful.
“Henry!” I screamed. “A little help?”
Henry changed course at the sound of my voice, flying in my direction. I had no idea how he planned to get me out of my bonds (or, come to think of it, how he’d managed to get Honey out of the cage) – I just hoped he had something.
As it turned out, he did. He swooped to the ground, picking an object up out of the grass with his feet as he flew towards me. The item glinted in the moonlight. Of course! The necklace! Henry flew over me, dropping the necklace over my head as he passed. The chain jangled as it landed around my neck and my powers decided to kick in again. Apparently my life was sufficiently in danger for the Doomstone and its buddies to help me out now.
“Heel!” I boomed as the power flowed through me. The werewolves all stopped growling and trying to attack Honey immediately and sat back on their haunches. I looked at the minions in humanoid form. “You! Put this fire out and get me down!”
The minions left Honey alone immediately. Two ran into the cabin and returned with fire extinguishers while a goblin-vamp conjured up a water spell. “Spray my boots first!” I commanded the goblin. She did as she was told and I whimpered in relief and pain as the cold hit my blistering skin. “OK, you can get back to the fire now.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Pierre cried, still wrestling with Honey. He flipped her onto her back and straddled her, trying to hold her down. “Don’t you see what she’s doing? You must fight her influence! She’s doing the same thing to you as she’s done to Honey!”
“Apparently they agree that the sun is superior to the moon,” I said as the last of the fire went out.
“Well, they can agree all they want,” said Pierre, grunting as Honey gained the upper hand in their wrestling match. “I don’t need them. You’re still bound by my magic, and you – can’t – escape.”
Henry landed and shifted from eagle form into his human self. “Like I couldn’t escape?” he said.
Pierre turned red and tried to lunge for Henry, but Honey had a good grip on him and he just sort of stretched and then flopped back. He banged his head on the ground.
“Oh!” said Honey, pausing their wrestling match. “Are you OK, snookums?”
“Yes, my love,” said Pierre, smiling at her. “I’m always fine when you hold me close.”
Honey giggled, even as she pinned him down to stop him murdering me. As touching as the scene was, I kind of ruined the moment by channelling the stone’s energy into breaking apart my magical bonds and dropping into the pile of ash below me. I’d like to say I looked very cool, but the truth is I kind of slipped and choked on the smoke and ended up on my arse in a puddle of dirty water. Still, the way Pierre was looking at me you’d think I’d just done the most miraculous thing in the world.
“Guess your magic isn’t that strong after all,” Henry said to Pierre as I drew up alongside him. We both crossed our arms and struck a pose like we were in a cool movie poster, which was definitely not something we’d practised before so that we’d get it just right when we vanquished a foe. Or, more often, arrested a shoplifter. Whatever. We had a cool cop pose and you can’t take that away from us.
“What…” Pierre said, seeming to forget to fight against Honey now. There wasn’t much point, anyway – all his minions were under my command and he was surrounded. He’d created a monster. Well, several. And he had no escape route. (He could do the whole ‘disappear in a cloud of smoke’ thing, but that would be kind of lame after everything that had happened tonight. Besides, I had a feeling the Doomstone would react badly to that.)
“Wondering how I got out?” asked Henry. Pierre simply nodded, confusion all over his face. Henry smiled and shifted int
o a ghost. “Like you said,” he explained as he grew transparent, “a ghost can get out of that cage.”
“And he pulled me through the bars with him,” Honey added.
I turned to Henry. “Like E–” I caught myself in time. Didn’t want to admit anything in front of witnesses, just in case. “Like our informant?”
Henry nodded. Interesting. Did that mean Henry could get me in and out of Ed’s house now? Brilliant! I wouldn’t have to interact with my least favourite person (alive or dead) quite so much in the future.
Pierre looked defeated. “So,” he said, “what happens now?”
The others also gave me questioning looks.
“Let him stand,” I told Honey. She stood and helped Pierre to his feet. I walked towards him, my necklace growing warmer with each step. His companion was calling to me. The Talon of Truth – whatever that was – belonged to me. I would have it back. It was mine. I needed it.
I thrust my hand forward and ripped Pierre’s heart from his chest.
Chapter 26
Pierre’s heart beat slowly in my hand as his lukewarm blood dripped down my arm. It was going up my sleeve, which ordinarily would have been annoying, but right now I was focused on the heart. I was vaguely aware of Pierre falling to his knees and Honey collapsing beside him in hysterics. The other vampires were slightly freaked out by this turn of events too, but I didn’t care. I was too busy to worry about them.
Pierre would die without his heart; I knew that for sure. Even a vampire couldn’t survive without a vital organ for too long. I also knew that I didn’t care – especially now that I had his companion item in my hand. Not the heart. There was a scar on the side of it where he’d inserted the companion. Interesting. Wondering how he’d done it, I leaned in to get a closer look.