I will not go out like some whimpering bitch.
She took a labored breath and straightened her back. She would take whatever was coming to her with dignity.
The chanting continued to accelerate in speed and volume, and finally, Catalina made her move. The knife slid across Dez’s abdomen, slow and deliberate.
In an instant, she couldn’t get air, her breath caught in her throat. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced before, heavy and intense. No matter how hard she gasped, there was no relief. She closed her eyes against the panic spiking within her, refusing to give in to the urge to look up at Catalina. She wouldn’t risk even the slightest chance that Catalina would catch her with fear in her eyes. Pride or not, she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Tears poured over her cheeks as regrets and missed moments from the last four centuries played through her mind. One final thought ran through her head before the unconsciousness consumed her.
Michael, I love you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Michael
“We’re almost there,” Michael said, tilting his head in an attempt to see where Kade was. He caught sight of the vampire, just a few feet below him to his left. He returned his attention to the climb. His fingers finally caught hold of the lip of the small ledge. The crevice in the rock wall was virtually invisible from the canyon floor. Now, pulling the weight of his body up into it, he realized how big the entrance to the cave really was. Once he was securely in place, he grabbed ahold of a piece of rock jutting out of the stone to the side of the rough doorway, and reached his hand out to help his friend onto the ledge beside him.
“I don’t know how many of them we’ll be facing once we’re inside, but I want every last one of them dead.” He turned to make his way into the cave, but stopped for a second, and turned back to his friend. “Catalina, the one with silver hair and eyes, is mine.”
“You got it.”
The two vampires crept into the cave entrance, careful to make as little noise as possible. The element of surprise was going to be their only saving grace in this situation. He could only hope they had made it in time.
They continued down a long corridor. The further in they went, the wider the makeshift hallway became. Just ahead, Michael could see the walls come back together, finally meeting at a small opening similar to the ones which served as the cave’s entrance. The closer they got, they started to hear voices, and just before they reached the opening, Michael could make out chanting. Shit!
He tapped Kade on the shoulder and made a motion with his hands to indicate they were going to head in. He counted off with his fingers.
One.
Two.
Three.
With preternatural speed, they both ran in, and the scene stunned Michael for a moment, bringing him to stop short. There were three witches, including Catalina, standing in a half circle, hands joined, their feet soaked in a pool of blood.
Dez.
Rage boiled inside him, and he and Kade came up behind the witches, each putting a bullet in the back of a witch’s head, leaving only Catalina. In one smooth motion, Michael grabbed her arms, yanking them behind her, and sunk his fangs into her neck. With five long pulls, her hot blood poured down his throat, and he could feel the witch’s power flowing into him. As the blood drained from her body and she started to go limp, hundreds of years of memories flashed through his mind. Not his own, but hers. Memories and knowledge. He knew everything she knew. Histories. Spells. Her personal thoughts and feelings. More importantly, he knew exactly why she was here and why she was killing Dez.
He let her go, tossed her aside, and fired a shot into her head before she even hit the ground. Dez dangled in front of him, limp and lifeless, surrounded by the celestial glow. Her head hung down in front of her, her clothes saturated in blood from her stomach down to the floor. He grabbed a savage-looking blade from the floor. From Catalina’s memories, he knew this was the blade which had inflicted Dez’s gruesome injury.
Without a second thought, he raked the blade across his wrist and put the wound to Dez's mouth. He pumped his fist a few times, forcing the blood to flow. He had no idea if it would work on Dez with her demon heritage, but vampire blood had the ability to heal humans, and it was worth a shot. Dez showed no immediate response and panic tore through him.
He ripped the chains out of the wall and caught her as she slumped to ground. Laying her flat on the floor, he pulled her shirt up exposing the gash. He reopened the now-healed wound on his wrist and put it to her stomach. Time slowed to a standstill as he waited for a sign of life. He had almost forgotten Kade was with him until the vampire placed a sympathetic hand on his shoulder.
"Anything?" he asked, his voice a gruff whisper.
"I can hear a very faint heartbeat, but it's steadily slowing."
"Michael," Kade said softly, "I'm so sorry."
He stepped back affording Michael some space to deal with what was happening in peace. Michael rested his hand on hers, his finger resting on the inside of her wrist, feeling her fading pulse. He fished through all of Catalina’s memories desperate for a way to stop the inevitable. The abundance of knowledge he acquired from her didn’t exactly come with a search bar to narrow down the results, and no matter how hard he tried to sift through it all, his mind felt numb. His didn’t have the ability to focus on anything but her. He knew regardless of what happened, he refused to let go of her hand and risk her dying alone in some desert cave.
A faint sound broke Michael out of his reverie.
Tink.
He stared down as Dez’s face. Her eyes were closed, and her usual alabaster skin was much paler than normal.
Tink.
“Michael.” Kade’s voice was quiet and broke slightly.
Tink.
Michael had seen a lot of death in four-plus centuries of life. Dez was not someone he was at all prepared to say goodbye to.
Tink.
“Michael,” Kade interrupted again, “I think someone is trying to get your attention.”
Tink.
Michael finally turned his attention to the source of the faint noise. On a rough wooden table sat a tiny glass jar. Michael instantly recognized it from Catalina’s memories as the jar she harvested the final star’s energy in. The bottom edge of the jar was glowing, just barely, an iridescent blue. He stared blankly at the bottle for a moment when a thought occurred to him. He closed his eyes and absently waved his hand through the air and whispered a singular word.
“Anhelo.” Live. Standing in front of the table where there had previously been nothing but thin air were Lucas and Natalia.
“Oh my god,” Kade whispered, staring wide-eyed at the pair.
“You can see us?” Natalia asked.
“As sure as I’m standing here,” he replied.
“Michael,” she asked, “what did you do?”
“I made you live,” he mumbled, his eyes returned to Dez’s motionless face, rubbing his thumb back and forth on Dez’s hand. A single tear rolled down his face, and a lump formed in his throat. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn she was just sleeping. But he did know better. She was dying and there was nothing he could do about it.
“How is that possible?” Lucas asked,
“You were trying to get my attention,” he asked. Michael really didn’t feel like explaining.
“Yes,” Natalia said, a blend of fear and awe in her voice. She picked up the jar, crossed the small space, and held the glass container up in front of him. “This blue glow is celestial energy stolen from the stars.” She kneeled down and tipped the bottle, attempting to pour the minute contents on Dez’s wound.
“It won’t work,” Michael said, staring at Dez’s beautiful face, not daring to blink. “There isn’t enough in there. To heal her, we would need at least that entire bottle filled, possibly more.”
“How can you be sure?” Lucas asked.
“Because everything that bitch knew is now rattling around in my brain.”
“What about what you did to bring them back?” Kade asked. “Can you use it to bring her back?” Michael closed his eyes, releasing a few more tears. He took a few calming breaths in an attempt to steady his voice before speaking.
“It only works on the dead,” he finally managed to get out, “and the only way I can bring her back is if she crosses into the ether.”
“And she’s part demon,” Lucas whispered.
A thick silence settled over the group, heavy, as they all realized the implications of the simple statement. Demons don’t cross into the ether. Demons go to hell.
“There has to be something we can do.” Natalia’s words sounded as desperate as Michael felt.
“We can wait.”
None of them said another word. Natalia crouched down and took Dez’s other hand. Kade appeared at Michael’s side and put a hand on his shoulder before taking a seat on the stone floor beside him. Lucas was the last to join, leaning over and kissing the top of his brother’s head before taking a seat next to Natalia. The four of them kept vigil. They waited.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dez
There was a hum in Dez’s ears and complete blackness all around her. When she had first arrived, she thought it was the ether, but she had no control over this space the way she did the ether. She had called out for Lucas and Natalia several times with absolutely no answer. She was alone. Completely and utterly alone. After her reunion with Vegas, she had vowed she would never be alone again. When she knew her death was coming, she took comfort in the knowledge that she would at least have company in the afterlife. It appeared she had been very wrong.
She tried calling out to them again, hoping with everything she had they would answer back. Once again, she was greeted with silence instead of the friendly faces of loved ones.
“So, this is going to be it?” she asked the emptiness. Her voice didn’t travel or echo back. It just died in the void surrounding her.
“This sucks,” she said matter-of-factly. There was no point in trying to walk anywhere. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t the ether. For all she knew, it went on like this for infinity.
Maybe I was right. Maybe I was turning into one of them. After all, demons don’t go to the ether. They go somewhere else. Maybe this is my ‘somewhere else.’
The reality of what Dez was possibly facing was like a gunshot to the chest, taking her breath away. She collapsed into a sitting position and stared, unable to wrap her mind around the prospect of spending an eternity in this place.
“Oh god,” she gasped, “I’m going to go insane here. I am going to end up one of those psychotic ghosts who spends eternity haunting dirty old houses and old folks’ homes.”
“Don’t wallow in self-pity. It’s not an attractive quality.” Dez’s head snapped up and standing before her was Catalina. The smirk on the witch’s face left a twinkle in her eyes.
“So I did go to Hell.”
“Now, now,” Catalina chided, “there is no reason to be insulting.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dez asked. “I don’t know if you noticed but I’m dead because of you.”
“Yes, well, if it’s any consolation, we both ended up dead, and it was all for naught. Your parasite cut the spell off before we could finish.”
“Vegas,” Dez whispered.
“Yes, yes, your precious Vegas,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He and another one of his kind murdered us before we could complete the spell. Now, we are all dead and there is no one left to send the demons back to where they belong. Happy now?”
Dez felt horrible. The whole situation is what she had feared. I’m dead, and Vegas is left to clean up the mess alone. She lowered her head into her hands. She had faith that he would be able to get rid of them all. It was just going to take him some time. Far longer than if she was at his side. She took some comfort in the fact that he would have Kade and his coven to help out, but it did little to make her feel better about sitting here, useless. And dead.
She picked her head back up and eyed Catalina.
“I guess you were wrong about me.”
“How is that?”
“I’m here. Not in Hell with the rest of my kind.” The sarcasm dripped from Dez’s words.
“There’s still time,” Catalina replied. “The ether isn’t the afterlife exactly. It’s more like a pit stop. The place you go before you get where you’re going to end up. Think of it as a supernatural holding cell, and I was the only being left alive with the knowledge to pull someone back before they moved on. Mark my words, you will still end up in Hell where you belong.” With that, she faded and vanished.
Dez was left all alone once again. She hoped whatever happened would be quick. She could see how any long length of time spent in this place could drive someone insane, and she found herself thinking about Natalia and Lucas and how having each other was probably the only thing that saved them from losing their minds.
“Lucas!” she called out.
“Natalia?”
She waited, silently wishing one of them would appear and save her from the loneliness quickly setting in. Where the hell are they?
“Anyone?”
No one responded. No one appeared. She was alone.
Then something else happened. There was no noise, no forewarning. Suddenly Dez was being pulled harshly toward something she couldn't see. There was nothing to grab onto and no one to hear her blood-curdling screams as she hurled through the space to an unknown destination.
EPILOGUE
Dez
Dez heard mumbling as she regained consciousness. There were a few different people speaking, but they were far enough away that she couldn’t tell who it was.
“Lucas?” she croaked out.
“Guys!” The raised voice sent a sharp pain through Dez’s head. “She’s waking up!” There was a scurry of several sets of footsteps, then Dez felt a cool hand on her face.
“Sweetie, open your eyes.”
The voice sounded like Vegas, but Vegas didn’t use words like sweetie. He never used words like sweetie. She tried to open her eyes, but the light streaming in on her face burned as soon as she cracked her eyelids even the slightest bit.
“Harley, can you get the blinds?”
“Sure,” Harley responded quietly.
A few footsteps, then the light pouring over Dez was gone. She attempted to open her eyes again, this time with better success. Everything around her was blurred slightly. When her vision cleared, she looked around and saw that she was laying on the bed in the spare room of Charlie’s house. She was surrounded by him and his wife, Lucas and Natalia, and closest to her was Vegas.
“How are you all here?” she asked as tears started to well in her eyes.
“We’re fine, Dez,” Vegas soothed, “and so are you?”
“I was in the ether being pulled toward Hell. Catalina was there and said you stopped the spell, but not before she killed me. How am I here?”
“Everything she told you was true,” he replied. “You were almost dead when Kade and I found you. We—" His voice cut off and he tipped his head down, pausing before continuing. “We couldn’t save you. Luckily, I took a shot and learned something pretty interesting. When a vampire bites a witch who has been around for several-hundred years, the vampire’s head gets filled with all sorts of fun stuff. Without really thinking about it, I pulled Lucas and Natalia back from the ether. I wasn’t even really sure how I did it at first, but as soon as your heart stopped beating, I did the same thing with you. With them, it was instant, they were just there. With you, we thought something had gone wrong. This is the first time you’ve regained consciousness in almost four days.”
“I’ve been out for four days?” The time she had spent in the ether had felt like fifteen minutes, tops. Not four days.
“Yep,” Lucas replied. “You had a heart beat and you were breathing fine, but you were completely unresponsive.”
“Until now,” Vegas added.
> “But four days?”
“Remember, time moves differently in the ether,” Natalia reminded her.
“Can I get you anything?” Harley asked.
“A glass of water would be awesome.” Harley nodded and left the room. She came back in with a tall glass of ice water and Dez drank down almost the entire thing before returning her attention to Vegas. He was staring at her intently.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Guys, can we have a minute?” he asked their friends. Lucas patted him on the shoulder and they all left the room. He turned back to Dez. “I thought I had lost you forever, Dez. I don’t know what I would have done if you were gone.”
“That explains the ‘sweetie,’” she mumbled.
“What?” he asked, a confused look on his face.
“Nothing. Never mind,” she said shaking her head. “I’m here now, that’s what matters.” Vegas smiled sweetly, and leaned forward, kissing her gently on the lips.
“You ready to try to get up?”
“I probably should but, honestly, I feel like I could sleep for days.”
“We’ve got all the time in the world,” he replied.
“They’re not dead, you know. The demons. They’re all still out there.”
“I know,” he said, looking down at his hands holding onto one of hers, “or, at least, I figured. It’s alright. We’ll get them. It’ll take some time, but we will get them.” She nodded in agreement and held up her hand.
“I guess we’re just going to have to accept that, at least for a while, hunting them down is just going to have to be part of our daily life.”
Dez thought back on how exhausting the last few months had been and couldn’t imagine that lifestyle becoming their day-to-day. In her time alone, she had learned to enjoy the hunt but, given the choice, she’d prefer an eternity of nights spent curled up with Vegas on his couch.
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