Chase raised his eyes to me. “Everything okay?”
I nodded somberly and sat on the other side of Lucy. “I take it you heard?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Sorry Xoe.”
I shrugged and turned to Chase. “Still up for running through my lesson with me?”
Chase hesitated. “So we are staying then, right? We're going to see this pack thing through?”
Lucy perked up at that before I could answer. “But Xoe,” she began
I patted my hands at the air in a calming gesture. “There will be no more discussion Lucy, we're staying. Which reminds me, we need to get a message to Abel.”
“After the lesson,” Chase interrupted. “I don't need another lecture.”
I glared at him. I'm not a big fan of my lessons. They're not bad, just boring.
“Fine,” I replied crankily, eliciting a relieved smile from Chase.
Lucy sat awkwardly between us for a moment, then asked, “Can I watch?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
Chase and I moved to sit cross-legged on the floor, facing each other with our knees almost touching. It was usually me and my dad sitting this way while Chase sat off to the side.
It didn’t surprise me when he started running through the lesson exactly as my dad did . . . he’d sat in on enough of them.
“Hold out your hands,” Chase instructed.
I held both my hands out, palms up. Chase placed his hand palm down on my right hand. His hand was dry and slightly cooler than mine. He nodded at me, signaling that I should make a flame in my free hand. Having someone touch one hand helped me concentrate on making a singular flame in my other hand, don’t ask me why. I guess instinctively I tried not to burn them, even though Chase wouldn't get burned anyhow. I could still light his clothes on fire though.
I closed my eyes and focused. I could sense Lucy sitting quietly on the bed. I focused on my free palm. I felt the surge of energy I always feel before I make a flame. I kept my eyes closed for a minute, focusing on sustaining it.
“Um Xoe . . . ” Chase began.
Sensing the worry in his voice, I opened my eyes. I had made a flame like I was supposed to, but it was . . . huge. It was also a deep crimson color, as opposed to my usually natural orange flames. I stared at the flame in shock. It was incredibly freaky . . . yet beautiful. I'd never seen fire that color.
I took my free hand away from Chase. The stone on my ring was swirling with seemingly violent, unnatural lights. “You see it this time?” I asked Chase, holding my ring out for him to see.
“Uh huh,” he observed nervously.
I for some reason wasn’t nervous. I felt calm, if slightly awe-struck. I closed my hand that held the fire and it disappeared. There was no smoke in its wake like there usually was.
Lucy came to kneel beside me. “I take it that’s not what usually happens?”
Suddenly a crash came from next door. We all instinctively bolted toward the other room. Lucy was the first to make it there, throwing the door open wide before rushing inside.
The vampires were back, and they’d brought friends. Maggie had a new dress, pastel pink with little flowers on it . . . ick.
“There you are,” she observed upon seeing me.
Jason was being held back by her cronies that we’d met earlier, while an elderly woman with pure gray hair and another woman that looked eerily like Maggie stood watch. The Maggie doppelganger was in the exact same dress as Maggie, only in baby blue. Double ick.
“Maggie no!” Jason shouted and kicked out at his captors as she rushed me.
Lucy side-tackled her before she could reach me. Maggie threw Lucy against the wall like she weighed nothing. Maggie pinned Lucy with her hand on her throat. I watched in shock as Lucy started sputtering for breath, her hands clawing at Maggie's around her neck.
In unison, Chase and I grabbed Maggie and ripped her off of Lucy. Before I could see if Lucy was breathing Maggie turned on me and threw me to the ground, face contorted with rage. She looked nothing like the cute, petite woman I had seen earlier. She got a grip on my throat much like she had with Lucy, except she was straddling me to help pin me down.
Chase was there, about to pull her off of me, until he disappeared in a blur of motion with the Maggie look-alike on top of him.
My vision was going gray. I couldn’t remember how to fight back. I felt something with my left hand as I flailed my arms feebly. I wrapped my fingers around the rooms’ big heavy bible. I didn’t know who had taken it out of the drawer but I was grateful. With a quick muddled thought that this was strangely ironic in some way, I swung the bible up to make a sickening crunch against Maggie’s nose.
She fell back, losing her grip on my throat and Jason was suddenly there. He grabbed Maggie by her torso and threw her into the wall like she weighed nothing. The wall shook with her impact.
My senses started to come back to show me chaos all around me. The wolves in the other rooms had to hear it, but no one came running to our rescue. Maggie came rushing back towards me, blood dripping steadily from her nose. I scrambled backwards to get out of her reach, but she was on me in seconds. She was faster than Jason, faster than anything I was yet to deal with.
I shoved my palm into her nose, making the blood flow more heavily, as she grabbed at my waist and dragged me under her. She managed to pin my wrists, hard enough that it felt like my bones might break. Her grip felt like an iron vice. She put her face right above mine and smiled.
The blood from her nose dripped near my mouth and into my nose. I sputtered as I kicked my legs to try and buck her off, but it wasn't working. I could hear struggles all around me, but everyone else was out of my line of vision. I tried to concentrate and form the same fire I had formed only moments before, but nothing was happening. My powers work with anger, not fear.
There was a giant thud at the door, and Maggie paused to look in that direction. A moment of silence and another thud sounded. One more thud and the door splintered and swung violently inward to slam against the wall. Abel stood framed in the doorway for a moment, then he was just a blur of motion running towards Maggie.
Abel full on jump tackled her and they flew into Jason and the elderly woman, who had obviously been struggling with each other.
Maggie slipped Abel's grip and regained her footing to face him, but then something drew her attention to the other end of the room. With a blood-curdling scream she rushed towards Chase, who was crouched beside an unmoving Maggie doppelganger.
I didn't have time to wonder at the power suddenly flowing through me. Rather than forming fire in my palm, I closed my hands and focused on Maggie. Like magic, Maggie was on fire for the second time today. Except now I wasn’t just being pissy. She was going after Chase with some serious intent. She'd just tried to strangle me. The calm realization came over me that I wanted her dead.
People always seem to think that they could never wish death on another person, but let those people watch the lives of their loved ones at risk. Let them come to the horrifying realization that someone they care about is about to die right there in front of them. Let them feel that perfect cool rage at those realizations, then ask them again if they're capable of wishing someone dead.
The acrid smell of burning flesh filled the room, then diminished as Maggie leapt right through the window, already shattered from the vampires' entrance. She wouldn't die. She was a vampire, a super old one. She'd heal surface burns in a matter of hours. Too bad.
I turned around just as Abel snapped the elderly woman's neck. I shuddered and wished I hadn't turned around so soon. Abel gave me a look of what seemed like respect. I was getting that look a lot lately. Apparently supernatural beasties only respected you when you punched them or lit them on fire, though I highly doubt Maggie's emotions at the moment ran anything near respect.
Maggie's other two cronies had bolted. Some friends they were. I wasn't sure when they had left, probably when they realized that we were putting up more of a fight
then they thought us capable of.
Lucy was blinking and looked confused, like she had just regained consciousness. Despite the bruises forming on her throat she seemed okay. Jason was mostly unharmed, fancy that. Either vampires didn't like to hurt their own, or Maggie still had a soft spot for Jason after all of these years and had ordered him unharmed. I was betting on the second.
I went to crouch by Chase, who was still crouched by Maggie number two. His shoulder was bleeding. It looked like the woman had bitten him and torn a chunk of flesh away. His shirt was torn and very, very bloody. Blood was dripping down to stain the carpet.
I reached out as if to touch the wound, but let my hand fall before I could complete the action. Chase met my eyes, pain showing clearly on his face. “It’s fine,” he said shakily.
With wonderfully numbing shock coming over me, I looked down to who I had to guess was Maggie’s twin sister. Well she had been her sister. Crap, sisters made into vampires? She had two perfect little puncture marks on the side of her neck. Dark yellow and green lines flowed under her skin, radiating from the bite and mottling the color of her otherwise pristine neck.
I turned back to Chase and he smiled feebly. I smiled back, don’t ask me why. Chase is part Naga. He’s poisonous. I’d forgotten that little tidbit. I don’t think I’ll forget again.
“Can you stand?” I asked him.
He started to nod, but then stopped with a wince of pain. He was a demon, he’d heal, but it still hurt.
I grabbed his hand and helped him stand. Jason and Lucy were both staring at us. Jason had a tortured look on his face, blaming himself for everything, as he often did.
Lucy looked pale despite her olive skin. She turned to go to the door, mumbling something about getting away from this mess, but I stopped her with a hand on her arm. I highly doubted that Maggie was waiting outside, but Lucy had been stolen from us once before, I wasn't about to risk it happening again.
Lucy stared at my hand like it was something foreign, and I withdrew it slowly. I looked down at my hand wondering if there was something wrong with it.
“How are you calm right now?” she asked.
I shrugged. Surprisingly I did feel calm. You could only suffer through so much action before you started to compartmentalize. I found myself wondering if it would all just suddenly catch up with me eventually.
Lucy shook her head. “The look on your face Xoe, you wanted to kill her. He,” she pointed at Chase, “killed that woman. She's on the floor dead right now. Does it not register with you that there are bodies on the floor?”
I guess Lucy had been conscious for more of the fight than I'd thought.
“Lucy,” Jason began, trying to stop the coming argument.
I shook my head and held up a hand for him to stop. “She tried to kill you. She would have hurt Chase.”
Lucy squinted like she didn't understand, then shouted, “No one needed to die!”
“We would have died!” I shouted back, frustrated. “What part of that do you not get, Lucy?”
Jason finally cut in at that point. He came to stand in between me and Lucy. Chase just stayed leaning against the wall, bleeding and unsure of what to do.
I looked up into Jason's pain filled face. He didn't try to blame me for being ready to kill Maggie, or for the death of her sister. He just stood there looking miserable.
I tried to smile at Jason reassuringly, and he managed to force his mouth into a small smile back. Had he cared for Maggie's twin? He'd been with Maggie for years, so he obviously knew her. It was all a bit too much for me to deal with at the moment.
I stepped around Jason and Lucy, and led Chase toward the bathroom to clean his wound. I spared a glance at Abel. The elderly woman was crumpled at his feet, but he didn't seem to care. I shook my head and kept walking.
I left the door open behind us and made Chase sit down against the edge of the sink. Without a word, I grabbed the bloody fabric of his shirt and finished the tear that had been started there. I ripped the shirt completely off of his arm so I could lift it over the rest of his body with him only having to move his good shoulder.
At a loss as to what to do with the bloody fabric, I settled for stuffing it into the bathroom’s small trashcan. Chase watched every move I made, as if he’d memorize the entire sequence.
Suddenly uncomfortable, I turned towards the sink to wet a washcloth. Never having cleaned a wound before, I decided to start small with the bloody skin around the missing flesh. He’d already almost stopped bleeding, so I just had to clean up the blood that hadn’t been absorbed by his shirt and jeans. I patted the skin around the wound and glanced down at the jeans again. The jeans could stay bloody, no way those were coming off while I was around.
“That's not your blood on your face, is it?” Chase asked.
Crap, Maggie's blood was still on my face. I quickly grabbed another towel and started scrubbing at my face in the mirror.
“It's not my blood,” I answered. A sudden, horrible thought dawned on me. “I can't get anything from vampire blood, right? Like, nothing bad can happen?”
Chase gave me a weird smile. “Well, as far as I know, vampires don't carry blood-borne diseases. You probably couldn't get one even if they did, since your blood is far different from a human's. Also, demons can't become vampires, even if just getting some vampire blood in your nose could cause someone to become a vampire. I think you'll be fine.”
I started to feel a little silly for asking, but hey, I hadn't known any of that stuff, so now I did.
Chase was still staring at me. I put down the bloody towel and looked at his wound again. “I’ll get the first aid kit,” I announced nervously.
I never used to carry a first aid kit around with me, but somehow I knew we’d need it at some point . . . imagine that.
When I entered the bedroom, Jason was sitting on the edge of our bed with his face in his hands. Lucy was sitting beside him silently, refusing to look at me. Abel was on his cell phone, murmuring to someone quietly.
Jason looked up when he realized I’d entered the room. “Xoe, I’m so sorry-” he began.
I smiled weakly. “Later, okay?”
He nodded then looked down at the elderly woman's body still crumpled where Abel had left her. I was leaving that one to someone else. I was not in the business of hiding bodies. Maybe Abel would do it. He'd done if for us before.
I realized I still had some of Chase’s blood on my hands. My clothes had soaked up some too from helping him into the bathroom. I wiped my hands on my jeans, then proceeded to shuffle through my suitcase. I found the first aid kit at the bottom and stood to go back into the bathroom.
“Is Chase okay?” Jason questioned weakly.
I nodded. “He’s fine. We’ll all be fine.”
I went back into the bathroom without another word.
Chase was standing, examining his wound in the mirror. He didn't look pale, and seemed cognizant enough, so I assumed he hadn't lost a dangerous amount of blood. Demons may be tough, but they can still die from blood loss, just like anyone else.
I pushed him gently to sit back down. “Stop messing with it,” I lectured.
Chase smiled, but then his smile quickly faded as I soaked a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol. “No way!” he exclaimed.
I put my free hand on his good shoulder and met his eyes. “Now now,” I soothed. “Be a good boy and you’ll get a lollipop afterward.”
“It’ll heal fine,” he argued.
Not listening I began to dab the cotton ball on his bite. She’d really done a number on him. Even with his increased healing abilities it would take a while. There was just too much flesh missing.
Chase let out his breath at the initial sting, but didn’t complain any further. Only when I really started focusing on the wound, did I realize that yes, I was staring into a big gaping hole in someone's shoulder. I started to feel dizzy.
Before I could stop myself I swayed to the side. Chase reacted before thinking of his
pain and raised both his arms to catch me around the waist. He pulled his arms back down when the pain hit and I went down.
I ended partially leaning against Chase’s chest as I tried not to hurt him, while at the same time I tried in vain to get to my feet. Some blood had pooled on the floor, preventing me from getting enough traction to stand. I kept slipping back down and landing on Chase.
Someone cleared their throat from the doorway behind me. I braced myself and turned. Devin had his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. Great, just great. I hadn't heard him come in the room. Jason had propped the nearly shattered door back in place while I was cleaning Chase's wounds, so I would have heard him moving it to come in.
Chase finally got his good arm around my waist and helped me stand with him.
Devin grinned, no longer trying to hide it. “Did somebody call room service? I’m told we have a body or two.”
Abel must have called him, and I was grateful for it. I really didn't want to see the body again.
I squinted at Devin suspiciously. “How did you get in?”
“Abel let me in through the adjoining room,” he explained, still trying to hide his laughter. “I thought you might be hesitant to open the door to this room. Now about the bodies . . . ”
I pointed out into the main room. He knew that was were the bodies were, he just wanted to give me grief. After Devin walked away, I realized that Chase’s arm was still around my waist. He squeezed me a little closer and I felt blood soak into the bottom of my shirt. I might have been mad if it wasn't already ruined anyway.
I stepped away. “I need a shower.”
“Thanks for doctoring me,” he replied.
“Any time,” I mumbled.
He nodded, a small smile playing across his face.
I was just so damn amusing today.
Chapter Fifteen
I left the bathroom to find Devin and Jason wrapping the elderly woman's body in a rug. That’s right, they were seriously wrapping her up in a rug. A second rug had been procured and Maggie's sister was already wrapped up tight. Jason and Abel lifted the ends of the now rolled up rug with only a little visible effort and walked it into the girls' room.
The Xoe Meyers Trilogy (Xoe Meyers Young Adult Fantasy/Horror Series) Page 38