by Laura Marie
“What?”
“I came to you after I knew that something was going to go down.”
I shook my head, confused. “What do you mean?”
He looked away from me as if he felt embarrassed.
“I asked some of my pack friends to keep an eye out for vampire movement around town. They just love calling them out. And one of them, her name is River, picked up on some serious vampire magic. But it’s not in their territory. And I need you to come with me so we can figure out what’s going on.”
“Why didn’t you just say that when you came to my house?” I asked.
Reece pulled up his shoulders. “When you didn’t come to school, I was scared that you’d give up or something. And Chloe means too much to me. I really need your help.”
“You have said so,” I said. “She means everything to me, too.”
Reece pulled up his shoulders again, as if he had no idea what to say.
“Let’s just say the pack isn’t always like that.”
That didn’t sound right to me, but I wasn’t going to debate that. We had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that the wolves had picked up on vampire magic and that something big was going to happen.
“Are we talking big like murder big?” I asked.
Reece nodded. “I think so. If we can stop her before she strikes again, maybe we can still save her. River said there are a bunch of hikers headed out over Colemeda Bluff. They’re an easy target for a rogue vampire, and word has it they’re being watched.”
“Where’s Colemeda Bluff?” I asked.
Reece turned around and pointed to the craggy rocks that rose up behind Safety Beach, a low range of what I guess could have been classified as mountains. They weren’t very high, but they might qualify.
“The Bluff is that part over there, with the sharp point and sheer drop to the ocean.”
I nodded. “Okay, so when do we go?”
“Right now,” Reece said and dangled the keys to his truck in front of me.
We drove through forests that I didn’t know—wolf territory, Reece told me. The Colemeda Mountains rose in front of us, suddenly much more imposing than they looked from Safety Beach itself. Maybe it was because of the witches’ cloaks.
“I can’t believe we’re this close to actual mountains,” I said.
Reece only pulled up his shoulders and hummed along off-tune to the radio that kept on losing signal.
I realized that the interference was because of the magic in the air. The further we drove, the more intense it became. It was humidity in the air, thicker than anything I had breathed before, but I knew what it was.
It was vampire magic. Whatever was going on here was strong.
Had Chloe become this strong? I thought back to her initiation and how she had turned feral, and I thought that maybe it was possible. But there was something else in the air, too.
Danger. Violence. Death.
“Do you think it’s too late?” I asked in a low voice.
I didn’t know why I was trying to whisper. It felt like we were going to make ourselves known if we weren’t careful.
“I don’t know,” Reece said grimly. “I hope not.”
We drove a little further before Reece pulled over to the side of the road. The road had started falling away, replaced by dirt and gravel and, eventually, it became just a path in the dust between the trees. But now we had to go by foot if we wanted to go further.
The Bluff was ahead of us, and I could hear the ocean. I could imagine that it clapped against the cliff that plummeted down to the sea below.
The further we walked, the stronger the magic became. I had no idea what we were going to find, but whatever it was, it was terrifying. I knew it would be bad.
When we stepped between the trees, it was suddenly dark. The trees all had dark trunks so that it was almost black when they were clumped together, and the leaves above were so dense it hardly let in any sunlight.
The forest floor was clear, with nothing but mulch, and the silence was deafening. No birds were singing between the branches, no woodland creatures chasing each other or foraging nuts.
“Something is wrong,” I said to Reece.
“Yeah,” he said, “I smell it, too.”
“Smell?”
“Blood.”
My body went cold. Blood meant that death had already arrived, or it was on its way.
Something moved between the trees a little further ahead, but the trunks were so close to each other it was hard to know what I was seeing. A flash of white, dark hair following like a kite.
And then I saw her face.
“Oh, my god. Chloe.” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Reece said grimly.
She moved through the trees as if she were an animal stalking her prey. Seeing her like this was scary. I thought again about what I had seen when we had been at the chapel together. She had been like an animal then, too. And if she had slipped so far that she was going after hikers, it was that much worse.
“We have to stop her,” I whispered.
“We have to see what she’s doing, first.”
I nodded. Reece was right. But I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see her do something I had hoped she would never be able to do.
The closer we got to her, the stronger the smell of blood became, to the point where I could smell it, too. And I had nothing more than a human nose. It made me sick to my stomach, and I broke out in a cold sweat.
“She did it,” I said.
“Shut up,” Reece hissed at me.
My stomach turned. What if I threw up?
We moved through the trees following Chloe, watching her. As a vampire, she should have sensed us, smelled us, heard us, something. But it was like she was in a trance, drawn to the smell of blood.
But did that mean she hadn’t spilled that blood in the first place?
When we were almost on top of her, Chloe crouched down. She bared her fangs, long white fangs that I hadn’t seen on her before, and her eyes were a liquid black that filled the entire eye socket. She looked like a nightmare.
She was ready to attack.
This was where Chloe was going to kill. This was where we would see her in action, the deal breaker. Because if I saw her murder someone, I wasn’t ever going to be able to be friends with her again. I didn’t care what Reece said about forgiving mistakes.
I noticed a human on the ground a few feet away and knew what Chloe was after. The human seemed to be bleeding, but the cut on his leg wasn’t severe. It didn’t justify the smell of blood in the air.
“I can’t do this, Reece,” I said and started turning away.
“Wait,” Reece said. “Look.”
I watched Chloe reluctantly. I didn’t want to see this, but Reece was trying to show me something.
And then I saw it, too. Chloe wasn’t actually attacking. She looked like she wanted to. I had never seen such desperation, such need. But she also looked like she was holding herself back. The vampire in front of us was barely Chloe anymore, she was so primal. But she was still fighting this urge that wanted her to kill.
If she hadn’t done this, then who had?
I looked at the hiker again. He sat on the ground, whimpering. I realized that his side was drenched in blood, too. And he had puncture wounds on the side of his neck. Everything else looked like it could have been an accidental wound, but the puncture wounds were bite marks.
Vampire bite marks.
While we watched, the weather changed.
I looked up, trying to see the sky. This wasn’t me, I was sure of it.
But while we waited, a fog rolled in. It curled around the tree trunks, filling in like a smoke machine at one of the parties I had been to back in Cali. The forest became even scarier, and it was as if the bit of sunlight that had reached us was being drained away.
It only took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.
“This is Fog,” I said.
“I know that.�
� Reece sounded irritated. Or nervous. Or both.
“No, I mean it’s a vampire cloak,” I said. “This isn’t Chloe. Someone else is doing this.”
“I felt it when I was looking around the other crime scene,” Reece said. “I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Really? It reeks of vampire.”
Reece pulled up his shoulders. Maybe he had spent too much time around Chloe, and he just couldn’t feel the difference anymore.
It would have been romantic if this whole thing hadn’t been so damn twisted.
The Fog grew. I understood now how the police couldn’t figure out what happened with the murders. This was impossible to get through unless you were already in the middle of it. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Chloe moved forward, and it was as if the Fog swallowed her whole. Suddenly, we couldn’t see her anymore.
“Where did she go?” Reece asked.
“Come,” I said and moved forward.
It was getting harder to breathe, harder to feel, harder to think. The Fog permeated everything and swallowed whatever was already inside it, whole.
I took one step forward, and then another. I followed the route I was sure I had seen Chloe take.
But suddenly, we were lost. The word had transformed. The Fog was so thick it was all I could see. I was suddenly claustrophobic. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction.
The black trunks rose up from the Fog like sentries of doom, and the world spun slowly around me as if I had been drinking.
“What’s happening, Emily?” Reece asked, and he sounded scared.
I was scared, too. But I wasn’t a werewolf caught in the web of my archenemy’s cloak, and I could understand why he was freaking out.
I grabbed his hand, and the moment we made contact, he relaxed a little.
“Don’t let go,” I said. It wasn’t only for the sake of keeping his panic at bay, but so that we didn’t lose each other. If we got separated, we wouldn’t find our way out of here until it was all over and another person had died.
Or we had died, too.
I closed my eyes and tried to sense Chloe’s magic. I couldn’t press against the Fog, even though it would help us see. I couldn’t use my magic. The vampires had felt me fighting their cloak the last time, and I didn’t want Chloe to figure out we were here, breaking through her trance. We had to get to her first.
But at this rate, we weren’t going anywhere but in circles.
“We’re going to find her,” I said, but I didn’t even believe my words. We were lost in a maze of dark trunks and white fog, bound up by foreign magic that I understood less and less, and we weren’t the heroes. We weren’t the werewolf and the witch that would save the day.
We were just two kids who were in way over their heads.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I was starting to give up hope. It felt like we had been wandering through this Fog for hours. But it had to be a trick. There was no way we could have been up here on The Bluff for that long. The Fog was messing with my head.
I slowed down, something at the back of my mind screaming at me to stop. Reece tugged at my hand, trying to move forward, but I wouldn’t take another step until I figured out what I was feeling.
“Why are you stopping?” Reece asked.
“Because we’re about to fall off the Earth,” I said, pointing at the drop that had suddenly appeared in front of us. Reece was on the very edge, and he scrambled to get back to safety.
He had nearly fallen to the ocean below.
This Fog was really messing with our heads.
Reece tripped and fell backward. He sat on the ground, breathing hard.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
I spun around. Something in that Fog drew me. The magic was strong, vampire magic. And somehow, I knew it was Chloe.
“I wish we could do something about this fog,” Reece said. “I’m dying without my eyesight.”
“Use your other senses,” I said.
“I would, but my wolf is freaking out about all the vampire magic here. I don’t know if you know, but we’re not exactly tight.”
I nodded. “I gathered. Come.”
He hoisted himself up and took my hand again, and we started moving through the Fog. Chloe was just ahead of us now. I could feel her. My magic had found her, and the Fog was just in the way, now. I was irritated with it.
Suddenly, we could see again. We had broken through the vampire cloak the same way Chloe’s dad had driven us through it, and we had found the chapel.
“Look,” I whispered.
Chloe crouched next to a large tree, her hand on the trunk as if to steady herself. Her eyes were trained on something, her mouth moving in almost chewing motions and she swallowed again and again.
I had seen those motions countless time before.
Through the trees, I saw another vampire. It was hunched over something that looked like a body, and I shivered.
“Who is that?” Reece asked.
Just then, the vampire moved, and I recognized him.
“Dmitri,” I whispered. “The Master Vampire. Maybe he’s here to stop Chloe. He was looking for her.”
“He better not hurt her,” Reece said with a growl, his voice deeper than usual.
“No, he actually cares…”
I hadn’t finished my sentence before Dmitri attacked Chloe. He launched at her with an unearthly scream, his body a blur as he flew through the air and tackled her to the ground. I didn’t miss the bloody mouth, his elongated fang, and the black eyes, bottomless pits of black, of death.
Chloe screamed, too. The sound sliced right to the bone.
They rolled on the ground, slashing at each other, snapping jaws, pulling hair.
“What’s going on?” Reece shouted.
I noticed the hiker on the other side of the fight. Bloody. Dead. And it all fell into place.
“He’s protecting his kill.”
I was frozen to the spot, staring at the vampire fight that took place in front of us. The two vampires had been reduced to the animals inside of them, and I realized what Dmitri had been trying to tell me.
I just hadn’t realized that he’d been talking about himself.
He was the murderer, wasn’t he? Chloe had been holding herself back, drawn by the blood but stopped by her heart of gold.
“He’s hurting her,” Reece said.
His eyes were glued to the fight, and he looked like it was ripping him apart, too. But he was a wolf, and they were vampires, and getting involved would be a risk.
As they fought, clawing and biting and screeching, the vampire magic grew around us, and it was so strong that I could almost taste the blood on my own tongue, feel my teeth tingle. Dmitri had Chloe pinned, and he was about to go for her jugular when Reece cried out with a roar.
The sound shouldn’t have come out of a human mouth.
His clothes ripped as he shifted into werewolf form. I understood why he usually undressed.
The transition was faster than I had seen before. One moment, he had been human, the next his honey wolf charged the fighting vampires.
With a loud growl, he pounced on Dmitri’s back.
The vampire let out another unearthly sound and let go of Chloe, spinning around to get the wolf off his back. Chloe scrambled backward, and her black eyes fell on me. For a moment, she hesitated, as if she recognized me. Chloe was still in there. The monster that had crept to the forefront of her existence was only a product of her lack of blood.
Chloe needed to feed.
The wolf yelped when Dmitri slammed Reece into the ground and Chloe and I both whipped around. Chloe bared her fangs and launched herself at Dmitri, knocking him off balance with her shoulder.
I watched as she teamed up with Reece, the vampire and the werewolf, to fight their common enemy.
But Dmitri was stronger. His vampire magic flared up, and the Fog around us crept closer,
sucking the air out of the area around us, making it hard to breathe. He had been consuming human blood, killing them and taking their life force. He was so much stronger.
But Chloe and Reece were not alone, and Dmitri knew we were here now. There was no need for me to hide anymore.
I reached down deep and summoned my magic.
A strong wind picked up and yanked at the leaves, the trees bending back and forth. I pushed the Fog back with my power, fighting Dmitri’s magic while the other two fought him physically.
He grunted with the effort, and his eyes fell on me. It was just a second before he looked away again, but in those eyes, I saw the promise of death.
I shivered, and fear crept up on me and tapped me on the shoulder.
The earth started to tremble. It came out of nowhere, and I struggled to stay standing. Dmitri fell, and Chloe and Reece stumbled, trying to stay upright. The earth cracked in front of me, a split that ran from behind me through the Fog to where the edge of the cliff was.
“You think you’re special, don’t you, little witch?” Dmitri said.
His voice creeped me out. It sounded like he was wearing a voice changer or something. It went with the fangs and the messed-up eyes.
“Let me show you how small you really are.”
Dmitri went for me, leaving Chloe and Reece behind. Reece charged, but it was as if he was suddenly moving in slow motion. Chloe dropped to the ground, clutching at her head.
Dmitri was using some kind of magic to stop them from saving me.
I had to do that myself.
Fine by me. I had more than enough anger at this son of a bitch who had made Chloe think she was the killer. He had refused to help her, he had allowed her to doubt herself, he had been willing to frame her for the kills.
There was nothing about this vampire that made him a leader. I hated him.
The earth stopped rumbling and the wind picked up, the Fog driving further and further away until we could see the ocean through the trees. The trees whipped back and forth. Dmitri tried to fight the hurricane I was creating, but he wasn’t strong enough for that.
Nothing was strong enough to beat the love I had for Chloe, the anger that I harbored that her life had nearly been sacrificed.
“You don’t know what it means to be a vampire!” Dmitri shouted, his voice barely carrying to me through the storm, “She’s a monster, Emily!”