All that remained were the half-empty drawers of her dresser that yawned open at haphazard angles, and the crumpled bit of story she clutched tightly in her fists.
Logan looked down. Slowly, and with shaking fingers, she un-folded the sheets of paper. There were two pages, taken from one of her favorite parts in what had always been one of her favorite stories.
About Halloween. In all of its dark, magical glory.
*****
There was no answer. The phone continued to ring in her ear. Logan bit her lip, ran her free hand roughly through her hair, and turned in a nervous, helpless circle. Her bedroom looked pretty much the same now as it had before the attack of whatever it was that took her stories, but the event had been noisy. She couldn’t believe neither her parents nor her brothers or sister had awoken. She’d even gone down stairs to check on them.
Once she’d seen that they were still sleeping soundly, she’d come back upstairs, gotten dressed as quickly as she could, and called her history teacher. He wasn’t picking up.
“Come on!” she hissed. Mr. Lehrer had wanted her to call him just to check in anyway, never mind that she absolutely needed to talk to him now. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering?
Logan hung up and re-dialed. Again, the phone rang until it decided to go to voice mail. Logan shut her eyes tight, fighting for control of her fear. This time, when the beep came, she left a message. “Mr. Lehrer, it’s Logan. Something has happened. All of my stories are gone. Sam’s taken them. Something’s really wrong. I’m calling Katelyn and Meagan now. Please call me as soon as you get this!”
She hung up and dialed Meagan’s number, figuring that the young witch would most likely either be with Mr. Lehrer or would know where he was. But Meagan didn’t answer either.
Logan suppressed a growing terror that threatened vomit-inducing nausea, hung up, and prepared to dial Katelyn’s number. However, before she could, a text message chimed through, blanking out her phone’s screen.
Logan stared down at it while the blood drained from her face.
Train tracks, Logan. You know where, and you know when. Better hurry, my beauty. Before your crush is crushed. LOL - Sam
Logan took a second to process the words she read. And then, as her stomach turned to lead and her heart climbed her throat, she dialed Katelyn’s number.
Chapter Fifteen
Sam turned from the dark forest he’d been facing when he felt the other approach. The moon cast blue-white light through the tree tops, highlighting the fallen leaves, moss, and twigs below. The forest was dense here, private and deep.
Nathan McCay, formerly the drummer in Dominic Maldovan’s band, moved over the underbrush without making a single, discernable sound, courtesy of his new vampire nature and Sam’s dark magic. The tall blonde now looked every bit the eighties vampire character he’d dressed up as a week ago for the high school’s Halloween Dance. And there was an aura around him that crackled with unseen power and barely kept wickedness, as if the world had better walk on eggshells around him or he would do something unforgivable.
The first mission Sam had sent the new vampire on was an important one. McCay smiled at his master as he stepped into the clearing carrying a medium sized cardboard box in his hands. “I got all but two pages,” he said, grinning so that his long, sharp fangs gleamed in the moonbeams. “Logan grabbed the last two sheets and held on for dear life.” He shook his head as if still impressed with Logan’s tenacity.
Sam moved forward, taking the box from him. It was heavy with loose-leaf paper.
“That’s everything else,” McCay said.
Sam looked from the box to his new servant. “You’ve done well. Now join Briggs on Southbridge and make sure the witches are finished off. I’ll not have them interfering again in my plans.”
McCay nodded once. A second later, a harsh wind rocketed through the clearing, kicking up leaves, branches, and dirt. McCay disappeared into this cloud of debris, vanishing with superhuman speed as he shot toward the night sky.
Sam paid his departure little heed. The wind died down, the clearing became still, and Sam’s attention remained rapt, his eyes glued to the heavy box in his hands. All of Logan’s past writings were in here. He’d known she wouldn’t destroy them. It would have been the smart thing to do, the wise thing to do. After all, he’d used her writing against her once before, and she was already afraid to write anything new. The logical next step would have been to get rid of anything she’d already created.
But she was a writer, and a writer could no more destroy their own words than a sane man could sever a limb. It was a part of her.
And now it would be a part of him.
He hadn’t retrieved the stories himself because he didn’t yet want Logan to know that he was inhabiting Dominic’s body. There was a good chance that he could use this disguise to his advantage. When she looked at Dominic, she saw a young man she’d slowly been falling in love with for eight years. There had to be power in that.
So he’d sent one of his new lackeys instead.
Now Sam ran his hand over the cardboard of the box and considered the treasure of what was waiting inside.
Before Logan had made those markings on those LEGO labels, Sam wouldn’t have been able to do anything with the contents of the box. Other than read it, he guessed. He assumed it would have been educational, and probably fairly interesting – Logan’s imagination could sometimes be incredible. However, that wasn’t the best use for the words, as far as he was concerned. If the right magic was used on them, they could be transformed.
That’s what he’d done with them a week and a half ago, when he’d first come through to this realm.
At that time, he’d come through the open door of October as an incorporeal form of pure, massive power. He’d instantly located Logan’s notebook, as if drawn there by a beacon. He used his existing, inherent power to transform the descriptions in Logan’s words into a corporeal form, becoming Sam Hain.
However, that mass of energy had been sapped from him when he was defeated at the high school dance. All that remained after Lehrer’s destructive spell was Sam’s consciousness and the shell of a body – someone else’s body – that he had inhabited at the very last minute.
Without that power, Sam couldn’t do anything with Logan’s written stories. He couldn’t transform anything she’d written, no matter how much of it he managed to find. It took a certain amount of magic to make magic, and he just hadn’t possessed enough of it.
That is, until now. The tables had turned when Logan wrote those words in Dominic Maldovan’s bedroom.
Sam hesitated a few moments longer, the wait like the anticipation before ripping into a present during a birthday party – or so he assumed. Not that he’d ever had a birthday party.
The forest grew eerily quiet, every night creature stopping to listen or watch.
Sam lowered his gaze. He had taken out the contact lenses for now; they were irritating. His naturally intense blue eyes began to glow.
The box in his hands rose, lifting out of his grasp in a slow spin. The flaps on the top unfolded, and the pages within the box emitted a promising yellow glow. Sam watched it with a mounting impatience, a rising hunger, the light in his eyes reflecting the emblazoned aura of the power of Logan’s words. When the box floated a good six feet above him and had begun to tilt as if to pour its contents into the open air, Sam raised his head and spoke a single word.
“Mine.”
The word reverberated through the forest, echoing as if spoken by a god. There was a flash, originating from within the box. It spread quickly, whiting out the clearing and surrounding area. Sam was hit with a blast of energy composed of the fantasies, the plot lines, and the magic of ten thousand creative imaginings.
He closed his eyes and let it in.
Chapter Sixteen
It was Dietrich’s ribs that hurt the most. Something was pressing into them. It felt like whatever it was had lodged itself halfway through his c
hest. He opened his eyes, and the world came to him in unfocused hues of black and dark blue. The pattern was blurry, but looked familiar.
The car, he thought. This was the cross stitch on his seat covers.
He tried to breathe. Pain stabbed through him, arcing sharp and severe and drawing his breath up short. He gritted his teeth and looked down, expecting to see spears or daggers or half of the windshield sticking out of his upper body.
But it was just the steering wheel, and there was no blood. He had been thrown up against it; his air bag had failed to go off, and now he probably had a broken rib or two to show for the accident. He closed his eyes in thanks for a moment. They felt big in his face, as if bulging with blood, and his head throbbed. He opened his eyes and turned as much as he could toward the passenger seat.
Luckily, Meagan’s air bag had gone off.
With a spike of adrenaline and terror, Dietrich remembered his student and fellow magic user. A moment of real dread claimed him when he realized she could be dead. “Meagan!” he breathed, reaching over to fight with the parachute-like material of white that still puffed up, now bloated and useless, obscuring his view of her face. Eventually, he managed to get it deflated enough to shove it out of the way.
She was unconscious but breathing. From the line across her nose and the darkening shadows beneath her eyes, he would guess that she’d been struck too hard with the very thing that had most likely saved her life. The air bag had hit her with enough force to break her nose and knock her out.
“Meagan!” He considered shaking her, but settled on tapping her cheek instead. “Meagan, wake up!”
She moaned, her forehead furrowing.
“That’s it,” he urged, turning a bit more so that he could look out the shattered windows. Rain obscured the landscape, gathering in mud and puddles just beyond the crumpled doors and destroyed hood of his car.
It took him a moment to realize that it was all upside down.
That would explain the heavy, throbbing feeling in his head. Now it all made sense.
With a grunt of effort and pain, Dietrich shifted behind the steering wheel, pressing his palms against it to dislodge his chest. Beside him, Meagan stirred. Without looking at her, Dietrich continued to push, continued to grit his jaw in pain.
“Can you hear me, Meagan?” he asked through his clenched teeth.
A sound of stunned misery returned his query. He glanced over at her. Her eyes slowly blinked open.
“Answer me, Meagan,” he prodded further as he finally managed to move to the side enough to reach the door handle. He yanked, but it didn’t budge.
“Ow,” she mouthed. Her voice sounded odd.
“You’ve got a broken nose. Is anything else broken?” he asked.
“I… don’t know,” she whispered. He could sense her moving beside him, tentatively experimenting with each body part. “I don’t think so.”
“Then we need to get out of this car before that storm over the mountains causes a flash flood that takes us with it.”
The doors were stuck, crumpled into their frames. However, the glass to all of the windows had been destroyed and removed. With great effort and fiercely bit-back sounds of pain, the two of them managed to pull themselves from the wreckage, crawl through the windows, and roll out into the mud and debris of the ditch.
It smelled like rotting vegetation, pungent and putrid. Mushrooms huddled around clumps of grass and moss-covered rocks. Muted hues of green and brown splished and splashed, mottled and dismal. Thunder rolled across the distant mountains. Lightning revealed itself from behind thick, purple clouds, illuminating the forgotten wetness of the ravine.
Dietrich got his hands and knees beneath him, wincing when he put weight on his left wrist. It was either sprained or had a hairline fracture. He got to his feet, slowly and surely, and stood for a moment, swaying slightly from side to side.
The rain pelted him, cold and hard. Thunder rolled closer, and lightning coursed through the sky once more. The heart of this particular storm was drawing nearer.
Meagan moved up beside him, her younger body standing a little straighter and steadier than his. “What now?” she asked as she gingerly touched the side of her face, edging ever closer to the broken nose. Blood smeared her upper lip, and her bottom lip was split on one side.
“We need to get cleaned up,” he said, as he just as gingerly felt along his ribs for the cracks he knew would be there. “And healed.” He knew a few mild healing spells that were fairly good at dealing with cracked bones and bruises, weakness and exhaustion and the like. But he wasn’t certain he could take care of two people while in the condition he was in right now.
“Think you can handle that?” Meagan asked, clearly trying to be as strong as possible under the circumstances. Her wide eyes combed over the wreckage of the car and the building water level of the ravine around it.
Dietrich considered Meagan and how far she’d come under his guidance and instruction in their grove. She was a quick study and full of potential, despite this recent foul-up with October and Samhain. Healing spells were reserved for older grove members, those with the wisdom to know when to use them and when to allow nature to take its course. The spells were taxing, rather particular, and not at all easy to cast.
But desperate times called for desperate measures.
“With your help,” he told her. She turned around to cast a surprised look at him. “You have to learn some time,” he said. He shrugged and immediately regretted it.
Meagan looked down at where he held his ribs. “You cracked them, didn’t you?” she muttered. “Can you breathe deeply?”
He shook his head. “Not really, unfortunately.” He turned his attention to the slippery slope of the hill that led from the bottom of the ravine to the road up above. There was light coming from the road, though he couldn’t see from where. There was also a low rumble… but it could have been the rain.
“Then we have to heal you first or you’ll get pneumonia or something,” Meagan said.
“Or something,” Dietrich agreed. His attention, however, was on the road.
“Can you walk?”
Meagan nodded beside him.
“Good. We need to get to higher ground. That storm is sure to dump loads of water into this ditch.”
Because the town was located at the foothills of the mountains, and due to the frequent storms in the high country during summer and fall, the ravine they were now standing in was infamous for flash flooding. This storm had been building for a while, and Dietrich was guessing it would be only minutes now – possibly seconds – before the water came rushing through at top speed. He didn’t want to be stuck at the bottom of the ditch when it did.
Chapter Seventeen
Both the light and the rumble he’d heard coming from the road grew in strength as Dietrich slip-slid his way to the top of the hill. Once he managed to make the lip of the road and the tread of his shoes found crumbling asphalt instead of mud, he understood why.
The semi truck that had run his car off of the road hadn’t left the scene of its crime. Instead it waited, rumbling and massive, less than a hundred yards from where Dietrich’s car had veered to the right. It was a juggernaut of steel and fumes and rubber that shook as its giant engine idled. The seemingly endless trailer behind the cab was painted pitch black, matted so that its edges seemed to disappear into the surrounding night. An eerie blue light seeped through the bolt cracks and edges and emanated from beneath both the trailer and the engine of the huge rig. This light evaporated into the air like smoke, as if the illuminated, intangible wisps were ectoplasmic fumes – and this were a ghost truck.
“Jesus,” whispered Meagan beside him. “What the hell is that thing?” Her voice was sounding progressively worse by the second, and Dietrich could imagine she was tasting copious amounts of metal in her mouth; blood from her broken nose leaking through her nasal passages.
Before Dietrich could reply, the driver’s side door to the rig popped op
en, and both he and Meagan took a step back. A moment ticked by. Then a left boot appeared – just before a tall figure swung out in one graceful movement. Boots touched down onto wet tarmac as lightning once more cracked overhead and highlighted the scene.
Dietrich squinted against the deluge, shielding his eyes to do away with a bit of the blurriness the rain was causing. He recognized the boy’s face. The figure moved closer, his steps making no sound on the road.
This was Shawn Briggs, one of Dominic Maldovan’s friends and band mates.
The tall boy had always been handsome and, because he’d also been a musician and member of an actual band, there was that intangible charisma attached to his persona that drove a lot of girls crazy. Now, however, there was very clearly something more to him than there had been before.
He seemed even taller than normal. His brown hair was so dark it was almost black. His skin was paler. There was an aura of strength around him, of capacity, as if he could literally fly if he wanted to. And there was an unsettling static charge in the air that had nothing to do with the building lightning overhead. It was similar to the feeling someone got when they came too close to a crazy person, to someone who’d outright lost their marbles. It was that unsettling sensation that one false move, one misstep that somehow broke this insane person’s code of ethics, would cause them to lash out and harm you. That aura surrounded Shawn Briggs like a cloak, wrapped around him tightly, and radiated outward on unseen tendrils of quiet menace.
But if none of that was enough, there was the fact that Brigg’s normally brown eyes were now glowing a bright, feral red. And as he drew closer, Dietrich could also see that the boy was sporting long, sharp fangs.
“You like the truck, Meagan?” Shawn asked, focusing his inhuman attention on the girl as she sidled a little closer to her teacher.
The October Trilogy Complete Box Set Page 23