He passed the notebook back to her and she pressed her pencil once more to its paper.
She had tried the simple route the first time, so as not to write too many unnecessary words. However, Dominic was right. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking with, The potion bottle appears in Logan’s grasp, safe and unopened.
Samhain had changed the chemistry of her world enough that her writing could make things happen, but not like this. This was a realm of mathematics and science and mental disorders, and words held power only because of the way they drew the reader in, painted a picture, and evoked emotion. They created.
That was what she needed to do now.
“Okay,” she said, sitting back and closing her eyes to clear her thoughts. “Give me a sec.” Then she began writing again.
Time slipped into the background, the sound of her pencil scratching on the paper grew fainter, and Logan sank inside of herself, inside the story she was telling. When she was finished, she realized that she could breathe deeper now. Her head felt clearer.
She set the pencil down and handed the notebook to Dominic with absolute confidence. There weren’t many things in life Logan could do absolutely right.
But damned everything else to hell, this was one of them.
Dominic began to read, Katelyn reading over his broad shoulder. Normally, it would terrify Logan to have someone reading her work. But this was no essay she was thinking of submitting for a contest or an article she’d sent to a magazine. This was no manuscript, unedited and pure, set before the scrutinizing eyes of an agent. This was just her, hopefully saving her own life.
“It’s perfect,” Dominic whispered. He looked up from the paper. “You really are good at this.”
Logan recognized the sincerity in his voice and felt her skin heat up – in a good way. She felt a warmth spread through her belly and a sensation of lightness throughout her entire body. She smiled. She couldn’t help it.
“He’s right,” Katelyn agreed as she finished reading herself. “But you already knew that, and I’d hate for your head to swell back there. It’s hard enough getting out of that seat.”
With speed and flourish, Dominic proceeded to rip the newly written page out of the notebook, turn in his seat, and open the driver’s side door. Katelyn and Logan exchanged looks. Then Katelyn turned and got out as well. A second later, she was pushing her seat forward so Logan could climb out of the back.
The forest beside the ravine had that freshly washed scent to it. The air smelled like wet dirt, the pine needles dripped rain remnants, and the ground was spongy beneath their feet. The moon hung low over the distant mountains, its bottom crescent tip brushing the peaks of the closest Rockies. An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness, and otherwise it was quiet but for the occasional muffled drip and rustle in the damp leaves.
It was exactly as Logan had described it in the notebook only moments ago. Her tiny story was already being woven into reality.
She held her breath as the three of them made their way together to the water’s edge. Logan noticed the way her companions moved, the way they surreptitiously peered into the darkness and stepped lightly so as not to make too much noise. Just as she’d written they would.
They stopped at the lip of the ditch and peered into the murky, muddy water. The water had been raging past a few moments ago, but now the ravine appeared as if it were settling down after throwing a fit. The edges of the ditch were slimy and dark, and twigs and leaves had carved paths in the peat to prove the tremendous height and speed that the water had reached with the storm. Autumn leaves floated on the murky surface, along with clumps of moss and tangled vine.
Again, just like she’d written it.
And suddenly, there it was. As they watched, a bubble rose to the surface of the slow flowing water. Then another. The third was bottle-shaped and shimmered like slime on metal. Which was what it was.
“I’ll be damned,” Logan whispered.
Chapter Thirty-One
Remnants of glass unstuck themselves from the large front window’s frame and tinkled to the ground to join the other shards. Meagan glanced at them, feeling a bit sorry, and lifted the phone’s receiver to her ear. She began to dial a number.
A few feet away, Dietrich Lehrer sat against the cupboard doors on the inside of the front desk, his knees curled to his chest, his head bent and hidden. His body shook visibly as it rocked back and forth. Meagan eyed the skin on his hands; the pallor had changed. It was not only pale now, it was turning gray.
The phone went to voicemail, and Meagan pressed the little white pegs on the cradle to hang it up. She sucked her lip in, bit down on it, and tried to think of another number. Mr. Lehrer’s ragged breathing filled the brief silence, niggling at her to hurry.
Just as she began to try another number on the pad, a wind picked up, shooting invasively through the broken window to rush through the small space of the shop and whip through her hair. Meagan shielded her face with her free arm. The wind grew stronger, lifting papers and receipts off of the pin they were tacked to on the desk and sending them about the office like white bats. The last few shards of glass remaining in the window fell from their frame to shatter below. Plastic wrapped clothes on hanging racks behind Meagan began to sway lazily back and forth.
Eyes shut tight against the debris, Meagan ducked behind the desk in self preservation. She could no longer hear Lehrer; the wind was too loud. Meagan pressed herself to the wood of the cupboard and waited.
A few seconds later, the wind died down. Seconds after that, the sound of boots on glass pricked Meagan’s ears. She lowered her arm, opened her eyes, and held her breath, listening intently.
“Hello Angel Eyes.”
Meagan screeched in surprise and jumped to her feet, spinning around to face the source of the deep voice.
Shawn Briggs leaned casually over the counter behind which she’d been hiding. His inhuman red eyes locked onto hers, his expression slightly amused. “My, aren’t we jumpy.” He pushed off the counter and slowly stepped around it, the glass crunching under his boots.
Mr. Lehrer was still curled into a tight ball, but his head was raised now, and Meagan couldn’t bear to look at him. She’d never seen anyone fall victim to a Hell Hound before, but by the looks of the stone gray tone of her teacher’s skin, the red in his eyes that almost matched a vampire’s, and the tips of the fangs that now rested just behind Lehrer’s lips, she could imagine the beast’s poison had nearly finished doing its evil deed. Lehrer was turning into some kind of monster. She even wondered whether it was too late to save him now.
“Someone looks a little worse for wear,” Shawn said as he kneeled in front of Mr. Lehrer and pretended to look him over. He pressed his forefinger thoughtfully to his chin. “Hmm. Had a little run in with a Hell Hound, I see.”
Meagan said nothing.
Shawn glanced at her over his shoulder. His fanged smile was reprimanding and coy. And… hot?
Oh gods.
It hit her hard and strange. There couldn’t have been a worse time to notice, to be reminded of how he and his band mates were all tall and broad-shouldered, how they were the objects of so many students’ desires that it was like something out of a teen romance. Now that he was a vampire, the angles of his face were harder, he seemed older, more grown-up. His voice was deeper and more melodious. He was certainly stronger. And the fangs weren’t exactly unattractive.
She was as bad as Logan was with this shit.
Get your head in the right place, Meagan, she told herself firmly. Alec Sheffield is dead and Shawn Briggs is a real, honest-to-angels vampire. He’s going to kill you. She tore her gaze from his, which was admittedly difficult, and glanced down at Lehrer. And your teacher.
“Why would I kill him?” Shawn asked, cutting through her thoughts with his somehow amplified words. He turned his attention back to Lehrer and she could see from the side that his smile broadened. “He’s about to become Sam’s little pet. He’s probably never been
more useful before in his life.” With that, he stood and turned. “I wouldn’t lay a finger on him.”
He leveled her with a hard, red gaze and continued toward her. Meagan stepped back. Advance – retreat. Advance – retreat. Wasn’t that always the game between cat and mouse? Vampire and victim?
“And you, Meagan.” He shook his head. “Didn’t I tell you before that I have no desire to kill you?”
She was never going to be able to look at her classmates the same way again.
“I’m giving you a chance to be something greater, Meagan.” Step forward.
Step back.
“Allow me one bite, one taste, and nothing in the mortal world will have any control over you. Nothing will be able to stop you.”
“The running water in the ravine seemed to do a pretty good job with you earlier,” she retorted. She stepped back again, and found herself flush with the wall.
“A minor setback,” Shawn admitted smoothly. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
He so much sounded like one of the bad guys from Logan’s stories. He sounded like Sam.
“That’s because I’m an extension of him,” Shawn told her. He chuckled as he added, “and because it was Logan’s words that made me what I am now.”
“That girl writes too damn much,” Meagan muttered, barely hearing her own words over the hammering of her heart and the swirling rush of her own blood. There was nothing left. She couldn’t use the phone, she was out of magic, and Lehrer was out of commission.
This was it. For real this time.
“Don’t worry, Stone,” Shawn said, taking that last step that closed the distance between them and left her breathless. She stared helplessly into the fires in Shawn’s eyes. He raised his hand and very gently cupped her face. He was deceptively tender. He lowered his head until his next words were whispered intimately across her quivering lips. “It’ll only hurt for a second.”
Oh…. She just knew he was going to say that.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“I’ll be damned,” Logan whispered.
Sam’s gaze shot to her, his soul memorizing the curve of her chin, the smoothness of her skin, the sound of her soft, soft voice. You have no idea, he thought.
But he said nothing as he turned and knelt at the water’s edge. Very slowly, the metal flask containing the second half of the spell protecting Logan floated to the side of the ditch.
He couldn’t touch it. He could feel a kind of force field around the receptacle that acted as a repellant toward him. Lehrer and the young witch had been thorough in casting the spell. He wasn’t going to be able to come into contact with the bottle any more than he could come into physical contact with Logan herself.
His blood felt like magma in his veins. He was burning up inside, for so many reasons. His inability to touch Logan’s skin while she was so close to him acted like salt on an open wound. He could also sense that his Hell Hounds had been destroyed, though he was slightly placated that Lehrer had been bitten and Briggs was now taking care of the second witch.
Maldovan’s strong spiritual presence in Sam’s stolen body was a constant struggle, perpetually draining him and making him edgy. Still, the boy’s guise was invaluable. He’d used it to get Logan to write so many things, and all he’d had to do was look at her. Ask her to do it. Show that he had faith in her.
She would do a lot of things for Maldovan. She was in love with him.
Sam gritted his teeth and felt his left hand curl into a fist at the thought. What made it worse was that he knew the feeling to be mutual. Dominic Maldovan would do anything for Logan Wright.
So be it, Sam thought. Then you can die for her.
But later. Right now, he needed to concentrate on destroying that protection spell.
He couldn’t physically touch the bottle or Logan, but he’d been able to get around that contingency by making certain he grabbed her arm over the sleeve of her jacket while in the car minutes ago. The material acted as a barrier, allowing him to stay her with a steady grip.
To get the bottle, he could pretend to have gloves in his pocket and he could pull them out and slip them on. But why bother? It was time for this charade to end anyway. He would simply use magic.
The fact that Lehrer and Stone hadn’t considered he would do so was not only surprising, it was insulting. What sort of helpless, mewling beta male did the witches think he was? But in all fairness they might not have expected him to regain so much power so quickly.
No matter, he thought as he reached his hand out and smiled. Magic funneled down his arm and into his hand, filtering through his fingertips. They began to glow, and the potion bottle floating on the dirty water simultaneously began to rise.
Beside and behind him, Logan and her friend gasped. Both girls backpedaled.
“Dom, what are you – ” Logan asked. But she cut herself off and he sensed her mind working, knew from skimming her clever surface thoughts that she was figuring it out. Puzzle pieces were sliding into place for her.
As she watched him, his clothes mended, his bruises disappeared, and his cuts healed. Oh, she was definitely figuring it out.
Why he hadn’t touched her, why he was being so distant and gruff, how he had known what kind writing would work at finding the potion bottle and what kind wouldn’t – it all made sense to her now. Horrible, perfect sense.
“Katelyn, run!” Logan screamed.
Sam heard the girls spin, their boots crunching wet, fallen leaves beneath them as they scrambled to get away. He ignored them. The sound of their footfalls became fainter and farther as they escaped into the forest. He let them go. Once the bottle was empty, once the spell was broken, it wouldn’t matter where Logan went or what she did, there would be no escape for her. He would find her.
The metal flask hovered in the air a foot in front of Sam. His grin broadened as the flask’s metal cap magically unscrewed itself and lifted away.
The contact lenses in Sam’s eyes dissolved into nothing, vanishing on a changing wind as the bottle tipped and the potion began to pour out. His once more blue gaze shimmered and shined as the first of the liquid fell over the lip of the flask and disappeared before it hit the ground. His incisors began to lengthen and sharpen when the bottle was half empty. Finally, an aura of absolute darkness wrapped itself around him like a protective, royal cloak as the last few drops of the protective elixir exited the bottle and were blown away into the night.
The spell was broken.
The flask dropped uselessly to the ground and Sam turned to face the tree line of the forest. It was dark and quiet in the nighttime space beyond. The sun would rise in a few short hours, yet at a time when the animals of the wilderness should be out hunting, rummaging, or foraging and just rising to face the early hours of day, there was nothing but silence. Nothing but innate fear.
The creatures of the natural world knew what it was that walked in their midst: Death.
*****
Meagan felt the soft brush of Shawn’s breath against her throat. She shut her eyes tight and tensed, waiting for the pain. The tips of his teeth scraped, both threatening and promising. Her heart quickened, skipped a beat, and thumped back into rhythm. Then she felt him go still, and his grip on her waist tightened. Pin points of pain at last blossomed as his fangs began to pierce.
She whimpered – and there was an incredible flash of blinding white light.
The air swelled, blew up like a balloon, and then shrank again, popping Meagan’s eardrums. She blinked rapidly, swayed on her feet, and groped for the wall. Motes of luminescence swam before her blurred vision.
Shawn’s arm loosened around her waist as he pulled back and turned beside her.
“What the – ” Shawn whispered.
Meagan peered hard through the curtain of visual after-shock before her eyes. She willed it to recede, to clear, and let her see what the hell was going on. Little by little, it did so, until she could make out Shawn standing in front of her with his back to her and the figure
of a somewhat older man standing just beyond the broken window of the cleaner’s.
There was something off about the newcomer. He was bent over, his fingers pinching the fabric of his khaki pants, his expression one of interchanging awe and quizzical interest. He fingered his gray sweater next, as if he’d never before seen or felt woven cotton.
And then he froze, straightened slowly, and let go of his clothes. His gaze traveled the length of the ground, following the trail of broken glass, leaves, and escaped clothing receipts left by Shawn’s rogue wind.
When he saw Mr. Lehrer on the ground rocking back and forth, with all but the slightest shred of his humanity gone, the stranger’s expression changed. The confusion he’d worn a moment ago slipped away and something like recognition took its place. Then he saw Meagan and Shawn.
His gaze met Shawn’s last. Meagan could feel the two stare each other down. It was a confrontation on a silent level, perhaps even on a magical level, as Meagan sensed there was something much more to this other man than met the eye.
“This is not the place for you, dark one,” the stranger said. For such a seemingly unassuming man, his voice carried well. There was a note of authority to it.
Meagan didn’t know who he was or what was happening, but she wasn’t going to let an opportunity get past when it presented itself. She pressed her palms to the wall behind her and felt along as she very slowly began to inch away.
Like lightning, Shawn spun, his hand slamming down against the wall beside her head. His face was instantly within inches of hers once again, and Meagan swallowed her cry of alarm.
“I don’t think so, Angel Eyes,” he told her, fangs flashing. “You will stay put.”
Something buzzed and crackled, like electricity moving from one metal rod to another. Shawn glanced back over his shoulder and moved just enough to afford Meagan a view as well.
The stranger stood in a fighter’s stance, legs apart, arms raised. The palms of his hands were glowing. Streams of white energy jumped from one to the other and back again.
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