“Step away from the girl,” the stranger commanded. His voice had risen in volume and was now laced with what Meagan clearly recognized as serious magical power.
He’s a wizard, she realized. And a strong one!
Shawn turned fully now, leveling all of his attention on the newcomer. “Who are you?” he demanded icily.
“The name is Draper,” the stranger said. “Hugh Draper.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
There was a moment of following silence after the stranger’s James Bond-like introduction. Shawn eyed the newcomer and Meagan could feel the irritation coming off of the vampire like a rolling heat wave.
Suddenly, the wind that had kicked up earlier was back and once more rip-roaring through the little shop.
Meagan ducked and covered her head as lightning seemed to strike inside the cleaners, illuminating everything in white hot magic. Her eardrums slammed shut to protect themselves, quieting the world in a distant buzz. In this far away-ness, the wind screamed, something in the shop overturned, and Meagan had a flash of real concern for Mr. Lehrer, whom she doubted had enough sense in that moment to cover his own head.
Praying that nothing did him any real damage, Meagan waited the chaos out.
Seconds that felt like centuries later, all was silent once more but for the very loud ringing in the depths of her head.
Meagan removed her hands from her ears. Ringing. More ringing. And footsteps?
She opened her eyes and turned to find herself staring at a pair of sneakers.
She followed the khaki pants legs up to the hem of an oversized gray cable knit sweater with patches on the elbows, and then to the concerned, friendly features of an aging wizard. To her, he looked like Patrick Stewart with hair and a beard.
He bent beside her, offering her his hand.
She straightened, and he asked her something, but all she heard was ringing and the muffled edges of words that were almost there. She tried to read his lips and experienced a sharp spike of fear that she’d actually gone deaf.
The wizard frowned, his eyes widened, and suddenly he smiled, nodding. He waved his hand, said something else that she didn’t hear, and suddenly sound slammed back into Meagan with a whoosh.
Now she heard everything: the wind dying down, papers settling somewhere unseen, and in the distance, the sound of sirens.
“I’ve not been to your time before, but I have a feeling we must leave or risk a dealing with your authorities.”
Meagan had no idea what to say to that. Life had taken a very confusing turn for the fantastical. She allowed him to help her rise, and then realized something was wrong. She was forgetting something.
“Mr. Lehrer!” she exclaimed, moving around the newcomer to peer at the spot where she’d left her grove leader. He was still there, but though the transformation seemed to have completed, he was no longer conscious.
“Mr. Lehrer!” she cried again, diving to her knees beside him. “Oh gods, Mr. Lehrer, please don’t be dead.” She placed her fingers to his throat while she muttered obscenities she didn’t know she had in her and felt a sickening fear scrape along her soul.
There was a weak beat, and then another. He had a pulse.
“I placed him in a stasis to protect him from whatever poison has infiltrated his system,” the stranger said.
Meagan looked up at him. She swallowed hard and let her hand drop. “What… what did you say your name was?”
He smiled patiently. “Draper,” he said. “Hugh Draper.”
She took in the name and, this time she memorized it. Under normal circumstances, she had a good memory for names; she was lucky like that. Most people had trouble with it. Logan, for instance, couldn’t remember a person’s name to save her life.
“You’re a wizard.”
“Yes, that I am,” he admitted freely, still smiling.
“What….” She turned a little on her bent knees and took in the mess around them. Serious damage had been done to the shop. Shawn Briggs was nowhere to be found. “What happened? Where did the vampire go?”
“The vampire?” Draper repeated. He seemed contemplative, as if he was considering the description. “That is troubling. Tell me, are these beasts common in this time?”
Meagan blinked. Then she realized that there was more to his voice that felt strange than the inherent magic that laced his tone. It was the accent.
She frowned and slowly stood, taking in his appearance with a new eye. His clothes hung strangely on him, as if he wasn’t used to wearing them. His beard and hair were cut oddly, in a fashion she was not familiar with.
“You’re from the past, aren’t you?” she asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied. “It’s a rather long story. There will be time for telling it later, I hope. However, at the moment I do believe it wise we make our departure, and not only to avoid trouble with your authorities. Your vampire will most likely return shortly as well.”
The sirens Meagan had heard moments ago were much closer now. Maybe she’d set off a silent alarm when she’d broken the window. It was also possible that the destruction had simply gained some passerby’s attention.
She contemplated Lehrer’s sleeping form. There was no way she could lift him. Just to make sure, she adjusted herself, reached down to curl her hands under his arms, and tried to pull up. Straining, she decided she could maybe drag him. But with the amount of glass strewn about the floor and the length of time it would take her to get him outside, dragging was not really an option.
“How much of that magic do you have left?” she asked Draper.
“Enough to help with this,” he said. The wizard waved his hand over Lehrer’s body and muttered words Meagan did not understand. Then he moved to Lehrer’s legs and easily lifted them and her teacher’s rump off of the cold, littered linoleum.
Meagan’s eyes widened. She again tried to pick Lehrer up. This time, she was able to easily get him off of the ground. He was no longer heavy; in fact, he was very light, as if his bones had been hollowed out and his muscles had been turned to marshmallows.
With that odd internal image forming in her mind, Meagan directed Draper toward the building’s back door, and together they carried Lehrer out into the night.
Chapter Thirty-Four
No, Logan thought furiously as tears stung threateningly at her eyes and she ran full tilt into the forest. No, no, no, no, no….
Katelyn had started off running beside her, the two of them crashing through underbrush and swiping away stray branches as they sprinted through the darkness. But Logan couldn’t tell if she was there beside her now and she couldn’t afford to look over and make sure they remained together; she could feel the evil in the night pressing in. It was coming for her. In fact, the best thing she could do for Katelyn would be for her to lose her and go her separate way. Sam would have no reason to harm Katelyn then.
It all made sense now. The anger she’d felt coming off of Dominic was indeed directed at her. But he wasn’t angry over Alec Sheffield’s death; he was angry that she wouldn’t join him! He was angry that she was making him go to all of this trouble. No doubt, he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just stop fighting him. He’d given her a taste of his power, a glimpse of what he could do for her if she would accompany him to his world.
And she still refused him. Yes, he was angry.
She understood now why Dom’s eyes were no longer the piercing, vivid green she adored and melted under, but aqua, tainted with the blue of the man behind the mask. She understood why he hadn’t touched her. The spell Mr. Lehrer and Meagan had cast prevented him from touching her. The only time he’d tried, he’d actually grabbed her jacket, not her arm.
She also understood why she and “Dominic” had been able to escape “Sam” so easily back at the train tracks. Nathan McCay hadn’t actually been Sam. He’d been pretending to be Sam and probably worked for him now. And the body that slammed into McCay? Another one of Sam’s evil concoctions, no doubt,
and most likely just an illusion. It had been meant to throw her off and give her the chance to “escape,” which would allow the real Sam to get close to her and to manipulate her using Dominic’s body.
It had worked. It had all worked and it all made so much horrible, terrible sense!
Fury coursed through Logan. She was raging inside, more angry than she’d ever been, but not just at Sam for pulling the wool over her eyes and possessing Dominic’s body. She was mad at herself for allowing any of it to happen.
She was so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
“If it were anyone else calling you such a thing, I would turn them into a pumpkin and carve them out.”
Logan skidded to a fast halt, her heart leaping into her throat and her hair flying before her eyes. She hurriedly brushed it aside.
Katelyn was indeed gone, having been separated from her somewhere along the route, either by accident or by Sam’s magical doing.
Sam stood above her on the uphill trail and stared out at her through Dominic’s eyes, now fully blue and utterly alien to her. The moon illuminated him from behind, giving him an eerie, ghost-like aura. He looked different. There was an otherworldliness to him now, a sensation that he was something more than the sum of his parts. He was the king of another realm, the emperor of an entire universe. He looked taller.
He looked mean.
The strong, intelligent, and beautiful rock god she’d fantasized about for the duration of her entire childhood had become a Death Lord vampire, composed of fast, hard angles and pale skin and sharp, sharp fangs.
And there was no point to running any longer.
“How long?” she demanded breathlessly. Her stomach was tied in nauseated knots, and her body trembled. Her knees felt weak beneath her, as if they would buckle any second now. But she wanted to know. “How long have you been wearing that mask, Sam? Since the very beginning? Since the school dance? How long?!”
Sam’s gaze was ever steady, ever piercing. “Long enough,” he said. “But no. Sheffield was the first body I inhabited.”
Logan processed that. It hit her like a ton of bricks. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “You took Dominic’s body in the cornfield! You’ve been in him since the hospital!”
He smiled, showing her those fangs she knew would be her guillotine. “Yes.”
She felt sick; the nausea was getting worse. He’d orchestrated everything so perfectly. She’d been right about any lie he told; it would be elaborate. It was a work of art. Down to the speech about life and death and change that Nathan had given her at the railroad tracks, it had all been perfect.
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, trying to pull her reeling mind away from the way he’d manipulated her into writing LEGO poetry words in Dominic’s bedroom and an entire mini-story in Katelyn’s car. If she didn’t stop thinking about it, she would end up trying to strangle him with her bare hands. Which would be worse than useless.
“What exactly are you going to do to me?” she clarified. She wanted to know. She wanted to know just what she would experience as she died.
“Logan,” he said, his tone intimate and suddenly gentle. He came toward her down the hill, each step deliberate and slow. “Sweet Logan. Don’t you see, I’m going to make you a queen? I’m going to make every dream you’ve ever had come true, and then some.”
“I’ve never –” She broke off as terror temporarily closed her throat. But she swallowed, took a step back, and managed to go on. “I’ve never heard murder described so beautifully.”
“You’re thinking mortal thoughts again,” he reprimanded, shaking his handsome head as he continued to close in on her. “And you’re fearing mortal fears. You must look beyond all of that, Logan. You’ll feel no pain. No loss. You’ll cease to exist here and begin living somewhere else. It’s as simple as that.”
“Nothing is that simple, Sam,” she said. “What about my family? My friends?” She stumbled back and nearly tumbled when her heel caught on a vine. She righted herself with a palm braced against a nearby tree trunk. It was no use retreating, but her body was fueled by Old Brain self preservation. “What about the people you killed?”
“If you wish to see them again so badly, then there’s no need to despair,” he told her. “Everyone shows up in my realm eventually.” He stopped two feet away, the distance between them now so small, she could feel his power lick along her skin like mild electricity. “Everyone,” he repeated for emphasis.
Logan pressed her fingers to the trunk of the tree behind her. An idea occurred to her, and her fingernail curled against the wood. “Then let me go,” she said. “Let me live out my life. If I have to come to you eventually anyway, then let me have what is rightfully mine here.”
“No.”
Logan’s chin lifted defiantly. Her gaze hardened. “No? Just like that? Fairness is not in your makeup, Sam?”
“Death isn’t meant to be fair, Logan. It is the counterpart to life, after all.”
Logan steadily scraped her fingernail into the tree, hoping she was smart enough to do what she was doing right.
“I’m worried about my little brother,” she told him. “My parents. Can’t you understand that? Have you no sympathy?” Scrape.
“I know what you’re doing, Logan,” he suddenly sighed. “I can read your mind, remember? And it doesn’t work that way. Your words don’t hold that kind of power here.” He offered her his hand then. The universe quieted. “But come with me to my world, and you’ll see that there they do.”
Logan let her hand drop from the tree. Maybe he was right and it didn’t matter. But at least she’d tried. And she was finished anyway.
An odd sense of calm stole over her. She peered into Sam’s blue, blue eyes and felt the salt of the sea on her skin. Thoughts of her family faded. Concern for her classmates slipped slowly away.
The blue wrapped around her. She heard the sky and fell into it. It felt like cotton balls and gentle breezes.
She looked down at his hand, waiting and offered. Slowly, she slid her hand into his. Sam’s fingers tenderly closed over hers.
She was moving forward, walking on nothing. A breath and a heartbeat later, his free hand cupped her cheek.
She closed her eyes as she began to drown, and his lips found hers. They brushed against her, cool and dry and soft as silk. She smelled cinnamon and pumpkin spice and night. She heard something tinkling, like pixie dust or magic. A breeze brushed through her long locks, and it felt like the gentlest fingers combing her hair.
She sighed across his lips.
And Sam deepened the kiss.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Meagan eyed the alleyway warily. Weak secondary lighting from the streets on either end of the grocery store illuminated the stretch of cement. Nothing moved in this murky, misty pre-dawn darkness. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to. It was like the shadows were waiting for something to emerge from their depths.
She and the wizard Draper had moved Lehrer’s body as far away from the mini-mall and that area of street as they felt they needed to go. They’d retreated to the alley behind a grocery store a few blocks away. The parking lot was deserted at this hour, but no doubt a manager or someone to do the stocking would be along any minute now. Meagan had no idea what time it was; she didn’t own a watch because like every other teenager in the world, she used her phone to tell time. But by the temperature in the air and the absolute calm of almost everything around her, she would guess it was around four in the morning.
This night had taken a veritable eternity.
Meagan remained knelt beside her teacher, her eyes on the enigmatic Hugh Draper. The wizard from the past was rummaging through the underbrush beside the alley. He reached over the low-lying cement wall that bordered one side to pick through and collect red and gold leaves that had fallen from the Maples and Oaks lining the store. Meagan watched him for a few silent minutes, and then finally asked, “What are you doing?”
“Coll
ecting magic,” he told her distractedly, his attention clearly on his task.
“In leaves?”
He looked up. “Magic moves through every living thing around us,” he told her.
She blinked. “What, you mean like ‘The Force’?”
He cocked his head to one side and gave her a quizzical look. “I have to admit that the travel spell does allow me to interpret the language of each time period with liberation, but I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that particular colloquialism. The Force?” he asked curiously.
Meagan shook her head in wonder. “Never mind.” She ran a hand over her face and let out a sigh. “Those leaves are dead. You said magic was in living things.”
“Some of these leaves still have just enough life left in them that I can use it. No sense in wasting it, and no sense in destroying a living plant when I can get what I need here instead.”
He moved back to Lehrer’s side and began to place the leaves, about three dozen of them, in a circle around Lehrer’s still body. Meagan tried to move back to afford him space, but he stopped her.
“Stay inside the circle. This will help with your broken nose too.”
It had been hurting her, throbbing gently but persistently. She was guessing she must have black eyes or something for him to know it was broken.
When Draper had nothing but a small opening in the circle remaining, he moved inside of it and knelt once more beside her teacher. Then he closed the circle with his last few leaves.
Meagan watched in apt silence as he began to chant. A few seconds later, the leaves started to glow, each one intensifying in its yellow, orange, or red color. All at once, streams of the same colored light erupted from the leaves’ surfaces and shot toward Draper. He continued to chant, apparently absorbing this energy, until the streams of light at once shot out from him to hit both Meagan and Mr. Lehrer.
It felt like liquid candy, like a sugar high and sunshine and taking a bath in a rainbow. Her nose made a crackling sound, a funny Pop Rocks kind of sensation, and the pain ebbed. It was wonderful.
The October Trilogy Complete Box Set Page 30