The Chosen Coven Series Box Set

by D L Blade

  I nodded my head, and she walked down the hall toward the stairs which led to the second level, and I walked to that door. I slipped the key in and it unlocked. It worked on all the locks. I turned the wheel, and it opened the door.

  It wasn’t a safe. The only thing in the there was a coffin, which stood at the center of the room.

  I walked slowly to the coffin, placed my hands on the lid, and lifted it. There was a handsome man inside. He looked dead, but no different from Jade or Maurice.

  I placed my hand on his chest, and I felt it rise. He was alive, or, undead.

  A vampire.

  He looked so familiar to me. I pulled my hands up to his face and closed my eyes. I didn’t know what was wrong, so I didn’t know how I could help this man, but I allowed my powers to come through me and into him. After a few moments, his eyes opened, and he looked right at me.

  “Mercy, you’re okay.” He sat up and reached for me, but I stepped back, almost stumbling over my feet.

  “Who . . . who are you? Do I know you?” My voice trembled.

  His eyes were glistening, and his tortured stare answered my questions. I was someone he cared about.

  I must know and care for him.

  He climbed out of the coffin and walked toward me, holding up his hands. “I won’t hurt you.”

  This time, when he reached for me, I didn’t move back. Instead, I stepped toward him, touching his icy cold fingers. “My name is Dorian. And we were in love centuries ago. All I remember is Maurice telling me that he needed me as leverage if you refused to cooperate. It was a witch that put me under a spell in here. You can’t trust them.”

  “I know. I don’t remember who I was, but I know all of this was a lie.”

  Dorian’s eyes looked heavy, and he didn’t look well. “You look sick,” I said to him.

  “I need to feed.”

  “So, you’re a vampire, then?”

  He nodded.

  “Here.” I pulled my hair to the side, not even hesitating to help him. “Please, it’s okay. Drink.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. Not your blood. I need to be able to use my vampire strength to help you.”

  I creased my brow. “I don’t understand.”

  His eyes stared into mine. He inched closer, and for a moment, I hesitated, started to step back, but I stopped. He leaned in and placed his lips to mine and deepened the kiss.

  The fire that burned inside me leaped to the surface, aching for more of his touch. His taste was familiar, his touch was a memory. My mind was in the moment, then it wasn’t. I remembered the first time our lips touched, but it was a different life. We were different. It was long ago.

  Dorian! I remembered him.

  Julian did this.

  I saw it happen. Julian had placed his hands over my temples outside of Dorian’s car. I grabbed at his wrist and tried to use my powers, but it happened so fast. He pulled at my hair and yanked me down until my knees crushed into the pavement on the side of the road. Dorian had screamed for me in the distance.

  When I came to, I looked at Dorian and smiled with relief. I was back. I remembered everything.

  “You remember?”

  I nodded. “I remember.”

  He grabbed my hand as we heard the floorboard creek outside the room. “You have ten minutes to get as far away from here as possible,” Jade said. “Julian is on his way back.”

  “We have to go, Mercy. Now!”

  “Wait,” Jade said.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s daylight. He can’t leave.”

  I looked at Dorian and my eyes widened. “You must turn back. You must, Dorian.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t have a choice. You’re going to be dead when he gets here. You can’t help me fight if you’re dead,” I said as panic rose in my chest.

  He hesitated but grabbed my hand. “Okay.”

  I felt the pounding of my heart against my chest as I held my wrist up to his lips. Then he bit down.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the blood drain from my veins and enter his mouth. The feeling of euphoria took over, and when I opened my eyes, tears welled in his.

  I placed my hand on his cheek, feeling the warmth as his skin came back to life.

  “You don’t have time to have a moment, you two. Go,” Jade said.

  When we reached the door, I turned to Jade. “He’s going to kill you for helping us.”

  “I know, and I don’t care.”

  No. This wasn’t right. “I can turn you back, too. Right now. You can come with us. You don’t deserve this.”

  She laughed. “Yes, I do. I’ve done disturbing things, Mercy. I deserve to die for what I’ve done. He doesn’t love me, and he was the only reason I allowed myself to stay alive all these years. I don’t want to be a vampire, but I also don’t want to be human because I know that the moment my soul returns, I will be haunted by the guilt of everything I have done. I’m ready to die.”

  I turned to Dorian and shook my head. “No!” I turned back to her. “No!”

  “We have to go, Mercy.”

  “I can’t leave,” I said. “Jade, please. Let me turn you.”

  She shook her head, a tear running down her face. “Get out of here. Now, or I’ll put you both in that coffin.”

  Dorian grabbed my wrist, yanking me out of the house, me resisting him the whole way. I’ll force her if I must. She wasn’t going to sacrifice herself like that. I didn’t know why I cared so much, but I did. Nothing about this was right. Maurice would not be the cause of her life being taken from this earth.

  I yanked free from his grip, running back to the house, but she was already on the porch, the sun beating down onto her pale white skin. The sun would be the weapon to take her life.

  “No!” I screamed as I watched her body burst into flames. It didn’t last long. Not for a vampire. She was ash before she could scream.

  I fell to my knees. I had never seen a vampire die by the sun before. It was always so quick, with a flick of my wrist while I gripped to a stake. This was something else. This wasn’t a sight I was prepared for.

  “Now, Mercy. We have to go now.”

  I felt his hands on mine again, pulling me away from that prison we were held in. A prison that, moments ago, I believed to be my home. I believed it to be the place I shared with a man I loved. A lie. A fantasy created by a demented narcissist. He wouldn’t win today. Not with me. Not with Dorian. And not with Jade.

  We took off down the road. We had no money, no phone. I had no idea where we were going to go.

  We hurried down to the beach, and I spotted a couple sitting on the sand. “Excuse me. We have an emergency. Can I please use your phone? I have no money to give you. I’m sorry.”

  The man shook his head, put his arms around the woman, and walked away.

  Okay, I get it. We’re strangers. Not everyone will be that skeptical, though.

  I pointed to a teenager. “There.”

  This time, Dorian spoke. “Excuse me, we have an emergency. Can we borrow your phone for just one minute?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Um . . . sure, here.”

  “Thank you,” I said, grabbed the phone, and dialed Joel’s number, and he picked up right away. “Hello?”

  “Joel, it’s Mercy,” I said, relieved to hear his voice.

  “Mercy!” he said in reply. “You guys! It’s Mercy on the phone.” I heard shouts and commotion in the background.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Lily and Bradley came over tonight. Oh, Mercy, we’ve been so worried.”

  “Look, we don’t have a lot of time. We’re on the north side of the Huntington Beach Pier. We need you to teleport us home.”

  “Give me five minutes. I need to grab a map to pinpoint the exact location.”

  “Okay, see you soon.”

  I hung up the phone and handed it back to the girl. “Thank you again.”

  The girl continued down to the pie
r and we were alone again, and that was a relief as the portal was about to open.

  A few minutes later, the entrance to the vortex opened, and we stepped inside the portal. It zipped us through faster than it took for us to blink.

  We landed in the front living room, but no one was there. “Joel? Lily?” I called.

  “I’ll check the kitchen,” I said.

  Dorian eyed the back door. “I’ll check out back.”

  We split up, and I called for them again but heard nothing. I looked for Dorian near the back door, but I didn’t see him, so I walked out to the backyard.

  “Dorian?” I called.

  I then spotted the backside of . . .

  “Bradley?” He turned around, holding the carved-out end of our missing dagger.

  I stared at him, confusion clouded my senses and my heart pounding hard against my chest. “You guys found the dagger?” My question was stupid. No, that’s not what this was. Especially after seeing the face Bradley was giving me.

  His face read hatred and disgust.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked. He gestured with his other hand to the right. Sitting under their willow tree were three bodies, sprawled out. I could see their chests rising and falling. They weren’t dead.

  I looked back at Bradley. “What did you do to them? Why are you doing this? Who are you?”

  My questions came out fast, one after another, without skipping a beat. I didn’t understand any of this, but I was ready to kill this asshole as soon as I had answers.

  “I really didn’t think we’d ever see you again, but I’m glad I’ve kept the dagger with me everywhere I went, just in case,” he said, snickering. “What a great opportunity to catch you off guard, once you came through that portal.” He spoke in an accent I hadn’t heard coming from his mouth before. He was British, and before I could speak again, he continued. “You’re just as stupid and careless as your father.”

  What? This is about my dad?

  “You knew my father?”

  He pulled his glasses off, and tossed them on the yard. His face was hard and furious. “Your father killed my wife.”

  I was stunned silent for a minute. I remembered my father’s story about the woman he had accidentally killed. He wasn’t able to stop before he took too much of her blood. He escaped before the husband came back, but he watched the man through the bedroom window, holding his wife until she slipped away in his arms.

  “I’m sorry about your wife, Bradley, but what does that have to do with me? Your quarrel is with my father, and he died yesterday. Maurice killed him right in front of me.”

  I understood the need for revenge, but no one would go through this much trouble for revenge. Why kill innocent people? For one person?

  All of this. All of the death couldn’t be because my father killed his wife, unless it screwed up his head so badly, he was acting without any remorse.

  He stepped toward me, and I raised my hands, ready to use my powers.

  “Ah. Ah. I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned. Then, he gestured toward Dorian and my family, laying on the ground. “There is magic connecting me to them. If you kill me, they’ll die in less than a minute.”

  “How?” I asked, my voice steady. Finally gaining composure.

  “Ha! I’m not going to tell you how the spell works, my dear.”

  I cringed at the sound of him calling me “dear.”

  “No, how did you do it? The killings? Was there a vampire doing your dirty work?”

  He stepped toward me, and I moved back. “No. That was all me.” He pulled something out of his pocket and held it up, smiling. A proud grin pulled at his lips. “I designed this after I mastered my plan to draw you out. How to entice you to kill your own father.”

  I narrowed my eyes in on an object that looked like vampire fangs. Two prongs, a little over an inch apart from each other, connected by black rope or string.

  “It makes the perfect bite mark into one’s neck.”

  He was crazy. And I was pissed. His need for revenge was so powerful, he had taken innocent lives.

  “But they were innocent, Bradley. You killed humans. People who had families who cared about them. Have you no shame for what you’ve done? All for what? So that I’d think it was my father and kill him to avenge your wife?”

  He placed the fang device back into his pocket, and I could see him gripping the dagger tightly in his other palm. “No one is innocent, especially not you. After you turned your father back into a human, I knew I couldn’t continue with the original plan. But me killing his daughter? Now, that’s rich. The perfect revenge. An eye for an eye. You’re the one person he loved on this earth.” He stepped closer, but when I moved back, my backside hit a patio post. “I was hesitant at first, because we witches would be without Spirit again, but then I thought about it.” He tapped the dagger on his thigh, just as I had seen Kylan do at the cove a year ago. “Would the powers really leave this earth if a witch kills them? If I killed your coven, then I would gain your powers, right? You kill a witch, you get their power.”

  “I don’t think it works like that with the Chosen Ones, Bradley.”

  “Your mother thought so, didn’t she? Isn’t that why she tried to kill you?”

  He was right. It wasn’t a scenario that had really crossed our minds since this all started. We were so worried about vampires coming after us, we didn’t think about the fact that other witches could also want us dead in order to take our power.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You’d have to get close enough to me first.” I held up my hands, ready to fight him. But I couldn’t kill him until the spell on my family was released. I had to disempower him somehow.

  Before he took a step closer, I released my energy, blasting him up into the air and flying him back toward the back fence. Once he hit, the dagger flew from his hands.

  I dashed for it.

  I didn’t get far. He had my legs pinned to the ground and yanked me closer to him. I punched him hard in his face, but he barely flinched. He grabbed my head, and I felt dizziness take over. The power he had was something I hadn’t encountered before from other witches. He created a sense of vertigo in my head, and I was on the verge of throwing up, but I kept my hands steady as I released more of my powers. I tried to summon the earth around me, the dirt, the trees, the air, fire, but nothing worked. I couldn’t focus enough with the pounding going on in my head to conjure up my magic. He was crippling me as if I had overdosed on drugs.

  “Stop it, Bradley. You don’t want to do this. My powers will kill you if you take them. You can’t handle this amount of power.”

  He just laughed at me, while continuing to distort my mind.

  My pleading was pointless, but I had to try something. I brought my knee up and kicked him in the groin, causing him to fall to his side. I was on my feet before he could grab me, and I side kicked him, causing him to fly through the air and slam into a tree.

  I blasted my powers toward him, and it kept him pinned to the ground. I gripped his throat and threw a punch, but when his hands lifted, he shot back powers I hadn’t seen coming, and I flew through the air, landing on my back.

  Just as I looked up, I saw Bradley’s face in doubles, triples, a blur of confusion. He was now on top of me, pressing his hand to my head, causing an extreme amount of vertigo, and I could no longer use my powers on him. I tried to lift my fist, but I missed his body, and he gripped my arm, pulling it back down.

  Once my hand was free to strike again, I mustered up every ounce of power I had in my body. Not from my magic, but from my own physical strength. I lifted it up, slowly brought it back down to my body, and thrusted my fist forward with every ounce of strength that I had in me until my fist broke through his chest.

  I felt the crushing of his skin, his muscles, his sternum, and grabbed his heart firmly. I held on, his eyes wide open, blood pouring from his mouth, but before I yanked his heart from his chest, the piercing sound of a dagger plunged into
my stomach.

  With the dagger still in me, I squeezed his heart with my hand, and yanked it out of his chest.

  Bradley fell over my body, which caused him to push the dagger deeper into my belly, but I was able to push him off so I could sit up, but barely. Blood spewed out of my mouth, and I felt like I was choking.

  I eyed my family and Dorian and moved as fast as I could, though my body was weakening by the second. I covered each body with my hands, bringing them back from the brink of death. They’d all started to fade away after I ripped Bradley’s heart from his chest.

  I watched all three of their chests rise and fall. They were alive. I sighed with heavy relief, but I couldn’t hold on anymore. The power from the dagger was taking my life.

  I was going to die.

  “Mercy!” Dorian cried as I fell in his arms. My name was the last thing I heard before I slipped away.

  Mercy

  I looked down a long hallway where the walls were bright white. Was this heaven?

  I continued down the hallway until I reached a door, but when I placed my hand on the knob, my hand went through it and I stepped onto dark pavement. The air was thick, and the only things I saw in front of me were bodies walking shoulder to shoulder like a crowded street in a city. Most of the people walking looked lost, sad, or scared.

  No, this wasn’t heaven.

  “Excuse me,” I said to a young woman with golden blonde hair. She stopped and turned to me, her eyes widened, and her face looked terrified.

  “It’s you. That means . . .”

  I died. She meant to say that I had died.

  I nodded. “I think so. What is this place?

  She looked around as people passed by, ignoring us. “This is the underworld. It’s a place where the spirits go when their bodies are still connected to the earth in some way. I’m a vampire down there. You were here not so long ago.”

  I thought about her words. Vampires were undead, but their souls were taken from them when they were turned. Was this the place where they’d go?

  “We can’t move on until our bodies on earth die, or you help us come back using your blood. We’ve all hoped you’d save us; bring us back to our bodies and our consciousness. But now you’re here. Which means we’re doomed.”