by Melody Raven
They hadn’t died, which was good, but it was impossible to not feel a bit defeated. Again. This was becoming a recurring theme when it came to Heather. Another reason why she didn’t want Derek to be alone tonight. These crushing thoughts were a bitch on a good day, and today wasn’t good.
She opened the door and once she got out, she leaned over to look at Derek. “Upstairs. Let’s go.” She thought she was going to have to put up more of a fight, but Derek pulled the key out of the ignition and climbed out.
“What happened out there?” he asked once they were in the elevator.
Sam didn’t know what to tell him. “Heather must have gotten to Bastian somehow. But when he fought her, when he fought her successfully, she was surprised. Tonight might not have gone how we wanted, but it didn’t go how she wanted either.”
“Magic,” muttered Derek. “The game where everyone loses.”
She frowned. “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
He winced. “I didn’t mean—” He reached out for her hand but seemed to belatedly remember that there was still remnants of the black ooze and blood on his skin and ripped his hand back.
“Don’t worry,” she assured him. “I know what you meant.”
Once they were in the apartment, she slid off her suit jacket and set it over the white armchair in the living room.
Derek shifted his weight awkwardly for a minute. “I guess I’ll go wash my hands.”
“No. I have a better idea.” She hooked a finger in his direction, motioning for him to follow her. Then she went into the bathroom and started to run the water in the state-of-the-art shower her grandmother had set her up with.
“Sam….”
“Shhh.” She reached up and loosened his tie before she tugged at the silky material and pulled it off his neck. “You are going to relax and let the hot water wash away all the darkness and stress. I’m going to let you have some time to yourself. And then when you’re done, you can decide if you want to go home….” She started to undo the buttons of his shirt. “Or if you want to stay here. With me.” The buttons were undone and she pushed the shirt and jacket off his shoulders.
He was looking at her as if he were debating skipping the shower altogether. “You make it sound like there’s a choice.”
She kept one hand on his jacket and shirt, making sure they didn’t fall to the floor, and instead she set them softly on the large vanity counter. “Well, I would be lying if I said there wasn’t one option I’m rooting for….” She should’ve just left him alone then, but with all of his strong chest and abs revealed, it was impossible not to reach out and set her fingers right over his heart.
“I keep on wanting to touch you,” he breathed, bringing up one of his hands, but never quite touching her face.
She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his chest, also working against everything in her to keep from jumping him right there. “You shower and relax. Take your time.” She looked up from under her lashes and met his eyes, trying to convey with just one look everything she wanted to do to him. “I’ll be outside and waiting for you when you’re done.”
He nodded, apparently incapable of speech anymore. She had to bite the inside of her cheek, trying to pull herself out of her need to pull him under the spray of warm water and take advantage of him right there. She wanted to give him some time to process. Besides, he already thought the magic was strange enough. She didn’t want him to know exactly how much the blood on his hands didn’t bother her.
Or maybe he knew about her darker side. She only knew about a handful of the times they’d shared before Claudia had worked her magic on her mind. When she was with Derek, it was so easy for all the stress of current events, including her memory loss, to slip away. It didn’t feel as if she were missing chunks. It just felt as if she was with a super sexy guy who looked at her as though she were the only woman in the world.
It felt like he had so much to give. Strength, warmth, love. And what did he get in return? He had to stab a guy tonight. A guy he might not have liked, but it wasn’t in self-defense or the heat of the moment either. She was taking this guy who thought the world of her and putting him in these situations that were incomprehensible.
How did someone that good get unlucky enough to fall in love with someone like her?
When she walked into her bedroom, she was too caught up in her own self-pity to realize that Heather was lying on her bed.
She was halfway across the room when her sister’s presence finally hit her. Sam stopped dead in her tracks, almost too shocked by what she was seeing to believe it. Heather lay on one side of the bed, her arms folded up behind her head. She’d kicked off her shoes in the corner and one leg was bent. She was in the same dress she’d been in when Sam had just seen her, and she wasn’t killing Sam, so that had to be a plus….
“Hey Sammy,” said Heather in a wistful tone.
“What—” The words came out of her mouth in a cracked and dry tone, almost as though she’d forgotten how to speak. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, obviously the meeting with Claudia was a disaster. What the hell is up with Bastian? Did you know he wasn’t a witch?”
Heather was speaking as though nothing was wrong. As though they were two sisters just gossiping about their grandmother’s employee…. She eyed the door and debated her chances.
“Don’t think about it,” warned Heather. “If you run, I’d have to chase you and you know how that would work. And if you scream, your sexy beast will try to save you and then I’d have to stop him. So maybe you should just act like my goddamn sister and talk to me for a few minutes.”
The mention of Derek was what got to her. The last time he’d been alone with Heather, he said she’d paralyzed him completely. And considering what had happened earlier, Heather was angry and unpredictable. She didn’t want Derek stuck with an alone and unpredictable witch supercharged with dark magic. “Okay, you’ve got me. What do you want to talk about?”
“I already told you. What do you know about Bastian?”
Sam shrugged. “Not much. Claudia trusts him and he seems completely loyal to her.” Sam remembered something else. “Mom didn’t know him, which was strange since she knows everyone.”
Heather snickered. “Figures he’d be Claudia’s dirty little secret.”
“What do you mean? Do you know what he is?”
“Let’s put it this way. I put very clear commands into that man to listen to everything I say. When I told him to kill Claudia, he had a mental overload. Do you know what that means?”
“I’m sorry, I skipped that day of school when they went into compelling someone to kill your family members.”
Heather scoffed. “Well, that means your sweet and innocent grandmother already had her mind control on him.”
“What?”
“He’s not a witch, which means he can be controlled by us. The reason my commands fried his brain was because it was directly contradicting an earlier command. By Claudia. No wonder she trusts him. She was controlling his every move.”
Sam really hated how much sense that made to her. Claudia had trusted him implicitly and he hadn’t even considered keeping any information from her, even when Sam had really wanted him to keep his mouth shut. “He’s not human, though. I’ve seen him get into people’s heads. He’s better at it than I am.”
“Which isn’t saying much.”
Sam blinked a few times. Somehow in the few short minutes they’d been talking, she’d already forgotten what her sister was capable of. So somehow the subtle stinging comment about her magic had caught her off guard. Damn it, she needed to stay on alert. She needed to remember that she wasn’t having a pleasant conversation with her sister. She was talking with the enemy.
“So he’s not human but not one of us…. Damn, that’s intriguing. Maybe the next time I get my claws into his neck, I’ll figure it out.” Heather started to run her nails against each other as though just imagining sticking them into
Bastian. It was still her sister, but now she was half animal.
“If that’s all you want, can you please leave? I don’t want Derek to see you.” Not exactly the wording Sam wanted to use, but she really didn’t want to piss Heather off. No telling what she’d do when she was angry.
Fuck, Sam hated being this vulnerable.
“All I want? Haven’t you been listening, Sam? I need to find that binding agent Claudia used for the spell.”
“Well, I don’t know where she keeps anything.”
“Then help me find it.”
“I can’t help—”
Heather sat up on the bed and looked at Sam with the pouty little look that had gotten her anything she wanted a child.
“We’re not kids anymore,” said Sam, hoping her refusal wouldn’t cause a blowback she’d regret.
“Look around you. Look at everything that’s happening. You’re going out on a limb to protect Claudia, but what has she done to deserve your protection? She’s used you. Lied to you. Wants to kill your boyfriend. Stop protecting her. Stop helping her.”
It was impossible to defend some of the things Claudia had done recently, but she wasn’t just defending her grandmother. She was literally picking the lesser of two evils. “How could you hurt Derek’s father?” she said instead. The twenty nameless people were probably blips on the radar to Heather, but she had to use what she knew. Heather knew how she felt, or at least how she used to feel, about Derek, and she’d purposefully set out to hurt his family. That was a purposeful dig aimed at Sam and she couldn’t pretend it didn’t happen.
“Sammy, I—” Heather broke off and for the first time in a while, Sam saw some emotion there. Heather looked down as she sucked in a breath. “You don’t understand what is happening. When I first got this power, I didn’t know what I was doing. How to control it. How to keep myself. But things are different now. I’m stronger and I’m getting stronger every day. The darkness isn’t taking over. We’re working together, our synergy enough to take on even the strongest witch in the world. But when I bring the rest of the darkness out, things will change. It’s going to try to take over. To overrule all my free will. If I find this binding agent, I can control it. These horrible things I’ve done? That’s not me. You know that’s not me. Everything I’m doing, everything I’m working for is to help us. Claudia has overstepped her bounds multiple times and she needs to be stopped. I have been blessed with the ability to do it. Now, please, help me. And there won’t be any more people getting hurt. No more pain.”
“But you still have to do the ritual, right? Six people have to die. And then Claudia.” And as much as Heather liked to talk about control, she’d killed those ten coworkers of Bob Pierce just a few days ago. But for the first time, something hit her. Heather wasn’t lying. Everything she said was the complete truth to her. She honestly believed she was doing this for good. She believed Claudia was evil and needed to be stopped.
The water suddenly turned off and Sam knew Derek was going to come into the room any minute now. She didn’t have time to delay or think. She needed to give Heather an answer now.
She took one deep breath and released it as she braced herself for what was about to happen. Then she looked up and met Heather’s eyes. “Okay. I’m going to help you kill Claudia.”
“You told her you were going to what?” shouted Derek. Sam flinched and he immediately regretted yelling, but even she had to admit it was a damn stupid thing to do.
Sam threw her hands up in exasperation. “I didn’t know what to do!”
“You say no!”
“She’s a witch who was more powerful before this all happened and now she’s supercharged with dark magic. Saying no wasn’t really an option.”
“Yeah, but she likes you, right? Theoretically you and your mother are the safest people in the world right now.”
“Derek, you were just in the other room, though. Maybe I was safe but….”
Derek ran a hand through his still wet hair. Damn it, she’d done it for him. That somehow made it worse and better at the same time. This was what he wanted. Sam to care about him like he cared about her. But he didn’t want her to make a literal deal with the devil to prove it.
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, we’re not going to actually kill Claudia. But we need to act like we’re entertaining the idea.”
“I don’t want to sound defeatist, but if Claudia can’t stop her, what are we supposed to do?”
Sam stiffened and Derek knew the point had been something she’d thought of before. “Claudia can stop her.”
“Well, it’s about damn time for her to step up.”
“She’s powerful enough to do it. The problem is that Heather is powerful enough to make it difficult. Tonight Claudia could’ve taken Heather down if Heather hadn’t thought she had Bastian under her control. It was a surprise. That’s where things get tricky. Heather always has surprises up her sleeve. We just have to get our own.”
“You want to surprise the girl who knows everything about you and your family, including the grandmother she wants to kill?”
Sam sighed and her shoulders slumped.
“Okay,” said Derek. “It’s been a long day. Maybe we should take a beat and we can work on this tomorrow.”
Sam was quiet and Derek just gave in to temptation and wrapped her up in his arms for a tight hug. He wanted to comfort her, but he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that part of it was for him. He wanted Sam in his arms. He wanted to forget about all this shit even as it felt as though it was piling up on him. He was only wearing the towel and was still wet, but she didn’t mind as she hugged him back.
“Derek, I have to tell you something.”
“Is it going to terrify me?”
She shook her head against him. “No. Maybe. But I have to say it out loud.” Still holding him, she leaned her head back so she could look up at him. “When Heather was here, she was rambling on about the darkness and how she was gaining more and more control over it.”
“And did you start to believe her?”
“No, but….”
Derek waited for her to continue.
“Bastian mentioned about a run-in Claudia had with the darkness before. A lot of people died but Claudia was able to defeat it. I think that’s what Heather is looking for, the binding agent that was used in that spell. If Heather got it, there’s a chance she’s right. There’s a chance she could control it. I mean, except for Claudia, Heather is one of the strongest witches I’ve ever met and that includes my mother. If anyone could do it, it would be her.”
“And why are you telling me this?” Sam started to pull away, but he held her tighter, not letting her go. And when a tear escaped the corner of one of her eyes, he wiped it away. “It’s okay. You can be honest.”
“I’m telling you because I want to believe her. And part of me does believe it. That if I go against Claudia and get Heather whatever was used in the spell to stop the darkness, Heather can get control of it and I’ll have my sister back.”
Derek was quiet because he knew Sam already knew what he would say.
“But I can’t let myself believe it. After everything that has happened, I know she has to die. But I want you to know, just between us, that I was tempted. And if it looks like I’m becoming convinced, I need you to pull me back. I need you to remind me why she has to be stopped.”
Instead of saying anything, he bent forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Don’t worry. We’ll stop her. And whatever you need, I’m going to be there for you.”
Because no matter who Heather was related to, she’d hurt his family, she’d hurt him, and she’d hurt Sam.
One way or another, her days on this earth were limited.
Claire picked up the fork and twisted it in her hand. She wanted to run and abandon this whole stupid idea, but she knew she needed to at least see Dante. If she suddenly disappeared out of his life after what had happened, that would just raise suspicions. Sh
e needed to pretend she just wasn’t interested. It was a nice dance, but they hadn’t exactly pledged eternal love to each other.
If Claire backed off, there shouldn’t be any suspicions raised. She just needed to be calm, tell him that she wasn’t ready for a relationship. Considering all the shit she’d been through lately, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a good reason. After Tommy Collins, he would probably understand if she never wanted to be in a relationship for the rest of her life.
There. She was cool, calm, and….
“Hey stranger.” Dante came up behind her and set an arm on her shoulder.
Claire jumped at his unexpected arrival. The shirt she’d borrowed from Sam this time was a loose knit black tank top with an intricate pattern sown in. Except it left her shoulders mostly bare so when Dante touched her, it was bare skin on bare skin.
He didn’t start to scream and collapse in pain, so that was a good sign.
“Hey.” She rolled her shoulder out from his touch. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah.” He took a seat across from her, but the small table at the little bakery didn’t give her a lot of space.
She’d chosen a bakery because they had food and coffee, so it was a good morning spot, but it wasn’t exactly a sit-down place that served an entire meal so it wouldn’t take as long.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Dante shrugged as he picked up the little menu, glancing at it for two seconds and throwing it back on the table. “I feel fine now. Hell of a hangover the next day, but it’s gone now. How about you? I took you out for a good time and ended up passed out on the floor. Which, ironically, is usually the sign of a great time….”
Claire found herself smiling, something she hadn’t done since Jackson’s little visit yesterday. Dante wore jeans and a green and black patterned flannel shirt that was open to reveal a black shirt underneath that stretched across muscles that would have most girls drooling.
Okay, had Claire drooling too, but she needed to stop that right now. “So, um, I wanted to apologize,” she said.