Wicked Secrets
Page 22
In a scarily even and arrogant voice, Owen asked, “Or else what?” He smiled a putrid grin and reached down to clamp his hand around Sherry’s throat. Her shriek was muffled by the duct-tape over her mouth, but her green eyes went wide with renewed horror. Ember watched her friend struggle to scream, struggle for breath as Owen’s fingers tightened on her throat.
Ember choked on a scream of rage, fighting against the witches’ grasping hands. “Let go of her!” she cried, feeling the witches’ sharp nails digging into her shoulder and wrists. Fury boiled inside her. There was a fire building in her chest, and everything in her vision was washed a red haze. She glared at Owen, wishing he’d burst into flames.
Suddenly, he released Sherry’s throat and grinned viciously, his eyes glistening with hatred. God, she couldn’t stand it. She wouldn’t stand it. She would kill him; she’d kill him and his bitch minions for ever laying a hand on Sherry. They’d suffer for this. She wanted to make them suffer like she’d never wanted to hurt anyone before in her life.
Owen’s eyes fixed on her with glittering fervency, excited by the fear and anger on Ember’s face. “Tell me, Ember, will you risk Sherry’s life for that of Reid and Ricky? Will you let us kill her, to save your boyfriend? It’s Reid or Sherry. Which will you choose?” He laughed, and her stomach turned over. She wanted to make him shut up. Owen sounded absolutely out of his goddamned, twisted mind. He was enjoying watching her suffer, but he was unaware of the boiling rage inside her. Even when she bared her fangs in an animal hiss, he couldn’t have imagined the force of the ire inside her.
It built and built until something in her blood burst and spilled power into her every cell. Bloodlust engulfed her, her vision tinting red, and her vampire-witch magic bled into the air around her, sucking up energy. It felt white-hot, burning against her skin, but there was no pain. Just a rush of energy that threw sparks off her nerves, boiling under her skin.
Deadly quiet, she hissed, “I'll tell you one more time. Let her go or I swear to God. I. Will. Kill. You.” The sound of her own voice surprised her. It didn’t sound like her at all, so cold and flat, barely human. The scorching fire in her veins built in the tips of her fingers and flickered wildly in her chest, in her soul. She felt…powerful. She felt powerful and dangerous and so, so furious.
Behind her, the witches shifted uneasily, frightened. One of them gasped and dropped her hands from Ember’s shoulder, backing away. But Owen was so beside himself with excitement and arrogance that he simply laughed. It was a horrible, raw sound of sharp malevolence.
“What’re you going to do, Emy?” he taunted, grinning manically. He laughed again and reached down, grabbing a fistful of Sherry's hair at the roots, and pulling her head up to look Ember in the eyes. There was so much pain and terror in those familiar green eyes. Ember wanted to scream and cry and shriek at seeing her best friend treated like an abused animal.
Instead she channelled that energy into her fury, into her power and growled, “I warned you. And now you’re going to see how wrong you were to underestimate me.”
Some of the excitement faded from Owen’s face as Ember raised her hands. The pressure in her fingertips burst into flames – burning hot ribbons of fire wreathed her fingers. She broke free of the witches and spun, throwing out her hands toward them all. Flames shot out from her palms in seething, dancing ribbons, wrapping around each of the terrified girls.
The witches cried out in pain as the flames caught their clothes and charred their skin, but still they tried to fight back. They threw their own magic in pulses of light and warping the vegetation to bind her to the earth. Ember danced around the reaching roots and snapping vines, dodging the orbs of sizzling energy, laughing in amazement at her own power. It was a rush like nothing she’d ever felt – she could do anything she wanted; she could run for miles, she could smash rocks with her bare hands…she could burn them all to ashes. And she wanted to; she would do it.
Ember turned, swinging her arm, and lashed at Owen with a whip of flame. He tried to move aside, but didn’t move fast enough. It caught his shoulder, slicing his jacket open and leaving a thin, red welt across the skin. It didn’t burn him nearly as badly as it was burning the witches, and Ember snarled, wielding her fire again toward him. He spat some form of insult at her, but she didn’t listen, raising her hand back, getting ready to throw more flames at him…
But then she was hit abruptly in the chest by a huge force of pulsating energy. It was like being rammed by a bull, and she flew back several feet, landing with a thud and skittering across the dirt like a pebble on ice. Her elbow smashed into the ground, sending pain up her arm, and her head cracked against the solid earth. She saw white, and then black, and then the churning grey clouds hanging in the sky. The fire flowing from her fingertips dimmed and jumped, flickering out for a moment. But that moment was all it took for the witches to escape the flames’ deadly embrace.
Ember struggled to her feet, breathing hard as injuries began to heal, but not nearly fast enough. She saw Owen take a step toward Sherry and snarled in a thick voice, too dark and guttural to be human, “Stay the hell away from her!”
She cupped her hands and felt her palms tickle with heat as a bright, squirming ball of flame began to grow in the cage of her fingers. She didn’t know how she was doing it, controlling this power, but it felt as easy and natural as breathing. Like she’d always been able to do it. Like she was born with this ability.
With a yell, she hurled the orb of burning, crackling energy into Owen’s unprepared body. He had seen the fire building in her hands but he hadn’t expected such speed and such force. It knocked him breathless, hitting him in the gut and sending him flying to the ground several feet from where he originally stood. He barked out in surprise and pain as he landed, and Ember saw an almost perfect circle of charred skin where her fire had hit and burned through his t-shirt.
So, her fire could burn him after all, when he didn’t have time to defend himself. The realisation sunk in like acid eating into her brain cells. He must’ve been using some sort of protection spell. She immediately shot out a spray of flames from her hand, catching just his left side as he scrambled to get up. Owen yowled in agony as the heat sizzled against his skin, leaving more reddened flesh where it touched.
Ember took aim again but something – someone – slammed into her from behind, whacking her hand and sending the flash of fire awry. The witch who’d tackled her rolled her over and glared down at her with bright, grey eyes.
“You bitch!” Moonstone spat viciously, clawing at Ember’s face, despite the disgusting burnt skin on her own body that was slopping off. It was visible through the shredded fabric of her dress, like someone had coiled her in white-hot cables, wound them round her body to leave a distinct pattern of wounds all over her, cracked and black at the edges, and seeping clear liquid.
The dark-haired witch hissed and screamed, slashing at Ember, trying to tear her face off. The other witches stood nearby, faces twisted into evil smirks as their fingers glowed with an unholy light that was steadily growing into a blinding luminescence.
Ember tried to fight off the bigger girl, but she was too heavy to move, and Ember cursed her own petite stature. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Owen stirring, trying to get to his feet. Crap. She needed to get the witches out of the way. But then the witches released that blinding light, blasted her with it, and she let out a scream of agony. Her back arched as a violent force zapped through her like a lightning bolt, from her head to her toes and every muscle in between. It felt like she was in an electric chair.
She gritted her teeth on another scream and forced her spasming arm up, feeling searing heat in her fingers. She grabbed a fistful of Moonstone's cropped hair and pressed the pads of her fingers into the witch’s scalp, hearing the awful sizzling, popping noise it made, like bacon in a pan or a branding iron on cattle. The witch screamed and tore away, clambering away from Ember with several piercing shrieks. Ember looked down at h
er fingers and found melted flesh and hair clinging to them. She gagged and wiped the remains of the witch’s scalp onto the grass.
She scrambled to her feet and pulled herself together, drawing on her power to lash out with a whip of flame. Bright and narrow, it cut into the torsos of all four witches. The witches let out howls of pain as the flame slashed their skin, leaving it blackened and bleeding, looking as if someone had cut them with flaming swords.
While the witches staggered back, shrieking words of hatred and agony, Ember turned to Owen, who was almost fully on his feet. She didn’t get the chance to attack him before one witch lunged at her back, grabbing her around the neck from behind and choking her, while stabbing her fingers into Ember’s spine and sending threads of paralytic energy through her body. Willow and Moonstone giggled manically as Ginger continued to use her power to rip apart Ember’s nerves. Ember screamed, and heard the piercing sound tear from her throat as if from a distance.
The fourth witch, Rainbow, was smiling, a horrid grin, right in front of her. “You forced our hand, Ember. We wanted you to join us and you refused. And it’s your own fault you’re about to see your best friend killed right in front of you.” Rainbow moved aside to let Ember see Owen, with one arm securely around Sherry’s waist, holding a sharp, evil-looking blade to her throat.
Ember wondered, somewhere in the back of her mind, why he’d choose a weapon like that, when he could easily kill her more cleanly with his magic. It seemed so mundane to use a knife. And Ember had long ago gotten used to the lack of mundane left in her life.
As if reading her mind, which maybe he was, Owen spoke up, “I’m going to slit her throat so that when her blood spills, you won’t be able to resist draining her dry. I’ll do the damage, but you will ultimately kill her. Shows what you get for being a vampire.” He sneered and laughed; a booming, ugly laughter that echoed round the trees.
Ember swayed, her body still twitching and aching with the aftershocks of the witches’ attack. She could feel herself weakening, her strength fading. Wind whipped her hair around her face, obscuring her vision. “I won’t,” she rasped, but the confidence in her voice wavered. She could feel her fangs throbbing, the dry ache in her throat, the pain in her gums – the pain was familiar, the same ache she’d felt right before the first time she fed. After expending so much effort, she was hungry. She remembered the way she hadn’t been able to resist Reid’s blood when he put his bleeding wrist in front of her, remembered the way the pain had dissolved and left her feeling almost drugged.
But she wouldn’t feed on Sherry. She wouldn’t.
Ember drew a breath and straightened. “I won’t,” she said again, this time with more force. “I’m not the monster here – you are!” Her voice rose to a shout. Owen’s expression darkened, his eyes narrowing. Ember looked at Sherry, standing still and scared in Owen’s grip.
Owen’s eyes, black as coal in the descending darkness, met hers, and she saw that every last trace of humanity, every last tiny bit of the boy she once knew, was gone. “Say goodbye to your friend, Ember,” he said in a chillingly calm voice, his fingers tightening on the handle of the knife.
Absolute terror flashed in Sherry’s green eyes, matching the fear that struck Ember’s heart dead in her chest. That terror let loose something in Ember’s soul, a flood of power that had been held back in a subconscious dam until now. And, with a blood curdling scream, Ember felt power explode from her body, flames erupting all around her and shooting into the sky. The inferno blazed bright and fast as it swallowed the witches holding her, and circled behind Owen, leaving him and her in a ring of fire.
The witches screamed, high, thin shrieks of agony that couldn’t match the guttural intensity of the roar of the fire. Sherry’s eyes slid shut as she fainted, going limp in Owen’s grasp. He dropped her to the ground like an old rag-doll, gaping open-mouthed and wide-eyed at Ember. Time froze and they could’ve been staring at each other for seconds or centuries, before Owen fell to his knees, all traces of confidence and darkness gone from his face. He hadn’t known she had this level of power; she hadn’t known it herself. The witches had awakened this in her, and she’d killed them with it.
“Please, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! I’ll leave and never come back. I’ll do anything, just don't kill me please!” he screamed over the hissing of the flames, sobbing and gasping. The air was thick and hot with the stench of something meaty burning – the witches’ flesh. Ember looked down at Owen and only saw a pathetic little boy, frightened and pleading for his life. Then she looked at Sherry, lying limp and bruised on the grass, and everything inside her got very, very still and quiet.
She laid her gaze on Owen, who flinched as if she’d hit him, and said in a deadly calm voice, “Too late, you had your chance.”
She watched his eyes go wide in terror, and he opened his mouth to make one last desperate attempt for his life, but she didn’t give him the chance to speak before the flames engulfed him. His screams were doused by the crackle and roar of the inferno, and the stench of burning flesh was overwhelming. Ember looked away, but there was nothing left inside her now. She felt empty, hollow, like someone had scooped out all her emotions and thoughts and left the rest of her behind.
Slowly, the fire died away to reveal charred ground and a pile of charcoaled bones and ash. Ember turned to see four more piles of ash around her, where the witches had once stood. She took a moment, waiting for the reality of what had just happened to hit her, but it didn’t. She was exhausted and numb; her legs and hands started to tremble. Something inside her went weak as well – her power dripping away like blood from a wound, leaving her pitifully human. She was a creature reborn in fire, left new and weak in the aftermath.
She turned back to her unconscious friend on the ground, bruised and beaten, and somehow made her legs take her to Sherry’s side. She stood over her best friend for a long moment, before her knees finally gave out and she collapsed next to Sherry. She reached out a hand to stroke the tangled blonde hair of her limp friend, and the unconscious girl stirred. “Sherry? Sherry,” Ember breathed, barely hearing her own voice over the dying inferno that was melting away around them. Plumes of black smoke curled into the dark clouds, and the flickering bloody light of the fire lit everything in shades of red and gold.
“Mh,” Sherry groaned faintly, and Ember pulled the girl into her lap, resting her head on her leg and clutching one of her pale, bruised hands.
“Sherry.” Ember felt tears roll down her face as her voice cracked, and Sherry’s green eyes opened. The flicker of life tore down the last of Ember’s strength, and she found herself crying uncontrollably over her friend, hugging her weak, fragile body as if someone might come to take her away again.
“Ember,” Sherry whispered. “Is he...?” Her voice was so soft and raw that Ember could hardly hear her over her own sobs.
She nodded. “Yes, Sherz, he’s gone. For good. None of them are coming back. I’m so sorry I got you into this. So, so sorry. I–” Ember stopped, her voice breaking and a fresh wave of tears choking off the rest of her apology.
“Shh, Ember. Wasn’t your fault. You saved me. You saved me from them. Thank you.” Sherry’s simple, soothing words calmed a raging ocean of guilt and fear and horror inside her, and she finally found the strength to stop crying. Ember looked down and met the steady green gaze of her life-long best friend, and smiled weakly. Sherry smiled back, and that was the last thing Ember knew before the darkness of unconsciousness swallowed her up.
Chapter Nineteen
** Ember **
Ember awoke to the patter of icy rain on her face, and a sharp breeze making her shiver. She took a deep breath of the crisp October air and pulled herself gently into a sitting position. Slowly, focus dawned on her, and memories flooded her mind. Distantly, she knew she should have felt guilty – she had killed five people. But all she felt was an ache in the back of her head, and a sense that a lot of time had passed since she’d last been awake.
“Sherry?” She twisted round and found her friend lying nearby. She shook the sleeping girl’s leg and Sherry stirred with a mumble. “Sherz, we need to get back. Time to wake up.” Ember shook Sherry again and she opened her eyes to stare blankly around them. She looked puzzled for a moment, before realisation bloomed on her face and she looked like she might cry. Ember moved to wrap her arms around her friend. “Shh, it’s okay Sherz. Remember, we’re safe now. We’ll find our way back to school, and everything will be okay.” And I’ll beg Reid for forgiveness, and hope he still wants to be with me after I acted like the world’s stupidest girlfriend. God, I wish he was here right now, Ember thought, sadness seeping in at last. She bit her lip. She could have used his arms around her, strong and comforting, and he undoubtedly would’ve had some witty comment that would have made her smile.
Get out of the forest first, and then deal with boy problems, she thought, shaking her head to clear it. She nudged Sherry’s arm, helping her sit up. “Come on. Are you hurt? Can you walk?” Ember questioned her friend gently, looking her over carefully. She was covered in dirt and scratches, and the bruise on her jaw had turned a lovely shade of purple, but she was all in one piece. Ember tried not to think about how close she’d really come to losing her best friend.