Born Dark

by H G Lynch

  “You’re cruel, you know that? I’ve barely seen you in four days and the last time I saw you, you were in that goddamned bikini, and now you tease me like this? Demon!” He sighed and pushed himself into a sitting position again.

  She shrugged. “Your own fault. You were stupid enough to listen to a witch and stay away from me. You had me a little worried so this is your punishment.” Ember grinned and sat down on Ricky’s bed casually.

  “C’est la Vie,” Reid muttered and then focused again. “So, how did you figure I’d seen the witch on Saturday?” he asked seriously.

  “Oh, she said you had. Well what she really said was, ‘I met one of the witches on Saturday and she said some things. And I realised she was right. We’re just not right for each other’,” Ember quoted dramatically. She snorted. “Whatever she said to you on Saturday, she was not right. I don’t care if she rattled off a hundred reasons for us to not be together. I have one reason for us to stay together, and it should beat them all,” Ember said smartly, meeting his curious gaze evenly.

  “And what might that be?” He asked his eyes alight. Ember smiled genuinely and leaned over to stroke his face gently.

  “I care about you. And I know you care about me, too. Even if our relationship is complicated, that much is true and simple.” She saw his blue eyes glow and a sweet smile spread across his mouth before he kissed her. It was a different kind of kiss to usual; it was slow and sweet and gentle. And it made her heart ache - in a good way. He pulled away and looked at her, brows pitched up worriedly.

  “You know I was only avoiding you for your own good, right? The witch threatened to hurt you, said I would only put you in danger. I guess I forgot that you can fight for yourself.” He smiled a little but his eyes were full of remorse. “And it was nearly impossible to stay away from you that long. I kept getting images of you in the bikini. My dreams have been pretty lurid since Friday.” And he was back to being same old Reid. Ember laughed and he flashed a dazzling grin before pulling her over to him and sitting her down on his lap sideways. She leaned her head on his chest as he held her, and she could feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt, and hear the beating of his undead heart. That witch was wrong. Vampires and humans weren’t all that different. They both bled, and killed and loved. It didn’t matter that one was prey and the other the predator. All that mattered were the emotions. And of course, the fangs were important. Just because they were so damn hot.

  After an hour or so, Ember left Reid with the excuse that she had homework to do. It was a lie – well, she did have homework to do, but that wasn’t why she was leaving their cuddling session. She was leaving because she kept thinking about that damned witch and the way she’d been trying to play her and Reid apart. It made her furious. So furious, in fact, that she returned to the forest in search of a confrontation. If nothing else, she wanted to slap the witch stupid or, at the very least, give her a good earful of insults. Not that it would do any of them any good, but it might make her feel a little better, and it would show the witches she wasn’t fooled by their plot, their games. She wasn’t giving Reid up without a fight. She’d spent too much time figuring out she cared about him to let anyone mess it up now.

  So she ducked out of the dorm building, careful not to slam the door, and stormed across the parking lot and into the trees. Her feet flawlessly remembered the path to her tree, dead brown leaves crunching under her boots. She felt certain that the witches would show up if she just hung around for long enough, but she didn’t feel like waiting, so as soon as she got to her tree, she snapped off a branch nearly as thick as her wrist and started to shout.

  “Hey, witchy! I know you’re out here! Why don’t you show yourself, you pathetic coward! And no disguises this time! Yeah, that’s right, I knew it wasn’t Reid! You’re not as smart as you think, you magical freak!” she yelled, knowing that witch was still hanging around. She could feel it, sense someone else nearby.

  And then she heard the snap of a twig behind her and she spun, pointing her branch like a sword out in front of her. The tip hovered at a girl’s throat, just above the collar of her green shirt. The girl had wavy brown hair and doe-like brown eyes. Ember recognised her as one of the witches immediately and narrowed her eyes to a glare. The girl just stared back with an annoying kind of innocence, her hands staying by her sides. Ember didn’t lower her branch as she spoke, though she wasn’t sure how much damage she could do with it if the witch decided to attack her. Reid would kill her if he knew she was out here, picking a fight with a witch, but it needed to be done; Ember wanted to make it clear to these witches that just because she was small and human, that didn’t mean she wasn’t a threat. It didn’t mean she wouldn’t fight them every way she could. They were threatening her and her friends, and she wasn’t going to stand for it. Ember had never taken threats very well – about as well as she took commands, which wasn’t well at all. She dealt with them even less well when they were aimed at those she cared about.

  Ember smirked thinly at the witch, lifting her chin and jabbing the end of her branch into the girl’s throat just enough to make a point. “Hello there, witch,” she spat the word like it was an insult. It might as well have been. Ember was currently ranking the witches somewhere below Kara, and just slightly above Joseph the Werewolf. She took a close look at the brown-haired girl. She looked completely normally, pretty enough, even a little plain. She looked harmless. But Ember knew she wasn’t. “I take it you’re the one who thought you could fool me with your little disguise. It was a neat trick, but there’s something you should know if you want to pretend to be my boyfriend: He wouldn’t dare call me babe.” Ember stepped a little closer, invading the witch’s personal space. The girl’s eyes narrowed at last but she didn’t so much as twitch. That was a smart move, because Ember was very tempted to do something nasty with this branch the second the witch showed the slightest sign of attacking.

  “You want to know why he’d never call me babe?” Ember continued, ignoring the dark look the witch was giving her. She’d had scarier glares from her mother. She went on without waiting for the witch to answer. “He wouldn’t dare because he knows it would piss me off. He really doesn’t want to piss me off. Not just because I’m his girlfriend and he cares about me, blah, blah. No, he doesn’t want to piss me off because bad things happen to those who annoy me.” She wasn’t thinking of Kara or even Reid himself, but of a girl who’d bullied her at her last school. One day, Ember had gotten so fed up of the bullying that she’d collected some spiders from her garden and carried them to school in a plastic container. Then, when the girl had left her bag unattended for a moment, Ember had loosed the spiders into her schoolbag. When the girl picked up her schoolbag, the spiders crawled onto her hand and up her arm. The screaming had been heard all the way across school. And, of course, nobody had seen Ember do it, so she got away with it, but she made sure the girl knew the spiders were from her. That girl never bullied her again.

  Ember smiled viciously at the memory. People so often underestimated her. This witch had done the same, and now look where she was – on the end of a very pointy stick aimed at her jugular. And she did not look happy about it. “Guess what witchy?” Ember crooned in a sugar sweet voice, the one she used when she was really, really angry. She’d worked out that it disturbed people when she used the voice while smirking at them. Usually, they shied away or stared at her like she was crazy. The witch’s expression didn’t change, but it didn’t dissuade Ember from lifting her branch to tap it against the girl’s jaw, like a Victorian teacher might have done to chastise a student not sitting properly in class. “You pissed me off. So now bad things are going to happen to you. Do you understand?” Ember tipped her head down to glower sinisterly at the witch through her lashes. The witch looked murderous. It only made Ember smile more. Until she heard the crunching of leaves under feet behind her.

  Keeping her branch steady at the brown-haired witch’s throat, Ember whirled, wishing she had another weap
on as the three other witches slunk out of the trees around her, stalking her like a pack of wolves. She recognised the crop-haired one as the leader and met her glare with even fierceness. The ginger girl, with her wild mane of orange hair, had a lethal look about her, so Ember kept track of her in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t take her gaze off Croppy, because she knew the others would not attack without some signal from their leader. Both Ginger and Rainbow stopped when Croppy held up a hand, confirming what Ember had thought.

  Ember gritted her teeth, determined not to show fear. She was outnumbered now, surrounded, and nobody else knew where she was right now. If something happened to her, if these witches attacked her or kidnapped her, how long would it be before somebody started to worry? An hour, two, more? She pushed away the thoughts, focussing on the witches instead. Panicking wouldn’t do her any good. But maybe she could find a way out of here, make a break for it. If she could just get close enough to the dorms, she’d be safe. Surely the witches wouldn’t follow her across the parking lot in broad daylight, not with other students milling about. Of course, if worse came to worst, she could send Reid a telepathic yell for help. She wasn’t sure he’d hear it from this distance, but it was worth a shot if she got desperate.

  “Well now,” Croppy said, smiling a condescending little smile that made Ember want to rip her face off, “I guess our little plan didn’t quite work, did it? But you know what, Ember? It doesn’t matter because here you are, all alone, and here we are. And you’ve rather annoyed us as well, siding with the vampires.” Croppy frowned, shaking her head as if in disappointment. Ember continued to glower at her, uncomfortable because she couldn’t see the brown-haired witch or the one with the rainbow streaks in her hair properly. Either one could lunge at her and she probably wouldn’t have time to react.

  But Croppy continued to talking in a sincere sort of voice that made Ember bristle. “But, Ember, this doesn’t have to end badly for you. If you walk away right now, leave the vampires to us and don’t interfere, we can overlook your…indiscretions. We’ll leave you and your friend alone.”

  Ember made a disgusted sound. “And what will you do to the vampires?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.

  Croppy didn’t even hesitate before answering in a flat tone. “We’ll kill them. But that shouldn’t matter to you. They are predators, killers even, who feed on innocent humans. They manipulate them with their mind powers and then they suck their blood. Vampires are evil creatures who must be gotten rid of. Help us, help us destroy them, and we’ll give you whatever you want. We can teach you spells that work for humans, we have money, we have power.”

  For a moment, Ember made a show of considered her offer, and then smiled sweetly. “Thanks but no thanks, witchy. I think I’ll stick with my blood-sucking boyfriend. However, I will give you a piece of advice in return for your kind offer: Back the hell off, because vampire or not, I bite too.” And with that warning, Ember threw down her branch and began to leave. She made it four steps toward Ginger, who was baring her teeth angrily, and just for a second she thought they might actually let her leave.

  And then Ginger leapt at her and she knew Croppy had given the order to attack. Ember barely dodged the red-haired girl’s fervent attack, spinning out of the way at the last second. But Rainbow came at her from the other side and knocked her flat to the ground. The air burst form Ember’s chest in a rush and she struggled to gasp for air. Rainbow had her wrists pinned to the dirt, holding her down, but Ember pulled up a knee and slammed it into the witch’s stomach. With a yelp of pain, Rainbow rolled off her, clutching her stomach. Ember scrambled to her feet and tried to run. She heard someone breathing right behind her and threw herself aside just as the brown-haired witch tried to snatch her. She kept running, weaving agilely between the trees. She knew this route well by now, and the witches didn’t; it made it easy to outrun them, skipping over slippery patches of mud hidden under fallen leaves, avoiding rocks buried in the undergrowth, hopping on raised roots instead of tripping over them.

  Through the trees ahead, she could see the grey of the school building. She willed herself to make it that far. Her lungs were bursting, her legs burning, and she didn’t dare look over her should to see how far behind the witches were. She still hear them behind her, several pairs of feet kicking up rustling dead leaves and snapping branches. One of them yelped and Ember guessed she’d tripped over one of the tree roots.

  She was almost safe now, the edge of the trees just metres ahead, but then something strange happened. One moment she was just running, hearing her own ragged breathing and feeling the wind rushing past her as she ducked branches, and the next she staggered to a halt as prickle of warning shot up her spine. Instinctively, she spun, must in time to see a bizarre orb of blue light flying toward her. She threw up her hands, not having time to move out of the way. The orb smashed into her hands, and she expected a jolt of electricity, maybe her skin burning off, but all she felt was a tickle and some warmth against her palms.

  Blinking in surprise and confusion, Ember lowered her arms and stared at her hands. They were a little red, but otherwise fine. No scorch marks or welts or anything. She glanced up and saw the witches standing some distance away, staring at her, incredulous. Apparently they’d expected more to happen, too. But nobody had time to ask any questions like, “Why aren’t you singed to a crisp?” or “Did you just try to kill me?” because, at that moment, the vampires showed up. Out of nowhere, they were suddenly at her sides, flanking her protectively, Reid and Ricky. She wasn’t sure how they’d known where she was, or that she’d been in danger, but that didn’t matter. They were here.

  Now facing two angry vampires, and with their magic clearly malfunctioning, the witches didn’t seem so keen to tussle. They turned to flee, and Ember thought Reid would go after the, but as he took a step forward, the witches suddenly vanished. Poof. Just like that, gone into thin air. Ember was sure it was an illusion, they were just using some sort of invisibility spell or something, but it surprised Reid enough that he turned back to Ember instead.

  He stared at her with narrowed blue eyes and she thought for certain he was about to lay into her for recklessly endangering herself by coming out to the forest, but all he said was, “Are you okay?” She nodded, mute. He sighed and looked to Ricky. “Do you suppose we scared them off for good this time?” he asked, without much hope in his voice. Ricky just frowned and Reid shook his head. “I thought not. But at least they’ll think twice about coming after Ember again.” He grinned abruptly and gave her a look that made her suspect he’d known she would come out here to confront the witches.

  She smiled back at him hesitantly. “I warned them it was a bad idea to piss me off. I think they may have gotten the message,” she said. Reid laughed, slipping his hand into hers. Even Ricky chuckled.

  They turned to head back to the dorms, Ember feeling just a little proud of herself for standing up to the witches and more than a little glad she didn’t get killed. They were almost at the entrance to the dorm building when Reid turned to her and said, “You know, you’d make a great vampire.”

  Ember split into a grin. “Damn straight I would.”

  Reid laughed again as he pulled open the door to the dorms and Ember couldn’t help but wonder if he really meant it, that she’d make a great vampire. She hoped so, because she fully intended to become one.