Obsidian Horizon

by Heather Renee

  Catherine jumped down from the front of her ship—her gaze had been locked on Evander’s body before it disappeared into the waves of the surf. When her eyes found their way to me, they were crimson, and the ruthless emotion I saw in them was enough to make a shiver rush down my spine.

  She blurred and was suddenly across from me. With Jameson beside me, Solomon stood on my other side, and Henry stepped into the open space across from Jameson. We had Prime surrounded.

  It had been mere seconds since the kraken had taken Evander’s body, but it felt like an eternity. Seeing the beast and Catherine up close seemed to have stunned Prime. I didn’t know much about their background, only the little Evander had told me, but there was definitely history. Though, none of that mattered now. All that mattered was ending our waking nightmare before any more deaths could happen.

  “Let’s end this, once and for all,” Solomon hissed.

  “You could bring a hundred hunters and vampires to fight me, and you would still lose, Lavinia. Stop this nonsense and I will let your friends live, as long as you do as I ask.” Prime lowered his stance, preparing for our attack.

  He was only trying to postpone the inevitable, and it wasn’t going to work.

  We all rushed at Prime at the same time. He turned toward the weakest of us and swiftly backhanded Henry, sending him sailing into the sand. My heart clenched in my chest, hoping he was all right but unable to check on him. From the corner of my eye, I saw a glint and noted that Henry had dropped his dagger when he was thrown across the beach.

  Prime turned toward Solomon, who had his dagger raised and ready.

  “You deserve to die last for all the trouble you have caused me, but now works, too.” Prime sneered as he tried to sidestep, but he wasn’t quick enough, and Solomon’s blade sank into his shoulder.

  As Prime roared in pain from my venom, Catherine came at him from behind, thrusting her laced blade through his back. Though he was immune to hunter blades, I could quickly see the effect my venom was having on him. It was minuscule, but he was slowing down. We needed to finish him before he had the chance to regain his strength.

  Prime arched his back. “I will not be defeated!”

  “You should have been happy with your lot in life, and that might have been true,” I spat in response. “Instead, you chose your own petty needs over being a decent man, and for that you will pay.”

  Jameson lunged forward as Catherine and Solomon yanked their weapons from Prime’s body. I felt my gums ache with the pressure of built up venom, and the descent of my fangs. They were ready, and so was I as I followed after Jameson.

  Jameson’s fist slammed into Prime’s jaw, making a cracking sound as I lunged forward and attempted to bite him. When he shook me off, Catherine grabbed one of Prime’s arms, locking it in place as Solomon did the same with his other arm, so I could try again.

  Faster than my eye could follow, Jameson was suddenly behind Prime trying to help hold him still before I attempted to bite again. Jameson wrapped his arm around Prime’s throat while his other hand grasped his hair, keeping his fangs from snapping forward. When they were in position, I moved back in for the bite, this time breaking skin, but before my venom could be released, I was pushed away by Catherine.

  When I regained my stance, I saw why she had done so.

  Using the position Prime was locked in, his head snapped back hard and fast, knocking Jameson’s hold loose. He used the element of surprise to yank his arm from Catherine, pulling his own blade from a side pocket. Whirling around, he plunged the weapon into Jameson’s chest, whose eyes widened in shock.

  “Death is all you will ever bring to those around you, Lavinia,” Prime sneered.

  Without pausing to understand the gravity of what had just happened, my body responded, not needing conscious thought to finish what needed to be done. If I truly acknowledged Jameson being stabbed, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to do what was necessary.

  Catherine regained her hold on the monster while Solomon sliced his own blade across Prime’s throat, making sure he could no longer speak.

  Prime started to laugh, but it turned into a gurgling sound from the most recent wound he had been dealt. My hand felt empty without a dagger, but I didn’t need one. The only weapons I needed were my venom and fangs. As I approached the father of all vampires, I prepared myself to kill him.

  Movement caught my attention, and I saw Henry making his way toward me, his once discarded dagger in hand. He had blood dripping from his temple and his skin was pale, but he looked all right considering the blow he had been given. He handed me the dagger, seeming to know that I would feel more comfortable with it in my hand even if I didn’t need it.

  I nodded my thanks and before I could think anymore, I let my darkness consume me. With swift movements, I stood before Prime, following the urges of the power within me. I sent a silent prayer to the Sea Witch that this would work just as my fangs sank into his chest—right over where his heart should have been, if he truly had one.

  His pathetic attempts to continue fighting back ceased as my sharp teeth pierced his skin and venom flowed into him. Coppery blood filled my mouth, but I didn’t swallow. Instead, I let it drip from my mouth. I didn’t want any part of him inside me.

  Venom continued to flow from my fangs as I let my natural instinct guide me. Prime’s body began to jerk against me, but I held on fiercely. When the jolting stopped and the darkness pulled back, I knew it was safe to withdraw my fangs.

  Prime fell to his knees, his chest heaving, while everyone took a step back. I wiped the blood from my mouth, and my fangs retreated as I watched the monster, who was supposed to be my father, be overcome by the gift he had been given long ago.

  His skin shriveled until he resembled the starving vampires we had encountered all those weeks ago. Red eyes met my own, and I observed with complete detachment as they slowly faded until they became brown—the same shade as mine.

  He tried to speak, but nothing came out except another gurgle followed by a bubble of black blood that formed in his mouth before it burst into a torrent, staining the front of his body. He tried to draw in a breath but couldn’t as blood continued to pour out of him. He shuddered one last time and, suddenly, his body disintegrated into ash.

  No one moved for several moments, all staring at a pile of dust that had once been the most feared vampire in the world. I was numb. Not only had I killed this hated man, I had also killed my father. Though he deserved to die after everything he had done, I made a vow to myself that I wouldn’t regret my actions.

  Movement caught my eye, and anguish crashed into me. Jameson was still lying on the ground but was beginning to move on his own.

  Racing to his side, Solomon and I helped him up, but he pushed Solomon away as he swept me up into his arms and squeezed me against him.

  “Are you all right?” I cried as I buried my face into his neck and breathed in his scent.

  “I’m fine. He didn’t have a laced blade, but it still burned until my healing took over. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

  Relief coursed through me, knowing he was going to be fine. A feeling I hadn’t truly experienced since I woke in the burning remains of my aunt and uncle’s farm. I breathed out a sigh as elation began to sink in, then hushed him. “It’s over now, and Prime can never hurt anyone else again. That’s all that matters.”

  My lips found his, and we shared a victory kiss as we both relaxed into each other, letting the stress of our relationship bleed out of us and join the pile of ash at our feet.

  When we finally pulled back from each other, Solomon clapped Jameson on the shoulder, a smile on his face and tears in his eyes. What he had been through all these years had finally been reconciled with the death of his enemy. He got vengeance for the murder of his wife, and he reunited with his daughter, while also gaining a son in the process.

  “We did it,” I said, beaming at them both.

  “You did it,” Jameson corrected, and I
brushed off his words. None of it would have happened without everyone’s help—everyone, including those who were no longer with us. Grief battled with my emotions as Evander’s face surfaced to my mind. Tears gathered in my eyes for the ally who had become our friend and was no longer with us.

  Henry was sitting on a sandy slope not far away, with Alice kneeling beside him and inspecting his head. They both smiled at me, and I knew they would both be all right.

  Turning to Catherine to give her a hug and rejoice in our victory, I realized with dismay she wasn’t there. Only a pile of ash remained where I had last seen her, along with her sword. I had momentarily forgotten what would happen once we killed Prime.

  I forgot that it would kill all of the vampires he had sired who hadn’t remained pure. My heart ached knowing that I would never get the chance to thank her for her sacrifice and help.

  Tearing a piece of my shirt off, I scooped into it as much of her ashes as I could. There was no body for us to bury, but we could spread her ashes into the sea and hope that she was at peace.

  “All who have perished today will move on…” The Sea Witch’s voice resounded in my mind, a note of sorrow ringing with her words.

  “There has been so much unnecessary death by one man’s madness,” I admitted aloud.

  “All of those deaths are on me, and I will make sure they all find peace.”

  “Thank you,” I choked out, thinking of my polite vampire friend who had surprised me at every turn with his steadfast loyalty.

  “What now?” Jameson asked, looking around the beach at all the piles of ash before moving his eyes to the mostly-empty ships in the bay.

  “I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. We hadn’t talked about the future for fear that it would never come. Now that it had, we needed to figure out our next steps.

  A tentacle from the kraken curled up through the waves crashing against the beach.

  “Go to him,” the Sea Witch urged.

  I walked toward the beach and the massive tentacle, trying to swallow my trepidation. I had just witnessed this creature lay waste to more ships than I had ever seen at once. The tentacle reached forward, and with a deep breath for courage, I did the same and touched the water beast. It wasn’t as unpleasant as I thought it would be. Its skin felt like sand, which helped to ease my discomfort.

  “I placed a gift on a man who had convinced me he was worthy of such greatness, unknowing the repercussions it would have, and how helpless I would be to stop the curse he would turn my gift into. You have my eternal gratitude for undoing what I could not. My debt to you is deep, and I hope this will help pay for some of the heartache my choices have caused you.”

  Confused, I watched as another tentacle rose from the water, and with it, Evander. His eyes were bright green as he stepped onto the beach, completely healed, with no chest wound or blood to be found.

  “I am returning your friend to you,” the Sea Witch spoke again, before I could react. “I was able to heal his wound before death took him and, with his permission, returned him to this life with a second chance to right his wrongs. He will struggle with this new existence after years with Prime, but having you and the others to surround him will help Evander find his way. We shall speak again soon, Lavinia.”

  With those final words, the Sea Witch withdrew from my mind and the kraken sank back into the dark depths of the sea. Evander stepped further onto the beach, blinking like he had just come out of a trance, or perhaps because he had just returned from the brink of death.

  I smiled at him while Jameson wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me against him.

  “Back from the dead, I see,” Solomon greeted, stepping toward him and grasping his shoulder. “Making deals can be dangerous.”

  “I didn’t make a deal, I only agreed,” he replied, glancing at me for confirmation.

  “The Sea Witch healed him and then returned him as a gift to me,” I explained, eyeing him as I tried to work out what she had done to wipe his slate clean. “You are not as you were before.”

  Evander nodded, running a hand through his hair as he turned his eyes toward the horizon. His jaw muscles clenched as he tried to put to words what had been done.

  What did he agree to?

  “She said I could start this life anew, but if I choose to go back to the ways of my old life, I would perish just as the others had. She made me pure,” he confessed.

  We all stared at him, stunned by the revelation. I suspected it was not going to be easy for him, and in a twisted way, I hoped it wouldn’t be. A person sometimes needed to struggle in order to gain strength. Evander was already strong, but I wasn’t sure he was strong enough to survive losing everything he had ever known, no matter how much he wanted to be better.

  I smiled and walked closer to give him a hug. So much death had occurred on the island, I was glad life was also found. Life was precious, and we needed to live it to its fullest. It’s what my mother would have wanted for us, along with everyone else who had fought and died so the rest could live.

  Their sacrifice would not be forgotten.

  Evander squeezed me for a few moments, then pulled back, and I noticed that his eyes were drawn to the piles of ash which seemed to be everywhere on the beach—the fine particles were blown by the breeze, intermingling with the sand.

  “The Sea Witch assured me that everyone has found peace,” I reassured him as Jameson pulled me back to his side.

  “Even Prime?” Evander asked, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.

  “I did not ask, and she did not offer that information,” I answered truthfully, swallowing hard.

  If I was honest with myself, I hoped Prime was suffering in whatever afterlife there was, but another part of me knew that his mind wasn’t well. Though it didn’t excuse his transgressions, it helped to let all of the hatred go. He had spent his vampire life searching for something he only found with my mother, so a small part of me hoped that he had found peace in some way.

  “There is nothing left for us here,” Solomon announced, making his way toward a rowboat that had been tied to the dock. How it had survived the fighting was beyond me.

  We made it back to Eaton’s borrowed ship in exhausted silence, and then began preparations to set sail and return to Port Valor. We needed to tell our friends that the fight was over and that we had won—though, not without great losses.

  As the sails unfurled and the breeze caught them to pull our ship out of the bay, I handed Evander the piece of torn shirt with ashes wrapped in it. I explained whose they were, then left him to grieve privately and put her to rest in whatever way he saw fit.

  Finding Jameson on the top deck, we both stood silently against the railing, wrapped in each other’s arms. We might not have had a plan, but we were alive and together. That would be more than enough to get us through the coming weeks and figure out how we wanted to live out the endless years that lay ahead.

  Epilogue

  One year later…

  So much had changed since we defeated Prime, but at the same time, it felt like we had always been together. We fell into a new normal that was so natural, it was hard to remember anything before we found peace.

  After we arrived back at Port Valor, a small group of us headed back to Port Victory to rebuild. Nathan had found love with one of the women from Ruth’s estate, so he and Nettie stayed behind, but we visited each other as often as possible, and I marveled at how quickly Nettie grew every time we saw them.

  Henry and Alice had a sweet baby girl they named Catherine in honor of the woman who had saved Henry’s life. We later learned that while they had been battling at sea, a vampire had Henry pinned down and was seconds away from ending his life when Catherine had stepped in, cutting the vampire’s head clean from his neck. Maggie and Timothy still lived with them, and their family was happier than I ever knew was possible.

  Even though it shouldn’t have been, the most shocking revelation was seeing Tobias and Ruth find love with each other.
Shortly after things settled, Solomon asked to be called Tobias once more, wanting to put that part of his life behind, but I kindly declined, referring to him as Dad instead. That had brought the brightest of smiles to his face.

  Tobias had also taken charge of helping Evander find his purpose. They started a new shipping business with the old pirate ships. Along with transporting items to the islands, they made many trips to the mainland, bringing people back in hopes of populating our beautiful lands again after all of the losses we suffered. Jobs were hard to find on the mainland and, when the once-abandoned businesses and vacant positions were offered to those who wanted to move, it made the process of bringing new people a lot easier.

  As I sat on the beach in front of the house Jameson had built for us, I thought about our future. We had started a sugarcane farm in my uncle’s old fields, and it began to prosper in the spring. Though none of it was ready to be harvested yet, it kept Jameson busy and happy. He wasn’t good with idle hands, and the work wasn’t too strenuous or time-consuming.

  “What is my lovely wife doing out here, all alone?” Jameson whispered in my ear as he sat next to me.

  “Enjoying the sun and thinking about my hard-working husband.”

  We had also decided to get properly married when we arrived back at Port Victory. The ceremony was small, but it was all we had needed and a day I would cherish forever. When we had first returned, a priest and a group of around twenty residents had appeared to us. The priest had hidden as many as he could beneath the church the night of the first attacks, and they had already begun to rebuild the main parts of town before we arrived.

  The Sea Witch hadn’t reached out to me since we killed Prime, but she had sent her kraken to keep an eye on my dad and Evander’s shipping endeavor. They had spotted him several times during their travels, always when they were in trouble with either heavy storms or regular pirates.

  Pirates still roamed the seas, but none as powerful as the vampires we had defeated, and that was all right with us. There would always be bad in the world, and we had come to accept that.