by D. N. Hoxa
Damian pressed the tip of his sword onto the witch’s cheek, smiling all the while, a wicked look in his now dark eyes.
“Okay, okay, I’ll tell you!” the witch said, raising her hands by her side. Damian let her go but kept his sword aimed at her face, his eyes never blinking. “Fucking bloodsucker,” the witch muttered. “They wanted to know the location of my great-great grandmother’s grave. There. You happy?”
And she turned around and started walking toward her house, muttering all kinds of curse words under her breath.
“Why?” I asked, following her.
“I don’t know. Didn’t ask.”
She’d almost reached the back door of her house when Damian stepped in front of her.
“And you told them, just like that?”
She actually growled before stepping away from him. “I would have if I’d known. As it was, I had to do a ritual to look for her bones,” she spit.
“So where is it?” I asked.
“No idea. I gave them the tracker and the activation spell,” she said. “Now they’re gone and I can’t even charge them for the fucking fence.”
“Why?” Damian said. “Why did they want the location of your grandmother’s grave?”
“Look, I couldn’t care less, okay? Now, be so kind and get the fuck out of my house so I can clean all this mess up.”
“Who was your grandmother?” I asked.
“Samantha Oldrick,” the witch said, making a face like the name tasted bad on her tongue.
“What did she do?”
“Other than abandoning her children and her husband to go search for riches?” She shrugged. “No idea. Now, can you get out?”
Great. With a sigh, I turned around and walked into the house. She wasn’t going to tell us anything else because she didn’t know.
“Thanks for your help,” Damian said and followed me inside.
“Don’t you dare come back here again, you hear me? Or I’m calling the Guild!” the witch shouted from the backyard.
“Let’s hope she doesn’t see the door before we leave,” I whispered to Damian.
He grinned. “I hope she does.”
“You enjoy pissing people off, don’t you.” It wasn’t even a question. He enjoyed pissing me off, too. I still hadn’t forgotten that he’d killed my maneater.
“It’s a flaw,” Damian said.
When we walked out of the house, we found Kit standing in the street in front of the three-foot-high gate. He looked bored as hell, and as soon as he saw us, he started running across the street, probably to go wait for us by the car. He didn’t even care to check if I was hurt.
“I think it’s safe to assume that they’re going to use Malin’s spell to summon the grandma.”
“It seems so,” Damian said. “We need to find out who Samantha Oldrick was.”
He looked to the side but didn’t reach for his sword, so I wasn’t alarmed. A second later, Nikola came out of the yard of the house to the left, putting his jacket on.
“Did you catch them?” I asked Damian when I remembered that he’d gone after them, too, together with Nikola.
“No, they got in a car. Nikola chased after them. I came back to talk to the witch,” Damian said.
Nikola reached us.
“I lost them at the River. They had a boat waiting,” he said reluctantly. I had no idea how far Delaware River was, but it couldn’t be close. He’d run for quite a distance, but he wasn’t even breathing heavily.
“Don’t worry, Nikola. We’ll find her,” Damian said.
Nikola nodded, and with his head down, he crossed the road.
“He looks…defeated,” I said in wonder while we walked to the car. “Does this mean they’re no longer mates?”
“No, they are,” Damian said, taking his phone out of his pocket. “Until one of them explicitly states that they’re no longer mates, they are.”
“If she really loves him, why is she doing this?”
“Vampires are more complicated than people believe,” Damian said. He couldn’t be more vague if he tried. “I’ll need to call John to find the location of the grave. Wait for me in the car?”
I nodded and climbed into the passenger seat. Nikola was already in the back, and Kit was on the other side, too. I wanted to tell Nikola that I was sorry again, but it felt like intruding for some reason, so I kept my mouth shut and left him alone with his thoughts.
Chapter Nine
I was under the impression that it was going to take time to find out where the grave of the grandma was, but no. It only took about six minutes for John to call back. We were still in the car, not even out of New Jersey yet. Damian put him on speaker.
“Sorry it took so long. Apparently, the Guild archives all records of the deceased over two hundred years ago,” he said.
I raised my brows at Damian. He thought six minutes were long?
“There’s a burial site for bodies of supernaturals that were never claimed by family. It’s in Corbin City, a piece of land owned by the Guild between two creeks. I’ll text you the coordinates.”
“Thanks, John,” Damian said.
“Yeah, no problem. Need assistance?”
“No, we’ll be fine.”
“Good luck.” The line went dead.
When he sent the coordinates, Damian put them in his GPS system, then he drove us there like a maniac.
It should have taken us two hours to get to Corbin City. Damian got us there in one and a half. When we stepped out of the car, it was a quarter past eleven, and we couldn’t see shit.
The darkness seemed to have little care for the bright, almost full moon shining silver in the sky. The soil-like smell was almost fishy, and it was intense even for me. That was probably why Damian wasn’t sniffing the air like he usually would. The trees were dense on the side of the narrow road where Damian had left his car. There wasn’t anyone in sight, and all we could hear was water flowing somewhere. The ground was muddy, and my sneakers made annoying squishy sounds as we went deeper. Even Kit, who’d normally love a chance to run up trees stood on my shoulder, reluctant to step on the ground.
We didn’t say anything, just walked ahead like we knew where we were going, but I doubted we did. It was too dark, we couldn’t hear anything, and the nasty smell wasn’t going to let either of them pick up any other scent. But maybe I could find them with my magic. I let it out and searched for essence anywhere around us. So far, I had nothing.
“What are the odds that we got here before they did?” I asked in a whisper.
“Even better. We can hide and wait for them,” Damian whispered.
“I’m not going to shift this time,” Nikola said. “I don’t have the energy.”
“Stay out of the fight, Nikola,” Damian said. It sounded like a warning.
“I’ll try to talk to her. She has to listen to me.”
“If the others—”
“Wait.” I stopped walking. My magic was picking up on something—almost an essence. I looked around at the darkness and the many trees, trying to focus. It was right outside my magic’s reach.
Damian and Nikola watched me. I took another two steps forward but lost the sense completely, so I moved to the left. On the third step, I felt the essence, stronger than before. “This way,” I whispered and continued through the woods, focusing on my magic and the essence that was becoming clearer. I hurried my steps—the ground was muddy, but it was more or less even—and I soon felt the second essence. And the third.
Damian grabbed me by the arm and stopped me. He was looking at the darkness ahead, his eyes glistening in the weak light. “They’re about half a mile away,” he said.
“I can’t smell her at all,” Nikola said.
“Should we separate?” I wondered. There were six of them, though I could only feel three, but we also didn’t know the terrain and we couldn’t see shit.
“No, we’ll stay together. Chances are they’ll try to run again when they see us,” Damian said. “Reme
mber, Nikola. Stay out of the fight.”
Nikola didn’t say anything. He just started walking ahead, and we followed.
Between the three of us, only Damian managed to walk without being heard, but it didn’t matter. We weren’t exactly trying to keep our location a secret—and neither were they.
A couple of minutes later, we began to see orange light coming from ahead, behind the tree trunks in what looked like an opening in the middle of the woods. The smell became heavier with every step I took to the point where my eyes teared up. Kit’s tail was over his nose. He was trying to block the smell out, too.
Damian pulled out his sword when we were almost to the tree line—and by the way two shadows moved toward us, I’d say they knew we were there.
“Jump,” I told Kit, and with my daggers I started to run forward. Damian had already disappeared, but Nikola ran right beside me until we made it to last of the trees.
It was an opening—half a football field in size—and the ground right in front of us looked really muddy and slippery, but it only went for a few feet before it turned solid again. Before me was a wall for lack of a better word, made of stone, standing about eight feet tall, with drawers in it. Drawers with names and dates engraved on the front. Ugh. Just how many dead bodies were in there? I couldn’t see how wide it was because it went into the woods on the other side, and there was only so much light provided by the two torches sticking out of the ground.
The shadows I’d seen were of two men who were chanting, their arms raised toward us. Magic infused the air, almost as intense as the smell, and the ward crackled with it, too. Behind the wizards was the vampire Helen, standing in front of somebody who was leaning on the ground in front of a large piece of stone. A tomb. On her other side were two others—the ghouls. Where had the other one gone? Because the person kneeling on the ground was a woman—I could see her blood red hair glistening in the light of the torches.
Adrenaline pumped the blood in my veins. I looked at Damian. He grinned. This was gonna be fun.
“Helen!” Nikola shouted while I put away my daggers and raised both my arms forward. Let’s see how much damage I could do against two wizards and an active ward.
Taking in a deep breath, I began to chant my own spell, the same one I’d used before to break wards. It had worked perfectly. The words rushed out of me like they couldn’t wait to taste the cold air, gathering the magic in my body, pulling it out. My fingers glowed bright purple. It could have been my imagination, but the spell flowed easier, almost like it had a mind of its own, like it didn’t really need me to speak to do its job. My eyes locked with one of the wizards standing on the other side of the ward. He was smiling—not for long.
Something moved behind him, something that glowed golden, and for a second, my tongue tied. It was a humanoid shape but other than the head and the limbs, I couldn’t make out any other feature. It was a ghost but not exactly, floating on air over its tomb, glowing with the color of the sun. It raised its arms to the side, and I almost stopped speaking altogether.
Just a little longer, I pushed myself. Just another sentence and I would be done.
My fingers glowed brightly with every new word that left my lips, until the glow spread all the way over my knuckles. And when the spell finished, the last of the magic shot out from my palms, pushing my arms back. It hit the ward of the wizards in complete silence, but it only lasted long enough for me to think that it hadn’t worked.
But it had.
The sound of paper catching fire barely made it to my ears, but it was there. There were no flashes of bright lights, just that sound, growing more distant by the second as my magic consumed that of the wizards.
I knew the ward was gone when Damian suddenly appeared in front of both wizards and grabbed them by the throats. Nikola went around him, running to the vampire, but before he reached her, one of the ghouls stepped in front of him.
My time had come. I pulled out the daggers and ran forward just as Damian threw the two wizards back like they weighed nothing. They hit the ground on their backs, completely terrified. My feet sank in the disgusting mud so I was slow until I made it to the other side. By then, Damian was there, too, going after the vampire.
Nikola was trying to duck the ghoul’s fists, almost losing his balance. I grabbed him by the back of his jacket and pulled him to the side, then tried to stab the ghoul in the gut. He blocked my hand, but I had two. My other dagger buried in the side of his face, and he didn’t even flinch, like he didn’t feel it at all. He was a big guy, over six foot two, with a round face and deep-set eyes that looked dead. Orange light from the torches fell on the side of his face, so I saw half his teeth when he smiled—and they looked rotten.
I went for him again, swinging my arms, kicking him in the chest, but it wasn’t doing any damage. Maybe my physical strength meant nothing to a ghoul, but my magic did. Calling out an attack spell, I put my new dagger in its sheath and stepped back, raising my palm at his chest. My fingers were still glowing from the last spell and they came to life again. The ghoul knew that I was about to spell him, but he didn’t care. Opening his mouth, he let out a growl unlike any I’d ever heard, and he charged me, both arms open wide by his sides.
I jumped back two steps before the spell finally left my hand. Purple light hit him straight in the face, sending him right back where he came from. He didn’t fall, but I’d already started chanting another spell, this one from Aunt Marie’s spell books. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice the other ghoul coming at me from the side. He slammed onto my shoulder and sent me to the side, face first onto the mud. Some of it got in my mouth, and if I’d had a second, I’d have thrown my guts out right then and there.
As it was, I had no time to stand down. I jumped to my feet, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and looked at the ghouls, expecting them to be closer to me, but they weren’t. They were stepping back.
I risked a glance behind me to see a flash of red hair disappearing behind the enormous stone wall and into the woods, together with a man—one of the wizards. The other was on the ground, lifeless eyes staring at the dark sky. On his other side was Damian and Nikola, and they were talking to the vampire, who looked even more lethal from so close up.
“Please, Helen. Stop this. Whatever you’re doing, stop it,” Nikola was saying, and she answered, but I didn’t stick around to listen.
Tapping my thigh to call for Kit—if he could even hear me—I turned for the ghouls again, stolen dagger in one hand, magic ready to leave the other. The words of the spell slurred together, but my magic understood. It eagerly left my palm and shot forward, but one of the ghouls moved away, so it only hit his friend. He stumbled back, but I didn’t see if he fell because the other was already on me. He swung his fists at my face, and I had to duck down every half a second.
“Kit!” I shouted with all my strength, then spun around and tried to kick the ghoul’s legs from under him, but it was no use. He didn’t fall.
But Kit finally heard me. I didn’t see him climb up the ghoul’s body, only when he jumped on top of his head and proceeded to scratch the hell out of his eyes. The ghoul didn’t kid around. He practically hit himself over the head with his massive hand, and Kit jumped away, but the ghoul’s fingers managed to catch his tail.
By then, I’d already stabbed him in the chest with both my daggers. The ghoul growled, and only when his mouth opened and I saw his teeth were semi-clean, did I realize that it wasn’t the same one I fought at first. They were almost identical. He let Kit go and his fists came for me. I had no choice but to back away, but he was wounded now, and the next spell that I chanted hit him in the chest, right over the wounds that were bleeding only a tiny bit. Not surprising—Aunt Marie had said that the blood of a ghoul wasn’t as liquid as ours.
He fell back as the baby blue light of my magic slipped inside him, and this time I didn’t wait to see if he’d fall. I kicked him in the face twice, then tried to stab him in the eye, but he pushed himself
back.
Only then did I realize that his friend was gone. He wasn’t dead—I couldn’t see the body, but he wasn’t there anymore, either.
And this ghoul was turning to leave, too.
I shot after him, even though my muscles were screaming and my magic was no longer as eager to leave me as it was a few minutes ago.
“The soul!” Damian shouted, stopping me in my tracks. “It’s getting away!”
He was still fighting with Helen while Nikola tried to talk to her. He was saying something to her, in Italian, I think, but it didn’t look like she was interested in hearing it. Her whole focus was on Damian.
A look at the tomb made of stone, half open on the ground, and I saw that Damian was right. The soul that glowed like a miniature sun was floating higher in the sky—and it was laughing.
The ghoul had all but disappeared to the other side of the stone wall of tombs. He was slow and he was stumbling forward. I’d never have a better chance of killing him if I didn’t follow him now, but the soul was more important. Malin’s words came back to me with a rush. Dangerous. Evil. Impossible to catch once they got away.
“Goddamn it,” I cursed at the night, put my daggers away and ran to the tomb. It just wasn’t meant for me to kill anything tonight, apparently.
I raised my hands at the soul, who still laughed, its voice neither male nor female, rising higher with every second. I had no clue how to even handle souls, but I did know what little Malin had told Jamie and me about them. She said that souls were strong, that they could break through anything, even weak wards—except their tombs. I was just gonna have to make sure that my ward wasn’t weak.
My lips moved with the words of a spell I’d never used before. I didn’t have much experience with wards. They weren’t very tricky. They literally built a wall of magic around you, to shield you from outside magic, but they didn’t allow you to use other spells outside it, either. You didn’t exactly need wards when hunting hellbeasts, so I’d probably only used Guild issued ward spells a handful of times, if that.