“Of course. I’m sorry.” I touched his hand. It was cold.
He pulled it away. “Please. I don’t want to disgust you.”
I was thinking that he didn’t disgust me in the least. That not only was he breathtakingly handsome, but that something about him pulled at my heart.
It had taken months for me to fall in love with Peter. But with Colin—his very name bounced around in my head like music—I felt an almost uncanny attraction, as if we might have shared some other life together, sometime long ago.
“We’re almost at the water,” I said, forcing myself to stumble blindly through the last hundred yards of heavy growth onto the muddy shore of Whitfield Bay. The cliffs that surrounded it in a huge horseshoe jutted out on either side of us, while the rippling water shimmered in the moonlight.
There was nothing on the shore. I felt a sinking despair in the pit of my stomach. For some reason, I’d thought that Peter would be easy to spot. Instead, all I saw was the bay and beyond it, the vast Atlantic. “How will we ever find him?” I whimpered, close to tears.
Colin cupped his hands over his eyes and surveyed the scene. “Ondines don’t like deep water,” he said. “The pixies will have taken your friend somewhere shallow, without much current.” He led me toward one towering side of the horseshoe, where the cliff gave way to a jumble of rocks that created eddies and grottoes, quiet places amid the rocky seawater.
We walked close to these rocks for what seemed like forever, while I pictured Peter languishing in a watery grave. “No one can stay this long underwater,” I said, panicking.
“They wouldn’t let him die,” Colin said.
I was sure he meant to be comforting, but something about his tone of voice, his hesitation at speaking, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I turned toward him. “What does that mean?”
He looked abashed. “Nothing. Only…only…”
“You mean they’re going to eat him alive,” I said. It wasn’t even a question, because I knew by his face that I’d guessed right.
“Peter!” I screamed into the night.
Colin put his hands on my shoulders. “Stop it. Stop it, Katy.” Then he pulled me toward him and held me tightly. I swear, I could almost hear his heart beating.
I don’t know if it was because I needed to take comfort, or if my motives were less pure, but for a moment at least, I felt safe. Safe in his arms. For the span of time it took the Whitfield clock tower to strike two, we stood like that, together.
Then he pushed me away. “There,” he said quietly, pointing at a spot in the bay between three rocks. “Do you see it?”
I walked closer to the place he’d indicated until I was ankle deep in the freezing water. Then I saw it: Deep beneath the surface shimmered a blue-green phosphorescence that looked as if the rocky grotto were illuminated by moving neon lights. Colin was splashing ahead. He looked back at me. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I wasn’t. I don’t like water. The year I came to Whitfield, I’d nearly drowned in this bay when a boat I was in crashed against the rocks. I should have learned something about water safety after that, but I’d been too afraid of the experience to even think about it.
“I can’t swim,” I squeaked.
Colin nodded. “Go back to shore, then,” he said, shouting to be heard above the roar of the sea. “I’ll get him.” Our eyes met for a moment before he dived into the water and disappeared.
I stood there for what seemed like a long time, the cold tide rising around my legs, unable to understand all the different emotions that were swirling in my mind. I decided that I’d sort all that out later, when we were out of danger. For now, though, the best thing I could do would be to follow Colin’s advice and head back to shore and wait.
With a sigh that was full of guilt—why hadn’t I learned to swim?—I waded back toward the muddy beach. But I’d only moved two paces when something wrapped around my ankles. It happened fast, like a whip snapping, and pulled me under the water, choking and sputtering. I tried to grab hold of something—anything, a rock, an outgrowth of seaweed—but the pull on my legs was too strong.
I’m going to die. The thought came to be as clearly as if it had been shouted into a megaphone. My hands struck out wildly, opening, then closing into fists and then opening again like little white starfish as I ceased to struggle and allowed the water to carry me under.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was quiet here, once I got used to it. Am I dead? I wondered. It was hard to tell. I probably was; I’d just never pictured the Summer Country as being like this. Green-blue lights swirled around me, illuminating a weird garden of unearthly sights. Sea anemones beckoned with fronds like long pale fingers. A school of fish, glowing green, swam carelessly past. Slowly, whatever had been binding my ankles loosened and I saw whiplike strands dancing around what looked like…mermaids.
The ondines, I realized, but I no longer felt any fear about them, only a quiet, resigned kinship of sorts. I could see them clearly now, slender maidens with hair spread out like scarves.
Am I one of them?
An ondine glided by, her long tail shimmering like silver.
Of course not, I answered myself. I could never be something so beautiful. So perfect. I was here to serve them…To feed them.
Another swam to me, touching my face with long tentacles. Oh, thank you, I thought. Thank you for letting me serve you. Her eyes glowed red. When she opened her mouth, I saw two rows of sharp pointed teeth.
Glorious…
She stuck out her tongue, long as an eel and quivering as she licked my arm, leaving a narrow gash. My blood poured out of it, rising like black smoke in the water. Tiny fish darted close by, intoxicated by my blood, wanting more. Other ondines followed, their long dark tongues snaking out hungrily, their red eyes fixed on me.
A part of me, very distant, was objecting. It wanted to leave this place, but that small voice was easy to ignore. Mostly I felt only numbness and the need to give these creatures what they expected of me. I was food for them. I would feed them. I would please them. I was food, their food…
Suddenly, as if a bomb had exploded into my placid thoughts, Colin appeared. The ondines fled, screeching, from him. He was carrying Peter under his arm.
My mind snapped back into focus. I tried to scream, but my lungs were filled with water. I was flailing around wildly when Colin put his arm around my waist and pulled me away.
I came to on the rocky shore, with Colin’s mouth on mine. At least I think it was. I sputtered and coughed up a lot of water. By the time I opened my eyes, he was leaning over me, smiling and frowning at the same time.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he said.
I could still feel the touch of his lips on mine as he moved swiftly to Peter and began chest compressions on him.
“You know CPR?” I asked stupidly.
“We had drowning men in my time, too,” Colin said. He paused for a moment, looked at me with his blue, blue eyes from beneath wet curls, then went back to working on Peter.
“Thank you,” I said. “Whatever happens after this…Thank you.”
He paused again. His face looked pained. He spoke very quietly. “When I held you,” he began, “…or rather, when you held me…” He had been avoiding my gaze, but now he looked directly into my eyes and I could see how difficult it was for him to speak the words. “…it was the first time I’d been touched willingly in two hundred and forty years.” He turned back to Peter then, and performed more compressions. “And so it is I who wish to thank you, Katy. I shall never forget your kindness, whatever happens, as you say, after this.”
Peter gave a strangled sound as a gush of water poured out of his mouth. Colin rolled him onto his stomach. Peter coughed in loud, honking barks.
“Peter!” I breathed. I glanced up at Colin. The expression in his eyes was inexpressibly sad as he watched me take Peter’s hand in mine.
I couldn’t look at Colin anymore. Peter was my boy
friend. We’d been through too much for me to betray him with thoughts of someone else. I forced myself to focus on Peter’s face, smile at Peter, remember that I love Peter…all the while aware that Colin was watching me.
“Katy?” Peter rasped, propping himself up on one elbow.
“You’re going to be all right,” I whispered.
“I’m afraid that’s not entirely correct,” Colin said softly. “Although it’s true that his blood is circulating again.”
It seemed like an odd thing to say. “What, Colin?”
“Now that he’s alive again, I need to take him.”
“Take him where?”
He smiled. “Katy,” he whispered. Then, before I could react, he slapped me across my chest with so much force that I flew backward thirty feet or more, until I smacked into the cliff wall.
I don’t know how long it took me to regain consciousness, but when I did, my blurred vision revealed a scene that sent shivers down my back. Peter was on the ground, trying to fight off Colin, who was hunched over him, holding Peter down.
My first thought, narcissistic as it was, was that they were fighting over me. If that were the case, Peter would lose for sure. I’d seen how strong Colin was when he carried both Peter and me out of the bay. He must have fought off the ondines, too. And when he threw me against the cliff, it had felt like a Mack truck had barreled over me.
“Stop it!” I yelled, staggering toward them on wobbly legs. “There’s no need—”
By then I was close enough to see what was really happening, and my words dried up in my throat.
Fighting over me? How idiotic could I have been? Peter wasn’t fighting at all. He was only making a futile effort at defending himself while Colin tore at his throat with his teeth.
I could only blink in horror as Colin turned his head away from Peter to face me. His mouth was bloody, obscene. His teeth had grown into long fangs that dripped foaming blood over his chin and down the front of his jacket. Beside him, Peter lay face-up, his eyes glassy and unblinking, this throat savagely ripped open.
I screamed. The sound echoed around the bay, gradually ebbing away into silence.
I’d half-fallen in love with Colin. And he’d killed Peter.
“A vampire,” I whispered. “That’s why you were summoned.”
“It was going to be you,” Colin said thickly, “but I couldn’t bear to hurt you.”
I stared at him for a moment, at his animal fangs, his blood-smeared chin. How could I have ever befriended that…that thing?
In the moonlight, I saw his eyes well with tears. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Because I can’t help being what I am. Please go, Katy. Go before I’m not able to stop myself.”
The rocks around me were already beginning to bounce with my energy inside them. “Yeah, well, I guess I can’t help being what I am, either,” I said, sending the rocks flying. They struck Colin hard, hard enough to break bones. But this was a vampire. There was only one weapon, I knew, that would work against him.
“Stake!” I commanded, raising my hand.
From deep in the woods something came flying, fast as lightning and true in its course, into my waiting hand. It was a piece of wood a foot long and three inches thick, with a pointed end sharp enough to spear a rhinoceros.
Colin stood up. “Go ahead,” he said, facing me squarely. He tugged at the buttons of his military jacket so that it hung straight on his body as he stood at attention. “Do what you must, Katy.”
For a moment I hesitated, remembering the feel of his arms around me, the touch of his lips on mine. But then my gaze shifted to Peter, lying lifeless in the mud. Peter, who had saved my life more than once, who had been my life.
I nodded once, in farewell. So did Colin, an instant before he leaped at me, claws out, fangs exposed.
I released the stake. It flew straight into Colin’s heart. Our eyes met again, briefly, connecting over an ocean of regret, of things that might have been.
His gaze softened. He was almost smiling. As the town clock chimed three, his body disintegrated to ash.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Katy!”
The voice sounded as if it were far away, barely discernable at first, but after a time I realized that it was Becca, calling from the woods. “Katy, come here! Hurry!”
I glanced down at Peter. My hands were covered with his blood. How long had I been on this shore, kneeling, cradling his head in my lap, touching the waxy skin of his cheek? It was where I wanted to stay forever. I needed to stay with him, to mourn, to bring his mangled body back home.
“Katy!”
With a sob, I got to my feet. I knew that, whatever had happened, I had to think clearly now. There was nothing more I could do for Peter, while there were others—the whole town, in fact—who were still in grave danger.
Feeling my heart tearing in two, I turned and followed Becca’s voice.
* * *
She was waiting with Amanda, and greeted me with a big smile when she saw me. “It worked!”
“What worked?”
“Telepathy. You heard me, right?”
“Yes—”
“God, you look like hell.”
“It’s…Peter…I mean—”
“Okay, here’s the plan I’m going to reach out to everyone who was at the campsite. We all have talents. Well, everyone except Cheswick. So we’ll stick together and one by one, we’ll get rid of all the awful things my mother conjured. Let’s go.”
I looked back toward the beach.
“What’s the matter?”
Slowly I closed and opened my eyes, unable to speak or even think.
“Look, I know you’re tired. We all are. But if we work together, we can do this. I know we can.”
I swallowed, then nodded. “Okay,” I whispered. There would be time to think about Peter later. Later, and for the rest of my life. “That woman isn’t your mother,” I said, willing myself to focus on the present. “She’s a cousin of—”
“Shh. I’m communicating with Verity. She’s at Hattie’s. She says it’s bad there. Really bad.”
Amanda cleared her throat. “Um, I hate to break it to you, but it’s pretty bad here, too.” She nodded eastward.
I squinted in that direction. “What do—”
Then I saw it. The werewolf, running through the woods toward us like a hairy locomotive.
“Oh, man,” Becca said.
Amanda touched her arm. And mine. “Stay cool,” she whispered. Then she closed her eyes and emitted a series of squeals, grunts, woofs, and something that sounded like chikereechi!
I looked over at Becca, who was looking at Amanda as if she were insane. But a moment later we were surrounded by woodland creatures. They were prey animals—rabbits, squirrels, deer—but as the werewolf approached, they formed ranks in front of us, chattering and baring their teeth like tigers.
The werewolf slowed, pacing slowly and growling, its ears flattened into attack mode. “This doesn’t look good,” I said, picturing a werewolf smorgasbord with Bambi’s friends as the appetizers and us as the main course.
“Have faith,” Amanda said. She squeaked some more. Her last utterance must have been a command, because all at once the bunnies and chipmunks leaped, teeth-out, at the werewolf’s feet, causing it to yelp in pain as a deer turned around and kicked its face. Several squirrels were climbing up the werewolf’s legs as if they were scaling giant sequoias. Birds pecked at its eyes. Spiders crawled into its ears. As it turned and skittered away, a raven swooped down from the trees and deposited a wet, steaming pile of excrement on the werewolf’s head.
“Take off, troops,” Amanda called.
CHAPTER NINE
Verity hadn’t been kidding about how bad it was in the restaurant. The zombie must have gotten bored playing the piano, because he had abandoned it to feast instead on the entrails of someone who looked a lot like the school’s attorney. From what I could see from outside one of the windows, the real musicians were all dead,
lying in various stages of dismemberment.
“See what I mean?” I turned away from the window. Verity had joined us. Her eyes were red and swollen. “That’s my dad,” she said brokenly. “The one the zombie’s—” She couldn’t finish, but I knew the word that would finish her sentence. Eating.
“I know I should fight them, but I’m afraid to go in. Afraid to defend my dad.”
“We’ll go in together,” I said. “We have a plan. It’ll work out.” I didn’t even know what I was saying. We had no plan. We had nothing.
Verity looked up, sniffing. Chrissie was coming out of the woods. She was carrying a pile of rocks in the hammock she’d made from the bottom of her tee shirt, probably to use against the demons inside the restaurant. “I thought maybe that was Peter,” Verity said. “Where is he?”
Tears blurred my vision. “The bay,” was all I could manage. “A vampire…” I started to tremble uncontrollably.
She put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes asked the question her lips couldn’t form.
“Yes,” I said before she could say dead. I didn’t want to hear that word, the same way Verity hadn’t been able to handle the thought about what the zombie was doing to her father. “The soldier was a vampire.”
“I’m sorry,” she said numbly, and we held onto each other. She felt like a little bird. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said softly. “It’s like when you get robbed or someone breaks up with you or your cat gets run over by a car. You just don’t want it to be true, so you say it can’t be true…”
“But it is,” I finished.
It was all true, the worst nightmare any of us could possibly imagine was happening, and it wasn’t a dream, and it wasn’t going to have a happy ending.
* * *
Bryce and Cheswick showed up carrying weapons from the garden shed, Bryce with a scythe and Cheswick with a rope. I didn’t know what possible use a rope would have, unless Cheswick knew something about knot tying, which I would bet he didn’t.
Maybe it was my low state of mind, but I found myself getting angry with Cheswick for his sheer incompetence. Right now we needed someone with a cool head, intelligence, and common sense. We needed Peter.