“I’ve never –” She broke off as terror temporarily closed her throat. But she swallowed, took a step back, and managed to go on. “I’ve never heard murder described so beautifully.”
“You’re thinking mortal thoughts again,” he reprimanded, shaking his handsome head as he continued to close in on her. “And you’re fearing mortal fears. You must look beyond all of that, Logan. You’ll feel no pain. No loss. You’ll cease to exist here and begin living somewhere else. It’s as simple as that.”
“Nothing is that simple, Sam,” she said. “What about my family? My friends?” She stumbled back and nearly tumbled when her heel caught on a vine. She righted herself with a palm braced against a nearby tree trunk. It was no use retreating, but her body was fueled by Old Brain self preservation. “What about the people you killed?”
“If you wish to see them again so badly, then there’s no need to despair,” he told her. “Everyone shows up in my realm eventually.” He stopped two feet away, the distance between them now so small, she could feel his power lick along her skin like mild electricity. “Everyone,” he repeated for emphasis.
Logan pressed her fingers to the trunk of the tree behind her. An idea occurred to her, and her fingernail curled against the wood. “Then let me go,” she said. “Let me live out my life. If I have to come to you eventually anyway, then let me have what is rightfully mine here.”
“No.”
Logan’s chin lifted defiantly. Her gaze hardened. “No? Just like that? Fairness is not in your makeup, Sam?”
“Death isn’t meant to be fair, Logan. It is the counterpart to life, after all.”
Logan steadily scraped her fingernail into the tree, hoping she was smart enough to do what she was doing right.
“I’m worried about my little brother,” she told him. “My parents. Can’t you understand that? Have you no sympathy?” Scrape.
“I know what you’re doing, Logan,” he suddenly sighed. “I can read your mind, remember? And it doesn’t work that way. Your words don’t hold that kind of power here.” He offered her his hand then. The universe quieted. “But come with me to my world, and you’ll see that there they do.”
Logan let her hand drop from the tree. Maybe he was right and it didn’t matter. But at least she’d tried. And she was finished anyway.
An odd sense of calm stole over her. She peered into Sam’s blue, blue eyes and felt the salt of the sea on her skin. Thoughts of her family faded. Concern for her classmates slipped slowly away.
The blue wrapped around her. She heard the sky and fell into it. It felt like cotton balls and gentle breezes.
She looked down at his hand, waiting and offered. Slowly, she slid her hand into his. Sam’s fingers tenderly closed over hers.
She was moving forward, walking on nothing. A breath and a heartbeat later, his free hand cupped her cheek.
She closed her eyes as she began to drown, and his lips found hers. They brushed against her, cool and dry and soft as silk. She smelled cinnamon and pumpkin spice and night. She heard something tinkling, like pixie dust or magic. A breeze brushed through her long locks, and it felt like the gentlest fingers combing her hair.
She sighed across his lips.
And Sam deepened the kiss.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Meagan eyed the alleyway warily. Weak secondary lighting from the streets on either end of the grocery store illuminated the stretch of cement. Nothing moved in this murky, misty pre-dawn darkness. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to. It was like the shadows were waiting for something to emerge from their depths.
She and the wizard Draper had moved Lehrer’s body as far away from the mini-mall and that area of street as they felt they needed to go. They’d retreated to the alley behind a grocery store a few blocks away. The parking lot was deserted at this hour, but no doubt a manager or someone to do the stocking would be along any minute now. Meagan had no idea what time it was; she didn’t own a watch because like every other teenager in the world, she used her phone to tell time. But by the temperature in the air and the absolute calm of almost everything around her, she would guess it was around four in the morning.
This night had taken a veritable eternity.
Meagan remained knelt beside her teacher, her eyes on the enigmatic Hugh Draper. The wizard from the past was rummaging through the underbrush beside the alley. He reached over the low-lying cement wall that bordered one side to pick through and collect red and gold leaves that had fallen from the Maples and Oaks lining the store. Meagan watched him for a few silent minutes, and then finally asked, “What are you doing?”
“Collecting magic,” he told her distractedly, his attention clearly on his task.
“In leaves?”
He looked up. “Magic moves through every living thing around us,” he told her.
She blinked. “What, you mean like ‘The Force’?”
He cocked his head to one side and gave her a quizzical look. “I have to admit that the travel spell does allow me to interpret the language of each time period with liberation, but I’m afraid I’m not familiar with that particular colloquialism. The Force?” he asked curiously.
Meagan shook her head in wonder. “Never mind.” She ran a hand over her face and let out a sigh. “Those leaves are dead. You said magic was in living things.”
“Some of these leaves still have just enough life left in them that I can use it. No sense in wasting it, and no sense in destroying a living plant when I can get what I need here instead.”
He moved back to Lehrer’s side and began to place the leaves, about three dozen of them, in a circle around Lehrer’s still body. Meagan tried to move back to afford him space, but he stopped her.
“Stay inside the circle. This will help with your broken nose too.”
It had been hurting her, throbbing gently but persistently. She was guessing she must have black eyes or something for him to know it was broken.
When Draper had nothing but a small opening in the circle remaining, he moved inside of it and knelt once more beside her teacher. Then he closed the circle with his last few leaves.
Meagan watched in apt silence as he began to chant. A few seconds later, the leaves started to glow, each one intensifying in its yellow, orange, or red color. All at once, streams of the same colored light erupted from the leaves’ surfaces and shot toward Draper. He continued to chant, apparently absorbing this energy, until the streams of light at once shot out from him to hit both Meagan and Mr. Lehrer.
It felt like liquid candy, like a sugar high and sunshine and taking a bath in a rainbow. Her nose made a crackling sound, a funny Pop Rocks kind of sensation, and the pain ebbed. It was wonderful.
Eventually, the leaves ceased to glow and, as Meagan looked on, they browned and curled at their edges, drying out completely. The streams of light dissipated.
“The poison in his system will no longer harm him,” Draper said, opening his eyes. “I have managed to neutralize it.”
“Thank you for healing me,” Meagan said, “but who are you really and where did you come from that you know so much magic?” They were fair questions, she thought. It was dangerous to trust too willingly.
“I told you,” Draper said lightly, as he stood from where he’d been kneeling. “My name is –”
“Hugh Draper,” Meagan said. “I know. But that’s not what I mean.”
“Oh?” he asked, throwing her a questioning glance.
Meagan took a deep breath and stood as well. “I mean, you just popped out of time in the nick of time to save me, scared away a vampire, healed my broken nose, and stopped my teacher’s transformation into a monster. That’s a hell of a lot of magic.”
“Well, actually I’m unable to stop his transformation,” corrected Draper, who was again watching Lehrer.
Dietrich Lehrer looked no different now than he had twenty minutes ago. His skin was stone gray, circles further darkened the spaces beneath his closed eyes, and th
e tips of wicked sharp fangs pressed against both lips, upper and lower, of his closed mouth. “He’ll be physically changed until we can find a reversal spell. However, his mind has been restored.”
“You mean, he’ll look like a monster and act like my grove leader?”
“If that’s what he was before,” said Draper, “then yes.”
Meagan ran a hand through her long black hair.
“Now why don’t you tell me what exactly is happening here and we’ll figure out where to go from there?” Draper suggested. He looked at the ground, found a dry and relatively clean space on the low cement wall beside them, and gestured for her to sit.
Meagan shook her head. “No thank you. I can’t sit still right now.”
Draper nodded and sat down himself, folding his hands in his lap.
Meagan met his brown eyed gaze and considered her options. So far, the stranger had only helped. She didn’t get any kind of creepy or negative feelings off of him, and she was really short of other choices. So she gave up and took a deep breath. “Okay, but you’re not going to believe it.”
She told Draper about Sam, about the ritual she’d performed and messed up, about the blue moon this month and how it affected the door to Samhain’s realm, about the dance, about the spell she and Lehrer had cast to protect Logan – about everything. She hadn’t expected him to believe her, though she didn’t know why. Maybe it was that he was an adult. Adults never believed anything.
But Lehrer was an adult, and right now, he was so entrenched in magic, he was a freaking monster. So her organization of adults and magic into separate categories wasn’t exactly valid. Plus, this Draper guy was clearly a magic user in his own right, a self proclaimed wizard. He had come from some other time, and had somehow scared away Shawn Briggs.
Come to think of it, she wondered where the vampire was at that moment….
All in all, she wasn’t overly surprised when she finished conveying everything she could think of and Draper nodded thoughtfully, placed his fingers to his lips in contemplation, and said, “So now we need to get this bard friend of yours some place safe until the final day of the month and then make certain to close the door to Samhain’s realm once more.”
“The spell Mr. Lehrer and I cast on her should keep her safe for a while as long as the phylactery bottle we placed the other half of it in stays out of Sam’s reach.”
“And that’s where your plan has gone horribly awry,” came a third voice from the darkness.
I knew it, thought Meagan as she spun around and Draper jumped to his feet beside her.
This time Shawn Briggs wasn’t alone. Nathan McCay was with him again. Meagan stared at them and decided that in a sick sense, Logan would have had a right to be proud of what she’d created. Never had vampires looked so good.
Or so truly terrifying.
“The bottle’s been found, the spell is broken, and Logan is Sam’s for the taking,” Briggs informed them calmly. Then his gaze zeroed in on Meagan, and the red in his eyes intensified. “Just like you are for mine.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
This will never work, Katelyn thought as she slammed the gear shift into reverse and turned in her seat to look behind her. She barely knew what she was doing. It was an act of desperation, of nonsensical hopelessness more than anything else. But it was all she could think of. It was all she had left.
Logan was out there in the woods, Sam hot on her trail, and if Sam had his way, not only would Katelyn lose the best friend she would probably ever have, Logan’s family would lose their daughter and their sister. And everyone Sam had killed would stay killed.
It was better than doing nothing.
With that affirmation rooted firmly in her mind, Katelyn brought the car around, tried to remember which way she’d come, and then slammed the gear into drive. She clenched her teeth together, gripped the wheel with everything she had, and floored it.
*****
“Exactly how much magic did those leaves give you?” Meagan asked Draper without taking her eyes off of Shawn and Nathan.
“Some,” he told her. “And traveling restores much of what I expend. But I am not as young as I once was and therefore not as strong.” He took hold of Meagan’s wrist and pulled her back.
She glanced down at Lehrer’s still unconscious form as they retreated step after step, and she experienced a moment of indecision. She didn’t want to leave her teacher lying there on the cold ground. She didn’t want to abandon him. But Shawn had already claimed he wouldn’t touch Lehrer. She could only hope he still felt that way.
“Aging sucks, doesn’t it?” Nathan asked conversationally as the two continued toward them, stepping nonchalantly over Lehrer as they drew nearer. “All that joint grinding and aching, all those wrinkles and gray hairs, all those tumors that just seem to appear out of nowhere.” He looked at Meagan. “Lucky for you, Meagan, you won’t have to suffer any of it.”
He smiled like someone who’d just figured out how to have his cake and eat it too. “You were right, Briggs,” he told his companion. “The spitfire’s a keeper. Imagine what a vampire witch might be capable of.”
“It’s a real pity we’ll never know,” said Mr. Lehrer as he suddenly shot up from the ground so fast, he literally blurred into motion. Meagan could only watch in stunned disbelief as the man who had been all but dead only moments ago somehow grabbed both vampires from behind and spun, swinging them around with inhuman, monstrous strength.
She felt her eyes go wide when Shawn and Nathan went sailing across the alley, two black clad blurs, to slam into the back wall of the supermarket. Bricks dislodged themselves beneath the impact. Mortar broke free and crumbled to the ground along with the vampires as they hit the cement and rolled.
But Lehrer gave them no time to recover from the attack. He was on them so fast, it made no sense. Meagan heard growling sounds, monstrous and horrible, and the fight or flight instinct inside of her kicked in.
Without thinking on it any further, she grabbed Draper by the sleeve of his sweater. “Run!” she shouted even as she was turning to sprint down the alley. But his hand firmly placed on hers stayed her where she was.
“No!” he told her, “Your teacher is not a monster on the inside,” he said quickly. “And we need to make certain he does not kill your classmates!”
Meagan looked from Draper to the growling mass of bodies moving violently through the alley and gave that one or two beats of thought. Then, quite hesitantly, she nodded.
It was true that he certainly sounded normal when he’d spoken a moment ago. And Draper was right about Shawn Briggs and Nathan McCay. They’d been transformed by Sam, but underneath they were still Dominic’s closest friends. If they were killed and Meagan and her companions were able to defeat Sam, it was possible they would come back to life, but that was a long shot. Why chance it?
“Don’t kill them!” she shouted at her teacher, hoping to be heard over the commotion. “Just knock them out!”
“I’m trying!” came the gruff and rather impatient reply.
The struggle continued, and for a moment it looked as though the vampires might have the upper hand as Briggs back-handed Lehrer hard enough to send the teacher flying into the low-lying cement wall. But Lehrer was more resilient than Meagan could have imagined. Once he hit the wall, he leapt back onto his feet and charged his opponents head-on.
A few minutes later, Nathan McCay lay sprawled at the base of the wall. A few seconds after that, Briggs followed. Both boys were unconscious.
Dietrich Lehrer stood over them, doubled at the waist, his hands on his knees, his breathing deep and ragged. “I’m getting too old to wrestle with students,” he muttered.
Meagan could only stare at him. It was beyond strange to hear his perfectly reasonable and normal voice coming out of the beast that he’d become.
“Aye, my friend,” said Draper as the wizard left Meagan’s side and made his way to Lehrer’s. Lehrer looked up and met his gaze. Draper smiled warmly
. “The greatest insult to the human race is that we age. Even dying holds more dignity.”
“And who are you?” asked Lehrer as he straightened, rubbed the back of his neck as if to work out a kink, and eyed the stranger warily.
“Draper,” the wizard said amiably. He held out his hand to shake. “Hugh Draper. And may I say, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I know it was only the Hell Hound’s bite that made you thus, but even so, I’ve never actually met a goblin before.”
A goblin? Meagan thought. But as Mr. Lehrer reluctantly shook the older wizard’s hand, she realized that an explanation was in order – and that if Shawn had been telling the truth about the potion bottle, then she had very little time in which to do it.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
He could feel himself inside, split as if in half, one part of him railing madly against the other. But he was almost there, Logan was almost his, and separating from Maldovan at that moment was impossible. Maldovan had to be killed for Sam to leave his body, and Sam couldn’t do the deed himself. Once he was in his own realm, he would have the bastard murdered a dozen different ways.
Right here however, right now, all that mattered was that Logan was literally in his grasp. She sighed softly against his lips, caught up in his magic, and relaxed beneath his touch. Finally. Finally, she was his for the taking.
Sam’s mind filled with images of his home. He saw the long shadows, the mist-covered grounds, the endless forested trails that led to hollows, and he saw himself walking them alone. He remembered the solitude that came with the passage of eons and a throne that no one else could fill. He saw pumpkin patches of muted orange and orchards where the apples never quite ripened. He felt the loneliness of a never ending rule, a mountaintop with a view of forever and no one to share it with.
And he tasted Logan’s sweet lips beneath his. He felt her warmth, her softness. He infused her color into his bones, inhaled her innocence, her power, and yearned to cradle her soul next to his. And he realized, with the first moments of sheer joy he had ever experienced in his life, that all that was before was no more.