Now he grasped it tightly, feeling his massive hands curl easily around it. Suddenly, it felt like tissue paper.
McCay and Briggs hadn’t considered that he would break free. They were rash and impulsive and never thought things through all the way.
They were boys. Boys always messed up eventually.
Right now, Dietrich couldn’t have been happier about that particular personality fault.
He pulled, using the muscles the poison of the Hell Hound had given him. The rope made a ripping sound that carried easily under the water. It was loud and wonderful, and in sheer seconds, Dietrich was free from the rope’s hellish hold.
He shoved himself upward, aiming in the opposite direction to the rope, having no other indication of which way was up and which way was down.
But a few seconds into his mad-dash swim, Dietrich realized his mistake. His massively strong goblin body was taking him up faster than he should have gone. And he had no way of evening out the pressure.
A dull ache began in his shoulders, but this dull ache increased to a terrible sharp pain within sheer split moments. His skin began to itch – furiously. It felt as if insects were crawling all over him. Then his skin began to sting as if those insects were biting him. The pain in his shoulders spread down his body to his hip joints, his knee joints, and his ankles, and before long he was engulfed in a throbbing disruption in every single joint in his body.
I’m getting the bends, he thought, and it was so much worse than that too – because the pressure in his lungs hadn’t gone away. He couldn’t believe he’d managed to not inhale this long as it was, and now he was falling victim to decompression sickness. He wasn’t going to make it. He had to stop. And he had to breathe.
No. Not one more time!
He was going to die yet again in this hellhole of a water pit. And each time, it was so horrible, it killed a new piece of his soul. Dietrich honestly felt as if his mind had become a cracked vessel, delicate and strained. One more thunk and it would go – shattered into a thousand pieces.
He opened his mouth….
But a hair’s breadth of time before he would have inhaled that killing mouthful of liquid, a white light opened up before him. He froze, temporarily and mercifully distracted from that suicidal inhalation.
The light in front of him spread, becoming the ring of a magic portal. That ring shot toward him, engulfed him, and he was suddenly yanked through the portal and sent hurling through time and space.
In the portal, Dietrich inhaled.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lehrer came out spinning end-over-end as if he’d gone in doing somersaults, and water went spraying everywhere as the portal ejected him with exactly the amount of force Meagan and the others imagined it would. They’d prepared for it this time, though, gauging how far he would go and hurriedly throwing down their jackets and outer sweaters where they figured he’d land.
To their great fortune, they’d estimated right on. Meagan watched, wide-eyed, as Lehrer shot through the air in a wet, spraying arc, and then slammed into the ground directly on top of their clothing. He rolled right off again, though, tumbling a few times across the unforgiving rock surface before coming to an absolute stop. He lay still and prone, and the worst kinds of thoughts cascaded through Meagan’s mind.
She, and the others hurried to his unmoving form, kneeling beside him. She needed their help in turning him over; his goblin body was immensely dense and heavy. But they were rewarded for their efforts when her grove leader let out a low groan and began coughing. It was a wet, wheezing cough that sounded so miserable, Meagan couldn’t help but feel wretchedly guilty.
“Mr. Lehrer!” she exclaimed, breathing hard with fear. “Can you hear me?” She didn’t know why she was asking him that. Perhaps thoughts of water pressure and exploding tympanic membranes. Everything seemed chaotic to her. She wanted to use her magic to heal him, but he was clearly alive, and if he was coughing, then he was expelling the water from his lungs.
He coughed some more, and Katelyn said, “Move him on his side.”
Together, they rolled him back onto his side. She was no doubt thinking he would vomit up lungs-full of water, but it turned out that whatever he’d had in his lungs, if anything, he’d already expelled.
“His lungs are strained,” said Draper. “It will take him a moment before he can speak. But he is going to be well.”
*****
Twenty minutes later, Meagan stood over the unconscious forms of Nathan McCay and Shawn Briggs and shook her head. “They look almost human right now.”
Both boys seemed wrapped in a peace that belied the monsters they’d been half an hour ago. It reminded her of how little three-year-old hellions could suddenly look like angels once they were unconscious and tucked into their beds.
She’d done a lot of babysitting.
“In sleep, we revert to what we once were,” said Draper.
“And they were once human,” said Katelyn. “But I seriously can’t believe they’re still out cold. That was one hell of a spell.” She looked over at Meagan, her eyebrows raised. “You think it’ll last much longer?”
“I don’t know. Probably not. We should do something to protect ourselves,” Meagan replied.
Mr. Lehrer came up beside them. “I have an idea.” His voice was scratchy and raw. He tried to clear his throat, failed, and swallowed hard instead.
Meagan waited until he wasn’t looking at her, and then studied him over, concerned. He didn’t look good. Actually, he looked like a goblin freshly pulled from the water, but it was what she saw in the depths of his eyes that left her feeling disconcerted.
He seemed different somehow. Very, very tired at the least.
“Katelyn, give me your life pendant,” he instructed softly, holding his hand out. His eyes were on the sleeping vampires, so he didn’t see her expression of worry.
But Meagan nudged her and nodded. She had a feeling she knew where he was going with this.
Katelyn took a deep breath and unlatched the necklace, giving it to her history teacher. He looked up when it landed in his palm, then turned to Meagan. “We can duplicate this. It’s a spell I haven’t yet taught you, but you’re more than ready for it now. And if we do it together, it’ll work twice as fast.”
She nodded. “But what about them?”
“I have a hunch….” Lehrer frowned as he looked over the vampires again.
“You have a hunch that if we place the life pendants on them, it’ll lock them in their human forms.” She’d had the same passing gut feeling, but had been afraid to voice it.
Lehrer met her gaze. Again, she was struck with the new depths to his eyes, and the worry inside her ratcheted up a notch.
He nodded and looked away. “These pendants contain within them the essence of life, and a vampire’s essence is shrouded in death. One might cancel out the other.”
Yes, but which one? Thought Meagan. It was another thought she chose not to voice. “Let’s give it a shot,” she said instead.
“Very well, but we’ll need to add a stipulation that will prevent the amulet from harming anyone who wears it, or it’ll end up burning a hole through them while they sleep. Place your hand over mine,” he instructed. She laid her hand over the life pendant, sealing it off between their palms.
“And repeat after me.”
It was much less of a drain on Meagan than she’d expected it to be, but then it had become quite clear that October Land amplified her magical abilities. They seemed to have done the same with Mr. Lehrer. The duplication spell took two people to cast, which was both fitting and ironic. Within minutes, the two had created seven new pendants – one from Katelyn’s pendant, then two more from those two, then four more from those four.
“Plenty to go around and extra just in case,” Meagan said as she took one of the pendants and secured it around Shawn’s neck. Lehrer did the same with Nathan.
“Can they take them off again?” asked Katelyn as she lifted up Nath
an’s hand to remind everyone about the black gloves they both wore.
“Probably,” said Meagan. “But why would they want to?” If she was given a choice between being herself and being a bastard, blood drinking monster –
“You know,” said Katelyn, “ the whole ‘sleep all day, party all night, never grow old, never die’ thing.” She was quoting The Lost Boys.
“You forgot the ‘but you must feed’ part,” countered Meagan.
Both girls found themselves considering that then, and the whole thought of drinking blood was so wretchedly disgusting to them, they simultaneously shivered at the thought, and the discussion came to an end.
“What now?” Katelyn asked as they moved away from the two sleeping vampires and back toward the forest line. It seemed the only way to go.
“Now we locate Logan,” said Lehrer.
That was obvious, but Meagan hadn’t suggested using magic to find her friend before because a location spell would just tell them where she was. And that was a little like saying, “She’s in New Mexico,” and if you didn’t know where the hell New Mexico was relative to where you were, then you were out a good bit of magic and nowhere closer to your goal.
None of them seemed to know anything about October Land, what it looked like, or even how big it was. So a location spell wasn’t going to be of any help.
“Are you going to cast another spell like Meagan did to find you?”
Lehrer looked at Meagan in surprise. But she held up her hand and shook her head. “I didn’t cast a location spell – it was a sock finding spell. You’re wearing the ones I gave you for Solstice last year. I noticed when we were packing to come here.”
Lehrer’s brows raised and he looked down at his ankles, lifting his pants legs to reveal a gray and white striped cashmere pair. “They’re warm,” he said by way of explanation.
“I’m glad,” Meagan replied, smiling.
“They’re also big enough to go over my feet right now,” he added, gesturing to the size fifteen hiking boots they’d had to buy him before heading into October Land. They’d just been fortunate that Wal-Mart carried extra, extra, extra, extra, extra large sizes in just about everything. They’d gotten his clothes there too.
“That was a sock finding spell?” Katelyn exclaimed. “Holy shit, girl. You are so gonna have to come over to my house. I’m pretty sure our dryer is actually a dimensional mouth that eats single socks.”
Meagan smiled.
Mr. Lehrer nodded in seriousness. “That was quick thinking,” he commended Meagan. “Good job.”
She tried not to blush.
“You were right in thinking a location spell wouldn’t do you any good,” he continued. “In fact, for Logan I was thinking more along the lines of….” He trailed off suddenly, rubbed his big forehead with his massive hand. He closed his eyes.
“Mr. Lehrer?” Meagan moved toward him, but he held up his hand.
“I’m fine. I just can’t think of what it’s called when you try to find water in the desert. You know. With that stick thing.”
“You mean dowsing?” supplied Katelyn.
Mr. Lehrer didn’t look surprised, exactly, but he had an expression on his goblin face like he’d just been proven right about something.
“It doesn’t work, you know,” Katelyn continued. “It’s an unconscious psychological trick the mind plays on the dowser’s arms and it’s been proven ineffective over tons of other methods –”
“Yes, I know,” Lehrer cut her off, but not in an unkind way. He was actually smiling, although it was a tired smile. “But ours will work. Because unlike dowsers, we really are magic.” His smile turned into a tusk-filled grin, and Meagan couldn’t help grinning as well.
“The problem is,” he continued, “just as you needed my socks, we need something that either belonged to Logan or is associated with her in some way.”
Everyone was quiet for a moment as they looked down at themselves, holding up their arms, checking their fingers and pockets. “Shit,” said Katelyn. She looked down at the sweater she was wearing, a thick knit cotton yarn number in pastels that was perfectly flattering with her long blonde hair. “Logan gave me a gorgeous sweater for my birthday and I didn’t wear it because I didn’t want it to get ruined on this trip.” She dropped her sweater in frustration. “Instead, I wore this hideous thing.”
“It isn’t hideous,” said Meagan, confused.
“Not at all. You look quite lovely in it,” agreed Draper.
“She gave us those necklaces too, remember?” Meagan said. “The best friend necklaces. But we wore the life pendants instead.”
“So no one has anything belonging to or associated with Logan?” Lehrer asked.
They shook their heads.
“I can help you,” came a new voice. It was familiar, but changed. It sounded hollow and deep and surprising.
The party turned, their guards up. Meagan felt more magic pool into her hands, ready to be used in defense.
A handsome teenage boy stood several feet away. The problem was, he was standing directly on top of one of the pools of water. And he was see-through.
“Alec,” Meagan breathed.
Alec Sheffield smiled and gave a little, mega-cool wave. “Hey.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
It felt like the entire universe waited.
The Harvesters waited, their collective breaths held, their eyes glued to Sam and Logan. The fire waited, its flames respectfully low and unnaturally quiet. The storm overhead waited, its spinning slowed and its lightning for the moment held back.
Sam and Logan stood facing one another, a mere foot apart. Sam’s tall form towered over her, but for all the potential destruction housed within his beautiful, hard body, there was infinite gentility in his gaze.
Logan had warring memories within her, two minds unconsciously battling it out for space in her thoughts. There was the promised soul of Ciara, and then there were the memories of Logan’s family. They were all bittersweet memories, none of them perfectly happy, none of them perfectly painful.
His fangs were clearly visible, promising and threatening when he spoke. “You have a choice to make, Logan. Do you keep Ciara’s promise? Or do you defy the fates yet again?”
“Ciara was in love with another,” Logan returned calmly. “She did not give her soul to you. Fate made that choice for her, and it wasn’t Fate’s choice to make.”
“If people do not belong to the fates for them to do with what they will, then nothing does. All that happens does so because the fates deem it. It is not always what you wish, but that is the price of mortality.”
Logan felt her blood pressure rise. She hated that reasoning. “You’ve just told me that life isn’t fair,” she countered. “I hate it when people tell me that. Life would be so much more fair if less people spouted that crap and more people did something to make it fair.”
Sam’s gaze hardened, turning from mercury to steel. It was a moment before he spoke. But when he did, his tone had lowered, and there was leaking power in his words now. “Then you would defy the fates.”
White lightning split the sky overhead, casting the masquerade floor into stark contrasts of light and dark. Thunder, its violent brother, came rumbling along after. The Harvesters looked up, fidgeting nervously in their seats.
Logan, however, remained as she was, her gaze trapped in Sam’s as if held there by chains. “I have a life to live, Sam. Just like Ciara did.”
The lightning that had been dancing through the skies now dove for the ground, shooting into the forest nearby and cracking a tree in half. The sound shocked the universe for a moment, and the ground shook.
“When will the living stop using their lives against me?” Sam asked.
“How about when you stop using death against them!” came a new voice – but a familiar voice.
Logan spun around to face it, but before she could even fully lock her eyes on the newcomer, Sam was snaking an arm around her waist and pulling her ba
ck against him. She slammed into the solidness of his chest, let out a cry of surprise, and then shuddered. Her eyes became heavy-lidded.
Wonderful, terrible heat immediately seared through Logan beneath his hand, reaching past the material of her midnight dress to scorch her skin and spread across her body with insidious, delicious wickedness.
Sam lowered his lips to her ear. “See him now, Logan, for it is the last time you will lay eyes on the interloper.”
It was Dominic.
Logan’s lips parted. She wanted to cry out to him, to tell him to leave, to run away and protect himself, but Sam was pouring his magic into her, drowning her in warmth and pleasure. It was sinking lower, curling into forbidden places. She felt her head drop against Sam’s shoulder. She couldn’t help it.
“Let her go, Sam,” Dom demanded.
Sam ignored him, choosing instead to speak to Logan as if Dominic was of such inconsequence, he didn’t bear paying attention to. “You won’t miss them,” he told her gently.
It was the same thing he’d told her at the dance weeks ago.
“Remember?” he asked, and she did. “I told you, Logan. I won’t let you.”
She believed him. She believed that if there were a force in the universe capable of making her forget her family, her mother and father….
My mother, she thought suddenly, at once seeing something with a semblance of clarity. Her mother turned to alcohol in order to escape the pain of her life. Just like Logan turned to pen and paper. But how much more pain would her mother be forced to endure and attempt to escape if she lost her daughter?
An infinite amount, she thought. It was supposed to be the worst thing that could happen to a person – the loss of their child.
“They will forget you,” he told her, also just as he had at the dance. “I will make sure of it, Logan. For you, I will make them forget. For my queen.” More luxurious bliss flooded her body, drawing a low, soft moan from between her parted lips.
She was having a hard time concentrating. But…. was that what she wanted?
To be forgotten?