by D L Blade
“Are you still wearing the necklace?” He looked at my neckline. I gripped the stone. Was Caleb talking to me? Or was he still possessed?
“Caleb?”
“Are you?” he snapped.
“Yes, yes it’s on.”
“Get out!” Caleb shouted.
He slammed his head back and black smoke came through his eyes and out of the car.
“Are you okay?” Caleb asked, clearly himself again. His eyes were wet and he could barely catch a breath.
“Are you? Holy shit, Caleb. You were possessed. How did you even get here or know where to find us?”
“The portal Joel created was still open, so I hitched a ride here. I saw you on the beach, followed by that smoke entering my body.
“What do we do now?”
Our focus was drawn to the front window of the car and we saw a man standing in front of us. He wore a long black coat, gray top, and black pants. His hair was frosty white and lay right on his shoulders. He looked to be in his twenties. He had no facial hair and his eyes were bright red.
He wasn’t a witch, like we thought he could be. He was a vampire. He showed his fangs, hissed and licked his lips. He was clearly evil in its purest form. My heart felt like it was going to explode as my heartbeat pounded hard against my chest. He had handsome features, but when he showed his fangs and hissed, his face transformed into a demon-like creature. He was horrifying.
“What is that?”
Caleb’s shook his head. “This isn’t good.”
“Who or what is that?”
“Remember the demon I told you about that mated with an angel to create the vampire race?”
“That’s the demon?!”
“No,” he said. “That’s their child. The very first vampire to ever exist.”
I looked back toward the vampire. “Great.” Panic was rising in my chest. “We can’t drive away. Joel and Lily are still on the shore. We need to fight him. It’s not like he could kill us, right?”
He put his hand on his waist but froze. “The dagger I used during the ritual. It’s gone.”
“Why do we need that? Aren’t wooden stakes how you kill a vampire?”
“There’s one weapon that can kill an immortal. It’s that dagger.”
“Well, the plot thickens. Got to love your secrets, Caleb.”
He shook his head. “Son of a bitch.”
We looked back at the very pissed-off vampire in front of us. The red-eyed demon held the dagger, tapping it against his leg.
He was so close to us now. He stood in front of the car and laughed.
“My name is Kylan,” he said, and my heartbeat picked up at the sound of his voice. “I was hoping to stop the ritual from happening, but you weren’t at your home like I thought you’d be.” He flashed an evil grin and showed his fangs, his face contorting into a disgusting and vile demon-like creature.
Caleb didn’t take his eyes off Kylan. “You’re his biggest threat, Mercy. He knows what our mission is. With us alive, he knows we will destroy everything he created, especially with you being back. I wish I had put it all together; that he would be the first one to come after you. He would have known about you, long before the ritual. It was never known to us that he could harness magic.” Caleb cursed and slammed his hands on the steering wheel. “I just assumed it was a witch.”
“Hey, this isn’t your fault. My guess is that he’s been hiding for centuries. It could have been anyone, Caleb. Let’s fight him. Together.” He looked at me and nodded.
We both turned toward Kylan again. We each opened our door and got out of the car, and cautiously walked toward him.
Kylan laughed again. “How precious is this?” He paused and slowly smiled at us. “Look at you two. Back together again after all these years. Too bad you’re about to die together. In a way, it’s like a tragic love story.” His laughter sent chills down my spine.
I had never been so terrified in my entire life. Despite the overwhelming feeling of fear, there was also anger. He was hurting the ones I love. I felt my new powers radiating through my body, and I wasn’t leaving this park until this creature was dead.
Kylan took a step closer to us.
“Mercy, run!” I heard Joel’s voice.
Lily and Joel were now conscious, breaking off the tree branches that were wrapped around them to keep them from being pulled into the cove.
Kylan was walking toward us. I lifted my hands up and used my energy to shoot the dagger out of his hands and across the parking lot. This infuriated him and he hissed loudly.
Lily and Joel clasped hands together and began to chant a spell. A ring of fire formed around Kylan.
“Really? Fire? Do you know how old I am?” Kylan asked mockingly.
He glared at me and clapped his hands like we’d just concluded the final scene of a play. “I’ve decided I am going to kill Caleb first, that way, you can watch him die.” His head tilted back as he laughed at us, and it made my skin crawl.
“The fire will only last a few more minutes. We need to stand in a circle around the fire ring and be ready when it burns out,” Lily said, not acknowledging Kylan’s threat. She and Joel were now by our side. The four of us held hands and formed a circle around him.
“I have powers, too, you know,” Kylan shouted. “I was the first vampire ever created.” He lifted his hands and Joel and Caleb stopped moving. Lily turned to me and her eyes were midnight black.
Oh no.
I held my hands up. “Lily, it’s me. Wake up. Fight it.”
Lily pulled her hand out to her side and I felt a force of energy radiate inside my body. I realized she was pulling that power from me. The dagger lifted off the ground and flew toward her hand. She clasped her fingers tightly around the dagger and lunged toward me, throwing my backside on the ground. I hit my head on a rock and winced. “Lily, wake up!”
She tried to plunge the dagger into my chest but I fought her with all my strength. I wanted to use my powers but I feared I’d hurt her. My hand flew toward the dagger and I used the force of fire from my fingers to heat up the dagger in her hands. She yelped and released it. I caught the warm end of the blade and tossed it again, behind me. My hands gripped each side of her face and used my energy force to pull the smoke out of her eyes. I shielded my face with my right arm as it exited her body. For a brief moment, I felt it trying to enter my body but my necklace lit up like a Christmas tree, pushing the force away from my body and back into Kylan, who had been standing there, hands in fists the entire time.
He wasn’t going to win.
He was now grinning and showing his fangs. For an ancient, all-powerful vampire, he wasn’t fighting much. In fact, he really wasn’t fighting at all.
“It’s over, demon. Let them go.” I pulled myself out of my fear, jumped to my feet and helped Lily to hers. She was in a daze.
“It’s okay, Lily. You’re safe.”
Kylan lifted up his right hand and froze Lily like the others. “Fine. I’ll find another way,” he snarled with gritted teeth.
I held out my wrist. “I’ll let you drink my blood. That’s the other way. Now that I’ve gone through my Awakening, my blood will allow you to walk in the light. Don’t you want that? Here. Drink.”
“I don’t want your blood. It isn’t as desirable to all of us.”
This puzzled me, especially when he laughed. He was so sadistic and now I was alone with him.
The fire burned out around him and he walked over to the dagger on the ground and picked it up. He then did what I wasn’t expecting. He walked back over and handed it to me.
I looked at him, confused.
“Take the dagger and plunge it into your heart, or I will gut your aunt right in front of you with it.”
I didn’t know what to do. The short memories I had of some of the battles I’d fought in my previous life, were brief. I couldn’t recall any training that I could use right now, in this moment. How was I supposed to stop the original vampire?
&
nbsp; I’m surprised I’m not already dead. Why am I not already dead?
I looked at him with a puzzled expression on my face. “Why are you making me take my own life? Why not kill me yourself?”
He frowned. “It’s more poetic.”
I looked down at the dagger. This didn’t make any sense.
“No,” I said, handing him back the dagger, but he wouldn’t take it.
“No?” He looked down at the dagger.
“You do it. Make it quick,” I ordered, testing my theory.
He frowned again, and his eyes lit up. “Take this dagger and kill yourself with it, witch! You don’t want to see what horrible things I will do to your aunt, do you?”
I looked over at Lily and back to him. I was now smiling.
“You can’t kill me, can you? Something is not allowing you to do it. And you can’t possess me, either because I’m wearing this necklace.” I touched the jet stone.
He showed his fangs.
“That’s why you used Cami … because you can’t do it. You can’t kill any of us. You didn’t push her, she jumped to protect me.”
This may be easier than I thought.
“Why can’t you, though? Why are you not able to kill me?”
He hissed at me like a viper ready to strike. His eyes narrowed, and his fangs appeared again.
“After I ripped my father’s head off, my angelic mother put a curse on me.”
The sadistic bastard killed his own father?
“But you created vampires. Don’t they have to die in order to transition?”
“I only turned one vampire. Her name was Valentina. She was so afraid of what she’d become after I drank from her. After I had explained to her that she would now be a vampire, she took her own life. She didn’t realize that was the final step in her transition. Once you die, you’re reborn.” He laughed.
He was so sick. He loved seeing people in pain … he thrived on it.
“Her blood lust was stronger than mine. She turned humans into vampires and her creations turned others, and a vampire race had begun. It was like a plague that would never stop spreading.”
He laughed again so hard he flung his head back and balled his fists. When he lowered his head again, the red in his eyes had turned black.
This thing was pure evil. He had to die, and now.
“You lose, Kylan. I will not take my life, ever. I will also continue to fight by Caleb’s side until every last one of you is dead.”
I was making him angrier, but I didn’t care. His face started to change. He was so ugly now it was hard to look at him.
“That necklace may keep you from being controlled by me but all I need do is wake Lily or Joel and possess them again and make one of them kill you with this dagger. Then I’ll force them to drown themselves. You push that dagger through your heart and I will spare their lives.”
“You won’t touch them,” I warned. I then took the dagger and flung it toward the water as far as I could.
As he dashed for the dagger, I lifted my hands and created a barrier around Caleb, Joel, and Lily. The shield encircled them in a bubble Kylan couldn’t penetrate. I chanted:
“Fire from my hands, create this flame.
Make him feel every ounce of pain.
Send this demon straight to hell.
For all I have, I create this spell.”
Kylan stopped running. “What’s this?” He looked down at his body. “What’s happening to me?”
His body was melting, but he wasn’t screaming. It just made him angrier. I wasn’t pulling this power from Caleb, though. Spirit didn’t have to. I was able to control fire and everything around me.
I kept my eyes on Kylan. His flesh was melting from his face to the point that he was no longer recognizable.
“Stop this, you witch!” He barely cried out before his mouth melted off his face and dripped to the ground.
I spotted a fallen branch, ran toward it, yanked it from the ground, and split it in half with my knee. I ran toward Kylan with the sharpest end pointed toward him. He was still standing, but very weak; too weak to fight back. I plunged the piece of wood through his heart. He backhanded me across the face, causing me to fall to the ground. As he screeched, Lily, Caleb, and Joel unfroze and fell to their knees. They all looked up just in time to see Kylan explode into ash.
I bolted toward the water and picked up the dagger. Lily ran toward me and held me tightly. I gave her the biggest hug I had ever given anyone. They were safe.
“We need to hide that dagger,” Caleb said while getting to his feet.
“I know a place,” Joel mentioned as he lifted both hands up in the air and created a portal. “I’ll teleport it there.”
He chanted a spell and the dagger zipped through the portal entrance.
“Where did you send it?” I asked.
“Don’t tell us where you sent it,” Caleb interrupted. “The fewer people that know, the better. There are mind reading witches out there.”
“You’ll never know,” Joel assured us.
“We need to go. As soon as your Awakening happened, every witch felt it, and there are witches that are aligned with vampires. Your blood is very desirable to them now and their witch allies will lead them to you. We need to hide you until we can put together a plan,” Caleb said.
“Where can we go?” I asked.
“Joel, can you teleport us to St. Peter’s Cemetery?” Caleb asked while grabbing my hand.
Joel nodded.
“Why take us to a cemetery?” I asked, remembering what happened the last time I was there.
“There’s a witch safe house in one of the mausoleums, Mercy,” Caleb explained.
It all made sense now. I knew exactly where he was taking us. Seconds later, we were teleported to the St. Peter’s Cemetery, where Riley’s mother was buried.
“I’ve been here before.” I looked over at the mausoleum across the cemetery. “My friend’s mom is buried here. We came here a few weeks ago to pay our respects, and over there, we heard some crazy noises from that mausoleum.” I gestured in that direction. “Is that the safe house?”
Caleb nodded. “It used to be a vampire lair. You and I snuck in there once to take out a vampire that was planning to strike a werewolf pack. We owed that pack a favor.”
“I think I had a vision about it, but at the time, I thought it was just a dream. Someone threw me down the entryway from behind,” I said. Bits and pieces of that vision came back into my mind. I had climbed down some stairs inside a coffin in the mausoleum. Someone had come up behind me and pushed me down.
He smiled. “Yeah, that guy got what was coming.”
I looked at him curiously. “That actually happened?”
“It was as if they knew we were coming. They struck you from behind and when you landed, a crowd of angry vampires surrounded you. But don’t worry, we were right behind you.” He winked at me and grabbed his phone from his pocket.
“I need to call Abigail. She’s going to worry about me.”
“Don’t you dare. She tried to bite me.”
“She won’t hurt you, Mercy. She’s on our side. She couldn’t control herself.”
“Are those words actually coming out of your mouth?” I couldn’t believe he was already dialing her number.
We entered the mausoleum’s doors and there was a coffin at the center of it. Joel slid the coffin open and it made the same screeching noise I had heard the day I was there. Someone must have been hiding in here that day. There was a long set of stairs that led under the ground and Joel went in first.
“I need to make sure it’s safe first. Come down slowly in about five minutes.”
Five minutes later, we entered the lair, and I looked around. It was bigger than I had imagined. There was furniture in every space of the walls; there was even a kitchen and a few bathrooms.
We were down there exploring the space for over an hour when we heard a tap at the door. Abigail walked in. “Do you really think she�
�ll be safe here? It’s a vampire lair.”
Caleb lit up when he saw her. He really cared about her. “Not anymore, it’s not. She’ll be safe here. It’s been abandoned for a couple centuries.” He walked up to her and gave her a long hug then pulled away slightly, while still resting his arms around her shoulders. “We need your help, Abigail,” he said.
“Of course you do,” she gloated with a side smirk.
Caleb rolled his eyes.
Abigail walked in my direction and sat down on the couch next to me. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore, and if I were going to trust her to fight with us from here on out, I wanted to know who she really was.
“Hey,” I said gently.
She closed her eyes in annoyance. “Yes, Mercy?”
“Sorry I won’t let you drink from me. But you understand, right?” She didn’t respond. Instead, she folded her arms like a stubborn child but kept her posture perfectly straight.
After a long pause, she turned toward me. “I’m not being selfish, you know. I can’t control my desire for blood. None of us can.”
“Who did this to you?”
Her forehead creased. “Who turned me?”
I nodded.
She showed no expression of anger or warmth. She looked away and shifted again in her seat.
“I was thirty-two when I was turned. I was born a witch, as you know, but that all changed after you and your coven began to train. I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore, so I left the village to find my purpose.
“Three years after I left the village, there was word of the witch hunt, and that you had died. I felt like our hope was lost. I didn’t belong with the witches anymore, nor was I a powerless human. I didn’t belong anywhere. I met a handsome vampire named Lucas Carmichael shortly after Caleb and the rest of your coven fled Salem. At the time, I didn’t know he was a vampire. He was so charming, and he treated me like a princess.” Abigail smiled wanly. “I wanted so badly to live forever like my nephew, but the Chosen Ones were the only ones allowed to do it. I envied what you had, so when he told me what he was, I was drawn to it. This was my moment to live forever, but in different way.”
