by Lucia Ashta
“Petunia!” Naomi yelled in the terrifying moment before the second attack arrived.
It was just my luck to have the witch, and perhaps our greatest chance at surviving this assault, lose her mind right when the hunters got here.
Thwump! The air seemed to suck out of the house, fleeing through the bare windows.
“Hurry,” a tiny voice said across the room, but at its frantic pitch I couldn’t tell which of the fairies it was.
The house sucked all the air back in as if it were reaching for its dying breath. My ears popped at the sudden shift in air pressure, altering the pitch of the constant ringing in them.
A fissure as wide as my arm tore down the wall that divided sitting room from entryway. Like a lightning bolt it struck, searing the wall as it went. This wasn’t just any force, this was magic, and it sizzled as it swept through the house that was supposed to be invulnerable thanks to Naomi’s wards. From what the witch had said, I’d understood that the hunters shouldn’t have even been able to enter the fifty acres that enclosed Irving’s house. Either her wards weren’t as strong as she believed them to be, or the hunters were far more powerful than she’d anticipated. Either option was bad news.
“Finally,” Naomi said, again to air that was empty except for the fine particles of plaster raining down from the trembling ceiling. “You took long enough. We’ll have to address your response time later.”
Great. We were in the middle of an invasion and the witch was having conversations with an imaginary … Petunia.
Another rattling thump and the floor beneath my bare feet shook, building strength like an earthquake. Even my thoughts shook loose from my mind as my entire body vibrated, my long hair shaking around my down-turned face. I placed my palms flat on the floor in search of any kind of stability. Of course that didn’t help. The constant motion of the house made me dizzy, as if I were caught in the undertow of the ocean, desperate for stillness.
“Petunia, now!” Naomi yelled, drawing my attention to her once more. The witch had seemed intelligent and meticulous, conniving even. Her outbursts made no sense. Could the magic of these hunters outside the house be affecting her somehow?
A wave of bright green energy blasted out from Naomi … and a speckled cat was then perched on her shoulder, where it barely fit. The cat’s eyes blazed the exact color green as Naomi’s magic.
I blinked, trying to understand what I was seeing. Where the heck had that cat come from?
Then Naomi’s magic barreled against me, pushing with enough force to knock me off my feet. I landed on my butt atop pieces of Irving’s destroyed dainty tea set. I brushed my wings out from under me and popped back up to a crouch.
“Again,” Naomi said to the cat, who sat on her slim shoulder.
From behind them, as the dust settled enough to see across the room, I finally caught sight of the fairies. Fianna shot wave after wave of crimson magic at the ceiling and walls, while Nessa sent her sapphire magic flinging right after it, though at a slower pace. Nessa’s mouth moved a league a minute as she released her magic and immediately worked to rebuild it. It appeared that the fairies were working to fortify the house, or maybe the witch’s wards—both were obviously needed.
A green, crackling glow swept out from Naomi to encompass her and her cat. The witch brought her hands in front of her, and I ran for the entryway before another one of her blasts could knock me on my ass. As soon as I exited the sitting area, I plastered myself against the wall that faced the other side.
The house thumped again, and this time I was in position to see the front door stretch against its hinges. It expanded like a long strand of kelp before shrinking back to its normal size. Surely they must be magical hinges. No wood or brass stretched that far without breaking.
But even if some spell fortified the doorway, how much longer could it hold? The house was threatening to fall apart at the seams.
“Where’s the girl?” I heard Naomi call out to the fairies.
“I don’t know!” Fianna yelled. “Nessa, find her.”
I ran back toward the sitting area. No need to distract them from whatever they were doing, which was probably actually helpful, as opposed to the freaking out I was mostly doing.
Nessa slammed straight into my face. I swatted before realizing I shouldn’t, and sneezed when the fairy’s azure hair tickled my nose. My sneeze sent her shooting off in the opposite direction, so I dove to catch her because I thought she was falling.
“Get away from me,” Nessa said, stumbling in flight but catching herself, twisting to brush my hands away before I could touch her. “Good grief, girl, stop swiping at me.”
“Sorry,” I said, then grit my teeth. Every single piece of me vibrated as the house shook and struggled to remain more or less in one piece.
Nessa’s eyes widened and she looked around us, taking in the growing damage to our supposedly safe refuge. “You’re not going to hit me again, right?”
“Of course not. I didn’t mean to in the first place. I just reacted. I don’t know what to do.”
“Use your powers, obviously,” the blue fairy said in her battle wear. “We’re under attack.”
Well, duh. “I don’t really have any powers,” I said, in my barely-there clothing that matched my total lack of preparation for our defense.
“You must. Every magical creature does. And you’re a sirangel.”
“But—”
“Figure it out,” she snapped as she pointed herself back in the direction of Fianna, who continued to shoot off red magic at the house without her. “And stay where we can see you!” Nessa called over her tiny shoulder.
I crept along the outermost edge of the sitting area and pressed myself against the wall, until a fissure large enough to pull me into it shattered that wall as well. I squealed, realized belatedly that I’d distract the fairies and witch working to defend me, and clamped my mouth shut.
Use my powers, Nessa had told me, but clearly she didn’t realize that I really meant it when I said I didn’t have any. Not in any real sense. I was a siren, or at least half of one. I was the daughter of the most powerful siren our clan had; her powers were second only to Mulunu’s, who wasn’t a siren. Her song was so strong that she had managed to woo an angel when angels were supposedly impervious to the influences of Earth and her oceans.
But just because my mother’s song was strong didn’t mean I’d inherited the scope of her skill. And just because I was the daughter of an angel didn’t mean I could do whatever angels did. I knew next to nothing of my father, no matter how much I defended him. He was no more than a picture in my mind, borne from my mother’s repeated stories of their love.
The next slap against the house tore at the ceiling until plaster showered down from above like a rainstorm. I coughed and wheezed as I breathed in the dust, reaching for the wall to hold myself up. The house was crumbling around us, and that was despite Naomi’s wards and all of her present efforts and the fairies’. Worst of all, my presence was what had brought this chaos on everyone else … and Quinn and Irving were out there somewhere, without even the protection of the house.
Quinn. I had to see him again, I just had to.
I stopped panicking, I stopped thinking, and I just opened my mouth.
I usually had to set an intention for the course of my song, but I was too unsettled for that. The house was now falling in big chunks and dissolving into powdery pieces.
I sang, surprised at how different my song sounded outside of the water. I hesitated at the unfamiliar pitch, cleared my throat, then forced myself along.
I released my water magic in whatever direction it wanted to go, to do whatever it could do to save us. I gathered strength and confidence, and sang, managing to forget a bit about my crumbling surroundings and lose myself to the tune and melody. I didn’t know if my song would accomplish anything useful, but at least it was already calming me.
I pulled my top up to cover my mouth and breathed in as deeply as I could throu
gh the fabric, filling my lungs, and then belted out a tune that possessed none of the worry ratcheting through my body. I unfurled my wings fully and allowed my shoulders to relax despite the foreign feeling. I sang as my attention hazily traveled to the sliding-glass door.
The song died on my lips with a strangled sound.
I wrapped my wings around myself again to hide. But it was too late.
14
If there was something useful I could have done when the vampire looked through the sliding-glass door across the room at me, I couldn’t imagine it then. I gaped at him from an opening between my wings until I realized I shouldn’t make it obvious how easy of a target I was—though that ship had probably sailed, let’s be real.
I’d never seen a vampire before, but I had no doubt that’s what the man, who wasn’t quite a man, was. He was too pretty and his features too perfect to be an average human. Though he hadn’t spoken a single word to me, nor gestured in any way, my heart thumped loudly, dangerously so—he could probably hear my erratic heartbeat across the distance that separated us. A dark, goopy energy—his magic probably—rolled off him like waves. When it hit me, the flashes of green, red, and blue magic of my allies faded to the background, along with their shouts and the chaos. All I could focus on was him; he made my stomach roll with nausea strong enough that I wondered if I might hurl in front of him and make the announcement of my vulnerability complete.
His hair was dark as midnight under a new moon. His eyes, somehow, were even darker; their pupils disappeared into the black of his irises. Tall, his body lithe and strong, he was a consummate predator.
I swallowed with difficulty, and his perfect full lips stretched into a deadly grin. Even across the room, I sensed him as if he were right next to me, breathing down my neck, promising pain—or possibly pain disguised as pleasure. I stumbled backward until my wings and back met the wall, his dark magic rolling over me so tangibly that I snapped a quick look to either side to confirm he wasn’t somehow next to me.
He wasn’t inside the house, of course. He couldn’t be ... yet. When my gaze traveled across the devastation of the sitting room toward him again, he flicked his tongue from his mouth, then ran it seductively across his bright lips, so slowly that I couldn’t help but follow the movement. My breath hitched as his tongue finished its slow sweep.
He grinned, his smile as deadly as everything else about him, revealing elongating fangs.
What, was I to be a late lunch? I thought the vamps wanted my magic, not my blood. Maybe they wanted both. I squirmed against the wall and willed myself not to whimper. Were Quinn and Irving out there battling others like this vampire? Would the two shifters survive if they were? Quinn had never even shifted before.
This vampire was a shark, at the top of the food chain, and his sights were set on me. Hiding behind my wings was a futile gesture. With regret, I slowly pulled back the partial curtains they formed in front of me.
I should have protected the secret of my true nature with my life, yet I’d revealed it to a predator hunting me for my uniqueness. The vampire had heard me singing, and there was no way he’d confuse my siren’s song for anything else. Even if my song hadn’t swayed him, he’d surely identified it for what it was. The way it vibrated through the body and pushed against the heart and mind, a siren’s song felt like so much more than music. The undead would experience that too, even if their hearts no longer beat. A vampire as evidently capable as this one would recognize magic, certainly.
I stashed my wings away as well as I could and met the vampire’s probing gaze. I shouldn’t reveal weakness. This creature thrived on fear. If I let mine out, he’d feast on it for a week.
No, it was time to pretend I was something I wasn’t.
I squared my shoulders and imagined wings didn’t hang from them. I met his gaze head-on and refused to look away although my insides protested at the effort. What I wanted to do—desperately—was run.
The vampire’s body flickered for an instant before solidifying outside the sliding-glass door again. And another time. He disappeared for a fraction of a second before materializing in the same spot. What the heck?
A third time his body vanished … and this time it shimmered into existence right next to me. I screeched and jumped away from him, my heart in my throat. But when I landed, he was gone.
I whipped my head back around to the sliding-glass door. He was there again, his eyes narrowed at me.
“I’ll get in there soon enough,” he said, his voice a terrifying combination of seduction and deadly promise. “The witch’s wards won’t protect you forever. No witch is powerful enough to take me on. Eventually, you’ll be mine. And so will your power.” His lips crept upward, exposing long, shiny fangs. “All of you will be mine.”
I shivered. It was clear he believed himself capable of delivering on his promises. “No,” I said to the vampire, and even that short word shook my voice. “You won’t take me.” If he hadn’t been a vampire, he might not have heard me over the cacophony of witch and fairies defending against the magical equivalent of tsunamis this vampire’s compatriots were hurling against the house.
But this vampire made out every word I said, even when all I had in me was a whisper.
“You won’t ever have me or my power,” I said.
He responded by shimmering again. This time when he popped up right next to me, he lingered for several seconds longer, and his outstretched fingers caressed my forearm where the creamer pitcher had cut me. His touch was as cold as arctic water.
I froze, unable to move until he was gone again. The house was shaking in non-stop protests of the violence of the assault. It wouldn’t hold much longer, and the moment Naomi’s wards failed entirely, the vampire would be inside. He’d take me. There’d be nothing I could do to stop him.
I looked toward Naomi, her cat, and the fairies, all congregated in the middle of the room yelling spells and shooting wave after wave of magic toward the interior of the house. They fought our attackers by reinforcing the only defense that stood between us and them. They hadn’t even noticed the vampire who’d nearly managed to slip through the wards.
I forced my magic to rise to the occasion. Dammit, I had no better choice. The vampire was already flickering again from outside the empty panes of the sliding-glass door. How long would it be before he managed to remain inside the house long enough to pull me outside along with him? Like with any creature, the magical abilities of vampires varied. If this one could get through Naomi’s wards when nothing else yet could, I shouldn’t underestimate him. Though I’d never experienced the entirety of my magic, surely it could do something to help me survive.
He materialized inside the house again, and the shark-who-ate-the-seal look he gave me threatened to crush my spirit before he reappeared outside the empty doorway again. Then he finally trailed his gaze from mine to the sliding doorframe in front of him.
“I’m coming for you,” he promised, reaching a hand toward the vacant doorframe, moving slowly. There was nothing between the vampire and me but air—and hopefully a protective ward still strong enough to withstand his magic.
He pinned his unnerving stare back on me. I stopped breathing entirely and pressed my arms against the wall behind me. His hand was already inside the house, past the first knuckle.
My stomach fell. The wards had failed and now he’d come for me. Magic, I had to spark my magic somehow. I had to do something, anything.
He thrust his whole hand inside.
His flesh sizzled and melted, skin peeling from the bone in angry, red strips. His eyes tightened and he withdrew his hand quickly, little more than a blur, hissing at the damage. But he didn’t even spare a glance at his hand, which began to heal quickly—too quickly. If his healing magic was this advanced, maybe not even Naomi could stop him if—when—her wards fell.
Something zipped in front of my face, and I screamed and shrank against the wall, thinking the vampire was there to get me.
“What
are you doing?” Nessa shouted at me, buzzing at eye level. Her hair was covered in white plaster, muting its cerulean color, and her eyes were feverish, wild. “What are you thinking?” Hands on hips, she glared at me. “You don’t play footsie with a vamp!” She turned to shoot the vamp a death glare. When she turned back to me, she whispered, “They always win.”
Movement behind her drew my attention back to the vamp. His grin was wide enough to split his too-handsome face. If he’d heard Nessa’s tinkly whispers, then there was nowhere safe to speak within the house.
“Come on. Move,” the fairy admonished, getting my leaden feet to take me out of the vampire’s line of sight.
Even desperate to get away from him, it was difficult to resist the urge to turn back to look at him some more. Humans must have no hope against vampires. The vamp’s eyes were mesmerizing, and though they suggested torment, they also whispered promises of pleasure. I imagined even a vampire as threatening as this one could be irresistibly enchanting if he so desired. It only made him all the more dangerous.
Nessa hovered next to my ear and whispered so that the vampire wouldn’t hear over the din, “Don’t let him see he has power over you. Vamps feed on that stuff.”
“Yeah, I gathered that,” I said, half there, half entranced by the vamp. A sharp yank tore at my ear. “Ow! What’d you do that for?”
The little fairy shook her head at me in blatant disappointment. “We need to train you, stat, or we’re all going to be in big trouble.”
I half turned and she bit out, “Don’t you dare turn back around. Get your heiny over next to Naomi and that blasted cat of hers and stay there. No matter what you see, you don’t look, you hear me?”
