‘Ever heard of cutting the line?’
“I rest my case!” The Congressman yelled, throwing his hands up in the air as if his point had been proven.
Officer Parker gave me a long stare as if to say, “you better be right about this. My reputation is on the line.”
A lot more was on the line than his reputation.
“Harper!” I heard someone calling my name. It was a voice that I clearly recognized. A voice that could only belong to my frantic sister.
“I’m over here,” I yelled back. Her face finally appeared through the woods and the crowd of police officers standing there, waiting for the inevitable but thinking that this was all just a waste of their time.
“The officers wouldn’t let me through until just a few seconds ago. What’s going on?” she said once she finally reached me.
I lowered my voice and took her hands into mine. “She’s here,” I said quietly.
Her eyes widened. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “I saw it.”
“What else did you see?”
“Nothing I can say here. Just stay close by.”
She looked at me as though her heart was warmed by my wanting her nearby. In reality, I wanted her close to make sure nothing happened to her. My vision of her body floating around in the murky water hadn’t abandoned my subconscious. She was pushy. She was annoying. She refused to mind her own business. But she loved me. And people who loved me were in short supply these days. I didn’t want her out of my sight. At least for now. Until she did the next annoying sisterly thing that I couldn’t stand.
She leaned into me. “He’s here too,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“We found her!” the officer on the boat yelled out.
‘Oh shit. Here it comes. The storm gran warned me about.’
Madison’s eyes widened. Her jaw dropped. She let go of me and brought both her hands up to her mouth in horror.
I closed my eyes and slowly turned around, already knowing exactly what I would see. It was one of those horrible slow-motion moments when you turn around knowing what you’re about to see is going to be awful. But unlike everyone else, I was prepared for it. After all, I had already seen it.
The hook the cops were dragging along the bottom of the swamp came up over the surface of the water. Samantha Larsen was attached. Unmoving, white as a sheet, her lower half covered in mud, the torn remains of her dress covering her brand, and a chain attached to her leg, holding her down under the water where her murderer hoped she would never be found.
Only one thing stood out to me. The fabric of her dress over her brand wasn’t charred. That answered my question. It wasn’t the brand that killed her.
Her long black hair covered her face. The officer took his shaking hand and pushed it out of the way to reveal her black eye and busted lip. The expression on her face left little room for anyone to doubt that she was in a state of shock when her soul left her body.
“Sam!” The Congressman screamed from the top of his lungs. He rushed toward the water and nearly dove in before two police officers stopped him. They had to practically tackle him to the ground to get control. “No!” he screamed. “No, no, no! Not my baby!” he kept screaming.
I knew pain. I knew the sound and sight of horror. But the cries the Congressman let out was something that I never desired to hear again.
I was ready to leave. No, I needed to leave. Officer Parker got what he wanted. I found Samantha Larsen. I helped him with a cold case. And I needed to get away. Bile was beginning to build up in my stomach. I could tell that I was about to upchuck. Not because I particularly cared about Samantha Larsen, but because the sight of her body only made me think of one thing. Caleb. His body. His life. His death. Hearing the Congressman’s pain reminded me of the agony I had been through. I couldn’t watch it. I had to get out of there.
It didn’t matter how many visions I had of the dead. Seeing a body as lifeless as Samantha’s did nothing but stir up a part of me that I somehow managed to suppress for over a week. It was coming to the surface again. And so was my magic. Gold light reached my fingertips before I even realized how rustled I was becoming.
Madison must have taken the hint because she wrapped her arm around me, concealed my hands and led me out of there. Thank goodness Officer Parker had enough on his plate with Samantha’s body being found to be concerned about me leaving. If anything, I hoped he was tired of dealing with me.
Once she turned me around to walk back down the path where the media was anxiously waiting, I saw a familiar face. No. Two familiar faces. Emily was standing only ten feet away in the distance. She was staring at Samantha’s body being brought out of the water and pulled onto the boat as her father clutched his chest, screaming for his daughter to be brought ashore. Then her eyes turned to me. They were empty. Hopeless. A single tear dripped down her face and tumbled to the ground.
Perhaps I wasn’t the only one who saw it coming. Emily knew her sister was up to no good. Maybe she prepared herself for something like this to happen.
Before I could say anything to her, she backed away from me. She was ready to snap at me. Ready to brush me aside if I got too close.
So much had happened that I nearly forgot. She saw me use my magic against Isaac. Any trust that might have existed between us was gone. Or at least damaged.
Someone was standing behind Emily. Someone that I wasn’t prepared to see. Nathaniel stepped closer to me and Madison. He was in his usual suit without even a single droplet of sweat on his face. One of the only perks of being undead, I suppose.
“Thank you,” I said to him. “Thank you for finding Emily.”
He gave me a slight nod to acknowledge my gratitude then took me by the shoulder, ushering for my sister to let me go.
“I’ll take her home,” he said to Madison. “You take Emily back to your place. She needs to rest and get away from the media. Her father has enough to deal with at the moment and she shouldn’t be alone.”
“But Harper’s house was nearly destroyed. You can’t take her back there,” Madison argued.
“I’ll bring her by your house in a few hours. She and I need to talk.”
There was no resisting him. I was going with him, and that was the end of it.
Madison moved aside and he took me into his arm. No. I allowed him to take me. I allowed him to bring his arm under my back to help hold me up. I was weak from the sun. I was weak from everything that happened with Isaac. And I was weak with the memory of Caleb’s death resurfacing all over again. I may not have liked Samantha. I may not have even liked the Congressman. But that didn’t mean that I wanted to hear anyone else going through the same pain I went through when Caleb was taken from me.
“I’ll meet you at my house, Harper. And Nathaniel,” she said from behind. He turned to face her. “You take care of my sister. She’s the only one I have.”
He said nothing.
She followed us down the path and toward the media who were waiting for any news they could get their hands on. Nathaniel was very deliberate in his attempt to steer me away from their carnivorous eyes. He took me to a black Lincoln town car that waited behind all the police vehicles. He opened the door and stuffed me inside. I watched as Madison went to her car with Emily not far behind her. Emily rested her head in her hands as soon as she was inside Madison’s car, the grief of her sister’s death finally striking her with an unmerciful blow. I wanted to be in that car with her. I wanted to comfort her. If anyone knew the pangs of sudden and unquenchable grief, it was me. But after what Emily saw me do, I wasn’t sure she would want me anywhere near her.
‘It doesn’t matter. Emily is safe. She’s back in our time. He got her back here just like Eli promised.’
Even so, something strange occurred to me. For the first time since I met Nathaniel, I didn’t feel threatened by him. I didn’t dread the thought of him randomly killing my family for deviating from his orders ever so slightly. Eli assured me tha
t he wouldn’t do such a thing. Eli even promised that Nathaniel would bring back Emily. So far, one of those promises had been kept. And for whatever reason, the second promise of my family’s safety didn’t seem far-fetched anymore.
I watched Nathaniel take hold of the steering wheel and drive us away from the media madness. A sense of a relief greeted me that I hadn’t felt in days. In the presence of a deadly vampire. Figure that one out.
I didn’t like him. And I couldn’t fathom what his ultimate motivations were. But of one thing I was certain. I trusted him. He wouldn’t let anything happen to Emily. He had been granted the approval of a powerful vixra. He had the opportunity to kill Madison and he didn’t. He wouldn’t kill me.
Nathaniel closed himself off with an impenetrable shield that told everyone to be afraid. To do what he wanted. And not to ever piss him off. In spite of all that, there was something else there that didn’t exist before. When he took me into his arm only moments ago there was one single emotion that I sensed. An emotion I didn’t realize a bloodthirsty vampire such as Nathaniel could feel.
Concern. He was concerned for me. For my well-being. Not as his investment or someone he needed to use. But as a human who needed protection.
Good thing too. I would need that concern to continue as a violent burning surged up my throat.
“Pull over,” I said. “I need to throw up.”
Chapter 15
For the second time since I met Nathaniel, he watched as the contents of my stomach came tumbling out. This time there wasn’t a fancy braid to hold my hair out of my face, so he held it back for me. Not much came out, thank goodness. But still… I wasn’t drunk. I wasn’t at a party. I didn’t have food poisoning. I had just seen the dead body of Samantha Larsen. And the time before that, I was yanked into a magical vixra transportation tunnel. Nothing about my life was even remotely normal anymore.
The bile lurching out of my throat was like acid curling around my tonsils. And this time there weren’t any cars for Nathaniel to break into for a mint. I just had to live with it. He glanced down at me as I coughed and hoped that it was over. Nothing more seemed to be coming out so I tried standing straight.
“Can you manage the drive?” he asked me.
“Where? You can’t really want to take me back to my house.”
He let go of my hair. It tumbled down my backside and lay there covering the spaghetti straps of my tank top. I didn’t dare move it away. Any sudden movement would hurt my throat too much.
“There’s something there that I think you’ll appreciate,” he said with a mischievous grin crossing his face. A grin that I was unfamiliar with. Was this the same Nathaniel who had threatened me and my family? The same Nathaniel who tossed me to the side as Isaac went on the attack and mocked me endlessly? He wanted to show me something I would appreciate?
He seemed to catch onto my growing curiosity and opened the car door. “Get in,” he ordered. “I know I’ve given you plenty of reason not to trust me, but trusting me right now is your best bet at staying alive.”
He sounded so cool. So collected. So arrogant. He knew something. Something that he thought I would find interesting. It was pure curiosity that led me to get into the car with him. That and the fact that I didn’t fancy walking all the way home in this unbearable heat. Or to look at more police cars rushing by as the news spread of Samantha’s body being found.
I got in the car and buckled the seat belt. Then I spent the next ten minutes getting him caught up on what had happened since he disappeared. The details I gathered about the murder in Sealing, the fact that Emily knew who Tobias was, how Isaac kidnapped us both, Eli’s visit and his eagerness to discover how vixra blood was being distributed and why the tunnels were being misused, and most of all, the randomness of Isaac constantly calling me Georgeanna. A sudden pang of fear erupted inside me when the car started moving progressively faster at the mention of that name and how Isaac thought I was my ancestor. Nathaniel’s eyes returned to the icy cold state that I had grown to recognize as his general demeanor.
I shouldn’t have asked. I honestly knew before I even opened my mouth that it was a bad idea. That it might mean something that I wasn’t supposed to know. Something I didn’t want to know. Something that would only bury me deeper inside a situation I never wanted a part of to begin with. But after all I had been through, I wasn’t going home without answers.
“Who’s Georgeanna, Nathaniel?” I asked quietly as his determined eyes stayed focused on the road.
He remained silent.
“Who is she?” I insisted.
“Was.”
‘Was? Meaning she’s dead?’
“Okay, who was she? You said I was her descendant, but that’s it.”
“A kruxa. She lived a long time ago.”
“And why did Isaac think I was her?”
He grit his teeth. I was making him uneasy. Not a wise move. But then again, he had done more than his fair share of making me uneasy since we first met. On the other hand, I didn’t have control of the steering wheel. I had already been at the mercy of one crazy driver today. I wasn’t going to push it too far. At least for now.
We pulled up to my drive way and Nathaniel quickly got out. I followed him through the yellow tape surrounding my house and to the front door. The chaotic mess of my walls and floor boards left a gigantic hole in the center and much of the roof destroyed. Darkness had started to fall and I was acutely aware that the light coming through wasn’t from what remained of my interior lighting, but the moon slowly starting to rise above my house.
Nathaniel edged around the side of what used to be my guest bedroom and toward the back end of the house. I followed him, making sure that my feet didn’t touch a single floorboard that his didn’t. I had the feeling that they could give way at any moment and I didn’t trust I wouldn’t fall through one and break an ankle.
When I stepped inside my bedroom, I was thrilled to see that at least some of it was still intact. My queen size bed was still there, although it had jolted to the side and crushed my night stand. My books were scattered on the floor. I began to realize after seeing the carnage inside my house once more that the very thought of presenting what happened as a robbery was clearly absurd. Officer Parker had every reason not to buy it. It looked as though an earthquake had happened right in the middle of my house.
Even so, that wasn’t what stood out to me the most as I took a few more steps into my bedroom. It was the man who was tied to the pipes that were showing through the torn up wall. There was some sort of metal wire wrapped over his wrists. Something that didn’t look familiar to me. Something I could only assume was of a magical nature. It glowed bright blue and only got tighter as Isaac started coming around and moved his arms about erratically to pry them loose.
Isaac’s body was covered in blood. Nathaniel had slashed him all over the place. And even though none of the cuts remained, his clothes were completely ruined.
Nathaniel said he had something to show me that I would appreciate. He never said that he had someone I wanted to strangle with my bare hands.
“What the hell?” I muttered under my breath.
Nathaniel went over to my bookcase and took out the one book that was meant to deceptively look like any other book. The one that held my gun. The one I had pointed at him when I thought my house was being broken into. He put a round in the chamber and handed it to me.
Then he walked over to Isaac and removed the gag from his mouth.
“I’ve already drained all the vixra magic from his blood stream. He can’t harm you now,” he said turning to me.
That grin was back on Nathaniel’s face. His voice teased me as he spoke, like silk rubbing up against my skin and offering me something I wasn’t even aware I wanted. A chance for some revenge.
“Tobias will never let you get away with this,” Isaac roared.
I could sense Nathaniel was tempted to laugh. “You’re nothing more than one of Tobias’s henchmen. His dogs. H
e tells you who to hunt, who to kill, and where to shit. If I tell him you went off the rails, he’ll believe me over you any day of the week.”
Nathaniel turned around and handed me the gun. “Care to have some fun?” he asked me.
‘I like this side of you so much better.’
“Not after I told him why you let this one here live,” Isaac hissed. “He sent you here to discover what she knew and to kill her. Now he knows why you didn’t.”
‘Um, excuse me?’
Nathaniel made a face that could only be described as pure rage. He marched over to Isaac and punched him hard across the face. Isaac’s cheek split open, only to heal in a matter of seconds.
Isaac looked pleased with himself. As if that was the exact reaction he had been hoping for. “What’s the matter, Nathaniel? Afraid your toy might finally get whats coming to her?”
“Georgeanna is dead,” Nathaniel spat. “You know that.”
“Unless your vixra friend found a way to keep her alive. The best way to hide her would be to pretend she was dead. Quite brilliant, I might add. Quite brilliant.”
“Shoot him in the leg,” Nathaniel commanded me. “The arm. Wherever. He can’t die from it.”
I was shaking. Unsure of what to do. Not entirely certain if my arm would move.
“Do it!” Nathaniel hollered.
I aimed the gun toward Isaac’s chest. I heard somewhere that intestinal gunshots were particularly painful because it took a while to die. I could only hope that it would take Isaac a while to heal from it. Even with immortality on his side. The gun was trembling in my hand as I reached for the trigger. I focused as hard as I could. It had been a while since I went to the gun range to practice. But it wasn’t my rusty skills that were holding me back. I always shot at paper targets before. Not living ones. Well, as ‘living’ as a vampire can possibly be given that they were technically already dead.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment and forced myself to remember what this monster had done. He was a member of the Catach-Brayin. The most vicious and powerful vampire coven in the Western world. He threw flames from his hands hoping I would burn to death. He tried killing Nathaniel when he was my only life-line to get back home. Then he kidnapped me and Emily, forcing me to leave Emily behind as she fended for herself in a place and time that wasn’t her own.
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