by Jones, L. A.
She then ran up to him and hugged him. "You were great Roy-boy!"
He snickered as he grabbed hold of her waist with one arm. "Thanks Rai-Rai."
"Sorry I could not be here in the beginning," Aradia said letting go of him. "I had to finish up some homework."
Roy shrugged. "At least you were here in time to see me."
Aradia scoffed, and flourished her disdain with a wave of her hand. "I would never miss that!"
Roy had promised to take her home after the battle of the bands, but first he would have to clean up with his brothers. So after three more bands performed the event ended, Aradia waited outside leaning against his truck. It was then when she realized someone was staring at her. She turned her head, and recognized him as the guy from the woods. He was still staring at her with the same crude, and crazy smile.
At first, she just ignored him.
"I am Korrigan McAlester," was how he introduced himself.
"That's nice," Aradia muttered, but loud enough for him to hear.
He laughed a lot longer than the feeble joke required, and then returned to staring at her. However, this time instead of just staring at her endlessly he began to approach her. She could sense that he was vampire; therefore, she knew she could use her powers against him with no fear of exposure or defeat. This time she felt it was different though especially once Aradia made a ball of fire appear in her hand. This was when he sped towards her, and grasped her hand with no fear or hesitation. He looked unfazed as if what Aradia could do was something he had seen before and many times. However, according to both Dax and Tristan such a thing was impossible. Looking down at her, his eyes glistening with what Aradia could only call madness, he clenched her hand tighter making the ball of fire she had created disappear.
Okay, Aradia thought, now I might be in a little bit of trouble here.
Korrigan chuckled as he gripped her throat with his hand, with lightning speed he pinned her against the wall. She gasped from the sheer force of him slamming her against the bricks.
"My god," Korrigan panted in long drawn out raspy breaths. "You have no idea how sexy you sound when you're injured."
For a while, he just held her in place and breathed on her until finally he dove towards her neck. Amazingly, instead of fangs piercing her flesh all she felt was him pressing his nose against her neck. Aradia wanted to cry out in disgust.
"You smell so damn good!" he growled, "There are no words to describe it!"
He pinned both her arms on to the wall, and pressed his cheek against her face. She turned her own face to avoid him as best as she could.
"Ever since I first saw you, I have not stopped thinking about you, and fantasizing about you. What it would be like to make hot passionate love to you and hearing you beg for me to take you..."
"Did you forget to take your meds today?" Aradia asked him petulantly, "Or maybe what you really need to do is lay off the Viagra!"
She did not know if he had heard her or even understood her insult. The fact that after she said this he pressed his body against her painfully harder gave her some indication though.
He whispered in her ear, and pressed his wet lips against her ear. "You have no idea how much I have dreamed about you lying in my bed, and me on top of you making you truly appreciate you being born a woman."
"My god! Read some Shakespeare or at least some Lord Korrigan Byron poems dude, because with lines like those the odds of you scoring are a million to one," Aradia spat at him.
"I don't know," he said finally responding to her. "From the current position I am in, I can honestly say I have just scored big time!"
"I am not a score!" Aradia snapped.
"Want to bet? You being the last witch... hell you’re a better score than a playboy model on the rebound," he breathed heavily as he rubbed his whole face all over hers and down her neck.
Aradia quickly raised her leg, ready to knee him hard in his most sensitive area. Suddenly, he was pulled off of her quicker than a flash from a camera. Aradia looked up eagerly expecting Dax, but instead she saw Roy in his werewolf form. Not even hesitating for a second Korrigan bared his own fangs, and retaliated. He slashed at Roy who tried to take a swipe at him with his paws.
Aradia just stood motionless until she saw Roy getting thrown back in a blaze of fire. Aradia dashed straight towards the direction he was falling and held out her arms to grab him. She managed to catch him in time, but as she did so, she could not help but stare at Korrigan in astonishment.
"How?" she sputtered, "How did you..."
"How do you think I did it Aradia?" Korrigan snickered.
She shook her head, still not understanding anything.
Until finally he said, "I am a witch just like you!"
Chapter Seventeen
Aradia gasped as Korrigan leaned down closer to her. Suddenly, like an animal sensing a predator, he raised his head quickly .
He glanced around and said, "I will explain the next time I see you and believe me I will."
He then blew her a kiss. "Until then, my love."
With that, he took off in to the darkness of the night. Soon afterwards, Roy's brothers showed up, and carried Roy inside. It had taken some time, but Aradia had managed to heal Roy. At least his physical self, but according to him what truly hurt were the wounds to his pride. Aradia had not even been able to laugh at that because she was too confused about what had had happened. After Roy had dropped her off at home, she had still been in no mood to talk to her parents. Instead she had just raced up to her room, threw herself onto her bed, and began to think.
She had found proof that she was the last witch yet here was a guy who undoubtedly had witch-like powers and was at the same time a vampire.
How can he be both? Aradia wondered.
"Oh it's easy," said a horrifyingly familiar voice from out of the darkness. “To be part witch and vampire that is.”
Aradia sat up her in bed, and looked around frantically. She finally spotted Korrigan emerging from the darkness grinning crudely. At first, Aradia wanted to demand answers as to why was he in her room and how? Neither questions seemed relevant though, all that did was getting away from him. She then sprang up, and reached for the door. Korrigan, however, sped towards her, blocked her path, and pushed down onto her bed. Almost instantaneously, he was on top of her, breathing heavily once again. Aradia struggled hard, trying to free herself. She even threatened to scream for her parents.
Korrigan just laughed and whispered in her ear, "Try it! I will kill them before they even have a chance to beg for their lives!"
Aradia grew still and finally whimpered, "What do you want from me?"
Korrigan laughed. "Only you my dear! Only you!"
Aradia kept struggling, but amazingly all he did was just hold her down as if the thought of holding her captive was enough. However, he soon shook his head, flipped himself on his back, and put Aradia on top of him. At first, Aradia was stunned but once again, she struggled to get away from his vice like grasp.
"God!" he gasped, "I love how you wiggle on top of me!"
"Jesus you are gross!" she snapped at him as she finally managed to break free.
Korrigan grabbed her again and slammed her against the door, pressing himself against her.
"What do you want from me?" she gasped again.
He snickered softly. "I think we already established that my sweet! Anyway the only reason I am here is to give you the answers you want!"
"Answers?!" Aradia repeated, "What answers?"
"Answers to how I can be a vampire and part witch," he said.
Against her better judgment, Aradia grew still. After glancing at the ground, ceiling and then at him, she finally asked how.
He laughed yet again and explained, "I was born a pure blood witch in a coven several miles away from Salem, but one day I was turned into a vampire. My brothers took me in and showed me how to use my powers. No witch had ever been turned before so no one knew if I would even survive the turni
ng, but I did along with half of my witch powers."
"You mean warlock powers don't you?" Aradia joked amazed she could do so in this type of situation.
Korrigan merely shrugged. "Whatever! Either way I am like you Aradia. I am a witch! Therefore, you are not the last of your kind, you are not alone!"
Aradia paused, but not because she was enjoying Henry's roaming hands on her.
"But you are not really a witch," she argued, "You are a vampire!"
"With witch powers! It's basically the same thing!" Korrigan argued.
"Why are you telling me this?" Aradia finally asked him.
Korrigan groaned in frustration. "Don’t you see? I can teach you how to use your powers. I can explain to you about your past! Most especially, I can keep you by my side and we can make more of our kind!"
"What?" she whispered.
"Babies! We can make babies together!" he cackled, "Don't you want that? A family of your own and more of our kind to be roaming the earth? Isn't that what you want?"
"Can you do that?" she asked astounded.
"No," he replied, "But we can! Just you and I! We can make a whole brand new witch’s coven all by ourselves!"
Korrigan then chuckled crudely.
Aradia did not know what to say. She knew it was possible that he could be lying, but what if he wasn't. What if mating with him was the only way to restore her people to existence. Then another more important thought crept into Aradia's mind, what about Dax?
Using all her strength, she shoved Korrigan away and gripped him about the throat as he landed against her bookcase.
"Now you listen here you psycho stalker with fangs!" Aradia snarled, "You get the hell out of my room and don't you dare come back!"
With one last thrust of her hand, she threw him out of her window! As he fell, he gripped the trunk of a nearby tree, and swung around to crouch onto a branch. He looked at her, but his look of shock soon turned to amusement.
"Fine! I am going to leave you now so you can think about what I have said," he chuckled, "But I can honestly say I am going to enjoy breaking you!"
After licking his lips languishingly, he disappeared from the branch. Aradia could hear him running through the trees. Leaving her alone to sink against the wall of her window, feeling violated, and emotionally tortured. Her parents soon burst into her room with her father holding a shotgun, and her mother behind him. Her father brandished the gun left and right until her mother saw Aradia and dove straight to her.
"Honey! Honey! Aradia! Are you alright?" her mother said as she wrapped her arms around her. Her father dropped the gun and soon followed suit.
They huddled clutching their daughter as she cried until finally her mother forced her to look at her.
She then repeated the question of what was wrong, but all Aradia did was respond with a question of her own. "Mom, dad can I sleep in your room tonight?"
The next day Liza called the school and said that both she and Aradia could not come in today. Ross still went to work reluctantly realizing that this sort of thing was something that could only be talked about between mothers and daughters. After baking some chocolate chip cookies, Liza threw a blanket over Aradia's shoulders and asked once again what had had happened. Aradia hesitated, but eventually she poured out the entire story. She then spent the rest of the day crying in her mother's arms.
"Are these all the files of the latest assault charges filed?"
"Yeah," said Officer Sage, "Why?"
Ross did not answer, and continued to leaf through the papers. Unknown to his wife, and daughter he had overheard Aradia describe her attacker. Although he knew that a vampire was hardly going to be described in the police reports, he still wanted to check.
So far, nothing had turned up, but as he sat in his office as one of the many assistant district attorneys of Salem he decided to go through the "Jane Doe" files courtesy of the homicide division. Remembering what Aradia had described, and trying to restrain the urge to go after the guy himself with a wooden stake and mallet; Ross looked for similarities of what had happened to Aradia in the files.
Eventually, he hit pay dirt. An identified woman, probably a prostitute, had been found badly beaten by the side of the road. Judging by the lacerations on her wrist, she had been tightly restrained to a bed, raped repeatedly and then ultimately killed. What made this case so unusual was not only did the victim have no traces of DNA of her attacker on her, but the coroner also had discovered that she had had no blood left in her body.
At lunch, Ross drove home to make sure Liza and Aradia were all right.
He explained his findings to Aradia who shuddered. "I figured his enthusiasm in holding me down was not exaggerated on his part."
It was during English class, which she shared with Dax when the teacher introduced three new students. One of them was Korrigan! It was all Aradia could do from screaming out loud especially when Korrigan walked right down the aisle without even waiting to be introduced by the teacher and sat right next to her. Unwilling to show that he freaked her out, Aradia kept facing forward without so much as a side glance at him. Dax sat on the opposite side of Aradia, and sent Korrigan the dirtiest and fiercest look she had ever seen on him. Korrigan, however, did not even notice him. He focused on Aradia as if he wanted to eat her alive, slowly.
"I say we track the bastard down, cut off his balls, and then force him to swallow 'Em!" Roy thundered and slamming his fist on the table.
Aradia did not respond to that. It was only the five of them Dax, Roy, Al, D, and Aradia sitting at the SilverMoon diner after hours when Aradia had told them everything about Korrigan McAlester, and his attempts to assault her.
Dax enthusiastically agreed with Roy, which Aradia noticed. It is funny, she thought to herself, this is the first time I have ever seen them agree on anything.
Although, she wanted to hunt down Korrigan too, she pushed the thought aside.
"Look Roy, it does not matter!" Aradia interrupted. "We have more important things to worry about!"
Dax scoffed. "Such as?"
"Like starting the club!" Aradia answered.
He stared at Aradia in disbelief before sputtering, "You can't be serious!"
"I am serious Dax, and you know it!" Aradia snapped.
They all looked at her, shocked.
"Aradia," Al started, "You were almost assaulted in the last couple of nights! How can you think of even going through with your crazy plan to open a club to promote amelioration amongst the hidden?"
"Easy," Aradia snapped at him placing her hands on her hips and glaring fiercely. "It is because I am determined to see this through! In addition to other things, amelioration needs to be promoted in the hidden world. Most of all, I am not going to let some crazy stalker ruin my life. If I bury my head in the sand because of what he tried to do to me then I will be giving him the satisfaction and I would sooner die!"
She took several deep breaths after saying all this.
The brothers and Dax just looked at her silently until Al said, "Its times like these when it's hard not to believe in reincarnation when it seems like the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seems to have been reborn in you Rai."
That is when they all, including Dax, laughed.
Aradia interrupted and said, "Look you going to help me do this or not?"
The question silenced all of them like a bullhorn.
Ultimately, it was Dax who broke it by asking, "What do you think?"
Aradia smiled widely. ""I think that I need to show you what I picked to be the place for the club!"
"Well I got to hand it to you Rai-Rai," said Roy as he surveyed the room. "That you sure know how to spot them."
"Not really," said Aradia, "It took me four different visits or 'break in's to be precise until I found this place."
Al and D checked out the stage, chuckling after hearing Aradia's joke.
Dax was behind the bar and asked, "So beer and drugs still a no-no?"
"What do you think
?" Aradia asked him sarcastically.
"I think," Dax said while climbing over the bar. "That we need to stop thinking so much or else we will stop learning how to have fun."
"If you call getting arrested for possession, being plastered, or wasted, killed while driving drunk, or worse getting slapped with records on your work resume that will last longer and be more humiliating than a branded scarlet letter fun!" Aradia snapped with her voice dripping with disdain. "Then yeah we do!"
She stomped off to check the back to see if there was a kitchen. Apparently, Dax was the only one brave enough to follow her.
"Okay what is it?" Dax asked her.
Aradia said nothing as she checked the fridge, and looked under the tables for bugs and rats. Dax sighed, and repeated his question.
This time Aradia answered him, "I am sorry I am so edgy. It's just lately..."
"Lately, you were almost raped by some psycho in your own room," Dax finished for her.
Aradia stopped, and turned to Dax who without any hesitation swept her into his arms. At first, she struggled in Dax's arms. What Korrigan did to her was still fresh in her mind, but Dax held fast and after he gave her a comforting squeeze tears finally began to pour from her eyes. Dax sighed as if this was what he had been expecting.
"God, I was so scared," Aradia croaked, "I thought he was going to...to..."
"Hush baby. Hush!" Dax whispered in her ear as he kissed her hair.
Aradia cried and cried. She expected Dax to eventually tire of her weeping, but he did no such thing. He kept stroking her hair gently, whispering in her ear, and comforting and soothing her. Soon her tears stopped flowing, and with one last press against his shoulder, Aradia raised her head to look at him.
"Do you feel better now?" Dax asked softly.
"Uh huh," Aradia whispered awkwardly.
The two of them once again stood still, entranced with each other. Dax had his arms around her, and her arms around him with their lips only a few inches away from each other. As Dax slowly tried to close the distance between them, the door to the kitchen burst open, and there stood Roy.
