Secretly Sam

by Heather Killough-Walden

  With a frustrated face and a pursing of her lips, she pressed the phone icon on her screen – and was blinded by the sudden glare of headlights up ahead.

  “What the – ” Lehrer sat back in the driver’s seat beside her, squinting against the blinding light. A distant rumble on the road grew in volume, a building roar. It sounded as if the ground were shaking, as if a massive engine vibrated toward them down the dark, wet street.

  The headlights grew brighter, closer. Meagan shielded her eyes with her phone hand.

  An image of death, fate, and possibility flashed before her mind. The witch in her, that beautiful magical being open to the infinite, complex fractals of the universe, recognized the split-second moment where roads connected and paths crossed and destiny could be decided.

  And in that moment, she reached out with her free hand and pulled the steering wheel out of Lehrer’s grip. The car careened off the road with frenzied speed. The wheels wobbled, skidded insanely, and the car shot into the bushes to the accompanying cacophony of a semi truck screaming past.

  The car bounced painfully as it flew through tangled underbrush and soared nose-first into a ditch. For the briefest moment, there was the smooth nothingness of air beneath the tires. Then the ground rushed up to swallow them, the airbag in front of Meagan detonated, and she felt a force so powerful, she went instantly numb.

  There was a ringing in her ears as her vision receded, and she had the strangest instant of complete clarity. She absolutely, positively knew that Samhain had sent that truck after them to kill them. She absolutely knew that she’d managed to pull them off the road just before they would have hit the bridge crossing Southside Ravine and would have had nowhere to go. And she knew that they would live now.

  We will live, she thought – just before unconsciousness claimed her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At just after three in the morning, the house was dark and quiet, and Logan remained wide awake, her mind spinning. She’d come home earlier that night to a rare silence. All of the lights were off and there were deeply breathing bodies in all of the beds. Of everything she had experienced recently, this was perhaps the most unrealistic event of them all. A home like hers – at peace.

  She almost resented it. Why was it that her family chose a time when she wasn’t around to finally get along? And why now, when her own little world was falling apart so dramatically?

  But then, albeit reluctantly, she recognized it for what it was – a blessing. No one was being hurt right now. It was something to be very thankful for. And it was one less thing to worry about. And so she let it go.

  Now she took a deep breath, exhaled softly into the evening, and rolled over in her bed to stare out the windows across the room.

  Something moved on the other side of them.

  Logan gasped, sitting bolt upright. Her blankets slipped from her shoulders. Her heart hammered; blood roared through her ears. She was on the second floor – what the hell could have moved in front of the windows?

  A bird, she thought. A bat. A really big moth?

  But her heart wouldn’t listen. It continued to pound relentlessly as she gazed steadfastly at the darkness beyond her white, gauzy windows and wished with all her might that she’d remembered to close the blinds.

  She stared, and she stared some more. She stared until her eyes hurt and she realized she hadn’t blinked. She blinked – and the shadow came again, shifting just beyond the glass, in that indistinct blur that was half reflection and half night.

  Oh God! Logan jumped from the bed, fighting the instinct to curl more deeply into it and burrow beneath her covers. Against every dictate of self preservation, she inched forward, squinting to try to get a better look at what lay beyond the glass.

  The shadow moved again. She opened her mouth to cry out, her second instinct to call for her parents. Parents were always the ones you wanted when the monster came in the middle of the night, no matter how old you were.

  But before she could make a sound, the windows slammed open, swinging inward on a violent fury of wind. Logan shielded her face with her arms as her hair whipped madly around her and loose objects in her room began to shift or fly. Her feet retreated along the carpet until the backs of her legs bumped into the edge of her bed and she fell, plopping onto the mattress as the contents of her room continued to whirl about.

  Hesitantly, she peeked from behind her forearms, squinting her eyes to avoid the lashing punishment of her strands of hair.

  In the darkness just beyond her windows, two red dots burned bright. They gazed into her eyes, spearing through to her soul. She stared open-mouthed, unable to move more than to draw breath.

  It’s not Sam, she thought. It was an odd thing to realize, but it was a very definite thing as well. Who ever, what ever, this was, it was probably working for Sam. Maybe it was a part of him somehow, but it wasn’t him.

  The burning red dots disappeared, and there was a sudden, pulling rush all around Logan. She almost screamed when the drawers in her dresser flew open. Sitting atop her socks, undergarments and folded t-shirts were stacks of loose leaf paper upon which she’d written story after story. These papers at once began to lift away, shuffling into the wild, churning air like large, thin playing cards. Logan watched them for a moment, still too stunned to do anything.

  And then, as the first dozen sheets made their butterfly-like ways out the window and into the night, she realized what was happening. This was her writing, the exact kind of writing that had given Sam Hain corporeal form a little over a week ago. The words on the pages told tales of forbidden romances between women who dared to dream of something darker – and powerful men who fulfilled that darkness to perfection.

  Now those stories were flying right out of her room and into enemy hands.

  With a start, Logan rushed forward, but the mad swirl of pages around her threatened to rip her to paper cut shreds. One sliced across her forearm, another across her cheek. She shielded her face with her hands and backpedaled. The stories continued to fly out the window, and finally, as the wind began to die down, Logan made one final effort at salvation.

  She lowered her hands, uncovering her face, and rushed forward once more, making a grab for the last of the pages moving toward the window.

  She caught them, clutching them tight in desperate fingers. The pages pulled and yanked and vibrated as if they were live, terrified insects willing to sacrifice a wing in order to stay alive.

  They began to rip, and Logan adjusted her grip, crumpling the pages between both hands until they were tight balls. As if in angry retribution, the windows to her room slammed shut, the glass vibrating dangerously in its panes.

  The air calmed. Her curtains settled.

  Logan stood still, her heart hammering, her lungs working overtime. She peered beyond the glass at the pure, unfathomable darkness. There was no sign of her lost pages, no sign of the red eyes that had gazed in at her before.

  All that remained were the half-empty drawers of her dresser that yawned open at haphazard angles, and the crumpled bit of story she clutched tightly in her fists.

  Logan looked down. Slowly, and with shaking fingers, she un-folded the sheets of paper. There were two pages, taken from one of her favorite parts in what had always been one of her favorite stories.

  About Halloween. In all of its dark, magical glory.

  *****

  There was no answer. The phone continued to ring in her ear. Logan bit her lip, ran her free hand roughly through her hair, and turned in a nervous, helpless circle. Her bedroom looked pretty much the same now as it had before the attack of whatever it was that took her stories, but the event had been noisy. She couldn’t believe neither her parents nor her brothers or sister had awoken. She’d even gone down stairs to check on them.

  Once she’d seen that they were still sleeping soundly, she’d come back upstairs, gotten dressed as quickly as she could, and called her history teacher. He wasn’t picking up.

  “Come on!�
� she hissed. Mr. Lehrer had wanted her to call him just to check in anyway, never mind that she absolutely needed to talk to him now. Where was he? Why wasn’t he answering?

  Logan hung up and re-dialed. Again, the phone rang until it decided to go to voice mail. Logan shut her eyes tight, fighting for control of her fear. This time, when the beep came, she left a message. “Mr. Lehrer, it’s Logan. Something has happened. All of my stories are gone. Sam’s taken them. Something’s really wrong. I’m calling Katelyn and Meagan now. Please call me as soon as you get this!”

  She hung up and dialed Meagan’s number, figuring that the young witch would most likely either be with Mr. Lehrer or would know where he was. But Meagan didn’t answer either.

  Logan suppressed a growing terror that threatened vomit-inducing nausea, hung up, and prepared to dial Katelyn’s number. However, before she could, a text message chimed through, blanking out her phone’s screen.

  Logan stared down at it while the blood drained from her face.

  Train tracks, Logan. You know where, and you know when. Better hurry, my beauty. Before your crush is crushed. LOL - Sam

  Logan took a second to process the words she read. And then, as her stomach turned to lead and her heart climbed her throat, she dialed Katelyn’s number.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sam turned from the dark forest he’d been facing when he felt the other approach. The moon cast blue-white light through the tree tops, highlighting the fallen leaves, moss, and twigs below. The forest was dense here, private and deep.

  Nathan McCay, formerly the drummer in Dominic Maldovan’s band, moved over the underbrush without making a single, discernable sound, courtesy of his new vampire nature and Sam’s dark magic. The tall blonde now looked every bit the eighties vampire character he’d dressed up as a week ago for the high school’s Halloween Dance. And there was an aura around him that crackled with unseen power and barely kept wickedness, as if the world had better walk on eggshells around him or he would do something unforgivable.

  The first mission Sam had sent the new vampire on was an important one. McCay smiled at his master as he stepped into the clearing carrying a medium sized cardboard box in his hands. “I got all but two pages,” he said, grinning so that his long, sharp fangs gleamed in the moonbeams. “Logan grabbed the last two sheets and held on for dear life.” He shook his head as if still impressed with Logan’s tenacity.

  Sam moved forward, taking the box from him. It was heavy with loose-leaf paper.

  “That’s everything else,” McCay said.

  Sam looked from the box to his new servant. “You’ve done well. Now join Briggs on Southbridge and make sure the witches are finished off. I’ll not have them interfering again in my plans.”

  McCay nodded once. A second later, a harsh wind rocketed through the clearing, kicking up leaves, branches, and dirt. McCay disappeared into this cloud of debris, vanishing with superhuman speed as he shot toward the night sky.

  Sam paid his departure little heed. The wind died down, the clearing became still, and Sam’s attention remained rapt, his eyes glued to the heavy box in his hands. All of Logan’s past writings were in here. He’d known she wouldn’t destroy them. It would have been the smart thing to do, the wise thing to do. After all, he’d used her writing against her once before, and she was already afraid to write anything new. The logical next step would have been to get rid of anything she’d already created.

  But she was a writer, and a writer could no more destroy their own words than a sane man could sever a limb. It was a part of her.

  And now it would be a part of him.

  He hadn’t retrieved the stories himself because he didn’t yet want Logan to know that he was inhabiting Dominic’s body. There was a good chance that he could use this disguise to his advantage. When she looked at Dominic, she saw a young man she’d slowly been falling in love with for eight years. There had to be power in that.

  So he’d sent one of his new lackeys instead.

  Now Sam ran his hand over the cardboard of the box and considered the treasure of what was waiting inside.

  Before Logan had made those markings on those LEGO labels, Sam wouldn’t have been able to do anything with the contents of the box. Other than read it, he guessed. He assumed it would have been educational, and probably fairly interesting – Logan’s imagination could sometimes be incredible. However, that wasn’t the best use for the words, as far as he was concerned. If the right magic was used on them, they could be transformed.

  That’s what he’d done with them a week and a half ago, when he’d first come through to this realm.

  At that time, he’d come through the open door of October as an incorporeal form of pure, massive power. He’d instantly located Logan’s notebook, as if drawn there by a beacon. He used his existing, inherent power to transform the descriptions in Logan’s words into a corporeal form, becoming Sam Hain.

  However, that mass of energy had been sapped from him when he was defeated at the high school dance. All that remained after Lehrer’s destructive spell was Sam’s consciousness and the shell of a body – someone else’s body – that he had inhabited at the very last minute.

  Without that power, Sam couldn’t do anything with Logan’s written stories. He couldn’t transform anything she’d written, no matter how much of it he managed to find. It took a certain amount of magic to make magic, and he just hadn’t possessed enough of it.

  That is, until now. The tables had turned when Logan wrote those words in Dominic Maldovan’s bedroom.

  Sam hesitated a few moments longer, the wait like the anticipation before ripping into a present during a birthday party – or so he assumed. Not that he’d ever had a birthday party.

  The forest grew eerily quiet, every night creature stopping to listen or watch.

  Sam lowered his gaze. He had taken out the contact lenses for now; they were irritating. His naturally intense blue eyes began to glow.

  The box in his hands rose, lifting out of his grasp in a slow spin. The flaps on the top unfolded, and the pages within the box emitted a promising yellow glow. Sam watched it with a mounting impatience, a rising hunger, the light in his eyes reflecting the emblazoned aura of the power of Logan’s words. When the box floated a good six feet above him and had begun to tilt as if to pour its contents into the open air, Sam raised his head and spoke a single word.

  “Mine.”

  The word reverberated through the forest, echoing as if spoken by a god. There was a flash, originating from within the box. It spread quickly, whiting out the clearing and surrounding area. Sam was hit with a blast of energy composed of the fantasies, the plot lines, and the magic of ten thousand creative imaginings.

  He closed his eyes and let it in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was Dietrich’s ribs that hurt the most. Something was pressing into them. It felt like whatever it was had lodged itself halfway through his chest. He opened his eyes, and the world came to him in unfocused hues of black and dark blue. The pattern was blurry, but looked familiar.

  The car, he thought. This was the cross stitch on his seat covers.

  He tried to breathe. Pain stabbed through him, arcing sharp and severe and drawing his breath up short. He gritted his teeth and looked down, expecting to see spears or daggers or half of the windshield sticking out of his upper body.

  But it was just the steering wheel, and there was no blood. He had been thrown up against it; his air bag had failed to go off, and now he probably had a broken rib or two to show for the accident. He closed his eyes in thanks for a moment. They felt big in his face, as if bulging with blood, and his head throbbed. He opened his eyes and turned as much as he could toward the passenger seat.

  Luckily, Meagan’s air bag had gone off.

  With a spike of adrenaline and terror, Dietrich remembered his student and fellow magic user. A moment of real dread claimed him when he realized she could be dead. “Meagan!” he breathed, reaching over to fight wit
h the parachute-like material of white that still puffed up, now bloated and useless, obscuring his view of her face. Eventually, he managed to get it deflated enough to shove it out of the way.

  She was unconscious but breathing. From the line across her nose and the darkening shadows beneath her eyes, he would guess that she’d been struck too hard with the very thing that had most likely saved her life. The air bag had hit her with enough force to break her nose and knock her out.

  “Meagan!” He considered shaking her, but settled on tapping her cheek instead. “Meagan, wake up!”

  She moaned, her forehead furrowing.

  “That’s it,” he urged, turning a bit more so that he could look out the shattered windows. Rain obscured the landscape, gathering in mud and puddles just beyond the crumpled doors and destroyed hood of his car.

  It took him a moment to realize that it was all upside down.

  That would explain the heavy, throbbing feeling in his head. Now it all made sense.

  With a grunt of effort and pain, Dietrich shifted behind the steering wheel, pressing his palms against it to dislodge his chest. Beside him, Meagan stirred. Without looking at her, Dietrich continued to push, continued to grit his jaw in pain.

  “Can you hear me, Meagan?” he asked through his clenched teeth.

  A sound of stunned misery returned his query. He glanced over at her. Her eyes slowly blinked open.

  “Answer me, Meagan,” he prodded further as he finally managed to move to the side enough to reach the door handle. He yanked, but it didn’t budge.

  “Ow,” she mouthed. Her voice sounded odd.

  “You’ve got a broken nose. Is anything else broken?” he asked.