Secretly Sam

by Heather Killough-Walden

  “I… don’t know,” she whispered. He could sense her moving beside him, tentatively experimenting with each body part. “I don’t think so.”

  “Then we need to get out of this car before that storm over the mountains causes a flash flood that takes us with it.”

  The doors were stuck, crumpled into their frames. However, the glass to all of the windows had been destroyed and removed. With great effort and fiercely bit-back sounds of pain, the two of them managed to pull themselves from the wreckage, crawl through the windows, and roll out into the mud and debris of the ditch.

  It smelled like rotting vegetation, pungent and putrid. Mushrooms huddled around clumps of grass and moss-covered rocks. Muted hues of green and brown splished and splashed, mottled and dismal. Thunder rolled across the distant mountains. Lightning revealed itself from behind thick, purple clouds, illuminating the forgotten wetness of the ravine.

  Dietrich got his hands and knees beneath him, wincing when he put weight on his left wrist. It was either sprained or had a hairline fracture. He got to his feet, slowly and surely, and stood for a moment, swaying slightly from side to side.

  The rain pelted him, cold and hard. Thunder rolled closer, and lightning coursed through the sky once more. The heart of this particular storm was drawing nearer.

  Meagan moved up beside him, her younger body standing a little straighter and steadier than his. “What now?” she asked as she gingerly touched the side of her face, edging ever closer to the broken nose. Blood smeared her upper lip, and her bottom lip was split on one side.

  “We need to get cleaned up,” he said, as he just as gingerly felt along his ribs for the cracks he knew would be there. “And healed.” He knew a few mild healing spells that were fairly good at dealing with cracked bones and bruises, weakness and exhaustion and the like. But he wasn’t certain he could take care of two people while in the condition he was in right now.

  “Think you can handle that?” Meagan asked, clearly trying to be as strong as possible under the circumstances. Her wide eyes combed over the wreckage of the car and the building water level of the ravine around it.

  Dietrich considered Meagan and how far she’d come under his guidance and instruction in their grove. She was a quick study and full of potential, despite this recent foul-up with October and Samhain. Healing spells were reserved for older grove members, those with the wisdom to know when to use them and when to allow nature to take its course. The spells were taxing, rather particular, and not at all easy to cast.

  But desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “With your help,” he told her. She turned around to cast a surprised look at him. “You have to learn some time,” he said. He shrugged and immediately regretted it.

  Meagan looked down at where he held his ribs. “You cracked them, didn’t you?” she muttered. “Can you breathe deeply?”

  He shook his head. “Not really, unfortunately.” He turned his attention to the slippery slope of the hill that led from the bottom of the ravine to the road up above. There was light coming from the road, though he couldn’t see from where. There was also a low rumble… but it could have been the rain.

  “Then we have to heal you first or you’ll get pneumonia or something,” Meagan said.

  “Or something,” Dietrich agreed. His attention, however, was on the road.

  “Can you walk?”

  Meagan nodded beside him.

  “Good. We need to get to higher ground. That storm is sure to dump loads of water into this ditch.”

  Because the town was located at the foothills of the mountains, and due to the frequent storms in the high country during summer and fall, the ravine they were now standing in was infamous for flash flooding. This storm had been building for a while, and Dietrich was guessing it would be only minutes now – possibly seconds – before the water came rushing through at top speed. He didn’t want to be stuck at the bottom of the ditch when it did.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Both the light and the rumble he’d heard coming from the road grew in strength as Dietrich slip-slid his way to the top of the hill. Once he managed to make the lip of the road and the tread of his shoes found crumbling asphalt instead of mud, he understood why.

  The semi truck that had run his car off of the road hadn’t left the scene of its crime. Instead it waited, rumbling and massive, less than a hundred yards from where Dietrich’s car had veered to the right. It was a juggernaut of steel and fumes and rubber that shook as its giant engine idled. The seemingly endless trailer behind the cab was painted pitch black, matted so that its edges seemed to disappear into the surrounding night. An eerie blue light seeped through the bolt cracks and edges and emanated from beneath both the trailer and the engine of the huge rig. This light evaporated into the air like smoke, as if the illuminated, intangible wisps were ectoplasmic fumes – and this were a ghost truck.

  “Jesus,” whispered Meagan beside him. “What the hell is that thing?” Her voice was sounding progressively worse by the second, and Dietrich could imagine she was tasting copious amounts of metal in her mouth; blood from her broken nose leaking through her nasal passages.

  Before Dietrich could reply, the driver’s side door to the rig popped open, and both he and Meagan took a step back. A moment ticked by. Then a left boot appeared – just before a tall figure swung out in one graceful movement. Boots touched down onto wet tarmac as lightning once more cracked overhead and highlighted the scene.

  Dietrich squinted against the deluge, shielding his eyes to do away with a bit of the blurriness the rain was causing. He recognized the boy’s face. The figure moved closer, his steps making no sound on the road.

  This was Shawn Briggs, one of Dominic Maldovan’s friends and band mates.

  The tall boy had always been handsome and, because he’d also been a musician and member of an actual band, there was that intangible charisma attached to his persona that drove a lot of girls crazy. Now, however, there was very clearly something more to him than there had been before.

  He seemed even taller than normal. His brown hair was so dark it was almost black. His skin was paler. There was an aura of strength around him, of capacity, as if he could literally fly if he wanted to. And there was an unsettling static charge in the air that had nothing to do with the building lightning overhead. It was similar to the feeling someone got when they came too close to a crazy person, to someone who’d outright lost their marbles. It was that unsettling sensation that one false move, one misstep that somehow broke this insane person’s code of ethics, would cause them to lash out and harm you. That aura surrounded Shawn Briggs like a cloak, wrapped around him tightly, and radiated outward on unseen tendrils of quiet menace.

  But if none of that was enough, there was the fact that Brigg’s normally brown eyes were now glowing a bright, feral red. And as he drew closer, Dietrich could also see that the boy was sporting long, sharp fangs.

  “You like the truck, Meagan?” Shawn asked, focusing his inhuman attention on the girl as she sidled a little closer to her teacher.

  Meagan didn’t answer, but Dietrich could almost hear her swallow. He watched her throat move, once more imagining the amount of blood she must be inadvertently drinking. She’d already wiped some away from beneath her nostrils; the smear of pink and red marked her upper lip and part of her cheek. The rain was taking care of the rest.

  “It’s not so bad,” Shawn said, still addressing Meagan. “The taste of blood. You get used to it.” He moved closer, taking slow, long strides that Dietrich and Meagan attempted to match in retreat. “I could get used to yours,” he continued, his tone lowering so that it became more personal. “He wants you both dead, but what a waste.” He sighed and shook his head. “Violet eyes are so rare. I’ve always admired yours, Meagan. Imagine how beautiful they would be if you were like us.”

  Meagan’s purple eyes flashed, and her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. Dietrich felt the pull of power around her, a bu
ilding of the witch’s inherent magic. She was drawing into herself, beefing it up as if preparing for an assault. And maybe she was.

  “Us?” Dietrich asked, gaining Shawn’s attention.

  The vampire turned his burning gaze on his history teacher. Shawn smiled, giving Dietrich a better view of those fangs. “Ah, Mr. Lehrer. The history teacher with the secret identity. A witch, no less.” He moved closer. “Or in your case, would it be wizard?”

  Dietrich tried to step back, but Meagan slipped behind him, her hand reaching out to clutch at his sleeve. Dietrich turned to look, steadying her as he did. They were up against the lip of the ravine. Loose rocks crumbled from the road into the mud, sliding down the slope to land in the building puddles below.

  A hissing sound was growing in volume, but Dietrich couldn’t place it. And he had more immediate concerns.

  “So tell me, teach,” said Shawn. “Can you magic your way out of this one?”

  Dietrich spun to face the vampire again, but the boy was no longer there.

  “Boo.”

  Dietrich spun in the other direction, turning to his left to find that Briggs was now behind them, flush with the edge of the ravine, his boots mere inches from slipping down into the wet, sloshy ground below.

  Miraculously, he remained firmly where he was.

  “Holy mother….” Meagan’s voice trailed off as the hissing sound Lehrer had noticed earlier now became loud enough to muffle even the sound of the rain. It sounded like snakes – thousands of them. But this noise was joined by another, the kind of bubbling, gurgling sound that boiling water made.

  Dietrich frowned, looking from Briggs to the ravine and the car that was lodged deeply in its mud below. It was too dark at its base to see what was happening unless lighting was flashing. When it did, Dietrich’s eyes followed the line of illuminated sludge to where the ravine disappeared upstream. He watched that dark edge as the lightning died, shunting it into blackness once more.

  He continued to watch. The sound continued to grow.

  And then electricity brightened the night sky once more, a bolt striking so close by, Dietrich’s body reflexively curled in on itself for protection. But his eyes remained locked on the ravine – as a wall of frothing, foaming water six or seven feet tall rushed toward them.

  He’d been right. The deep, dark wet swallowed the ground, ate up everything in the ravine, and within seconds, it filled the space of the ditch to mere inches from the lip of the road, completely drowning the ruins of his car in the process.

  Dietrich watched it with wide eyes, thanking his lucky stars that he’d managed to get himself and Meagan out of it when he had.

  “You’re wasting time, Shawn,” came a new voice from behind them.

  Dietrich spun, drawing Meagan close.

  Another of Dominic’s band mates stood beside the abandoned semi. Dietrich recognized him as Nathan McCay. His dirty-blonde hair seemed even longer than it had always been, which as far as Dietrich was concerned, had always been far too long. And, like his compatriot, he too had been transformed.

  Two vampires, both of them Dominic Maldovan’s closest friends. What could this mean?

  His mind worked a thousand miles an hour, his head spinning through the multitude of possible implications. If Dominic’s friends were vampires… was Dominic as well? Had he been compromised? And if they were vampires, then that meant that Sam Hain had managed to absorb power from somewhere after all. From Logan? From those words she had scribbled?

  He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. Sam was becoming himself again, and that meant that he would be going after Logan… most likely as something she had created with her own pen.

  Thank the gods for the spell, Dietrich thought. The spell he and Meagan had cast at the last minute would at least protect Logan from Sam. And if Logan were still alive, then there was still hope of defeating the Lord of the Dead and perhaps, as Katelyn suggested, of saving everyone else.

  Beside him, Meagan’s body felt as if it were surrounded with static electricity. It brushed up against him like Velcro, dragging at his skin and raising the hairs on his arms. He glanced down at her. Her magic was begging to be used. She always had been one of his most promising studies, and the elders of their grove had all been right. She was by far the most powerful among them. She was different, as was Logan. It made sense that the two were friends.

  “You should have killed them by now,” McCay reprimanded, clearly speaking to Shawn, who yet stood by the ravine behind them. The two vampires had caged them in, one on either side.

  “We’re not killing Stone,” Briggs replied, his voice deep and clearly audible despite the roar of the ravine. “She’s mine.”

  McCay’s gaze slid from Dietrich to Meagan. His red eyes considered her. “Little witch with the purple eyes, huh?” McCay said softly, as if speaking to himself. “This the one you wrote that song about?” he asked, obviously still speaking to Briggs.

  “The very same.”

  “Fine,” McCay consented. “We turn her and we kill Lehrer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Logan’s dashboard turned red. She looked down.

  “Shit,” she swore, realizing that for what was probably the first time in her entire life, she’d forgotten to fill up with gas when she needed to.

  But she shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. She was meeting Katelyn here anyway. She turned the wheel toward the opening of an empty Mason’s lodge parking lot. The lot was half-way between Logan’s house and the train tracks south of town. Once Katelyn arrived, they could just take Katelyn’s car the rest of the way and leave Logan’s here.

  Logan squinted as she pulled into the parking lot. The rain obscured the landscape, but a flash of lightning illuminated the muddy gravel and revealed the single vehicle parked at the far end. A deep red Volkswagen Beetle gleamed under Logan’s headlights. Katelyn had beat her to it.

  She pulled up and parked beside it.

  Katelyn opened her car door and got out, shielding her face and hair as best as she could from the deluge.

  Logan leaned over, unlocked the passenger side door, and sat back as Katelyn hurriedly got in.

  “We should take your car instead,” Logan told her right away. Katelyn turned to look at her, a little breathless. “I’m out of gas” Logan explained, “and your car isn’t a piece of crap.”

  Katelyn blinked. Then she nodded. Logan noticed a darkness under her friend’s hazel eyes as Katelyn turned to look out through the windshield. The rain had completely obliterated the landscape, and all either of them could see was mottled darkness and the occasional flash of purple-blue light.

  They fell into a mutual silence, both girls stunned by recent events, both of them needing a moment to catch their breaths.

  Katelyn swallowed hard. It could be heard in the silence of the interior. Her clothes had gotten more than slightly damp just going from her Beetle to Logan’s car, and Logan instantly felt bad for not stopping her sooner since they would just have to get back out again.

  Katelyn broke the silence. “So what happened?” she asked, turning to face her again. “What exactly did Sam tell you?”

  Logan pulled out her phone and handed it to her friend. Katelyn swiped her finger across its surface a few times, drew up the latest text messages, and stared at the screen.

  “Does he really have Dominic?” she asked without looking up.

  “I don’t know,” said Logan. “But when I tried to call him after I reached you, he didn’t answer.”

  “How many times did you try to call him?”

  Logan looked out the window. “Lots.”

  “And Mr. Lehrer and Meagan?”

  “Won’t answer either.”

  Katelyn sighed. “Same here. I can’t get through to anyone.” She hesitated, and then began to give voice to the very same question Logan was afraid to ask out loud. “Do you think they’re….”

  “No,” said Logan. Katelyn turned to look over at her.r />
  Logan met her gaze, holding it steady. A silent understanding passed between them. They’d seen a side to the world that no living being was supposed to see, much less come to know to the degree that they had. They were learning lessons that broke them down and built them back up again as different people.

  The Katelyn staring back at Logan now was a little different than the one she’d been ten days ago. And Logan was a little different too.

  What they were about to do was suicidal. What they were now having to face, as friends and against impossible odds, was death itself.

  If it took a bit of self-delusion for them to get through the night, then they were willing to support each other in that delusion.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Meagan felt the pool of magic inside of her like a swirling unrest. It was a sort of sick, tangible upheaval combined with knowledge absolute. She stared into the red glowing eyes of her two classmates and knew that if she wanted to, she could do some serious damage here. But if she did, she would be giving up something else in return, some irreplaceable part of herself. She would be changed forever.

  To say nothing of what it would do to the real, human Nathan McCay and Shawn Briggs. Were the boys still in those bodies somewhere? Were they salvageable? Or had Sam destroyed them for good?

  That’s not the point, Meagan, she scolded herself as she felt something like static discharge race across her fingertips. It doesn’t matter. Killing is not your job. It’s Sam’s. He’s the Lord of the Dead. Samhain was the one who spirited souls away from the world and ushered them into his own. He’d proven that point several times over since he’d come through October’s door.

  Meagan resisted the urge to pat the inner pocket of her jacket, where the metal vial containing Logan’s protection spell was hidden away. As long as Logan lived, they stood a chance. Even if everyone else was killed, there was the slightest possibility that if Logan could somehow defeat Sam before the second full moon, they would all come back to life. It had happened once before. It could happen again.