She just needed to keep that flask safe and out of Sam’s hands.
“Sounds good to me. I never did like history,” said Shawn as he agreed with Nathan’s idea to kill Mr. Lehrer and leave Meagan alive.
Meagan realized offhandedly that she actually sort of felt… flattered. It was untimely to say the least, and it probably meant she was certifiable, but there it was. Shawn Briggs had written a song about her? When had that happened? She’d definitely lusted after him a time or two. He had that dark hair, dark eyes appeal that touched a girl somewhere deep down. He was smart, talented, and well traveled. His parents had moved a lot. As a result, Shawn was well-rounded, knowledgeable, and sported the tiniest bit of a conglomerate accent that you only noticed after you’d been speaking with him for some time.
It was intriguing. He was attractive.
And now she found out that he was attracted to her as well, so much so that he’d chosen to turn her instead of kill her.
Flattered, indeed.
“I’m glad you’re flattered,” Shawn said, his tone intimate. His smile felt as if it were meant for Meagan alone.
“For a witch, you’re an incredibly easy read, Stone,” added McCay with a laugh. But his expression changed in a heartbeat, going instantly cold and wary. “Wait a minute. What’s this? A spell?” His gaze narrowed. “To protect Logan?” His lips slid into a nasty, I caught you smile and he shook his head. “Do tell, little witch. What is this magic you’ve cast?”
Oh crap, she thought. They’re vampires. They can read my mind! Vampires could read human thoughts – at least Logan’s vampires could. And since this was all based on Logan’s fantasies, these ones could too. She should have guessed as much when Shawn mentioned the taste of blood thing. She’d been inadvertently drinking her own blood due to her broken nose since she’d awoken in Mr. Lehrer’s crunched car, and just when she’d thought to herself that it was going to make her vomit, he’d mentioned that it wasn’t so bad… and that he could get used to drinking hers.
He and Nathan had probably been reading their minds the whole time.
“Finally figured it out,” Nathan said.
“Give me the flask, Meagan.”
Meagan spun to face Shawn, who was suddenly directly behind her, his tall body bent over her, his lips to her ear. She leapt back from him with a half-shriek of surprise, and Lehrer was instantly between them, attempting to shield her with his body. Her heart jumped into her throat and pounded away, taking her breath from her lungs and replacing it with lead.
Shawn really had been reading her mind all along. While Nathan had barely learned about the spell in the first place, Shawn already knew about the flask. Meagan wondered why he hadn’t said anything until now.
Shawn smiled at her, giving her a close-up view of those perfectly deadly fangs, and held out his hand. “Why don’t you just give it to me, Meagan?”
“Why don’t you just take it?” she asked, not even knowing why she asked it.
Lehrer shot her a warning look, his eyes wide in both surprise and confusion. No doubt, he was wondering why she would shout out such a challenge at such a time.
“What is this spell you’ve cast, old man?” Nathan asked, his tone making it clear that he was losing his patience.
Meagan’s head whipped around. Nathan McCay had drawn closer on the other side. The two blood suckers were flanking them, closing in on them, giving them nowhere to go.
But they hadn’t attacked yet. Why? They were vampires. They were far stronger than humans, and far faster. And if they were Logan’s vampires, they could move so fast, they would blur. They could fly. They could probably use a certain amount of magic. They could do just about anything.
So why were she and Lehrer still alive?
Nathan was addressing Lehrer now; Meagan wondered whether her teacher was any better at shielding his thoughts than she was.
“It’s no use, Lehrer. You can try to hide the truth from me all you want, but eventually you’ll get tired. You’re injured. You’re in pain. You’ll grow weak, and then you’ll tell me everything.”
It occurred to Meagan that Shawn hadn’t answered her. He hadn’t told her why he didn’t just take the flask from her himself. He could so easily rip it off of her body and then either kill her or change her. Why didn’t he just do that? And why hadn’t he answered her?
Because he can’t take it, she thought. He can’t take it!
She mulled the realization over in her mind, looking from one vampire to the other. And then she caught the apprehensive look Shawn shot Nathan. And she knew she was right.
“They can’t take the flask from us,” she said hurriedly. Lehrer looked from her to their attackers. “They know it’s important and that Sam will want it,” she went on, never taking her eyes off of her fallen classmates. “But they can’t touch it.”
Lehrer was silent for a moment. Then he licked his lips. “It must be some effect of the spell’s wording. Maybe because it protects her from Sam, it also protects her from everything Sam creates.”
That’s it, Meagan thought. Sam turned Shawn and Nathan into vampires; he created them. So they were as helpless against the spell as Sam would be.
Nathan bared his teeth in an animal snarl. “We might not be able to touch the flask, but why would you care? We’ll rip at least one of you to shreds either way.”
“In that case,” said Meagan as she reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and extracted the metal bottle. “We’d better get rid of it now.” She cocked her arm back and aimed, throwing the flask with as much accuracy as she could manage.
It hit the furiously flowing sludge of the ravine with an inaudible splash and was instantly swallowed up in its murky, churning depths.
“No!” Nathan bellowed. Both vampires rose into the air on phantom winds and shot toward the ditch. But they stopped so abruptly at its edge that they seemed to be jerked into place in the air. They reeled back, attempting once more to dive for the water.
Again, they failed.
“They can’t cross the water!” Lehrer cried just as Meagan was coming to the same conclusion. She remembered that one of Logan’s stories had mentioned a vampire’s inability to cross naturally running water. This apparently qualified.
And suddenly she knew what they had to do. This was their one chance for survival.
Apparently, Lehrer had the same idea because they grabbed each other’s hands at once and made a dash for the edge of the ditch. They ran – and jumped.
This time, it was Shawn’s rage that bellowed into the night. But Meagan barely heard it. Everything else in the world receded, grew quieter in the face of the roaring, waiting water. A heartbeat passed, another.
The frigid, frothy ravine swallowed them up and whipped them away with a hunger not unlike that of the vampires they swiftly left behind.
Chapter Twenty
“The ravine was filled with varieties of night sounds, lurkings of black-ink stream and creek, lingerings of autumns that rolled over in fire and bronze and died a thousand years ago. From this deep place sprang mushroom and toadstool and cold stone frog and crawdad and spider. There was a long tunnel down there under the earth in which poisoned waters dripped and the echoes never ceased calling Come, Come, Come, and if you do you'll stay forever, forever, drip, forever, rustle, run, rush, whisper, and never go, never go, go… go....” Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree
It was hard to tell which way was up and which way was down. Standing on the banks, observing the flash flood from dry land, one would never guess how fast it was actually moving or how powerful the flow of water really was. But from in here, within its watery, frothy grasp, the truth became painfully clear.
She’d been cleaned out in almost every orifice; mud and sand and unthinkable things now ran from one nostril to the other and choked her slightly before she coughed them up into the bubbles around her. She had only enough time to half-inhale before more of the ravine was subjugating her airways, threatening a slow and
agonizing doom.
She blinked against the distorted and burning darkness, tried desperately to gain her bearings. She had no idea where Lehrer was. Something hard slammed into her hip, but so much adrenaline was coursing through her system, she felt it only as an impact. Otherwise, it was numb.
Half afraid that she would inadvertently slice off her arm on a stray branch or rock, Meagan took advantage of her numbness and shot her arms and legs out spread-eagled, hoping that she would find purchase with one of them. Sand and stones slid along her skin, and she knew they were carving a messy path into her flesh. But she grasped at them nonetheless, desperate to slow herself down.
Too smooth, too sharp, too large, too awkwardly shaped – the branches and rocks slipped from her grip one after another, and she began to despair. Her lungs ached, her throat burned, her heart hammered.
Finally, she felt it. And like lightning, she clamped down with a tight fist, holding on to the branch she’d been offered with nothing short of a death grip. She came to a halt in the fast-flowing water with jarring suddenness, and the popping sound that radiated from her shoulder to her ears sent a chill down her spine.
But as her fingers slipped along the branch’s slimy surface, she realized it was the least of her concerns. She dug her fingernails in, fought with the terrible current, and tried with all of her might to bring her other arm around. Somehow – somehow – she succeeded, grasping hold of the branch with both hands. The pain started then. She wasn’t even in the clear; the branch might break, she might still go careening off into nothingness, never to stop, never to breathe normally again. And the pain still came.
She heaved herself up and out of the water, a keening wail emanating from her throat as her legs flailed and her boots fought to find purchase in the mud.
“Meagan!” came a distant voice from the darkness. Meagan tried to see through the curtain of hair, leaves and water that caked her eyes. A figure was moving slowly out of the ravine several feet away. A brown figure… holding a branch.
He came to the water’s edge. “Meagan, don’t try to climb out, just grab this and hold on!” Lehrer instructed, his words barely audible over the roar of the water and the rain still slashing into its surface.
Meagan complied, reaching out with slippery will that came from her very marrow to clutch like a mad woman at the edge of the branch he offered.
“That’s it!” he yelled.
It was very hard to tell her body to settle down. As soon as she did, however, she felt herself being pulled against the incredible tug of the water. She was moving against the current, slowly but surely. Finally, she felt the slope rise against her chest, smelled the pungent tang of rotting vegetation and mold, and instantly shoved the tip of her right boot as far as it would go into the mush.
“That’s it!” Lehrer called again. He knelt on the ledge of the ditch, his elbows tucked into his sides, his face a grimacing mask of pain.
She did it again with the other boot, and again, one leg after another, spelunking her way out of the ditch with the help of her teacher.
Eons later, she rested face-down in the mud on the ravine’s bank and Lehrer lay beside her, both of them gasping for breath. The storm waned around them; the thunder rolling away, the rain quieting to a drizzle.
An owl hooted somewhere in the distance.
Meagan tried to take stock. She moved each of her toes, moved each of her fingers, and swallowed the whimpers of misery that threatened to climb out of her throat. Her left shoulder was dislocated, and the arm felt as if it were going cold. Her broken nose throbbed, the mounting ache wrapping around her head and seeping into her brain.
But Mr. Lehrer wasn’t moving beside her, and the sounds of his breathing were odd to Meagan’s ears. They hitched at every in-take, and rattled with every release. Meagan pushed herself up on her one good arm and rolled over to face him. He lay on his back, his eyes open to the rain clouds above, his teeth clenched in what she knew was both pain and fear.
The situation was bad. First things first.
Meagan closed her eyes and cursed the world for putting her through so much pain as she did what she’d learned to do in gymnastics in the fourth grade. A wave of nausea rolled harshly through her, accompanying the agony while she slammed her shoulder against the ground, ruthlessly popping her arm back into place.
It took a moment for the stars to recede from her vision. It seemed to hurt much worse now that she was older. The extra pain was unexpected. Somehow, she managed to keep from vomiting, but she knew her arm would ache for weeks.
Once she could function again, she sidled back to her teacher’s side and leaned forward to speak to him when suddenly he coughed – violently. The movement turned him on his side in time for blood to collect behind his lips and roll over the corner of his mouth.
“Oh gods,” Meagan said before she could stop herself.
“Broken rib… punctured my lung,” Lehrer told her, his voice gurgly and weak.
Meagan thought of the way that he’d been hunched over as he’d pulled her out of the creek. Either the puncture had occurred as he’d jumped into the water – or he’d done it to himself while pulling her out of it.
A cold sort of determination settled over her. Her magic yet remained there inside of her, if a bit beaten up and shoved into the corner to make way for the terror of the last several minutes of her life. She needed to use it now, not to harm as she’d wanted to do moments ago, but to heal.
“I’m going to try to heal you,” she told him, wincing as she moved closer so that she could cradle his head and keep him on his side. “But you have to guide me. Can you do that?”
He nodded, closing his eyes. His body was rigid, his hands curled into claws. She could imagine that he was trying to keep from coughing.
With great care, Meagan lowered her good hand to Lehrer’s forehead. She knew enough about the spell to know she needed to make contact with his body, but she wasn’t about to press her hand to his chest, which is what she otherwise would have done.
She hoped this was good enough.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Repeat after me,” Lehrer ground out through his tightly clenched teeth.
Meagan listened closely, concentrated with all of her might, and repeated the words he whispered.
Chapter Twenty-One
They didn’t have to say anything. Even if he hadn’t been able to read their thoughts and scour their brains from a hundred paces, the looks on their faces as they entered the clearing said it all. They’d allowed Lehrer and Stone to escape.
And there was something else.
“Spit it out,” demanded Sam as he met them half-way.
“Logan is being protected by a spell,” said Briggs. “And the flask we need to break that spell was tossed into a ravine.”
“The same ravine I’m assuming you allowed the witches to escape into,” Sam said softly.
As one, the boys nodded. They didn’t try to deny it, much to their credit, and they didn’t even look chastened. They looked pissed. That was good. Sam couldn’t stand people who scraped and mewled and offered up excuses.
Without hesitation, he dove into their thoughts, ripping what he needed from their short-term memories. It was not a gentle process, and both Briggs and McCay clamped their hands to their heads and squeezed their eyes shut, baring their fangs against the pain the intrusion caused.
But it would be short lived, and Sam was in no mood to waste time.
Once he had what he needed, he pulled out and turned away. “Logan will be here any minute,” he said, leaving them to straighten themselves out and shrug off the remnants of their discomfort.
He paced a few steps away. In the distance, a train’s whistle split the night. It had several miles to go yet, but it was drawing near.
He needed time to think.
He had to find a way to get that flask, and he wanted Lehrer dead.
Sam stopped, his hands on his hips, and shot a glance toward the
brown-haired vampire. Shawn Briggs ran the back of his hand under his nose to wipe away the few drops of blood that had been loosed by Sam’s mental attack. Then he rolled back his shoulders and met Sam’s blue-eyed gaze.
Briggs had a thing for Meagan Stone, the young witch who had originally helped Samhain gain entrance into this realm in the first place. Sam supposed he could allow her to live, but only if she were turned to his side and absolutely under his control. Otherwise, she would have to be destroyed. Her ability to manipulate October’s door was too powerful to take any chances with.
If handled correctly, she represented a reward for Briggs’ continued good behavior. She also posed a possible bargaining chip. And when it came to Logan, he could use all of the extra aces his hand could hold.
In the meantime, he needed to take care of Lehrer, and more importantly, he needed to get ahold of that flask. Without its destruction, Logan was literally unattainable. He could bring no harm to her, and neither could anyone nor anything under his influence.
Sam had to kill the thing he loved in order to keep it. If he couldn’t take Logan’s life, he couldn’t bring her back with him to his realm.
He racked his brain.
The metal bottle that housed the second half of Logan’s protective spell was currently being dragged along the bottom of a ditch in some swiftly flowing storm runoff. Briggs and McCay had already proven useless in this respect. Vampires would clearly do no good in this particular situation. According to Logan’s mythos, and to many legends in general, a vampire could not cross natural running water.
Sam could change them. They didn’t have to remain vampires. There was an entire menagerie of big, beautiful baddies waiting between the pages of Logan’s stories. He had the supernatural world at his fingertips.
The problem was, changing them into something else would prove just as useless because the real and final issue involving the flask was that neither Sam nor anything he created could touch it. That meant anything he turned Briggs and McCay into.
The whistle sounded again, closer this time, and fury rushed along Sam’s nerve endings like the prickle of fire. He could feel time breathing down his neck the way most humans could feel him breathing down their necks.
Secretly Sam Page 9
