Tegan's Magic

by L.H. Cosway

“We’ll get her back,” I tell him firmly. “We’ll get our Rita back no matter what.”

  He doesn’t respond, only hugs me tighter. Gabriel seems relieved that I’ve given Alvie hope of somehow saving Rita from the darkness that has consumed her, changed her. I wish I had paid more attention to her these past few weeks, spent more time with her than I did. Perhaps then I could have done something to prevent her from losing herself.

  She told me of her fears that she would go bad, that she’d let Theodore’s darkness take her over, and I had brushed off the idea, too wrapped up in my own problems. I’d told her that if she just made sure to hold onto her light side, the side that comes from Noreen, that she’d be okay. In my deepest fears I had never anticipated that anything would happen to the woman, that Whitfield would end her life so callously.

  Noreen had always been Rita’s rock, the one who taught her about good magic and using it only to achieve positive results, to make the world better. Perhaps it isn’t simply the grief that turned her, perhaps it’s the fact that her rock, her anchor, no longer exists in this world. Without her anchor, Rita’s potential for darkness took over.

  I’m not even listening to Finn as he talks, explaining some detailed plan to everyone. I only pay attention when I hear him say, “So, we’re all agreed that getting out of Tribane is the best idea?”

  “What!?” I exclaim loudly. “We can’t just leave. What about Rita? What about all the people?” I gesture frantically to the street below us.

  Finn locks eyes with me. “Rita made her choice and the people can’t be saved. You saw yourself how the extinguishers did nothing to kill the mist. It’s evolved. It’s harder to kill now, and the humans are all infected. Just take a look down at the streets and see how they’re murdering each other for no reason. Pamphrock’s dead; practically all of our men are dead too. There’s nothing left for us here. Leave Theodore and Whitfield to battle it out. Tribane is not going to be saved by us. We’ll only end up sacrificing our lives trying.”

  A heavy brick settles itself in my gut, because Finn’s right. I can’t see any way of us making things better here. There are only twelve of us. What damage can twelve people do against Whitfield and hundreds of his vampires, against Theodore now that he has Rita on his side?

  “God you’re right,” I mumble. “I hate to admit it, but it’s not going to be long before this place is a wasteland.”

  “The city has finally come to bursting point,” Ethan says sadly. “Now it’s going to tear itself apart. Let’s not allow it to take us down with it.”

  We all make noises of agreement and begin gathering our things. I might agree that we need to get out now, but I have no intention of staying away for good. I will be coming back for Rita no matter what.

  The current plan is to go back down onto the street, try to dodge the murderous vampires and the insane humans, find some vehicles and get the hell out of dodge.

  Unfortunately, that plan is immediately foiled, because as we make our way back to the ladder that leads down to the alleyway, I stop in my tracks, halting the others. A head pops up over the roof, a head with fangs and eyes of red.

  “There they are!” the vampire screeches, just as the last person I want to see comes up behind him: Whitfield.

  He slinks up onto the roof with catlike grace, his red eyes flicking over our group. More and more vampires follow behind him.

  “Jack-POT!” he shouts with delight. His facial expressions are all over the place. For a second I think he might be drunk, but then I recognise what it really is, blood-lust – or maybe blood-drunk. I don’t know what it is about seeing him, but it causes my entire body to tense up.

  Whenever I’ve come across an adversary in recent weeks I’ve been determined to defeat them, but now I just feel tired. Why did Whitfield have to find us here, when we’d just been about to leave the city?

  Way too much has happened today. I feel like my head is going to explode.

  “We’re leaving, Jeremy. You’ve won,” Ethan informs him in a hard voice.

  “Leaving?” Whitfield pouts like we’ve just told him we’re going home from his birthday party early. He’s got his sword with him again, the one that looks like it came off the props section of a war movie set in ancient times. “Leaving?” he repeats, and now he sounds amused by the idea. His voice sends shivers down my spine.

  “Well now, you may leave if you so wish, old friend. I washed my hands of you when you were exiled,” his eyes cut to me, “but this one is going nowhere.” He pauses and grins at me. “We have unfinished business, don’t we Tegan?” His voice is all sing song-y until it gets to my name, then it turns harsh and cutting. His crimson eyes are ablaze. The vampires who came with him are still climbing up onto the roof; it seems like the trail of them is never ending. Half of them are already battling it out with Finn and the others as Whitfield backs me and Ethan into a corner.

  I feel my hands begin to shake and my lip quivers, my emotions somehow overriding my magic. I try to push past the fear and bring my magic to the surface, but right now it just isn’t working.

  Whitfield laughs and sings, “Your death is coming for you, Tegan. Can you feel it? It’s in the air. Aw, look at that,” he puts on a theatrical frown before grinning at the vampire beside him, “she’s frightened. Isn’t that just hilarious? How funny it is to see fear on the face of a heartless murderess.”

  “You’re the one who’s heartless,” I spit, finally finding my voice. “I killed your daughter in self-defence. If she had never come looking for me then she’d still be alive today.”

  “I care nothing for your excuses,” he hisses, before shouting an order to the vampires around him. “Get her.”

  Finally my magic comes to me, and I whip out a spray of sparks at Whitfield’s cronies. They jump away, cringing and hissing from the burn, but they’re not deterred for long. I panic with the knowledge that this is a dead end; we’re surrounded. There’s no getting out off of this roof.

  However, just as thoughts of giving up begin to overtake me, I spot something out of the side of my eye. It’s another ladder. It’s almost the same colour as the wall so it’s slightly camouflaged. It leads up to the next building, which is substantially taller than the one we’re currently on.

  Before I even have the chance to consider using it as a means of escape, Ethan has thrown me onto his back and is running up the ladder with me. And when I say running, I mean zooming. There’s just no other way to describe vampire speed. When I look behind me I see that there’s only a couple of feet between us and Whitfield, who’s hurtling after us with about five other vamps.

  When we get to the next roof, Ethan keeps going. He leaps across the couple of feet gap between the building we’re on and the next one. The force of our landing shatters through me. This happens several more times, and I can’t help but look to see that Whitfield is still coming for us. Keeping one arm firmly around Ethan’s neck, I drop the other and squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on creating a stream of sparks in our wake. It slows Whitfield down a little, but he and his crew just keep dodging them. God, that vampire doesn’t give up easily.

  At one point I feel us going down another ladder and dropping onto the street. Ethan brings us across to a high-rise building, and I can just about make out a stairwell as we zoom up it. Then we’re outside again on another roof. I can’t gauge how much distance we’ve travelled, but it seems like we’ve gone a long way. It’s only when Ethan stops running that I see that’s not true. All we’ve been doing is run around in circles, because now we’re on a building directly across from the one we’d started out on.

  “Why did you come back here?” I cry at Ethan.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” he answers. “The streets are crawling with Whitfield’s men. There’s no escape.”

  I look down and see my friends still fighting off a never ending stream of vamps as they climb up onto the two storey building. Then when I peer at the street below my heart drops. The place is full
to the brim with vampires. I can’t even see the humans anymore, and I dread to think that that’s because the vampires have killed them all. Glancing down Campion Row and out onto the Hawthorne River, all I find is more vampires coming over to this side of the city. I’ve felt hopeless many times in my life, but never more so than this. Ethan’s right, there really is no escape. That fact is further reinforced when Whitfield comes to a stop before us.

  “Now, now, Cristescu, that’s bad form. I never pegged you as the tucking tail and running away type.”

  Ethan pushes me behind him protectively, before addressing Whitfield. “You have penned us in. There’s no shame in running away when you are outnumbered hundreds of times over.”

  Whitfield brushes off his response with a laugh. “Is that sour grapes I hear in your voice, old friend?”

  “You’re no friend of mine,” Ethan fumes, “so stop referring to me as one.”

  “There’s no need for such anger. I said you were free to go. It’s the human I’m after.” He stops and sucks in a savouring breath. “I’ve rarely smelled such appetising blood as hers in all my years. I will relish finally getting the chance to taste it.”

  “I thought you wanted to kill me because of Eliza?” I say shakily.

  Whitfield looks at me condescendingly, as though I’m an idiotic child. “Of course I will be killing you as a tribute to my daughter. Your blood is simply an added reward for my loss.”

  “I’ll take you down with my bare hands before you ever get to her,” Ethan threatens.

  “Go ahead and use your bare hands,” Whitfield pulls his sword out of its holster. “And I will use my sword.”

  He swoops down on Ethan, who shuns his bare hands in favour of pulling out his own sword. I’d all but forgotten he had it with him. They spar against one another, and it strikes me that both of them possess sword fighting skills you don’t encounter in this day and age. Skills possessed only through the necessity of living in a time when guns were not so readily available. Not to mention their moves are lightening fast, nothing like how a human would do it.

  Seeing that the other vamps are trying to get past Ethan to capture me, I begin moulding my palms together and creating balls of sparks to throw at them. This act exhausts me, and I can practically feel my magic dwindling away with the effort it takes to create them. However, right now they’re my only bet at keeping the vampires at bay.

  At one point a female jumps high into the air and before I know it she has her hands on my throat and her fangs are coming down on me. As quick as I can, I pull the stake out of my pocket yet again and stick right into her heart. Her dark blood sprays in my face and her body crumples to the ground.

  The victory is short lived, because my fight with her allowed the others enough time to get to me. I do my best to gain my previous momentum and start throwing sparks at them again. I glance at Ethan and Whitfield just as Ethan makes progress and slashes Whitfield’s arm. The vampire governor reels back, hissing at the strike.

  Just before he has the chance to recover from the blow, strange purple smoke begins to seep out of the ground around us. It comes from everywhere, pouring eerily through the bricks and cement. It becomes so thick that it practically blinds me, and for a few brief seconds I can’t see anything. The purple clouds my vision and those around me vanish. Slowly, the smoke begins to blow away and when I can see again I rush to Ethan, affixing myself firmly to his side.

  Things were bad before. There was no way of us fighting off the vampires for much longer, but now the situation is ten times worse, because standing before us are Rita and Theodore. Their black eyes are identical.

  And when Rita’s land on me, she smiles.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Day Has Come Where I Have Died, Only To Find I’ve Come Alive

  It’s not a friendly smile, it’s the smile of a killer just before they take their knife and gut you like a fish. My entire body turns as cold as ice.

  “Hello, Governor,” says Theodore, his dark eyes landing immediately on Whitfield. “I’ve been searching for you. What a coincidence to find you here with my dear little treasure.”

  I have always hated Theodore’s pet name for me, but right now I hate it with every fibre of my being. It’s almost like he’s mocking me, like he knows how frustrated it makes me to have all of this power bottled up inside and not know how to use it, how to tap into it. I’m a treasure for anyone who can capture me, but hardly ever for myself.

  “Rita,” I burst, “what are you doing with him? Please, just stop this and come back to me. I know you’re in there somewhere, you are!”

  Theodore wags his finger in my direction. “No, no, no, she’s mine now. Contrary to what you might believe, my daughter has only just become her true self. Before she was a shell, had not yet discovered her potential. Oh, isn’t it marvellous how grief can transform a person, how it makes them see the world the way it is truly supposed to be seen?” He pauses and glances at Whitfield, who has suddenly lost the confidence he had before the sorcerer showed up. All of a sudden, getting his revenge by killing me is no longer his top priority. “I suppose I have you to thank for that, vampire.”

  “What do you want with me?” Whitfield demands, his voice coming out strong and firm. It’s clearly a façade, because it’s obvious even to me that Theodore’s sudden presence has shaken him. I don’t think he was even aware of the sorcerer’s presence in the city until now.

  “With you?” says Theodore. “Why dear Governor, I want to kill you of course. You might not yet have heard that I recently ended Pamphrock. Now I only need to take care of you and the city will be mine again.”

  Angered by Theodore’s words, Whitfield gestures for his men to advance on the sorcerer. They barely get the chance to move an inch before Rita’s hands come up and black waves pulse out of the palms of her hands. The waves halt the vampires in their tracks and then they are still as stone, unable to move their own bodies against her magic.

  “Isn’t she just magnificent,” Theodore beams, his eyes cutting slyly to me, as if to rub it in my face that Rita is now his to use as he sees fit.

  Seeing how Rita is holding his vampires captive within their own bodies, Whitfield becomes desperate. This is clear when he pleads, “Look, I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. I could simply hand the city over to you and command my people to do your bidding. Look down onto the streets and see how many vampires there are, and that’s only half of them. Why waste what could be a beneficial alliance by killing me when you could have an army of vampires at your beck and call?”

  “When stripped of your bodyguards, you really are spineless,” Ethan quietly fumes, interrupting Whitfield’s ruthless proposal.

  Whitfield lets out a harsh laugh. “This coming from the man who only a few minutes ago was running away from me like a coward.”

  “I ran away like a man who has a brain in his head and knows when he’s been outnumbered. But unlike you, Jeremy, I would never sell my people out to a sorcerer. Do you even realise the gravity of what you have offered? To save your own skin you would enslave the very people who look up to you to guide them. If that is not cowardice then I don’t know what is.”

  “Do not talk down to me. I am hundreds of years older than you, Ethan Cristescu. You have no idea what it takes to survive that long.”

  Theodore coughs loudly, an amused expression on his face. “I hate to break up this little domestic you vamps are having, but I do believe I’m the one holding all the cards here.”

  Whitfield loses the hateful expression he’d been wearing when speaking with Ethan and turns back to Theodore.

  Satisfied that the attention is back on him, Theodore goes on, “So, if I’m understanding this correctly, you are offering to serve me and to command your vampires to serve me too if I spare your life?

  “That is correct, Sorcerer,” Whitfield answers, affecting a supplicating demeanour.

  “Well, I have to say, that is certainly an attractive offer,” Theodor
e rubs at his pale chin thoughtfully. “With my magic and the physical prowess of your vampires no one would dare try to overthrow me.”

  Well, he’s certainly changed his tune. Before he had planned on driving the vampires from the city by starving them of blood.

  “It’s true. We vampires are far stronger than any humans,” Whitfield agrees, a little too enthusiastically. “I promise you would not regret gaining a vampire following.”

  Theodore takes a moment to study him, before gesturing him closer with a wave of his hand. “Come with me, we shall discuss this away from prying ears. Daughter, be a dear and make sure that my dear little treasure and the vampires don’t try to flee.”

  Rita doesn’t breathe a word, her expressionless face gazing straight ahead. The black magic streaming from her hands keeps Whitfield’s vampires at bay. I momentarily wonder what would happen if I simply hopped onto Ethan’s back again and told him to run. Would she use her black magic to freeze me too? Or would she somehow remember that I’m one of her closest friends and let me go? Right now I don’t have the balls to test out the theory. Besides, as Ethan said, we’re penned on all sides by vampires, so we wouldn’t get very far even if we did try to run again.

  This is it. I stare at Whitfield and Theodore, who are deep in conversation on the other side of the roof. Theodore has his hand on Whitfield’s shoulder, a gesture that could be interpreted as either new-found friendship or dominance. In my gut I’m going with dominance.

  Theodore might seem like he’s interested in teaming up with Whitfield, but let’s face it, he’s only doing it so that he can add to his strength. Moments ago he was all set on killing the vampire governor to get him out of the way. And to be honest, I don’t get why he doesn’t just kill him. Having the vampire population at his beck and call aside, Whitfield is clearly only biding his time by offering this deal. The very moment he spots a weakness in Theodore’s armour I have no doubt he’ll dive right in for the kill himself.