Her Lying Days Are Done

by Robert J. Crane

  My heart swelled with relief, but in that same second, the other two noticed me, and redirected all of their fire power at me.

  Lockwood shouted, “Cassandra, get down!”

  But it was too late.

  The magic that they were shooting at the barrier were weakening it. It rippled like a pond being struck with a stone, and the shimmering green grew fainter.

  “Cassie!” I heard Dad shout. He had gotten to his feet and was just about to reach me when the barrier shattered, and one of the blue spells that the women were shooting at me collided with one of Lockwood’s brilliantly white spells.

  It kept coming, and all I could do was watch it, mouth hanging open…

  ... And it struck Dad square in the chest.

  He went flying through the air, across the living room, only to slam against the metal shaded windows. He crumpled to the floor, unmoving.

  The whole world stopped. Everything.

  And then I heard the sound of a panicked scream escaping from my mouth.

  Chapter 12

  Something about my dad getting struck drew something out of me. Awoke a blood thirst that I never really knew I had. The adrenaline was pumping through my veins, and it was as if Lockwood had given me some sort of magical elixir. My blood ran hot. I felt strong.

  I felt heedlessly, recklessly invincible.

  And I was going to make them pay with their own blood.

  Iona appeared. I wasn’t sure from where, or how, but she was on the stairs, obviously taking the opportunity of the missing witch to enter the fight.

  Wait. One of the witches was gone, the one Mill had attacked. Where had she gone? She had been laying there on the floor, but was now missing, dead for all I knew.

  Mill was on all fours behind Iona, panting, a pained look on his face. His hand was clamped around the spot where the spell had struck him.

  Laura appeared, with Mom not far behind, higher up the stairs. The spellcasters near the door hadn’t noticed them. Their focus was all on me.

  Lockwood scooped me up with one hand, dragging me behind his body. Once again he was shielding me. “Are you all right?” he asked in a strained tone.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “But my dad—”

  Then I heard an unfamiliar voice…and in an unfamiliar language. It was the wizard. Or the witch. No, both.

  It was obvious they were distressed. They continued to shoot spells at Lockwood, who was throwing them right back. I blinked a few times. He actually was doing exactly that. He was somehow able to grab their spells in midair and throw them back as though lobbing thrown softballs.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Dad, who was still slumped against the wall.

  I adjusted the long knife in my hand, the memories of the Butcher flashing through my mind. If these spellcasters were vampires, then cutting them wouldn't kill them.

  But it would hurt. And a dark, angry part of me was relishing the thought of causing them pain. The knife had a wooden hilt, too. If I buried that all the way to the heart, it would turn them right into black goo.

  I heard one of them utter the word Draven, and my ears perked up. It was buried in the middle of a long string of foreign words, a deeply guttural language.

  “They're human, Lockwood,” Iona called. “That's German they're speaking.”

  “Yes, I just realized that as well,” he said, straining beneath a volley of their magic as it collided with his shield and he failed to hurl it back. His arm was tight around my waist, and he was holding me off the ground so I couldn't set my feet and pull free. “Of the—” he made a guttural noise of his own, that sounded very much like German, “—school of magic.”

  “So there really are witches and wizards?” I asked, watching his shield ripple from another hit. Sparks flew brightly across the surface, and I flinched from the light's intensity. “And they're hunting me for Draven? Great. Because I needed more to deal with than the Lord of Tampa and a newly converted vampire best friend.” Now I had vampiric spellcasters on my tail.

  “Well, you do seem to excel at managing these larger conundrums,” Lockwood said, sticking the hand that wasn't wrapped around my waist out toward the enemy. A white glow formed in his palm, then quickly doubled in size and turned a sickly yellow color before he shot it at them.

  The wizard in the middle who had taken a fraction of a second to glance at his compatriot took it in the side of the face, and it sent him flying into the frame of the door, which cracked upon impact. His face went slack, and he tumbled to the ground with a thud.

  Lockwood sagged; he must have put quite a bit into that spell. I felt the strength of his grip on me fade, and I took the opportunity to wriggle free. I rushed out from behind Lockwood, screaming into the air, at the last witch standing there.

  She had pin-straight black hair that fell to her shoulders, and while her sunglasses hid her eyes, they didn’t hide her incredibly high cheekbones or her pouting lips.

  She brandished her cane, raising it to send a blue ball of light at me, but having trained with a vampire, I'd learned when to expect attacks and respond quickly. I ducked, and the spell flew over my shoulder, grazing the cloth as I came in low.

  I rose, and before the witch had another chance to send a spell at me, I plunged the knife into the center of her chest.

  It sunk in all the way up to the hilt, and I shoved it in, hard. The wood was in her flesh, the blade buried in her heart, and one more good shove would—

  Hot, scarlet blood gushed out over my hand.

  I screamed when it touched me, warm and unexpected, not the thick black goo I'd anticipated.

  Human blood. It was human blood.

  The witch stumbled backwards, grasping at the knife.

  She muttered something in German, her teeth gritted tightly, and yanked the knife out, staring at it. She flicked her gaze up at me, whispered something—

  In the next second, she had disappeared with nothing more than a rush of wind.

  Her companion in the doorway struggled to his feet. I met his gaze, looked right into the black sunglasses, and then he, too, was gone.

  “Laura!”

  I whirled around and saw Mom and Iona hovering over Laura, who was sprawled on the stairs, her perfect hair splayed out around her head like a golden crown.

  “She got hit with one of those blue lights,” Mom said, cradling her head gently.

  My heart hammered, and the room swayed.

  “Still breathing, though…” Iona said, checking her pulse.

  “That spell was meant to hit me,” I said.

  Lockwood turned around, his face sweating, his breathing heavy. He didn't sugarcoat it. “Yes, it was,” he said.

  “Then…” I licked my lips, “... If Laura is still breathing and caught the full brunt of it…they weren’t trying to kill me?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lockwood said.

  “They were trying to take me alive,” I muttered.

  “I don’t imagine they thought they were going to run into such a defense,” Lockwood said. “To have two vampires and a Faerie in your arsenal is... Unusual, to say the least. For a human.”

  Mill dragged himself to a wall and leaned against it, face even paler than usual. There was a nasty green spot on his arm, and all the veins were starkly contrasted against his skin.

  “I will attend to Mill,” Lockwood said. “You should go to your father.”

  My heart leapt into my throat, but I didn’t hesitate. Mill nodded; he'd be in good hands with Lockwood. And at least he was still conscious.

  Laura might not have been, but at least she was breathing. Iona and Mom were watching her. I wasn’t sure that Mom knew about Dad yet. Better take it one step at a time.

  I walked across the cracked marble tiles of the foyer and back into the living room, feeling as if I were walking through some sort of twisted nightmare.

  Dad lay at a weird angle, head lolling to the side.

  No kid should ever have to see their parents this way.
<
br />   Was he…?

  I crept closer, seeking signs of life. The movement of his chest. A stir. Something.

  Anything.

  He couldn’t be...

  No.

  He couldn't.

  Chapter 13

  If the house was a mess when we arrived, it was a hundred times worse after the fight with the witches and the wizard. There was bright red blood splattered all over the floor, and Lockwood was tending to a wound on his arm, his own silvery blood drenching his dress shirt.

  I reached Dad in a sort of fog, numb from the fear that was threatening to engulf me. He had a nasty burn on his arm. That was where the spell had hit him.

  “Dad…?” I asked, kneeling down beside him. My voice was trembling. “Dad, are you all right?”

  He didn’t stir.

  I reached over and touched his hand. His skin felt cold beneath my sweating, shaking fingers. I hesitated but felt his wrist for a pulse. I fumbled, not sure where it was supposed to be—was it down by the hand, up on the forearm? I'd only ever seen this done on television, and the wrist was like its own territory. I clutched at it with clumsy fingers, feeling like an idiot child trying to play at adult things.

  There.

  It was there, faint and fluttering, but it was there, just on the side of his wrist beneath the tendons running down its middle. I sighed with relief.

  “He’s alive,” I shouted out into the foyer. I sank back on my heels and almost laughed. “He’s got a pulse.”

  It wasn’t long before Mom came to join me. She was teary-eyed as she stared at Dad, brushing her hands over his face. I felt like I was intruding as Mom checked him over. It was very rare for me to see her so unhinged, her eyes blinking furiously, hands moving to his cheeks, drawing quick breaths. She was usually so composed, so cool… To see her flustered like this—

  Well, I hadn't ever seen her quite like this. Then again, we'd never been attacked by vampires and witches... ever... before.

  Lockwood appeared as I moved away from her. She'd settled slightly, holding my dad's cheeks between her hands, her forehead pressed to his, whispering something to him. Lockwood sidled up, pausing for a moment, indecision rattling across his features. “Mill is not doing well,” he said after a moment.

  My heart clenched. “What? Why?”

  “He was hit with a nasty spell,” Lockwood said. “A curse of some variety I'm not familiar with.”

  “Can you do anything about it?” I asked.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I'll need to study it a bit more. But I wanted to see how your father was first.” With a curt nod, he brushed past me and knelt down next to my dad. My mom moved out of the way, relinquishing her grip on him with a brief kiss to the forehead, letting Lockwood in closer. He forced a smile and then turned his attention to the spell-burn, touching it ever so gently. “I think he’ll be all right,” Lockwood said after a moment's consideration.

  A breath I hadn't realized I was holding rushed out in relief, and I suddenly felt like all the blood had left my head, it felt so light.

  “There is some damage here,” Lockwood said, looking at the spell-burn again. “I will need to work on some sort of salve for him, and that may take some... consideration.”

  “Isn't this just...magic?” I asked. “Can't you just use a spell or something to fix it?”

  “Faerie magic is not the same as human magic,” Lockwood said. “They come from different worlds, and they do not mix well. Faerie magic is often a poor counter to this world's variety. They collide, and it creates unknown effects, as you saw. This will require some study so I can dress it accordingly.”

  “But you’ll be able to help him?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Lockwood said. “I know what my spell was composed of, what sort of intentions I had.” He opened Dad’s eyelids and looked into his eyes. Give him a stethoscope and a white lab coat and he could have passed as a doctor. “I think I can manage to conjure up something that will help, but it will take some time.”

  “This is all madness,” my mother said under her breath, brushing her hand over Dad's forehead. “Madness.”

  “Mom...” I said.

  She gave me a hard look. “Look at what happened to your father. Are you happy now?”

  Happy our house had burned down? That my friend had betrayed me? That I'd been dragged through the ringer in Faerie only to return to this knot of horror that had now resulted in a battle with spellcasters and the injury of my father? “That's not the word I'd pick for how I feel right now,” I said, trying not to lash at her with all these feelings that were threatening to overwhelm my tiredness. “Could you check on Laura for me? Please.”

  She stared at me for a moment, her gaze hard, but slowly turned and made her way out of the living room without saying a word.

  “Is she going to be all right?” Lockwood asked once she was out of earshot.

  It was like a rope was tied around my heart, squeezing it. “I hope so. I’ve never seen her this... twisted up.”

  “She's been through quite a lot this evening,” Lockwood said. “Between action and revelation. Do you mind if I go check on Mill?”

  “No, that’s fine,” I said. All of the strength had left me, and I wasn’t sure if I’d even be able to stand and follow after. At least Mill was conscious, which put him on a better footing than Laura or my dad. “You know what you're doing. And...” He looked at me as he rose to his feet. “Thank you, Lockwood.”

  He nodded, and a brief smile lit his face. “We will make it through the night, Cassandra. Stay strong, and all will be right before you know it.”

  “I'm beginning to think you're a bit more of an optimist about these things than I am, Lockwood,” I said as he made his way across the living room. Mill was waiting, leaning against the archway, watching us both.

  “I have faith in your ceaseless ability to navigate us through these troubles,” Lockwood said, turning to smile at me once more.

  “I wish I shared that belief,” I said under my breath. He heard me, but hopefully no one else did. The last thing anyone else needed was to hear me doubt myself right now, after all.

  “I’m fine,” Mill said through gritted teeth as Lockwood approached.

  My stomach did a somersault. He was leaning pretty heavily against the wall, a tight grimace formed on his lips. “Let me take a look,” Lockwood said.

  “How's Cassie?” he asked. I could hear him plainly. Even when he was in as much pain as he was, he still wondered about me.

  “Uninjured,” Lockwood said, giving me a sympathetic look as he started out of the room. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

  “Next time I'll duck,” Mill said.

  It felt like someone had thrown a smoke grenade inside my mind, a cloudy murk between my ears slowing my thoughts. There was danger, great danger, but it was distant and muted, out of sight. I just couldn’t process it, not with my mind chunking along at quarter speed.

  I grabbed a pillow from the couch and rested it underneath Dad’s head, so that he didn’t have a nasty kink in his neck when he woke up, though that would probably be the least of his problems. His face was pale, and I leaned over and took his glasses off. He wouldn’t be happy if they got bent. I laid them down beside him and sighed, resting against the wall beside him.

  “Please be all right,” I whispered, watching him for some sign of movement. His chest moved up and down in a regular pattern. If he was in really bad shape, his breathing would be more unsteady, wouldn't it?

  Magic. I wouldn't have the first clue if something was really, terribly wrong, would I? Even Dad, a doctor by trade, wouldn't necessarily know how to treat himself in this scenario. I rested my chin on my chest and folded my arms in front of me, staring dully at the living room floor.

  Black boots clicked into my field of vision, jarring me to look up. Iona was looking around at the scorch marks from the spells on the previously pristine white walls, her thin arms wrapped around her. She had a thick furrow of concern
across her brow. “Wow, they did more damage than I thought…” she said.

  I sighed. “I know. I'm totally going to have call an interior decorator to fix this atrocity. But, y'know, tomorrow.”

  “You okay?” she asked, putting her back against the wall and sliding down beside me.

  I noticed for the first time since seeing her that she had a little braid in her hair, so tiny that it was lost in the rest of the silvery blonde strands as she brushed it over her shoulders.

  Was that because of me? “I’m fine,” I said, but we both knew it wasn’t the truth. I tried again. “My dad’s been hurt, Laura and Mill were both hit…Draven's people found us and escaped, which means they know where we are.” I frowned. “They were speaking German?”

  Iona nodded. “I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I recognized a few words here and there. Definitely Deutsche.”

  Lockwood reappeared, face grim. His lips were pressed tightly together.

  “What now?” I asked. My heart couldn’t take much more of this.

  He exhaled heavily through his nose. “I'm afraid Mill is taking a turn for the worse.”

  “I’m fine,” Mill said from the archway to the foyer. His voice was tight, as though he were holding back pain.

  “He is most certainly not fine,” Lockwood said. “He is growing progressively paler.”

  “He's a vampire. We don't tan. How is getting paler even possible?” Iona asked.

  Lockwood gave her a look, arching an eyebrow. “It’s not just that. The spot where he was struck is not healing. Which for a vampire is...not good. Nor is it normal.”

  “It’s fine,” Mill said again. “It's magic, it'll just take a little longer to heal, that's all.” I looked past Lockwood and Mill was...paler, somehow. His face looked like a full moon, almost aglow with whiteness.

  “Those people were German sorcerer mercenaries,” Lockwood said.

  “'Sorcerer mercenaries' is a thing?” I asked. “There is still so much about this paranormal crap that I just do not know.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, you know more about Faerie than Mill and I combined now,” Iona said.