“Not now,” he said, “I want to play with your friend first.”
I knew vampires were strong, but even so I wasn’t prepared for the ease with which he lifted me off my feet and tossed me into the pool. I might have been a tiny pebble rather than a fully grown woman, flailing gracelessly as I hit the water with a loud splash.
The water was warm, deep, and dark. Beneath the surface, I could not tell which way was up, nor which was down. I kicked off in a random direction, my lungs constricting from the unexpected dunking. I hadn’t had a chance to take in a lung full of air before losing my connection with the oxygen I’d always taken for granted.
At least I hadn’t fallen far. I expected to find fresh air in a matter of seconds, but it didn’t come. I kept kicking and kicking, always expecting to find the fresh air I sought, but it wouldn’t come. Frantic, I switched directions, and this time my hand brushed against something hard–the edge of the pool. Grateful for the landmark, I used it to feel my way to the top, where I drank in a refreshing breath of air.
The vampire was there when I gasped for breath, his yellow eyes boring into my soul. They didn’t hypnotize me as before. I can only assume that he didn’t feel the need, since he thought I was under the spell of the venom. I looked away as soon as I could, but there was nothing friendlier to see in the rest of his face. Certainly not his pointed fangs, stained with something dark and deadly.
With a casual sweep of his hand, the vampire pushed aside the loose strap of my large swimsuit. “If we want to have more fun after tonight, it will have to be the shoulder. Your family would notice the neck.” They might have noticed the thumb, too, but I didn’t point this out to him.
Then he bit. I closed my eyes, dug my nails into my palms, and clenched my jaw tight. The pain was that of a hundred tiny knives ripping open flesh, tearing muscles, and scraping them raw.
A scream tried to force its way up my throat, but I fought it with every ounce of strength in my body. I focused on the fight with the scream, because I was losing the fight with the vampire, and I did not want to dwell on the pain, which consumed the whole of my existence.
Tears flowed from my eyes, but bent as he was over my shoulder, Luke did not notice. He might not have noticed anyway, in the dark and the damp.
Then the slurping began. What had sounded like demonic nursing when I’d heard him do it to Angie, now sounded like a chorus of fear, digging through pain to reach my soul. My heart shuddered. I could feel the blood being drawn up and out through the veins in my shoulder. My head felt light, and it became hard to breathe.
Time passed. It might have been a few seconds or an hour, but it passed. Each second was a fresh fight with the pain, with the fear, and with the desperate scream in my throat. How long could I hold out? Surely, it wouldn’t be so bad to scream. Then he might end it more quickly. Death would be a welcome relief.
I wasn’t immediately aware of the moment he released me. One second, I was wrestling with my need to scream, debating the merits of death, and the next, I looked up at the starry sky. I was floating on my back in the water, whimpering. It wasn’t a scream; it was more a compromise.
“Tomorrow,” he whispered in my ear. “Return to this place tomorrow night.”
Then he was gone, though not far. I managed to turn my head just enough to see him standing by Angie, the latter on her knees, begging him to taste her.
“Tomorrow,” Luke whispered. “Tomorrow you and your friend will come back here.”
I touched my right shoulder with my left hand and felt the torn, damaged flesh there. Among vampire venom’s other magical properties, it acts as a coagulant and healing agent. This is useful when you want to spend days playing with a victim before they die. Without it, they may bleed out the first night.
So I wasn’t thralled, but it looked like I might die anyway. He hadn’t drawn enough blood to kill me, but it continued to drip into the pool from my open wound.
The stars looked out of focus and hazy, as if obscured by the glow of a city’s lights. My body felt heavy; the muscles relaxed, and I began to droop into the pool.
In the next second, Angie was there, supporting my body and helping me to the stairs leading out.
“I know how you feel,” Angie said in a low voice. “I’m sad when he leaves too, but there’s no reason to drown yourself. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t tell her that I wouldn’t be. Whether my absence would be due to death or the desire for life, I did not know.
With shaking limbs, I crawled out of the pool. I had left my purse on a lawn chair a few feet away, but it seemed so far. If I could reach it, I could get my cell phone and...
An image flashed in my mind: a cell phone lying on the floorboard of the passenger side of my car.
“I need help,” I managed to say to Angie. “I’m losing blood.”
She leaned over me, damp hair hanging around her face. “What happened to your shoulder?”
I gaped at her. “The vampire.”
She laughed. “You always did have an overactive imagination.”
In my pain-shocked mind, I didn’t know if it was Angie herself or the venom that allowed her to so stubbornly refuse to see what was happening. Looking back, I think it may have been both.
Her face swam out of my vision, but I was sure it would come back in a matter of moments. I heard her around the other end of the pool for a few seconds, then I heard her footsteps coming closer and closer. Any minute now, she would stop by my side, maybe with a towel or something to help stop the bleeding. But the footsteps didn’t stop. They went past me, through the patio door.
The banging of the door behind her sounded like the lid of my coffin closing.
I closed my eyes and steeled myself to do something–anything. With agonizing slowness, I managed to get myself up on hands and knees, and inch toward the lawn chair. The phone wasn’t there, but my car keys were. If I could get the keys and then get to the car...
But the ten feet to the lawn chair took an age to cross, and when I looked back, I saw a trail of blood. The hand digging through my purse closed on the car keys and pressed a button to unlock the doors. I heard the tiny chirp. Then I saw black.
16
I WOKE SLOWLY, SENSATIONS RETURNING TO my body one at a time. The first thing I felt was hard, cracked pavement pressing against my belly and legs. It smelled strongly of chlorine and something else, something a little bitter. I moved my hand, felt a thin metal ring, then heard the jingling of a set of keys.
“Sh-she’s ok.” The voice was shaky and out of breath, as if its owner had just run a long race. I didn’t immediately recognize it.
“Cassandra?” That was Dad. He knelt down in front of me, and I managed to open one bleary eye to focus on his fear-lined face.
I closed my eyes again. It wasn’t real. Dad wasn’t real. The vampire wasn’t real. The world wasn’t real. If I could just fall back into sleep, I would wake up in my own bed, enfolded in the loving embrace of my fortress of solitude.
“Cassandra?” That was Mom. I felt her hand on mine, and the keys slipped into her waiting fingers.
“M’okay,” I managed.
“Can you sit up?” Dad asked.
I didn’t want to, but I tried it, scraping my knees against the rough cement. Lifting myself into the lawn chair didn’t seem possible, but I did manage to square myself on the ground and take a look around.
Juliana was on her knees a foot or so away, gasping for breath. Either she had gone on a healing spree before she had gotten to me, or she hadn’t gotten there a moment too soon. She pulled a lock of sweat-drenched hair behind one ear and slumped down on the ground next to me. Then she flung one arm around my neck and started whimpering.
“D-don’t scare me like th-that.”
I patted her hair absently for a while, letting sensation return to my body. It ached all over, but the acute pain was gone, and strength was slowly returning.
“How did you know?” I asked
.
She didn’t answer. None of them did, but I guessed. Juliana had been crystal gazing again. I sighed in a resigned sort of way, but I couldn’t get angry with someone for invading my privacy when she had just saved my life, however much I may have wanted to.
“It was Angie,” I managed. “I came over to talk, thinking I’d be safe behind her threshold, but she knew the vampire. She invited him in.”
No one answered, which was just as well. There wasn’t anything to say that wouldn’t make me feel worse than I already felt. I stared at the pool, which, I suddenly realized, was glistening with light reflected from a new source. It didn’t take me long to find it. Dad balanced an orb of light above his head, casting bright white illumination across the entire patio.
The scene looked worse than I would have thought. A cloud of blood filled much of the shallow end of the pool. More blood traced my path from the steps to the lawn chair, where I sat huddled with Juliana.
I could only imagine what I looked like, though I felt all right, and was feeling better the more time passed. Juliana’s breathing was easing too, though she had her share of my blood in her hair and on her clothing. She had decided to wear white shorts that day, an unfortunate choice.
Mom followed my gaze. “We can’t leave this.”
Of the things that a sorcerer can use to gain control over another human, blood is the strongest. Certain spells can be woven around hair, skin, fingernails, and saliva, but blood trumps them all, and I had just left behind enough for every sorcerer in Eagle Rock to take a sample.
“Get the chalk and salt,” Dad said. “I’ll heat the water.”
Mom ran off, I assume to her Sprinter, while Dad sat by the edge of the pool and put his hand in the water. Within seconds, the already warm pool began to steam and bubble.
“Come on,” I said to Juliana. “We need to move back.”
With difficulty, I got to my feet. My knees weren’t sure whether they wanted to support my weight at first, but I talked them into it. Then I offered Juliana a hand. She took it, wobbling slightly, and together we backed away from the pool as far as the fence. There, we collapsed together and waited for our parents to begin their spell.
Mom returned with an old black diaper bag that she calls her potion bag. She set it by the pool, then fumbled around for the salt, which she immediately tossed into the boiling water. Then she took out the chalk and drew a large pentagram over the place where I had lain motionless a few minutes earlier. She drew a circle around the pentagram and blessed it with a few whispered words. I had seen her do all of this a hundred times before, though I admit I didn’t understand the finer points of how it all worked.
“Ready,” Mom said, standing in the middle of the circle.
Dad joined her inside the circle and took her hand, linking their magic together. I saw when it happened, because a shudder ran through both of their bodies.
I shuddered as well. It was hard to watch them clean up my mess, as it was one of those not-so-rare moments when I felt utterly powerless. Juliana leaned against me, still weak from her exertion, and I patted her hair comfortingly. She was six years younger than me, practically a child, and yet I had needed her to come to my rescue. Not only that, but I had put her at risk, drained her battery. She would recover from tonight, but what if there were other nights?
“Let’s go,” Dad said.
I blinked. The blood was gone. All of it–the cloud in the pool and the trail on the ground. It looked as though I had never been there. Even the chalk circle had been wiped clean, and I hadn’t even seen it happen.
I stared at the spot where the attack had taken place, remembering every moment of it as if it were happening to me all over again. There was Luke, standing over me with his glowing eyes. There he was again, standing over Angie, slurping her life’s fluid. There he was in the pool, razor sharp teeth ripping into my flesh, eliciting a scream that never escaped my lips.
I rubbed my eyes, willing the images away. If only I could wipe the memories quite as easily as my parents had wiped the blood.
17
MOM DROVE MY CAR HOME. We passed the twenty-minute drive in complete silence, my head firmly pressed against the passenger side window. Partly, I was avoiding her gaze and any unwelcome conversation that might accompany it, but mostly I was trying to escape the world. I squinted up at the stars, wondering if one of them granted wishes like in the fairy tales I’d read as a child. I wish I may, I wish I might, I thought. But I stopped there. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted.
Everyone was gathered in the living room when we walked in, I still in the over-large swimsuit, carrying my clothes and purse at my side. Gathering as much dignity as I could manage, I pushed past them, letting their shouted questions and comments roll off of me. The only thing I wanted was a shower, my most comfortable pajamas, and bed.
My plans did not work out. No sooner had I slipped into the pajamas, then there was a knock on my bedroom door. I knew it would be my parents before I answered. I even knew it would be both of them, together, and that they had no intention of letting me sleep until we had worked out a few things that had been weighing us down over the past couple of days.
“Come in.” I flung myself down on my bed and pretended to be in the middle of reading a book. My parents couldn’t have been less fooled by the nonchalance if the book were upside down.
“We need to talk,” Dad said.
I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to say. I had acted recklessly, all because of my own private feelings of doubt about Mom’s pregnancy. Well, they weren’t so private anymore.
“Why did you go to Angie’s?” Dad asked. “You said you were coming home.”
He had to know. Was he going to make me say it? I wouldn’t look at his face. Instead, I studied the pocket of his black robe, embroidered with his initials, E.S.
“Has Jason called?” It was a lame and desperate attempt to change the subject.
“No,” Mom said. “I’ve left three messages myself. Don’t worry about him, I’m sure he’s just busy.”
“If we have to, we’ll kill the vampire who attacked you ourselves,” Dad added.
I closed my eyes and clenched my hands into fists. “If we don’t get him by tomorrow, he might just finish Angie off.”
Mom and Dad looked at one another significantly, and Mom twisted the belt of her pink floral robe around one finger. “We’ll try to help her.”
“Cassandra, you’re trying to distract us,” Dad said. “I want to know why you said what you said to me on the phone.”
I couldn’t find a way to dart around that one, so I tried for a partial truth. “Mom always said she wanted seven kids. She was quite clear about it, and about why. I figured if you had another one, it was because you didn’t think I counted.”
“Aren’t you a little old to be worried that a new baby is going to replace you?” Mom asked. “I thought we covered this when you were two, and we told you about Nicolas.”
“Fine, I’m crazy. Let me go to sleep.” I pressed my face into a pillow.
“We really ought to talk about this,” Mom said. “You know we love you, right?” There was tension in her voice, as if she were desperate for me to understand.
“Yeah, I know.” Lack of love had never been the problem in our house. It overflowed with love. It was respect and acceptance that I had been missing, something she would be hard pressed to give me in an evening pep talk.
“We’d do anything for you,” Dad said. “All you have to do is ask.” There was a note of desperation in his voice that did not quite infuse me with confidence. Besides, after the way they had treated me the other day, overreacting because of an alleged relationship with Evan, I didn’t know if I could trust them.
“Anything, huh? Would you stand aside and let me make my own choices?”
“Yes,” Dad said.
The answer had come too easily, so I upped the stakes. “Even if I chose to go out with Evan Blackwood?”
Neither o
f them spoke for a long time. Mom seemed supremely interested in a spot on the wall, while Dad feigned interest in the book I had pretended to read.
“I thought you were dating Braden,” Mom said.
“I am.” Although after our disastrous date that evening, I didn’t know how much of a future we had. I thought of his proposal again, wondering how badly I had hurt him, not saying yes right away, but how could I have said anything else? All of a sudden, he wanted me to change my life for him, and then, without giving me a chance to catch my breath, he asks me the most important question of my life.
Besides, a guilty part of me asked, how could I say yes to him, when I had fantasized about kissing Evan earlier that same day?
“If you’re dating Braden,” Mom said, reminding me that we hadn’t finished our uncomfortable conversation, “then I don’t understand the question.”
“It’s simple enough,” I said. “I could change my mind, and I want to know if you trust me to make my own choices.”
“Yes, we would,” Mom said. Dad glared at her, and she shot him a dirty look.
“We do always have your best interests at heart,” Dad said, ignoring Mom’s look. So, in other words, no.
“Is there a point to this conversation?” I asked. “Or is it just slow torture?”
“We just want you to know we’ll always be there for you, no matter what.” Mom stood. “Good night.”
She was halfway to the door when I said, “Braden asked me to marry him.”
“He did?” Mom paused. “What did you say?”
“Maybe. He wants to move to Chicago, and I didn’t know how I felt about it. I’d always thought he wanted to move back here after school.”
“Oh.” Mom returned to the bed, and perched on the edge. I couldn’t tell if she sounded pleased or not.
“You won’t be around to protect me in Chicago,” I said. “You’ll have to trust me.”
“We do,” Mom said, “but there are some things you might want to think about. Reasons you might not want to live so far away.”
Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective Page 13
