by Ruby Raine
Charlie growled, guarding Lizzy’s door. Adrenaline surging his exhausted body and mind to life.
Grayson snarled. No one needed words to understand his warning. He’d come for Lizzy. He was not leaving without her.
Mack grabbed innocent and confused onlookers and scooted them out of harm’s way, while Melinda and Lucas dove behind a couch in the waiting area.
Getting in the middle of this battle was a death sentence.
And it was about to take place in the middle of a public hospital.
Mack hollered for people to get back, ordering a nurse who’d shown up to block the hall and get everyone out of the building who could leave.
What the hell excuse was she going to come up with for this one? Too bad it wasn’t Halloween and she could claim, costumes. “Costumes that come to life,” she bit out. Grayson’s fangs and snarls were pretty dang real. And Charlie’s wolf was showing.
Melinda’s concerns were more of the, what did Grayson do to Michael, and oh my God, Charlie and Grayson are going to kill each other.
The vampire would not think twice about biting Charlie, and her brother would not leave Lizzy within Grayson’s fangy grasp. They were poisonous and deadly to each other, and the venom was pouring out freely with both prepared to fight to the death.
No one else in the hospital understood what the hell was happening, but basic common sense had everyone running and hiding. Mack did her best to get them all out of the hospital.
“She’s mine, wolf! Get out my way so I can save her before it’s too late!”
“No. Not while I still breathe.”
“I can save her. Do you really want her to die?”
Charlie flinched. No. He did not. It was the last thing he wanted.
“Unless Lizzy wakes up and says the words turn me into a fucking vampire it’s not happening. It doesn’t matter what you or I want. This is about Lizzy. She didn’t want to be a vampire when you were engaged.”
“She wasn’t dying then!” His predatory gait warned, We are still engaged. She is mine.
Melinda readied her palm. Not that any spell was going to help. Grayson was too fast.
Behind them, in Lizzy’s room they heard the words, “No pulse.”
Charlie was never so personally injured by two words in his entire life. God damn it, doing the right thing sucked in a way that in this moment, he saw clearly why good men went bad. How someone who spent his life fighting on the side of good, could suddenly swerve and venture down the dark side. The agony of knowing there was a possible way to save her, but not doing so because it would mean taking a dark path, was an inner torture unlike anything he’d ever experienced in his life.
Melinda realized, wretchedly, what she needed to do. If Lizzy was dead no matter what Grayson or Charlie did, she wasn’t going to come back as a wolf, or a vampire. And Melinda wasn’t about to let her brother get killed over an irreversible outcome. He wasn’t in a sane state of mind. He had the ring. However, she wasn’t entirely sure it would protect him against such a foe, and she refused to chance it.
“Guardians forgive me if I’m wrong,” she prayed to herself, simply unwilling to take the risk that the ring might fail. Melinda bounded to her feet, palm raised, and aimed and shot directly at Charlie. He was big, partially a wolf at this point, so it didn’t knock him out, only knocked him into the doorframe and bounced him forward to the floor.
In a single breath of time, Grayson flew into the room and had Lizzy in his arms, wires still attached to her. He was bathed in a savage agony.
A nurse shouted, “I have a pulse!” Ignoring the movement and the sudden appearance of a man resembling a vampire... Doctor Walter passed his gaze between Charlie, who was back on his feet, and Grayson, who was clearly not human. To their credit, the nurses just went with it, waiting for an order of some kind as hope bloomed inside the vampire.
“It’s a sign,” Grayson declared wildly. She’d come back to life in his arms.
Charlie opened his mouth to beg Grayson not to do it- the vampire’s fangs punched into her, his gaze fixed on Charlie in a glare that warned. She. Is. Mine. Not a single moment of doubt for the vampire. He took. Without hesitation.
Charlie slumped to his knees, all life sucked out of him. All that remained was misery and jealous hatred for the vampire willing to claim what he wanted without fear of the consequences.
Grayson pulled out his fangs from Lizzy’s neck like it personally hurt to do so.
The bloodlust was calling to him, the curse, demanding its price; but not with Lizzy. Never with Lizzy. He laid her down gently.
“Please,” begged Charlie. “Don’t do this to her. Don’t make this choice for her. It’s just another prison.”
“One in which she is not fucking dead.”
Lizzy was lost.
Lost to Charlie forever, if Grayson got even a drop of his vampire blood into her mouth, and she died.
“I’m losing the pulse again.”
The doctor looked pleadingly at Charlie; he wasn’t sure how to diffuse the situation. Charlie’s mind spiraled into a dark pit, sinking deeper and deeper where there were no answers. No solutions. Only a black hole filled with nothing.
Melinda ached all over so badly she almost fell. She’d been trying to save her brother and ended up condemning Lizzy, and ensuring Charlie lost her, forever. He’d never forgive her for this. How was it she’d believed she was done with this type of stupid and shortsighted mistake?
A body sidled up alongside Lucas and Melinda.
“Michael!” she almost shouted.
He had a gash on his head, looked like he’d been hit pretty hard. “I’m okay.”
Charlie clambered to his feet. “Grayson, don’t do it. Please don’t...”
The vampire had his wrist to his mouth, his fangs cutting it open.
“Please think of Lizzy. You claim to love her. That means choosing for her, not choosing for you.”
“I am.” Grayson was lost, crazed, and moved his wrist towards Lizzy’s mouth.
His body jerked, his arm falling to the bed, bloodying the sheets. A full body gasp burst out of him, and his bloody hand flew back and raked at his chest. If he were human, they’d have thought he was having some kind of heart attack.
Charlie stormed over to Grayson intent on ending this any way he could, only to find himself hitting some kind of invisible wall that had come to surround the vampire.
“No pulse!” the nurse shouted again.
“Paddles!” ordered the doctor, seeing as this might be his only window to get Lizzy’s heart working again.
“Oh my God.” Charlie spun to look at his friends and family collected at the door. “I know what breaks the curse,” he exclaimed wretchedly. “Lizzy has to die.” She’s dying... she’s dying...
This is what was happening to Grayson right this very minute. The curse was breaking because she was dying.
Fuck. Lizzy was dying.
Grayson cried out in agony, this conclusion too painful. But the invisible shield would not allow him to move any closer to Lizzy. He hadn’t finished. He hadn’t fed her his blood. He hadn’t completed the last step to save her.
“Charlotte Howard, that bitch! When I get to hell, I’m going to track her down and make her life a living hell, in hell!” What the perfect final piece of the curse. To break it, Lizzy had to die.
“No pulse,” the doctor said. “Still no pulse.”
The air in the room got cold. Charlie’s breath came out like icy fog.
The force field encasing Grayson began to flex and pulse. A whipping crack shot into the air.
“Doctor Walter, get out,” warned Charlie. The doctor hesitated, but in the end, ordered his nurses out of the room. He and Mack began a mass evacuation of the hospital.
The field around the vampire surged, Grayson’s eyes bulging from some unseen power sucking the curse out of him.
“We’ve got to contain it,” Michael shouted. He, Melinda, and Lucas plowed into the r
oom with Charlie. He took one last painful glance at Lizzy and joined hands with them.
The doctor came flying back.
“I’m not giving up! Do what you have to.” He’d gotten the nurses away, and went to work trying to get Lizzy’s heart beating again. A vibration rippled out of the field around Grayson, a tide of magical energy shaking everything in the room like an earthquake had just hit. It snaked its way out into the rest of the hospital.
Charlie, Michael, Melinda, and Lucas started to chant and attempt to contain the energy erupting out of Grayson in hopes to keep it from doing any serious damage. Another surge flew out at them, but they held it inside their circle.
“Still no pulse,” Doctor Walter called out.
The vampire’s knees barely touched the floor, like some force was both keeping him on the ground and trying to lift him at the same time. Another power surge flew out of Grayson and slammed into the witches trying to keep it in the room. It was too much, and the windows shattered, glass flying everywhere. Charlie’s heart shattered right along with it. Lizzy was dead. She had to be dead. The curse was breaking. Badly.
Grayson’s head flew back and out of his mouth burst a stream of fiery red light that shot upward blowing a hole straight through the roof. It went high into the air, streaking across the sky. To what destination, they had no idea.
“C’mon damn it!” the doctor was shouting at Lizzy. He turned up the juice one more time. Hit her with them. Her body floundered on the bed, but nothing.
Charlie’s mind and body gave out. He had nothing left. His grip loosened and the circle was broken. The energy was surging up and out. This was as contained as it was going to get now.
He plodded over to Lizzy, lifting her body, cradling her to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said so genuinely that all Charlie heard was, she’s gone.
He wept, the tears falling all over Lizzy. How could it end this way?
Behind him, the energy field broke with a pop that fried the lights over the heads, plunging them into darkness. Power went out in the entire hospital, but the generator kicked in, bringing it all back just a few seconds later.
The streak of fiery red flooding out of Grayson’s mouth dissolved and he slumped onto the floor, eyes rolling up in his head. He looked pale, even for a vampire. He tried to reach out to Lizzy but had no strength to.
“Oh my God,” Melinda stammered breathlessly. She pointed at Charlie, who had his eyes smashed closed, his forehead against Lizzy’s. And his hands were glowing! They were fucking glowing! Bathing Lizzy in a golden haze.
“Is this really happening?” Lucas mumbled, not daring to believe. “Why now?” At the very last second possible.
“Because it was the only way to break the curse,” marveled Michael. “If he’d healed her before, the curse would not have broken.” Lizzy would never have been freed from the curse, always tied to Grayson in some way, whether she wanted to be, or not.
The doctor, watched, enthralled.
Mack slid into the room, gazing up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. Melinda, Michael, and Lucas’ gazes followed, each wondering where that blast of magical energy had gone off to. Hopefully, into the cosmos never to be seen again.
Charlie barely dared to breathe. Or hope. But if Lizzy lived, that was enough. Whether she chose him, or Grayson, or who the hell ever... just live, he pleaded. He lay her down on the bed, letting his hands hover over her.
Lizzy fell into darkness. A blissful, nothing. The voices of those suffering around her, fading into a warm serenity that seemed to wrap itself around her. At the same time, another voice hovering somewhere close, telling her to wake up. But she was so comfortable, couldn’t it wait, just a little longer?
But it persisted. So she breathed in and opened her eyes.
It wasn’t the hospital room she expected to see. Actually, it wasn’t a room at all. More like, some ghostly version of the cavern where she’d first been ghasted. Had she died? Was this some form of in-between? Or... hell? Because this is where she’d always expected her version of hell, would be.
Oddly, it didn’t give off hellish vibes. There was no fear, or pain, or worry, or regret.
Lizzy gave a clipped gasp when wisps of flowing white shimmered their way out of the walls, surrounding her. She spun slowly, taking them all in. Shocked when there were faces she recognized from her past. Mathew’s father, but sadly, not Mathew. The Elder Howard, who’d been in charge at the time of her ghasting. Some of her fellow trainees, some who’d died young and in the line of duty, some who’d died of old age. And many faces she did not recognize, and then two, she did.
“Dad? And... mom?” She only realized it was her mother’s face being it was so much like her own. She’d never met her mother as she’d died just a few days after Lizzy had been born.
“My brave daughter. You’re finally here.”
“So I am dead,” she confirmed. She wanted to be sad over this, and somewhere deep, the human feelings still lingered over the life she was losing.
“You did die,” explained her father. “But this is not the end. This is not your end, my darling Lisbeth.”
“I’m not to stay with you?”
“Not today.” Another voice called out from behind her. She turned to see another ghostly female figure approaching. Everyone else bowed to this womanly spirit, and Lizzy wondered if she should do the same.
“You are only meant to be here for a moment. Long enough to break the dark curse put upon you. And for us to bestow you a gift.”
Two spirit arms came up behind Lizzy; her parents. They escorted her back to the sacrificial stone where it had all began. Where Charlotte Howard had cursed her. Except this time, there was no fear as she was placed upon the stone.
Her mother and father helped their daughter to lie flat on the stone. Each hugged and kissed her. Lizzy wanted more time with them. The father she missed so much, and the mother she’d never met.
“We will meet again,” her mother promised. “But first, you have a human life to live.”
They backed away, joining hands with the many spirits gathered in the cave.
Lizzy’s eyes stopped down by her feet, where the regal-like spirit was hovering just off the ground.
“Who are you?”
The woman wore a soft smile.
“I am the last of The First.”
That made no sense to Lizzy. She’d never heard of The First.
The woman smiled as if she understood all Lizzy was thinking.
“The First Witches born to this earth. Whose power remained even after death. Until today. I use the last of our magic, to bestow you a gift.”
“A gift, for me?” Did this mean she really was going back into the world of the living? And what did this new gift mean in regards to the two men she loved, and the choice she’d already made before dying.
There was a soft laugh. “You already made your choice before taking your last breath.”
“Yes. Yes, that is true. I did. So that won’t be a... problem?” she asked, nervously. Her human feelings were returning to her, almost like they’d been ordered to.
The woman just smiled warmly, while her spirited form, rose, until her feet were as high as Lizzy’s. She twisted her head to the side, taking one last glance at her parents, who had begun chanting alongside the other spirits. Part of her wanted to stay with them. But she felt them pulling away.
The Elder Howard broke the chain, approaching Lizzy.
“I’m sorry, Lisbeth. For not seeing Charlotte for what she truly was. I’m so sorry for what happened to you, and never discovering this terrible thing. You might not have seen it, but never doubt that your presence was missed. Be well. Be blessed, in this next life.”
Lizzy just stared, dumbfounded. After a second she mustered out a, “Thank you.”
He rejoined the chanting spirits, Lizzy, a mess in her own mind over all of this. It was a bittersweet redemption, to know she had mattered, in some way, in her old li
fe.
She looked downward at the woman hovering near her feet.
“Are you ready?” the last of The First, asked her.
“Yes,” Lizzy answered breathlessly.
“Then return, Lisbeth Deane. You are reborn this day, and will live in the darkness no more. Through me, you will know only light.” Her ghostly form sank sharply into Lizzy’s body, the impact, an explosion of great power and knowledge that awakened something deep inside her soul, and shot her out of deaths door.
WITH A DEEP RUSH OF an inhale, Lizzy sucked in a breath. Her eyes punched open as if she’d just awakened from a vivid dream, and not days of being stuck in a coma, or had just risen from the dead! Everyone so stupefied, no one stopped her from yanking out the needles in her arms, getting to her feet, and running out of the door shouting, “We have to get to the graveyard!”
“What in the holy hells just happened?” Mack blinked hard, befuddled.
It took two entire seconds of stunned disbelief to get their feet moving and follow.
Grayson climbed to his feet, albeit much more slowly than he was used to. He looked almost human right now, but he followed just the same. He wasn’t about to let Lizzy out of his sight. They plowed through the corridor exiting the hospital, ignoring the wary stares of passersby, or other care-workers doing their best in this crazy crisis none of them understood.
BOOM!
Everyone froze. And gasped. Gaping upward into the sky at a cracking bolt of lightning shooting horizontally across the skyline. Power surged outward, forming into a circular formation which sucked downward into a vortex racing toward the ground.
The graveyard, they realized.
“We’re too late,” claimed Lizzy. Two strong arms grasped her shoulders. A set of overwhelmed, glossy blue eyes, finding hers.
“Lizzy?” Charlie questioned in a voice that warned he had little patience in him. She sagged under his grip, her gaze locked on his but no words forming. “I don’t know what the hell is going on, but you just died, after spending days in a coma. You need to get back inside the damn hospital,” he growled, unwilling to put her life in any more danger.
