by B. A. Rivera
A witch with the ability to absorb someone else’s powers. I wasn’t familiar with witchcraft, but that sounded like it could become a problem.
“If they bring her back, we’re all dead.”
Chapter 15—Theodora
I walked into our home. I could hear music coming from throughout the house. Or what I could only assume was music. I’d never heard anything like it before.
When I walked into the living room, Christian was sprawled across the couch. There were two women on the floor, both dead. He probably sucked them dry.
“Having fun, I see,” I said.
He looked at me, a smile on his face. He tilted his head when he saw my appearance. “Well, well. You cut your hair. Copying your baby brother?”
“Long hair can be a lot of work. Luckily, women of today embrace a shorter do called a lob.”
“Lob?” he questioned.
“I don’t know either, that’s just what the man who did my hair called it.”
Christian was still grinning. So wide that it put a smile on my face.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said.
“I am. I’m full.”
I shook my head. My brother had a big appetite for blood. He enjoyed being a vampire. More than any of us.
“What happened to your witch?” he asked.
“Not my witch,” I said, sitting down across from him. “And I let her go.”
“You let her go?”
“I don’t want anything to do with the Sinclair’s. I know that I hurt our family with my involvement with Elizabeth. Melinda is a reminder of that. I needed her out of the house, so we can move on.”
He smiled, sitting up to look at me. “I thought you said she didn’t look like Elizabeth?”
“Not entirely, but the similarities were enough of a reminder. I want us to start over. I’m sorry for my part in what happened to us.”
He raised his hand to stop me. “I was hangry, as the people say now. It wasn’t your fault. If you knew Elizabeth was double crossing you, you never would have led us back to Falls Creek. If she were still alive, I’d murder her for hurting my older sister.”
“Thanks.” Christian’s words meant a lot to me. My biggest concern was that my siblings were going to blame me for what happened. Just as I blamed myself. “Still, I want to prove that I’m not ever going to allow anyone outside of this family to get to me again. I’m not ever going to do anything to risk our family.”
“Here, here,” he said, raising his glass of bourbon from the table in front of him. “And what about vengeance?”
“There are no witches to take vengeance against. Melinda and her siblings are no threat to us. The Sinclair’s are no longer a problem. Besides, I’m sure if we give it a little time the other vampires are going to take care of the Sinclair’s themselves.”
Those words made my stomach turn. I didn’t want Melinda to be harmed, but it was the inevitable. Her last name was Sinclair. There were only three left. Vampires always wanted to bring an end to the witches that killed vampires. They were sitting ducks.
“We won’t have to lift a finger. Which gives me more time to do this.” He gestured towards the girls on the floor.
“We still have important things to do here.”
He looked perplexed. “Like what?”
“It’s time we finished what we came to Falls Creek to do.”
Chapter 16—Melinda
“Our family was a part of a coven of witches that’s main goal was to hunt and kill vampires. The vampires you awoke are called the Daywalkers. They’re the only ones that can walk in the sun. According to our grimoires, they can’t be killed. That’s why our family put them into a sleep spell. It was powered by our blood and only our blood could wake them.”
Scarlett was going through her things. She had all kinds of weapons that could be used against vampires. She knew so much more than I thought she would. I wondered if she even did spend all these years in medical school or if she was out there hunting vampires this entire time. She seemed to be some kind of an expert at it.
“Why did our family want them dead so badly?”
“Our coven was hunting them for centuries. Long before we managed to put them down. They went against what we stand for as witches. You can’t be both. You can’t be a witch and a vampire. It’s against nature.”
Scarlett pulled a stake from her bag. She went to hand it to me, but I wouldn’t take it. I looked at her incredulously. “How long have you known about all this?”
“Since before I can remember,” she said, pursing her lips as she lowered the stake to her side. “Mom and Dad knew one of us needed to continue their work. And I was the firstborn witch. I’m stronger than you by birthright. They wanted to protect you and Nickolas from all of this. Count yourself lucky.” She smiled, but I could hear bitterness in her voice. I think she was mad that our parents chose to put this on her. They chose to protect Nick and I, but they made Scarlett carry our family legacy on her own. I’d be mad too. It was a big legacy to handle on your own. It wasn’t fair to Scarlett.
“So, you’re a vampire hunter then?”
“I am. I’ve been training my entire life for this. And I’ve killed countless vampires.” She tried to hand me the stake again. This time, I took it.
“We can talk about this more later,” she said. “Right now, you and I need to go to the cemetery. We’ll find them there.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because they’re going to want what they came here for. Their mother’s body.”
Chapter 17—Theodora
“Maybe we’re making a mistake.”
I kept walking, shining my flashlight through the cemetery. We were looking for the Wittendale mausoleum. They were another family that were part of the coven.
“Mistake?” I questioned, looking at Christian. He was the only one of my siblings that was available to help me retrieve our mother. Sofia was out ‘clubbing’. It was nice that she was enjoying herself. She never got the chance to be a normal girl when we were alive. I couldn’t help feeling glad that she was adjusting to the new world so quickly. She should have been born into this era. She was made for it. She even already got the hang of something called a smartphone. I don’t know what iOS stood for, but it was important.
Alexander and Josephine were off ‘reacquainting’ with each other. I knew reacquainting was code for sex. There would be plenty of time for that later. An eternity. We should be focusing on bringing back our mother.
“Maybe Mother is better off wherever she’s at.”
I looked at him in shock. “Dead?”
“I hear the Spirit World is a rather peaceful place. Why bother her?”
“What’s the matter? Afraid our mother will have something to say about your galivanting from woman to woman? I’m sure she wouldn’t approve of your treatment of women.” I laughed.
Christian pretended to be an evil vampire. He pretended as if he felt nothing. I knew that was far from the truth. Deep down, he was still a boy. A boy that lost his mother way too early.
I shined the light on the name of the mausoleum. “This is it.”
“Mommy dearest, here we come.”
I stopped him when I heard something inside. “Do you hear that?”
He listened intently. When he heard what I heard, he smiled. “Well, it looks like Mommy has some company.”
I knew who was inside. I couldn’t say I was surprised. I saw it coming. When we stepped inside, Melinda and her sister were standing beside a coffin in the middle of the mausoleum. My guess was, it belonged to our mother.
Christian smiled. “Hmm, what a coincidence? I presume this is the sister you mentioned. Such beautiful girls. You know, it’s not safe to hang around in cemeteries at night. There are monsters out there waiting to prey on innocent girls like you.”
I ignored my brother’s attempt at being comical. “Is there a problem?”
“You could say that,” Scarlett said as she glared d
aggers at me.
I tilted my head in confusion. “I let your sister live, you should be grateful for that.”
Scarlett pointed something at me. It was black, and it looked to be made of metal. I think it was a gun, but it didn’t look like the guns I’d seen before.
“And what’s that?” Christian asked.
“A gun.”
“Hmm, they’ve upgraded the firearms,” he said. “But a gun won’t do anything to us witch.”
She cocked the gun. “It will if it shoots wooden bullets.”
“The sister knows more than we believed her to,” he said to me. “I guess the Sinclair’s are going to be a problem after all.”
Scarlett kept her glare on us. She hadn’t blinked since we entered the mausoleum. She had such pristine focus. This wasn’t her first time facing a vampire. This woman was a hunter.
“Which one do you want? Elizabeth’s twin or the sexy bombshell waiting to explode?”
Leave it to Christian to be attracted to the woman pointing a gun at him.
“Neither.”
Christian looked to me in confusion.
“We came here for our mother. We don’t want a fight. We just want our family back together.”
“And I want my family’s amulet back,” Scarlett said.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said. “You don’t have the manpower to put us back into our comas. I’m not giving you the one thing you could use to get rid of us.”
I stared Scarlett down. I wasn’t going to be intimidated by some child with a gun. I was a Genovese. A Daywalker. Witches feared us, not the other way around.
Melinda stood by her sister, looking between the two of us. It didn’t go unnoticed that she had a stake in her hand. She probably didn’t know how to use that thing. She was scared. I felt bad that she was being dragged into this. I guess we all had to face the reality of this cold world eventually.
“I’m not going to let you resurrect your mother.”
“This doesn’t concern you,” Christian said. “Go about your lives and leave us alone.”
“I’m protecting my coven.”
I had to laugh. She scowled at my laughter. “Not much of a coven anymore is it?”
Before she could respond, I put my hands up in front of me and uttered a spell. It slowed down time, but only for Melinda and Scarlett.
“Sister, really?” Christian said, looking at me suspiciously.
“Come on.”
We ran to the coffin. It was unmarked. This was definitely it. Christian opened the coffin. We froze at what we discovered.
The coffin was empty.
I bit down on my lip in anger as I turned to the two witches. I raised my hand and reversed the spell against them. “Where is she?”
Melinda looked confused at what happened. Scarlett raised her gun to us, but Christian ran forward and hit the gun out of her hands. He grinned with satisfaction.
I wasn’t grinning. “Where is our mother?”
“I don’t know,” Scarlett said.
“I swear on your lives if you did anything to harm her…”
“She’s telling the truth,” Melinda said.
I exhaled, looking at Melinda. “How do you know what the truth is Melinda? You’ve been lied to your entire life.”
She looked hurt by my words. I was angry. She wasn’t going to get kindness from me this time.
“I know. But I was with her the entire time. She didn’t do anything to your mother.”
I looked into her eyes. I didn’t trust them, but she was being honest. Not only did I see it in her eyes, but I heard it in her heartbeat. She was telling the truth.
If Scarlett didn’t do anything to my mother, where the hell was she?
Chapter 18—Melinda
I spent the last few days locked in my room. I didn’t want to talk to Scarlett. And I felt like I couldn’t talk to Hayden about this. She may have been a werewolf, but she was just as clueless as me.
I definitely couldn’t talk to Julian. He didn’t know a thing about the supernatural community. He didn’t even know Hayden and I were part of it.
I heard a light knock on my door. The door opened before I could respond. To my relief, it was my brother.
“Can I help you?”
“You have to come out eventually,” he said, coming in and closing the door behind him.
“No, technically I’m still grounded.”
“I know you’re mad that Mom and Dad didn’t tell us about who our family is. But you can’t take it out on Scarlett.”
I raised an eyebrow. “She lied too.”
“She just didn’t tell us.”
“Lying by omission, still a lie.”
He shook his head, going to sit at my window. “She just did what Mom and Dad wanted. What would you have done in her shoes?”
To be frank, I didn’t know what I would do. Mom and Dad put a lot of pressure on Scarlett. It didn’t seem like something they would do to one of their children. I think that was why I was having such a hard time with this. I felt like I didn’t even know my parents anymore.
My perception of my father had already been tainted when he killed my mother, but the way I remembered my mother was still intact. Before any of this anyway.
“I know. I get it. This isn’t Scarlett’s fault. It’s Mom and Dad’s fault.”
“Don’t be too mad at them either. They were just doing what they thought was right.”
I thought of Theodora. She’d said the same thing. There was something about her that made it impossible to stop thinking about her. Yeah, she was a supermodel, but it wasn’t that.
When she looked at me, she really looked at me. Like there was no one else in the room. I didn’t see a monster when I looked at her. I saw a girl just like me. A girl that lost her mom and never got over it.
“Want to go with me to Falls Creek Grill?” he asked.
“No thanks.”
“You can’t stay in here forever.”
“I’m not. I’m going to Hayden’s house.”
“Okay, good. I’ll see you later then.”
“Yup.”
I was leaving the house, but I wasn’t going to see Hayden.
Their front door was unlocked when I got there. I probably should have knocked, but what was the point. I didn’t think you could sneak up on a vampire.
I found Theodora in the study, reading something. Probably a grimoire. Everyone I knew seemed to be reading a lot of those lately.
“I let you go. Twice now. And you come back here and break into my home?” Theodora looked up at me. “Do you have a death wish?”
She changed her look. I noticed it the other night, but I wasn’t in the position to offer the vampire witch a compliment. Not when my sister had a gun pointed at her. I really liked her new haircut. She’d blend right in now. Well, maybe not. She was still a hundred times more beautiful than any girl I’d seen before.
Theodora got up and stepped in front of me. She was making me nervous. Only, it wasn’t the bad kind of nerves. It was the good kind. The kind you felt when you had a crush on someone. But, that was ridiculous. She was a vampire. I couldn’t have a crush on a vampire.
“I don’t believe you would kill me,” I said.
“My brothers would.”
I couldn’t help staring into her green orbs. Her eyes were so mesmerizing. The rest of her demeanor was so broody. But her eyes made me feel something else. I saw something in them. It’s how I knew she wouldn’t hurt me.
She kept her eyes on mine. For a second, it looked like she was blushing. But then, she looked away from me.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
That was a loaded question. One I didn’t have a full answer to. Not a rational one. “I guess I’m confused.”
“About?”
“You’re all evil, right?”
She smiled. It made my stomach turn even more. “That’s what I’ve been told.”
“Scarlett says you are. All of
you. And I kind of thought so too, because of the whole kidnapping thing. But then, you let me go. If you were really that evil, you would have just killed me.”
She stayed looking at me for a moment. “Life isn’t always black and white Melinda.”
“I know. But this should be. Vampires can’t be good, right?”
“I think that’s a question you have to find the answer to yourself.”
Of course, she had to make this difficult. Could nothing be straight forward with this girl?
“I will tell you this though, a lot of vampires are evil. Most, actually. Myself included sometimes. But we do have the ability to be good, Melinda. We just have to want to be.”
I couldn’t stop myself from asking the next question that came from my lips. “Do you want to be good?”
She didn’t answer me right away. She looked away. “I don’t know that I can be.”
I nodded my head, looking away myself.
“But I do want to be.”
I looked back at her, and she was smiling at me. It was a small smile, but it was there.
Maybe there was hope for Theodora. Maybe she and her family didn’t have to be our enemies.
I hoped not, because if I had to base it off of how I felt right now, enemy was the last word that I would use for Theodora.
Chapter 19—Melinda
After meeting with Theodora, I decided to go to the Falls Creek Grill. Hayden and Julian were there. Nick was already on his way back home. He texted me when he saw Hayden at the restaurant. He caught me in my lie.
“Hey,” I said, smiling at Julian and Hayden as I joined them at the table.
“Hey,” Julian said. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“Grounded.” At least it wasn’t a total lie.
Hayden looked at me suspiciously. She was my best friend. She knew something was going on with me, and she wasn’t buying me being AWOL because I was grounded.
“Julian, we need more fries and Melinda needs a drink.”
“I’ll call the waiter…”
