“Are you okay?” Emma asked.
Beth nodded. “I will be, once the drug leaves my system. Please, don’t worry about me.”
She then shifted to look up at Vaughn. “Is Loghry dead? You have to make sure. It’s very important.” She glanced at Emma. “If the ghosts are here, ask them. They’ll know.”
Vaughn watched Emma turn toward the ghosts. She seemed to be communicating with them. Her resulting expression of horror told Vaughn what he needed to know.
Loghry had faked his death before. Why not now? “He’s not dead, is he?”
She shook her head. “Becca says he isn’t, but how is that possible?”
Vaughn opened himself up to the future, which showed him two things, the location of a weapon and Loghry rising as if from the dead.
He told Emma he’d be right back and headed down the opposite path. One of Dagen’s men had died nearby, his sword beside him. He took the man’s half-sword and returned quickly.
The women were holding each other as Loghry staggered to his feet, already recovering. Unbelievable.
Vaughn followed the snapshots, levitated and came up behind the wizard. Holding his sword with both hands, he drew his arms back and swung hard. He struck the base of Loghry’s neck and decapitated him. Both parts of the wizard fell to the dirt.
The women pressed their faces into each other’s shoulders.
Vaughn was breathing hard. Fury engulfed him for a long, difficult moment as he stared at the headless body, enraged by all that Loghry had done through the years.
It took him a few minutes to recover himself. He labored through a series of deep breaths, easing his anger down. Loghry was dead and Emma and Beth were safe.
Together, all three of them had done a lot of good. They’d not only saved the girls in the cage tonight, but all the ones Loghry would have gone after in the future. If the wizard had survived, there would have been hundreds more.
When he’d grown calmer, he moved back to Emma and Beth. “You two okay?”
They both nodded, but each face was pale.
“Sorry this was so messy.”
Emma rose to her feet. “It was the right thing to do. Maybe even the only thing you could do.”
Beth stood up as well. “Thank God, it’s over. There’s no way he can come back to life now.”
Emma placed her hand on Vaughn’s arm. “I just spoke with Becca. He really is dead now.”
Vaughn turned to Emma and slid his arm around her shoulders. He drew her close. “We did it, Em.”
Tears filled her eyes as she nodded. “With Beth’s help, yes we did.”
Vaughn opened his free arm to Beth. She arranged herself next to him, leaning against his shoulder. He held her tight as well.
They’d done it. The wizard was dead.
~ ~ ~
Emma savored the close connection to Vaughn as she watched the triplets. All three girls remained hovering near Loghry. They seemed to be waiting for something, perhaps for his spirit to leave his body.
Vaughn leaned close and spoke in a low voice. “What’s going on with them?”
Emma shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe they want to face the man who took their lives.”
“Can he hurt the girls at this point?”
“I don’t think so. I think this is something else.”
To Emma’s surprise, more ghosts began to arrive in the small space. Each was a teenage girl, no doubt victims like Becca and her sisters.
And they kept coming, on and on, silent and grim, their mist-like bodies overlapping one another.
“Vaughn, can you see the other ghosts? There are hundreds of them.”
“They have to be the girls Loghry killed over the years.”
Movement from the wizard’s body drew Emma’s attention. She watched as a confused spirit emerged, hunched and grotesque-looking. He glanced at all the faces and snarled, but none of the teens moved.
Near his body, a fiery red archway appeared. Loghry turned toward it and his snarls ceased. His spirit grew agitated and as the archway began to draw him in, he started to scream. Though he attempted to fight back, the power that had hold of him sucked him through the arch. He disappeared into a black abyss, the last of his screams echoing through the labyrinth.
Once he was gone, the arch vanished as well.
Silence followed.
Then, after a full minute, everything changed.
Emma found it difficult to explain the sensation that flooded the space, as though the labyrinth had been weighed down with a physical oppression, which no longer existed. Her heart felt light, and she was completely at peace.
The spirits of the girls began to celebrate. They gave what sounded like shouts of triumph at first. Then one after the other, the young women broke into a celestial, otherworld song.
Tears burst from Emma’s eyes. Vaughn, can you hear them?
Like angels singing.
It is.
Beth leaned her head against the well of Vaughn’s shoulder. She was shaking again so Emma put her hand on Beth’s forehead and let her healing flow.
“Oh, that feels wonderful. Almost as wonderful as hearing the angels sing.”
Emma glanced at her. “Can you see the spirits, Beth?”
“No. I can only hear their song. Wait, is that my name? Are they singing about me?”
“Yes.” Emma smiled through her tears. “They’re singing your praises, and I think they’ll be singing for a long time to come.”
Beth smiled. “I hear your name, too, and Vaughn’s, just as it should be.”
Emma was overwhelmed with the waves of gratitude that poured through the girls’ voices. She had no doubt the sound of all these combined voices, raised in celebration and thanksgiving, would forge her determination to do good in her world for years to come.
~ ~ ~
As Vaughn listened to the ghostly singing with an arm around Beth and Emma, his entire Five Bridges experience slipped through his head. What had been nothing but despair had transformed into an understanding of what this new world could be. From the beginning, he’d fought his alter experience, believing it could never be more than a struggle for survival.
Tonight, all that had changed.
He kissed the top of Beth’s head, then turned to Emma and dipped low to kiss her on the lips.
An ocean of love had arrived in his life, and he would never again be the same.
The spirits continued to sing, though they slowly began to vanish, one at a time, until only the triplets remained, three lovely brown-haired girls, each expression enrapt.
While Emma talked to them, Vaughn contacted Brannick telepathically to let him know what had happened and to ask him to bring in a search party to go room by room through the mansion. Brannick told him he would contact Connor, who was a Trib officer and who would know which of the uncorrupt TPS force he could ask to help with the search. Vaughn suggested they bring in a couple of trained police dogs as well.
Vaughn didn’t have high expectations about what would happen. No doubt as soon as Donaldson learned that Loghry was dead, he’d contact the cartels, and in turn oust Brannick and Connor from Loghry’s home. The best they could hope for was to discover if any other prisoners were on the grounds, then to release them before they could be taken somewhere else and funneled back into the sex trafficking underworld of Five Bridges.
Within fifteen minutes, Brannick and his team arrived, along with a pair of well-trained search-and-rescue dogs on the leash and ready to hunt. Every corner of the mansion was searched as well as two more hidden chambers within the labyrinth that Beth told them about. Loghry had been a deeply disturbed man and four more malnourished and tortured female vampires were found alive on the property. The dogs located at least a dozen corpses as well. No doubt more would be found over time.
Long past midnight, when word came that Donaldson was taking over the investigation, the team gathered near the guest house. Vaughn thanked Brannick and his men for their help. He s
hook hands with each of them.
As the team disbanded and headed their separate ways, he flew with Beth and Emma back to Emma’s home. Emma prepared a quick meal of vegetable soup, sour dough toast and red wine.
His sister ate ravenously, being nothing but skin and bones beneath her ragged dress. Her shakes had stopped, at least for the moment, in no small part to Emma’s intermittent healing touch. But withdrawal from any of the flame drugs was never simple and would require months to complete.
When dinner was over, Emma took Beth to the guest room where she would stay as long as she wanted. Beth was in good hands.
Vaughn, to his surprise, felt a strong need to be in Emma’s spellroom. He made his way there and found both Toby and Stormy present, eyeing him curiously. The room felt familiar and comfortable as though he were coming home after a long difficult journey.
He’d never thought to have a woman in his life again, and he took a moment to silently give thanks.
When Emma entered the room, he opened his arms to her. She walked into them, then surrounded his waist and held him tight, her head pressed against his chest. “I can’t believe all that happened. Vaughn, we made it.”
“We did.”
“And an evil man is dead.”
“He is.”
“And your sister is back.”
He leaned away from her just enough so that she could tilt her head up and look at him. He smiled down at her. “And I have you to thank for all of this.”
“I feel the same way. I wouldn’t be here, with your arms around me, except that you helped me save those girls two months ago.”
He caressed her face. “Emma, I could wait for weeks, even months to ask you this, but somehow this feels like the right moment and definitely the right place. You have come to mean everything to me, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
~ ~ ~
Emma would never have predicted that the night she fought and helped slay such a powerful wizard as Loghry, would end with a marriage proposal. It might not even strike the most romantic note. But with all that, it somehow seemed perfect.
She stroked Vaughn’s face with the back of her fingers. “Of course I will. I love you, Vaughn. We’re a team now, you and I.”
He kissed her, a long lingering kiss, with his strong arms around her and his lips warm and full of tenderness.
The embrace only ended when a strange ghostly shouting had Vaughn pulling away from her. “What the hell was that?”
He turned her in the direction of the sideboard that held all her glass canisters, and there the triplets were, lifting the lids up and down and making what sounds they could from their ghostly voices.
Emma laughed. “They’re celebrating our engagement.”
Vaughn turned to her chuckling as well. “Love you, Em.”
“Me, too.”
He kissed her again, despite all the racket.
EPILOGUE
Three weeks later on a Saturday night, Emma sat outside with Vaughn and Beth. Vaughn had fired up the barbeque ready to cook some ribeyes, Emma had prepared potato salad and corn on the cob and Beth had made sangria.
Beth was staying with them indefinitely while she received intensive therapy from a good-hearted witch who specialized in long-term abuse situations. Having been imprisoned by Loghry for years would take time to overcome, as would the second-hand addiction to amethyst flame. The flame drugs were notorious for requiring extensive recovery periods.
As part of her healing process, Beth had taken a part-time job at the Tribunal, working the tip line for abducted teens.
Vaughn had quit the Crescent Border Patrol. Though Connor had wanted him to become a TPS officer, Vaughn felt compelled to go a different direction entirely.
Just a few days after Loghry’s death, he’d presented Emma with the idea that together they could establish a safe house for human teens in Five Bridges. This would be a place where any teen, having escaped his or her captors, could come to seek shelter.
The organization would keep a high profile to make sure the word got out. Vaughn would also use his experience as a Border Patrol officer to provide round the clock security for an endeavor that was sure to enrage the unsavory elements in all five territories.
Emma knew it was the right thing to do. For the first week, she’d even hoped she could purchase Loghry’s mansion to use as their safe house. But Donaldson blocked those efforts, and shortly afterward, it became the headquarters for a powerful cartel lieutenant.
One of the more positive repercussions of Loghry’s death was that without his charismatic presence and dark wizard ability to control those around him, his organization disintegrated. Of course, others took over his clubs, and the places were back in business in a short period of time.
Fortunately, the new owners didn’t have Loghry’s taste and refused to offer up fresh teens to their patrons. In that sense, she knew she and Vaughn, with Beth’s help, had disrupted a truly vile part of the Elegance Territory club scene.
After the meal, Emma had taken the leftover potato salad into the house, when the triplets suddenly arrived in a distressed state.
What is it, Becca? She put the salad in the fridge, then headed back to the living room where the girls flew around erratically.
The oldest of the girls by two minutes opened her mouth to speak, then rolled her eyes when nothing came out. She switched to telepathy. My parents will be here soon, though you should send them away. I don’t want to see them, none of us do. Emma, they’ve done something terrible. I mean really, really bad.
What did they do? Emma knew Samantha and Davis. They were good people and Emma couldn’t imagine what they might have done that could ever be characterized as ‘terrible’.
You’ll see. It’s disgusting. We didn’t want this to happen.
Becca’s sisters nodded their heads vigorously.
Since events at Loghry’s mansion, the girls had taken up residence in Shadow Territory and were working with a powerful dead-talker. The sage woman was training them to function as liaisons between the spirit world and the dead-talker community. In this way, they hoped to be of service to Five Bridges as well.
“Emma, what’s going on?” Vaughn called from the patio. “Do you need me?”
Emma extended her senses, but the situation didn’t feel dire at all. “No we’re okay.”
“Is that the doorbell?”
“Yes.”
“Should I come to you?” Vaughn was always thinking in terms of security.
“No, we’re good. Just enjoy your time with Beth. I’ll let you know if I need you.”
Emma crossed to the large entrance hall and reached for the front door. She had the oddest feeling.
When she pulled the door wide and saw Samantha and Davis standing on her front porch, she realized she wasn’t looking at two humans at all. Instead, her alter witchness recognized at once that she was staring at a warlock and a dead-talker. “Oh, my God! What have you done?” No wonder Becca and her sisters were so upset.
Despite Emma’s shock, she held the door wide, beckoning the couple to come in.
Samantha walked into the house with a fluidity of movement Emma often associated with those from the dead-talker territory of Shadow. “We’ve done the only thing that made sense to us once we learned of our daughters’ deaths.”
She closed the door, then glanced from mother to father. “You chose to take the alter serum? I can’t believe it.” She’d never been given a choice. But if she had, she would have preferred death rather than to undergo such a difficult transformation.
Each nodded solemnly. Davis took a deep breath. “We wanted to be near our girls, of course, though that’s just part of it. We knew we couldn’t continue our lives as they were in the human part of Phoenix. We wanted to be part of the healing of Five Bridges.”
Emma remained staring at each of them for a long time. Her brain refused to make sense of the extraordinary decision these two people had made.
She wished she’d known their intentions when she and Vaughn had paid them a visit following Loghry’s death. “If I’d had any hint of what you were thinking, I would have argued this decision out of you both. I’m sorry, but I’m appalled.”
Davis took Samantha’s hand. She looked at him in turn and smiled a very sad smile.
Davis met Emma’s gaze again. “We know the decision was unorthodox, and so far the girls refuse to speak to us because of it.”
Samantha glanced around. “We were hoping they might be here. Their dead-talker muse won’t help us connect with them. She’s been emphatic that it must be their decision and we respect that.”
Emma glanced toward the girls who had arranged themselves in and around the large chair Vaughn used almost exclusively in the living room. All three shook their heads in refusal.
She reverted her attention to Samantha. “Are you able to see your daughters at all?”
Samantha’s shoulders rose and fell on a sigh. She shook her head. “No. I sense their presence and that they’re very angry with us, but no, I’m unable to see or communicate with them. When you told me that you and Becca had talked to each other, I was hoping you’d be able to help.”
Emma had no framework with which to deal with this kind of situation. She had a close working relationship with the triplets, but she understood the source of their anger. “I don’t know what to tell you, Samantha, except to give them time. I’m in a state of shock myself over your choices. Ultimately, however, it will be up to your girls whether or not they draw close to you.”
She could feel movement from the other room and wasn’t surprised when the triplets slowly moved into the entrance area and lined up on either side of Emma. She also wanted to know their wishes in this situation. Becca, what do you want me to do? I can send them away, but at some point you’ll have to deal with them.
I just think it’s so sad that they did this to themselves and for what?
Emma took a moment to search for the right words. I get that they want to be with their children. But like you, I question how wise their decision was. However, they’ve already transformed and I sense they intend to work hard here in Five Bridges, just as you and your sisters are doing, to help prevent this kind of tragedy again.