‘Damn it!’ Justin spat. I heaved a great breath of air and fell to the water with a splash. Salt. Blood. Muscles contracting in my legs and arms.
With a sneer, Justin lurched out of the bay and on to the sand. He turned and glared at me. A revelation passed over his face. I didn’t know what it meant, but Justin had clearly figured something out.
I wanted to move faster than my mind would allow. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. I felt slower than I wanted to be.
‘What did you just do to me?’ I cried and ran my hands up my chest and over my arms. ‘What was that place?’
‘Take Rhode out of here,’ Justin ordered the other vampires as he wiped some sand from the front of his pants.
‘No!’ I screamed, and the word ripped through my throat. I stumbled; my head was so fuzzy and my coordination was off.
‘Lenah!’ Rhode’s scream carried over the beach. ‘Lenah! Run!’
They dragged Rhode to the grass. As I turned, so did the shield, to keep me from my Rhode.
‘Don’t hurt her!’ Rhode yelled.
A conflagration so great, Fire had said. I could do it. I could throw the necklace.
I staggered to the soggy sand and ripped the chain from my neck. The metal pulled away from my skin and crunched under the force of my grip.
Justin laughed again. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
The tiny pendant was like fire in my hand, wanting to be set free. I opened my hand, and the necklace flew through the air towards Justin. He jumped out of the way as the pendant melted into a fireball.
It hit the barrier of water with an explosion, sending red sparks into the air. The water shield swallowed the fire. I hid my face in the crook of my arm, waiting for it to implode. Once it did, I would run through and rescue Rhode. The fire would chase the vampires away from Wickham, away from us, and I could spend the rest of my time explaining to Rhode all the ways in which I would never fail him again.
I peeked over my arm.
The red pendant was now the size of a basketball inside the centre of the spinning water. The water shield pulsed to the rhythm of a heartbeat. It contracted and then doubled in size. It contracted again . . . growing even bigger. Where was the conflagration? Where was Fire’s power?
Wide-eyed, Justin backed away towards the beach grass. ‘What is that?’ he asked, as the orange deepened to a coral colour and the sphere engorged even more.
I didn’t dare breathe. No one moved. The ground rumbled and the orb shook. Any moment . . . Come on! I prayed.
The bubble blasted apart. A great rush of air lifted me off the shore and I flew back into the water. I rocketed to the bottom, completely submerged, and kicked to the surface. I broke through and gasped. Crackling fiery embers shot through the air like fireworks. Red trails from the combustion fell to the ground in grand arcs. There was a symphony of hisses as flames dived towards the bay and, finally, were extinguished.
What had happened?
Not even a red ember or a tiny flame flickered in the starry night.
The water shield had engulfed the fire pendant and exploded, leaving nothing behind but a black scorch mark on the sand. It hadn’t produced the inferno that Fire had promised.
It had failed. I had used my one power and it completely failed me.
The explosion must have thrown Justin back as well. As he stood up, his mouth was lifted into a closed-lipped smile.
‘He knows nothing,’ I said but my voice cracked, growing hoarse.
Justin bowed and pretended to doff a cap to me. He jumped the sea wall with the agility of a cat and left me bleeding in the bay – alone.
‘Rhode?’ I cried into the darkness, even though I knew it was pointless.
I sloshed out of the water, tripped over myself and fell on to the sand. My palm rested in an overlapping map of footprints. I would have followed them as Vicken had trained me to do, but they disappeared at the sea wall.
‘Rhode?’ I called out again, and my voice cracked.
I scrambled up to the sea wall, but the woods were too dark for me to see. I spun around again. The beach was empty except for the dead vampire girl a few hundred yards away.
Rhode was gone.
I did the only thing I could do – I ran.
CHAPTER 10
I found my ruby dagger near the beach grass and tucked it into its sheath. The soft sand made it difficult to keep up my pace, but I continued down the beach. My thighs burned and my calves ached but physical pain was meaningless now.
Tony. Get to Tony.
I fell to my knees just as a Wickham security van pulled past the steps to the beach. I breathed in the musty smell of the sand.
Tony. He could make sense of anything.
Once the tail lights faded away, I ran up the stairs and along the back of Quartz. I stopped at Tony’s window and knocked three times. A crash and a bunch of swear words followed. He came to the window and peered outside holding the paintbrush like a dagger. I brought my face close to the glass. He jumped and shook his head once he recognized me.
‘Do you like me alive, Lenah?’ he asked, and opened the window. ‘Because you’re going to kill me if you scare me like that again.’ He squatted and looked me up and down. ‘What the hell happened to you? You’re shaking. Come inside.’
‘I need my knives,’ I said. My teeth chattered together. ‘Knives,’ I said again.
‘Sure, sure. Knives. OK, Crazy,’ he said as I sat down on the floor beneath the window.
‘I need to get to my room. Knives are in my room,’ I said.
All I could see were Rhode’s eyes through the water shield. He had mouthed the word ‘forever’. Even after I lied to him, Rhode still wanted me to know that he would love me forever. He instinctively understood that we were cut from the same stars. Even though he couldn’t articulate it, even though he couldn’t remember me, he knew we were meant for one another.
Tony’s hand wrapped around my arm. ‘You’ve got quite a cut there.’ He lifted me up. ‘And you’re soaked.’ He sniffed me. ‘Were you swimming in the bay?’
‘My knives.’
‘We’ll get your pretty knives in a minute,’ he said. ‘First we need to tell Tina you fell and get you a pass for being late. If we don’t, you’ll get a detention. Wow, you really need to clean up. With soap.’
Tony sat on the floor at the base of my bed.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘it would be nice if we could have a conversation that doesn’t involve the expression “Holy crap, now what do we do?”’
Thunk.
I threw Fire’s ruby-hilted dagger again and into a wall that didn’t connect to anyone else’s. I walked to the end of the room and retrieved it for another throw.
Tony held a note from Tracy. It said that she was going to take Kate to the infirmary. Apparently Kate had tripped and fallen and hit her head on the way back from the club. Going to Bolt and meeting the Italian vampire seemed like so long ago.
I threw the knife again.
‘That’s like ten feet. You’re really accurate,’ Tony said. ‘It’s scary.’
‘We can’t do anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where Justin is. It’s not like I know any vampires around here.’
‘Well, you kind of do,’ Tony said, as I grabbed the knife from the hole I had made in the wall. I resumed my position at the end of the bed and gripped the dagger even harder. The heat of my skin against the hilt allowed me to draw a deep breath, perhaps for the first time since Rhode kissed me on the beach. ‘You sort of know that guy we’re meeting at the chapel tomorrow night?’ Tony continued, ‘The nice man you assaulted at the club?’
‘We? We’re not meeting anyone.’
I threw the knife again. After it hit the target, Tony said, ‘I’m going with you.’ His jaw was tight. ‘You’re not walking into that place by yourself.’
‘That place? The chapel?’
‘The vampire chapel now, as I like to call it.’
If I tried to prevent Ton
y from joining me, I knew he would just put himself in harm’s way anyway.
‘Hey, your neck looks burned. Did you know that? Where’s your necklace?’ Tony asked.
I reached to the base of my throat where the pendant had been. I sucked in a breath when my fingers ran over a raised spot. I went over to the mirror; a small teardrop shape was branded on my skin. Tony stood behind me and we gazed at the reflection together. I dropped my hand away. Now that I thought about it, my palm had some small red welts too. Must have been from when I grasped on to the burning jewel.
‘The pendant warmed up when Justin was close by. It’s heated up a few times when vampires have been near. It burned my palms too.’ I showed Tony my hands.
‘Like a warning device?’ he asked.
‘I hadn’t thought of that. But yes, I guess so. I used it to try and stop Justin.’ I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror when I admitted, ‘But his water shield overpowered it.’
Tony returned to his spot on the floor and rested his head on his knees. ‘What the hell is a water shield?’ he said in a very small voice.
Thunk.
I hit the target again.
‘Didn’t Fire give that necklace to you? Isn’t she, like, all-powerful?’
‘She’s Fire. An element. Water is an element too. These aren’t manufactured weapons. They are just the elements, which, left to their own devices, are powerful. But Justin’s water extinguished the fire.’
I investigated the scuffs on my shoes and mumbled, ‘Like I said, I failed.’
Tony’s head snapped up. ‘You didn’t fail. You tried, and maybe tomorrow night we can ask that vampire for help.’
I aimed at the hole in the wall and the dagger sank perfectly into the spot again. I wouldn’t have missed Justin’s vampire on the beach now. I would have been able to help Rhode.
The latch clicked. I didn’t have enough time to retrieve the knife. Tracy stepped into the room. Her mouth parted as she looked to the blade in the wall.
‘What are you doing?’
I hesitated, choosing my words. I decided to go with literal. ‘Practising.’
‘So I don’t get it,’ Tracy said. ‘What do you think he wants?’
‘I don’t get it either. He doesn’t want the ritual that Rhode and I performed. I don’t know why, since it’s all any vampire has wanted for centuries. I had no answers. I slapped my hands against my thighs and paced before Tracy and Tony. They sat together on Tony’s bed. I’d never been stumped by a vampire’s behaviour before. I’d been the expert.
The ritual to turn a vampire human again would provide enormous power to those that performed it, even if they didn’t intend to sacrifice themselves. Pouring negative intentions into a spell so powerful would unleash real danger and potentially morph the ritual into something else, something dangerous. It was always the intentions that mattered most.
‘Maybe he really doesn’t want humanity,’ Tony said, still talking about Justin.
‘Remember how you said I had to abide by some silly vampire laws? Want to see what I am capable of now?’
Justin hadn’t tried to get the ritual from me; his focus had been Rhode. OK, what were the rest of the facts? He had left those frogs to torment me. He had kidnapped Rhode. There was no pattern. I was the only common factor. I stopped pacing and gripped the window frame.
More facts: Justin couldn’t turn me into a vampire; he couldn’t hurt me either. I shook my head – what was the missing piece? The dagger was now back in the trunk so I couldn’t keep throwing it to help me concentrate. It was dark outside, so the brightness within the room reflected my face in the window. My hair was matted down on my forehead and my clothes were still soaked through. I touched the back of my head with my fingertips and winced; it was tender from when Justin gripped me and stared into my eyes.
The memory of the dark shadows overtaking the world replayed in my head. My body had nearly disappeared; I had no sense of being on the beach when we had shared a stare. Justin had tipped my head back and my reality was out of my control.
On the beach I had stared into Justin’s cold and vacant green eyes and my consciousness had been transported.
I jumped in my seat.
This was part of the missing piece.
‘His eyes,’ I said aloud and spun to face Tracy and Tony. ‘Tonight. He was doing something when he looked in my eyes.’
‘Who?’ Tony asked.
I explained what happened on the beach in as much detail as I could.
‘. . . and then we were both back at Wickham. I fell into the water and he dropped to the sand,’ I finished.
‘So he sends you somewhere,’ Tony said, trying to understand.
‘Not my body. We don’t transport physically,’ I explained.
‘Like on Star Trek,’ he said.
‘Star Trek?’ I asked not familiar with the phrase.
‘Never mind. So you don’t go anywhere physically,’ Tony asked.
‘But my mind does,’ I clarified.
What Justin was doing was very dangerous. To be able to look in my mind and transport me somewhere? I had never in six hundred years heard of this before. Such powers were especially surprising in a vampire so young.
I stepped back from the window until my heels hit the base of my bed across the room.
‘What?’ Tony asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
Sunrise bled over the green and highlighted the back of Tony and Tracy’s heads. It was the kind of red that I would have loved had the colour not mocked me. I touched the bruise on my chest and winced.
‘You have that look on your face again,’ Tony said. ‘You know, the one where you’re going to bite someone?’
Whatever Justin was messing with was way out of my league and completely out of bounds for Tracy and Tony.
‘I need to arm you,’ I said, and jumped back into the mind set of Lenah the soldier. I got up and knelt before the trunk Fire had left me and quietly clicked the locks. The hinges squeaked a bit and I sat back on my heels. I had definitely seen more than a few daggers in the trunk.
I moved a few things out of the way in search of the daggers, the longsword I planned to bring to rescue Rhode, a few books, my satchel of money – and . . .
A box.
A small wooden box with a strange swirling design etched into the top. Moonstone crawled over the wood like a plant vine.
‘I’ve never seen this,’ I said aloud.
‘What is it?’ Tracy asked.
‘Come down here,’ I said. Tony and a sleepy-eyed Tracy knelt beside me at the trunk.
I opened the lid.
Inside were two silver rings and a bracelet. Each was adorned with a gemstone. The vine design covered the bracelet; in the centre was a dark blue sapphire the shape of a teardrop.
‘Water . . .’ a voice whispered. It echoed about the room and slowly rippled away.
Tracy gripped my forearm and froze. I looked around. The room remained unchanged; no flickers of red or crimson. Was I expecting Fire to hover above me like an apparition?
‘Hello?’ I waited, my heart beating at the base of my throat.
No reply.
‘I’m not hearing voices now, am I?’ Tony asked.
‘No, we all heard it,’ I said.
One of the rings had a very white opal set in it and the other an amber stone. It was one of the most vibrant stones of that colour I had ever seen. Wait . . . a gold stone, a white one, brown, and blue. Ah. It all clicked. These were the remaining elements: earth, air and water.
The sunrise fell through the room and over the box. It warmed my fingertips. Whether or not that box had been in the trunk before didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. We had them now – the remaining three elements – and if I spent my time wondering why Fire behaved the way she did, I would be asking the universe how it worked, and that was not high on my list of priorities at that moment.
‘These are weapons. Just like my pendant, they might seem like ordinary jewels, but they
’re not. As you can see here –’ I showed them the burn on my chest again – ‘when they get warm, they are warning you a vampire is near. If they get hot enough to burn you, you are in mortal danger.’
Tracy raised her eyebrows and Tony lifted himself on his knees. Their eagerness sent a shot of panic through me. Maybe I was too quick with these weapons. I lowered the box into my lap.
‘What?’ Tracy asked.
‘Maybe I’m going about this all wrong. Maybe I’m being too rash. These aren’t typical human weapons. These were made in another realm by extremely powerful supernatural creatures. I have to think this through some more,’ I said, and closed the lid on the gems. I couldn’t get anything else out about my doubts because Tracy shot up and snatched every picture off her bureau mirror. She slid open a desk drawer and took out a photo album. When she sat back down, she threw the pictures of Justin and her friends into my lap and opened the album. She flipped violently through the photos.
Justin and Tracy on a beach.
Justin and Kate water skiing.
Justin and his brothers on Justin’s father’s boat.
Wait . . . where were Justin’s brothers? Why were there only pictures of Kate and Claudia? Justin’s brothers Roy and Curtis also went to Wickham.
‘What happened to Roy and Curtis?’ I asked.
‘When Justin went missing, their mom took them out of school.’
Made sense. Why continue to send her children to a school from which her middle child had disappeared and where no one could find any answers? I had met Justin’s mother and she loved her son like my mother loved me.
I flipped to the last page in the photo album.
It was of a snorkelling trip on a very familiar boat. Justin’s boat.
‘If you don’t let me help you get my friend back, Lenah, I’ll go to that chapel tomorrow night myself.’
‘That vampire could be worse than Justin,’ I said.
‘He could have killed you at the farm or in the club, but he didn’t,’ Tony countered.
I dipped my chin to my chest. ‘Look, I just can’t—’
‘Risk anything happening to us?’ Tracy asked.
‘I’ve seen what happened before. And when put to task, I failed. I failed Rhode tonight.’