“Jack!” Sam yelled out to the empty room, keeping her hands firmly pressed over Jamie’s chest where the arrow protruded in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
Barely a second later Jack was by her side, looking around in complete confusion.
“What—”
Sam cut him off by speaking over him, there was no time for questions. “Corporealise!” she ordered. “You have to hold down on the wound.” Jack did as he was told and knelt beside Jamie. Taking her place beside him, keeping his hands around the arrow that was sticking out of Jamie’s chest, and putting pressure on the bleeding.
Placing his hands over hers, as she moved away. Her hands now covered in warm blood, so much that it dripped from her fingers, leaving a trail along the floor as she stood and walked to the door.
Throwing it open and looking out, glaring at the Vampire Hunters that she knew were hiding among the trees. She concentrated her energy and sent it out in a blast at the three Vampire Hunters that were currently running forward, making their way towards Jamie’s house. The blast of energy threw all three of them backwards. One of them hit into one of the trees, and was skewered on a low-hanging branch, which fortunately for him meant instant death.
The other two scurried to their feet and pointed their weapons in Sam’s direction. Without hesitation, she sent out another wave of Power, this time ensuring it was lethal. The Vampire Hunters shrieked in agony as they were consumed by flames that burned so hot their bodies were reduced to nothing more than piles of ash within seconds.
Sam used her Magic to clear the scene of any evidence of a fight. The body and the ash and the destruction vanished in an instant, leaving nothing behind so that it was as though nothing had ever happened.
Sam closed the door, and put a temporary barrier spell around the house. Moving as quickly as was possible as she was fully conscious of the Vampire currently dying on the floor; his body still as it was probably wondering if it should heal the open wound and seal within itself the poison it had been injected with, or continue to excise the poison and instead die from blood loss.
With the blood that still stained her hands, Sam drew some runes on the wall of Jamie’s home, drawing the outline of a portal on the living room wall while simultaneously reciting the incantation to activate the runes. Sam bent down and picked up a piece of broken glass from the floor, stabbing the sharp edge into the palm of her hand, she winced at the pain as she dug the glass in deep enough to draw a sufficient amount of her own blood to give it a kick of Magic that was necessary to open the portal.
She then slapped her bleeding hand against the wall, the runes she had drawn began to glow as the Magic was pulled from her blood and absorbed into the wall. Into the runes she projected a thought of her home, opening a doorway between here and there.
“Can you carry him through?” Sam asked, as she pulled her palm away from the wall, cradling the hand against her chest as she allowed the wound to heal.
“Is he even still alive?” Jack asked unsurely, as he looked from Sam to the deathly still Vampire on the floor.
“He should be okay for a few more minutes . . . maybe,” Sam said. “After that he’ll be dead from blood loss.”
Jack picked Jamie up, carrying him over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing at all. Sam ran to the door, picked up her backpack and followed Jack through the portal, making sure to close it behind her so nothing could follow them through.
Sam ran to the kitchen and found her magical first-aid kit.
When she ran back in she saw that Jack had taken Jamie’s jacket off and was about to lie him down on the couch. “Keep him sitting up,” she said to Jack, who did as he was told and held Jamie in an upright position.
Sam snapped the head off the arrow, then pulled the remnants of it out of Jamie’s chest. She used the scissors to cut his torn and blood stained shirt off, pealing the fabric away from the blood that kept it plastered to his skin. She took out one of the creams she had made up for whenever she got hit with Hunter weapons. The bottle contained enough herbal ingredients and enough Magic that it could pull any foreign toxins out of his body and heal up the wounds.
At least that was what the cream did when she was injured. She could only hope that it would work the same for Jamie.
She didn’t know much about Vampire biology, but she could only assume that a cream made to extract poison for a non-human creature like Sam could fulfil the same purpose on another type of non-human.
Sam applied a large amount of the cream onto the wound on Jamie’s chest and the corresponding tear on his back. Afterwards she put a bandage on either side.
Jack lay Jamie down on the couch, and they both left him there to rest.
Hopefully he would heal . . . because if not, he would die.
CHAPTER 34
Before Jamie had even opened his eyes he knew he wasn’t at home.
Sam, was his first thought; and as he opened his eyes he knew immediately that he was in her house, even though he had never before seen the inside of it. Her scent was everywhere, so he knew it was hers.
Jamie sat up and looked around slowly, pushing back the navy blanket that had been draped over his body. He tried to clear his thoughts and remember what had happened.
He’d awoken on the sofa in Sam’s living room, which was strange because he didn’t recall coming to Sam’s house, let alone being invited inside. Jamie looked down at himself and noticed that his shirt was missing and that there was a bandage on his chest.
Slowly he peeled the bandage away, and as he moved he could feel that there was another on his back; he removed that one too, curious as to why he’d needed bandaging in the first place. But it seemed that the harder he fought to collect his memories, the further they hid away in his subconscious.
He gazed at the bandages thoughtfully, both of them were stained with blood and what appeared to be a blue dye. There was no blue mark on his chest, so he assumed there wasn’t one on his back either, and there was also no scar. But then there wouldn’t be a scar. As a Vampire his wounds healed themselves just moments after they occurred. Which made the fact that he had needed nursing all the more confusing.
Slowly, he got to his feet and studied the space in which he stood.
The living room in Sam’s home was larger than his own; brighter in its furnishings and colouration, yet just as sparse when it came to decoration. It lacked the family photographs, trophies, and other childhood memorabilia that would usually be found within the homes of all normal humans.
All of the curtains were closed—from what he could tell at least—and luckily the fabric they were made from was heavy enough to keep him safe from the sun. Jamie could tell by the outline of light around the curtains that not only was it daytime but the sun was shining.
Strange, he thought. Last he remembered it was lashing rain.
Jamie turned back to the sofa and noticed that his shoes were on the floor beside it. He sat down and slid them on. When he looked up from his laces he saw that one of his t-shirts was folded on the table.
He picked up the t-shirt and examined it closely. It wasn’t the one he’d been wearing. At least it wasn’t the last one he remembered wearing. But he knew by the scent of it that it was his. He pulled it on over his head, the whole time wondering how one of his t-shirts managed to find its way to Sam’s house.
Jamie stood again, looking towards the hallway as he wondered where Sam was, and whether it would be alright for him to wander her house until he found her.
With a deep breath, he stretched his senses outwards. He could hear Sam upstairs talking to someone.
“I need you to go back to whatever sources you have and find me all of the information you can on Vampire Hunters.” Jamie paused at her words, flashes of memories coming back to him like bursts of lightning in his mind. He remembered going to Sam’s school, taking her to his home, speaking to her, arguing with her.
&n
bsp; She’s not human either, he remembered, his mind suddenly buzzing with apprehension. Slowly, he walked out of the living room, through the hall and up the stairs, all the way wondering who she was talking to.
“What?” she asked, as if someone had said something to her. Jamie couldn’t hear anyone else and couldn’t sense another person in the house. He paused on the staircase for a moment. Is she talking to herself?
“No,” she said. “It’s alright then. Wait ‘til later.” Jamie came to the top of the stairs, but her voice still seemed far away. He turned the corner and noticed another staircase at the end of the hallway . . . leading to an attic perhaps? He continued moving forward. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you dare leave me here alone!” Jamie came to the door. He hesitated before opening it. “Don—”
Jamie opened the door just as Sam dropped her head to her hands. “I hate you!” she screamed.
He cast a quick glance around the room; there was no one else there.
“What did I do?” Jamie asked as he stepped inside, wondering if her hatred was aimed at him, and what exactly he had done to deserve it.
Sam turned her head and looked in his direction, she sighed. “I wasn’t talking to you.” She was sitting at a table on the far end of the attic. Books littered the top of the desk, some of them open, others closed and in piles that were placed precariously on the edge of the table. Sam put her foot up on the chair across from her and pushed it out from the table; she looked at Jamie and nodded towards the chair, inviting him to take a seat.
Jamie took a step towards her then stopped, unsure as to whether or not he wanted to sit with her. After all, she might be completely insane. She had been talking to no one and Claudio had said she was cursed . . . whatever that meant. “Who were you talking to?” he asked, inconspicuously looking around once more, just to be certain there was no one else present.
Sam sighed tiredly and rubbed her eyes. “Jack.”
Jamie looked at Sam . . . there was still no one else in the room. “Is Jack here right now?” Jamie asked carefully.
Sam gave him a sideways look. “Do you see anyone else?”
“No,” Jamie said. “But I also didn’t hear anyone else while you seemed to be having a full conversation with . . . ” he paused for a moment, then said, “ . . . yourself.”
Sam looked at him. Then she started to laugh as if she found his statement amusing. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Jack is a Ghost. Your silly little Vampire brain can’t register him when he’s invisible. He doesn’t bother with the whole making-himself-seen thing when it’s just me.”
Jamie cringed when she said the word ‘Vampire’. It felt strange, hearing someone attribute that word to him after so many years. He looked at Sam in disbelief. “A Ghost? . . . Ghosts aren’t real.”
“By that logic, neither are you,” she said.
She has a point, Jamie thought as he finally walked towards Sam and took the seat she had pushed out for him. “So, can I meet Jack?”
“When he gets back,” she said.
“Well, where did he go?”
“To find all of the information he can on Vampire Hunters,” she stated, looking him directly in the eye. “To prevent you from getting shot again.”
Shot, he thought as the remainder of his memories flooded back to him. That’s what happened. He put his hand on his chest, the pain of his body being pierced coming back with the memory. “The arrow?”
Sam looked at his chest where he had been injured, then used her thumb to point over her shoulder to a small table in the corner of the room. “It’s over there if you want to keep it.”
Jamie looked at the broken arrow, then back at Sam. “You saved my life?” he said in astonishment. From what he could remember, the arrow had hit him less than an inch from his heart. I almost died.
Sam shrugged. “You saved mine. I saved yours . . . though technically I was never in danger ‘cause I could have saved myself, but whatever.”
“Did you say there were Vampire Hunters?”
Sam nodded. “Three of them. They’re dead now, but there’s probably a lot more where they came from, so . . . ” She took a book from the pile on the table and dropped it in front of him; it hit the table with a thud. “Start reading. Find out all you can about their methods, that way you’ll know what to look out for.”
Jamie opened the book, then he looked at Sam. “Thank you,” he said. “For not letting me die.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said. “You’d do the same for me . . . you did do the same for me . . . technically . . . well, kind of.” Jamie laughed a little. She couldn’t just say thank you, he thought as he shook his head. Then he opened the book and started to read.
“Did Claudio help you find your Sire?” Sam asked a few moments later, while flipping through pages in the book she was studying.
Jamie looked at her in bewilderment. “What?” he asked, not seeing how she could possibly know why he wanted to find another Vampire, and how she knew the name of the one he had talked to. From what he’d gathered from Claudio’s reaction at Sam’s name, he wouldn’t come anywhere near her. And how would she know him?
“Did Claudio help you find your Sire?” she repeated.
“How did you know I talked to someone named Claudio?” Jamie asked.
“Because I gave you the address of where he hangs out, so that he could help you. Because apparently he’s the guy to talk to when you wanna find someone.”
“And how do you know Claudio?” He tried to keep his tone indifferent, but failed.
Sam smiled as if she found his question amusing. She didn’t answer, instead she asked one of her own. “What did he tell you about me?”
Jamie paused for a moment, not sure if it would be proper to repeat the things that Claudio had said about Sam, and speak them to her face. He let a sigh. “He said that if I wanted to live I should stay far away from you.”
She nodded her head as if that was something she expected people to say about her. “He said that you were a Witch.” Jamie paused and looked at Sam, trying to find a reaction in her expression. But she just stared back impatiently, wanting him to finish what he was saying. “He said that you were cursed and that everything around you . . . dies.”
Sam smiled bitterly. “Well that’s not entirely true, I managed to keep those plants alive.” She pointed out the small attic window. Jamie couldn’t look out to see because the curtains were drawn and from what he could tell it looked bright outside.
“Why did you ignore what he told you?” she asked, her eyes looking down at her arm where there was a red mark on her wrist. Jamie leaned in to get a better look as she traced over it with her finger. It was an odd mark, the design a series of swirls and loops that came together to make quite an intricate pattern which covered half of her lower arm, from her wrist halfway up to her elbow.
“I didn’t fully believe him,” Jamie replied.
“And do you believe him now?”
“No.”
Sam looked up, her eyes staring directly into his. “How can you not?” she asked, sounding both confused and outraged. “What he told you was true, except for when he called me a Witch, but the rest of it . . . I am cursed. People die—”
“I’m not people,” Jamie said, cutting her off.
She shook her head. “Neither were my parents,” she said quietly. “Neither was my adoptive mother, or my grandmother. Yet where are they now?” She looked at Jamie as if waiting for him to answer. Which he didn’t, because he knew where all of those people were now, and he knew what she was trying to say.
“Maybe I can help you,” Jamie said.
“I don’t need help,” Sam snapped. “What I need is to be left alone. I can deal with my problems, but I can’t keep everyone safe, unless I keep them away.”
“I can keep m
yself safe.” Sam snorted and rolled her eyes. Jamie felt himself scowl. “You think I can’t? I’ve lived longer than you, I’ve survived this long alone.”
“That was before you had things after you. You don’t know what’s out there. You don’t know how to deal with it. And if I’m attacked by something you can’t help me fight, I won’t have time to give you a lesson on how to deal, I’ll be too busy fighting and keeping you from being killed.”
Jamie leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the book that was open in front of him. “If I’m such a burden then why not just leave me to die?”
Sam sighed tiredly and rubbed her eyes. “Because now we’re even. And the only reason you were attacked in the first place was because you got messed up with me. So, I’m gonna help you get the bounty off your head and then I’m no longer responsible for you.”
Jamie could feel his eyes grow wide. “A bounty?”
Sam looked at him in confusion. “Did I not tell you that already?” Slowly, Jamie shook his head. Sam sighed and looked at him empathetically. “Sorry,” she said. “The men you killed, the one who attacked me and the other two at the base, one of them was a Hunter and the other two were Demons. Well, not actual Demons, that’s just what they call themselves, they were Warlocks or something. Anyway, when you killed them you made it look like you were on my side, which pissed a lot of guys off, so now there’s a bounty out on you. Wanted dead.”
“Damn,” Jamie whispered. “Not even ‘or alive’?”
Sam shook her head. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “That’s why it would have been better if you had just stayed away from me.”
“Why?” Jamie asked. “Why would . . . Demons want me dead because they think I’m on your side? Your side of what? Why are they after you at all? Did you do something do them?”
“I exist,” she said quietly, looking at the mark on her wrist again. Jamie wondered if it meant something. Was it a tattoo? A birthmark? Or perhaps some kind of magical mark? “I don’t think I’m supposed to exist.” She shook her head. “I don’t fit. I don’t fit anywhere. I’m not anything, and yet I’m something. And on top of that I have Power. A lot of Power. Like, they come at me with a two-hundred man army and I’m the only one who walks away kind of Power. And they want that for themselves, they’re at war and they need to tip the odds in their favour, so they need me. But not me. So they try to kill me, because they think it will free my Powers from this body and send it out into the world for anyone to absorb.”