The next day, after a long hot shower, a few cups of coffee and a nice walk - their code for hunt, Starr prepared a bag of clothes to take to Boston. Shane did the same because, no matter what Starr said, she insisted on coming.
When they stood in the kitchen, about ready to leave, Misty said, "I thought you guys agreed to meet next week?"
"Uh," said Starr, "I think Meghan would like to go home now. I'm sure she misses her parents, and vice versa."
"Are you sure it's safe?" asked Mica. "I mean, the Queen isn't dead."
"We'll be there, watching," said Shane.
"I think some people are coming," said Lily who was looking out of the kitchen window.
Starr and the others crowded around her to get a look.
Starr breathed in, fast, and grabbed the side of her face.
"Oh my god! What are we gonna do?" cried Marla.
Outside, there were dozens of vampires dressed for war. Seeing that their house was atop a small mesa, there was no other way out. All other sides of the property were cliffs.
Home Again
Chapter 7
Several hours had passed. Starr, Shane, Mica and Marla lingered in the kitchen. Misaki and the others were upstairs watching the baby.
"I've tried to cryout, telepathically, to Chanler but he's not getting my messages, neither are the other Council members," said Shane.
"What about the Scamalls?"
"Nothing."
"This is my fault. I should have known better."
Lily walked in.
"Is help coming?" she asked.
"No, and I don't understand why they aren't attacking. Why are they just standing out there?" asked Mica.
Starr walked over to the window again. All dressed in black, they stood stiff with swords and other armor. Credenza stood in front and center of them all. Her amber eyes looked right at her.
"I've changed my mind. Shane, why don't you try and talk to her? Ask her what she plans to do."
Shane's dark eyes lost focus.
They waited eagerly.
"She wants the crystal, of course."
Starr groped the chain, on which it hung, around her neck.
"Why does she want your necklace?" asked Marla.
"Because the witch who stored her powers in it was a necromancer; a type of sorceress who deals in life and death. If I give her this, she can absorb the soul without a ritual. All she has to do is call it to her. That is what happened in the bell tower: I accidentally called the soul to me when I saw that she was about to take it."
"You can't give the crystal to her," said Mica.
"I don't plan on it."
"She says you have an hour to decide, and then they're coming in," said Shane.
"We need to board up the house," said Mica.
The next few hours they used whatever they found secure themselves inside. In the den was two bookcases; they drug them out and placed one at the kitchen door and, the other, at the front patio door. Behind those, they placed couches. Then, with the wood that was stored in the basement and a battery operated screw driver, they drilled logs into the walls, covering up the windows on both the lower and upper floors.
Now, through a crack in the logs nailed to the kitchen window, Starr peeked out. Credenza and her men hardly looked worried. They stood just as motionless with their eyes directed at the house.
That evening, they ate dinner in silence and in the dark. The food wasn't much because most of the goods they'd secured before the winter had spoiled. No one was around to keep the generators going, and the gas was outside in the shed. Since no one dared go out there, they could only eat cans of beans and vegetables, which they heated on a small butane grill.
Meghan must have felt the tension because she cried for what seemed like hours. This made them feel even worse, and eventually, they left the kitchen and returned to their rooms, leaving Meghan to Starr's care.
After another hour of screaming from her, Starr placed her on a bundle of blankets and placed ear buds next to her head; then she turned on her mp3 player and clicked it to the sound of forests. It was a soundtrack Starr used to help her sleep.
She tip toed back into the kitchen. Marla, Mica and Shane pulled plugs out of their ears.
"You know, we can't wait in here forever. Our food supplies are down. We could starve," whispered Marla.
"Have you guys thought of a plan?" Mica whispered back.
"We have to wait it out. We have to reach Chanler; he'll help us," hissed Starr.
"I don't think they'll make it in time," Shane said.
"Why aren't they trying to get us, yet?" asked Marla.
"I don't know, but when they do, you guys should wait up in the attic and take Meghan with you. They won't hurt any of you. Don't worry if you have to hand over the baby; it's not like you could stop them anyway."
"Starr," whispered Shane, "You're not giving up, are you?"
"No, but it looks like we're not gonna be able to save her. Fact is, if they want the baby or the crystal, we can't stop them. Hell, we couldn't even make it difficult."
Once more, Starr looked out of the window. They had a large fire going. Not that vampires got cold, or at least not in a human sense, but their limbs did get stiff.
That night they went to bed. Meghan woke and cried every time the soundtrack stopped. Starr didn't get to sleep until well past midnight. However, she wasn't down long when a cold draft blew across her face.
She sat up, and was racked in wonderment. Something was off. She checked the baby who was still and breathing.
She reached up and rubbed her neck when she realized she didn't feel the chain on the back of her neck. Also, she didn't feel the jiggling of the crystal when she leant over Meghan.
Starr looked down her shirt; the crystal was gone.
Spinning on foot, she spotted the front door untouched. Panicked, she ran into the kitchen and saw the couch and the book case moved aside, and the door cracked open.
Breathlessly, she squeezed through and emerged outside. Through the garden gate, she saw her hair highlighted by the moon. She was handing something to Credenza.
She ran through the garden and through the gates, stopping just behind her.
"Lily, how could you?"
"I had no choice; I'm sorry. She controls everything I do."
Briefly, Starr thought back to her time with the zombie-vamps, and how she had controlled them, too. Lily was technically one of those vampires.
Starr jumped at Credenza, and grabbed her hands while pulling knife from back pocket. She attempted to saw through her wrist, but her skin was too hard. Still, she didn't let go, like two dogs mouth wrestling and neither one able to get the better of the other.
"Do you want us to stop her?" called a man.
"Bound her, now!"
Someone grabbed her around the neck and pulled her back, but his grip loosened and he let out a scream. Starr spun around and saw that Mica had just plunged a machete into his neck. Marla and Shane stood behind her.
The men moved toward them. Starr pulled the machete from the man's neck and sliced through the heads of two men who approached tried to grab Marla and Shane.
Although she tried her best, spinning around and killing without thought, Marla, Mica and Shane were soon tied up. Eventually, Starr began to tire, too. A soldier stabbed her in the arm while another punched her in the face.
She fell to ground. They surrounded her and tied her up, next to the others.
"You know, Starr, I don't want to destroy you. In fact, I feel like you're a sister to me. In a way, you are. What can I do to convince you to stop fighting me? And join me and my party? Even Dracus would welcome you," she said and nodded to her brother.
"Nothing, nothing at all. I keep saying that all I want is to be left alone. I have a different idea of what life should be."
"And yet, here you are interfering."
"It's my business, too."
Right then, something dropped out of the sky,
behind Credenza. It took a moment for her realize that it was Seth and Emil. Starr had forgotten all about them.
Without a moment's hesitation, Seth plunged his sword into her face. A round of gasps came from her soldiers. She dropped to the ground, but it didn't last. Credenza was too old and too strong. A mere second later, her hands rose to her face, grabbed the blade and pulled it out. Then, with blood smeared across her face, looking like demon, she stood.
The men surrounded Seth and bound him.
"Goodbye, Sirius," she said.
His head started to pulsate. The sound of his skull, moving beneath his skin, sounded like cracking crab shells. Seth screamed terribly. Finally, his head exploded, splattering brain matter all about his body and the ground.
Credenza put the crystal around her neck and started chanting.
Lily ran at her and pushed her into the fire. Credenza stepped aside, and shouted, "I'm sick of you, little girl!"
She grabbed her by the neck, squeezing her tightly and tossed her backward, into the fire.
Marla and Mica screamed at her to stop, to save her and swore they'd kill her.
Shane cried.
Starr tried to move her from the fire, but she was a terrible telekinetic, and a few minutes later, Lily was a charred out corpse. The scent of her burning meat filled her nose, and smoke from her fat stung her eyes.
Once more, she was taken back to the moment of her sister's death.: Flashes of her lying in the bed, blue tinged with light perspiration on her cold flesh. Pain and anger like she'd never known before, rising up inside her. Then something hot and wet ran, repeatedly, down her face.
Was she crying?
The next few moments were unknown to her. People screamed, men gasped, blood blinded her and rained down on her.
When she finally came to, it was to see that dozens of men lay dead, in pieces, on the ground. Pools of blood literally smothered them all.
The Queen pushed herself up from the ground and prepared to strike her down with her sword. Starr raised her hand at her, and Credenza was blown into a pile of mush and blood.
Starr knew what had just happened; she'd vamped out, but as she looked down at herself, she saw that, once again, she glowed with an aura.
Goodbye
Chapter 8
Starr spent the next morning raking up ashes. After she'd killed all the vampires, Shane and the others made another fire to burn them, because they wanted to separate Lily's ashes, which they put into a glass vase; there was nothing else in the house that was worthy of Lily. She even felt bad for Seth, though she didn't like him much, and gave him his own burning as well.
Fortunately, it only took a few hours to dispose of them all, but the evidence of their night was obvious by the glistening red road that still hadn't dried.
She raked across the center of the pile where the fire was, and hit something that clinked like glass. Starr knelt and buried her hand in the dirt and pulled out the green crystal.
Maybe it wasn't a crystal, as how could it have survived the fire? Even the chain had melted off. She could see its residue where the drilled it through.
As she knelt there, looking at the crystal, she thought about how she never really knew Lily. She never knew why she came to be on that stoop, in the middle of the night, a few years ago when they were back in New York. She tried to find shelter in Starr's strength, but she was never there for her. She couldn't be, not with all the business of the Council.
Guilt assuaged her. If she could have been there for her, who knows? Maybe she would have never been bit? If she'd killed Credenza when she'd had the chance, they would have never come to the lake.
"I'm sorry about this, really I am," said a man's voice.
She looked up; it was Emil.
"I couldn't tell you Lily was with us because Credenza kept close tabs on us."
"Well, at least I know, now, why you were interested in me."
"I truly like you, Starr, but yeah, the reason I came to you was because I was sent."
"I should have known Credenza would send a spy."
"Well, no, not by her, but by my father: Lucenzo."
"Lucenzo? You're Primordial."
"Yes, well, part. Credenza thought we were working for her, but she was wrong. It was my father who told Stelar of her plans, and of the stone and the regressed vampire disease. At first, they offered the stone to me, but when they saw the lengths she would go to, they realized you needed it more."
Starr tried to respond, but her tears choked her.
"I wish I'd never had it. I'm cold like I was before, but I feel something, too. Pain, I think. I can't stop crying."
She extended her arm to him.
"Here," she said, reaching into her pocket cargo pocket. "This is yours, then. You should be the city's keeper."
"Oh, no," he said, and waived it away. "I don't want it. I have plans for my life."
"Well, I don't want it, either."
"But they gave it to you for a reason; it has ended up with you because it's your fate."
"Tuh," she said.
Angrily, she stood up and walked to the edge of the mesa. Gathering all her strength, she pulled back her arm and threw, both, the key and the stone into the lake.
"May I never lay eyes on Valhol again."
Inside the house, everyone was silent, even Meghan, thankfully.
Together, they made a dinner in Lily's honor, and Seth even though they didn't know him.
That night with bags in hand, she and Shane flew to Boston with Meghan. Funnily enough, this time Shane wanted to stay. But Starr begged her to come. She needed to return the baby and tell the Scamalls and the Council, in case they didn't hear it by psychic cryout, that the Queen and her soldiers were dead.
Something had changed in her, and she didn't know what, but this time, she just couldn't do it alone. Maybe that her mistake in the first place: Thinking that she didn't need anyone to help her fight. Shane was strong, and well, it was time for those things to change, especially if she was about to be a named a leader.
Sure, she realized she was going back on everything she had told herself about wanting a normal life, but there was one more thing that needed doing before she could focus on herself. That thing was restructuring the Council back into place. People need some policing, and especially crazy vampires.
More about the series:
Lost and want to play catch up?
Visit the Vampin Box Set Year One Books 1-9, and Year 2, 10-15.
Vampin Year 2 Series to Date:
#16 Sirius
#17 Remembering
#18 Soul
Originally a monthly short with the Black Press Online, Vampin is now available as a monthly teen series.
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