A light flared around Lucy and Abbey,
scorching the air and illuminating the entire graveyard. Something
whipped through the air, crackling with blurry speed, sending the
two corpses attacking Lucy and Abbey flying through the misty
air.
Lucy looked up and saw an unbelievable
sight. There stood her grandmother in her nightgown and robe, her
hair braided in a long white rope. In her hand she held an old
wooden baseball bat—the one from the hall closet. But now it was
glowing, shimmering with light.
“
Gram?”
Her grandmother moved forward and
swung the bat, catching a zombie in the back of the head, then
smacking another in the teeth, flattening both. Another blurry
movement and she took out another zombie’s legs, sending it
clattering to the ground. In no time her grandmother had run to
them, and was pulling Lucy to her feet with unnatural
strength.
Lucy gulped when she caught the look
on her grandmother’s face. She was majorly pissed off.
“
As impressive as this is…”
she waved a hand at the throng of corpses. “That you can raise an
entire cemetery, if you can’t control them and send them back to
their graves you’re going to get everyone killed!”
She grabbed Lucy’s injured hand and
Lucy could feel her gram’s power flicker and sizzle against her
flesh. It wasn’t very strong, but it was concentrated, and most
importantly, it knew what it was doing. “Now let’s send all these
poor people back to their rest.”
Lucy could feel her own power rise up
again, this time it hurt and burned far more than before. But it
wasn’t as frightening. She knew her grandmother was going to put
everything right.
Gram raised her other hand up to the
heavens. “Hear me, denizens of this cemetery. I am Lillian
Haveraux, and I command you to return to your graves…
now!”
Lucy felt the power flash up through
her, rippling over her flesh and pulsing through her hand into her
grandmother, then out to the zombies. Every zombie stopped in its
tracks, slowly turned to face Gram, and then just like that, they
all started moving in straight lines until they started falling
back into their graves. And amazingly enough, all the ripped up
earth and grass just seemed to open up and swallow them, and then
settled and smoothed out until even the grass looked exactly as it
had before.
Gram let go of Lucy’s hand and she
felt the instant shock of their powers disconnecting. Her
grandmother shot her with the angriest glower. “You stupid
girl!”
“
But Gram… I-I
didn’t…”
Just then Gram’s eyes lit on Abbey’s
still sobbing form, and she shook her head, giving her
granddaughter’s arm a gentle squeeze. “I should’ve
known.”
Gram walked over to Abbey, peering
down at her with harsh, demanding eyes. This alone made Abbey shut
up.
“
Your grandma, Donna May,
and I both told you not to mess with this kind of
magic.”
“
I had to try!” Abbey
cried.
Gram grabbed hold of Abbey’s hand. She
examined the wound and then let her go. “You’re just a witch.” Her
tone was cold. Lucy had never heard her voice like that. “You can’t
possibly control a necromancy ritual. It may be magic, but it is
too removed from witchcraft for your kind to do anything but get
themselves killed!”
Abbey sobbed. “I’m sorry… but I
had—”
“
If you had waited until
you’d learned enough from your grandmother, you could’ve called
your parents’ spirits from the nether realm, all by yourself, like
any other self-respecting Wiccan.” She got right in Abbey’s face.
“Instead, you had to trick the first necromancer you came across
into this foolishness, and you almost got my granddaughter
killed!”
Abbey wiped the tears from her eyes,
her face usually so full of life was stripped of all
hope…beaten.
In an instant Gram’s face changed from
angry to the gentle warmth Lucy was used to. She moved forward and
took Abbey into her arms. “Sweet child. Zombies can’t remember what
they were. They’ve lost the spark of humanity. Their souls moved on
shortly after they died. So please don’t remember them like this.
Remember them as they were when they were living.”
As always, Lucy was touched by her
grandmother’s caring nature. Even though she’d been angry enough to
kill Abbey only a minute ago, she was now consoling her, her arm
around Abbey’s shoulders as they turned and started to walk towards
the entrance of the graveyard.
Lucy brushed some of the dead leaves
from her jeans, just starting to feel a little better. Still
wobbly, but she was a damn sight better than she would’ve been if
the horde of zombies had gotten their cold, dead hands on
her.
Gram’s such a rock
star…
She was going to elaborate on her
grandmother’s wondrous qualities, but she didn’t get a chance to
finish that thought. What’s more, she didn’t have a chance to even
take a single step to follow either.
She gasped as she felt it: something
cold and dead hurtling toward her from behind. The darkness of the
graveyard made her all the more confused, and she turned in time to
see flowing blonde hair and a smiling set of fangs. Something hurt,
and something else knocked her down and was dragging her way—then
all went black.
Chapter 16
FROM THE SHADOWS of the night, Delia
had watched the two on the porch. She had been such a fool, to
believe Gabriel’s word over her own common sense and intuition.
She’d known the instant the girl had stumbled into that filthy
little alley behind the Refectory. She could see passion and the
glow of love plainly on her face. But that hadn’t been what had set
her off—that alone, the pathetic attentions of a silly human girl,
wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference to her.
What had made the difference had been
the smell. Even through the stench of the garbage and rot of the
alley, the scent he’d left on her flowed through the rancid air to
Delia, and the meaning of it shot straight through her nervous
system and mind, and cracked her heart.
Gabriel’s scent was all over the girl.
And worse, she smelled lust and longing in that trace of him. He
wanted her. He wanted her enough that she stunk of it.
Now that didn’t mean love. Delia knew
that it didn’t. But what it did mean was that his body wanted to
cheat on her. And added to the obvious amorous intentions of the
girl, Delia had snapped. She’d wanted the girl dead—not scared, not
whimpering for her life, but dead.
But Gabriel and her stupid brother,
Vin, had interfered. Gabriel had fought for the girl, and Delia had
been more than hurt over that fact. She’d been devastated. And no
matter how much he swore that he did not love the girl, she could
indeed see it in his eyes. It wasn’t just lust, for that scent had
waned during their battle in the alley. But he could not hide the
truth that blazed from his very soul. He was now in love with
another.
And as Delia searched his eyes,
finding this new horrific truth there, she also saw another truth.
Though there was still love in his eyes for her—and maybe he was
still in love with her—there was pity too. And that pity had sealed
it for her.
She’d trusted her heart to a filthy,
stinking werewolf, but no longer.
She lied when she told him she
believed him. She lied when she told him she trusted him. After
all, he’d made every lame excuse imaginable not to lay with her
that night. How stupid did he think she was?
So she’d kept to the shadows,
following him, unable to trust herself to not kill the girl if she
just stalked her. And then the two had wandered out onto the porch,
their want and need for each other as thick and obvious in the
night air as their adoration of each other was to the eye. And all
that she’d gleaned before the kiss against the porch
railing.
Delia heard thunder pounding in the
background—a storm, or avalanche, some natural disaster. But she
could hear their breathing rise and quicken, even their hearts
pounded loud enough that she knew their pulses were nearly in
sync.
Delia had wanted vengeance. She’d
wanted to attack Gabriel right then and there. How dare the dog
think he could do this to her! She was a warrior, second in power
only to her father, and this mangy mongrel thought he could hurt
her like this. To choose a mere mortal over her.
A single hot tear escaped from her
left eye. Delia snapped closed her eyes and clenched her jaw shut,
pushing back the emotion that threatened to turn her into a
sniveling, crying wreck. No, she was a warrior, weeping wouldn’t
change things, and would not make her feel better.
Yet vengeance against her enemies
would.
She pondered following Gabriel, and
then pushing a tree down in his path. When he got out of the car
she would take him, hard and fast… well, maybe she would torture
him—get some real satisfaction from his death.
Unfortunately, the mere thought of
killing Gabriel sent a cold, bitter chill through her entire being.
She knew there and then that she couldn’t just kill him. She loved
her wolf. But she did want to hurt him.
Physically? Or just psychologically?
Maybe break his heart as he had broken hers.
Now that sounded promising.
And how better to break a heart than
to kill what it loved? The thought of ripping the girl’s throat
out, or better, her heart… oh yes! That was a lovely thought. Rip
out Lucy Hart’s heart, watch her life drain from her face, lapping
up her fear like a river of blood, later gifting that heart to her
unfaithful love. Maybe she’d gift wrap the little piece of meat—a
box with metallic red wrapping paper, and blood red ribbons and a
bow.
Delicious.
But not enough… no, his betrayal was
far worse than killing that stupid human could pay for. She wanted
him to know, for the rest of his inadequate life, that his heart’s
desire was just out of his reach.
Yes! If he would not be hers, and she
had to live with that fact as evidence, then Delia would make sure
Gabriel shared the exact same lifelong agony. Her plan formed in
her mind, as glittering and cool as the night that enveloped her.
Yes, so easy. But the girl wasn’t just a human. She’d been immune
to Delia’s mind control—something she hadn’t encountered in a human
before. And, infuriatingly, she’d demonstrated influence over
Delia’s body, holding her back from killing her outright. Though it
had visibly drained the girl to pull off such a trick, Delia would
need to be careful, sneaky. Not only capturing her, but in keeping
her captive.
Turning a human took time… an entire
night and day, to be exact. She needed privacy and safety—somewhere
safe from Gabriel, her meddling brother, and where the girl’s power
over her would be quelled.
Delia closed her eyes as the lights of
the Hart girl’s home flickered off, delight flowing through her
veins as she saw in her mind’s eye where she would take her. She
knew just the place.
“
Tomorrow night, you little
bitch…” Delia whispered into the wind, her nails cutting into the
flesh of her palms, making them bleed. “You will rise vampire. And
Gabriel will never be able to make you his bride.”
~*~
Delia was just about to set the little
house where Lucy Hart lived on fire. Since she couldn’t enter
uninvited, she would simply and literally smoke the little
blood-sack out. But then another human girl had shown up and
started rapping pebbles against the girl’s window. How convenient.
The human girl had Lucy out the front door and headed out into the
woods behind the house in no time at all.
Delia followed, not making a sound,
biding her time as the two strode through the woods and then into a
graveyard.
Too bad Delia was no longer going to
kill her rival for Gabriel’s love. Killing her in the graveyard
would have been a splendid memory to have.
But no sooner did she enter the
graveyard than she felt it. The little blood-sack’s power, the one
that had stopped her in her tracks back in that filthy alley, the
one that Delia would neutralize soon enough. But maybe not soon
enough. What if the blood-sack had finally noticed her lurking in
the background?
But then she saw what was happening.
There was an altar set up on the top of a gravestone—and Delia
could smell her rival’s blood. They were performing necromancy.
Yes, that was the power the girl had, power over the dead. Of
Course!
But Delia had never heard nor read of
a necromancer powerful enough to possess or control a vampire. That
was new and interesting. Delia felt the blood-sack’s power surge
through the ground, running straight for her. She jumped, vaulting
herself straight up into the air, landing on headstones as she
hopped with lightning speed toward the walls of the graveyard.
There she perched and watched the mayhem the little blood-sack and
her witch friend let loose.
Foolish children, they had no idea
what they were actually doing. With as much power as the little
blood-sack had, and obviously no skill or control over that power,
just walking into a graveyard was a dangerous proposition. Let
alone filling the consecrated earth with that power.