Secretly Sam (10 page)

The car
, he thought. This was the cross stitch on his seat covers.

He tried to breathe. Pain stabbed through him, arcing sharp and severe and drawing his breath up short. He gritted his teeth and looked down, expecting to see spears or daggers or half of the windshield sticking out of his upper body.

But it was just the steering wheel, and there was no blood. He had been thrown up against it; his air bag had failed to go off, and now he probably had a broken rib or two to show for the accident. He closed his eyes in thanks for a moment. They felt big in his face, as if bulging with blood, and his head throbbed. He opened his eyes and turned as much as he could toward the passenger seat.

Luckily
,
Meagan’s
air bag
had
gone off.

With a spike of adrenaline and terror, Dietrich remembered his student and fellow magic user. A moment of real dread claimed him when he realized she could be dead. “Meagan!” he breathed, reaching over to fight with the parachute-like material of white that still puffed up, now bloated and useless, obscuring his view of her face. Eventually, he managed to get it deflated enough to shove it out of the way.

She was unconscious but breathing. From the line across her nose and the darkening shadows beneath her eyes, he would guess that she’d been struck too hard with the very thing that had most likely saved her life. The air bag had hit her with enough force to break her nose and knock her out.

“Meagan!” He considered shaking her, but settled on tapping her cheek instead. “Meagan, wake up!”

She moaned, her forehead furrowing.

“That’s it,” he urged, turning a bit more so that he could look out the shattered windows. Rain obscured the landscape, gathering in mud and puddles just beyond the crumpled doors and destroyed hood of his car.

It took him a moment to realize that it was all upside down.

That would explain the heavy, throbbing feeling in his head. Now it all made sense.

With a grunt of effort and pain, Dietrich shifted behind the steering wheel, pressing his palms against it to dislodge his chest. Beside him, Meagan stirred. Without looking at her, Dietrich continued to push, continued to grit his jaw in pain.

“Can you hear me, Meagan?” he asked through his clenched teeth.

A sound of stunned misery returned his query. He glanced over at her. Her eyes slowly blinked open.

“Answer me, Meagan,” he prodded further as he finally managed to move to the side enough to reach the door handle. He yanked, but it didn’t budge.

“Ow,” she mouthed. Her voice sounded odd.

“You’ve got a broken nose. Is anything else broken?” he asked.

“I… don’t know,” she whispered. He could sense her moving beside him, tentatively experimenting with each body part. “I don’t think so.”

“Then we need to get out of this car before that storm over the mountains causes a flash flood that takes us with it.”

The doors were stuck, crumpled into their frames. However, the glass to all of the windows had been destroyed and removed. With great effort and fiercely bit-back sounds of pain, the two of them managed to pull themselves from the wreckage, crawl through the windows, and roll out into the mud and debris of the ditch.

It smelled like rotting vegetation, pungent and putrid. Mushrooms huddled around clumps of grass and moss-covered rocks. Muted hues of green and brown splished and splashed, mottled and dismal. Thunder rolled across the distant mountains. Lightning revealed itself from behind thick, purple clouds, illuminating the forgotten wetness of the ravine.

Dietrich got his hands and knees beneath him, wincing when he put weight on his left wrist. It was either sprained or had a hairline fracture. He got to his feet, slowly and surely, and stood for a moment, swaying slightly from side to side.

The rain pelted him, cold and hard. Thunder rolled closer, and lightning coursed through the sky once more. The heart of this particular storm was drawing nearer.

Meagan moved up beside him, her younger body standing a little straighter and steadier than his. “What now?” she asked as she gingerly touched the side of her face, edging ever closer to the broken nose. Blood smeared her upper lip, and her bottom lip was split on one side.

“We need to get cleaned up,” he said, as he just as gingerly felt along his ribs for the cracks he knew would be there. “And healed.” He knew a few mild healing spells that were fairly good at dealing with cracked bones and bruises, weakness and exhaustion and the like. But he wasn’t certain he could take care of two people while in the condition he was in right now.

“Think you can handle that?” Meagan asked, clearly trying to be as strong as possible under the circumstances. Her wide eyes combed over the wreckage of the car and the building water level of the ravine around it.

Dietrich considered Meagan and how far she’d come under his guidance and instruction in their grove. She was a quick study and full of potential, despite this recent foul-up with October and Samhain. Healing spells were reserved for older grove members, those with the wisdom to know when to use them and when to allow nature to take its course. The spells were taxing, rather particular, and not at all easy to cast.

But desperate times called for desperate measures.

“With your help,” he told her. She turned around to cast a surprised look at him. “You have to learn some time,” he said. He shrugged and immediately regretted it.

Meagan looked down at where he held his ribs. “You cracked them, didn’t you?” she muttered. “Can you breathe deeply?”

He shook his head. “Not really, unfortunately.” He turned his attention to the slippery slope of the hill that led from the bottom of the ravine to the road up above. There was light coming from the road, though he couldn’t see from where. There was also a low rumble… but it could have been the rain.

“Then we have to heal you first or you’ll get pneumonia or something,” Meagan said.

“Or something,” Dietrich agreed. His attention, however, was on the road.

“Can you walk?”

Meagan nodded beside him.

“Good. We need to get to higher ground. That storm is sure to dump loads of water into this ditch.”

Because the town was located at the foothills of the mountains, and due to the frequent storms in the high country during summer and fall, the ravine they were now standing in was infamous for flash flooding. This storm had been building for a while, and Dietrich was guessing it would be only minutes now – possibly seconds – before the water came rushing through at top speed. He didn’t want to be stuck at the bottom of the ditch when it did.

Chapter Seventeen

Both the light and the rumble he’d heard coming from the road grew in strength as Dietrich slip-slid his way to the top of the hill. Once he managed to make the lip of the road and the tread of his shoes found crumbling asphalt instead of mud, he understood why.

The semi truck that had run his car off of the road hadn’t left the scene of its crime. Instead it waited, rumbling and massive, less than a hundred yards from where Dietrich’s car had veered to the right. It was a juggernaut of steel and fumes and rubber that shook as its giant engine idled. The seemingly endless trailer behind the cab was painted pitch black, matted so that its edges seemed to disappear into the surrounding night. An eerie blue light seeped through the bolt cracks and edges and emanated from beneath both the trailer and the engine of the huge rig. This light evaporated into the air like smoke, as if the illuminated, intangible wisps were ectoplasmic fumes – and this were a ghost truck.

“Jesus,” whispered Meagan beside him. “What the hell is that thing?” Her voice was sounding progressively worse by the second, and Dietrich could imagine she was tasting copious amounts of metal in her mouth; blood from her broken nose leaking through her nasal passages.

Before Dietrich could reply, the driver’s side door to the rig popped open, and both he and Meagan took a step back. A moment ticked by. Then a left boot appeared – just before a tall figure swung out in one graceful movement. Boots touched down onto wet tarmac as lightning once more cracked overhead and highlighted the scene.

Dietrich squinted against the deluge, shielding his eyes to do away with a bit of the blurriness the rain was causing. He recognized the boy’s face. The figure moved closer, his steps making no sound on the road.

This was Shawn Briggs, one of Dominic Maldovan’s friends and band mates.

The tall boy had always been handsome and, because he’d also been a musician and member of an actual band, there was that intangible charisma attached to his persona that drove a lot of girls crazy. Now, however, there was very clearly something more to him than there had been before.

He seemed even taller than normal. His brown hair was so dark it was almost black. His skin was paler. There was an aura of strength around him, of
capacity
, as if he could literally fly if he wanted to. And there was an unsettling static charge in the air that had nothing to do with the building lightning overhead. It was similar to the feeling someone got when they came too close to a crazy person, to someone who’d outright lost their marbles. It was that unsettling sensation that one false move, one misstep that somehow broke this insane person’s code of ethics, would cause them to lash out and harm you. That aura surrounded Shawn Briggs like a cloak, wrapped around him tightly, and radiated outward on unseen tendrils of quiet menace.

But if none of that was enough, there was the fact that Brigg’s normally brown eyes were now glowing a bright, feral red. And as he drew closer, Dietrich could also see that the boy was sporting long, sharp fangs.

“You like the truck, Meagan?” Shawn asked, focusing his inhuman attention on the girl as she sidled a little closer to her teacher.

Meagan didn’t answer, but Dietrich could almost hear her swallow. He watched her throat move, once more imagining the amount of blood she must be inadvertently drinking. She’d already wiped some away from beneath her nostrils; the smear of pink and red marked her upper lip and part of her cheek. The rain was taking care of the rest.

“It’s not so bad,” Shawn said, still addressing Meagan. “The taste of blood. You get used to it.” He moved closer, taking slow, long strides that Dietrich and Meagan attempted to match in retreat. “I could get used to yours,” he continued, his tone lowering so that it became more personal. “He wants you both dead, but what a waste.” He sighed and shook his head. “Violet eyes are so rare. I’ve always admired yours, Meagan. Imagine how beautiful they would be if you were like us.”

Meagan’s purple eyes flashed, and her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. Dietrich felt the pull of power around her, a building of the witch’s inherent magic. She was drawing into herself, beefing it up as if preparing for an assault. And maybe she was.

“Us?” Dietrich asked, gaining Shawn’s attention.

The vampire turned his burning gaze on his history teacher. Shawn smiled, giving Dietrich a better view of those fangs. “Ah, Mr. Lehrer. The history teacher with the secret identity. A witch, no less.” He moved closer. “Or in your case, would it be wizard?”

Dietrich tried to step back, but Meagan slipped behind him, her hand reaching out to clutch at his sleeve. Dietrich turned to look, steadying her as he did. They were up against the lip of the ravine. Loose rocks crumbled from the road into the mud, sliding down the slope to land in the building puddles below.

A hissing sound was growing in volume, but Dietrich couldn’t place it. And he had more immediate concerns.

“So tell me, teach,” said Shawn. “Can you magic your way out of this one?”

Dietrich spun to face the vampire again, but the boy was no longer there.

“
Boo
.”

Dietrich spun in the other direction, turning to his left to find that Briggs was now behind them, flush with the edge of the ravine, his boots mere inches from slipping down into the wet, sloshy ground below.

Miraculously, he remained firmly where he was.

“Holy mother….” Meagan’s voice trailed off as the hissing sound Lehrer had noticed earlier now became loud enough to muffle even the sound of the rain. It sounded like snakes – thousands of them. But this noise was joined by another, the kind of bubbling, gurgling sound that boiling water made.

Dietrich frowned, looking from Briggs to the ravine and the car that was lodged deeply in its mud below. It was too dark at its base to see what was happening unless lighting was flashing. When it did, Dietrich’s eyes followed the line of illuminated sludge to where the ravine disappeared upstream. He watched that dark edge as the lightning died, shunting it into blackness once more.

He continued to watch. The sound continued to grow.

And then electricity brightened the night sky once more, a bolt striking so close by, Dietrich’s body reflexively curled in on itself for protection. But his eyes remained locked on the ravine – as a wall of frothing, foaming water six or seven feet tall rushed toward them.

He’d been right. The deep, dark wet swallowed the ground, ate up everything in the ravine, and within seconds, it filled the space of the ditch to mere inches from the lip of the road, completely drowning the ruins of his car in the process.

Dietrich watched it with wide eyes, thanking his lucky stars that he’d managed to get himself and Meagan out of it when he had.

“You’re wasting time, Shawn,” came a new voice from behind them.

Dietrich spun, drawing Meagan close.

Another of Dominic’s band mates stood beside the abandoned semi. Dietrich recognized him as Nathan McCay. His dirty-blonde hair seemed even longer than it had always been, which as far as Dietrich was concerned, had always been far too long. And, like his compatriot, he too had been transformed.

Two vampires, both of them Dominic Maldovan’s closest friends. What could this mean?

His mind worked a thousand miles an hour, his head spinning through the multitude of possible implications. If Dominic’s friends were vampires… was Dominic as well? Had he been compromised? And if they were vampires, then that meant that Sam Hain had managed to absorb power from somewhere after all. From Logan? From those words she had scribbled?