I closed my eyes and thought back to that day, to the emotions that surrounded me when I realised my dad wasn’t my bio-dad. And that same sense of concern filled me, this time not for what would happen to me, but for what would become of my little girl.
I snapped out of my thoughts to the echo of a man’s scream, sitting bolt upright in the cold, loose sand.
“David?” I called, but the resonating sound in my thoughts was too high to be David’s scream. I couldn't see or hear him at all now. I also couldn't hear Zane, which had to be a good sign. I hoped. And I realised then, as I rubbed my shoulder, that I also couldn’t feel the foot of that man bearing down on me.
I spun at the hips to check for him. He was gone.
“Hello?” I said quietly.
No one answered. I crawled through the sand, feeling blindly for my sword, and found it a few feet away at the end of a familiar, albeit melted, boot—one that had been on my shoulder a second ago. I smiled wickedly.
“Sucked in,” I said, clambering to my feet with my sword in hand. “That’ll teach you to pin down a Cerulean Entity!”
He didn't respond. I didn’t expect him to. I kicked him hard in the shin once, for good measure, and scooped the folds of my dress up around my knees, running fast toward the fallen rocks at the base of the cliff. They’d give me a good vantage point to spot David. He probably wouldn’t want my help, but two of us had a better chance of beating that guy than one.
The silence around the cove now was deafening. My ears still rung from that gunshot, but underneath that there was almost nothing. The waves abused the shore with the same roaring violence they always did, crashing against the rocks as if they meant to destroy them, but that seemed to be the only battle left going on.
As I started up the rocks, my foot slipped on a loose scrap of the delicate fabric from my dress, so I hopped back down and scrunched the skirt tightly in one hand, my sword in the other, and sliced a chunk away, ripping the entire bottom of my dress off in two strikes. My legs breathed the icy cold of the ocean wind and I kicked off my flats, flexing my toes in the grainy wet sand. That should give me a little advantage. Bare feet worked much easier with sand than shoes or heavy boots. Besides, the immediate connection to earth would surely increase my powers.
I sheathed my sword and curled my fingers around a rock as high as I could reach, then hoisted myself up, finding a foothold and using it to climb. Three big steps brought me to the top of the rock pile, and I stood above the beach looking down, my cut dress waving around my thighs.
The battle was clearly won. Or lost. Who knew? The beach offered nothing but thick fog. I couldn't see or hear anyone, and as I realised what that could actually mean, I got a very eerie sense of being alone. Too alone.
I pushed my hair up my head and drew a long breath, digging my fingertips into my skull. I couldn't see David, or even the tall man—couldn't see anyone.
Above me, a white beam circled again and flashed out to see, lighting up the empty horizon. There were no ships out there, no row boats with reinforcements. No escapees. Nothing but crashing waves, the silence of death, and me.
I lowered my hands and let the wind take my hair out behind me, searching frantically under the fog for anything—even a limp body would do.
And then I saw it—just a small glimpse of a gold button on a chest laying back-flat in the sand and, nearby, a very tall man stalking toward it.
He lifted the body from the ground with one giant hand and raised it above his head, arching the spine awkwardly back.
“No,” I whispered, moving back against the wall. I saw myself shoot out over the rock, the air beneath my feet, and slash that vampire with the full charge of my sword, but my bare feet glued themselves to the bumpy surface of the rock, my eyes watching on as David’s lifeless form slammed into the ground, faster than a watermelon out a window on a highway.
I cried out involuntarily, shielding my mouth when the beast turned, his dark gaze fixing on me, like a targeted missile.
David stayed down as the troll stalked with wide, eager strides in my direction, his thick fingers wrapped steadily around the handle of an axe, his body hunched with the force of his speed.
I turned to run, hitting the rocks before I realised I was caged in, and as I spun back to check his whereabouts he jumped up out of nowhere and palmed my face, shoving me down. I lost my footing on a loose pebble and slid down, head first, grabbing and clawing at the rocks as they grazed and opened the skin on my spine and elbows.
Zane jumped down and landed heavily with his boots either side of my head, my body landing upside-down, head in the sand, legs and feet still against the rocks. I reached for Nhym on my belt, but she was gone.
“What have we got here?” he said, pulling me up by a handful of my hair.
I reached up to hold it to my skull. “Let go of me!”
He spun me to face him, his fist balling my hair, tilting my chin forcefully up with a bloody fingertip. I could smell a mix of human blood and … David’s blood. Too much of David’s blood. “Pretty little thing, aren’t ya?”
“Pity I can’t say the same about you,” I said, my voice unusually steady.
Zane laughed. “Ah, just my kind of girl. Keeps her wits in the face of fear.”
“Face of
fear
?” I said. “I’d say you’re uglier than you are scary.”
He released my hair with a shove and I rolled my shoulder before I hit the ground, making it look accidental while I gauged the distance from my hand to my sword.
“Nice try, girly.” He grabbed my ankle and dragged me across the sand until the fog swallowed my sword. “But I’m not here to kill you. Not right now anyway.”
“What do you want then?” I asked as he flipped me onto my back. And my eyes went straight to his belt buckle as he unclasped it, holding his axe tightly in one hand as a threat if I moved.
“I just wanna relieve myself in ya.” He grunted, fighting with his belt. “Won’t take long.”
“Oh no. Please don’t,” I pleaded, hoping it didn’t sound too fake. I never was that good at acting.
“I’ll take pleasure in disgracing the wife of
David Knight
.” His left eye shrunk, searching the length of my thighs as he mentally plotted out exactly what he’d do to me. “And I’ll be sure to photograph you spread-eagled, after I fuck you so hard you bleed—just so I’ll ‘ave a nice memory to look back on.”
“Oh. God. No. Please,” I said, trying hard to cry when, really, I was just thinking,
please come closer. One of us is going to get fucked, but not in the way you think.
With a rather rough tug, he released his ugly, floppy member and grinned, as if I should be impressed. It just looked like a very depressed snake without a head.
“What the hell is that?” I laughed, and thousands of tiny needles pricked my chin, the skin breaking open as his heavy hand cracked my jaw. My ears rung and the world spun so fast I couldn't determine up from down, not even as he threw my dress up over my head and cut my undies away with that axe. I squealed as it nicked my leg, and I could tell from the sound of his laughter that it only excited him.
He forced my legs apart and landed on top of me, sand spraying up from his knee and scratching my delicate skin. But I just waited, my eyes closed tightly. Didn’t fight, didn’t kick. I needed this dizziness gone so I could save my own life. My virtue meant nothing to me if I was dead.
The feel of his limp, lifeless penis against my leg made me want to scream and roll away—claw at the sand until I escaped. But my head felt too heavy to even think.
He batted at it violently, trying to make it hard. “Come on,” he grunted.
With shaky hands, I fought the wispy fabric over my face and finally came up into the air again just as he got his snake hard enough to penetrate me. And before he had the chance, I covered his thick, gristly face with my hand and called on all the elements of nature, feeling them rise up from under me, making my arms, my legs, my feet tingle and burn. And as I shut my eyes tight and focused on my hand, he screamed so high and so loud he sounded like a child. He pressed his hands down beside my shoulders and tried to push away, but the energy of Nature had him pinned to my hand, his nose and eyebrow melting under it.
A wet slop of flesh hit the sand and I felt a tepid trickle of water run along the grains beside my leg, the stinking scent of urine burning my nose and seeping into the fabric under my bum. I held strong, sucked down the bile in my throat, and sealed my mouth shut to keep the melted flaps of skin from landing inside.
Zane’s body shook and trembled on top of me, getting slowly heavy and limp. And at the point I thought I could hold him no longer, he suddenly flew into the air, leaving a cool gust behind him, almost taking my hand with him. I felt his skull rip away from my palm, leaving the face behind. I didn’t care then where his body had gone or how; I flipped over onto my knees and buried my hands in the sand, trying to scrape it off.
But as my panicked voice reached my own ears, so too did a breathless heaving and wet splashing sound. I smelled Falcon before I looked back at him, but my eyes could not widen enough to take in the towered form, his spine arching and straightening as he drove his sword into the beast over and over again—hacking up his face, moving on to his midsection and, when that no longer satisfied, he grabbed Zane’s floppy wiener in the palm of his hand and … I looked away.
The ocean called to me, hushing and soothing me as I folded forward on my hands and knees and cried violently into the sand.
“Are you okay?” Falcon landed beside me.
“I just need to get my hands clean.” I scrubbed and scraped at them, but the melted flesh was sealed like glue and feathers to my palm and between my fingers.
“Okay. It’s okay, Ara.” Falcon grabbed both my hands and threw them around his waist, hugging me tight. “Calm down.”
“He … he…”
“I know.” He rubbed my back firmly, the large circles getting smaller and smaller as my sobbing turned to whimpering. “He’s dead, okay. Very dead.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded.
I pulled away and spread my fingers in front of me. “Can you help me get my hands clean?”
“Of course.” He leaned back and laid his very bloodied sword to the ground behind him. “Close your eyes, okay?”
I nodded, shutting them tight. And I felt the mess peel away strip by strip, like dried up glue. That’s all it is, I told myself. Just glue from an art project.
“I was so scared, Falcon,” I cried.
“Not as scared as
he
was.” He laughed.
One eye popped open and, just seeing that smile, I felt better.
“There,” he said, turning my hands over. “Just go down to the water and rinse them off.” He held them up for me to see. “You’ll be fine.”
I nodded, planting a hand to my knee to help me to my feet. Falcon took my elbow and steadied me until the jelly left my legs, looking down into my face with a look I’d never seen before.
“You did good, Ara.”
When the tears dripped free from my eyes and the wavering lens cleared, I noticed nothing but pride in his light brown eyes. “I did?”
His face cracked and he smiled broadly. “Very good. You didn’t need my help at all.”
I glanced back at the dead vampire, but looked away at the last second. “Remind me never to piss you off,” I said. “I don’t think I've ever seen you that mad.”
His fists tightened. “I’m tired of people hurting you. That was the last straw.”
“Well—” I smiled softly. “Thanks.”
“Any time.” He bent down and picked up his sword, sliding it into its sheath. “Come on, we’ll go down to the water together.”
“Have you seen David anywhere?”
“No. Why?”
“That giant was fighting with him before he came for me.”
Falcon stopped.
“What?” I asked nervously.
“David was
here—
at the beach?”
“Yeah. Why do you look so worried?”
“Because he didn’t mutilate that guy worse than I did.”
“So?”
“So, that means he didn't
see
what he was doing to you.”
“I think he’s unconscious.”
Falcon shook his head. “Do you remember when you first moved here, and you got in an argument with Mike—that day he held you against the wall and yelled at you?”
“Yeah,” I said, but it was really more of a question.
“David felt that—he felt your fear from miles away, and he came for you. That bond you share…” He shook his head again. “It could wake a man from a coma. And the fear I could smell from the other end of the beach just now was enough to draw
me
here. So what’s happened to David?”
My heart dropped into my stomach. I wiped my hands on my skirt, looking around frantically in the sand. “Please tell me he’s not dead.”
“Ara.” Falcon’s tone froze my soul. I looked up at him and then followed his gaze to the beach up ahead.
As the fog separated in hazy puffs, the lighthouse gave a small flash, enough to see a rather thin, but very still figure laying on the ground. “Falcon,” I cried. “He had no immunity.”