Witch Upon a Star (A Midnight Magic Mystery) (17 page)

The two seconds of silence was deafening. I was almost relieved when Asher called, “Anna …”

He wasn’t buying it. I was about to step out of my hiding spot but noble, sweet Tom beat me to it. “You need to leave now,” he said with as much authority as a sixteen-year-old could muster.

“Tom, go back to bed,” Mrs. Harmon hissed.

My self-appointed savior continued down the stairs. “I’ve called the police already. They’re on their way.”

“That is not necessary,” Oliver said. “We are—”

“Anna,” Asher shouted with disapproval, “
mo chuisle
, please. I wish to talk, nothing more. You owe me that at least.”

“She doesn’t owe you anything,” Tom spewed out, “you-you child molester!”

Christine chuckled cruelly. “What have you been telling them, Anna? You may as well come out, little girl. Sir Galahad blew your ruse.”

“Please just g—” Mr. Harmon said.

I stepped onto the landing, suddenly wishing I wore more than a white slip. Asher preferred me in negligees or nothing, so my sleepwear choices were limited. I’d expected to just run to the bathroom and back. The five minutes between then and the present seemed like an eternity ago. I gazed down at them all: the elder Harmons huddled together blocking the door, bat still in hand; Tom at the foot of the steps, hands balled into fists, ready to channel his inner Batman; and my old family on the other side of the threshold all staring up at me. Malice in her brown eyes, apprehension in the gray, and relief in the piercing blue. My own moved upwards. I couldn’t look at him. I had to remain strong. “I have nothing left to say to you. I said it all last night. I told you what would happen. You taught me to keep my promises. To keep my word. I only wish you’d learned that lesson as well. So please leave. Now. Don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

“Oh, boo fucking hoo,” Christine said, rolling her eyes.

“You heard her,” Tom said. “She doesn’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Please leave,” Mr. Harmon said forcefully as he began to close the door.

“Oh, fuck this,” Christine said. She pounded on the side of the house hard enough to jolt us, while saying, “Mommy Homemaker!” Mrs. Harmon must have glanced into Christine’s eyes, and even with a millisecond of contact, Christine wormed inside her mind. “Invite us inside.”

“Come in,” Mrs. Harmon said robotically.

Christine literally pushed past Mrs. Harmon with the men following behind. This was not good. At all. The moment they walked in I could practically taste the threat of violence in the air, as if the room were already thick with blood. The knot strangled my stomach, and I grew nauseous. Oliver glanced up at me, eyes pleading for me to do something. Anything. All other thoughts ceased except, “
Get them out of this house
,” which was screamed through a bullhorn inside my brain.

“Get out,” Mr. Harmon said. “I dis-invite you from this house.”

“How adorable, you have viewed a vampire film,” Christine cooed. “It does not work that way, Daddy.”

“Anna, it is time to come home,” Asher said forcefully.

“Yes, Anna, go get your suitcase
now
,” Oliver insisted through gritted teeth.

I nodded like a flicked bobblehead and started toward my room. Had I been thinking clearly I would have just walked directly downstairs and out the door, but I was on autopilot. I was told to get my suitcase, so I did. I hadn’t unpacked so I just zipped it up, grabbed my purse, and hurried back out. “I-I’m ready.”

I made it three steps down before Tom said, “No! She doesn’t have to go anywhere with you!”

“Boy, shut your mouth,” Oliver snapped.

“It’s okay, Tom,” I said, still walking.

“No, it’s not okay, Anna! He doesn’t own you!” Tom turned to Asher. “You don’t own her. She doesn’t want to be with you anymore, don’t you get that? She doesn’t love you anymore. Bullying her isn’t going to change that, you-you monster. If you really loved her—”

I blinked and Asher was an inch from Tom, lifting the boy by the jaw and snarling. “How dare you question me, boy?”

“Asher—” Oliver warned.

“Hey, get your goddamn hands off my kid,” Mr. Harmon said, raising the bat and advancing toward them.

“Lucas—” Mrs. Harmon pleaded, reaching for her husband.

Too late. All too late. It was too late the moment they crossed that threshold.

Christine pounced on Mr. Harmon before he could reach his son. There wasn’t a moment for me to react. She was five feet away, then upon him, fangs impaling his jugular like a rabid dog. His howl of pain, Mrs. Harmon’s shriek of terror, and Tom’s gurgling cry as he fought against Asher’s grasp still haunt my nightmares to this day. As Mr. Harmon crumpled to the floor, blood pouring everywhere, the hysterical Mrs. Harmon darted toward her dying husband.

I didn’t know where to look next: at the horrified Oliver as he backed away from the blood, at Asher slowly crushing the gagging Tom’s windpipe as the teen clawed and kicked to no avail, or at the advancing Christine as she went for Mrs. Harmon. My overloaded mind finally decided. I raised my finger and shouted, “
Lapsus
!”

Christine flew into the living room out of sight, allowing Mrs. Harmon to reach her husband, collapsing to his side and pressing the wound to quell the blood. But I chose poorly. The moment Christine rocketed out of sight, a sickening crack overshadowed all the carnage as Tom’s windpipe collapsed. Crushed like glass. Asher released him, another for the ground.

“No!” I cried.

I sprinted down the steps, finger raised again, but in a foot race between a vampire and witch, the vampire will always win. Two steps and Asher was there, slamming me against the wall with his body and covering my mouth with his hand. “Please do not make matters worse,
mo chuisle
,” he whispered.

Cue worse.

“Mama!” Both mine and Asher’s gazes whipped down the hall as Bethany began running toward us. “Ma—”

“Bethany! Run!
Run!
” Mrs. Harmon shouted. The girl listened, spinning on her bare foot, taking off the way she came. Like a wild woman, Mrs. Harmon leapt up and dashed toward the staircase, shrieking the whole short trek. In another blink, Christine reappeared behind the mother. With one swift movement, the monster snapped her neck, silencing the mother forever. I screamed and squirmed under Asher, even biting his hand, but he caught my eyes. Everything locked shut. My limbs, my mouth, even my mind was no longer my own. Out of reach. I could hear, I could see, but nothing more. No feelings, no thoughts were available to me. Forced catatonia. He literally took all of me. He removed my soul. “There is my girl,” Asher whispered as he released my shell.

“Speaking of girls,” Christine said, nodding up toward Bethany’s room. “The brat saw us.”

“We can wipe her memory,” Asher said.

“It can be retrieved with magic. We should burn the house anyway. We do not want a repeat of Warsaw, do we?”

Asher’s face contorted with distaste. “No, we do not.”

“So, should I …” she nodded again.

“I will.”

The two vampires glanced at Oliver, who until that moment had just watched in shock as the events of the past minute unfolded. The bastard actually smirked. “Why should you two get to have all the fun?”

“Good lad,” said Asher. “Christine, please go start the car.”

She obeyed, not giving her victims a second glance as she left. One minute. Less. Less than one minute to snuff out the lives of an entire family. Madness. Utter madness. And just the beginning. Asher picked up my suitcase, took my hand as if we were about to stroll down the Danube, and led me down the stairs. We stopped right beside Tom’s corpse, bloodshot eyes staring up at me, pleading for salvation even in death. It’s the only time I was glad to feel nothing. “Oliver, finish here quickly, then drive Anna’s car back to Washington. We shall begin making arrangements to leave this country as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.” Oliver hurried up the stairs and down to Bethany’s room. Monster.

Asher and I stepped over the still bleeding Mr. Harmon to reach the front door. Asher grabbed my coat from the peg and gently slipped it on me. With a tender, sad smile he buttoned it. “I am so sorry,
mo chusile
,” he whispered. “I did not intend for any of this to happen anymore than you did. I still love you though. I shall make this up to you, I promise.” He kissed my frozen lips, then picked me up like a bride, retrieved my suitcase too, and hustled me away from the house of horrors into the waiting car, even buckling my seatbelt. How considerate of him. “Drive.”

“Well,” Christine said as she shifted the car into gear, “who knew the suburbs could be such fun.”

And we monsters drove off into the darkness from whence we came.

_____

I often wondered if the numbness I experienced that night, that lack of a single emotion, was how vampires went through their existence. No fear, no pain, no thoughts for others. It must be. How else could they do all I witnessed? That night my forced apathy was a gift. Losing your soul, your essence, could be a blessing at times. Had I not been rendered soulless, I probably would have thrown myself from the speeding car, happy for death as my body hit the asphalt going seventy miles per hour. Or I would have lost all grip on reality as Asher and Christine made plans for our departure. The duo spoke as if I wasn’t there, which for all intents and purposes I wasn’t. For the two and a half hours it took to return to DC not a single thought crossed my mind. I stared straight ahead at the road with Asher’s arm wrapped over my shoulder. He even pulled me into my spot so I rested in the crook of his neck. I could smell the blood on him. He missed a smear near his ear when he and Christine stopped to wash up. I just stared at that spot and continued my inexistence.

Christine dropped us off at the hotel to make arrangements for our departure, and Asher hustled us up to the suite to pack. The evidence of the previous night’s histrionics had been cleared away as if it never happened. They even replaced the coffee table and mirror behind the bar. Better to pretend it never happened that way. Asher dragged me to our bedroom and placed me on the bed like the good wind-up doll he probably always wanted me to be. “You needn’t worry,
mo chuisle
,” he said, moving into the bathroom for his toiletries. “After tonight, I shall never allow her near you again. Never. Once Oliver returns our quartet shall take the first plane out of this wretched country, then go our separate ways.” He came back out and stuffed his toiletry bag into the suitcase on the stand. “You were correct on all fronts, my love. She has grown far too unstable of late. Tonight proves as much. There was no need for such violence. None.” He glanced at me and frowned. I just stared at the suitcase. My lover kneeled before me, meeting my eyes with his pained ones. “You do believe me, yes? I meant no harm to those people or to you. Especially you. I swear it on our love.” He paused. “Please tell me you believe me,
mo chuisle
.
Please
.”

With a mere thought, he opened my jail cell, and all at once every emotion banging to be let out rammed through the door. Fear, sadness, shame, horror, guilt, twelve tons of guilt coursed through my veins and my soul. Too much. Far too much. I began trembling, seething as the volcano within me, dormant yet accumulating for years, began to rumble. My jaw clenched shut, and my
breath escaped in ragged spurts through my teeth. Asher knelt there, trepidation locking all the muscles in his face. When I couldn’t hold it in anymore, I slapped him hard enough to bruise us both. Twice. He took them both. “I deserved that,” he said calmly.

The volcano erupted. “You … fucking … monster!” I shrieked. I bashed him with my fists on the face, the shoulders, I just kept pounding and shrieking and pounding even more. “I hate you! I fucking hate you, you bastard! You monster! I fucking hate you!” He let me continue my assault for five seconds before he grabbed my flailing limbs, spun me around, and held me with my arms crossed in front of me like a straightjacket. “I hate you,” I sobbed as I crumpled against him.

He lowered us to the floor with me on his lap. “I am sorry,” he whispered between the kisses to my hair. “I am so sorry, my love. I am so sorry. Please forgive me. I shall do anything you ask. I am your willing slave. I love you. Just please forgive me.
Please.
”

I knew where this was going. Part of me wanted to. My body was just conditioned to respond to his caresses, at the narcotic feel of his lips and words against my flesh. I couldn’t lose control, not then. The he’d win, and I’d be lost again. I took deep breaths to calm my sobs. “Let me go, Asher,” I warned.

“I am so sorry, my Anna,” he whispered with another kiss, this time to my neck.

“I said let me go!” I shouted, wriggling from his grasp. I think he was so shocked by my resistance, something that had never happened before, he released me. I sprang up and backed away, literally shivering the sickening sensation of him off my body. “You don’t get to touch me
ever again
,” I said through gritted teeth. “You …
disgust
me. I want to rip off my fucking skin to cleanse myself of you, you … devil.”

“You do not mean that,
mo chuisle
,” he said, rising. “You are upset and—”

“I’m upset?
Upset
? I-I-I just watched as you
butchered
an entire family whose only crime was being kind to me when I had no one else.”

“I told you, it was never my intention for that to occur. Christine—”

“Christine is a sadistic, crazy, unpredictable psychopath. None of which you were unaware of. Hell, I think you like that about her!
You
brought her there.
You
choked a sixteen-year-old boy to death and are acting as if you’d merely swatted a fly.
You
ordered Oliver to murder a two-year-old.
You
made me watch it all. You took away my free will because it didn’t suit you. At least Christine isn’t in denial about what she is, Asher.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Alain was right. He was a hundred percent spot on about you. He warned me this day was coming, and I was too blinded by love and hope and stupidity to listen. He said you were cruel and vindictive, and if I ever wised up and deigned to leave you, if I wounded your pride, you’d make me rue the day I ever set eyes on you. But I thought I was special. That my love would somehow transform you into the man I wanted you to be. A man who loved and respected me back. I was so fucking naive,” I said to myself.