Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Gemma shook the rain off her umbrella harder than necessary, as if it would erase the past nine hours.
Once inside her apartment, she chucked her soaked shoes and rounded the sofa to sit but tripped on her forgotten popcorn bowl.
She hurtled shoulder first onto the sofa’s edge. Popcorn kernels scattered everywhere.
She covered her eyes with an arm and lay on the floor. Her mistake to have left the bowl on the floor during episode re-watch number four before she conked out at one a.m. last night.
Thanks to Skarde, she’d overslept, which meant by the time she got to the hospital Charles had already been discharged.
It took two hours to find him and arrange for the nonprofit that assisted seniors after hospitalization to take him on.
Once that was done, her car battery had died.
She waited hours for the car service to show up and give her a jump.
Val never called, despite Gemma leaving her several voice messages and texts throughout the day. Perhaps she’d gone off on one of her weekend retreats with others in her coven or whatever they called themselves. They danced naked in the mountains for two days and did who knows what else.
She remained prone on the floor and stared at the watermark on her ceiling from the time the toilet in the apartment above hers leaked through.
In moments like this, to relax and forget all the stresses, she excavated a memory from childhood.
It was the view of a field of little purple flowers.
So vivid was the view that she could almost smell the dampness of early morning on the overgrown grass and even hear birds chirping overhead. It soothed her.
For years, she’d tried to find the location of the field and figure out when the memory was from.
She assumed it’d been near a foster parent’s home when she’d been three or four, but even after getting the records of who she’d stayed with at that time, she’d never found any fields resembling the one from her memory.
She envisioned walking through the flowers and touching a few of them.
Although it relaxed her, she could feel kernels of popcorn digging into her back. Back to reality. While vacuuming up popcorn, she stepped on the TV remote. The screen lit up on the DVD home screen. Shocked, she tripped over the vacuum cleaner and landed on her ass.
Two episodes were now available. Yesterday’s and…a new one?
Her hand trembled as she clicked off the vacuum and selected the new episode.
A fictional vampire had spoken to her through the TV last night. That was impossible, but so was a DVD that only played one episode a day.
She texted Val.
Really need to talk. Call ASAP. Please.
It had to be in her head. She must’ve pushed something to somehow hide the other episodes last night.
The dissonant themes of the show commenced. She sat on her coffee table and leaned forward, half suspecting the episode would glitch or the disc would stop working.
Skarde’s image flickered across the screen in the show’s opening sequence.
The three Hunters and Skarde were in a bar or tavern—or whatever they called it in medieval-esque times.
Servers and patrons sneered distrust and hate at the vampire, although they seemed to adore the Hunters.
Skarde never got angry, never made a sudden move, and never did anything to attract attention or warrant the hate.
Instead, he casually lifted his mug of some sort of alcoholic drink to his lips, letting the taste of it wet his tongue before lowering the pint.
Or maybe he was fake drinking. Someone probably poisoned him in the past, making him wary of his drink.
He was a good listener who seemed interested in the conversation of the trio, even sharing information on his firsthand experience with the wizard they planned to visit. They thought the wizard might know more about the crystals Petra wanted.
Poor Skarde. He seemed so tired of his life. She could relate to that sad state.
Wait a second. What had she missed? He’d said something.
But she didn’t dare rewind. The whole episode might disappear if she touched it.
He’d skipped out on his midnight rendezvous with Petra?
That’s what he’d said to the Hunters who now seemed pissed he’d had a chance at getting the crystal from Petra but ditched it.
“The witch knifed me,” he muttered, not that the Hunters cared. “I don’t do witches.”
“That’s right, Petra. He doesn’t want you,” Gemma said out loud. Good for him.
Minutes later, Skarde headed into a dense wet forest alone. The Hunters separated to go to the wizard’s house even though Skarde said he was one hundred percent sure the wizard was in the woods. Why couldn’t the humans believe him or at least stick with him?
She watched in horror as the tricky evil wizard cast a paralysis spell on the vampire. To his credit, Skarde moved cheetah-quick and hit the wizard in the chest with a small knife. A superficial injury, but a direct hit before the spell went into effect.
“No.” Gemma jumped to her feet. The red-haired wizard lunged and sliced Skarde with some sort of fire sword. Skarde, still able to fight the spell, moved enough that the sword only grazed his side.
The wizard’s cackle reminded her of something from a horror movie, but the jagged rotting teeth he flashed on screen were disgusting. That must smell revolting up close.
“Get off your knees,” Gemma yelled. Now it seemed the spell was in full effect.
She moved toward her fifty-inch screen with her hands out as the camera shot slowly zoomed in on Skarde like she might be able to touch him. There was so much pain in the strain on his face. “There’s got to be a way to break the spell. Why aren’t you wearing the hexenspiegel to counteract spells?”
Skarde’s eyes widened as they stared her way. She couldn’t interpret his expression.
Did he hope to die?
“You will not choose to die. Not tonight,” she said out loud, believing in her heart he could hear.
The wizard’s monologue droned on about how he was going to be the one to take down the infamous Skarde.
He boasted about how powerful that would make him.
The bastard might accomplish it, but not because he was better.
The vampire had given up. Perhaps he was tired of everything about his life.
Maybe he was tired of being hated and alone.
“You’re not dying on my watch,” she whispered.
Skarde had dropped his crossbow about ten feet behind the wizard in a place the mage couldn’t see. The vampire needed a partner on these missions, someone to grab the crossbow and shoot this soliloquizing weirdo.
The wizard raised his staff and aimed for the kill shot.
“No!” She pressed both hands on the screen as if doing so might keep her from seeing Skarde’s death.
Something pushed on her from all sides. It wasn’t painful. It felt as if someone had tucked her into bed with the sheets tight.
Then she fell. Fast. Her stomach bottomed out as darkness surrounded her. There was no wind, but she held up her hands and screamed, although it sounded dull.
Was she passing out? Had she whacked her head and put herself into a coma?
Down, down, down she fell until… Boom.
The belly-flop landing knocked the breath out of her.
She pushed to her knees and held up her hands to protect her head, fully expecting to die from her TV crashing down on top of her.
Nothing hit her. Her scrubs-clad legs soaked up wetness from...what? She hadn’t peed herself.
“What stinks?” she muttered, slowly opening her eyes. The stench, way beyond that of moldy wet leaves, reeked of something dead and thoroughly rotten.
Wet mud coated her hands. She shivered as cold wind whipped through her thin scrubs.
She was in the show.
“Impossible.” She pinched herself hard. Wake up.
Nothing happened. Her hands were still muddy. Her butt became increasingly sloshy. The air still stank of something rancid.
She couldn’t be in the show. She didn’t want to be in this show. Things got killed here. It even smelled like death here.
A scream worked its way up her throat.
Skarde’s gray gaze locked onto her.
Holy mother. That was Skarde freaking Blackman. In the flesh. The scream stalled in her throat. All that came out was a garbled wheeze.
The wizard muttered and paced, breaking her staredown with Skarde. She glanced behind her to see a shimmery area—that must be some sort of magical doorway through which she’d fallen.
Run for the shimmer. Get out of the show.
The wizard’s volume increased.
Skarde should be paying attention to whatever the magical man was doing. Instead, he mouthed to her, “Leave.”
Guess his paralysis didn’t apply to his face.
“You think your spell will work?” Skarde asked loudly of the wizard.
The wizard sounded to be in the final phase of whatever kill spell he was about to cast, undaunted by the vampire’s attempt to stall him.
Without thinking, or perhaps with thinking, since she’d already calculated in her mind what someone else—a character actually in the show, not her—was supposed to do, she picked up the wooden crossbow in front of her and pulled the trigger.
The weapon’s wicked kick threw her backward onto her back. The arrow wasn’t on it anymore.
A shriek shredded the air. She pressed her hands tight against her ears.
The wizard landed back-first on the ground with his wrinkled face inches from her foot.
The arrow had impaled his chest. Dark blood spread in a stain across his ratty shirt.
The man’s screeching stopped, but his gaze fixated on her.
His mouth worked as if he were attempting another spell, but blood dribbled between his lips. The wizard’s dark pupils dilated in the death glaze. She’d seen life leave a body more than a few times at the hospital.