Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Is that what you saw in your dream?” Gemma asked Val. “Me turning into a vampire?”
Val shook her head. “I saw Cade imprisoned. That’s it. In the episode the crazy witch eye was saying you will be the one who gets turned, and then something about causing your maker to become all-powerful. I don’t want a vampire walking around who’s immune to the ways we use to kill them.”
“Are you part of a vampire hunter group?” Gemma asked suspiciously. Val seemed pretty confident about her vampire-killing knowledge.
The witch’s cheeks flushed. “I might do more than dance in the woods on the weekend. Forget I said that.” She waved a dismissive hand.
Like hell she’d forget her best friend might be a vampire hunter.
“That witch was talking about you.” She grabbed Gemma’s wrist. “It’s not truth yet. You can prevent it from becoming reality. Don’t go back.”
Could she really not watch the next episode? Could she…give up Skarde?
No. She couldn’t and she wouldn’t. But Val didn’t have to know that.
“Maybe you’re right.” Gemma eyed the disc now sitting next to the laptop, calculating ways to get it back. She lifted it, stared at it, and put it back down. “You think it’ll all disappear like a bad memory if I forget about it?”
Val nibbled on her lip. “I think it’s worth a try.”
“You said it had to be powerful magic to suck me into his world.” She had to go back. She needed to be sure Skarde was okay.
Val glanced quickly at the disc and looked away. She clutched the pink crystal on a chain around her neck.
Without removing her eye on the disc and to distract Val she said, “I put the salt around my apartment. Do you have anything else you recommend I do or burn to get rid of the bad vibes Dylan brought in?”
Val stalked over to a cabinet and pulled out a sage smudge stick.
The moment Val had her back turned, she covertly swapped Skarde’s disc for the one Val had ejected out of her external disc player earlier. Guilt swamped her, but she’d die if she didn’t see the final episode tonight.
“Take this. Sage your place.”
“I did it last month.”
“You should be doing it every single day, not once a month.”
Once home, Gemma checked the disc every hour, through the afternoon into the evening. Had Skarde accepted one of those jobs? Had he faced off with VanFliet? Had he fallen into Petra’s bed?
He wouldn’t be stupid enough to screw the witch. Or would he? Others on the show insinuated the combination of him, boobs, and the offer of sex never seemed to add up to anything but naked time.
Except with her, apparently.
Skarde had denied her, and although she respected him for his restraint, she hated that she didn’t have enough influence over him to get him naked like all the other women in his life.
Then there was the whole crystal thing, which no doubt would climax when the Hunters tried to stop Petra from bringing forth a demon army.
Midnight. One last check before she went to sleep. She seriously had to sleep better tonight.
A new episode appeared on the home screen.
Why had it taken so long to show up? This was well past twenty-four hours.
Even though there was no guarantee of a portal to take her to his side, or a need for her to go over there again, she prepared for a just-in-case situation before settling in to watch. She stuffed things she thought she might need into a backpack.
Ready, she pressed play.
The scene opened in the dark of night. Raining. It looked cold and muddy. Was it ever not raining there?
Her stomach twisted when she recognized Skarde and the Vorche mountains in the background.
What was Skarde doing in dwarf territory? Most areas around it were controlled by…
VanFliet.
Her heart rate kicked up.
Six of VanFliet’s vampires flanked him.
The young vampires were sweating, clearly nervous as they worked up the courage to attack Skarde. Their prey leaned casually against the trunk of a gigantic tree.
Faster than the eye could follow, Skarde was across the wet space, standing behind the young vamps.
He clapped a hand around the shoulders of two, and before they realized what was happening, Skarde had them pinned.
He gripped their necks right at the base of the skull and cleanly removed their heads.
Gross. She wasn’t big on heavy gore or gratuitous blood. But she couldn’t stop watching the blood bath.
The other four fledglings barely realized their comrades were dead before Skarde moved.
He drove his fist into the sternums of two.
Their faces grew purple, eyes panicked. One tried to say something, but Skarde decapitated them in a blink.
The last two vampires ran. Another blink and they were in shredded tatters.
VanFliet cackled from his rocky perch on higher ground. The noise he released wasn’t a laugh, but an inhuman, humorless noise—as if this was all part of his master plan.
Skarde swiped at his forearm and plucked out a small arrow. “A poisoned dwarf dart? That’s cheating, Fliet. This isn’t you.”
“There’s no cheating in victory. This time, I win.” VanFliet did his own super speed move to plunge his knife into Skarde’s chest at least ten times.
“No!” Gemma screamed, but the noise petered out as air stopped moving through her chest.
“There’s no honor in cheating,” Skarde wheezed out as he clutched his chest.
VanFliet pulled him close and whispered something she couldn’t hear. He threw Skarde over the cliff.
He couldn’t be dead. He wouldn’t dare die. She waited for his hands to appear on the edge of the cliff like a great moment in an adventure film. But they didn’t. The seconds ticked by.
VanFliet leaned over the edge. “Try coming back from that before the sun rises in fifteen minutes to ash you into oblivion.”
Gemma released a noise filled with shocked distress.
Despite her horror, she wondered why VanFliet hadn’t decapitated Skarde.
It would’ve killed her on many levels to watch Skarde die, but, for VanFliet, decapitation would guarantee Skarde couldn’t return.
This…well, to die by sunlight would be a painful death, but there were still fifteen minutes before that happened. Fifteen minutes of hope for Gemma.
“Get up,” she ordered.
VanFliet scrutinized his surroundings as if he’d heard her.
The portal might be open. Her heart, already pounding, soared.
She slapped her hand over her mouth to avoid any further sound.
VanFliet ordered one of his vampires, “Sweep the area. I heard something.”
The scene switched to Skarde. He attempted to rise, cradled his head, and fell to his back. His hand gripped the rain slick, muddy cliff in a second attempt to pull himself upright, but he couldn’t get purchase. He wasn’t going to make it up the cliff.
Out loud she whispered, “Come on, be Skarde. Get off your ass and climb before the drug takes you.”
“Can’t do it,” he replied. “Dizzy. Losing blood.”
He had heard her. She’d barely whispered it.
She could either jump into the show and help him up or watch him die. She grabbed her backpack—her first-aid kit might be useful. She’d need rope to get down to him, or maybe to get him up. She didn’t have any lying around. No, wait…
Racing to her bedroom, she grabbed the parachute cord belt she’d bought from the kid down the hall last fall as part of some sort of scout fundraiser. When she returned the show had panned back to the cliff’s edge. Still not sign of him climbing.
Even if she got Skarde up the cliff, she would need something to shield him from the sun.
She snatched the Christmas fleece off her sofa before she touched the screen, which immediately sucked her in.
The travel was a slippery sensation this time with less compression, but there was a whirring inside her head.
It left her wobbly and disoriented upon arrival.
She opened her eyes when she slid on mud.
She was above Skarde, on the edge of the cliff.
A quick grab for a passing tree branch halted her slide toward the rim.
Clinging to the low-hanging branch to anchor herself, she peeked over the edge.
Rain pelted the back of her head as if pushing her to join Skarde.
Damn it, why hadn’t she grabbed a raincoat? Her sweatshirt did nothing but absorb the wet.
He wasn’t that far down, maybe fifteen feet. Still, there was no way she could lean over and help him up. They’d both end up at the bottom of the gulley. She couldn’t make out what lay down there with the rain, but best guess, there’d be a river and rocks—certain death for her.
Skarde stared up from where he lay half on and half off a narrow rocky edge. She couldn’t gauge his consciousness. What she could tell in the moonlight was that there was a lot of blood on his shirt.
She whispered as loud as she dared, “Skarde, are you dead down there?”
“Gemma, go—”
“Don’t you dare say ‘go home.’ You’re going to have to participate in this rescue.”
She tossed her backpack and fleece near the tree.
Unknotting the parachute cord that comprised the belt wasn’t as easy as she thought.
Its selling point, according to the kid she’d gotten it from, was that it could be used in an emergency.
Her fingers slipped on the wet, orange cord as she worked to unravel it.
Skarde called from below, “Not going to last long. Sun’s rising.”
“Doing my best up here,” she yelled. She hoped the cord would reach.
Best to anchor it. She tied it around the tree, silently shooting a thank-you to one of her foster brothers who, even though he’d ended up in a maximum-security prison by the time he was nineteen, taught her about knots and knives.
The cord ended a few feet above Skarde when lowered.
Damn. “Grab the rope. I’ll help pull you up. ”
“That’s not rope. It’s twine.” He didn’t move.
“It’ll hold you. The kid who sold it to me said it’ll hold up to 550 pounds. I figure you weigh two-thirds of that.”