Chapter 83
Prey
Monique was watching me like a lazy cat watches its prey.
I went to the fridge and grabbed another couple of cans of vodka. I decided I should at least attempt some form of peace if we were stuck together until morning.
“I’m watching a movie, if you want to join me?”
“Yes, what a fabulous idea,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Let’s go upstairs paint our nails, drink wine, eat some chocolate. Oh, I know. We can braid each other’s hair.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, Monique, stay downstairs and enjoy your own company.”
“Amy.” She waved her hand with an air of annoyance. “It’s bad enough being stuck here with you, let’s not pretend we like each other.” She turned her back on me and took a big gulp of whiskey. I couldn’t help but notice she had upgraded from wine as a coping mechanism.
I grabbed the knife off the hall table and went to watch another movie.
By the time it ended it was 9 p.m. I’d polished off two more cans of vodka and the stress of the day had given way to a restless buzz.
Georgie had sent selfies of her and Jodie at the bar, drunk, happy, having fun.
I wanted to go. Even if only for an hour to giggle and talk rubbish, to remind myself that the whole world wasn’t dark, nor scary, nor dangerous.
With the Bone Crushers being sorted, the threat faded.
There was no reason I had to stay put. I’d had enough, in my short life, of being controlled, of being told what to do.
I jumped in the shower and got ready, making sure to apply extra makeup to cover my bruised cheek. I surveyed the final results in the mirror. The bruise was safely hidden. I ruffled my hair to the side and forward, allowing loose waves to cascade down as extra insurance.
I grabbed the ring from the bathroom sink and slipped it on.
I hadn’t been anywhere without it since I’d found out what powers lay inside.
The only time it was off was when I trained or sometimes when I was at home.
If I hadn’t had it on last night, maybe I would have felt the danger as soon as I left the supermarket.
Maybe I might have gotten a vision before.
Maybe I could have avoided the whole thing if I had access to my internal, in-built warning system.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. So many maybes to consider, but one fact remained constant, with it on, I was rendered powerless. I pulled it off and tucked it safely in the draw.
Monique sat on the couch with a bored look on her face.
“I’m going to the bar, coming?”
“No, you’re not.” She looked at me stiffly. “Karson will murder us both if we leave.”
“Karson isn’t my boss, and he also isn’t here.
I won’t tell him if you don’t. We can be back before he gets home.
Nothing can happen with you there, and your elite vampire skills.
And I can do a trick or two, although the vodka may hinder me a little.
We go straight to the bar, park out the front, have a couple of drinks and come home. No one will be any the wiser.”
I watched her face as I spoke, it moved from a resolute no, to consideration.
“Or, I guess I could sit on the couch bedside you and we can chat until they get home.” I sat so close our legs touched.
She leaped to her feet like I’d burned her.
“Alright, let’s go. But if you tell Karson I let you leave the house. Never mind Cole, I’ll kill you myself.”
I believed her. I stood up, held up my little finger. “Pinkie-promise. And he’d yell at me too, so our secret is safe.”
She didn’t need to get ready. She was eternally ready.
Always glamorous, a stunning piece of perfection.
Aside from her personality, which could do with an upgrade.
And a few emotions other than sarcasm and bitterness might be handy.
I seriously wanted to wash out all the glue she used to keep her hair pinned so neatly behind her ears and mess it up.
I went to the kitchen and grabbed a couple of vodka cans from the fridge. She was waiting by the door when I emerged. I threw one to her. She caught it effortlessly in one hand.
“You have to drive. I may already be slightly under the influence.”
“Fragiles, two drinks and you’re useless.” Her face held a minuscule amount of pleasure.
“Is that a smile I see on your lips, Monique? Did they just curve upwards, who knew they could even do that?” I teased.
“Shut up, Amy, or you will see them curve around your neck.” She spun and glided out the door, disappearing into the dark.
I pulled the door shut behind me, the cool night air hit my face with a snap. A thick mist obscured the landscape and settled above head height. The tips of the trees looked like they floated on a frothing, endless ocean. Monique had stopped and was scanning the landscape. On full alert.
“You wish you could take a nibble.”
She twisted back and threw me her best cold stare. If it was meant to scare me it had the opposite effect. I giggled. We moved through the fog like apparitions. Well, Monique did, I was a little more heavy footed, poltergeist style, in comparison.
We drove down the drive. The fog was no thinner in the gully, it hovered over the road like a thick, gray carpet.
It was so thick the light of the headlight couldn’t penetrate more than a few metres in front.
But Monique seemed to have no trouble navigating it.
Her sleek boned fingers rested casually against the wheel.
On her mid finger she wore a large ring with an expensive looking blue gem. She drove fast, but competently.
“Does that ring have any powers?” I asked.
She gave me a weird, interested look and glanced at my ringless finger. I realized she knew nothing about my ring. I wondered if I’d made a mistake by telling her. Karson trusted her enough to stay with me, so I figured I should too.
“No, it was a present from an old friend.”
“Boyfriend?”
She didn’t answer. From behind headlights loomed in the distance, falling across the interior of our car and casting light across Monique’s features.
I thought I saw a strange shaft in her eyes, like an icy beacon.
It was disturbing. I stared at her, perplexed and unnerved.
We rounded a corner, the beams faded behind the hill, darkness filled the car once again, and the pinpricks in her eyes were gone.
“Didn’t your mother teach you it’s rude to stare,” she clipped.
“Just trying to work out how much glue you use to keep your curls tamed,” I answered casually.
I looked out the side window. Smothered by fog, the trees, still recovering from the fire, looked skeletal and sickly, grim as a graveyard of ghosts.
A chill rooted itself to my neck. I fingered it abstractly and glanced back.
“You know your hair would look stunning if you let it loose.”
“Thank you for your advice but, given your hair always looks like you just climbed out of bed, you will understand if I ignore it.”
“Didn’t you know messy bed hair is in?”
We hit a straight patch of road and the car behind had gained significantly on us, once again the beams managed to penetrate the car’s interior.
Apprehensively, I glanced across at Monique but there was no sign of the unpleasant chill I thought I’d seen before.
I convinced myself I must’ve imagined it.
As we came into the next straight the car behind revved at full throttle, sounding like the engine was about to blow, pulled to the side, and flew past. It was too dark to see in, but it was a small, old, white sedan, clearly in a rush to get somewhere.
The car swerved in and sped off in front, dissolving into the murky darkness as if the night itself had swallowed it whole.
There was an awkward silence for some time before I spoke again to break the tension.
“Do you like being what you are?”
“Are you trying to bond here? If so, don’t speak. I’m not bonding with a fucking witch.”
“Fair enough, I’m a nice witch, though, on the scale of witches. I’d be like your Tabitha from Bewitched version. You look like you could do with a friend or two, so you know, if you want to talk, we’re sitting here anyway.”
“You handed Ethan a business card to get someone killed, I’m quite certain that upgrades you to a little more Wicked Witch of the West.” She shot me a firm, accusatory, look.
My throat tightened. I’d sent the proverbial telegram to elicit his demise, there was no denying it. But I consoled myself, the Bone Crushers didn’t have to act on it. It would be at their discretion, that the lie I told myself.
“You’re a Wizard of Oz fan. Wow, who knew. I would have picked you to be more of a Silence of the Lambs type of chick.”
She sighed. “How the fuck Karson puts up with you I have no clue.”
“He doesn’t. He left me, remember.” The words squeezed against my heart.
“And yet he keeps saving you,” she muttered bitterly. She stabbed the radio on, music filled the car. She turned up the volume so loud we couldn’t talk.
“That’s rude,” I said.
She smirked and turned it up even louder.
I thought about Karson.
I always thought about Karson. Every time I thought of him, or specifically the loss of him, a tendril in my heart snapped.
The road was deserted. The woods seemed desolate.
I watched the fog smother everything, even the darkness couldn’t escape its gloomy clutches.
Like some visual metaphor was purposely sent to shape my mind, a profound revelation flared.
If I was the darkness, Karson was the fog.
I might have long moments of respite but while I remained here he’d come back, again and again, wrap his mist around my soul, seep into my heart, rush through my veins, filling every part of me until there was nothing left but him, and then disappear again. Leaving me distraught and empty.
I can’t do it. I’d had enough of people walking out of my life.
I had to take charge. I had to leave Church Heights if I was to feel like I had some type of power over my own life.
If I stayed I was guaranteed more pain. I could train anywhere and come back when it was required.
I’d pack my bags as soon as I got home and leave in the early break of dawn while they slept, before Ethan could change my mind.
The thought of leaving everyone I loved was gut-wrenching.
I’d come to this town a few short months ago, alone and broken, on the wistful hope that this was the place to start again.
For a moment, a flickering moment in time, it was perfect and wonderful, but I lost that.
Perhaps I was destined to always lose that.
Destined to be alone. My life up to this point, all those people who threw me to the curb, were merely preparing me for it.
I’d leave as I’d come, alone and broken, but changed, stronger.
Yet, mercilessly, still not strong enough.
But for my own sanity it had to be done.
I’d always love him. Maybe when I came back next I could face him without feeling pain and searing emptiness; although, instinctively, I doubted it.
The sign sprung to my mind, like a name you’d forgotten at the time but which springs up out of the blue later on.
A place of no return.
I moved my eyes back to the road. Over a bank there was something white and solid, much thicker and sharper than fog up ahead.
I squinted into the dark. We drove closer, our headlights torched the night.
I realized what it was. My heart leaped and began to boom in my chest. The back end of the white car emerged from the mist. Its headlights shot forward, sending a frozen, pale wash into a graveyard of gray.
It’d slammed into a tree. The windscreen was smashed.
The bonnet was caved in, the middle pushed back.
It was a small car without much leg room even before the bonnet had crumbled up. Someone would be seriously injured.
“Stop the car,” I cried out. Monique stabbed the music off and slowed, but she didn’t stop. We drove past slowly, our heads twisted to the wreckage like morbid observers. A driver was slumped over the wheel.
We drove past.
“Monique, stop the car right now,” I yelled. The engine died and the car stopped abruptly. Monique pumped the accelerator three times with a thud, thud, thud. The car didn’t move. Did I just stop the car? I had no time to think about it, I got out and ran toward the wreckage.
“Amy, no. Stop. It could be a trap,” Monique called out.
“Call 911, the driver’s hurt.”
Monique grabbed my arm, wrenching me to a stop, not even two steps from the car.
“Wait in the car, lock the doors, I’ll check it out,” she snapped.
She disappeared like a spirit into the fog. I didn’t go back to the car. I didn’t completely trust Monique to help. They’d be bleeding and I didn’t know her well enough to know how she’d respond.
The fizz of leaking radiator water cooling in the mist and a ticking from the engine were the only sounds. No owl hooted, not even crickets chirped tonight. They were silent, as if even the forest held its breath.
The mist swirled and writhed as if it was partaking in a sacrificial dance. There was no wind to drive it . . . it was almost as if it was alive. Fear began to creep through my veins, filling me softly. Chilling my skin.
It is said Hialeah’s ghost haunts the mountains.
I was being foolish, a ghost didn’t cause the car crash. The driver was speeding.
Run.
I couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong. I turned a slow circle. My mouth dried. I couldn’t see anyone but I felt it, a cold prickle across the nape of my neck. The feeling of eyes on me. We were not alone. A tsunami swept down my spine.
“Monique,” I croaked.
Run.
“Get back to the car,” Monique shrieked.
A whip of wind fluttered past my ears. There were three quick snapping sounds.
Monique’s shape appeared from the white mist. She began to stagger, as if she were blind drunk onboard a swaying vessel.
Her hand shook as she reached for three darts poking from the side of her neck. She hit the ground hard.
I cried out her name as a sharp sting bit into my neck. My mind swarmed, red noise filled my ears, darkness rushed and lunged all around me. A whimper spilled from my mouth. The world spun on a clock face. I felt myself tumbling as the crippling darkness invaded my mind.