21. Emily
21
EMILY
A scream tried to rip from my throat, but it rebounded against the wedge of nothingness in my mouth. Please! Please, somebody help me!
Yulia tilted her head to one side, a vicious smile toying with the corners of her lips. “I know this must be terrifying for you, darling,” she said. “But it will be over soon. Once you are dead?—”
A bang sounded, and I caught a glimpse of Yulia’s shocked face before I dropped to the ground. I landed heavily on the tiled floor, the impact knocking me senseless for a moment.
I rose and found Michael standing in the bathroom. Yulia glared at him, her teeth bared, and— Her teeth! They were fangs. Actual fangs.
She sped toward Michael, and he dodged her attack as if he’d seen it coming, even though she was lightning fast. He darted left and then right, and then brought out a wooden spike from a loop on his belt.
“You think you can defeat me, petty mortal Hunter? You think that?— ”
Michael stepped toward Yulia and rammed the stake through the left side of her chest. “Too much talking, too little fighting.”
She crumpled in on herself, slowly morphing and dissolving. A cloud of ash rose where she’d died, and the stake clattered to the tiles, where Michael retrieved it. He blew ash off the end.
I coughed and spluttered, pressing myself backward against the bathroom wall, my eyes wide.
Michael dropped to his haunches in front of me. “Come on, Em, we have to go.”
“How did you?—?”
“No time to explain now. There will be more of them. We need to get you back to my apartment. It’s safe.” He put out his hand.
I took it, and we darted out of the bathroom together.
I was still in shock when we arrived back at the apartment.
A vampire. A real vampire. I couldn’t be imagining it. And Michael had stuck a stake right through its heart and killed it. That had been real too?
“How is any of this happening, Mike? What the hell is going on?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” he sighed, and came over with two mugs. He set one on the coffee table in his comfy apartment. “Drink it. It’s hot chocolate. It will make you feel better.”
“I doubt it. I just watched a woman turn into a cloud of dust. And there was the whole part where she smelled me and tried to kill me right before that.”
“She smelled you?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it’s worse than I thought. You’re giving off an aura that attracts vampires,” Mike said, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. He was so relaxed that it made the situation even more bizarre. “I don’t know what happened to cause it, but here we are. ”
“Uh, you’re going to have to explain this in more detail. How did you even?—”
“Stake her through the heart?” he asked. “Yeah, that’s because I’m a vampire Hunter. I come from a long line of them. Look, Em, I know this is a lot, but I’m going to do my best to explain. There are vampires, werewolves, and Hunters.”
“Werewolves!”
“That’s right. It’s my job to make sure they never cross the line and kill humans. I’ve noticed a lot of vampire activity around our apartment building of late, and I’ve been looking out for you from afar.”
“And these vampires want me because I’m giving off an aura,” I said.
“They wanted you before then,” he said. “But it’s worse now.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “I’ve never experienced anything that could …” But I trailed off, flashes of my time with Alex coming back to me.
“That’s right,” Mike said. “He’s exactly what you think he is.”
“That’s … That’s impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. His name is Alexander Knight, and he’s a vampire. A part of the United Covens. It’s the only reason I haven’t yet staked him through the heart, even though my superiors would want me to. I can’t risk upsetting the tenuous balance in the city.”
I was at a loss for words. Alex, my Alex, was a vampire? He was … How? Why? But it made sense. He’d appeared out of nowhere and saved me. He’d disappeared just as easily, and he’d been completely intoxicating.
And I could swear that there was something I’d read recently that?—
“I’m sorry, Em, but he’s been using you.”
“No. I don’t— Why would he be using me? Look, this is a lot. Like, too much. What use would any vampire have for me.” I’m actually saying the word vampire .
“He wanted something from you,” he said. “I’m assuming it wasn’t blood. Has he bitten you?”
“No, he’s never bitten me,” I said. “And I’m sure I would have known if he was a vampire?” But the defense sounded weak, even to my ears. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Wouldn’t he?” Mike asked. “Where’s the book, Emily?”
“What book?”
“The book that you’ve been keeping in your apartment. The one from the library that you told us about. The diary of a French nobleman who believed in vampires?”
The memory came crashing into the front of my mind, and I sucked in a breath. The book. How on earth had I forgotten it so easily? I’d been convinced that the book had been making me sick, and I’d told Mike, and he’d basically told me that I was lying.
“But I said the book was evil or cursed. You told me I was crazy.”
“I couldn’t let you know that I knew the truth, Em,” Mike said. “I wanted to tell you, but telling you would mean breaking the vows that I took. The only way I could reveal the truth about who I was to you was to save you like I did today. You know that vampires are real now, and that means I can tell you what I am.”
“You still lied to me.”
“I had to lie to you. If I hadn’t, things would have been much worse. What would you have done if I’d told you that Alexander was a vampire?”
“I don’t know.”
“You would have either called me crazy or, worse, you would have believed me.”
“How is that worse?” I asked.
“Because if you believed me and confronted him, he would have dropped the act and killed you. All he wanted was the book.”
“No. He cares for me.”
“He’s a vampire. They’re soulless. He doesn’t care about you. He was just doing whatever it took to get what he wanted.”
But what had happened between us had seemed so real. So perfect. I’d felt as if he adored me, as if he couldn’t get enough of being around me. “He cares for me.”
“No, Emily, I’m sorry.” Mike’s words were firm. “He doesn’t care for you like that. He only wants what he wants. He was using you. If you don’t believe me, go next door and see if you can find that book.”
“What—?”
“That book that made you sick,” Mike said. “It’s cursed. And it has put that curse on you. It’s going to kill you if you can’t figure out how to break the curse, and he’s taken it to give it back to his coven. Do you know what that means, Em? He’s chosen himself over your life. You’re going to die because of him.”
I pressed my hand to my forehead. “I—No. How is that possible? The book is actually cursed?”
“Yes,” Mike urged, reaching over and taking the cooling mug of hot cocoa from my hands. He put it on the coffee table. “Look at me, Em. I know this is difficult for you to absorb right now, but it’s true. He used you. Come with me, and I’ll show you that it’s true.”
Mike rose, and I followed him out of his apartment and to mine next door. He produced a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
“What the hell, Mike? You have a key to my apartment?”
“Just in case you needed me,” he said, shrugging. “There was a vampire hanging around you, Em. Did you expect me to hang back and let everything happen? I had to keep you safe. Ugh.”
“What?”
“This place reeks of vampire magic,” he said. “Where did you leave the book?”
I cast my mind back, finding it difficult now that I was feeling better. “On the coffee table, I think.” I walked over to it, but the book wasn’t there.
It wasn’t in my bedroom either. Or in Morgan’s. Or in the kitchen or bathroom.
“It’s gone,” I whispered. “It’s actually gone.”
“He took it to give it to them,” Mike said. “And he doesn’t care if you live or die. ”
I swayed on the spot, and Michael helped me sit down.
“Here’s the tricky part,” he said. “We’ve got to get that book back. It’s the only way to save you.”
“But how?” I asked, still not able to get over the fact that it was gone. That Mike was right.
Alexander had taken it, and I was connected to it somehow. Memories of working with the book came back to me, trickling in now that I’d remembered its existence. Like it had been completely unlocked.
I had read the book, translated it, and I had suffered from those strange nightmares.
“Em?”
I met Mike’s gaze. “Yeah?”
“You weren’t listening to me. You were somewhere else.”
“What do we do, Mike? What do I do?” I asked.
“We have to get the book back. I need to think about it, maybe talk to my superiors. They might be able to talk to the elders who head up the U.C. and discuss the curse. The U.C. are meant to be this humanitarian coven that cares about humans.” Mike scoffed as if he thought that was ridiculous.
“But Alexander’s a part of that coven, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“So that means that he doesn’t want humans dead. He?—”
“What does it matter whether he wants humans dead? He betrayed you, Em. He took the book, and he’d do it again to save his own skin and do what his task masters say. I told you to stay away from him, didn’t I?”
I palmed my face, hot tears gathering in my eyes. This was beyond embarrassing. I’d thought that he … that he loved me. That I was special to him like he was to me, and after last night, I’d been certain that was true.
“You didn’t tell me anything real,” I said. “You lied to me too.”
“I had to,” Mike said. “I had to, can’t you understand that? I had to do what was necessary to protect you. ”
“And how do you know that Alex wasn’t doing that?”
“You think that him taking the book away from you, when it’s going to kill you by being far away, means he’s protecting you?”
I didn’t want to talk about it any more. I covered my eyes with my hands and rubbed the tears away, trying to find something that made sense in all of this mess.
Mike touched my shoulder, and I jolted on the spot. “It’s okay, Em. I’m here with you, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you, all right?”
I nodded, even though I still couldn’t believe any of this was happening. “How did this all start?”
“Start? It’s always been like this for me,” Mike said, and helped me toward the door.
I pulled free of his grasp. “What do you mean?” I was feeling well enough to stand and walk. “From the start?”
“I was raised by a family of monster Hunters,” he said. “We take care of everything paranormal, but we specialize in vampire hunting. There’s more to the world than just vampires, though. Werewolves, ghosts, demons.” Mike opened the door, checked the coast was clear, then quickly shuttled me down the hall and into his apartment. “Curses and magic.”
“This is a lot to take in.”
“I know, but it’s not like you have a choice any more, Em. You have to accept it because it’s real, and it’s dangerous.” He shut the door behind us and locked it. “For now, I think you should stay here with me until I can get hold of my superiors and figure out what next steps we should take. It’s safe here.”
But I was starting to wonder if anywhere was safe for me.