41. Janie
Chapter 41
Janie
W e fell out of the shadow void into my apartment. Tana—usually bright and cheery Tana—stood in my apartment in shock. I ran to her and hugged her. Her body stiffened with the touch and pushed me away.
“Janie, what happened?” she whispered.
“We saved you,” I replied.
She looked around, shaking. “How’d we get into your apartment?”
She’s going into shock. My eyes darted over her wounds and bruises. Tana needed help, but how could I help her? There was movement on the side of me and I saw Meical in human form step out of the shadows. “She needs help and care. How do we do that?”
Meical frowned. “I’ll have to call a witch to help. There are magic-based doctors we can use. I told you about them. They will fix her. They know what to do when humans touch the paranormal.”
“Can you call them? Now?!” I said that too harshly. I was panicking and trying to hold it together .
“Yeah,” he said as he turned away from us. There was a knock on the door, and Urien stepped into the apartment. Blood covered his shirt and Tana screamed. Urien and Meical winced. Meical slid into a shadow as I ran to Tana.
“Urien is good. He’s good!” I screamed.
She pushed away from me and crumpled to the floor. “He’s covered in blood! I saw him kill him!”
Kneeling, I shook her. I didn’t think this was the right thing to do, but I was panicking. “He was about to kill you! Urien helped save you!”
She stopped, her face frozen in fear. “Is he a vampire?” she whispered.
“Yeah, he is.”
Tana jumped up and darted to the door. Before I could grab her, the shadows covered the door, and a strange woman stepped out. Her hand extended in front of her and she blew sparkly dust into Tana’s face. Tana stumbled and fell to the ground. Tendrils caught her before she hit the floor and the woman waved her hands. Tana’s limp body levitated in the air as the woman looked at Meical.
“I can take her home and help her heal. We have magical doctors and we can sort this out for you.”
Meical frowned. “Can you promise my safety? I wouldn’t have pulled you through the shadows if it wasn’t an emergency.”
Emotions shifted over her face. “Did you kill a murderer?”
He nodded.
She nodded. “Then I don’t see any reason to alert any sort of hunters. Although I heard the granddaughter of Jonathon the hunter is nearby. She sometimes pops in when her anxiety is too much. You can take that as a threat or a warning. Whatever you want. ”
“No hunters. I can open the shadows for you again. Get her help quicker.”
The woman nodded as another shadow void appeared. She walked through with the floating body of Tana behind her. I looked up at Meical. “Who was that?”
“It was a witch I could find through the shadows. The person I tried to call didn’t answer. I figured they could find someone I could trust, but we didn’t have enough time.”
Urien came out of my room with Meical’s clothes on. “Can you eat the clothes?”
Meical nodded. I assumed in the bedroom there was a void consuming the bloody clothes.
“Is Tana going to be okay?” I asked.
“She probably has some healing to do. We have all sorts of witches and para doctors that can help her,” he replied.
I stepped closer to Meical. “What about your safety? She probably lost her job. I’m so worried for her.”
“I . . . we can only hope that no one will call the hunters. What she said . . . that could be bad. There is a human hunter family. Rare gifts to hunt my kind.”
“How many of your kind are around?”
“I . . . don’t know. I lost connection with a lot of my kind. We have to exist, in smaller numbers, because we can thrive in the shadows?—”
“Like you did?”
“Yes. The hunters have had their ways to kill us, but they can’t get all of us.” A shadow crept up my ankle, twining and tightening around my leg. Was this a fear and anxiety response?
Urien cleared his throat. “I’m going to the vampires and telling them that the human worry has been eliminated. I can use my connections to fix the mess. Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I can check in on the girl.”
I shifted my weight onto my other hip as I twisted to look at him. “She screamed when she saw you.”
He waved to his shirt. “I was covered in her would-be killer’s blood. What was she supposed to do?” He rolled his eyes. “Ugh. That was a nice shirt, too. Why didn’t we plan this better?”
I frowned and crossed my arms. “Yeah, why did it all go wrong? I know I was bait, but was that the way it was supposed to happen?”
Meical winced, and another tendril wrapped around my other leg. “This wasn’t the plan. We never figured it was the brother of one date. I’ve looked through all of his history and . . . it’s something. A mixture of anger, jealousy, and a strange sense of protectiveness. He was the killer. He’d stalk every girl his brother tried to date over the last year and his brother doesn’t know. I’m not omnipotent. I couldn’t see or taste what his brother did. He didn’t know.”
Urien looked up from his phone. “Welp, I have a friend in that town. A cop. He’s gonna deal with this.”
“What is he?”
Urien chuckled. “You don’t want to know. There are scary things just like Meical that are rare and dark. There’s a para in most forces. Gotta be. We have to clean up the messes of half-breeds and whatever fallout there is between feuds,” Urien replied with a wave. “I’ll leave you guys alone. See ya later, Janie.”
Urien stepped out of the apartment, and I was alone with Meical again. The human shimmered away, and the monster loomed over me. “I’m sorry it came to that point. It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he whispered as his hand caressed my cheek.
“Did you hear me hiss and kick at the shadows?”
He smiled, his fangs glinting in the light. The bulb blinked rapidly, and he glanced at it. “I’ll have to get a charm for that.”
“Well?”
He chuckled as another shadow wrapped around my torso. “That was a nice thrill to hear you asking for me. I can give you so much and I want to hear you moan my name and ask for me when you’re scared, sad, happy, everything. I want to give you the world.”
“Why’d you let me get taken?” I whispered. “I worried . . .”
He shook his head. “I needed you there to guide me. We saved your friend and— “ A tendril touched the cut on my arm that was scabbing over. “I hope I made it in time.”
As I turned away from him, I couldn’t help the hurt expression on my face. “I don’t think that I will have as much damage as Tana will have. I was lucky.”
“We put you in that spot. We screwed up.”
“I started investigating it on my own. I don’t think I could have saved her on my own. Remember? I tried to do this on myself.”
The fanged smile caused my heart to race more. “So, have I earned your forgiveness yet?”
I sighed. “I need more groveling.”
His tentacles pushed me against him, and my hips surged upwards. I naturally wrapped my legs around his waist and his lips crashed into mine.
“I love you, Janie. I have since the moment you lit up my life.”