2 Whispering (20 page)

“We can’t get away from him in the woods,” Paris panted when we hit the tree line.

“We don’t have a lot of choice.”

“We could run back to campus.”

“It’s too open. He would have no trouble picking us off. At least this way, we can hide.”

“Do you really think that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s a theory.”

We weren’t in the woods very long before I realized what a mistake I had made. Because of the darkness, Paris and I had to pick our way through the underbrush – and we weren’t making very good time.

“He’s going to kill us,” Paris said grimly.

“He’s going to try,” I said. “We’re not going to let him.”

“Those are bold words.”

“Adrenaline.”

I heard something shuffle in the underbrush behind us. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw a dark figure moving in the trees several paces back. I pushed Paris forward in desperation.

We ran for a few more minutes – but I could always hear Zach’s slow and methodical steps behind us. I realized that he wasn’t trying to catch us. I grabbed Paris’ arm to still her for a second.

“He’s right behind us,” she hissed.

“He’s herding us.”

“Where?”

“The burial clearing.”

“What burial clearing?”

I realized I hadn’t told Paris about the clearing. The night we had found it was the same night the Mike and Laura situation had blown up. I certainly didn’t have time to tell her now.

“We have to get out of these woods,” I said finally. “I called Aric on my phone when we were on the bluff. I’m hoping he’s on his way here. Maybe we can find him if we can get out of the woods.”

“I didn’t see you call him,” Paris said.

“I pocket dialed him.”

“How do you know he knows where we are?”

“I don’t,” I said soberly. “We just don’t have a lot of options.”

“Do you even know which way is out now?”

“No,” I admitted.

I looked around the woods wearily. “Come on.”

We walked for another few minutes, stopping every few minutes to listen. Zach was still behind us, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to catch up. I didn’t like that at all.

Finally, I thought I saw some moonlight through the trees. With a burst of speed I didn’t know I had, I pulled Paris through the tree line – expecting to find at least a glimpse of the campus we could recognize. We didn’t stumble onto campus, though. Instead, we found ourselves in the burial circle.

Crap.

“Where are we?” Paris’ voice was shaky.

“Exactly where we don’t want to be,” I said grimly.

“You’ve been here before?”

“This is where Rafael took me the night of the party at Mike’s.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We had other things going on.”

Paris glanced around the clearing. The moonlight filtered through the tree branches above, giving the area an eerie quality. The fog that was beginning to pool wasn’t helping either. “What are the mounds?”

“Graves.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” Paris looked dumbfounded.

“We did. The police claimed they couldn’t find it.”

“That’s because it’s protected by a spell,” Zach’s voice said from behind us. “Only supernatural beings can even see it. Which begs the question . . . what are you?”

“I told you, I’m just a regular person.”

“That’s impossible.” Zach shifted his gaze to Paris. “And what are you?”

“I’m a Pisces,” Paris said nervously.

“That wasn’t cute when Zoe did it. It’s flat out ugly on you,” Zach said irritably. “I’m going to ask you again, Paris, what are you?”

“I’m a witch,” she said finally.

Zach rolled the thought through his mind. “That actually makes sense. You’re an earth witch, aren’t you? You have that whole Wiccan hippie thing going on.” Zach turned to me. “Is that what you are? A witch?”

“I don’t know how many different ways to tell you, I’m just a person.”

“You’re not just a person. I am starting to believe that you’re oblivious to your true nature, though.”

“And what is my true nature?’

“I don’t know,” Zach said, taking a step towards me. “But I can’t wait to find out.”

Zach’s hand shot out quickly and grabbed my arm. I gasped when I saw his nails had started to elongate into blackened talons that were digging into my skin.

I tried to wrench away, but he was too strong. His growing fingernails dug into the soft skin on the underside of my wrist and he was starting to draw blood. I kept pulling away from Zach, but it was doing no good. Paris starting hitting Zach around his head, smacking the crap out of him in an effort to get him to release me.

“Oomph,” Zach inhaled when she landed a particularly vicious blow. He loosened his grip on my wrist, allowing me to slip my hand out of his. I stumbled backwards and the momentum I had from suddenly getting free caused me to tumble onto my back.

“Get up!” Paris was at my side pulling at me.

Zach had regained his senses and he was now glaring at the two of us. “This is why I never kill two people at the same time. It’s such a pain.”

“No, you can’t do anything in even increments,” I countered. “You’re like some OCD freak.”

Zach considered the statement. “That’s an interesting observation. I’ll have to give that some thought.”

“Great, you psycho, you do that.”

Zach sighed dramatically. “This would be so much easier on you if you didn’t fight it, Zoe.”

“You mean it would be easier on you. What a stupid thing to say,” I spat out. “Is that what you told the others before you killed them? Is that what you told Lisa?”

“Lisa,” Zach furrowed his brow. “How could you possibly know about Lisa?”

“She’s haunting Barnes Hall,” I said. I was just stalling at this point, trying to keep his attention on talking instead of killing. I needed time to form a new plan.

“Really? Is that what you were doing there that night? Talking to a ghost?’

“Yes.”

“How does she look?” The question took me by surprise.

“Like a ghost.”

“She was pretty attractive, if I remember right. She had a sweet disposition. She didn’t put up a fight at all.”

“Congratulations,” I said wryly.

“She told you I killed her?” Zach asked. “If you knew then, why didn’t you say something? Call the police?”

“She didn’t remember,” I said honestly. “All she remembered was everything going black.”

“That’s probably a defense mechanism,” Zach said pragmatically. “She didn’t want to believe she was dead, so she forgot how she died.”

“How did she die?”

“Pretty much how you would expect,” Zach said, his voice flat. He really had no emotion about what he had done. “She was alone in the hallway. Everyone else was gone. I wasn’t actually planning on hunting that night, but I couldn’t pass her up. I needed one more before the Christmas break, and she fit the bill.”

“So why did you kill five back then and only three so far this year?”

“I always kill five,” Zach said.

“Every year?”

“No, I’m not here every year,” he said. “That would be tedious. I only have to feed every few decades. It’s kind of nice. When I do have to feed, though, I have a specific timetable to work with.”

“What’s the timetable?”

“Four months.”

“And you need five  . . . life forces?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Time has no meaning for me,” Zach waved off the question.

“But you came from Greece, right?”

“Actually, I came from the Middle East. I was born in Iran in 1841.” Zach seemed to relish telling his story – so I let him. I was still trying to formulate a plan that would get Paris and me out of this situation alive. I wasn’t having a lot of luck.

“My family were farm people,” Zach said. “They were simple people, but they were good people. One night, when I was sixteen years old, our farm was overrun by a nest of vampires.

“Of course, I didn’t realize what they were right away,” he continued. “I had no idea vampires were real. I thought they were just the stuff of nightmares my mother used to tell me about when she wanted me to behave. They slaughtered everyone there. They thought I was dead, but my uncle found me two days later – just this side of death.”

“That’s terrible,” Paris murmured.

“It took me a long time to recover. Medicine wasn’t very good back then. No one thought I would survive, but vengeance is a great equalizer. It gave me the strength I needed to get well again. Having my life wasn’t enough, though. I wanted revenge on those that had taken my family from me. So I started doing research.

“You might not realize this,” Zach said, shifting so he could lean on a fallen tree for support to make himself more comfortable. “But most supernaturals are born, not made. Vampires make each other, but there was still a source at one point. I tried to figure out what that source was – but it was a fruitless endeavor. If anyone knew, they weren’t going to tell me.

“I became obsessed with making myself stronger, a supernatural, so I could fight the killers of my family. I wasn’t having a lot of luck, until my uncle introduced me to a Greek patriot from Santorini who was at his house for a visit. He was the one that told me about sphinxes. I think he thought we were just interested in the mythology – but we wanted so much more.

“We decided that, if we were going to do this, we would have to go to Greece ourselves. So my uncle sold his farm and we used the money to travel. It took us months to even get there – and once we were there, it took forever to actually find someone that could help us.

“Finally, though, when I was twenty, we got a piece of luck. The villagers in the hills of Santorini were talking about a magical shaman that was as old as the hills – and evil incarnate. They said he was killing villagers to prolong his own life. My uncle and I knew what he was when we heard the villagers talking, so we found him.”

Zach paused in his storytelling and fixed his gaze on me.

“I convinced the shaman that I was worthy of the gift of immortality, so he told me the secrets of everlasting life.”

“How did you convince the shaman?” I knew the answer to the question, but I wanted Zach to admit it.

“I procured village girls for his own longevity,” Zach said. “Even then, the women loved me.”

I wanted to throw up all over his smug little face.

“So, after he told me, I started to procure my own first five victims. Unfortunately, the villagers were rallying amongst themselves because  so many girls were going missing. They came for us one night – on a night when I still needed one more life force to finish the transformation – so I had to improvise.”

“You killed your own uncle,” I supplied for him.

Zach smiled at me. “I did. And my transformation was complete. Then I left the shaman to his angry villagers and I fled into the night.”

“Very brave of you.”

Zach ignored the barb. “I returned to my home after that, convinced that I could find the vampire tribe that had killed my family. I followed them through the Middle East and Europe for years – picking off vampires when I could, which wasn’t very often. Finally, I followed them across the ocean to America.

“Once here, I lost their trail for almost a century. I had convinced myself that vengeance would never be mine, but then I found another trail – one that led me here.

“Did you get your vengeance?”

“I did,” Zach laughed evilly. “You should have seen the face of the head vampire when I caught him unaware and alone one evening when he was about to go underground. I knew I couldn’t beat him with straight force, but I just had to distract him until the day could claim him – and that’s exactly what I did. I only wish they had cell phones with cameras back then, I would like to replay his screams as he burned over and over again.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that you’re doing exactly what the vampires did to you? They fed on your family to prolong their lives and now you’re feeding on others to prolong your life. You got your revenge, why do you continue to do this?”

“That’s simple,” Zach said, shrugging absently. “I’m not ready to die.”

“Doesn’t it bother you? Killing others?” I tried to appeal to his sense of morality. I was pretty sure, though, whatever morals he had once possessed were long gone.

“You would think it would, wouldn’t you? And yet, it doesn’t.”

“What happens if you don’t get your five life forces? Do you die?” I could only hope.

“I would die, yes. That’s not going to happen, though.”

“Even with Paris and me, you’re still short a life force because of the body you left on campus,” I reminded him. “That wasn’t a smart move, by the way.”

“Yes, well I couldn’t be seen carting a body around, now could I? You were already suspicious. I thought I could go back the next night but every time I went to try and get her someone else was there.”