Bound (The Grandor Descendant Series Book 3) (30 page)

“No,” Ari cried.

Neither Ryder nor Ari had time to respond; Mark’s body was half way through the air, his fist drawn back and ready to strike Ryder down, with one final blow. Then, just before Mark could reach Ryder, Patrick was there. He raced towards them, his hand held straight out as he caught Mark hard across the throat, gripping onto his head and then flinging his body in an opposite direction. There was an eerie tearing noise, and when Patrick released Mark, his body fell to the ground. Ari didn’t glance down at Mark; her eyes were wide and fixed on Patrick’s hands, from which Mark’s head was dangling.

“Oh Jesus,” Patrick said, flinging the head of his maker away so that it joined the corpse.

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” Ryder cooed, struggling to his feet as he raced to Patrick’s side. “We’re ok. He’s gone now. He’s dead. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

Patrick slumped to his knees and hung his head, saying, “It’s not alright. Don’t you realise what I’ve done?”

“He was evil; he killed your whole family-” Ryder began, but Ari suddenly spoke and both vampires looked at her.

“-he killed his maker… Patrick’s a blood hunter now,” she said.

Chapter 12- The Circle of Thirteen
           

“I don’t understand,” Ragon said half an hour later, when Ari, Patrick and Ryder had told him what had happened.

The four of them were inside Ragon’s room in Cruor halls. At Ragon’s words, both Ryder and Ari had looked up at him, while Patrick sat on the floor, his head in his hands.

“Why wouldn’t you have gotten me to come with you?” asked Ragon.

“There was no time,” Ari said defensively. “What’s done is done. We need to find a way to help Patrick, not worry about the past.”

“Speaking of the past,” Ragon said, “since when do you have visions of the past?”

“I don’t,” Ari began to say, until she stopped herself; clearly she did have visions of the past and not just the past, the way, way before. She had seen Patrick’s family being killed. Patrick was at least a couple of hundred years old; that meant that she had seen back a long way. “Lea, she put a spell on me, one to open my mind up to clairvoyant vibrations. She was hoping that I might be able to see what’s happened to all the missing students. She thought it might help to amplify my powers, so that if I touched something of one of the students which went missing, I would see where they were, if they’re still alive. But I guess I had the premonition of Mark and Patrick’s past instead.”

Ragon was staring at her in disbelief, clearly torn between reprimanding her and discussing her new found power.

“How do you feel?” asked Ryder, reaching a shaking hand out to Patrick.

“Betrayed,” Patrick responded, not looking up, his head still in his hands. “I feel betrayed and stupid.”

“I can ask Lea about the blood hunter curse,” Ari said, reaching for her phone. “Maybe there is a way to-”

“-the only way to stop it is to kill me,” Patrick said dully. “Or transfer the power into someone else.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Ryder said defensively. “Maybe you won’t become a blood hunter. It was an accident after all; it’s not like you set out to destroy Mark for his power.”

Ryder’s eyes were wide and hopeful and he glanced at Ari, who quickly nodded enthusiastically.

“Ryder’s right, there’s no knowing what is going to happen,” she said tentatively.

“If the ancients or James Frater, or any Elder finds out what I have done… I’m dead,” said Patrick. “Blood hunting is punishable by the Final Death Laws.”

“Well, they’re not going to find out,” said Ryder. “The only people who know what happened are in this room and were not going to say anything.”

Ryder glared at Ari and Ragon, as if daring them to challenge him on this.

“Ryder,” Ragon said, moving towards him slowly and placing an arm on his shoulder, “you’re still a young fledgling. There is so much of our world that you don’t understand. Those in power… they have ways of finding these things out. It might be safer for Patrick to leave.”

“No!” Ryder exclaimed, shrugging Ragon away and leaning down so as to sit by Patrick. “Some stupid curse doesn’t define you. You are the most gentle, sweetest person I know. Killing Mark was the right thing to do and you know it. You saved me.”

For the first time Patrick looked up. His eyes were heavy and there were large black bags forming underneath them which glistened with tears.

“Ryder,” Patrick said, smiling lightly, “Ragon is right. You are my blood line. What if I hurt you? How would I live with that?”

“The only way that you could hurt me is if you leave,” said Ryder.

“I’m so sorry,” said Patrick, momentarily staring up at Ryder. “I should have trusted you.”

A long pause followed this proclamation. Then, in an instant, Patrick stood, taking one final longing glance at Ryder, and raced from the room. The shock that followed Patrick’s exit lasted for only a second.

Quickly Ryder moved to follow him but Ragon grabbed onto his wrist, holding him tight as he said, “Let him go.”

Pulling hard, Ryder tried to break away, but Ragon’s grip was too strong.

“I’m going to call Lea,” said Ari, hoping to find out if Patrick was a blood hunter, given the strange circumstances in which he had killed his maker.

After she had tried several times to phone Lea, with no answer, she resolved to send her a text.

“Well, she isn’t answering, but I’ve sent her a message,” she said, moving over to Ryder and hugging him. “Don’t worry. I promise you we will find a way around this. Everything will be alright, you’ll see.”

Ryder nodded valiantly and made to move to the door; he had barely made two strides towards it when Ragon said, “Where are you going?”

“I can’t stay here thinking about Patrick. I need something to distract me,” Ryder replied indifferently. “Maybe I’ll go hunting? Or try out for the hockey team.”

“Just promise me you won’t do anything foolish until we have had a chance to speak with Lea,” Ari said.

“What can I do?” asked Ryder, his hand on the door, “I’m Patrick’s fledgling, not his maker. I can’t find him the same way he can find me.”

With that Ryder left, and Ari shared a long silent glance with Ragon.   

Ari had tried all night to contact Lea, messaging her and calling her constantly, but with no reply. Finally, when it was a little before midnight, Lea wrote her a message.

The dull vibrating nose of Ari’s phone woke her instantly. She struggled against the sheets for a moment, until Ragon finally untangled her and she grabbed her phone. Looking down, Ari read the message from Lea:

‘
Sorry for the late reply. Emily has gone missing. I’ve been with the circle for ages trying to find where she is but we have no idea what’s happened to her. You know as much as I do about the blood hunter curse. The only way to reverse it is to put the power into someone else, and I don’t think it matters how or why a vampire kills their maker, accident or not.
’

Ari frowned.

“What is it?” said Ragon, moving closer to Ari.

“Lea just wrote back. She says that Emily has gone missing.”

“Emily?”

“Yea,” said Ari. “She’s a member of Lea’s circle. She’s the tall girl who attacked you.”

“Oh, yea, her.” 

“And,” Ari added, ignoring Ragon’s indifference, “Lea says that Patrick is a blood hunter, no matter how or why he killed Mark.”

Ragon looked down at the blue sheets of his bed. Another vibrating noise distracted Ari and she reached for her phone again, seeing that Lea had written her another message:

‘Can you come and meet me now?’

Ari looked at Ragon in surprise, saying, “Lea wants me to meet her now.”

Reluctantly Ari got out of bed, throwing on a pair of jeans and one of Ragon’s jumpers. Silently the pair crossed the campus from Cruor halls towards Omega halls, and made their way to the first level where Lea’s room was. When Ari knocked on the door, Lea threw it open almost immediately.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, indicating for the pair to enter.

“What’s up?” asked Ari, looking at Lea sideways.

Lea looked tired. Her eyes were dropped and there were small purple bags underneath them.

“I need your help; you know the spell I put on you, the one to make you open to the future, well-” Lea started to say, but Ari cut her off.

“-yea, it definitely worked,” she said.

“What? How?” asked Lea.

“I didn’t see anything about the students who have gone missing, but I saw Patrick and the death of his family,” Ari supplied. 

“But…” Lea said, her words trailing off in confusion.

“Ari saw the past,” Ragon explained. “That’s why she was messaging you about the blood hunter curse. Patrick killed Mark, his maker, because Ari had a vision of Patrick’s family being murdered by him.”

Lea looked from Ragon and back to Ari, her mouth open in surprise.

“What!” Lea said finally, “That’s, that’s crazy! I have never heard of someone capable of seeing into the past. But, but don’t you see what this means?” Lea looked from Ari to Ragon; both had blank, vague expressions on their faces. “Maybe you could see the past of one of the students that has gone missing? You might be able to tell us exactly what happened to them.”

“I don’t know if-” Ragon started to say, but Lea had already grabbed Ari’s hand and was directed her to sit down at her desk, where a large cardboard box sat waiting.

“-here are some of the possessions of the students that have gone missing,” Lea said quickly, taking out some of the items and handing them to Ari. “Just touch them… maybe we will get lucky and you will see something. This is Emily’s book of light,” Lea added, handing Ari a small leather bound book. “Look, I’m sorry to have called you over here so late but the spell I put on you, it won’t last that long, and if there is a chance that you can help find Emily, well, I really need you to try. The circle… we think that whoever is responsible for the missing students might have taken Emily as well. I really need your help.”

For an hour Ari sat at the table, her legs crossed as she concentrated on the objects in the cardboard box. After failing to have a vision from Emily’s book of spells, she had tried focusing on a gymnastics trophy owned by a girl called Charmaine who went missing four weeks ago, and then a diary owned by a girl called Felicity, all without having the slightest hint of a vision. After focusing for ten minutes on an old jersey owned by a boy called Simon, Ari placed the shirt down in frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Ari said finally; she had started blinking furiously, trying to keep herself awake and remain focused, but it was no good. “I can’t do anything right! This is why I wanted that book of your grans. I am sure that if I could only have someone teach me… or maybe if I could learn more about what it meant to be the Grandor Descendant, maybe I would be able to-”

Ari stopped speaking abruptly when Lea raced to her wardrobe. She swung the wooden doors open and began fumbling inside for something. Finally she retrieved a brown paper wrapped box. There were at least six stamps covering the top right corner of the package, while in the centre, in small cursive writing, was Lea’s name and her address on campus.

“My Gran express posted it to me,” she said excitedly, “I completely forgot.”

“Express posted what?” asked Ragon, straining his eyes as Lea tore away the brown paper to reveal a large old book. 

Lea held out the book for Ari and Ragon to see

“Is this it?” she asked, looking at Ari.

Ari reached out her hands to take the book. The moment her fingertips touched the leather, she let out a scream and quickly withdrew her hand.