Dark Moors (THE TWO VAMPIRES, #4) (15 page)

Daniel spotted the witch approaching the cottage, her long hair tied back; she looked prepared; ready to fight.  It had of course occurred to him that this Sarah might have created this trap in the first place; they still did not know that she was not working for the
sorcerer, so he did not drop his guard, or relax, when he saw her.  He clenched his jaw, preparing himself in case she should subject them to any kind of new attack.

He caught her eye and waved, not sure how she would respond.  She waved back, but then her eyes widened
and she scanned the exterior of the cottage.  The witch stepped back and stood there thinking, not approaching.

‘Sarah,’ Daniel called gently, ‘the other Sarah is outside.’

‘She came?’ Sarah said as she hurried to his side and took his hand.

Daniel watched, amused
again by her behavior, as Sarah peered around his side and out of the window to get a glimpse of her new friend.  He held onto her protectively, just in case.

Daniel could sense that the witch was using magic, but her magic felt totally different from his, like her
power originated from a different source.  Her lips were moving and her eyes like slits, Daniel imagined she was muttering some kind of incantations.

His Sarah looked up at him questioningly, and he shrugged, he had no idea if the witch would succeed in breaking the spell put upon their cottage, the one that was keeping them inside – or if she was in fact reinforcing the spell that was already there.

As he looked back at the witch Daniel witnessed a smug smile tug at her lips, and she began to approach their front door.  Daniel, Sarah at his side, her fingers crossed behind her back, approached their door from the inside.  Daniel tugged at the handle and it opened, revealing a woman on the other side who was trying not to appear too elated at her success.

Daniel’s Sarah stepped out
through the door and flung her arms around her, ‘Thankyou so much,’ she said, ‘we are SO glad you came.’

‘I bet you are,’ said the witch.

‘Come in,’ Daniel said, extending his arm in welcome.

‘I would
- but I think we should go to the stone circle now - the moon is rising and we don’t want to miss our opportunity to stop this thing,’ she said, all smugness gone from her voice.

‘Yes, alright,’ Daniel said.

He saw that Sarah had sprinted back into the house and was pulling on her knee high brown boots.  He grabbed his leather jacket off the back of a chair and shrugged it over his shoulders, before donning his own boots and stepping out into the night with two Sarah’s to keep him company in this fight.

His Sarah took his hand and said, ‘We’ll probably get there and nothing will happen
, it’s probably some kind of ruse and we’ll all be laughing at ourselves.’

Daniel squeezed her hand as the witch replied, ‘I’d wonder the same if it weren’t for the fact you two were trapped in that house by a very strong spell – I
take it it wasn’t self-inflicted?’ she said raising her eyebrows questioningly.

Sarah shook
her head and giggled nervously.  Daniel suspected she knew in her heart what they were in for, and wondered if she felt the same horrible sense of foreboding that was playing with his spine.  He suppressed a shiver, not wanting to betray his weakness.

The three of them strode onto the moor.  The sky was clear and the night was brightly illuminated by the full moon which was glowing largel
y above them.  They walked, still in their human forms, for Daniel did not know if the witch was able to transform, and still thought it was best to be careful and not reveal all of their capabilities at once.  The witch had already outshone him in the magic stakes; she was obviously a powerful ally, if not an enemy.

Their path wound around, avoiding stone and marsh, scented by tiny flowers on the prickly gorse
that they traversed, until they were reaching the top of the tor that preceded their route to the circle where they suspected the ritual would be occurring this night.

Daniel slowed, his heart thudding in his chest, and pulled Sarah behind the ston
es that topped the tor so they would not be seen if there was anyone in the stone circle below.  The witch stayed close to Sarah’s side and all three of them peered around the side of the stone, to see what they could see.

Nothing.
  The stone circle was empty.  The night was silent.

Daniel’s heart rate slowed and he took a deep breath – what had he expected – to go storming down there and stop the ritual
right that second?

‘I guess we wait,’ muttered the witch, and made
herself comfy on a slab of granite, hidden from view from the stone circle, and sheltered from the wind.

He and Sarah moved in close and sat down too.  Sarah held onto his hand tightly, and he
swiveled it around her back so he could hold her to him while they waited.

‘I wonder how long…’ Sarah began, but then fell silent, listening out for any sounds that would propel them into action.

Daniel felt uneasy; something about this did not feel right.  He let Sarah go and peered around the stones again, studying the stone circle from a distance.

He saw a ripple go across his field of vision
.

‘Hey,
’ he beckoned to the Sarah’s to approach, ‘I think there’s something there.’

When the witch was by his side he said, ‘I saw some kind of disturbance – I think it may be a spell,’ then he caught sight of a dark figure approaching the stone circle from the valley it was by.

His Sarah gasped, betraying the fact she had seen him too.

‘Wait a sec,’ said the witch.

Daniel felt she was doing something; the air was full of magic, and then his vision dissolved and in the center of the stone circle he spotted four bound men.  They were struggling against their bonds.  The bright moonlight revealed the faces of two; red from the cold night air that whipped their faces.

Daniel saw the sorcerer getting closer, faster; he had obviously sensed the
witch’s magic disturbing his own.

‘We need to be quick – let’s fly,’ D
aniel said. 

He saw Sarah nod.  S
he transformed into a small white bird and took off with him, leaving the witch running behind.

The wind
pummeled his feathers as he swooped towards the stone circle.  He felt magic all around him as he and Sarah came up against a barrier on the outside of the circle, and shifted back into themselves.  The sorcerer had already stepped through and withdrawn a knife from his belt.  Flames sprung up around the circle, but Daniel could not break through.  Sarah was struggling too, she could not find a way past the barrier that was created by the sorcerer.

He saw the sorcerer meet Sarah’s eye, and sneer at her as he approached his first victim.  Sarah was panicking, trying to get in to stop him
, but she was not succeeding. 

Daniel looked back to the witch who was running down the hillside.  He could again see her lips moving as she ran towards them and felt her magic extending to th
e barrier they could not penetrate.

He focused on the barrier himself, trying to aid her, but before he could help the barrier disappeared and he and Sarah staggered through.  Flames were before him and they both leapt high into the air, avoiding the burn, and landed in
the circle next to the sorcerer as his knife sliced open the throat he was holding, cutting off the whimper that was escaping the trapped man.  Sarah screamed and rammed into the sorcerer, knocking him to the ground.  The flames flickered and faded as the witch arrived and stepped into the circle.  Daniel felt a surge of magic and watched, horrified as Sarah flew back through the air, out of the circle.

He ignored the tied men and focused on the sorcerer – he drew on his power within and
channeled it to his hands from which he projected fire towards the sorcerer.  Blue flames touched another boundary that the sorcerer had created to protect himself.  He felt the witch’s magic trying to work against the sorcerer’s powers, but her face was tense with concentration and he did not know if she would succeed.  He pummeled the sorcerer’s boundary with his own flames, hoping it would weaken.  The sorcerer raised his narrowed eyes to Daniel’s; they glinted red in the moonlight, sending chills to Daniel’s heart.  He tried to sharpen his focus, to penetrate just one small bit of the boundary, enough to give the witch a way to destroy it.  He saw a glint of movement as Sarah was back and flying through the air towards the sorcerer.  Something must have worked for she went straight through where the boundary had been and kicked the sorcerer in the head at the same time as Daniel’s flames hit him in the heart.

A wave of power knocked him to the ground and for a second his vision was obscured.  Everything was black.  He opened his eyes in time to see Sarah scrambling to her feet and the blade of the sorcerer go strai
ght into the heart of the witch - her eyes open wide as she crumpled to her knees and her life was taken away. 

Sarah pounced, screaming, at the sorcerer’s head
as he was just starting to remove his blade, and sunk her fangs into his neck.  The sorcerer wreathed in her grip, and sent out a fresh blast of power that knocked Daniel back again, but he struggled against it, fighting, and saw that Sarah had maintained her grip on the man who was weakening in her arms as she drained him of his blood, taking the power that was in his veins.

Daniel ran to the witch’s side and checked her stats, but her heart was still.  He brushed her curly dark hair away from her open eyes and ran his hand over her eyelids, closing them before Sarah would see the horror that was still evident there.

The heartbeat of the sorcerer was becoming weakened, he was using the last of his power to try and thrust off Sarah, but her grip was strong, and she was full of power; full of the life force of all the blood she had consumed during the previous couple of weeks, full of the magical energy that was in the sorcerer’s blood.  She drank the last few sips and staggered back, letting his limp, unseeing body fall heavily to the ground.

Daniel sped to Sarah’s side and he
ld onto her as she herself crumpled to her knees.  Daniel went down with her as sobs wracked her body, ‘She’s dead, she died – he killed her Daniel.  Daniel – I killed him!’ she wailed.

‘You stopped the ritual Sarah, you did it,’ he said.

‘But we failed – he killed Sarah – he killed a man!’ she sobbed, holding her heart as Daniel held her.

‘We didn’t fail – we saved three men – and the vampire hasn’t risen – we don’t know how ma
ny hundreds of lives we might have saved,’ he said, passionately, for he truly believed this – what Sarah had done had been necessary – he was just sorry that it had had to be her.

‘But she’s
dead Daniel,’ Sarah said pointing back towards the circle, towards the witch.

Daniel could hear the three men were now still.  He could hear their ragged breaths, their pain, and he could smell their fear, the suspense was killing them.

‘Sarah – I need to go and release those men,’ he said.

He rose, leaving her outsi
de the circle on the soft spongy ground, sobbing hard.

Daniel steppe
d back into the circle.  Instead he approached the men, and one at a time, he struggled with the knots until they were free.  Then he influenced each of them to forget all that had happened and to return to their homes.

As they left Daniel saw Sarah stand.  Her eyes looked dead. 
Haunted.  She walked slowly back to the stone circle and she too stepped inside.  She knelt at the witch’s side and touched the dagger that was still wedged in her heart.  Fresh sobs engulfed her.

Daniel let her cry, for it was a necessary step to grieve
.  He could have interfered – used his influence to stop her feeling the pain, but if he did that the pain would just resurface later.  No, it was best to let her be.  She would be ok soon, he hoped.

Daniel picked up the body of the man the sorcerer had slain.  His b
lood had spilled into the earth; Daniel just hoped it was not enough to have any effect of the old vampire who lay entombed below. 

Daniel left Sarah with the body of Sarah the witch, and he carried the body of the man across the moor to the place where the bodies from the previous ritual had been discarded.  Daniel pushed the body of the man beneath the stone, to join the other bodies which were now in an advanced state of decay.  It smelt putrid.

He returned to Sarah’s side.

‘We can’t leave her there Daniel, not with the other bodies, let’s leave her body on a
tor, like an altar, in respect,’ Sarah said, lowering her eyes as fresh tears escaped them.

Daniel nodded, ‘Do you want to do it?’ he asked her.

She nodded this time.  He watched, saddened as Sarah lifted the body of the witch and placed it over her shoulder, then she sped up the hill to the nearest tor and placed her right at the top; on the highest rock.  She stood up there for some time, but Daniel did not join her, he assumed she would have said if she wanted his company.  And now the sorcerer was dead, he did not think she was in any danger.