From the Ashes (Witches of The Demon Isle Book 8) (25 page)

Courtney went still for a minute. Gaze tight. Air sucked out of the room. The space suddenly confined, the walls creeping in.

“It’s thick in here,” she finally spoke up.

They waited patiently for her to decide, half expecting her to say no.

She paced for a minute, jaw grinding. Teeth licking at the fangs pushing against her lip.

“I will agree to your terms,” she finally told them. “But with an added condition of my own.”

“I’m willing to negotiate,” granted Charlie.

“I’d like to be able to live a normal a life as possible, and I’ll need some help with that. I came to the Isle seeking revenge, that’s still my plan. I guess now with your sister’s help. But I don’t condone hurting the innocent. I was a good witch in life before all hell broke loose. I’d still like to be in death. Or whatever I am now, I’d still like to be on the side of good. So if you continue to help me until I’m ready to go home, then I’m in.” She reached out her hand to shake on it.

Charlie accepted without hesitation and took it, affirming the deal.

“I think helping you adjust to your new life is the least we can offer. You have my word we’ll do whatever we can to help you.”

They parted hands, and Courtney swung her arm up to her forehead, feinting naivety.

“Oh dear. I’m just a poor lonely lost girl walking down a dark street all alone. Whatever will I do?”

“I think that’ll work,” remarked Michael dryly.

“Sorry, not trying to make light. Really is a bit thick in here.”

They left the cell, Courtney apprehensively joining them upstairs. “So this is the inside of the famous Howard kitchen. Nice.”

Charlie threw her another blood pack.

“I just finished one,” the reporter noted.

“Drink it. It’ll help with the urges once you leave the inside of the
famous
Howard kitchen.”

“Will I be okay out there?” she asked him. “I don’t mean if we find the other vamp. More in general. You know, around those with pulses? There was a reason I was hiding in the woods.”

“Drink up,” Charlie stated again.

“Yeah. Okay. Right.” She opened an end and sipped on it. “Just so you’re aware, I may be faster than you guys, and stronger, but I don’t think I’ll be as strong as this other vamp. If they are high on the good stuff, I’m pretty sure they can kick me a new one.”

“We thought of that. But all we need from you is to attract the vampire. We’ll give you a vial of werewolf blood to use on him. This should slow him down so we can catch him.” Charlie held one such vial in his hands.

“But don’t get the werewolf blood on yourself,” Michael explained.

“Why not?”

“Werewolf blood is poisonous to vampires,” he told her. “It won’t kill you, but it will hurt severely and shut down your ability to function correctly.”

She stared at the rust-filled liquid inside the vial. “Good to know. Where does one get werewolf blood, anyway?”

Charlie released a little of his inner wolf. Courtney’s eyes strained wide.

“One bite from me, and you’d be dead,” he cautioned. He left out the part where her bite could kill him too. Knowledge for another day, once they trusted her better. “A werewolf bite is a death sentence for a vampire.”

“Also good to know.” She sucked down her blood, thinking if she’d still had a beating heart, it would be thrumming at the speed of fear right now.

What kind of world had she gotten herself thrown into? Her coven had been small, and did good deeds, but nothing as serious or dangerous as what these witches did almost every day. She was a novice in comparison. And the Howards, as well-known as they were in supernatural circles, still managed to keep a few secrets.

“We’ve got a bit of time till sundown,” said Michael. Summer nights on the Isle, the sun didn’t go down till after nine at night. “I’m going to go bring Emily home from the bookstore, she put in a late day today. I won’t be comfortable leaving tonight if she’s not safely back here.”

He took off and Charlie explained the plan so far to Courtney. They were going to wait until the middle of the night, after the last of the pubs shut down, and the streets empty as possible. They’d find a prime location where they could hide, and watch at a safe, but close distance, and Courtney would play the part of the lonely damsel in distress. While Charlie, Lizzy, and Michael waited in the wings to subdue the vampire. With Mack nearby as backup.

Lizzy called Lucas and ordered him to come keep Melinda and Emily company. Mostly, she just wanted him involved in some way. The three of them would stay in the mansion, where it was safe. And perhaps he and Emily would keep Melinda from losing it when William was stripped from her life, forever. The brothers didn’t want her to be alone.

Lizzy closed her eyes, the memory of losing her fiancé at the forefront of her memory. She hadn’t told Charlie he was a vampire yet. Or that he’d burned before jumping to his death. Only William knew this. It would be painful to watch again. And if Charlie knew this death would be painfully similar, he’d make her sit out as well.

But he needed her, so she’d suck it up and be remorseful tomorrow. Maybe get Charlie to take her mind off the entire ordeal. But even the thought of his magic hands exploring all over didn’t stop the tremble in her veins. This would not be easy for any of them. But perhaps once done they could all move forward comforted in the knowledge there was no other choice. Finding some kind of solace in the fact that their friend would be at peace.

CHAPTER 17

Counting down to zero hour was taking forever. Too long for their already frayed nerves.

Charlie made Courtney drink so much animal blood it was sloshing around miserably in her stomach like the tide coming in. She refused to drink another, insisting her stomach would burst with a single drop more.

It was a risk, using and trusting Courtney in this task. One, they hardly knew anything about her and had to accept what she told them at face value. Two, she was new and yet untested vampire. Volatile and potentially dangerous if put in the wrong position.

But it was a safer alternative than using Melinda. Or Lizzy. Or anyone else who was only human, or a witch.

Michael whipped up a small dinner for Emily, determined to make her eat. No one else was in the mood including him, and he doubted she would either. But he had to try. He hoisted a tray up the stairs but when he got to their bedroom, she wasn’t there. He heard water running in the shower. He put the tray on his dresser and went in to see if she needed anything.

A step through the doorway to the bathroom, he stopped.

Through the steam, Emily was sitting on the floor in the middle of the shower, staring at nothing. She heard him and rustled to her feet, pretending to shower.

He saw only one option. A few seconds later, he slipped in behind her.

“God, Em. You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine. Nothing a hot shower can’t fix.” She refused to look at him. There was a whiff of an emotion fluxing, but she capped it, sealing it deep somewhere Michael could not reach.

He swept his hand to her chin and turned it gently, so he could see her eyes. “I don’t want to push, Emily. I just want to be here for you.”

“I got lost in thought. It’s nothing.” She forced a smile and went to grab the shampoo but he stopped her, grabbing it himself. He poured it onto his hand and rubbed it into her hair, massaging into each long strand. He reached over her head, and removed the handheld showerhead, rinsing away the shampoo. He wished rinsing away her pain was as easy.

She leaned into him, unconsciously, her eyes closed, lost in the moment. He put the showerhead back in its place, his arms circling her waist, bringing her up against him. She trembled, her hands bracing his. Michael nudged his lips around the hair stuck to her back, kissing her shoulder up her neck, in a purposeful motion. He reached her chin and she turned to meet him. His lips tender against hers.

She rotated, facing him, keeping their bodies touching, searching his eyes for something.

He waited for the onslaught of emotion to hit him. To tell him what she needed. But he didn’t need it, he could see it in her gaze. Feel it in her breaths. The way her body moved against him.

And then the emotions slammed into him.

To be whole again. To be loved utterly and completely.

“Emily…” her name fell off his lips like silk. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her tightly against him. There suddenly seemed no way to get close enough to her. Not even if they’d shared the same skin. Her arms glided around his neck, lips locking together. The kiss was deep. Penetrating into their souls. Heaven would have been getting stuck in this moment, forever.

Michael branding her heart, Emily imprinting her entire being, into his mind, his core, their souls melding together in a single desire.

His lips captured hers in a slow torture meant to drink in every moan. He moved his hips with a deliberate motion that kept their bodies glued to each other. If death came at this instant, he’d die in bliss. Michael wished so desperately to fix her. To make her whole again. To let his beautiful light shine again. To make her understand how much he loved her and would do anything to make her happy and prove she’d never be alone. That he was her security; but also that they belonged to each other, and no matter what was thrown at them he’d always take care of her.

The words slipped across his tongue before the thought or meaning even fully registered in his brain.

“Emily. Marry me.”

She gave a start.

He pulled back just enough to see her eyes.

“Marry me, Emily Morgan. You belong here, with me. My world is your world. Let me spend the rest of my life taking care of you. I’ll always protect you. I love you so much I can’t even think straight imagining a life without you in it.”

Emily said nothing.

Only stared, blankly. Blinking flatly. Her breaths heavy, her emotions swinging erratically.

Michael tensed. Not because of the answer she had yet to give, but to the floodgate drowning him in an overabundance of suddenly freed feelings bursting at their seams. Everything Emily had been holding back from Michael. All the things she did not want him to know. Or feel, or sense. Everything she’d tried to spare him from.

Her body heaved in thick breaths. The misty haze dulling her brown eyes these last weeks, lifting, replaced by tinder about to ignite.

Anger. So much of it. Over the loss of her father. Over the existence of someone as evil as Eva Jordan. Or the Feyk. Over her inability to rise above this and move on.

Fear. She’d lost the last of her family. Without the ring stolen by Stricker, her body was open for business to spirits seeking out a new home. Even with it, she’d been powerless to do anything, or stop anything. She was unable to help her father. Or Lucas, Melinda, or William… or herself. Or anyone.

Resentment and blame…

Emily released her grip on Michael, sucking in the last emotion. Like a car screeching to a halt but skidding off the road. She pushed their bodies apart, each breath an uneasy quiver. A coldness encasing her where a minute ago she’d needed him fused to her; now she could not get far enough away.

Resentment and blame…

The rest of the feelings belonging with those hidden from him, precariously swinging by a thread about to break. Emily scurried out of the shower. She couldn’t face him when it did.

Michael let her go, breath stuck in his lungs. Water pummeling his skin but only washing away the surface of him.

The last of her hidden emotions breaking free.

The thread spiraling apart. Unraveling a deluge of misery.

Pain… she was going to hurt him and there was no way to stop it. She’d tried. So hard. To keep it locked up. Praying it would go away. It was so wrong, to feel like she did. And unfair. And yet the most honest thing she’d allowed herself to feel in days.

Michael was frozen solid under the steaming water.

He missed Emily drying off furiously, still half-wet, throwing on the first clothes she could find. Grabbing a suitcase.

Resentment and blame…

Emily blamed him.

His family.

Herself.

And the entire damn magical island she’d called home… for stealing her father’s life. She despised this place and what it had taken from her.

The last of the thread broke with a plink, like a violin string plucked at sharply.

It might as well snapped in two, both broken strings stabbing at the same time. One through his heart, the other through his back. Emily’s blame and resentment coiled around one person, more than anyone…

He swayed under the water, grasping to turn it off. Stumbling out of the shower, throwing a towel around his waist. His feet shuffled into the bedroom.

Emily smashed a suitcase closed. It might as well been his heart. Her hands splayed against the top to keep her balance. She refused to look at him.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I don’t want to feel those things. I can’t stop it.”

“Because I failed you.”

“You really didn’t.” She said the words, but they were empty as her emotions screamed the opposite.

How could she not blame them? Or him?

He should have known. Guessed this is what she was hiding.

It was the Howard’s job to protect the Isle. To make sure things like what happened, did not. They’d failed. All of them.

But there was a personal resentment aimed directly at him.

Regardless, his voice worded his plea before his brain could even catch up to it.

“Don’t go. Please.” He was a pile of taut nerves about to grind into mush. “Forget what I asked you. It was stupid of me. Just don’t go.”

Even as he begged, his nerves crumbled.

Emily was already gone in her mind.

She grabbed the suitcase mustering every bit of strength she had to go through the doorway.

“Where will you go? When will you come back?” Michael’s legs disobeyed his order to go to her, and stop her.

“I don’t know.” She dug up a whip of bravery and faced him. She owed him that much.

“We could find you a place on the island, away from me.” This idea was already more than he could bear. And he wouldn’t get this much.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I really am. But I can’t stay here. I can’t stay on the island. Please don’t call me and ask when I’ll be back, because I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll know for a long time.”

What was her measure of a long time? Days? Weeks? Months?
Never?

He’d barely had any time with her. Their lives together just starting. There was no one else like Emily in the entire world and he’d been such a dope to not admit it sooner. And now, he was losing her. And she had every right to run away. Every right to hate this place. And him.

“The only thing I’m sure of is that I have to leave.” Emily’s words filtered across her tongue now of their own volition. Unable to hold them back after holding them for so long. “It’s not fair, what I’m thinking and feeling, Michael. I know it’s not, but I can’t stop it. I don’t think it’s going to go away until I get away. My dad came to the Isle for me. To protect me. And his reward is getting murdered… he’d be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

Michael wanted to argue but the strength left him.

Emily’s emotional outpouring flooded on.

“I can’t even look at you without so much hurt, and anger. God that’s miserable to say. So much of this is all me, Michael. I’m not trying to pull the
it’s not you, it’s me
card. It’s not like that. I’m just so angry, and so much of it’s at you and I don’t want it to be. When Eva took over my body I was half way to dead. And suddenly I popped back to life and you didn’t question it was really me. The situation was so impossible, and the thing is, you did figure it out before it was too late. And still, I can’t make myself give up the resentment that you didn’t know sooner.”

Michael just stared, about as blankly as Emily had been for weeks.

“I started to remember things…” her voice dropped, speaking low. “I started to remember things from while Eva was inside me. What you did to her, thinking it was her, not me.” She had wanted to tell him before, but the moment never felt right.

Michael forced the bile rising in his throat down. It pushed its way back up, threatening to send him flying to the toilet. Emily remembered him strangling her with the silver chain. Charlie stabbing her. Both of them filled with such anguish and taking it out on her body.

Emily lowered her gaze, unable to hold his any longer.

“I remember the way you sounded. The venom in your voices. The repulsion in your hands when you touched her… when you touched me. I understand your reaction to her, it would have been mine too. And yet the memories of it felt like me. You did those things to me.”

Michael stared blankly into nothing. His mind a momentarily emptied space.

“I have no one to help me. No one who knows what being a Spirit Vessel means. What will happen to me, or how to handle these things… these things that feel like memories that I know are not mine, but feel like mine. I know you want to help, but you can’t. Not this time.”

It didn’t seem like more than a few seconds, a few eternity building seconds, but when his vision refocused on where Emily had been standing the space was empty.

In blurry movements he located a pair of shorts and shirt, put them on and somehow got himself down the stairs without falling.

Melinda caught him at the front door. She’d just come down to wait for Lucas.

“What’s Emily doing putting a suitcase in her car?”

He ignored her, floundering out the door and down the porch stairs.

Emily was getting into the driver’s seat of her car. Michael froze on the bottom steps.

Her gaze said enough to keep any words from forming.

Goodbye…

Please don’t let this be forever,
his gaze begged of her.

She gave no indication of her intent to return and drove off toward the ferry landing.

Michael slumped down onto the step, in shock. Charlie, Lizzy, and Melinda were behind him, giving each other questioning looks. Melinda sat down next to Michael and touched his knee.

“What happened?”

He turned, his face blank, unable to explain.

Melinda saw the pain etched in his eyes and tears threatened to surface in her own. They’d broken, exactly like she feared they would.

“Michael?”

He looked forward, away from his sister.