Silverthorn (19 page)

Kendall hurried over to him and lifted a foot, ready to smash it down on his head.

Darius tilted, caught her sneaker, and shoved her backwards.

I blasted him again.

The force cracked even more of his bones, this time, probably in his clavicle. He dropped to the ground in anguish, trying to maneuver his shoulders, hoping they’d heal quickly enough to fend off our next attack.

I headed over to him, feeling a dull ache in my knee, and stood a few feet away from his legs to prevent him from kicking me. Then I called upon all of the energy from around me. When so much pressure built inside me that I feared popping like an overinflated balloon, I pushed the energy at Darius’s chest.

It hit him, and he jerked in place, pivoting left, rocking right, and curling up, all the while countless bones fractured inside his body.

Yet, I had plenty of strength left, so I mounted the pressure, aiming for his wrists, and remained in place until I heard his bones crunch. Then I moved on to his elbows. Satisfied to hear shattering bones there as well, I shifted up to his shoulders, looking forward to snapping every single bone in his body so he couldn’t turn another helpless human into a vampire or compel others to turn on me as he’d done with Nolan.

“Stop!” Kendall shouted, coming to a stop beside me. She looked down at Darius’s squiggling form. She reached out and locked her hand around my arm. The vibration from the power leaving my palm immediately made her hand fall aside. “Don’t kill him. We need answers from him!”

“Yeah, but he won’t give them to us unless I make him!” Hearing no further comment, I worked my way down to his knees and heard tiny snaps as if someone had stepped on a bunch of twigs. Then I moved down, heading for his ankles, prepared to end at his toes. I relished the agony rippling across his face, and I was eager to break all two-hundred plus bones in his body.

“Serena,” Kendall yelled, “that’s enough!” She hacked down on my arm, sending a bolt of energy into the ground.

The floor rippled below my feet, and I shut off the energy flow. I whirled toward her. “What’re you doing? Stop!”

“Not after what he did to you? You haven’t even asked him a question, and he’s flung you around the building.” Despite hearing groans coming from his direction, I glanced his way to ensure that his healing processes hadn’t already begun. For now, we were safe. “He’ll turn on us the first second he gets.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I’m the one he turned into a vampire, not you!”

She had a point, and while I planned to halt the punishment, it took my mind a little longer than normal to process the request, not to mention a bit more effort to get my hands to obey my brain. Furthermore, halting my punishment left me feeling a little empty, similar to eating a snack when you craved a full meal.

She had me there. I set my attention on Darius. “Where’s the book?”

He flicked his gaze between me and Kendall then snarled. “Go to hell!”

Elation flooded through me at the prospect of pumping another round of anguish into him. I motioned to him. “See? He only respects power, and I’ll show him what
real
power is.” I raised my hand, anxious to deliver even more jolts to his body.

“No!” Kendall said, once more knocking my hand aside.

I turned on her. “What are you doing? He’s evil. He’s hidden the book. He’s taken Zephora to God-knows-where. You thought she was strong before?” A maniacal laugh erupted from my throat. “In another day, even if she still hasn’t recovered from her withdrawal, she’ll regain one-third of the power she left behind in this dimension after she died. That means she’ll be stronger than Alexis and Celestina. Not only that, but she’ll have
every
ability that
every
witch ever had…or so I’m told. We won’t be able to stop her. So yes, we need answers. Now! If it means breaking every fucking bone in his body, I’ll do it. And you’ll stand there and watch!”

“You’re not thinking rationally. I want him dead, too, but we can’t win this way.”

“Oh, you’re developing feelings for him!” I nodded, feeling anger sparking deep resentment. “Is that it? He sired you, so now you have daddy-issues? You know what? I don’t care. If I hope to send Zephora back beyond the veil, I need that book.” I turned back to Darius.

Despite grimacing from the pain wracking his body, Darius revealed a hint of a smile.

“You think this is funny?”

“Ladies!” a female voice said, this time from behind me. “The library is
now
closed!” There was a pause. “Why is that man on the floor?”

I whirled around, gritting my teeth at so many disruptions. “We’re busy. Go away!”

“It’s time you leave.” She stood her ground, belying the fragility of a sixty-year-old woman with a flimsy frame and thin white hair that sprouted on her head. Her blue eyes blazed with determination. “Is that man injured? Should I call the paramedics?”

“He’s got a couple boo-boos, that’s all,” I said.

“Is it serious? Should I call an ambulance?”

Nerves jutted under my skin, but I maintained my composure by bunching my hands into fists. “Please…please just go away.”

“Either leave immediately, or I will call the police and they will escort you out!”

Kendall released a self-conscious smile and said under her breath, “Who’d have thought a librarian was such a ball-buster?” She turned to the woman. “We’ll be along in a minute.”

The woman looked from me to Kendall to Darius and back to me again. Without a word, she spun around and hustled away, most likely to call the police and ask for an ambulance.

“Great!” Kendall put her hands on her hips. “Satisfied?”

Staring into her worried eyes and taking stock of my anger, I had no idea how or why my frustration had hit such furious levels. As I considered my bloodlust, my temper subsided. “No.” A chill went down my back at the thought of losing control like that again, and I shook my head. What had come over me?

“You’re upset,” Kendall said. “You’ve gone through a lot the past few days. It’s understandable.”

I looked at Darius, startled by the smirk on his face, before returning my attention to my friend. “He turned you into a vampire. You didn’t get a choice.”

“You didn’t get a choice either,” she reminded me.

“Nor did I,” Darius chimed in.

“Where’s
The Book of Souls
?” I asked.

He beamed at me.

Kendall folded her arms as we looked down at him. “What now?”

My phone chirped, indicating that someone had texted me. I slipped the phone out of my pocket and checked it.

Brandon stated: “A librarian’s speaking with the cops. She gave them your description. You okay up there?”

I typed in, “Be down soon.” I sent the message and said to Kendall, “Cops are on their way.”

“I hope you enjoy spending time behind bars,” Darius said with a smile.

I circled Darius. “You think you’re getting out of this with only a few broken bones, don’t you?”

“What are you going to do?” asked Kendall, following my footsteps, probably to make sure I didn’t do anything to increase the already dour likelihood of exiting this situation without incident.

“Still with the smiley-face, huh?” I asked Darius and stopped behind him.

“You’re so foolish,” he said, shaking his head as though feeling sorry for me. “You think about only what’s in front of you. You don’t plan ahead.” He made a tsk-tsk sound. “Your grandmother would pity you.”

Mention of Grams lit a fuse through me. “Yeah, I guess I’m pretty impulsive. I went behind him, crouched, and cringed back a bit of pain in my knee. I placed both hands on either side of his head and snapped his neck.

My phone dinged again. Brandon had texted: A security guard is on his way up.

A second later, the elevator across the room dinged. The security guard had arrived.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When the security guard stepped out of the elevator, I followed Darius’s rationale on why he’d come to this building. Of course, it would be incredibly difficult to find
The Book of Souls
here. But there were two other reasons that explained his motive. First, the building would be closing soon, which led to the second piece of logic that had escaped me. There would be more staff in the facility than patrons, in which case they would require us to leave – without
The Book of Souls
.

My phone pinged again, delivering another text from Brandon: “More bad news. Alexis just went into the parking lot. Darius’s car is gone!”

I gnashed the phone in my grasp. It seemed Darius had one more reason to visit the library: to surrender, while allowing Nolan to drive off to an undisclosed location with Zephora. I stood upright to relieve the pressure on my knee.

I let out a breath, shocked at how easily Darius had defeated me. I’d failed to find the book, and I’d failed to prevent Darius from hiding Zephora, although I did have a consolation prize in Darius.

“Hey,” the security guard said, removing the cell phone from his belt. “What’s going on over there? The library’s closed!” He gestured to Darius. “What happened? Does he need medical assistance?”

“Do you want me to answer those questions in order?” I asked. “Do you have a preference? Or can I just wing it?”

“Is he breathing? Does he need CPR?”

I checked on Darius, glad he still lay unconscious. “He seemed kind of tired, probably just wanted a nap. Pretty inconvenient time and place though, huh?” I kicked his shoulder. “Bet he’d love a snack when he wakes up though.” I turned to Kendall. “I bet he’d go for some Count Chocula.”

“And rather than milk,” Kendall said, “he’d fill the bowl with blood.”

The guard hustled over to us, doing his best to close the sixty-foot distance between us. His belt jiggled in either direction across his abundant gut while his face flushed red. Obviously considering Kendall and I harmless, he tapped some digits onto the screen of his cell and placed the phone against his ear. “Hey, Bert?”

I turned to Kendall, “Five bucks says this guard’s name is Ernie!” Unable to process how to get out of this situation, I did what I always did in these circumstances. I relied on humor. It freed up my ability to process information. This was no exception. Rather than consider an intellectual outcome, however, I came up with a physical one…that I hoped worked.

“Ernie!” I called out to the guard, who slowed to a jog about ten feet away from us, confused by the nickname I’d given him. “I think you can help us, after all!”

Just as Bert said over the walkie-talkie, “Yeah, what’s going on over there,” our guard hooked his receiver on his belt again, disregarding his partner’s question. “What can I do?” he asked me, practically skidding to a halt before Darius’s body.

I went over and dug my fingers into a pressure point at his neck. The maneuver knocked him unconscious, and I carefully lowered his head to the ground.

“Quick thinking!” Kendall said. “But the cops are still coming.” She looked down at Darius. “He’s still out cold. What now?”

I had no idea when the cops might arrive, but I had to assume they’d arrive within the next two minutes. That didn’t give us much time to improvise, and I still needed to question Darius if I had any hope of getting my hands on
The Book of Souls
…or finding out where Nolan planned to stash Zephora.

I pointed at Darius. “Grab him and let’s go!”

She hoisted him over her right shoulder as though she’d just hauled a large bag of dog food, rather than a person, or in this case, a vampire. “What then?”

“I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

Kendall scanned the area. “Does this place have security cameras?” She spotted one in the far corner. “Great, we’re going to be on the news!”

“It doesn’t matter. We didn’t touch anything, so they don’t have our prints.”

“What about
The Book of Souls
?”

“We’ll have to come back tomorrow. Get him to the car.”

Within three seconds, Kendall fled across the room, rushed down the steps, and vanished from eyesight. I followed her footsteps, once more putting the brunt of my weight on my left leg, but when I entered the lobby, I ignored the guard’s warning to stop, and half-limped, half-jogged out of the building and into the parking lot.

Kendall stood beside the trunk of my car with Darius perched on her shoulder, while Brandon and Alexis scanned the area for the impending arrival of a police cruiser.

I hit the remote control button on my key ring to open the trunk and, once it opened, Kendall dropped Darius inside and shut the trunk. I went around to the driver’s side, got in just as my passengers did likewise, and started the engine. Just as I planned to leave, a picture formed in my mind: Darius popping the trunk, falling out, and rolling across the pavement, only to dash away with super speed in the opposite direction, giving us no way of following him.

“Wait,” I said to Kendall. “Get back out!” I popped the trunk, got out, and met her at the rear of the vehicle. I looked inside at Darius’s body lying beside an emergency kit, a flashlight, a wool blanket, a jug of water, and the Soul Sword. I grabbed the Soul Sword. “We’re loading him in the car.”

I grabbed the emergency kit, extracted a roll of rope, and flipped it to her. “Tie his wrists behind his back and toss him in the back seat between you and Brandon.”

“What?” She stared at the rope. “This won’t restrain him.”

“No, but when he comes to…you’ll have just enough time to snap his neck again.”

“This is a bad idea.”

“You’re right, but we don’t have time to consider our alternatives, now do we?”

Kendall glanced in every direction, obviously still concerned about the possibility that a police cruiser might swing into the parking lot at any moment.

Finding no other viable option, she tied up Darius, yanked him out of the trunk, and sat him up in the back seat beside Brandon.

I got behind the wheel, set the sword against the floorboards near my sister’s legs in the passenger seat, stomped on the accelerator, and shot out of the parking spot. Even shifting my right foot from the accelerator to the brake caused a little discomfort in my knee.

A moment later, as I turned onto a side street, I spotted a police car with its lights flashing as it headed toward me.

“Damn!” Alexis said, wincing and pressing her back into the seat.

“We’ve got nothing to worry about,” I said. “We knocked a couple dozen books off the shelves. It could have happened to anybody.”

“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Bored kids in the Styx tip cows. But us? We kidnap vampires and push books off shelves at the library. We’re some badass perps!”

When the squad car passed us and swerved into the library’s parking lot, Brandon sighed. “What happened upstairs? How did you knock him unconscious?”

Serena broke almost every bone in his body,” Kendall said. “Then she snapped his neck.”

I checked the rearview mirror, glad that Darius was in my line of sight. It allowed me to keep an eye on him. Even unconscious, I didn’t trust him.

Brandon cleared his throat. “I can’t sit next to him without any special powers to protect myself. Alexis, how about lending me your snow machine?”

She chuckled at the absurdity of his request.

“Far-fetched, I know.” He tapped my headrest. “How about giving me your flame throwing abilities?”

If he knew how to use and control my powers, I still wouldn’t have lent them to him, given our close quarters, since an accidental spark could light us all on fire.

“I’ll bet neither of you watched Sesame Street. You know, where they teach good little girls to share.” Getting no response from me, he turned to Kendall, who looked unfazed by the question. “Okay, how about Curious George?” After a couple seconds of silence, he said, “Nothing? Wow! Fine, you’ve had to have seen The Muppets.” The sound of the tires traveling against the road filled the car. “Oh, come on, this is getting ridiculous. All right, one of you must know about SpongeBob.”

“He sounds familiar,” Kendall said. “Is he your imaginary friend?”

“You two are unbelievable.”

“Why should we watch those shows?”  I asked. “That’s what we’ve got you for.”

“So you’ll share?” he asked with a grin.

“Nope,” we said at the same time.

Alexis picked up the Soul Sword and inspected it. “Who cursed this so it can kill any supernatural creature?”

“Zephora,” said Kendall.

“Mephisto,” I said.

“Mephisto?” Alexis asked, wincing as though trying to recall where she’d heard that name before. “Who is that?”

Since no one but me had seen him, I said, “He’s some kind of shifter who apparently owned the sword in the past. He wants it back pretty badly. I’m guessing either he or someone else cursed it to kill all supernatural creatures.”

“Did he try to take it or fight you for it?”

“No. He offered me money, and the bills in his wallet seemed never-ending, like he could have kept flipping past hundred dollar bills for ten minutes, and the stack wouldn’t have ended! But no, he didn’t fight me for it.”

“Probably not a shifter,” Alexis said. “Shifter’s can’t curse objects. Only witches can, so one of the witches in our line had cursed it.”

“Well, he can’t be a warlock,” Kendall said. “Serena said no one in your line pumps out baby boys. Why is that?”

“I have no clue,” Alexis admitted. “Mother didn’t know either. So now what? On to Walmart so Serena can get a few gallons of water and a towel to wrap around Darius’s head?”

I ignored her insinuation that I planned to force Darius through at least one round of waterboarding. “We’ll question him. Nothing more!”

“Hey, kids!” Alexis turned in her seat to address Kendall and Brandon. “Guess who just graduated from Jack Bauer University!” She spun toward me. “Where should we go to celebrate?” She pointed to an imaginary sign on the side of the road. “We’re in luck. The next torture chamber is a few miles up ahead.”

“I might not know everything about our heritage,” I said, “and I might be the weakest witch on the planet, but if we plan on stopping Zephora, we need to get
The Book of Souls
, and we need to find out where Zephora is.” I turned to her. “Do you have a better idea how to do that?”

Alexis looked out the window, unwilling to answer lest she appear anything but powerful.

“What happened upstairs?” Kendall asked me. “You kind of lost it up there.”

I looked in the rearview mirror. For a second, I thought Darius’s eyes opened, but I was probably so paranoid about having captured him without retaliation, I’d begun hallucinating. “I don’t know.” The moment I felt rage on the outskirts of my mind, I tapped into it, and couldn’t pull myself back to a rational frame of mind.

Alexis met my gaze with a slight grin. “Tell me about it.”

Kendall cringed as though recalling the incident in her mind. “You weren’t so wrong about…the whole torture thing. I mean, she probably broke over one hundred bones in his body.”

“What?” Alexis shouted and stared at me. “Really?”

Although my behavior was reprehensible, I found it unsettling that my sister was proud of me.

“Our Little Miss University going all dark side. I never thought you’d make it. Actually, I never thought you’d even get close.” She punched me in the arm, obviously the equivalent of a hug in my sister’s mind.

Disliking her insinuation, I divided my attention between the road and my sister. “Dark side? You’re one to talk, Darth Duplicitous.”

She beamed with pride. “That’s about the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

It figured that I’d insult my sister, only to have her misinterpret it as a compliment. The nickname was more than appropriate, considering that my sister had questionable scruples to say the least. Still, my frustration at failing to unravel her obnoxious behavior made me grip the steering wheel so tightly that my hands turned white. “I’ll ask you one more time,” I said, gritting my teeth. “What do you mean?”

Regarding my irritation as melodrama, she rolled her eyes. “Every witch at one time or another touches the dark side at some point or another. It’s a right of passage. It means you’re coming into your own as a witch.” She ruminated on that logic. “I never thought you’d pick it up so quickly, but hey, good for you!”

“Other side? I don’t get it.”

“The way Kendall described it, you reached out and dabbled in black magic.” She smirked. “Once you dip your toes in the deep end, it remembers you.” All trace of emotion left her expression. “And from here on out, it will call to you every day...until it wears you down and begins to control your every thought, your every action, and your every desire!”