Stolen Night (25 page)

‘Tracy, run,’ I commanded.

Odette moved so quickly she was a blur of honey and black. But I knew that was what she would do. I grabbed Tracy by her shoulders and threw her to the ground. Odette clawed at my chest –
her nails ripped through my shirt and scraped my skin. I screamed out, pain searing my chest.

Odette laughed and then threw a malevolent glance down at Tracy. I knew what I must do to protect her; I went for it. While she laughed at my pain, I stabbed Odette in the forearm. The blade
plunged into the hardened vampire skin. No measly craft knife this time. This knife stopped her. Odette stared at the wound as though she couldn’t believe I had done it.

‘That’s a perfectly good fisherman oozing out of my arm,’ she spat.

Down at her feet, Tracy pulled a long silver blade from her bag. It flickered in the rays of the setting sun, but Odette didn’t seem to notice. She sneered and took a step towards me,
intending to retaliate. I raised my dagger, poised to plunge again.

Odette hadn’t considered the human at her feet. Why would she? Hope slid through me as Tracy stabbed Odette hard right through the leather of her shoe. Odette screamed and fell back on to
the grass.

‘Go!’ I yelled, meeting Tracy’s watery blue eyes.

This time, she followed orders.

She fled through the maze of tombstones and trees. Suddenly I was flying through the air. Odette had swept her good foot under me, making me fall to the ground.

I landed with a thud, hitting the ground with my back, sending more pain through the cuts on my chest. Winded, I tried to draw in air but I couldn’t.
Breathe, Lenah.
A kick slammed
on to the right side of me. Another kick on the left. Odette’s dandelion-coloured curls dangled before me. Her devilish smile faded as tears flooded my eyes and washed out my sight.

‘Did your little friend think stabbing my foot was going to stop me? Haven’t you seen how powerful I am?’ I struggled for breath. ‘I am only to get more powerful as the
days go on. Oh, darling, are you having trouble breathing?’

She squatted above me and lifted an index finger, showing me her knife-like nails again. Slowly I was able to draw a shallow breath, my frozen lungs finally thawing. She pointed to my bandaged
arm.

No . . . don’t stab me.

‘
Of course
I’m going to stab you,’ she said, reading my emotional plea with her ESP. ‘I thought I’d warned you, but I guess you don’t listen. Being a
queen and all, you think you still call the shots. But not any more.’ Her long red fingernails hovered over the gauze of my burnt forearm. ‘Give. Me. The. Ritual.’

‘Never,’ I said, gulping in air.

She sneered and then stabbed my injured forearm. Her fingernails sliced through the gauze to my still raw skin. A ripping sound, then hot pain seared my burnt flesh. I screamed so loudly that it
scratched my throat. The pain was so intense that acrid bile made its way to my mouth. Where was Vicken?

‘Why, queen of all vampires?
Why
do you insist on making this so difficult for yourself?’

Queen of all vampires.

As she looked down at me, with her porcelain skin and bloody mouth, time seemed to slow. Our eyes connected. Mine blue – hers green. Together. Yes. Within her eyes I could
see
myself as a vampire, throwing my head back, mouth agape, laughing into the night.

How familiar was the overwhelming desire to
feel
once again. All we wanted to do was feel
. So numb. No feeling in my fingers or hands. Release the pain. Need the blood running down my
throat and the power to surge through my body.
I could sense the duality within myself.

I
was
the vampire queen again.

Catch them by surprise. A public spectacle. On Halloween.

These were Odette’s thoughts. I knew her plan because in that moment, as her unnatural jade eyes bored into mine, I could see her plan. It was just as I would have formulated it.

She was going to try to kill me at the Halloween dance, when I would be too busy trying to protect the humans around me. I could see the decorations, and Vicken’s and Rhode’s bodies,
bloody and dead on the gymnasium floor.

And with this remembrance of my vampire evil came some of the memories I had forgotten in my human state.

Odette’s murder, when she was made a vampire.

‘I remember the day you changed,’ I whispered shakily. ‘It was only hours before my hibernation. I told Vicken to make you a vampire. But he did not. And I desired the rush,
the high of bringing another night wanderer into the world.’

She pulled back and I saw her fingers curl over for the barest of seconds. My arm throbbed again, sending tears of pain to my eyes. It was easier to say this when I couldn’t see her
clearly.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’

She gripped her hands over my shoulders. She lifted me just slightly and then with a push threw me back to the ground.

‘Don’t distract me!’ she yelled. Pain pulsated at the front of my head.

‘I attacked Rhode in Hathersage in order to get the ritual, but all he could do was set the bloody place on fire. You’re both cowards. I am going to take you with me tonight.
I’m going to take you with me and then –’ she grimaced – ‘when Rhode comes for you, and you are dead, drained, chained to the wall, he’ll tell me all about this
ritual.’

‘It will be useless to you,’ I spat. ‘You’re not powerful enough to bring forth the darkness you seek.’ I tried to stare into her eyes again, to call back our
connection, but it didn’t work.

‘You don’t know anything about my power,’ Odette said, raising her hands, ready to strike again.

I flinched in anticipation.

Suddenly she hunched over. There was an awful thud and the sound of ripping flesh. Vicken’s dagger was pinned through her neck. She fell forward, grasping at her neck, and rolled on to her
side, grabbing for the hilt of the dagger.

Vicken appeared next to me with his wild hair and a bloody scrape on his cheek. He lifted his boot and stepped lightly on her stomach. She bared her fangs and hissed.

‘Now, now, play nice,’ he said.

‘She’s very strong,’ I warned.

‘That’s why I stabbed her, love,’ Vicken said out of one corner of his mouth. ‘Now, tell us, where did you get your super-strength?’ he asked, his boot still on her
stomach.

‘I’ve performed spells you’ve never dreamed of,’ she sneered. ‘Each time I grow faster, stronger, more cunning.’

But now I could see fear in her eyes. Blood from her neck trickled over her shoulder and on to the dirt. She tried to push herself up but collapsed with a thud back on to the ground, still under
Vicken’s boot.

‘Lenah, I need another dagger,’ Vicken said, gesturing at Tracy’s knife, which lay near Tony’s grave.

Odette struggled against his boot, baring her fangs like an animal.

Yes, I had made her a vampire, though I did not make her a vampire in the attic as I had originally planned. I had moved the misery downstairs. She’d hidden behind my ancient furniture.
Her eyes then had been beautiful and green, desperate for salvation. The first night I had tried to kill her she outsmarted me, ran from the attic and found her family by the stables out in the
back gardens.

‘Lenah! The knife,’ Vicken cried.

Her father had begged. Naturally I killed him first.

I stared at the ground. Ella had been her given name.

I have a life to lead, she’d said, pleading with me.

‘Do you?’ I’d said with a merciless laugh.

Through my reverie I heard Vicken’s voice: ‘The dagger – now! She’s healing!’

‘No, you pathetic child,’ I’d continued. ‘
I
have a life to lead and I can’t take my hibernation unless I am full. You are young and
healthy.’

I hated the sound of my vampire self.

‘Please . . .’ Odette’s human voice echoed in my head.

Followed by the same dead laugh. How I had laughed and laughed as she cried for mercy and begged me to spare her life.

‘Lenah!’ Vicken shouted again.

I refocused on Odette grasping for the knife protruding from her neck.

I couldn’t move. A sickening feeling overwhelmed me. Unmistakable and undeniable.

Odette pulled the bloody knife from her neck. She jumped up and kicked out at Vicken, who fell. In the time it took for him to get back on to his feet, she had run into the woods.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ he yelled at me.

Tracy appeared from nowhere, snatched her knife from Tony’s grave and set off towards the woods.

‘Hey!’ Vicken yelled after Tracy. ‘Crazy girl, get back here! Now!’

Tracy stopped at the edge of the wood, the knife in her hand hanging by her side.

Odette had vanished.

Vicken walked down the long lane of gravestones and stopped by Tracy.

He offered her his hand. She went to hand him the knife but he shook his head. She lifted her eyes to meet his and then considered his palm again. It was enough to make my heart break. She
dropped the knife to the grass and wrapped fingers with his.

‘Where did you come from?’ Vicken asked Tracy. ‘I thought you ran out of the cemetery.’

‘I hid by the mausoleum. When I saw her run away, I don’t know, I got brave for a moment,’ Tracy replied.

I held Tracy’s sweatshirt to my injured arm as we walked back through the campus towers and past the security guard. The sweatshirt soaked up some of the blood that had seeped through the
cut on my arm, but aside from a mild throbbing, the pain wasn’t bad.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘that I didn’t . . .’

‘It’s all right,’ Vicken replied.

‘It’s not all right,’ I said. ‘I froze.’

Tracy’s expression was pensive. ‘It took me all summer to accept Tony’s death.’

Vicken bowed his head a bit.

She looked at him. ‘Did you kill him because you were a vampire?’

‘We did many things as vampires which we would never dream of doing in human form,’ he replied gently.

‘
She
killed Kate and Claudia, didn’t she?’

Her eyes shone in the ghostly blue of the early-evening light. I nodded.

‘I’ve spent all summer looking up how to kill vampires. I know why you have a sword on your wall. Why you keep herbs on your door. Lavender is supposed to protect your home. And
rosemary.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Rosemary is for remembrance.’ She pulled a chain out from beneath her shirt. It was a silver locket. When she opened it, there was a
tiny sprig of dried rosemary.

My breath was short. I couldn’t help staring.

‘Tony researched you too,’ she said. ‘It’s why you wore those sparkly ashes around your neck last year. Like the ones I saw on your balcony. Then Justin confirmed
it,’ she said. ‘That you were . . .’ She paused and her eyes met mine. ‘That you were a vampire.’

I had never believed Tracy to be that astute. It seemed I had underestimated her.

‘I loved Tony,’ I said. The centre of my chest ached, taking the pain away from my arm. ‘He was my best friend.’

‘I’m not going to say anything,’ she said. ‘About either of you. It took me all summer just to accept that the rumours could be true. And then Justin confirmed it.’
She ran her fingers through her hair again. ‘Well, he didn’t so much confirm it as I forced him to tell me.’

‘How?’ I asked. The prickly feeling of betrayal dissolved as she spoke.

‘I threatened to smash the lights of his car. When that didn’t work, I showed him all my research. Everything I’d found. I told him about the pictures. He finally told me the
truth.’

‘You and Tony are more alike than I thought,’ I said. Her tenacity reminded me of how he too had unearthed my secret all on his own.

‘I want to know. Someday. Not today, but I want to know exactly what happened to Tony.’ She looked at Vicken as she said it. ‘That’s all. Can you promise me?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

We set off across the campus into the busy student body, all walking in twos and threes to the union or the library or their dorms.

‘What do we do about the Halloween dance?’ Tracy asked.

‘You stay out of the way, love,’ Vicken said, lighting a cigarette.

‘If you need me, I’ll help you,’ Tracy said, and pulled her bag tighter over her shoulder. ‘Any way I can.’

That night, I stood at my balcony door looking out at the tiles. Only when I moved did I occasionally see the flicker of my vampire remains. I reached into my pocket and felt
the gift card Claudia bought me for my birthday.

‘So it felt like your extrasensory perception was back?’ Rhode said.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It was very clear to me what Odette wanted. I could sense her deepest desires. I saw images from her plans for Halloween night.’

‘What could have caused it to come back?’ Justin asked.

The only explanation I could fathom was that the bond created between Odette and me on that dark day a hundred years ago linked me eternally to her mind.

‘I was her maker,’ I whispered. ‘It’s the only explanation. I understood her motivations, as much as I didn’t want to.’

‘Why didn’t you kill her when you had the chance?’ Rhode asked.

I locked my gaze with his and kept my jaw tight. My heart thudded. I hated thinking of myself in that moment, with the dagger by my side, Vicken at the ready, waiting, needing my help. I
didn’t know how to answer this. I
knew
this woman. She had been alone and afraid and I had sucked the very life from her. I had killed her. Worse, I had created the monster she became.
Her death played in my mind – the memory of how warm she’d been, how her body trembled with fear, and my joy at taking both her warmth and her life.

I met Rhode’s eyes.

‘Because I already have killed her. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth, and it paralysed me.’

Silence. Then Vicken said, ‘On that note, it’s time for dinner.’

There was a clink from Vicken’s boots as he stood up, and the shuffle of papers being moved. I turned my back on the living room and faced the balcony again. I knew what was coming in a
few days’ time and I would have only an old sword and a couple of daggers with which to take down Odette. I didn’t know if I could make myself do it.