The Dark Rising (14 page)

Letting the memories play over and over again in my head, I tried to identify what seemed strange or out of place to me.  I wanted to find something, some sort of clue that would lead me to the identity of the killer, but it was always Vance’s face in the mirror.

I rewound the images to the beginning and watched the hand that reached out to rip off the car door.  It looked like his too.  I felt myself growing frustrated quickly.

“Don’t force it, Portia,” Vance’s voice whispered sleepily next to me and he pulled me tighter to him.  “We’ll figure it out somehow.”

 “I just keep seeing Babs,” I sighed.  “She was terrified Vance.  I can’t get the image out of my head.”

I rolled over so I could face him.  His eyes were flaming red, and I knew he needed to feed.

“Why didn’t you bite me earlier?”

“I don’t like hurting you,” he said, looking back at me.

“I told you before—it isn’t as bad when we’re together.”  I reached over to stroke a finger down his face.

“I know, but it still hurts you a little, and you’re always so weak afterward,” he explained.  “I’ve been selfish.  It was my way of trying to thank you for being good to me.”

“And now you are suffering because of it.  If you don’t feed soon you’re going to turn into the jerk again.”  I laughed to soften the blow.

“I don’t want to have that happen.”  He leaned in to give me a kiss.  “But if I’m going to do this, we might as well make it as easy on you as possible.”

When he finally sank his teeth into my neck I barely noticed a thing, but he only took enough blood to take the edge off before he pulled away.

“Don’t stop,” I said, pulling him back to me.

He hesitated only a second before he dipped back in and continued to drink his fill, and I let my body relax as it morphed from feeling euphoric into unconsciousness once again.

The hunter was back.  He moved stealthily through the brush while he watched Bruce lock up his house before he turned to head to his car to go to the restaurant.  He never made it to the car.

Bruce’s eyes register the horror when he saw his captor.

“No!  Vance, don’t!” Bruce screamed and the hunter grabbed him, biting into his throat.

I screamed too. “Stop!  No!”  I felt the blood run into my mouth, tasting it the same as the killer would.

“Portia!  Wake up!” I heard Vance’s voice calling to me loudly.  “Wake up.”

I was unable to open my eyes until Bruce was dead and fell from my grasp.  Then the vision slipped away and I found myself sitting up in bed with Vance shaking me roughly.

“What is it?  What’s happened?”

“I … you … something just killed Bruce!” I rasped out, trying to catch my breath which was coming in ragged puffs.

“I’ve been here with you,” Vance said and in an instant his mind linked with mine.  I saw he had never even left the bed since he drank from me earlier.  He’d held me in his arms the entire time I’d slept.  “We need to find the rest of the coven—before anymore die,” he added, the urgency apparent in his voice.

“I know,” I replied, still feeling weak, yet wanting to do something to help.  “I’ll try.”

“No.  I want you to stay in bed.  You aren’t strong enough.  I’ll go after them.”

“They’ll attack you if you show up alone.”

“Let them try,” he said with a chuckle.  “I can take it.”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.  He went over to the closet and pulled out some of his clothes.

“What’ll you do if you find them?”

“I’ll try to convince them to come back here with me,” he said as he glanced up at me while buttoning his pants.

“Be careful.” I hated that I was too weak to go with him.

He finished getting dressed and leaned over to kiss me.

“I will baby.  I promise,” he replied.

And then he was gone.

I struggled to keep my eyes open after Vance left.  I knew I hadn’t regenerated enough after his feeding to even really be conscious.  He had forced me awake after the dream. 

“Go to sleep.  I’ll be okay,” his voice crept into my head.

I didn’t have the strength to answer him and I let my mind slip back into the darkness.

I had no idea how long I was asleep when I felt the bed move under the weight of someone climbing into it.  A hand brushed over my neck, moving the hair away from it.

“Hello, Portia,” a clearly female voice spoke up.

My eyes popped open and I found myself staring into a pair of demon ones, flaring red.  My sluggish brain tried to comprehend what was happening as I watched the woman’s teeth lengthen into fangs.

She pounced, biting into me, drinking until I passed out once again.

I heard a slight humming.  My mind latched onto that sound and tried to focus.  Slowly, I became aware of my surroundings, and my eyes fluttered open, squinting against the light.

I was in an SUV, from the look of it, lying in the second seat, restrained by some sort of magical barrier.  There was an I.V. tube stuck into my arm and a steady stream of blood ran through it, dripping into a medical bag.

Looking toward the front of the vehicle, I could see what appeared to be a woman with long red hair behind the wheel.  I also noticed my amulet had been removed and was now dangling from the rear view mirror.

“Who are you?” my voice whispered weakly, cracking slightly, turning my attention back to the woman, her head whipped around to glance over her shoulder.  I knew her face.  She was the lady I’d met at the Fountains at Fontane when Shelly’s car had exploded. 

What was her name?  It was something different.  I dug through my memories, trying hard to recall before it popped into my head. 

She’d called herself Cat.

“Oh.  You’re awake,” she said, appearing concerned.  “I guess I need to adjust some things.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, and I closed my eyes against a momentary wave of dizziness.

She sighed before she spoke.  “My name is Catriona Fitzgerald.”  She offered no further explanation to me.

The name sounded familiar, but I had to search my groggy mind for what it meant.  Suddenly it hit me.

“You’re Brian’s mom,” I replied, with a sinking feeling, remembering back to when Brian had attacked me in Scotland, right before Vance had decapitated him in a murderous rage.

“Yes,” she responded with a sharp nod, and I thought I her voice caught for a moment.  “He was my only child.”

I was in big trouble.  She was draining my blood to keep my powers depleted so I couldn’t fight back against her.  She wanted revenge.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To your worst nightmare,” she replied frostily, and I believed her completely, without a doubt.

“Vance will come for me,” I stated matter-of-factly, hoping it would scare her into thinking twice about what she might be planning.

“Oh, I’m counting on that.  But don’t worry your pretty little head.  We will be ready for him,” she said with an assured air.

“Who’s ‘we’?” I asked, picking up on her use of the plural.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she replied, and she continued to stare straight ahead.

“No one has the power to match him.  It would be foolish for you to provoke him.”  I tried to reason with her.

She just laughed at my remark.

“We’ll take care of Vance, and I think you’ll be surprised at how easily we’ll be able to,” she countered.

“And then what?” I prodded her for more information as things began to come into focus a little bit better.

“Then you will both die,” she said, this time turning to flash her demon features at me with a smile.

“Killing us won’t bring Brian back.”

“No, but it’ll make me feel a lot better,” she replied, and the car swerved slightly to the right. 

I realized we were exiting off a freeway via a ramp, when I saw a sign flash by.

“Brian deserved what he got,” I continued, determined to say my piece before she could do anything else to me she might have planned.  “He messed around in something he had no business being involved with.”

The car stopped suddenly.  Cat got out and came to open the back door.  She leaned in over me with a menacing look on her face, and I felt certain she would have killed me in that moment if she had been able to.

Instantly, strange images began dancing in my head, and it was if I had been transferred to a different time and place.

I was back in Scotland at the keep we had stayed in, wandering through the grounds desperately looking for something.  Suddenly, I caught a whiff of a rancid smell on the air and I turned to follow it.  I walked out of the gate in the back wall and into the meadow we’d played Frisbee in.  I found a patch of disturbed grass near a tree on the far side.  Falling to my knees I started clawing at the earth with my hands.  Soon, my fingers hit something hard and I began brushing the dirt aside to reveal the remains of a body.  My breath caught as I realized I was looking at my son.  No.  Not my son, but Cat’s son.  I was seeing everything as she experienced it. 

The puzzle pieces began to fall into place.

“You killed Babs and Bruce!” I accused, after the vision cleared from my head and I found myself staring back into her red eyes.

She laughed at me.

“I’m an illusionist demon,” she explained with a smile.  “I told you what to see and you did.”

“How dare you try to make me think Vance was responsible for their deaths!” I choked, my rage coming to the surface and with it a surge of power.

Cat reached for the tubing on the I.V., and I saw her adjust a small roller.  My blood began to flow out at a much more rapid pace, and I felt myself drifting away.

“Vance deserves what he gets,” she replied, with a snarl, right before my vision faded into blackness once again.

I vaguely remembered slipping back into a dim consciousness long enough to know I was being moved from the car and there was another person, besides Cat, present with me.

I didn’t know how much time had passed since that moment, but I heard a loud motor running and for a few seconds a wave of nausea washed over me.  Then I realized I must be in some kind of boat, a small one, judging from the curving bow beneath my spine.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and found it was nighttime.  I could see a sliver of the moon glittering through what appeared to be moss draped tree tops overhead.

“She’s waking up again,” a low female voice with a heavy southern accent permeated the air.

“I’ll take care of it,” Cat responded, and I quickly drifted back into oblivion once more.

When I awoke later, I found myself restrained in a semi reclining position on a medical table of some sort.  The I.V. still hung from my arm, with its constant dripping of blood moving into the receptacle at the end of it.

I couldn’t move any part of my body, except for my eyes, which I cast about to explore my surroundings.

The room was dimly lit and made entirely of roughhewn wood.  Rows and rows of wooden shelves lined the walls, containing all sorts of items.  Many of these I recognized as being for use in magic, but others were completely foreign, unrecognizable to me.  

While no one was with me, I could hear the murmur of quiet voices coming through a door that stood slightly ajar at the far end of the room.

My mind scrambled to put together some sort of coherency to my situation.  I knew was the prisoner of at least two people.  The area I’d been brought to had been accessed by boat, through what appeared to be a swamp, and the dwelling looked to be more of a shack than an actual residence or living quarters.

Wagering a guess, I thought perhaps I could be somewhere in the Deep South.  There were miles and miles of swamp land located there.  Escape would be near to impossible, and being found by anyone who wasn’t Vance would be an even more remote possibility.  It was a perfect location to hide someone.

Exhausted, I closed my eyes again and tried to center my mind, pushing out passed its barriers, searching for Vance.

“Are you out there?” I spoke into the silent darkness, wondering if my magic was even strong enough for him to hear me.

 My body pulsated with an ache from the physical pain of our separation.  I knew this feeling was the very thing which would draw him to me, but there was no answer, only stillness.

“Portia?” Cat’s voice called to me from across the room.  Instantly my eyelids snapped open to face her.  “Good, you’re awake,” she said and she moved toward me.

I thought of how her name suited her perfectly while I watched her lithe movements, just like that of a predator stalking its prey.

“Where am I?” I asked her with a dry mouth, wishing I could have a drink of water.

“Why does it matter?”  She reached to finger the tubing that was running from my arm.  “You’ll never be able to escape from this place.”

“Then there’s no harm in answering the question, is there?” I countered back to her.

She looked me over before giving me a sly smile. “No.  I suppose not,” she replied.  Her eyes flitted over my face, and I thought I saw a flicker of humor pass over hers.  “We’re deep in one of the bayous of Louisiana.”

 “Why did you bring me here?” I asked, trying to pump her for as much information as I could.

“I have a friend here who’s going to use her expertise to help me out a little.”  I felt, more than saw, the change she made in the adjustment of my blood tubing when a wave of dizziness washed over me.

“Help you with what?” I questioned, struggling with difficulty to remain afloat in my head.

“With killing you and Vance, of course.”  She smiled politely as if we were having a nice conversation together at brunch.

I sighed heavily and my mind fought to keep up.

“You can’t kill us,” I said back to her feebly, closing my eyes against another wave of dizziness.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re immortal.  We both received the Awakening,” I explained and I opened my eyes to watch her reaction to this news.

She tipped her head back and laughed before she leaned forward once again, placing her mouth right up against my ear as she ran the long fingernails of one of her hands down my face.