The Vampire...In My Dreams (22 page)

Dominic! I finally recalled the vamp’s last words, telling him to meet her here at midnight, no doubt for the final showdown.

My watch said it was 11:30. Would Dominic come for me now? Before it was too late? Lynetta wouldn’t spare me, because Dominic would never be hers if I lived.

A soft moan came from the bed. I crossed the floor and yanked open the bed curtains. Kate screamed.

“Ohmigosh, Kate,” I whispered, too startled to react more than that. Then I reached for her and touched her wrist. She pulled away. I realized then that the room wasn’t artificially lit, though I could see just fine. Kate couldn’t make me out, but why she didn’t recognize my voice was another thing. “It’s just me, Marissa,” I reassured her. “Are you okay?”

“She’s going to kill us, isn’t she?” Kate didn’t sound scared, being her typical adventurous self, but she sounded slightly disoriented.

I must have awakened her, which could explain why at first she hadn’t recognized me.

“No,” I said with dark resolve in my voice. “We’re going to kill her and before Dominic comes to rescue us, too, because I doubt she’ll fight fair.”

I left her to turn on a light switch.

“Marissa?” Kate’s voice sounded scared now, like she feared I was leaving her for good.

“Getting the light.” I flipped it on and four bulbs in a fan unit burned brightly. Before I could rejoin her, Kate bolted from the bed and threw her arms around me. “I thought I was dead,” she sobbed.

I held her tightly, trying to give her the strength and determination I felt in my mind, though my body felt otherwise. I wondered then how much blood the vampire had taken from me. Stepping back from Kate, I studied her throat. It was still bandaged, but there were no new bites anywhere else. I sensed nobody had fed on her again. She wore her denim pants and knit shirt. I assumed she’d dressed and was waiting for her parents to come for her when Lynetta had arrived at her hospital room instead. “How strong do you feel?”

“I feel good. I tried to tell the nurse I wanted to go home, but she said my mother would come later. Instead, Lynetta arrived. I tried to clear her mind, but I couldn’t.” Kate reached her hand out to touch my wounds.

I grimaced, the pain still pricking my nerve endings. “I tried to do that to her, too. The fact she’s an ancient vampire must be the problem.” Though I felt a little wobbly, I paced across the floor, not sure what else to do.

“Are you okay?” I heard the unmistakable worry in Kate’s voice.

“She’s dead meat,” I said, unable to curb the venom in my words. I would be strong enough to take the vamp down, if it killed me. All that mattered was that Dominic and Kate were freed.

“Can you call your patron demon?”

I stopped pacing, then shook my head. “Only once a month.”

“Every thirty days, or only once each month?”

My thought processes were sluggish. I touched my neck again. “What do you mean?” I just couldn’t understand what Kate was getting at.

“The new month begins a minute after midnight.”

“A minute after midnight,” I repeated like a parrot. “A minute after midnight! But Dominic is supposed to be here right at midnight. What if she kills us before then?” I collapsed on the bed, my strength and determination dwindling all at once.

“The lightning spell worked on Dominic. What if we tried it on her? Neither of us are as advanced in our skills as Joshua, but what if together we could fight her?”

We had to chance it. Anything we could do to stop Lynetta was worth trying.

Kate glanced at my neck. “Was she the one that bit you?” Her eyes grew big as her gaze returned to mine. “Oh, Marissa, we’ve got to kill her.”

I wondered if I might be able to vanish like Dominic did, then quickly dismissed that notion. I hadn’t fed off Lynetta, just the other way around. She wouldn’t be foolish enough to give me more abilities that I might be able to use against her. Rather, she had intended to weaken me.

I grabbed Kate’s hand when I realized what might have occurred. I’m certain the terror on her face reflected my own horrified features.

“What’s wrong, Marissa?” she choked out.

“I can’t be certain, but she might have taken some of my witch’s abilities when she bit me. She hasn’t been able to control Dominic since I shared my blood with him. She was only human until now.”

Kate shook her head. In a whisper she said, “She could use the lightning bolt spell on us.”

“Or anything else she could conjure up that I knew how to do.”

“This isn’t good.”

No, it wasn’t good. In fact, I couldn’t think of a worse thing to happen. I shivered. An ancient vampire with her own powers and now witch’s abilities, too. Dominic wouldn’t be able to kill her alone, I didn’t think. The three of us had to act together.

“Can you reach Dominic?”

I wasn’t sure. My mind was so fuzzy, I wondered if that was why I hadn’t sensed anything about him. Then again, maybe he was too far away. I wasn’t sure how strong our telepathic abilities were for each other.

“I hear everything you are thinking, dear Marissa.”

I gasped. My heart pounded with gusto and my palms grew clammy.

Kate took my hand. “What’s wrong?”

“Dominic just spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He hears everything I’m thinking.” I concentrated again, attempting to hear Dominic.

“She’s fed on you and weakened you. Your attempts to sense my thoughts are draining you of energy. Keep thinking of what you and Kate can plan, and I’ll continue to monitor your thoughts. I only know the spells you know and if you can’t work them, I can’t either. See if Kate knows anything we can all use together to destroy Lynetta and her minions. Together, we’ll defeat her. I love you, Marissa. No matter what, know that.”

My heart sang with renewed hope. The Stars had said we shared a bond that couldn’t be broken. We had to do this together, just as I had assumed. “He fears I’ll wear myself out trying to read his thoughts.”

“Great,” Kate said. “Just like before. He leaves us to fight the battle alone.”

“Not this time. The problem is he doesn’t know any spells except for the ones I already knew and transferred to him during the blood exchange. I have problems with correctly conjuring up a lot of them. But once we find one that will work, all three of us will use it together to defeat her. Since Lynetta said he couldn’t arrive before midnight or she’d kill us, he’s waiting until the right time before he joins us.”

Kate sat on the bed next to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder, encouraging the strong friendship we’d always had.

Then it occurred to me. “What if there was a spell I could never master, but you could?”

“What good would that do? If you couldn’t master it, then we couldn’t do it together.” Kate stood up from the bed, finally realizing what I was saying. “But if you couldn’t master it, neither could she.”

I grinned. “Yes, Kate. What’s a spell I could never master? There were several, but I can’t think of anything that would be useful to us now.” I hated how jumbled my thoughts were.

She folded her arms. “You never were good at turning objects to stone.”

I lifted my brows. “Nor were you.”

“Yeah.” Kate stared at the floor for a moment. “You could never enchant a vicious animal and make them docile.”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, right, neither could I.” Kate ran her hand through her golden curls. Then she waved her finger at me. “You could never turn an animal into another form.”

“Won’t work on a witch or warlock.”

“Yeah.” Kate looked into space, then her face suddenly brightened. “You were never good with your Cupid’s arrow spell.”

“Uh-uh. It would work only on someone who was good of heart. You can’t make someone evil love someone who’s not. Well, actually, you can’t make someone who’s filled with wickedness love anyone, period.”

“Hmmm, I’d forgotten that part of the spell.”

I stood up from the bed, and Kate’s mouth curved upward. “The berserker spell!” we both said in unison.

“Why didn’t I think of that before?” Kate asked, her cheeks full of color, her voice enthusiastic and filled with hope.

“Me neither. I could never do that spell because I always said it wrong. Not that I have dyslexia, but I always transposed the key words. Even now, I can’t remember how to properly cast the spell.” Even though we didn’t have much use for it, if a gang of humans tried to hurt a witch or warlock, we could cast the berserker spell in self-defense. The humans would then attack each other, giving the magic user time to escape.

“But we can work on it! I can get you to remember it, and then we’ll nail her butt!”

Her enthusiasm bolstered me. “And her minions too.”

“I don’t know the spell correctly either then, Marissa. Have Kate tell it to you slowly, and repeat the words, each one in the right order for me in your mind.”

I could sense the excitement in his telepathic communication. “Dominic wants us to use the spell.”

Kate beamed. “Sure is cool how you guys can talk to each other like that. All right, girl, let’s do it.”

By the time we had finished memorizing the spell, my watch showed it was a quarter of midnight. But Lynetta had no intention of waiting for Dominic to arrive before she disposed of Kate and me.

She threw the door open, letting it bang against the wall. Both Kate and I jumped. Lynetta wore a black sequined evening gown that reached her ankles, and four-inch stilettos that I couldn’t imagine fighting in. Time to party?

Chill bumps covered my arms and my heart thundered. We didn’t have a choice. It was now or never, despite Dominic not being here.

Six more vampires surrounded her, all of them baring their canines, all male and wearing tuxes…a nice formal affair.

My throat grew dry. But I tried to keep my wits about me, as lightheaded as I still felt. I assumed she’d told them it was feeding time, and we were the main menu. I steeled my back, trying to gather the courage I needed to face the challenge. Protecting Dominic and Kate remained at the forefront of my concerns.

At once, Kate and I began our chant, silently, in our minds. If we repeated the words out loud, the vamp could copy us and do the same to us. So we had to use the utmost caution.

“Shelingriadan, Parcel, Evilosian, Rarificat, Michelob, Minooson, Phat!”
I heard them repeated in my mind. Dominic had copied them, word for word. Then he appeared beside me. My heart raced when I saw him, but the menace before us was still too real. We only had time for a quick squeeze of hands.

Lynetta and her bloodsuckers stood still at first, as if they’d forgotten what they’d come here to do. The three of us repeated the words again, then the berserker spell hit full force.

Lynetta vanished for an instant, then returned with a sword in the next. With one swipe, she beheaded the tallest of the vampires, while another sank his fangs into a shorter man.

Like a madwoman and her crazed minions, the vampires tore through the house killing each other—the berserker spell had set the enemy against her own allies.

“Now what do we do?” Kate asked.

“When the last one is left, we’ll have to kill him or her,” I said, determined to end this now.

“Her,” Dominic explained. “Lynetta is the ancient one. Unfortunately, she’ll survive all the others.”

A grandfather clock downstairs struck midnight with an eerie twelve bongs while we searched five bedrooms, three bathrooms, the kitchen, a den, just about everywhere, looking for any sign of Lynetta. Then we found her in a large living room filled with four couches and several chairs upholstered in black sitting beside dark mahogany tables.

Seven dead men in tattered tuxes rested at Lynetta’s feet. She’d beheaded every one of them and their skin had shriveled up like white wrinkled raisins.

The place smelled musty, like an old antique shop filled with mildewed books, the home of millions of dust mites.

Lynetta had a strange look of madness in her ebony eyes while she seemed to stare straight through us at the wall behind us. Her hands still clutched the sword, blood dripping from its shiny steel blade.

“If we attempt to disarm her, she’ll kill us,” Dominic warned.

Lynetta looked sharply at Dominic as if she finally noticed him and took a step toward us. Was the spell already wearing off? Was she no longer under our influence to kill her own people?

She snarled. Blood dripped from her yellowed fangs. Her black hair hung tangled and matted and part of the hem of her satin gown clung to her ankles in ragged shambles. Now in bare feet, she leapt at me, swinging her sword.

“It’s seconds past the hour of midnight,” Kate screamed, grabbing my arm and shaking it. “Call your patron demon, Marissa! Call your patron demon!”

Chapter 23

DOMINIC

I began to chant for the water demon when Marissa didn’t respond. Did Lynetta now hold some power over her? As soon as the vamp leapt for Marissa, I grabbed my girl. We fell a few feet away onto one of the feather-filled couches, breaking our tumble.

I scrambled to my feet and continued the chant. Marissa quickly followed behind me, beseeching her patron demon to aid us once more.

Lynetta had barely missed us with the sword and sliced the couch instead, sending a flurry of feathers flying. Then she charged for a second time, but stopped abruptly and stared at the demon that appeared before her.

“What is this?” Lynetta shrieked, slashing through the watery figure with her sword.

The water demon wavered in her liquid blue shape, showing off her satiny curves. She laughed with the force of the rush of a waterfall, but hesitated in front of Lynetta, studying the vamp. What was she waiting for?

Lynetta seemed transfixed at the sight of the demon also. Or was she trying to control it with her black gaze as she focused on the creature’s blue eyes? She might not be able to mesmerize a human, but the entity wasn’t human. Could she succeed?

“Suck the water from her body,”
Marissa pleaded.

Her patron demon’s words washed over me like a summer’s silky rain. “She’s the one.”

“Yes, yes, please, destroy her before she destroys us,” Marissa said, waving frantically at Lynetta.