Wake of Darkness (31 page)

“Alex! Jim!
MOVE!!
” Screamed
Sophie.

They dived out of her way. Sophie shot
the make-shift stakes forward using just the force of her mind, and they
plunged themselves into the chests of the two males who fell, twitching on the
pavement. Without a word, Jim and Alexander promptly relieved them of their
heads.

Sophie reached for another scrap of
metal hovering in the air and grasped it with her hand so hard that it cut into
her own skin. She plunged it into the still heart of one of the females,
feeling the rough metal dig further into her skin. Jim grabbed another from
behind and cut his head off with a swift cut of his knife. Laney stood frozen
in the doorway Sophie had pushed her into. She was utterly terrified. This
wasn’t fun and games in the basement anymore. She looked to her sister with
wide, horrified eyes.

Sophie’s opponent, the shrill
female, lay gasping for air at her feet. Sophie leaned over the vampire, her
hand still clutching the metal scrap, her own blood running down the length of
its crude blade. It distracted the ever-ravenous fiend below her, who glanced
between the blood and Sophie's fiery eyes, a mix of fear and lust in her eyes.

“Who the hell sent you?” demanded
Sophie in a cold tone, holding the vampire down under her foot.

The vampire spit at her. Sophie
bitterly wiped her face and glared at the vampire beneath her. She turned her
head to the side and concentrated on her. The vampire’s eyes rolled back in her
head. Her back arched as a piercing scream escaped her lips.

It does not matter, Soph…
Alexander
thought, but she interrupted him with a dismissive wave of her free hand. She
didn’t look away from the vampire.

“You’re going to die, anyway,” said
Sophie. “I can make it a little less painful. Tell me. Who. Sent. You.”

The vampire relaxed against the
ground, panting from the pain. She garbled the response from her half-closed
lips in a desperate attempt for mercy: “Jacques.”

Of course.

Sophie quickly extracted the stake which
had been trembling in its resting place of the vampire’s dead heart, and cut
brilliantly through the vampire’s neck; the body went limp. She stood, slowly
straightening herself and looked at Alexander.

“He sent them here to get Laney,”
she said, before suddenly looking over her shoulder at the younger girl. “You
okay?”

Laney nodded, breathless, but she
still couldn’t speak.

“You know why they were after her?”
Jim asked.

Sophie shook her head and threw the
metal scrap to the ground with disgust. “They didn’t even know why; they’re
just following orders.”

Zoey looked at her. “Did you get
all of that information from her?”

Sophie shook her head. She wiped
her bloodied hand against the leg of her jeans, still irritated. She suddenly
looked up at Alexander, with worry reflecting in her eyes. She sighed with the
realization that he was alright.
That was too close.

He nodded in response as their eyes
held each other's gaze. Her breath came out in trembling exhalations as she
stared at him, realizing how close they'd come to losing the fight.

“This is ridiculous!” Jim exclaimed
to himself. He began piling the pieces of the vampires against the brick wall
of one of the buildings. “We’ve got to do something to end this.”
Damn it, I
should have known better. I should have brought more weapons.

“Agreed, but it’s over for tonight,”
Alexander replied. “This cannot continue; it’s intolerable. We are meeting with
the sisters tomorrow. Regardless of their response to Catherina, I think we shall
move forward sooner than we’ve planned.”

Zoey set the pile of bodies on
fire. They watched briefly as the limbs and torsos of their enemies were
consumed by the glowing red flames before retreating to the car.

They rode in silence, although
their thoughts were anything but quiet; Sophie grasped Alexander’s hand as he
steered them towards home, her other hand bandaged in his handkerchief. Jim’s
thoughts were angry, inflamed. Laney’s were grateful and melancholy, more
subdued than ever. Sophie’s were a mixture of uneasiness and the strange relief
felt after a near tragedy is avoided. Zoey’s was the only mind that was blank,
devoid of emotion.

And Alexander’s thoughts, as he
held the hand of his beloved, were determined.

The silence was deafening as they
backed into the garage. When he’d turned the car off, Alexander looked over to
Sophie who sat staring distractedly out the windshield. Her mouth was pursed in
worry; her eyes scanned the dark manically.

He and Jim exchanged a look. “What’s
wrong?” they asked her at the same time.

A tremor of fear ran through
Laney’s frame. Zoey sniffed at the air. Her eyes widened as she watched Sophie.

“I don’t know yet,” Sophie replied
in a flat voice, her eyes shifting quickly about, listening. She shook her head
after a few moments, though, and said, “I thought I heard something.”

Without a word, they were out of
the car. Jim stepped out first and turned in a movement so quick that the
change was nearly indistinguishable. He and Sophie locked eyes in the same
instant over the roof of the car as a stream of expletives burst out of his
mouth.

“They are here?” Alexander
demanded.

“Get her in the house,” Sophie told
Jim who already had Laney by the arm.

Jim looked to Alexander.

“Do it,” he said.

Jim and Laney suddenly disappeared.

Sophie jumped to her car where a
rolled up piece of cloth was stowed under the front seat. She heard Alexander
load a clip into one of the pistols left in the garage for such emergencies and
spin a silencer on the barrel, as she unrolled the cloth and drew out the
concealed silver and wooden stakes, the cloth creating a faint ringing sound as
it brushed against the surface of the silver. She handed some of the wooden
stakes to Zoey and took one of the silver stakes in each hand.

Alexander was already at the door,
waiting for her with his gun ready.

Where are they?
He asked

I don’t know. What should we do?

Let’s walk to the house. Stay
right with me.

Zoey and Sophie nodded. He crouched
down and let the firearm lead his trail. Every shift in the leaves directed it
upward in response.

Sophie crept out of the garage,
turned away from Alexander, so that her back was more to him than anywhere else.
Zoey slinked at her side, her eyes roving through the darkness.

I don’t see anything,
he
thought.

Me either. I can’t even hear
anything. Maybe they’re gone.

He stopped and reached back with
his free hand to grasp her upper arm.
Let’s go,
he thought before they
were suddenly moving and were abruptly in the house again.

“What is happening?” Dante asked,
panic in his eyes.

Zoey went to the front door and
made sure it was locked. Jim was standing at the front window, pistol in hand,
watching for any movement outside it.

Alexander placed a hand on Dante’s
shoulder as he walked past him. “We were followed.”

Catherina’s already sallow face
seemed to drain of even more blood. Her dark eyes looked from Alexander to
Sophie and back again. None of them spoke.

“How many?” Jim asked.

Sophie shook her head, joining him
at the window. “Three, I think,” she said. “They were watching, and followed us
back here.”

Sophie’s eyes tracked a subtle
movement in the dark a hundred paces from the front window. “Right there, you
see?” she asked Jim in a whisper.

In the same instant, Zoey and Dante
leapt away from the window as a black-eyed vampire lunged at them on the other
side. His fingernails scratched gratingly against the pane and Laney screamed
from where she cowered in a crouch on the stairs.

Another vampire crept at the
adjacent window and Sophie looked to Alexander.

The other one’s out back,
she
told him.

Alexander nodded and looked at Jim.
Are you ready?

As I’ll ever be,
Jim replied
and nodded at Sophie.

She looked at the others, her eyes
lingering on Laney’s. “Stay here,” she said and then they were gone.

Laney slowly walked over to
Catherina who had jumped to the second floor in an effort to protect herself. Laney
felt unsafe without Sophie, Alexander, and Jim in the room with her. She
reached out to take the older woman’s hand, but Catherina just stared blankly
at her and pulled away to retreat into her corner. Laney’s lower lip trembled
at the rejection and she blinked back tears.

Dante walked to her and placed a
gentle hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see him looking tenderly down at
her. Without a thought, she threw herself into his fatherly embrace. Zoey patted
her back.

“It will be alright,” he whispered.

Laney quickly looked up from where she’d
buried her face in Dante’s shoulder. She walked towards the window where she
saw Jim stealthily creep past.

“We got ‘em,” Sophie suddenly said
from behind her, and Laney turned on a heel to see her standing next to Dante. “The
guys are just making sure everything’s okay.”

Laney’s heart pounded.

“Are you okay?” Sophie asked,
taking three long strides towards her.

“Yeah,” Laney whispered
uncertainly.

Sophie hugged her quickly around
the shoulders and turned a half second before Alexander and Jim reappeared.

She and Alexander exchanged a look
and a thought that the others didn’t hear. Sophie sighed.

“I had no idea it would be like
this…” Laney trailed off.

Sophie nodded at her in agreement. Texas
had been child’s play. This was an entirely different game, one in which the
stakes were lethally high.

Chapter 26

I walk down the dark, damp
street. My feet barely sound on the concrete as I step through puddles and
stumble on old bricks. The night is still and dark. The air is heavy and I am
alone.

From the mist that suddenly
appears in my peripheral vision steps Alex, at my right hand. A gust of wind
sweeps over me from the left, and with the wind, comes the scent of them: the
metallic sickly sweet smell of blood and death.

Materializing from the darkness,
as they always seem to, they stand, poised to attack. One drags a young girl by
the arm, mercilessly pulling her along despite her vain protests.

She cries my name but she cannot
free herself, no matter how hard she struggles. Still, the mist obscures my
view of her. They are stronger than she, especially now, at night. My heart
pounds and I want to spring. I can’t get to her in time; I know this with a
certainty. The panic builds in my chest and I can’t catch my breath as I watch.
I know I don’t have enough time to react, to strike or to free her from their
grasp, whoever she might be.

She is going to die.

We are going to die.

I call to Alex, but he doesn’t
hear me. The female who holds the girl’s arm snarls and hisses as if she were some
beast of Hell. I can’t see her face through the fog, but I know it’s a woman
who keeps the prisoner.

And with sudden, crystal
clarity, I hear the girl again and recognize the voice.

“SOPHIE!!” she screams in a
blood-curdling timbre. “Help me! Please!” She frantically begs me.

The realization hits me like a
kick in the chest. LANEY! She is trapped.

I gather my strength, knowing
I’ll die in this fight; Alex with me, because he won’t let me go in alone. And
my little sister, but I have to try. I can’t let them take her.

The wind stirs before I can take
a step and the fog lifts suddenly. My eyes fall on Laney’s captor. Fear and hatred
rise in me, cold and burning, as I behold her with my own eyes, not
believing—but unable to deny—who holds Laney in her deadly grasp, her eyes
boiling black, her preternatural lips spread in a ruby red and pearl white
smile…

“CATHERINA!” Sophie yelled, sitting
straight up in bed, her nightgown stuck to her skin from all the sweat.

She gasped for breath and quickly controlled
her thoughts, hoping that Catherina hadn’t heard her, telling herself that it
was just a dream—a dream that seemed so real.
Too
real
.

And then, without giving it a
second thought, she did something that she’d considered weeks before they’d
come to New Orleans. In that moment, Catherina no longer had permission to hear
her thoughts. Sophie didn’t know why she’d decided to do such a thing, or if
she had even actually
decided
it, but she instinctually knew that she couldn’t
trust Catherina; couldn’t allow her in her head anymore.