Chapter Fifteen

Lucas takes the machete from my hands and wipes the blade on the grass, getting rid of most of the solid parts and some of the blood. He comes back, setting it down on the wooden railing.

“You’re not injured, are you?” he asks as he sits next to me.

“I don’t think so.” I look down at myself, realizing just how disgusting I am. “Sick.” I find a clean spot on my leggings and wipe my hands. “These were my comfiest pair of leggings.”

Lucas brushes my hair back and picks a chunk of rotting flesh from my braid, tossing it to the ground. I let out another deep breath, feeling my heart start to beat at a normal rate again. There are bodies littering my yard. The smell alone is enough to alert the authorities, and if anyone were to drive by and see…I don’t even want to finish that thought.

Binx comes back to the house, red eyes flashing for a brief moment before he takes on the appearance of a cat again.

“Good boy,” I tell him, wiping my hands clean again before reaching out to scratch him under his chin. “Are they all gone?”

Binx meows back, telling me there are no more zombies wandering through the woods.

“You talk to him?” Lucas asks.

“Yes.”

“And he talks back. How does that work?”

“I hear his voice in my head. When he’s in shadow form, he can speak out loud.”

Slowly, Lucas reaches his hand out. Binx sniffs his fingers and then rubs his head against Lucas’s hand.

“He saved you out there.”

“I know.” I run my hand over Binx’s smooth, black fur. “Wasn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last time.” The blood on my skin starts to itch. “We should go in, make sure everyone else is okay, and take a shower.”

“Together?”

“No,” I say, though the thought of getting naked with Lucas makes me tingle. Even now. “Not together.”

“Are you sure? I can make sure you’ve thoroughly washed all the hard-to-reach places.”

I roll my eyes. “I’ve been washing myself for years now. I think I can handle it.”

“I like the thought of you handling it.”

“Is everything about sex to you vampires?”

He shrugs. “Not everything. But you already know I want to be inside of you.”

“You’re so vulgar.”

“You’re such a prude.”

“I told you I’m not.”

In the blink of an eye, Lucas is on his feet, extending a hand to help me up. I take it, finding his cool skin to be comforting against mine.

“You missed one,” Eliza says when we step into the house. She raises her eyebrow and motions to the man huddled in a corner of my living room. “Want me to rip his head off?”

“That won’t be necessary.” Lucas steps over the cream-colored rug I have in the foyer, not wanting to track blood on it. He’s so thoughtful.

I can hear Kristy and Nicole in the kitchen, no doubt making a potion to help the poor guy we brought back. Naomi is standing in the living room, staring down Eliza. She doesn’t trust her, and if it weren’t for the fact that Eliza is under Lucas’s command, I wouldn’t either. Monica and the other human I assume is her friend are sitting on the couch, looking terrified.

“Has he said anything?” I ask Naomi as I take my shoes off.

She shakes her head. “We were able to get chamomile tea into him, which seemed to calm him down, but then his fingers, well, missing fingers started bleeding. And that caused the freak-out.”

“Bleeding is good,” I say, looking at the man. “Bleeding means you’re alive. Well, kind of. Are the others—”

“Making a potion to soothe his nerves as well as erase the last hour from his memory? Yes.”

“Thank God.”

Eliza puts her hands on her hips. “Is anyone going to tell me what is going on?”

“I did a spell to bring him back from the dead,” I say, sweeping my hand to the guy on the floor. “And it sort of accidentally brought forth an entire graveyard.”

Eliza shifts her gaze to Lucas, obviously not believing me.

“It’s true,” he tells her. “I saw the whole thing. Why are you here?”

“I’ve been calling for you for hours.” She casts her eyes around the house. “I figured you’d be here, with her.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Lucas goes on.

Not wanting the rest of us to hear what she’s going to say, Eliza speaks in a different language. Lucas answers back, speaking so fast I can’t pick up on what language it is. Italian, maybe? Spanish?

Whatever Eliza says seems to make Lucas annoyed, though not with her. He goes to her side, and I watch, curious about their relationship. He touches her as the talks, but there’s nothing sexual about it. I know he cares for her. Would die to protect her.

And there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

“Not to break up this fun little party,” Naomi says. “But you have a yard full of bodies.”

“Ugh, right.” I throw my head back, wanting nothing more than to collapse back onto the couch right now. But there’s no way I’m sitting down until I’ve taken my clothes off and showered. It’ll probably take an hour of scrubbing myself to feel clean. “I’ll, uh, put them in a pile, cloak it, and deal with them tomorrow.”

“So let me get this straight,” Monica’s friend says, slowly rising to her feet. She has pink streaks in her pale blonde hair. “You four are witches?”

“Right,” I tell her. “I’m Callie. Nice to meet you.”

“And he was dead,” she goes on, pointing to the guy on the floor.

“Yep.”

The friend turns back to Monica, who gives a shrug. “At least that explains the smell,” Monica whispers.

“Witches are real,” her friend repeats. “Witches who can do magic spells and bring dead folk back to life.” Shaking her head, she slowly sits back down on the couch. “And I thought vampires were all we had to deal with.”

Naomi smirks, raising one eyebrow. “You’re really not going to like it when you find out demons are real too.”

“Look,” I interject, holding up a hand.  “I don’t want to overwhelm you, and I really don’t want to wipe your memories. So just don’t go around telling anyone we’re witches, okay? We don’t want to be exposed.”

“Wipe our memories?” Monica asks nervously. She looks over at Lucas and Eliza, who are still speaking in hushed voices in the foyer. “You can do that?”

Naomi laughs. “Honey, we just raised an army of the dead. There’s nothing we can’t do.”

The man in the corner starts rocking back and forth faster and faster and then turns and whacks his head against the wall over and over.

“Shit,” I swear and rush over. I grab him by the shoulders and try to pull him away from the wall. He claws at me, and of course uses the one hand that still has all his fingers.

“Ladies,” Naomi calls over her shoulder. “We’re going to need that potion. Now.”

“Hey,” I say to the guy. “Calm down. It’s okay.” I push him back and my fingers slip as his skin smears right off his arm. “Crap.” I shake my hand, flicking the gooey flesh onto the floor. He’s deteriorating, dammit. My heart falls. I really thought I could save him.

I look up, meeting Naomi’s eyes. Her face softens and she comes over. “I’m sorry,” she whispers to me as she kneels down, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll tell them to adjust the potion.”

The man continues to wrestle against me, and the more he protests, the more his skin sloughs off. Not wanting to have him melt apart in front of me, I conjure up a ball of energy and zap him with it. He stiffens and then slumps forward, unconscious. Gently, I roll him back on the floor.

“What the hell did you do to him?” Monica’s friend asks, jumping up. “Did you kill him?”

“No, I just knocked him out. But he’s…he’s…”

“He’s starting to rot.” Lucas speeds over and crouches down in front of the man.

“I thought I could save him,” I admit quietly. “I mean, I didn’t, and then I did…he came back better than I expected. His wounds healed. I was going to find his family.”

“That wasn’t your plan, though, was it?”

“No. But it’s not fair. A demon killed him, and he should have a second chance.”

“Callie,” Lucas says gently, standing and cupping my chin up to his. “Go shower. You don’t need to watch this. I’ll bury him. Again. Just don’t ask me to dig him up a second time.”

I smile, looking into his deep blue eyes. “Don’t worry. I don’t plan on doing that spell again anytime soon. Or ever. Besides almost starting the zombie apocalypse, I didn’t really get the answers I was looking for. His brain was all mush inside. He didn’t even know his name.”

“And the other bodies,” Lucas starts. “You want them out back?”

“Yeah, there’s a burn pile several yards from the back porch. Kristy and I were hoping to have a good old-fashioned bonfire, but it looks like I’ll be roasting corpses instead.”

Lucas laughs and plays with a section of my hair. Behind him, I see Monica’s jaw drop and Eliza cross her arms and look away. Is it that out of character for Lucas to get close to someone…or is it because I’m a witch?

“Do you need to go take care of vampire business?” I ask Lucas.

“Yes, but I don’t have to leave just yet. I’ll stay and help you first.”

“You don’t have to.”

He inches closer. “I know. Now go shower. You stink.”

“You do too,” I remind him, and he flashes a smirk.

“We still could shower together, you know.”

“Maybe another time.” I leave the family room, but don’t go upstairs yet. I go into the basement first, grabbing a Rubbermaid bin off a shelf. It’s full of extra blankets. Most of my storage is down here since the closets in this house are on the small side. I sort through it, finding the oldest one, and bring it upstairs. I cover the unconscious man up and sacrifice a pillow off my couch. I have fifteen pillows on it, no joke, and have been wanting to switch the color scheme in here anyway. I have a hard time saying no to a good accent pillow.

Kristy comes back into the room with the potion. She says she’ll sit with him until he wakes up so I can go upstairs and shower. I must really stink. Lucas and Eliza are leaving the house as I go up the stairs and into my bedroom. I peel off my clothes and decide to just throw them away. Padding down the hall holding my blood-and-gut-covered clothes rolled up in a ball, I open the small hall closet up here and take out a plastic shopping bag. I dump the clothes inside, tie it tight, and set it at the top of the stairs so I’ll remember to take them down after I’ve showered.

When I go into the bathroom, I hear voices floating up from the yard. Not turning the light on yet, I slink forward, crouching down under the window. The bathroom gets hot and steamy and I usually leave this window cracked when I shower to help with the ventilation. I forgot to close it after the cleansing bath, and now I can hear Eliza talking to Lucas.

“I’m well aware of what she is,” Lucas tells her.

“Then you should stay away,” Eliza protests. “Witches kill vampires.”

“She’s not going to kill me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The same reason I’m not going to kill her.”

A moment of silence passes between them before Eliza speaks again. “She conjured white light, Lucas. White light. That’s Marie Lancaster-level shit! You and I both know normal witches can’t conjure UV light. That’s how Marie killed all those vampires in the War of Light and Dark, and it’s said that she had the power loaned to her from a god! A god, Lucas, and your little plaything in there just conjured it up like it was nothing! You’d have to be insane to keep hanging around her and you’re not insane, Lucas. You’re not!”

Marie Lancaster was a strong witch from a large coven, one who stood the front lines in the war the vampires and witches waged on each other over a thousand years ago. We learned about her in school, and she’s hailed as a hero. The vampires doubled their army without the witches’ knowledge and attacked at night.

Marie went to the highest hill on the battlefield and conjured the white light Eliza was talking about. It burned so bright it killed her in the process, but she “brought the light to the dark” as the history books put it, burning every single vampire in the army to a crisp.

That’s why it’s so rare to find vampires Lucas’s age now. Most were killed years ago, and those that didn’t perish in the war were hunted by the members of the covens who fought them. The witches knew there was no way to rid the world of vampires, but at least now they’d stop messing with us. For they were jealous of our powers of magic, and our ability to walk both in the day and the night.

But the part about her getting her powers from a god? That was never taught to us. I hold out my hand, looking at my fingers. I’ve always been good at conjuring. White light is energy in its rawest form and is the easiest for me to conjure. It’s hot and will burn you, but so will a lightbulb if you touch it long enough. It’s all energy and is just a matter of tapping into it.

“Though lately, I’m beginning to wonder,” Eliza goes on. “You haven’t been yourself.”

“Maybe this is exactly who I’m supposed to be,” Lucas says. “And I like being around her. She makes me feel, which is becoming harder to do. Sixteen hundred years, Eliza. I’ve been walking this earth for sixteen hundred years.”

“So what? You’re bored and need to have a little fun? There are plenty of young vamps for you to get off on. Hell, even humans.”

“I don’t want to just get off anymore. I’ve done that for too long. You say I haven’t been myself lately.”

“For the last fifteen years,” she spits, and the whole thing is still just so weird to me. Fifteen years is a long fucking time to be in a mood. But when you live forever, fifteen years is like a day, I suppose.

“Maybe it’s because I want more.”

“And you think the witch bitch can give it to you?”

I hold my breath, waiting for Lucas to answer. But he doesn’t, or just not loud enough for me to hear. I get up and get into the shower, thinking about everything I just overheard.

And now I know for certain he feels the same emptiness inside. Only…I can’t imagine having to live with it for all eternity.