Authors: Gina Whitney

Blood Ties (40 page)

She continued to drag me to the pentagram. My liver was severed and leaking bile. My blood was now poisoned, and my internal bleeding was catastrophic. I looked at James, who was also dying.

“I love you,” he said. And he closed his eyes.

There was no way was I going to let James die. With a newfound strength, I managed to grab Catherine’s wrist, breaking it. My hand cut through the air, and wavy energy shot out, grabbing hold of her. With my telekinetic powers magnified, I was able to toss her around the room with mighty force.

I summoned all my fortitude and courage, and used telekinesis to pin her up against the wall, leaving her feet to dangle. As I stumbled to stand, I wrapped my hand in my shirt’s cuff to protect me from the mock belladonna. I took the plant out of my pocket and headed straight for Catherine.

Catherine bucked against the wall as I sliced her across the face and chest with the mock belladonna. She screamed as her power drained out like it was her life’s blood. I let her fall to the floor. I watched for any sign of life, but she appeared to be dead.

I rushed over to James. He barely had a pulse.

“Come on, baby. Come on,” I said. I tried old-fashioned CPR on him like he’d done on me so many months earlier. He was still slipping away. I cut my wrist and fed him my blood, which was still coursing with his. James sucked weakly at first and then harder. He looked at me, and his eyes were no longer the eyes of a dying man. They were coming back alive.

Our blood tie had saved him.

However, behind me, Catherine defied gravity and raised straight up—stiff like a plank rising from the floor. She was so powerful and psychotic, not even the plant could kill her. But what the plant
had
done was buy me some time. And that was exactly what I needed at that moment.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Catherine said in a guttural, evil voice.

For the first time, I transformed into one of those gargoyle-like creatures like the other witches had done at the ritual. However, my form was more hideous, more beastly. I grew extremely tall and lost all of my recognizable facial characteristics. All that pent-up fear I had for Catherine changed my body. But the fear was gone now, and I was the embodiment of abject rage.

I jumped on her like a starving animal and held her down with my saber-length fangs. Her foul-tasting blood seeped into my mouth, and I swallowed it as a show of dominance. I took the knife Amari had given me out of my waistband and plunged it into Catherine. There was no pattern to my stabs; I was just jabbing. Through each one of her cuts, some weird, nefarious light shined out. The knife had a strange effect, like it was radioactive to her. Her flesh boiled as if she were in a nuclear reactor. We both concentrated on each other’s eyes. Catherine saw her executioner. I saw fear incarnate.

“It’s over,” I said. I picked her up with telekinesis and floated her body over the pentagram, which seemed like it was starving for her. I dropped Catherine into its center and watched her take one final breath, her eyes wide open.

Then her body exploded. The bits of annihilated flesh were sucked into a dimensional field in the pentagram. In a weak puff, Catherine’s Ancient spirit rose in a last attempt to escape and kill me, but was hindered by the pentagram’s gravitational force. I never saw Catherine’s soul. She had lost it a long time ago.

There was a tectonic shift under the pentagram, and it imploded. It disappeared into another dimension. The floor closed back up, and all that was left was a faint trace of the pentagram’s outline.

I morphed back into my normal self. The etheric cord holding James disappeared too. I ran over and helped him up. I put his arm across my shoulder. His hand draped down and accidently brushed my breast.

“Really? You had to go through all of this just to cop a feel?” I joked.

It took us a long time to make it back up to the main floor. Julie had somehow managed to put her broken leg straight in front of her. I sat James down next to her.

“I’m going to go get the car,” I said. As I hurried out, I couldn’t help but be proud of myself. I’d walked into that house with an uncertainty about the outcome. But I was leaving a success. Yeah, I kind of did the hero walk all the way out the door.

Julie looked over at James and said, “That’s a bad bitch.”

And I just had to agree.

A few days passed, and the house was slowly coming back together. James placed a large sheet of wood across the front door until a contractor could come out and fix it. Julie had moved back into the room she and Addison had shared. Remarkably, it didn’t bother her that Addison had died in there, and she always had a restful night’s sleep. She said she could feel Addison’s spirit and it was comforting to her.

Sometimes it felt like it had all been a dream—like it had never happened. But there were those heavy moments when memories came crashing back with excruciating pain. I often wondered what would have happened to me if none of this had occurred. I would have been sitting behind a desk, my accounting diploma looming behind me in some cheap frame. And I probably would have still been messed up in the head, pining over Rafe. Instead I ended up freer than I’d ever been, and with a love that went beyond the scope and breadth of the universe itself. That was more than an acceptable trade-off.

I was upstairs with Aunt Evelyn, feeding her soup for breakfast, and later would do the same for lunch and dinner too. She was propped up on one of those TV pillows. Her swelling had gone down, but she still suffered incredible headaches. But Aunt Evelyn was more concerned with everyone else’s welfare, as usual. James was in the room too. He kept looking out the window as if he were expecting something.

The smell of Aunt Evelyn’s soup was making me starved. Julie had gone out for some burgers and fries, but that was hours ago.

“James, have you heard from Julie yet? She said she was just going to Micky D’s. She should’ve been back by now,” I said. However, James was watching something from the window, and it brought a wide smile to his face. I was too hungry to get up and go see what he was grinning about.

Suddenly, there was a ruckus at the door. “We’re home!” Julie shouted from downstairs.

“It’s about time,” I said somewhat brusquely.

Aunt Evelyn passed a sneaky smile to James, and then flashed me a regular one. “I’ve had enough. You go on downstairs and eat your food,” she said.

I didn’t hesitate. With my stomach growling like a big bear, I trotted toward the stairs. Then I stopped to think.
We’re?
Julie had said that.
Who is ‘we’re’?

I walked down the stairs and saw her standing there with
hi
m
. My dad! I was stunned, just shocked that he was there.

“Come here, baby girl!” he said with open arms. I tripped over my feet running to him. Dad swung me around like he had when I was five years old.

“Where have you been?” I asked, still in awe.

“At an Extended Stay America in Pittsburgh.”

He was still twirling me around, and I was getting dizzy. “You look so different. So grown,” he said as he put me down.

I patted his belly, which had grown too.

“Too much delivery. You know I can’t cook,” he said. But his extra weight didn’t bother me one iota. My dad was back, and I was thrilled.

Fall came to Massapequa in bursts of orange, brown, yellow, and red. James and I celebrated the change of seasons with a romantic walk in town. Even with construction going on, it was wonderful.

We passed the Buttered Bagel. “Want one?” James asked.

“Sure, with a schmear,” I said.

“Will do.”

As James went in, I noticed Rafe across the street, leaning against a wall. James was barely in the store before Rafe ran over to me.

“Hey, Grace. Long time, no see,” he said.

“That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

Seeing me with another man made him jealous. This ass was convinced I would never get over him. “So is that you new boyfriend?”

“Mm-hm.”

“He’s alright.” Rafe leaned in. “But I bet he can’t do you like I did.”

Just then Tiffany showed up like a ghost popping out of thin air.

“Really, Grace. Are you so desperate that you have to flirt with my man? It’s not going to work. What would he want with some hoggy trash like you?” Tiffany said with a flip of her hair.

Rafe, knowing he’d been busted, acted like a jerk to me—as if that were something new. “Like I would lower myself to be seen with you again. Come on, Tiff.”

I let it go, taking the high road. I could now see how silly Rafe was, and how insecure Tiffany had been the whole time. All I did was stand there and watch them walk away. As I observed the exaggerated switch of Tiffany’s nonexistent ass, I suddenly started thinking:

Oh no. Wait a minute. Fuck the damn high road. After what
th
ese assholes did to me? I am not that big of a person yet. And
it
’s time for some payback.

Rafe and Tiffany were approaching the construction site’s Port-O-Potty. And the truck had arrived to empty it. When those two creeps were close enough, I waved my hand, causing the hose to dislodge. Piss and shit spewed all over my nemeses.

I so wanted to run over there and scream, “In your face, motherfuckers! In your face—literally!” But witch decorum, which included anonymity, frowned upon such a display. So I just reveled in the spectacle from afar. Satisfied, I laughed it up.
Now
I could be the better person, and meander down the high road.

James came out with a bag of bagels and saw me chucking it up.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He looked down the street at the two piles of shit, Tiffany and Rafe. “Wow! What happened to them?”

“Who knows?” I said, shrugging. I gave James a light peck on his cheek.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“Just because I love you.”

“I love you too. Forever and with everything.”

James and I went on, only looking back occasionally at Tiffany and Rafe. During the rest of our walk, I thought about how wonderful it was to be there with him. However, there were still ominous things to deal with. I did have to become the leader of the council. I had acquired a taste for human flesh and blood. Mandy was still driving past my house. And I now had Catherine’s blood in me, and there was no telling what effect that would have.

James and I came upon a cement bench. He pulled out some bagels, very fresh and chewy. He had already smeared on his cream cheese. As he was about to put the bagel in his mouth, I pulled it toward me and seductively licked off some of the white stuff.

“I hope that’s a prelude of things to come,” he said.

“You’d better believe it,” I responded.

As I took a bite of my own bagel, I decided to worry about all that other stuff later and, for once, let everything be all good.

THE EN
D

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