‘You’re mad. It’s not possible,’ I replied.
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t love you any more. In fact, I don’t love anyone any more.’ He threw a glass decanter filled with blood against a bookcase, and it
smashed to pieces. Blood spattered on to books and dripped to the floor. ‘To even think about my old life makes me sick.’
He paced before the shelves like an animal stalking its prey. When he stopped, he crossed his arms over his chest. I gasped. Just as quickly my onyx ring slid out of sight. I made myself
concentrate on Rhode to deflect Justin from understanding my intentions.
‘When Rhode couldn’t give me what I wanted, I got rid of the problem causing all of this.’
‘You removed your ability to love; I know.’
‘I went to Wickham a few days ago,’ Justin said, without acknowledging what I had said. ‘All of the students walking up and down those paths. Doing what they’re told at
every hour of every day.’
‘You miss it and it kills you.’
He laughed at that and his unnaturally fanged smile grew wide on his face; it did not hide his pain.
‘What should I miss? That I can’t ever go home again? Or play lacrosse? Or see my brothers? Those sheep do what they’re told. But they’ll join me soon enough.’
‘You leave them alone!’ I warned.
He launched himself at me and pushed me to the floor. His cold hands were around my neck but he didn’t squeeze; he just held me down.
‘I had to watch as the two of you fell back in love three years ago, when he came to that school. You left me,’ he snarled.
‘I never meant to hurt you. You know that.’
He released me and straightened his dress shirt. I wanted to rub my stinging collarbone but refused to give him the satisfaction.
‘I’ll never have to see it,’ he said, and sat down. He folded his hands in his lap and smiled.
‘What could you possibly be smiling about?’ I asked, and immediately regretted taking the bait.
‘I don’t ever have to worry about you and your pathetic boyfriend again,’ he said.
I rolled my eyes. ‘Why not?’
‘Why, Lenah, I thought you would be able to figure it out . . .’ He was positively beaming when he said, ‘I removed Rhode’s ability to love.’
Red flashed before my eyes. A white-hot anger exploded within me and I launched myself into the air, my hands out like claws.
Hurt, hurt. Take him down, hurt Justin.
He slammed me to the ground, holding me paralysed. I screamed to the ceiling like a caged beast.
‘Rhode!’ I yelled to the fresco-painted ceiling. I gritted my teeth. My hands shook and my legs too.
‘You questioned my power, which was stupid. When I’m done, I’ll be more powerful than the Hollow Ones ever dreamed.’
‘You will never succeed,’ I croaked.
‘Don’t you see, Lenah? I already have. You and Rhode are here. The last two pieces of the puzzle.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘I am going to harness your souls and combine them with something very special.’
He meant the Vereselum.
Justin bent close to me again, nearly kissing me when he said in a hush, ‘One drop of my Vereselum, and all of Wickham Boarding School will be vampires at my command,’ he
whispered.
My voice was hoarse but I spoke anyway. ‘You underestimate those that have come before you. You have to be bitten. It’s law.’
‘I make my own laws.’ He slithered around me as he spoke, grabbed my chin and ran his cold tongue up the side of my cheek.
He let me go, knowing that I had no advantage. I lay there, catching my breath. Justin’s shoes clicked as he walked back to his chair. I realized that he never held me for long because he
wanted to be close to the Vereselum.
Justin took a long knife out from a wooden box.
‘I need the souls of both of you,’ he said. ‘That’s why I didn’t kill either of you when I had the chance.’
The horror of his intentions riddled through me.
Justin’s knuckles cracked when he gripped on to the sword handle. That ring mocked me, so I focused on the door.
Rhode, Rhode. Have to get to Rhode.
‘I’ll need to bleed you almost until your last breath of course. Rhode too. I’ll call out each soul when the other is just about to die – one of the many advantages of
onyx.’
‘You sound ridiculous.’
‘Why? Because it’s what I want? Because Wickham reeks of a fake life? A life where I pretended to be happy? Where most people pretend to be happy?’
‘You
were
happy.’
‘Were
you
? Always trying to erase the things you’d done.’
I hated that he knew me so well.
‘You once held my hand in a boat. You comforted me when I thought Rhode was dead. You were a great boyfriend, Justin.’
He held my gaze. Wow. Had something I said actually reached him?
‘Why do you think I raced boats and bungee jumped?’ His voice was calm. ‘My human life wasn’t enough.’
He took a few deep breaths and held my gaze.
‘I can never go home,’ he said.
‘You could have.’ I didn’t have to say anything about the Vereselum.
‘No!’ he yelled. His anger had resurged. ‘The second that Rhode came back into your life, I lost everything. Now I’ll show them what it’s like.’
Justin stood next to the door, pointing at Rhode. I couldn’t tell what force he was wielding over him, but almost on cue, Rhode screamed. The shock of the agony within that scream sent me
to work.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I jumped on to the nearest table, hopped to a desk, and landed on the floor near the stone door. My sword. I had to get to my sword.
I slid the sword from the floor. Justin charged for me but misread my intentions. Instead of running back to Rhode, I ran to the Vereselum. Justin did a double take and opened his left hand wide
to transport himself to me on a rush of air. He was almost a blur in his black suit.
I held the hilt of the sword over the glass. Justin stopped instantly.
‘This is an interesting twist,’ he said.
One downward motion and it would smash the glass.
He lifted his hand, preparing to do that now familiar motion of using the wind.
I jabbed the glass with the sword, shattering the case into hundreds of pieces, and Justin dropped his hand. He even took a step backwards.
I reached into the wreckage and snatched up the bottle. But with a sword in one hand and the vial in the other, I couldn’t grab the book. Justin did. I jumped to the floor and we circled
one another; Justin’s eyes almost never left the vial in my hand.
‘I’ll destroy it right now,’ I warned.
‘You don’t know what you have there,’ he said.
‘Antidote.’
He pressed his lips tightly together. Another small victory.
‘You think we’d let you have something so powerful? Guess you should have checked on Laertes when you sent those vampires to Wickham. Now there’s no one else to help you ruin
the only hope for vampirism.’
He eyes jumped between the bottle in my hand and me. He licked his lips.
‘You want this?’ I said. ‘You answer a couple of questions for me. First, how does my soul have the power to instantly make someone a vampire?’
Justin said nothing.
I lifted my arm, threatening to smash the bottle.
‘It’s not you. It’s you
and
Rhode. Soulmates are the most powerful energy in the universe. The Vereselum, combined with your souls and the blood of a Demelucrea, will
cause the antidote to morph. Once I bleed into it, whoever drinks it will not only become a vampire but they will also lose their ability to love.’
‘What were you doing to me, when you kept staring into my eyes?’ I insisted.
‘Give me the bottle!’ he ordered.
‘Tell me the truth!’ I screamed back.
I took a stupid risk. I threw the bottle into the air just a couple of inches and caught it again.
‘All right!’ he cried. ‘Eyes are the windows to the soul. It’s not just a saying. Laertes taught me. I could take your soul and hide it away for a while. Until I needed
it. But it turns out I couldn’t take it from your body without Rhode. it has to be done at the same time because it’s the same soul in two different bodies.’
I dropped the bottle into the cushioned satchel.
Before I could swing the sword, Justin grabbed me under my arm. The room went topsy-turvy as Justin threw me to the ground. The sword clattered out of my hand.
I kept one hand gripped on the satchel. Justin dug his knee into my chest. I was completely vulnerable but I didn’t care. I searched with my other hand for the sword. The grip brushed
against my fingertips which curled around the hilt.
Justin, trying to understand what I was doing, turned to look. I lifted my arm and stabbed him in his side.
He immediately let go, falling backwards.
Justin grabbed at his wound. He would heal instantly so I had to be fast. I came to my knees.
‘Give me the bottle!’ Justin grimaced and pulled out the sword. He hurled it to the ground so it clattered far away. He yanked my hair and dragged me along the ground in the
direction of Rhode. It burned at the roots.
Don’t instinctively touch it,
I told myself.
Hold on to the bag!
His hand was tight around my head, and when he stopped pulling
me I flipped on to my back.
He stalked across the room to grab the sword.
‘Let’s just do this already’ he spat.
I had nothing. No way to protect myself. He could take the Vereselum with the satchel if I wasn’t armed.
I was just a girl. A human girl who wanted happiness. Who wanted to love Rhode, and go home and see her little sister.
Wait . . .
You have to use your heart
, Justin had said.
You have to use your heart.
I shoved my hand into my back pocket. The photo of Justin and his brothers was still there! I slid it out as Justin swung towards me, the sword high, poised to plunge. I pushed my hand out,
clutching the photo. In the picture, his brothers smiled out at the camera: three blond boys under the summer sun. Below them were Kate, Claudia and Tracy.
Justin stopped, his sneer fell away and he lowered the sword. He reached out very slowly and knelt to the ground, taking the photo from my hand.
He stared at the photo, his eyes dancing over its contents.
‘Where did you get this?’ he whispered.
The ring stared straight at me. He held the photo between both hands.
‘Why did you bring this to me?’ he said, still mesmerized by the sight of it.
I slapped my hand around his left hand, crumpling the photo.
‘What are you doing?’
I drew him forward by the wrist and said through clenched teeth, ‘I believe you have something of mine.’
I gripped my fingers around that ring and only then did his lips part in understanding. I ripped it as hard as I could and it sliced through his skin as I pulled that ring off his finger and
slid it on to my own.
A glint of red winked in the corner of my eye. My sword lay just beyond my fingers.
I was on the ground and Justin circled me, gripping the bloody, ruined photo. He bared his fangs and barrelled my focus on to his body movements. All I needed was the simple lift of his foot or
the bend of his knees; any small clue that he was going to attack and I would slice the sword towards Justin’s body.
He raised his own sword and sprang at me.
For the briefest of seconds – time stalled.
Justin’s entire body was in the air, his arms out, legs spread, the point of his weapon angled down at me.
I snatched my sword.
There was no boy in the rain standing by my side. There was no boy waiting in his tuxedo at winter prom with a corsage in his hand, nervous as I approached in a dress.
I pulled back my elbow just as Justin fell towards me. With a scream that burned my throat nearly in two, I plunged the sword into his chest all the way to the hilt.
Justin’s eyes widened and he stared at me. I scooted out from under him as he fell forward, catching his hand.
Where was a dagger? The desk was empty, all the pens, papers and books now in a mess on the floor. Without the ring Justin would be weakened, though the ring’s power would still protect
him for a little while longer. I had to destroy it.
A stone paperweight would have to do. I snatched it from the desk and placed the ring on the floor. In that ring was 592 years of vampire power. The onyx stone held on to the intentions of
Rhode’s spells, the ritual and all that I had done in all the time I wore it on my finger. If I destroyed it, it would stop Justin’s power source and break the link between him and the
world I was meant to change. It would also release the remainder of my vampire blood.
Justin screamed and arched his back in pain. He had somehow got the sword a little way out of his chest.
I clenched the polished heavy stone paperweight and brought it up over my head, so it hung over the small ring, which waited to be destroyed.
‘No!’ Justin howled.
I brought the paperweight down and smashed the ring. A white light exploded in the room. Words filled the space as though thousands of people were talking.
Go forth between darkness and in light.
A child, Lenah!
I love you. Love love love.
Believe and be free.
The whispers evened out and the silence of the house settled over the room.
I crawled to Justin, and when he looked up at me, I fell back.
His skin wasn’t waxy. His pores were open and sweat lined his brow. Vampires don’t sweat. Vampires don’t have pores either.
When the ring broke open – Justin became human again.
My hands shook and I reached out to touch his skin. Just to prove to myself that what I was seeing was real – he was warm.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ he spat. Even his freckles were back.
‘What I’ve done?’ I echoed, with a crack in my voice.
‘I removed it,’ he said. His eyes had returned to their soft evergreen colour. ‘I removed it so I wouldn’t have to love you.’ He drew a rattled breath. ‘Love
is for cowards.’
There was no remorse in his eyes. The green was cold and the vampire strength he would have had against the sword waned. He still held the bloody photograph in his hand.