I took my place in the center of the mats: feet shoulder-width apart, standing loosely with my knees bent, and my weight resting on the balls of my feet.
Nicholas paced in front of me, arms clasped behind his back. “Close your eyes and recite the five rules of combat.”
“One: Be aware of your surroundings. Anticipate attacks from every angle. Two: Be creative; anything can be a weapon. Use whatever you have at your disposal. Three: Show no fear of your opponent, no matter what size or shape they are. Four: Pinpoint your enemy’s weakness and use it against them. Five: Attack aggressively and relentlessly. Don’t stop until you’ve won. Be the last person able to throw a punch.”
“Good, you may open your eyes now.” His voice came from behind me.
Unlike with normal fighting and martial arts training, Nicholas didn’t stand in front of me, preparing his attack. He preferred to come from a surprise direction and keep me on my toes. As he put it, “In any real fight, an enemy will not stand and wait for you to prepare your move. They’ll strike when and where they have the advantage.”
I smelled cigarette smoke and turned to see Fallon standing at the entrance to the garage. She must have come to watch the show.
“If I’d chosen to attack you then, you’d be dead,” Nicholas chided. “Don’t let the little human distract you.”
I centered myself and tried to focus.
The room went silent, but I thought I picked up the soft padding of feet to my right. I turned my head slightly, using my peripheral vision.
Nicholas rushed at me in a blur of dark hair and muscle. Anticipating a torso attack, I pivoted, tightened my fist, and brought my arm up to block. But I was wrong. His foot swept my leg. My knee buckled and I toppled backward, arms windmilling as I tried to regain balance.
“When will you listen?” Nicholas appeared above me, shaking his head. “Let yourself fall and roll back up on your feet. You waste too much time trying to regain balance.”
I hopped up to my feet and turned to acknowledge him, expecting a small lecture. Instead, I was thrown off guard with a sharp punch to the gut. I bit back a cry, doubling over in pain.
“Rule number one. Always be aware and anticipate an attack,” he barked.
I took a deep breath, forced down the burning sensation in my stomach, and then straightened.
Nicholas swung out at me again, but this time I caught him by the wrist, rotated it, and jerked it upward. Stepping in with my right foot, I stomped on his toe and thrust my left elbow into his gut.
I smiled as he groaned, taking pleasure in having the upper hand for a change.
That pleasure was short lived. In my cockiness, I’d forgotten about his free hand. He struck me hard and fast, sending me crashing back to the ground.
“Rule number five: Don’t stop until you’ve won. Be the last one able to throw a punch.”
The air rushed out of me as I hit the mats. My vision faded and pain throbbed through my head. A cold rush of air blew across me. My body began to tingle and a wave of gooseflesh erupted across my skin. The pricking sensation intensified to sharp jabs, hundreds of them, like knives dancing across my skin.
I hissed in pain. Something was wrong. I’d taken plenty of hits before and been knocked on my head more times than I could count, but nothing had ever caused me to feel like this.
“Alyssa, are you okay?” Nicholas asked with concern in his voice.
I shook the haze from my eyes and looked across my body. The peaks of each visible goosebump were red with blood.
“What the fuck?” I groaned.
Nicholas was at my side, helping me to sit up.
“What did you do to me?” My skin felt itchy.
He picked up my arm and inspected it. “This is not my doing.”
Just as quickly as they had spread, the bumps faded and my skin healed.
“I’ve never seen anything like this.” He scratched his head and let my arm go. “What did it feel like?”
“Try acupuncture on speed,” I said, hauling myself up to my feet. My muscles ached from the fall, but the bumps and blood had already faded, leaving my skin in the flawless state it had been before – smooth and pale. Times like these, I enjoyed my nifty, super-fast vampire healing.
“Did someone turn up the AC?” Fallon asked, still standing in the doorway. “It’s freezing in here.”
She was right, the temperature had dropped. The normally musty heat in the garage was gone. Even in the autumn, when the evenings took on a comfortable cool, the garage maintained the heat of the day. Not now though. A cold breeze circled around the room as if industrial fans were running in various directions.
“Something’s seriously not right here,” I said under my breath.
“For once,”—Nicholas looked down at me, with genuine worry in his narrow, questioning gaze—“I agree with you.”
The cyclonic breeze halted, and then a rush of air blew toward the door.
Fallon squealed and flattened herself against the wall. The door behind her slammed shut. “What the hell was that?”
For a silent moment we all stared at one another.
I didn’t dare speak my thoughts at that moment. Even if I knew perfectly well that supernatural creatures existed—hell, I was one!—I was not about to be the first to suggest that we had a poltergeist.
I didn’t have to say anything, though. Our moment of silence was ended by Rozaline’s shrill scream, coming from inside the house.
Not many things scare a vampire—at least not an ancient one—and both Rozaline and Nicholas qualified as that. My anxiety level skyrocketed, seeing Rozaline crouched in the corner, looking like a frightened child. She stared at the ceiling as if some Hollywood-style monster was about to come down and devour us all. Below her, tiny drops of blood stained the carpet, creating a semi-circle around her feet. I assumed the same thing that had happened to me had just hit her too.
“He’s there,” she croaked the words and lifted a trembling hand to point at the opposite corner. She reached for her neck with her other hand, fingering the various silver chains that hung there. Each one held a crystal point pendant. Rozaline believed in the healing and protective powers of stones.
“He?” Nicholas asked. “You saw what this thing is?” His eyes darted up to the corner.
“Bloody awful.” Her voice warbled, and old hints of her long-faded English accent colored her words. “A man. A hideous man.”
“I don’t see anything.” Nicholas circled around her. He waved his arms in the air, toward the spot where she pointed, as if trying to grasp hold of the unseen
thing
tormenting us.
I’d never seen Rozaline so scared in all the time I’d known her. The contrast to her normally confident demeanor was enough to make me want to find a safe corner of my own to hide in. Whatever it was that we were dealing with, it was bad. Real bad.
“He came at me like a swarm of bees,” Rozaline said as she clutched a slender lavender stone at her neck. She rubbed her thumb up and down the small shaft of rock and breathed in slowly. It was almost as if she was trying to invoke the rock’s protection. “It felt like a hundred needles … pricking my skin all at once.”
We all exchanged worried looks.
“I don’t know what we’re dealing with,” Nicholas answered our unasked question. “But whatever it is, we have to assume that it’s attached to that box you received. We need to check Lysander’s library. Maybe he’s run into something like this before.” Nicholas pulled Rozaline into his arms. Her trembling had stopped, but fear still clouded her eyes.
“What if that thing attacks again?” she asked.
“We’ll all stick together and keep each other safe.” He turned back toward the corner of the room. His eyes narrowed in a taunting stare, as if daring that thing to touch his mate again.
Cold still lingered in the room. Though I couldn’t see anything in the corner, I believed that
thing
was still there, watching us, waiting, biding its time. Could a poltergeist really hurt vampires? Obviously this one could make us bleed, but could it do worse? I wondered about Fallon’s safety. She didn’t have the benefit of our speedy vampire healing. As a mortal, she was in the most danger from this thing, whatever it was. Strangely enough, though, it hadn’t attempted to attack her. So far, it had focused only on vampires. I hoped, for Fallon’s sake, it remained that way.
Nicholas and Rozaline headed into the living room. I followed, closing the bedroom door behind me—hoping to lock the coldness and the creepy poltergeist away inside. Fallon was right at my heel.
“Start searching for anything involving spirits,” Nicholas barked at us as we reached the living room. Lysander had filled two very large wooden bookshelves with his writings and all the history he’d experienced. With any luck, we might find some answers there.
We perused the bookshelves, randomly pulling out large tomes that hinted at having important information inside of them.
A ghost-free hour later, I heard a car pull into the driveway. I looked up from the musty tome I’d been reading—a secondhand account of the Bell witch. I rubbed my dry eyes and glanced around the living room. Books and papers coated the glass coffee table, in the center of the u-shaped sitting area. Nicholas and Rozaline sat on the leather loveseat, heads huddled together over a stack of books. Fallon had stretched out on the big black couch against the wall. She was busy flipping through a large book of her own.
Whatever it was that had attacked both Rozaline and me seemed to be quiet. Perhaps it was satisfied in the amount of panic it had already caused, or maybe it really was trapped back in the room.
One could only hope.
My research hadn’t proven to be much help in identifying what it was. There were accounts of ghosts and poltergeists that tossed around objects and could pick up weapons and hurl them at you. But none that could draw blood like our ghost had.
The front door opened, and Lysander joined us in the living room. Fresh from the hunt, his cheeks bloomed with color. But that was the only clue to indicate he’d just finished draining someone of their blood. There was no sign of a fight, no hair out of place, no missing buttons, not even a single drop stained his pale-green button down shirt or his faded-blue carpenter jeans. I didn’t have nearly the same table manners as he did. I’ve ruined more than my fair share of clothes with bloodstains.
I waved in greeting, but didn’t get up for fear of causing an avalanche of books.
A smile curved his lips. I could tell he was amused by our efforts, although also a little confused. Raiding his bookshelf was not an everyday occurrence, especially by me. His dark chocolate hair hung in loose waves, framing his flawless pale face as he looked down at us. The color contrasted so well with his blue-gray eyes. It was easy to get lost staring at them.
“I trust you will be returning all of these books to the shelf when you are done,” he said, failing to sound as authoritative as I assumed he wanted to.
“What do you know about poltergeists that can draw blood?” Nicholas asked without an ounce of amusement.
Lysander put a finger to his lips. His eyes gazed upward in thought for a brief moment, and then he shook his head and frowned. “Sorry, nothing comes to mind. Why do you ask?”
“Because both Rozaline and your little warrior here”— Nicholas pointed at me—“were attacked tonight. It caused hundreds of little wounds on both of their bodies in a matter of seconds.”
Concern softened Lysander’s eyes. “What about Crystal and Drew?”
“They’ve been gone since I woke this evening,” Rozaline answered.
“I didn’t see them either, but I didn’t get back until around seven,” Fallon added. “Oh, and I think I’ve fixed the computer. Hey, why didn’t I think of this before?” She smacked herself in the forehead. “I can check the Internet for information on poltergeists.”
I suddenly felt embarrassed for not thinking of that. Both Fallon and I were from the twenty-first century, unlike the rest of the Peregrinus clan. The Internet should’ve been the first place for us to think of checking.
Lysander nodded, and we followed Fallon to the den, abandoning the stacks of books. Fallon took to the chair and immediately started tapping away at the keyboard. Within seconds, she had a few search engines working, looking up poltergeists, ghosts, hauntings, and blood.
I collapsed on the futon, awaiting the results. The Internet proved just as helpful as Lysander’s books. There were plenty of accounts of ghosts and hauntings, but none resembling the type of attack that both Rozaline and I had experienced.
“I cannot believe this is the only time something of this nature has been recorded.” Lysander paced the room with Nicholas. Both men appeared extremely frustrated and concerned. “I doubt it has left, whatever it is. We need more information.” Lysander looked to Rozaline, who was standing in the doorway. “Tell me again. Exact details. What happened?”
Rozaline recounted the events, telling us that before she felt the needle-like pricks in her skin, she had caught a flash of his image. And then again as he retreated to the corner, before he vanished.
I wasn’t lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the ghost, only felt the swarm, like a breeze brushing against my skin, followed by the same needle-like pricks. I admitted though that I’d been a little dizzy after Nicholas knocked me on my ass.