Authors: Nerine Dorman
A loud bang from the back exit exploded into the tension-filled hall.
Arwen wasn’t sure what this diversion meant, for she had fixed her stare on the much-hated woman up on the small stage. Then chairs clattered and screeched across the floor behind her accompanied by a babble of voices.
Screams tore through the air. Was that blood fountaining, a flash of steel catching a slanted bar of sunlight? What the hell was happening? Fellow students just about trampled each other to get away from something in their midst.
A hand clamped onto her wrist but she stood transfixed even as Helen attempted to drag her away from the long blade that slashed only a few paces away from where they stood, tense–ready to move yet Arwen’s feet felt rooted to the floor. A small, thin black-clad figure capered between scarlet-blooming uniforms.
Each stroke arched and flesh parted with the sound of rotted velvet. Stitched together from hessian, a savage zigzagging leer of black thread for a mouth, the attacker’s mask chilled her blood. Red-button eyes bored into her skull and the entity seemed to be grinning for her benefit alone. The brown fabric was spotted with dark drops.
It was blood. Blood.
The screaming registered. She had not even become aware that the sounds around her had gone muted. The sword-wielding maniac did not pause. Kids burst over the row behind her and her world turned upside-down as she crashed painfully to the ground, the air ripped from her lungs as something hard jabbed into her side.
Were any ribs broken or had she destroyed one of the chairs on her way down? The ever-present throb of her head billowed so that sights and sounds brightened and contrasted, overlapping with her other senses. Reality blurred and the metallic tang of fear stabbed her being.
A shriek pierced through her entire world.
Strong warm hands encircled her wrists. Arwen tilted her head up to see Helen standing above her.
“Get up! Arwen! He’s gone mad! He’s trying to kill everyone!”
Who? The world turned slowly, gelid. Why were her arms and legs so unresponsive, jerky?
Then a blow to her head shot darkness through her vision, followed by an eruption of stars. A curious lassitude stole over her muscles and, oddly, this didn’t bother her though, on another level, her very instincts screamed at her to get out and get as far away from this madness as possible.
It’s okay, Helen
, Arwen wanted to say, a smile finding its way to her lips.
Someone must have kicked my head.
The masked figure hove into view, a dark haze buzzing around his head. Light caught the ruby-washed blade.
Above Arwen, Helen squared herself. A dull throbbing filled Arwen’s ears. A motion blur attached itself to everything around her, as if she squinted to gain double images.
Sparkling bits surrounded Helen, which coalesced around her right fist, as she punched the swordsman, knocking him back, out of Arwen’s field of vision. She hadn’t touched him, yet he’d fallen as though jerked away by an invisible force.
Then a dark spiral started turning at the edges of Arwen’s vision and she knew no more.
Chapter 19
Junkie
Trystan knew Helen’s Essence–that taunting blaze within her–caused his attraction to her. Although his initial reason for befriending her had been to gain her trust while he decided what he’d do, he had to admit that he was, well...
Trystan was growing fond of the human. A little too fond.
Damn her, it was her enthusiasm. She didn’t know. The girl was so bloody trusting.
Any thought of hurting her was like trying to contemplate crushing a newly hatched nestling.
He should never have taken a look in the first place. He’d been on his own too long. Helen made him forget himself and revert to an attitude he’d held many years ago before he’d complicated his existence.
Trystan growled with the indecision that left him pacing, restless, until on the Monday night he slid into his car, the steering wheel gripped so hard the leather creaked.
What if the others found her? What if someone already knew about Helen, and watched, waiting for the right moment to strike, to spirit her away?
Pure muscle memory guided him as he steered the big car along the gravel road that led back to the N9 National Road. An aardvark lumbered across his path and he swung aside, the beast’s eyes glowing for a brief moment in the headlights.
Once on the smooth strap of tar leading to the town–the road empty, as he liked it–Trystan stepped down hard on the accelerator and the Hudson responded, her engine growling into a low-throated howl.
Rose
sang so beautifully on the big roads.
Helen had spoken a lot about the high school she attended, of Etienne, whom he’d seen visiting the Wareing girl whenever the father wasn’t home.
She’d also spoken of the other kids, the ones who looked the other way when another group–a small band of predators–took their turn to harass those they considered weaker.
God knew, it wasn’t different among the undead, either.
Some truths never changed.
Helen proved easy to find. All he had to do was close his eyes and
reach
, his consciousness sliding across the dormitory chalets that huddled on the slope of the acacia-covered hill.
Most souls slept. Small sputters of static bubbled, giving away those who had fallen into deep dreaming. Trystan paused to consider the dwarf, who possessed a second presence centered over his chest, before the beacon that was Helen drew his attention.
Even in sleep, she shone as bright as, well, almost as bright as her namesake had kept her house in Nieu Bethesda about fifty years ago.
Paused beneath Helen’s window, Trystan allowed the memories of those years to wash over him, with visions of a moonlit yard filled with cement camels and pilgrims forever frozen in their journey to a mythical East.
An incredible buzz had warded that property, of which only flickerings now existed at its core. The memory of how it had been throbbed with a dull ache. No going back.
It would be easy to
reach
, to tweak at this living Helen’s dreams, to reel her in. Instead, he sat beneath the window ledge, content to listen, while he tugged at the dried grasses that covered the white-baked soil.
He waited, listening and guarding for most of the week, unable to decide whether he should wake her or allow her to sleep.
She distracted him. He was like a kid who’d just been given a beautiful Easter egg, and he couldn’t decide whether he should rip it open and stuff his mouth full of chocolate, or hide it somewhere safe, for all eternity, all the while fearing some kid bigger or stronger than him would snatch it away.
Trystan returned on Wednesday, close to convincing himself that he should wake Helen up to steal her away–for a peculiar foreboding gnawed at him, at the edge of his Essence–when the Wareing girl almost snuck up on him.
The only reason she didn’t succeed was because the crickets’ sudden lull betrayed her passage through the colonnaded walkway leading up to this set of chalets, giving Trystan enough warning to melt away into the night.
Still distracted by his interruption, brooding on his own thoughts, he walked to where he’d parked. A slick black BMW slowed down to keep pace with him, the driver rolling down the window. Recognition prickled and he quickened his pace.
“Fancy that,” a woman purred.
Dismayed, Trystan spun around to look Mantis directly in the eye, all the while cursing himself for not paying attention to incidental noise. She must have been cruising past while he’d been woolgathering. This was too damn close to home.
A low chuckle escaped Mantis’s throat. “Hanging out outside schools now, I see.”
His first impulse was to drag the smug vampire from her seat, but he restrained himself, fisting his hands and keeping them by his sides even though his muscles ached for him to leap.
Mantis smiled, her gaze traveling from his feet, lingering on his crotch before blazing into his own. With a careless hand, she flipped her black hair over her shoulder.
“What. Do. You. Want?”
Mantis’s grin never faltered. “I’m curious, Trystan. Curious. First Aberdeen. Now Graaff-Reinet. The elders in Gauteng are having a cadenza since one of their
jagters
went missing in Nieu Bethesda. I’m putting two and two together, getting five, and am pretty certain you could respond to a few questions so that I can add up to four rather and get a straight answer.”
Trystan’s low growl sounded bestial to his ears. He should kill her now but that would attract more unwanted attention. Letting her go was not an option, either, unless...
Some birds would feign a broken wing to lure other predators away from their nest.
A shudder coursed through his body. If Mantis discovered Helen...
She grinned, probably thinking she could sense his defeat.
“All right. I’ll go with you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “No funny business?”
“No funny business.” For now. Lying to an older vampire, especially one who knew him as well as Mantis, would not be easy. He could attempt to avoid certain topics, for a while, however.
“Get into the car.” She gestured to the Beemer’s passenger seat.
Trystan acquiesced, allowing his shoulders to slump. The interior smelled like leather, with an underlying hint of something darker–old blood.
Leaving
Rose
in the street, parked beneath a spreading karee wrenched at his soul. He could only hope he’d somehow find a way to make it back before sunrise. That someone else might paw at her paintwork, or peer into her windows...
Rather, lead Mantis away from Helen.
Rose
would endure. Helen possessed no certainties.
The BMW’s engine made no comforting roar; only a faint vibration beneath the soles of his feet betrayed the revolutions.
Mantis set her mouth in a smirk. She drove until they reached the center of Graaff-Reinet before tacking the N9 south.
“Where are we going?”
“To see some old friends.”
“I thought you hunt for the elders in Joburg.”
“Sometimes.” She shifted the car into its highest gear, her fingers spidering on the steering wheel as she settled back into her seat.
“You’re not taking me to Jozi, are you?”
“No.”
“Not Cape Town, either.”
“No.” Mantis snorted softly.
A number of thoughts fell into place. “You’re freelancing for the Black Pope on the side while accepting commissions from Joburg.”
“Maybe.”
“I thought the renegades wanted me dead.”
“Not as dead as the elders in Cape Town or Joburg. Perhaps you can answer some questions for me, for a change.”
“I’ll think about it,” he replied, alarmed by how fast Mantis drove. The speedometer crept way over the limit, then kept climbing. If she maintained her velocity, they’d be in Knysna within two hours, or less.
Trystan’s fingernails dug into the leather. Mantis was playing with him. They passed Aberdeen before she asked her first question.
“What do you know about the flare of Essence that spiked on Friday night? Nieu Bethesda or thereabouts.”
“There’s...” What could he say? Her Essence filled the car, enveloping him. Also she was adept at
reaching
. Still filled with so much stolen Essence from killing that
jagter
, he could do little to obscure any outright lies.
He cleared his throat, preferring to look out the window at the blur of the flat Karoo plain hurtling past. How easy it was, to pretend that they weren’t really moving, and that instead the world was speeding past. That’s exactly where they were, with all the brief lives passing them by while they remained unchanging.
“Trystan,” Mantis said.
“There’s a girl. Her Essence is awakening.”
Mantis chuckled, a horrible sound. “A girl. Where? I knew something was up. Loud enough for half the magi all the way to the equator to hear, let alone our kind.”
“I don’t think I need to answer that question. You already have all the confirmation you need.”