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“I have,” Rita answers him, her voice low and dark – so dark. She doesn’t even sound like my Rita anymore. The harsh reality sinks in as I realise that my Rita could be gone forever. I can hear Alvie weeping behind me, as he realises the very same thing.
Above our heads Pamphrock finally loses the battle against Theodore and his body goes limp within the magical hold.
“He’s gone,” Ethan states.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” I all but whisper, practically repeating myself. The fact that Rita has just joined Theodore is messing with my brain.
Theodore lets Pamphrock’s body fall to the ground with a sickening thump. I glance at Emilia’s window to see her smiling and closing over the shutters. I don’t know if she’s a fan of Theodore, but she’s gotten what she wanted all the same. Pamphrock’s dead and now nobody’s going to try and take Rebecca from her. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more hopeless.
Theodore joins hands with Rita and the others who came with him. Tears stream down my face. I want to rage at him and pull Rita away by the scruff of her neck, whether she likes it or not. But I’m no match for either of them, and I’m certainly not a match for the both of them together.
“I think you might want to climb up onto my back again,” Ethan tells me in a low voice.
“Why?” I question him, too lost in my own despair to understand his request.
He doesn’t answer. Instead he swings me up onto his shoulders without effort. Finn and Wolf are beside us moments later, as are Lucas, Delilah, Alvie and Gabriel. Practically all of the slayers have either killed one another or are still fighting it out. The only ones who didn’t s
uccumb to the mist are the handful of dhamphirs among their numbers. They come and join us too.
Something’s happening now that Theodore has joined hands with Rita and his followers. The mist seeps out of the dead bodies on the ground and returns to the cloud above the sorcerer’s head. That’s when I realise it’s coming after us, and it no longer seems repelled by me and my magic. Now it seems fearless. It practically crushes everything in its path, vehicles, trees, people. I’ve never seen anything like it. The black cloud descending on me and my little group instils terror into my very bones.
“Hold on to me and don’t let go,” Ethan instructs.
I wrap my arms tight around his neck and my legs around his waist. He doesn’t have anything to worry about, because I have no intention of letting go any time soon. Before I know it we’re running at vampire speed. I’m feeling extremely dizzy, but I do manage to turn my head just enough to see that we’re outrunning the chaos cloud. The blackness is getting further and further away.
When we stop, however, we find ourselves on Campion Row in the midst of the worst carnage I’ve ever seen.
Chapter Seventeen
I Joke About Death Because It’s Funny When You’re Frightened
It takes a minute or two for Finn and the others to catch up with me, Ethan and Lucas. Mayhem is erupting all around us. We probably ran to the worst possible spot we could have chosen in the whole entire city. Vampires are killing people and people are killing each other. From the corner of my eye I spot a vampire coming at Ethan with his fangs out and blood all over his face and body. By the look in his eye, I can tell that he recognises exactly who Ethan is.
This fact is further cemented when the vampire calls out to the others around him, “There’s that traitor, get him!”
“Ah fuck,” Finn swears and begins shooting arrows at the vampires approaching us, managing to take a couple of them down. Wolf growls and pounces on a female vampire. He jumps and his entire body flies in mid-air, before his open mouth clamps down on her throat. The vampire struggles against the animal, but Wolf makes an abrupt jerk and her neck snaps off. Jesus. He really isn’t any ordinary dog.
I clock another vampire just a second before he’s about to swing a sword at Ethan’s throat. Pulling the stake out of my pocket and manoeuvring my body, I manage to plunge it hard right into his chest. He clearly made the mistake of dismissing the human sitting on Ethan’s back as no real threat. People should really stop underestimating me.
Ethan smiles a 100 watt smile when he realises what I did. “Good girl,” he praises me.
“Come on, we have to get off the streets,” Finn orders, gesturing for everyone to follow him down a side alley.
There’s a narrow ladder running up one of the walls and leading to the roof of a two storey building. Making sure we haven’t been followed, we all take turns going up. I don’t bother to get down off Ethan’s back, and he carries me up the ladder with him.
The roof is flat and empty, and although it isn’t as high up from the street as I’d like, it will do for now as a place for us to rest. A solemn atmosphere permeates those present; we’ve all lost so much. Ethan finally allows me to climb down from his back and he frowns when he sees the damage Rita’s fire did to my hand when I’d tried to reach out to her.
“This isn’t good. A burn from magical fire can be life-threatening,” he says, and fear fills my gut. The burn doesn’t exactly feel life-threatening, but it does hurt pretty badly. Up until this moment there had been far too much adrenaline rushing through my system for me to notice the damage done to my hand.
Finn, Lucas and Delilah are taking stock of the weapons we have on us, while Gabriel is holding Alvie in his arms as he cries over Rita. I want to cry too. Even though she’s still very much alive, it feels as though she’s died. The sense of loss is palpable; it’s like somebody has gone and cut out a piece of my heart. The person wearing Rita’s skin who stared at me with those dark new eyes didn’t feel like my friend at all.
There are four dhamphirs with us, three men and one woman. They appear wary of the presence of Ethan and Lucas, but Finn quickly explains our alliance to them and they seem to accept it.
Ethan leads me over to a private corner of the roof, still examining my burned hand.
“I should give you some blood for this,” he says. “It could turn necrotic if left untreated.”
“Necrotic, does that mean it’s going to fall off?” I ask with a shudder.
