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“They’re all vampires,” Raquel said, clutching her stake. “Which ones do we go after?”
“If they’re attacking a vampire you know, take them out! Tell Dana who’s who!” I looked for a weapon for myself and grabbed a small hand ax.
“Raquel!” Vic ran toward the truck. He must have been in the woods — probably looking for something to use to smash into Mrs. Bethany’s house. “Give me something! Anything!”
[ left them behind, running through the snow, determined to help Lucas and the others. AsI saw how well armed Mrs. Bethany’s crew seemed to be, I reached up and pulled off my brooch. My body remained solid.
The closest people to me were my father and the tallest vampire in school, a guy almost as broad as he was high. He was pounding my dad with one hand; the other held a knife certainly big enough for a beheading. Dad had already gone down on one knee, unable to defend himself. I shouted, “Hey!”
The vampire turned. With a lazy grin, he swung the knife toward me — — as I dropped the brooch and became vapory. The knife went directly through me, and I felt nothing. The ax I’d been carrying kept swinging through the air at the same speed, undeflected, to bury itself in the guy’s back.
He fell to the ground, obviously not permanently taken out but dazed and in pain. Quickly I grabbed my brooch again and took Dad’s hand.
“Come on! We have to get in there!”
“We have to get out of here,” Dad protested.
I shook my head. “This fight doesn’t end until Mrs. Bethany’s stopped, and we won’t be out of danger until the fight ends.”
Mrs. Bethany’s cottage was only a few steps away. But Vic beat me to it, and when I saw what he was carrying, my eyes went wide. I never thought they’d give him the flamethrower.
Vic pointed the weapon at one wall — and a plume of fire set the place ablaze. I realized, Vic doesn’t know that fire could kill Maxie forever.
I ran toward the cottage, unsure what to do or how to help. Then I saw a faint outline of a figure against the snow — Maxie, drifting in a daze away from the flames.
“Maxie!” I shouted. Vic reached her at the same moment I did, and I pressed my brooch into her hand. Although she hardly had any substance, she was able to hang on to it; the magic within the jet solidified her and seemed to give her some strength. “Are you okay?” Vice smoothed her golden brown hair away from her forehead.
She shook her head no. “Christopher,” she managed to say.
“What about him?” I said. “Did he get you out?”
“Yes, but he — ” Maxie stared back at the fire consuming the carriage house. “He took my place.” Suddenly undone by grief and exhaustion, Maxie slumped against Vic’s shoulder; he let the flamethrower drop and held her tightly.
I left them alone and rushed toward the blaze. Though I knew it was dangerous to be so near fire or a trap, I couldn ‘ t let Christopher perish if there was any way to save him.
But as I remembered his sad expression as we prepared to come here, I knew immediately that there Wasn’t. Christopher had done this knowing he would be lost forever. He had sacrificed himself for Maxie.
I peered into the very heart of the flames. There, I could see Mrs. Bethany, her long hair tumbling down loose around her shoulders. Soot stained her face, and she looked very young. “Christopher!” she cried out. She must have seen him, in the instant that he had taken Maxie’s place. “Christopher, I’m here, I’m here!”
Despite the fact that she was on the verge of burning to death, Mrs. Bethany was — smiling. I realized then that Christopher had been wrong: her love for him really had been stronger than her hate. But they’d both found out too late.
Maxie had been freed before Mrs. Bethany could transform herself. Mrs. Bethany had enough time, maybe — to sacrifice Christopher and live again. She had to know that. But she wouldn’t do it. “We can get out of here,” she gasped, reaching through smoldering woodwork despite the risk to herself. I realized she was trying to retrieve the trap that held him. “We’ll be together, I promise you.”
I heard Christopher’s voice, hardly a whisper amid the crackling of the flames, “My dearest Charlotte.”
Then a surge of sparks drove me back, and I gaped as the roof of the carriage house crumbled. Nothing remained but glowing embers, and flame, and smoke. Sure death for any vampire, or any wraith. The Bethanys were gone, forever.
Shaken, I turned to see the battle — or what had been the battle. The vampires fighting my friends had been subdued, either by Dana and Raquel as reinforcements or by surrender when they saw that their leader, and the resurrection magic she alone knew, had perished. I could see my mother helping my father to his feet, Raquel and Patrice herding the enemy vampires farther away from the rest of us, and most of the others gathered around a fallen figure in the snow — Around Lucas.
Chapter Twenty — two
I FLASHED MYSELF TO THE SMALL GROUP OF people huddled around Lucas’s fallen form. He lay motionless and bloodied on the snow, his chest and forehead sliced deeply by a weapon. Dana cradled his head in her hands, and Balthazar ran one finger along the edge of the chest wound and winced. Vic and Maxie, still holding on to each other, stood nearby, while Ranulf clutched his ax to his chest as if he were a child with a security blanket. Lucas appeared to be totally unconscious.
“What’s going on?” I knelt beside Lucas. “He’s wounded?”
“Badly,” Balthazar said. But in his voice I heard real dread.
I said, “As awful as it is, as much as I know he’s hurting .. . he’ll be okay.” Nobody spoke. “Won’t he?”
