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“No,” Saber cried. She knocked Derek back into the casket with her mallet and he shook violently, barely able to move, sluggish and vibrating like some nocturnal insect exposed to light. She positioned the stake over his heart, feeling him squirm horribly beneath it, and pressed it firmly down, then raised the mallet.
Derek began to scream, his horrible mouth open, sticky and black, the noise like a rasping squeal. Saber dropped the mallet hard and true, shouting with the effort, and drove the stake through his heart with a dull crunching sound. His shrieking grew louder for a moment, then he began to smoke and sizzle, much the way Laurel had. Saber stumbled back to stand beside Lozen, and together they watched him burn.
32
“Ican’t believe you,” Mia said, sitting across from Lozen and Saber at a coffee shop two days later.
The snow caused school to be canceled, and Saber had been glad to be stuck at her house with Lozen. The roads were cleared soon after, and they’d returned to school on Wednesday, before being released early and driving to meet Mia at Pegasus.
“We thought it would be better if you weren’t involved,” Saber said, and Mia looked at her coldly.
“I’m not surprised thatyoukeep secrets,” she said. “But Lozen, you?”
Saber rolled her eyes. She tried not to let their new witchy sisterhood bother her, but she couldn’t help it.
“I didn’t want to put people in danger just because I wanted revenge. And Saber is leaving. We needed to get it done.”
Mia sat back a little, picked up her tea latte, and nodded.
“It could have gone horribly, horribly wrong.”
“Well,” Saber said. “It didn’t.”
Mia glanced at her again. Her eyes were cold.
“You did the killing?”
Saber nodded.
“And how many more are there in this…collective?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Lozen said, “but we think it might have been just Derek, that’s the one we staked today, and his maker, a woman vampire named Ysidra.”
Mia nodded.
“And you’re going to kill her, too?Killdoesn’t seem like the right word, does it?”
Just then, Elijah walked in and sat down beside Mia. Saber watched him take her hand and squeeze it. Mia smiled at him and squeezed back.
“They killed another vampire,” she said, indicating Saber and Lozen, and Elijah turned his large eyes on them. Together, they looked like a pair of owls sitting on a branch.
“Wow,” he said. “Really? Why didn’t you call us?”
“We just wanted to get it done,” said Lozen. “And we didn’t want to risk your lives for our… mission, or whatever it is.”
Elijah shook his head.
“I thought it wasallof our mission,” he said, and actually sounded a little hurt.
“There’s one more,” Mia said, breathing out. “Then maybe this will be done. Or maybe it will never be over.”
“What’s the plan now?” Elijah asked, and Saber shrugged.
“I think we have to figure out where Ysidra is,” Lozen said. “If we don’t kill her, she’ll come after us.”
“Did you guys invite Doug?” Lozen said, noticing they were missing the eldest companion in their vampire killing group.
“Yes, but we haven’t heard from him,” Mia said. “Not today or yesterday.”
