Witches & Words Read online

  “Then what is it you want from me, mortal?” said the Grim Reaper.

  “I have a question,” I said. “Did Mr Spencer’s soul definitely pass on to the afterlife?”

  “My apprentice took care of that, not me.”

  “And what happens if a soul is brought back?” I asked. “After the person turns into a vampire?”

  “That rarely happens,” said the Grim Reaper. “Most newly turned vampires fall into a coma after being bitten, and their souls remain in their bodies without passing on.”

  I’d talked to Evangeline herself about vampires’ souls before, and she’d said that Reapers dealt with mortal souls and not immortal ones. But she’d been talking about vampires who’d already been immortal.

  Mr Spencer hadn’t been bitten and fallen into a coma. He’d died, or so it had seemed. But there was one more way to create a vampire—using the blood of another vampire to heal a fatal injury.

  I might not know anything about vampires’ souls, and perhaps Xavier didn’t either, but the Grim Reaper would know for sure. “And if no biting was involved?”

  There was a long pause. Then…

  “Bring me proof,” he said. “Only then will I consider helping you. For now, my apprentice will be staying here.”

  I should have expected as much. Xavier wouldn’t be coming with me. I was on my own.

  So be it.

  When I’d called the police earlier, Edwin had probably thought I was cracking up. He’d insisted the bodies of the two vampire hunters were in the same condition he would expect them to be, given how long had passed since the murders. Vampires, however, were cold no matter the temperature, didn’t have heartbeats, and were also remarkably good at appearing to be dead when they weren’t. Just look at the guy who’d been sleeping in the basement of the library for the last few decades.

  With that in mind, all I needed now was a motive, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

  I left the graveyard. My breath fogged the air as I walked at a swift pace, out of the cemetery and back down the road. It took until I reached Mrs Peterson’s shop for my insides to thaw out.

  Mrs Peterson looked up at me as I walked through the antique shop. “You again?”

  “When you said your husband and Mr Blake were rivals,” I said breathlessly, “how deep did that run? Would they have deliberately tried to sabotage one another.”

  “Sabotage?” she said. “Well, they couldn’t do anything without making it into a contest. Same with the other hunters, when it came down to it. Is that what you mean?”

  “Would they have hurt one another intentionally?” I asked.

  She blinked. “Howard had a quick temper, certainly, and I found that the same was true of most of the people he associated with.”

  If the two ex-vampire hunters gone to the trouble of creating a fake book to lure in the vampires, Mr Blake wouldn’t have been happy that his friend had got cold feet and tried to warn me. He might, for instance, have acted irrationally and then regretted his hasty decision enough to attempt to undo it the only way he knew how.

  As I stepped out of the shop, cold breath whispered on the back of my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, a swift figure stepping around me too fast for me to take in his features.

  Then the world blurred before my eyes, flying past, far too quickly, and I closed my eyes against the oncoming darkness.

  My eyes flickered open. I’d been aware of being carried, but I hadn’t dared open my eyes until I lay on solid ground. Given the cold stone beneath me, I assumed I must be indoors, but the room was dark as pitch and cold enough for my breath to fog the air.

  Where I was, though, I could only guess. Vampires could run for miles at a time, and for all I knew, they’d taken me to the other side of the country. Even if I’d kept my eyes open, I’d never have been able to take it all in.

  I gingerly touched my face. Everything was still intact. The vampire could have killed me at any time during our hair-raising flight, yet he’d chosen to spare my life.

  Movement stirred in the darkness and a tall, hooded figure moved into view. “Why,” Mr Spencer’s voice said, “did your family have to ruin everything?”

  I squinted at the shadowy figure, my teeth chattering in the cold. “If you didn’t want my family involved, why’d you dump that book on us to begin with?”

  Mr Spencer moved closer. His steps were silent now, more so than before, but he wore the same hooded cloak that hid his face as he had the last time I’d seen him. “It was a mistake. I tried to warn you, but he got there first. He knows I’ve spent half my life hunting vampires, but he turned me anyway. Now I’m as good as dead.”

  “You faked your death,” I corrected. “You could have set the record straight at any time and my family would have got rid of the book.”

  “I had no choice but to hide.” His voice grew louder, echoing off the walls. “If the local vampires find me, they’ll have my head. It’s not as easy to keep still and pretend to be dead as it looks, believe me.”

  I had very little sympathy. “Are you planning to kill me?”

  “Kill you?” he said. “No. I only kill the dead. I would have left you alone if you hadn’t kept interfering, but I can’t have you blabbing my secrets to the vampires’ leader.”

  I swallowed hard, looking around. In the darkness, I could make out the shadowy edges of a room, while an unpleasant coppery smell hung in the background. Blood. I’d bet Mr Spencer had brought his blood supplies here to his new hideout along with his other possessions before they’d fallen into the police’s hands.

  “You aren’t going to hurt your ex-wife, are you?” I asked.

  “Lauren?” he said. “No. She’s welcome to do whatever she likes. I doubt she’d care if I was alive or not.”

  “Then why did you call her before you died?” I said. “Before you died and came back, I mean?”

  “I debated giving her the warning and not you,” he said. “I’m starting to wish I had.”

  “Then why did you decide to stay in town?” I frowned up at him through the darkness. “For that matter, why leave the book in the library even when you knew it would paint targets on our heads? You can’t complain that I figured out you were still alive, considering you’re the one who left the evidence in our hands in the first place.”

  “I couldn’t very well break into your family’s library while there was an active inquiry into my death, could I?” he said. “I hoped you’d figure out I was trying to warn you, but the book’s spell was supposed to ensure it didn’t give the game away. Henry made certain of it.”

  “You removed all the instructions on how to undo the curse on the book from your own room, didn’t you?” I said. “You’ve been tampering with the evidence. I suppose your vampire speed made it easy for you to sneak in and out of the hotel without anyone spotting you. But you claim you were trying to warn me when you called the library?”

  “Yes, before Henry ruined everything.” He scowled. “Not only did he push me to my death, he didn’t even have the guts to let me stay dead. I know the laws on creating new vampires better than anyone, and I assumed he did, too. Unless he wanted me to take the blame for my own resurrection, of course.” He gave a short, bitter laugh.

  “Is there a law against creating new vampires, then?” It made sense that Evangeline would want utter control over any new vampires in town, and an ex-vampire hunter would not fare well under her rule. Knowing her, she’d either have him arrested as a rogue or else take revenge on him for all the vampires he’d hunted.

  “You’re asking someone who hunted rogues for a living,” he said. “There’s no law against creating new vampires, per se, but all of them are strictly monitored. I don’t know whose blood he used to revive me, but I assume he intended for it to seem like I’d deliberately arranged to be turned after I died.”

  “If he did, then why not let the police deal with it, rather than pushing him out the window?” I said.

  “I couldn’t
leave him alive.” He lowered his hood, revealing a face paler than before, with bloodshot eyes under his blond hair. “Not after what he did. I can still remember what it felt like. Death.”

  Chills raced down my arms. “I saw the Reaper take you into the afterlife himself. What… what did it feel like?”

  All I could think of to do was to stall him, keep asking questions until someone found us here.

  “Cold.” He shuddered. “My career was based on ending lives, not on what comes next.”

  Yeah, but that’s no reason to drag the rest of us into it. I should be terrified, yet after the Grim Reaper, my fear had hit its limit and anger began to creep through. He’d put my family in danger for no good reason, and while he’d ultimately tried to warn us of the danger before his untimely passing, he could have cleared up the case at any time since his return from death and had instead chosen to leave my family in charge of that wretched book.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  I blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Your thoughts are loud,” he said. “I can’t think straight.”

  Huh? Wait—of course. He must have gained the ability to read minds when he’d woken as a vampire, and I’d bet his years of hunting vampires hadn’t prepared him for the reality of being one of them. Bloodlust shone in his eyes, and rage, too. Not just at me, but at Henry Blake, for turning him into a vampire and then ditching him. I had to keep him talking, otherwise I’d be the one he took out his rage on.

  “I can’t control my thoughts,” I said. “Look, sooner or later another vampire is going to find you. They’ll want to know who created you. And then what?”

  His teeth gleamed white and pointed in the darkness. “I’ll tell them the truth—that Henry is responsible.”

  “Telling a witch our plans, are you?” said a voice.

  My heartbeat kicked into gear at the sound of Mr Blake entering the room. He’s one, too. A vampire.

  I should have guessed. If it was him who’d turned Mr Spencer, he must have made arrangements in the case of his own death, too. The two of them had been running around in circles trying to outdo one another ever since they’d arrived in town, and now I had two angry vampires to contend with instead of one. Mr Dreyer might not have known what the two of them had done, but he knew they were bad news and had left town while he still could. I didn’t blame him a bit.

  I’m doomed. I might be miles from Ivory Beach, for all I knew, and my family didn’t even know I was missing. Xavier was still under the Grim Reaper’s watchful eye, and I had my doubts Evangeline would come to my rescue even if she’d worked out there were two new rogues in town. I hardly believed she hadn’t noticed their presence, but then again, they’d hidden their tracks well. I assumed the two of them had enough of their own supplies of blood that they hadn’t needed to go hunting yet, but it wouldn’t last forever, and I was a living, breathing human.

  “You found my trail,” said Mr Spencer. “I wondered if you might.”

  Mr Blake chuckled. “I should have known. You just had to upstage me again, didn’t you?”

  Trapped between two furious, bloodthirsty vampires. I didn’t need to be able to see them squaring up to one another to know I was in real trouble.

  15

  I didn’t dare breathe, let alone speak or move. The two vampires faced off, appearing as little more than shadowy outlines of people in the gloom. There was no visible way out except for the door Mr Blake had entered through and if I ran for it, the vampires would catch me in an instant.

  I’m going to die here. Both vampires were hungry for blood, and I was the closest source. Even if I stayed put if they stopped fighting for long enough to remember I was here, I was dead.

  I felt my way backwards in the hope of finding a way out, and something clinked against my fingers. A small glass bottle, lying on the ground. I didn’t need to be able to see its contents to guess it was full of blood. Mr Spencer had prepared well, after all. My hand clenched around the bottle and I rose to my feet, hoping it wasn’t empty.

  Mr Spencer turned in my direction. “And just where do you think you’re going?”

  I hurled the bottle into his face, holding my breath. The vampires screamed in unison and fell on one another, unable to resist the smell of blood.

  Meanwhile, I backed up to the wall, dug my hand in my pocket and my fingers snagged my Biblio-Witch Inventory. Whipping it out, I tapped the word light.

  Brightness flooded the room. The vampires let out twin screams of fury and pain, still grappling with one another. I broke into a sprint, reached the wooden door and escaped into the outside world.

  I slammed the door behind me. I stood in a field, and judging by the darkness, it was early evening. The house they’d picked looked like more of a shack, bordered by fields on either side with no signs of human habitation. To any normals who ran into me, I’d look like a maniac, dirty and dishevelled, but I didn’t care. I had to get away before the vampires caught up with me.

  I grabbed my phone from my pocket, but before I could dial, a voice rang out behind me, resonant and clear. “Rory?”

  I whirled on the spot, my heart lifting. Xavier walked towards me, his scythe in his hands.

  “How’d you find me?” I said.

  “I followed you using my Reaper powers,” he said. “I heard you talking to my boss and managed to slip away.”

  I pointed to the house with shaking hands. “The vampires are in there, but I wouldn’t get between them.”

  “Vampires,” he said. “Who, exactly?”

  “It was Mr Spencer who brought me here,” I said. “He and Mr Blake were working together at first, conspiring to lure some rogue vampires to Ivory Beach, but when he got cold feet, they fought and Mr Blake accidentally killed him. Then he tried to undo his mistake…”

  “… by turning him into a vampire,” said Xavier, his eyes gleaming with understanding. “That explains the blood on the stairs.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “When Mr Spencer woke up, he was raging mad. He pushed Mr Blake out the window, but he must have taken precautions, because he turned into a vampire, too. And now… let’s just say they’re not best pleased with one another.”

  A howl echoed from inside the shack and Xavier tensed, his scythe ready. “They’re fighting?”

  “I threw a bottle of blood at them,” I said. “To distract them. I don’t know what Mr Spencer planned to do with me, but he didn’t want me telling the authorities what he and Mr Blake did. They’ve been trying to avoid Evangeline, too. If she finds out they’re rogues, she won’t treat them kindly.”

  Xavier raised his scythe. “In that case, I’ll handle them myself.”

  As the Reaper reached the door, it bounced off its frame and two figures escaped in twin blurs, resolving into the shadowy forms of the vampires. Both of them were a mess, their faces covered in scratches, eyes wild and bloodshot and fixed accusingly on me.

  “Howard might have an issue with harming humans,” said Mr Blake, “but I don’t. If you don’t back off, Reaper, then you’ll have to escort your own girlfriend into the afterlife.”

  Xavier swore. “Keep her out of this. This is your last warning.”

  Before he could strike, a wave of cold darkness descended on the field, and even the two vampires went still as the dark shape of the Grim Reaper appeared from the night.

  “I wondered what was taking my apprentice so long.” His dark gaze landed on the two vampires. “So these are the two rogues, are they?”

  “You can’t kill us,” said Mr Spencer, his voice a terrified squeak. “It’s not our time.”

  “I alone have the right to decide your fates,” said the Grim Reaper. “You may have escaped the jaws of death once before, but I own both your souls already.”

  “Not quite,” said Evangeline’s voice from behind me. “Those two men are my prey.”

  Oh, no.

  Tall and beautiful as ever, the vampires’ leader strode towards the Grim Reaper, a scowl forming on
her face at the sight of the scythe in his hands.

  “I beg to differ,” said the Grim Reaper. “These two mortals cheated death. They broke the rules, and they will pay the price.”

  “They broke my laws when they tried to lure rogues into the town to further their own goals,” said Evangeline. “Not only that, they are both illegally created vampires, which means they are mine to punish. Their souls returned from death, and that makes them mine, not yours.”

  The Grim Reaper turned in her direction. “Their souls returned from death through unnatural means, not unlike yours. Do not force me to break my vows.”

  I tried to catch Xavier’s eye, but like me, he stood transfixed, his gaze on his boss squaring up to the vampires’ leader. I should have figured that the leader of the vampires and the person responsible for collecting the souls of the dead might have some differences, but not that their animosity might run that deep. No wonder the Grim Reaper had decided to help me, if the alternative was working with Evangeline.

  If it came to a conflict between them, the Grim Reaper would surely win, right? He was death personified. Then again, Evangeline herself was deathless. My teeth chattered in my skull. Get away. Now.

  There was a blur of movement as the two vampires sprinted away across the field, taking the chance to flee for their lives.

  Not fast enough. A third blur joined the other two, bright where the others were dark. Xavier halted in between the vampires, and in a swing, his scythe came down.

  Darkness spread from his feet across the field, pulling both vampires into its embrace. Behind him appeared the outline of a door edged in light as dazzling as the gleaming sceptre in his hands, and the two vampires began to glow, too. I watched, unable to move or speak, as their ghostly forms floated towards the hovering door at Xavier’s back.

  The angel of death watched them leave this world, without speaking. When the door had faded along with the rippling shadows behind him, the vampires’ bodies were gone.

  Then part of the shadows moved. My heart stuttered to a halt as the Grim Reaper stepped into view, looking directly at me. His hood had slipped, revealing a surprisingly human-like face beneath the shadows. His skin was as moon-pale, his eyes as dark blue as the night sky. I broke my gaze from his, hoping fervently he didn’t know I’d seen the vampires pass on to the next world.