Eventually, the trail of corpses led us into an enormous room, completely empty of any furniture or fixtures. I had no idea what the purpose of the room was originally supposed to be, but it was currently being used as a battleground. The Black Walker was in the center, surrounded by werewolves. There were a few wolves already down on the ground, bloody and unmoving. The rest were attacking the Black Walker; the fight was like a choreographed ballet, with each person leaping and swiping and flying around each other as if they’d been doing this kind of thing for years. Which, I suppose, they had. It was beautiful to watch (if you disregarded all the blood and goo on the floor), but I wanted to do more than just spectate. I pulled Mom out and charged in, with Damon and his blades close behind.

  Damon and I had been sparring together for years at Master Fang’s, so we worked pretty well together. However, we mostly used our feet and hands for that, and were not usually wielding extremely sharp blades. Plus, Damon was really fast now, with his supernatural speed. The beast itself was also pretty agile, considering its large, lumbering size. It flung its limbs around wildly, and getting hit by one of those was like getting hit by a semi truck. We fought for what felt like years (but was probably only a minute or two), and while we had definitely done some damage, it still felt like we weren’t getting anywhere very fast. Then, I made a mistake.

  The Black Walker was leveling a hit on Damon, and I was going to try to slice that arm up with Mom before he could. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that Damon was also planning a similar move. I had to adjust my swing at the last minute to avoid hitting Damon with the blade, but I still managed to nick him. I heard his flesh sizzle, and his gasp of pain, and then the Black Walker took advantage of the distraction to slam his fist into Damon and send him flying across the room. He hit the wall with a sickening thud and slumped to the ground. Still off balance from my aborted swing, I slipped in a puddle of blood and went down hard on my back, all the breath knocked out of my lungs.

  The Black Walker let out a triumphant sounding howl, and suddenly I was staring up at its massive jaws. Man, did its breath stink. It opened its mouth, and I was faced with massive teeth that looked bigger than I was. A large glob of drool dribbled down and dropped onto my face, and I almost gagged. The thought that this was how I was going to die was not a pleasant one, but I was pretty sure I was done for. The wolves were still attacking, but the Black Walker ignored them and focused its attention on me. I still had Mom in my hands, so I tried to lift it in an attempt to impale its jaw, but I knew I was going to be too late.

  Then, just like that, the teeth were no longer about to close on me. The head was gone, and all I could see was the Prince staring down at me, with one of Damon’s blades in her hands. Her face was as expressionless as ever, which I’m sure was a stark contrast to my own expression. I sat up, and when I saw that the head of the Black Walker was not currently attached to the rest of his body, I breathed a sigh of relief. The wolves that were still standing were tending to the ones that had fallen, and the room was suddenly eerily quiet, now that the fight was over.

  “Well,” I muttered. “Not that I’m not totally grateful or anything, but if I had known you could have just done that all along, I probably would have been a little more insistent that you come with us tonight.” I sat up slowly. “I thought you said you couldn’t help?”

  Andre, who I only now noticed was standing on the other side of me, reached a hand out to help me up. “Slight change of plans.” He grinned at me as he pulled me up from the ground. “Don’t worry; our reasons were totally selfish.”

  “Well, you are vampires. How’s Damon?”

  Andre nodded his head slightly behind where I was standing. “We brought the doctor. He’s tending to Damon now. He tried to make it to you when you fell, but he hit that wall pretty hard. He threw the blade instead. Luckily, Endra caught it. An interesting tactic.”

  “It worked pretty well for him before.” I turned around, and sure enough, there was Damon, sitting on the ground a few yards away. There was another man standing over him, and from the slightly annoyed expression on Damon’s face, I guessed he was not being a very good patient. The doctor wore black dress pants, a white dress shirt, and a black tuxedo jacket complete with tails. He had a bowtie, as well as a black, flowing cloak, and his jet black hair was slicked back. I just stared, then whipped my head back around to Andre and the Prince. “Holy shit! You guys know Dracula?!”

  Andre laughed, a booming belly laugh that made me grin. When I looked at Endra, though, I knew that I would never forget this moment for as long as I lived. I would tell my children and my children’s children of this day. And even though it disappeared almost as soon as she realized I was looking, I still saw it.

  The Prince smiled.

  We headed over to where Damon was indeed being a terrible patient, just in time to overhear the doctor declare that the wound would take some time to heal but that he should be fine, especially once he gets more blood in his system. He introduced himself as Roger (not Dracula, to my disappointment) and shook my hand. “Delaney Jones, I presume. I have heard much about you.”

  I noticed he didn’t say whether or not what he’d heard was good, and I didn’t ask. “Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan of your work.” I heard Andre snicker behind me. I reached a hand out to help Damon up. “You’re good?”

  “I’m good.”

  I was about to say more, but I was distracted by something out of the corner of my eye. “Uh, we should probably get Rast down here.” I pointed. “Like, as quickly as possible, please.” The head of the Black Walker was moving.

  It didn’t take long before Rast made it over to where we were standing. Many of the other members of the pack were working hard to clear the area of any signs of a battle. A maintenance closet had apparently been discovered, and the blood on the floor was now being cleaned up by a small army of mop wielding werewolves. Leif led Rast over to where the vampires and I were standing, the beads and bells and small charms that were tied into his tiny braids making a pleasant sounding ting as he moved. He was wearing a satchel draped across his shoulder, and as I watched him, he pulled out a necklace of heavy chain and dropped it over my head, where it rested on my neck so heavily that it threatened to drag me down. “You might want to lay down for this one, Delaney. It might make it a little easier for you to relax.”

  “You’re doing it right here?” I asked, trying to adjust the chain more comfortably around my neck, which I was quickly discovering to be an impossible task.

  Leif nodded. “It would be more ideal to do it outside, naturally, but time is of the essence. We may not get another chance like this, so we’ll have to just make do.” The next thing to come out of the satchel was a small blanket, which he spread out on the floor in front of me, then gestured for me to take a seat. “Rast is going to use the beast’s physical body to bind the spirit and prevent it from manifesting in the real world ever again. In order for him to do that, you are going to have to go on a bit of a journey yourself.” When I still hadn’t moved, he gently grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me forward to step onto the blanket, then pushed down until I got the hint and sat down. “I wasn’t kidding, earlier. Laying down really will make this easier on you.”

  I tried to shrug, but the chain was heavy, so I just did as I was told and lay down on my back.

  Roger was staring down at me curiously, so I grinned up at him and gave a little wave, which seemed to startle him. The Prince was ignoring everyone as usual, but Andre coughed, then suggested that it was time to leave. “Remember, Delaney, deadline is tomorrow at sunset.” I nodded, and they were gone.

  “Should I leave, too?” Damon asked. “Is this some sort of secret werewolf thing or something?”

  “Damon’s not going anywhere,” I was quick to interject before anyone could say otherwise. “I don’t care if it is some secret ritual, I have no secrets from him, and he’s not leaving.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Rast reassured me. “We actually need him and those blades of his.”

  Damon reached up to touch the hilt of his blades. “What do you mean you need me? I’m, uh, not a werewolf.”

  Rast gave him a gentle smile. “Exactly.” A couple more wolves came over, including Marie, and Rast turned to them to start giving directions.

  Leif grinned at Damon’s expression. “Do not worry, Damon. You will understand what you need to do when the time presents itself.” He held what looked like a bundle of twigs in his hands, and as I watched, he lit it on fire and started waving it over my body, causing the smoke to envelop me. When he finished with that, he started draping me with brightly colored ribbons. Finally, he took out some sort of powder and told me to lie very still as he poured it in an outline around me, like some sort of slightly less morbid chalk outline.

  When he was finished, he clapped his hands together twice, and suddenly I was surrounded by people. Most of them had drums, similar to the drums we saw in the clearing on the first day we met Rast. A couple had maracas and I even saw one or two tambourines. There was a lot of chanting and singing, and everywhere I turned my head, someone was there, staring at me. I realized I had no idea what this ritual was going to entail, and I was starting to get a little nervous. I looked for Damon’s face in the sea of people, and just as I was starting to panic, I saw him. I watched as he pushed his way into the crowd right near my feet and planted himself there with his arms crossed and an expression that was just daring someone to try and make him move. As if he could sense my growing unease, he looked at me and made a silly face. With a sigh of relief, I laid my head back down. If Damon was here, I was safe.

  Marie sat down cross-legged just in front of the top of my head and put her tiny hands on either side of my face. “Close your eyes, Delaney. Relax.” My expression must have been skeptical, because she patted my cheeks gently and whispered, “Don’t worry, you can trust us. Close your eyes. Relax. You’re safe.” She gazed into my eyes repeating “Close your eyes. Relax. You’re safe,” until I finally closed my eyes.

  It took several minutes of listening to the chanting and singing and the drums before I was finally able to completely relax. At least, it felt like several minutes. It was hard to tell how much actual time had passed, but eventually, I started to feel a little sleepy. The instruments and the voices started to blend together, and the rhythm was lulling me into a very relaxed state. Then, I was no longer laying on the floor of the water treatment plant.

  I was standing in the middle of a beautiful meadow surrounded on three sides by a forest. A light breeze drifted through the air, causing the long stalks of grass I was standing in to wave like an enthusiastic crowd at a sporting event. There was a crystal clear lake to my right and a large mountain standing majestically behind it, complete with white snow capped peaks. To my left, a path led into the woods. I was alone in the meadow, save for one other figure standing at the foot of the path, gazing at me.

  I had not seen my mother in years, but she looked exactly as I remembered. She wore loose fitting pants and a green embroidered tunic that was the exact shade of her eyes. Her dark hair hung in waves down her back. As she walked toward me, she could have quite literally stepped out of the photograph my father kept on his bedstand at home.

  I stood there, frozen in shock. When she reached me, she held open her arms, and before I could think about it, I stepped right into her embrace. I had forgotten how good it felt to be held by my mother. As she clutched me tightly to her, I was finally released from whatever paralyzing spell I had been under, and I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her right back. A tension I didn’t realize I had been holding onto released inside of me, and I felt at peace.

  Eventually, she let go of me and took a small step back. “Hey, baby girl.”

  “Hi, Mama,” I smiled at her. “Where are we?”

  She sighed. “We’re in the middle of the trap. I’m sorry it had to be this way. I tried so hard to make sure something like this would never happen, and yet, here we stand. I’ve put you in the exact situation I was trying to avoid, and turned you into what I swore you would never be.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean? What have you turned me into?”

  There was an enormous crashing sound from the trees behind us, and my mother sighed again. “Bait.”

  The noise from the forest intensified as it got closer, and I could feel the ground beneath my feet start to shake. It sounded like trees were being ripped up from the ground and tossed aside with each rumbling thud. It was obvious that the Black Walker was completely ignoring the path, as it appeared with a loud crash about fifteen feet from the entrance into the clearing. If I thought it looked angry before, it was now the absolute embodiment of pure rage.

  My mother glanced back at the Black Walker, then turned to me again. “It’s time to say goodbye now, my sweet girl.” She reached up to hold my face between her hands and stared at me as if she were trying to memorize my face. “Give your father my love. I am so very proud of you, my beautiful Delaney.”

  Before I could respond, the Black Walker hissed, and my mother shoved me away from her, hard. Everything suddenly happened so fast that I had no time to react, and could only stare in horror as I flew backward and watched the Black Walker leap right at my mother. As I landed hard on my ass a short distance away, I caught a glimpse of a very startled looking Damon dropping down from the sky above, and impaling the Black Walker with his blades. Then, just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone. The Black Walker roared in pain and collapsed, practically on top of my mother, who screamed something in a language I didn’t understand, then clapped her hands together with a loud smack. The Black Walker and my mother were enveloped in a searing light, and I had to shut my eyes to shield them from the brightness.

  When I opened my eyes, I could still feel hands on my face, and for a brief moment, I thought I was my mother. When I saw that it was actually Marie, and I was lying on my back in the water treatment facility surrounded by a bunch of faces staring down at me in various levels of concern, I was overwhelmed by a deep sadness, like my mother had left me all over again. Only this time, I had the sense she was really gone for good. I took a moment to wallow, and then sat up. I felt very weak, like all the energy had been drained from my body, and I had to brace my hands behind me on the floor in order to stay upright. “So,” I said, my voice sounding gravelly and rough. “Did we win?”

  Leif dropped down to his knees in front of me and used his thumbs to open my eyes wider. “How are you feeling?” I had no idea what he was looking for, but whatever it was, he must have been satisfied, because he removed his thumbs and left me blinking.

  I shrugged. “Tired. Sad. Overwhelmed.” Leif wrapped his fingers around my wrist to check my pulse, and nodded at my answer. He slid closer to place the back of his hand on my forehead, and I lowered my voice. “Was that...did all that really...was it real?”

  “Did it feel real?” I nodded, and he continued. “Then it was real. Things in the spirit world happen differently than here in the physical world, but it doesn’t necessarily make it less authentic. Strange, definitely. But still very real.”

  “I saw…” I stopped, swallowed. Changed my mind. I wasn’t ready to talk about her, so, instead, “I saw Damon, I thought.”

  “Yes! Damon and those blades of his were very instrumental in helping us with the ceremony. It’s kind of difficult to explain, but the spirit world is generally filled with...well...spirits.” He chuckled. “Damon is a special case, because he is technically neither living nor dead, so his interactions in the spirit world are unpredictable at best. And those blades, well, they’re practically an entity of their own, as I’m sure you’re aware. While we could have performed the ritual without Damon’s help, it would not have been nearly as easy or as successful.” Leif stood up. “Ah, speak of the devil!”

  Damon squatted down beside me. “You’re Good?”

  I nodded. “I’m Good.” I was finally starting to get my strength back, so I stood up, slowly. “Apparently, you saved the day. You seem to be making that into some sort of habit.”

  “Well, you know how I like to be the hero.” Damon laughed.

  “Does the hero have to help with the cleanup?”

  “I’ll have to check the contract, but I’m pretty sure I get a pass.”

  I rolled my eyes and bent down to help Leif fold up the blanket I had been sitting on. “I should have just let the vampires kill you.”

  “Are you going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life?”

  I nodded. “Probably.”

  It didn’t take long to clean everything up with everyone working together (including Damon, who didn’t actually have any intention of not helping), and remove as much evidence that we had been there as possible. We were all gathered at the meeting spot near the river again. Most of the wolves had already left, but a few were still saying their goodbyes.

  “You know that you are welcome at the Caern anytime, right?” Farrah hugged me, hard. “Please come visit. I worry about you.”

  I hugged her back. “Of course I’m going to come visit. I just found you guys. You’re not going to get rid of me that easily!” I hugged Marie and Leif, and then the Baxter twins. I was slowly starting to get used to all the hugging. The werewolves were an affectionate group of people who completely disregarded the idea of a personal bubble.

 

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