Death (19 page)

Aimee

Tristan smiles and nods politely. He isn’t lying. He just
isn’t telling the whole truth. Only Lorri and I are allowed to be apart of it
all. No one else can hold their thoughts.

"You will kill our mother, brother?" The voice still
freaks me out.

He nods, "Of course. You ladies know how I feel about it
all. I want Jonathan dead. I want him to pay for what he's done to us
all."

The sparkly dead glow in her eyes make my skin crawl. She
looks at Lorri and I and then nods. "Take my hand."

Tristan takes a breath and puts his hand into hers. She looks
up into the sky. The clouds hovering above us clear, except for one dark cloud.
A bolt of lightning strikes their hands. They both lift off the ground, shaking
and convulsing. Tristan drops to the ground on his knees, as O drops in a heap.

"They're gone." He whispers. He moves his hands
making the magic sparkle through them. He grins, "Guess I'm ready
then."
His eyes are sinister.

I have a bad feeling.

We flash back to the mansion and gather the forces. We wink in
groups to the forest in Florida, where the wolves wait. I drop to my knees and
let them maul me when I see them.

"I missed you guys." I whisper. Luke whines and
stomps his wolf feet.

"I know. We're going now."

Lorri leads us through the woods.

"This is where you came last time?" I look at Sam
and ask.

He nods.

Roland leaps into the air and phases mid air. He is a huge
black wolf. Hanna gasps. None of us have ever seen it.

I look back at Aleks. "I love you." I mouth.

"Me too." He says softly.

"Do it now Sarah." Lorri says softly. We can see
each other but nothing can see us. Sarah has worked hard at developing the
talent and is finally able to make us all invisible.

I can feel the line when we cross it. The darkness hovers in
the air like a black cloud. I instantly feel uncomfortable. The wolves growl
softly. Hanna and the doc look savage. He won't change into the beast either.
He and her both will be the beast but in control.

My insides hurt. I just want Ari. I want her so badly. I know
Lucas feels the same. He is skin and bone almost and his fur is not glistening
like it does. He looks exhausted and lackluster.

We cross a dirt path. Ben is out front. He walks, sniffing and
searching it out.

We stop when he stops. Lorri looks at little Sarah,
"Still good?"

Sarah nods. She looks like she is concentrating very hard. She
is the only one who can control her talents completely. The other kids are
still a little nutty when they get scared..

Her tiny face makes me distracted. I'm scared one of us is
going to die protecting her.

Sam stays close to her.

I hear them before we can see anything. A man laugh and
talking. It's Jonathan. My skin shivers.

I wink into a tree just above us. There is a small village in
the forest. Just some shanty huts with dirt paths between them. The houses are
old and decrepit looking. Jonathan is standing outside next to a girl with dark
hair. She is tied to a pole in the middle of the path. She has whip marks that
look like they're healing. I feel instantly angry and sickened. It's Ari. She
is filthy. Her clothing is torn and gross. After everything she has been
through, this is too much. Phillip isn’t there. No one else is. It's Jonathan
and Ari. He rubs something down her cheeks and then stops. The wind changes. He
lifts his face into the air like a dog smelling.

"Shit." I whisper and wink back to the ground.
"He can smell us I think."

Lorri nods, "Guaranteed. What are you getting
Trist?"

"Bad juju. These witches are bad. They're almost as
strong as I am. Phillip is here. I can feel him. The earth might not fight with
me here. It's tainted." He puts his hands out, "Ari is sick. We need
to hurry." He makes a face.

"She's tied to a pole in the middle of the road there.
It's a dirty little village of sorts. Gross. I saw Jonathan but no one
else."

Lorri flexes her fingers, "Chances are he knows we're
here and is ready. Are we ready?"

We all nod. We have no real plan. Ari always wrecks our plans
anyway.

We creep from the damp forest and into the village. The
electricity in the air is too much. I gag from the stench of the humidity and
dead animals. To the right carcasses and skins make a pile. In the distance I
can see Ari.

Lorri looks at me and nods, "Aimee you get Ari and Tristan
and I will get Jonathan. Sam, you come with me in case he winks. We track
him." Her whisper is so silent I almost miss it.

She holds a hand up with three fingers. She lowers one. My
heart races. She lowers two. My palms sweat. She lowers the third and I wink. I
touch Ari and am blasted across the dirt yard. Lorri has Jonathan in her hands
but he just stands and laughs.

Tristan blows the pole where Ari is tied up, sending her
flailing. I wink and catch her. Lucas is instantly with me, nuzzling her.

Suddenly they come out of the house. We must be visible
because they raise their finger, chanting. They look like regular women but
their eyes are black.

They all point at Tristan.

His fingers and hands shake.

"Lorri!" He cries out. Lorri winks to him but is blown
across the dirt road. Ben is attacking one of the witches. He kills her on the
road. Her body becomes a black blood puddle.

I look around at the pandemonium.

Lorri is being held to the ground. Jonathan is still standing
laughing. He seems to not be real. Ben leaps at him but he doesn't wound. He
doesn’t budge. He laughs. The witches chant. Aleks is flashing and killing but
the witches don’t stop. The ones still standing don’t defend themselves. They
chant. There are at least twenty of them still standing.

"He's glamour. Jonathan's not really there." Lorri
shouts.

Hanna and her father are ripping and tearing. Both are covered
in blood. It looks savage and disgusting, watching them kill unarmed women who
don't fight back. They chant even as they are ripped limb from limb.

Tristan screams again. His fingers twitch, "LORRI!"
He screams. His hand whips from his own neck and shoots a bolt at the ground in
front of me.

"MOVE." He screams.

I grab Ari and Luke and wink. I leave them in the living room
at Marcus's and wink back. I grab the first witch and suck. She tastes like the
best thing I ever ate. Dirty filthy death.

We murder every one of them to the sound of Jonathan laughing
his head off.
 
As the last witch
drops dead, Tristan vanishes.

Jonathan stops laughing and grins, "Thanks for finishing
it for me. I didn’t know how I would get him to get the magic from his
sisters." And then he too is gone.

Lorri screams and her and Sam are gone.

Sarah is crying in the middle of the dirty road. I can hear
her but not see her. She isn’t making anyone but herself invisible. She must
have panicked and dropped the guard.

"Sarah. Come to me." I whisper. I feel her next to
me when I can see her again. I pick her up and wink her to Marcus's. I hold her
tightly.

Aleks is there instantly with Ben, Hanna, Roland and the doc.

We stand in the middle of the living room, covered head to toe
in black blood and disappointment.

We have failed. In every way possible. Well, except for
getting back Ari. She is nearly unconscious on the ground and looks like she
might die any second. So the success feels less than that.

Ben and Roland leave the room with the black blood coating
their muzzles. Lucas sits and cries sad wolf sounds that break my heart. I
don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to fix her. I don’t know anything,
except that if she dies I will never heal. None of us will. She is the bane of
our existence but she is the heart as well.

His soft wolf sobs are killing me.

"Go change." I say.

He looks at me. His green eyes are filled with tears. "Go
change. I won't leave her side."

He stands and leaves.

The children are crying. Even Anne.

Lucas and Ben come running back in. Lucas is pulling is shirt
on.

"Aimes." He says.

I shake my head, "I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.
I, we need Lorri and Sam and Dorian." I'm shaking.

"She needs to be examined." The doc looks at Marcus,
who is sitting on the couch in a bathrobe and greasy hair. "Want to help
me, old friend?"

Marcus looks at him and then back at the TV.

"MARCUS!" Doctor Jekyll shouts.

Marcus climbs off the couch looking hideous. "Fine.
Jesus. Stop the shouting." He walks toward the lab. Dr. Jekyll lifts Ari
up off the floor and carries her towards the lab. Lucas and Ben follow. I
stand, frozen in the middle of the room. I don’t know what to do.

Sarah sobs in my arms. She never should have seen any of that.
Any of the death and horror. The witches never even fought back. We slaughtered
them and they let us.
Abbey gets up from the couch and picks Sarah out of my arms. She winks at me
and carries the sobbing child down the hall to a bedroom.

"Everyone get cleaned up, so when Lorri gets back we're
ready. Her and Sam will know where they went." Aleks says to everyone and
walks over to me. He takes my hands in his. That's when I notice the blood for
the first time. I pull my greasy hands away from his and wipe them on my pants.
I can't get it off. I'm scrubbing to the point of it being raw. He grabs me and
flashes us to his house in England. We are in the old bathroom. I stand there
frozen as he undoes my pants, "She's going to be okay."

I tremble, "I can't lose her. I just can't."

He looks down at me and stops my breath, "Hey. You
won't."

He pulls my shirt off and starts the old shower. The water
smells funny. He says it is how the water smells in the country. I just know
it's hard to wash my hair with it.

He lifts me into the shower when he has us both naked. He
takes a facecloth and rubs a bar of smelly soap against it. He starts at my
arms and slowly scrubs. He is gentle but thorough.

He lifts my arms and does my armpits and under my breasts. It
would feel like an invasion of privacy with anyone else, but somehow with him
it's intimate. I don’t scrub myself with him, ever. He isn’t forcing me. He's
charming me.

I need him to. I need to feel something.

He rinses and soaps up again and makes his way south. I feel
my body tense up. He leans into me and kisses my lips slowly, but doesn’t stop
his hands from taking the cloth between my legs. The roughness of it makes me
moan into his kiss. His tongue in my mouth is slow and lazy. Distracting.

He turns me around and rinses the cloth. He scrubs my legs and
butt cheeks while kissing my neck and back.

He stands and tilts my head back. His huge hands run the
shampoo through my hair. He massages and scrubs. I moan again. His erection is
against my back but I don’t get the feeling that this is a happy ending shower.
He rinses my hair and conditions. He dumps tons on the top of my head. I wince
but don’t say anything. He scrubs it in and rinses too. That should be
interesting later.

When he's done he turns me back around.

"My turn."

I smile and look up at him. He hands me the cloth and the
soap. I scrub it on there, "You'll smell like pretty roses too."

He grins. I start with his face and scrub the soap in. He
laughs as I push his face into the water. He sputters. I never realized being
so tall and close to the showerhead would be a pain. He sputters again. I pull
him out of the water, "Sorry."

He swallows and makes a face. I stifle a laugh and scrub his
neck and shoulders. They're muscled and thick. My fingers dig in. He raises an
eyebrow at me. I drag it down his meaty pecs and chiseled abs. I don’t remember
to soap up. I just rub the cloth and eventually my other hand, dropping the
soap.

"Aimes."

I look up, "Sorry. Right." I bend down and get the
soap. I stand, red faced and continue. I lather the soap in my hand and start
scrubbing his belly.

"Don't use the wash cloth on that." He nods at his
erect cock.

I let my fingers drag down the shaft and slide my soapy hand
up and down. He moans and I grin. His moans are like a food of sorts. They
satisfy something inside of me. I stroke his thick cock, until I notice he is
pushing against my hand. I stop and rinse him off. He bites the fat part of his
lip. I shudder and turn him around. I stand on my tiptoes and pour a huge
amount of shampoo into my hand. I realized I used the same amount I would use.
I look at his short hair and grimace. I put it on and lather. He laughs. I know
he can feel me bathing his head in shampoo. It takes forever to rinse it out.

"Do you need conditioner?" I ask.

He shakes his head.

I lather his back and rinse it off. He spins sharply and pins
me to the cold tiled wall of the shower. He lifts me into the air but I shake
my head, "We have to go. I need to see her."

He growls, "Aimes."

"I need to."

He puts me down. I'm aching with hunger and needing him, but
it's not right. I rinse once more and climb out. I hear the water change in
power. I grin.

"Making it cold?" I ask.

He doesn’t answer. He makes a grunting noise. I pull back the
curtain as he turns it off and pass him a towel.

"You're trying to kill me." His light blue eyes
flash anger. I laugh at him and walk to his room to throw on his clothes.

I'm pulling on my ass kicking boots when Giselle comes in,
"Aimes, we have a development." Her face looks funny. Shane is behind
her.

I jump up off the bed and grab his arm. He looks at me like
I'm crazy.

Giselle shakes her head, "Chill Aimes. He's fine."

I'm lost, "What?"