Seeing Cora again and treating her the way I always should have made the return worth it. I liked to believe I became the cousin she wished she had, instead of the fumbling, drunken bitch that I always was to her. Hell, I owed that to myself as well.
And then there’s Dana. Sweet, sweet Dana. She caught me by surprise, both with how gentle and transparent she was, but also that someone like that could find it in them to care about me. How bad could I be if someone like her could want me?
The porch light to the castle was getting brighter. I was almost there, almost dead again. We failed. We—
I’m thrown to the ground, and my entire body skates across the ice and spins. I wasn’t thrown because of any impact put onto me, but because it had happened to Master, which as a result had detached us. I looked up from the pile of snow my face had fallen into and saw that Master had been trampled on by a werewolf and they were in a scuffle. It was Max! Thank fucking God.
Master was strong and holding Max back, but werewolf Max was all over him, opening his large mouth and snapping his teeth at Master’s face to kill him. Veronica and Molly came rushing to Master’s aid, grabbing Max by the fur and trying to pull him away. Molly bit down on him, and Max howled. He then threw his head back to shove them off, but only Veronica was shaken loose and tossed to the ground. Molly wouldn’t let go, so I charged after her like a missile, tucking my head down low and shoving into her stomach. She slid across the ice and away from Max, but didn’t fall over, and when she realized it was me who had gone for her, she threw a punch that landed on my cheek. It hurt. A lot. Holy shit.
Footsteps came in fast from my right, and I glanced over only for a moment and saw that it was Daggett and Priscilla. Daggett could shift into a werewolf and help us, but I didn’t know what Priscilla was going to do. My only thought was for her to help Cora get out of there.
I did my best to fight Molly off, ducking every punch she threw and landing a couple of my own. I had never been tough; I had never been a fighter. I was the chick in high school that talked shit about a girl and then ran at the first sight of that girl willing to square up. I was shocked that my fists were even hurting Molly, because my punches were sloppy and not always connecting, but I had the strength of a vampire and that was all I needed.
Suddenly, Veronica slammed her hands down on my shoulders from behind me and then attempted to hold my hands back so Molly could pummel me, but she was immediately yanked off of me by Daggett. I sometimes forgot he was a werewolf and could do shit like that. He just looked so… dweeby.
Max and Master were still going at it beside us. Without the girls aiding him, Max seemed to be overtaking him. As he arched his head back and widened his mouth, ready to go in for the kill, Master’s body suddenly exploded into a mass of tiny, black bats. Max nosedived into the snow where Master once laid, as the air around us was polluted with dozens of flapping, screeching bats. They were in our hair, in our faces, scratching us and screaming so loudly in our ears I thought I was going to go deaf. It was chaos, and we were all running around trying to avoid it like a bunch of loons.
The cloud of bats slowly rose above us and pulled close together, their little bodies meshing into one another like balls of Play-doh to form an enormous mass of black that was darker than the night sky beyond it. It twisted and churned, and in a few seconds, the darkness doubled in size and seemed to be growing arms, legs, and a head. Master was reforming, only this time his skin had wispy gray hair all over. As he stretched his arms out wide, a pair of rough, jagged edge black wings spawned from his back. A pair of red eyes beamed down at me, surrounded by patches of dry, ashy skin. Even though I knew it was Master, there was nothing physically there that resembled him. A human sized bat is what he had become. I was horrified.
He floated in the air, his wings not even needing to flap to keep himself elevated, and then he let out a high pitched scream. It was sharp like a whistle and it pierced through the chilly night air, forcing us to cover our ears. I didn’t know if it was because I had vamp hearing or what, but he nearly ruptured my eardrum. The next time he screamed came with an impact. Somehow his vocal chords had made a noise so powerful that every single one of us took flight and were thrown about, until our bodies sprinkled onto different areas of the lawn. I tried to find where everyone had fallen and spotted Dana instead. She was slumped against a statue with her eyes shut and her body completely limp. Dana had only been there for a few minutes, but already there was a sheet of snow covering her. It was like she was sleeping and the snow was her blanket.
I tried to focus my hearing on her and her alone, and I smiled when the thud, thud, thud of her heart entered my ear canal. She was alive. Thank God.
I
