“Such a shame,” Elvira said, shaking her head. “You just couldn’t keep your nose in your own business. But then, your grandmother is the same way, so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise. Oh well. It’s going to take them a while to find you, I think.”
Elvira grabbed me by the shirt and pants and pulled me out of the container. It took everything I had not to cry out in pain; my shirt collar dug into my neck and made it almost impossible to breathe. Luckily, she put me down a moment later on top of a sheet. She began tying the ends together. I supposed she was going to drag me down to the forest like that.
I let her do it. If I attacked her in here, I was at a disadvantage. I had no idea what this warehouse looked like whereas this was part of Elvira’s business. In the forest, however, we were on equal footing. Besides, it wasn’t going to be easy for Elvira to carry me – I had a little bit of junk in my trunk - and a tired vampire would be much easier to get away from.
Elvira groaned and grunted as she struggled to pick me up off the ground. “I wish you’d heard of a diet before dying,” Elvira muttered, and I bit my lip to keep from shooting back a smarmy retort. I counted the steps she took, and after about a hundred, she dropped me onto the ground.
I came this close to crying out from shock and pain as I landed on the hard earth, but at the last second managed to keep my mouth shut once more. Elvira started dragging me along, which was far less comfortable, especially when hitting tree roots or the bottom of trunks.
After an agonizing few minutes, however, Elvira stopped.
“Alright,” she said. “Here’s your final resting place. I hope you like it, stupid witch.”
I could feel Elvira untie the sheet I was wrapped in and then heard her pouring something on it.
But it wasn’t until I heard the flick of a match that adrenaline coursed through my body as I realized what was happening. Elvira wasn’t going to just dump my body here and leave it. She was going to burn it so there would be no trace of me left at all.
There was a whoosh, and I knew this was my last chance. I leapt up from my spot on the sheet as fire rose up from it. Elvira’s eyes widened, and she stepped back in a combination of shock and fear as I emerged from the flames and came right at her, tackling her to the ground.
“You’re dead!” Elvira shouted. “You’re supposed to be dead!”
“Not quite,” I replied as I punched the vampire in the face as hard as I could. She let out a yelp of pain then bared her fangs at me.
“You’re going to pay for this,” she spat, grabbing a fallen tree branch off the ground and hitting me across the chest with it. I flew backwards into the burning sheet, crying out as my hand was immediately burned.
I grabbed the sheet and threw it at Elvira, which she ducked to avoid. The burning sheet landed on a fern, instantly setting it on fire. Elvira rushed towards me, still holding the branch, but I ducked away at the last second and shoved her, the extra momentum causing her to fall forward.
I grabbed a rock from the ground and threw it at her head, but while there was a sickening thud, she simply got back up. That was one disadvantage to fighting the undead: they were immortal. There were a limited number of ways that I’d be able to kill her if I had to, none of which I could do without a wand.
The fire began spreading to one of the nearby trees. It had rained earlier in the week, which helped, but I knew that here in the Pacific Northwest fires could be bad even in the winter. I needed a wand, and I needed it badly. But before I could get one, I had to get away from Elvira.
I began running as fast as I could in the direction I thought we had come from. I looked at the ground and found the drag marks and began to follow them, hoping they would take me back to the warehouse where I could get some help. Elvira’s footsteps pounded behind me, and I realized she was going to catch me before I reached the edge of the forest.
I quickly hid behind a tree and reached out my foot to trip her at the last second. She fell for the trap, sprawling to the ground with a shout, and I ran on top of her, my feet landing on her back and her head as I continued forward.
This had turned into a foot race, and I was winning. I could see the trees thinning out, which meant we were back on the outskirts of town, and all I had to do was find someone to save me.
That was when my eyes landed on Andy. His wand was up, and as he saw me rushing towards him, he sprang into action.
“It’s Elvira,” I shouted at him. “She’s behind me, and she’s coming.”
He nodded, looking past me as the vampire ran towards us. As soon as she spotted Andy, she stopped, her face somehow going even more pale than it had been. Then, she rushed towards us again as Andy muttered a spell that stopped her in her tracks.
Even a vampire couldn’t get away from a paralysis spell.
“She tried to kill me,” I huffed, my hands on my knees, completely out of breath. I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much the adrenaline had gotten me through that run. I was not in good shape. “She’s the one who killed Raoul. There’s a fire. You have to go put it
