“Dream on, leech,” Kiefer threw at her. “No one’s gonna be serving you jack.”
“Except maybe me,” Jessica chimed in. “A nice knuckle sandwich. Look what you did to my store, you douche!”
“Jessica, please.” Nathan held up his hand. But then he turned to the master and took his own potshot at her, saying, “Celia. Is that really you? It has been so long, I had almost forgotten how homely you were.”
The master vampire laughed, and it was a jarring sound, like windows shattering in a hurricane. “It is I.” She raised her arm, draping it against the doorframe as she cocked her hip. In a hate-filled growl, she added, “Nathan. And while I know you were only jesting about my looks, you are correct about the other. It has been a long time since you’ve seen me. I would guess about, what? Eight years, eleven months, and three days? That’s a long time to be stuck in a box in the ground, starving to death. Ask me how I might know.”
“Do not be melodramatic,” Nathan replied. “You were sound asleep. Kiefer and I made certain of that before we interred you. It has been as though you were in a coma all of this time, not awake and suffering.”
Celia’s eyes narrowed. “Is that somehow supposed to make it better? Should it excuse your impudent treatment of me? Particularly when your plan was to dig me up later and cut off my head?” She shook her head, letting her arm slide back down to her side. “You will pay for what you have done to me, vampire traitor. You will pay slowly, perhaps over the course of…oh, let’s say almost nine years?”
“Very well,” Nathan said. “Just let everyone else here go free and you and I will stay here and settle this however you would like.”
“Nathan, no!” Jessica cried.
Celia’s attention zoomed to her. A wicked smile curled the corners of the master vampire’s lips. “Very well. You will stay, Nathan, and everyone else will go. Everyone but this one, who I can see possesses certain special feelings for you. And I suspect it may be mutual? I think perhaps she should stay and play with us awhile.” The master lifted her arm and made a fist, magically lifting Jessica above the layer of detritus blanketing the floor. Jessica let out a strangled cry. She wheeled her arms and legs uselessly as Celia dragged her through the air, across the room, and locked her arm around her throat. Baring her fangs, the master vampire hissed against Jessica’s neck.
Nathan’s face blanched. “No,” he said, and Lucy heard herself screaming her friend’s name. Everyone was screaming now, yelling at the vampire to let Jessica go.
Celia, ignoring them all, raised her other fist, and Lucy felt the wooden stakes ripping out of her back pocket. She saw her weapons—along with everyone else’s—go shooting across the room and land in a clattering pile beside the master. Celia zeroed in on Kiefer and snarled, staring at him with pure loathing, “I will deal with you later, sorcerer.” She glared at Jason and Aaron in turn. “And you two, as well. Before the night is through, you shall learn what it truly means to belong to a master.” She flung out her free arm again, this time sending everyone but Nathan and Jessica hurtling across the bookstore.
Lucy gasped as she felt her feet leave the floor. She watched the two vampires and her best friend getting smaller and smaller as she was propelled out the broken window, and then she cried out as she landed painfully in the courtyard. Dara, Jason, Aaron, and Kiefer all dropped down around her, cursing and exclaiming as they hit the cobblestones and rolled across them. Feeling dazed, Lucy lifted her head just in time to see a wall of bookcases slamming in front of Book of Love’s doors and its broken window, sealing them both shut.
They’d just been locked out of the bookstore, she realized with a nauseous feeling. With Jessica still trapped inside.
With a vicious, bloodthirsty monster slavering at her throat.
Chapter Eighteen
Lucy was the first to stagger to her feet. Battling tears, she hobbled as quickly as she could to the front of the bookstore and scrambled up into the display window. Grunting with the effort, she tried shoving the bookcases out of the way, but it was impossible. They seemed anchored in place, weighing a million pounds each.
Kiefer stumbled over and climbed up beside her. “Celia’s probably using her mental powers to hold those bookcases there,” he said.
“Well then help me move them! We have to get back in there!”
“And do what?”
“Help Jessica! Celia’s going to kill her!” Just saying the words tied Lucy’s heart into a knot. A few tears escaped her eyes, racing down the sides of her terrified face.
“No, she isn’t,” Kiefer said. “You heard Celia. She wants to ‘play’ with Nathan, to pay him back him for what he and I did to her. My guess is, she’ll keep your friend alive for a while, so that she can punish Nathan by—” He bit off the end of whatever he’d been about to say.
“By what?” Lucy gaped at him in horror. “By torturing Jessica in front of him?”
He grimaced apologetically, clearly regretting his words.
Lucy snapped her attention back to the bookcases, shoving and beating at them and ignoring how much it hurt.
Kiefer caught her elbow and looked at her steadily. “Lucy, c’mon, stop it. You honestly think you can protect your friend any better than Nathan can? Give him a chance. We’re about to have our hands full out here with those trucks of vampires, anyway. He and Jessica are going to
