Suddenly Sam (The October Trilogy) (19 page)

When she was finished, Lehrer nodded his approval. She’d done it right.

They sat back, waiting.

But nothing happened.
Meagan watched her grove leader for any sign of change, but he steadfastly and stubbornly remained a goblin.

Fr
om somewhere behind them and again just over a hill in the distance came the crackling sound of another portal pushing its way into existence.

Meagan spun where she crouched down, her hair fanning out around her. They all watched as a
line burned its way into the air once more, and then zapped out of existence. These were small, and they were far away, but they were coming closer. And getting bigger.

Meagan fe
lt more pressure than she had ever felt before. Her teeth were grinding together, her fingers curled into fists. “What am I supposed to do, Mr. Lehrer?” She spun back around and fixed him with a desperate look. “It’s not working and a portal is about to open up and send us back home!”

Before Lehrer could respond, Katelyn cut in.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I’m not getting sent back without Logan,” she said. “I’m going to get her. I don’t know what’s taking them so long anyway.”

“They’re probably
just making out,” Meagan growled, as she frustratedly picked up her spell components and looked them over none-too-gently. She couldn’t figure out what was going wrong.

Katelyn ran past them, weaving in and out between the tombstones and trying hard to avoid the thorns on the roses. Meagan glanced up to see her go.

Something worried at her brain. Her brow furrowed and she sat up a little straighter.

“
It was Alec who suggested we try this spell,” she said, thinking out loud.

“Yes,” said Lehrer. “Why?” His gaze narrowed. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know… nothing probably. It’s just that….” She took a deep breath, glanced in the direction Katelyn had disappeared, and shook her head.

She
dusted off her hands and stood up. “Why did Alec enter Dominic’s body?”

Lehrer shook his head. “To be honest, I’m not certain.”

“Me neither,” said Draper, who came up to stand beside them. “It did seem an odd thing to do.”

“Yeah,” said Meagan. “It was. Especially given what Dom has been through in that respect already.
Alec has to know how he would feel about being possessed by another spirit. A true friend wouldn’t do that unless he had to.”

Lehrer mulled this over, his massive jaw moving from one side to the other as he considered Meagan’s words. “What are you thinking, exactly, Meagan? That Alec has ulterior motives? That he set us up?”

Meagan blew out a second frustrated sigh. “I don’t know! I have no idea! I feel really confused. I mean, I assumed that Alec had done it so he wouldn’t get left behind if the portal opened up and we couldn’t fix everything in time, but now that I think about it, that makes no sense. If we can’t fix everything, then he’ll stay dead. And if he stays dead, then he’ll stay a ghost and he’ll just be stuck in Dominic’s body anyway.”

“Then why
did
he do it?” Draper asked.

Meagan again looked toward the hill over which Katelyn had vanished. “That’s a very g
ood question,” she said softly.

There was a moment of silence between them in which
they were all no doubt trying to figure things out. Then Meagan asked, “What
is
taking them so long?”

*****

Logan raised her hand to the pendant again, but was careful not to touch it. “What
is
this?” she demanded, trying very hard to keep her voice from cracking. “What did you do to me, Alec? And why does it burn me when I touch it?”

“
It only hurts when you try to take it off,” he corrected her. He raised his finger and waggled it at her as if she were a naughty girl. “Tsk, tsk. You learn quick, though.”

“Tell me what it is!” she yelled.

“Think of it as the opposite of a life pendant,” Alec laughed, flashing fangs. Seeing him with them again was disconcerting and highly confusing. “I suppose you could say it’s a
death
pendant.”

A death pendant! Logan didn’t like the sound of that at all. If she’d wanted to remove it before, the urge was tenfold now
. She swore, grabbing a fistful of her own hair on top of her head to keep from trying again to yank the damn necklace off. “Tell me what it’s going to do to me!”

“
Well,” said Alec, with abhorrent nonchalance. “When that portal opens up over there between us and the castle,” he said, pointing to the sky in the distance. “Your friends will be sent back to the mortal world.” He dropped his hand and faced her again. “
You
, on the other hand, will remain right here where you belong, since as long as you wear
that
, October Land won’t know what the hell to do with you.”

“You bastard!” Logan finally screeched, losing control once and for all. She lunged at Alec, no longer seeing Dominic, but his terrible, horrible excuse for a best friend, who had destroyed any chance for a happy ending any of them had ever had.

Alec didn’t try to avoid her. Instead, he grinned as she came at him, and with the speed and agility of a vampire who had been a vampire for a thousand years rather than a few minutes, he grabbed both of her wrists, spun her around, and yanked her up against his chest.

“You know,” he said, his lips
beside her ear as she struggled in his grasp, “I haven’t had my first meal in this body yet.” He took her right wrist, which she tried with all her might to pull from his grasp, and raised it to expose the vein on the inside. “Why don’t we see what all this fuss over you is about, hmm?”

Logan cried out as he moved with inhuman, brutal speed, sinking his razor-sharp fangs through her flesh and into her vein without hesitation.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The pain was incredible,
and she screamed, but his free hand covered her mouth with almost casual ease, blocking all but her smallest sounds.

Logan bucked, kicking, fighting. It was no use. H
is hold on her was nothing short of unbreakable, and his teeth were firmly lodged in her wrist.

H
e pulled the first swallow of her blood into his mouth. It was excruciating, like a vacuum on her veins, stealing the needed oxygen from her heart. There was no gentleness, no kindness, no following pleasure as there had been with Sam. There was only the merciless pull of his incredible thirst as he drank deep, taking what he wanted at her utter and miserable expense.

She went limp as
the first wave of dizziness swept through her, followed by a mild but very real despair of nausea. Her head fell against his shoulder, and he held her there, chuckling softly against her brutalized skin as he continued to drink.

Moments later
, he stopped, slowly removing his fangs with some semblance of newfound gentleness.

He lowered her wrist, curling it against her as he hugged her intimately close. “
Now I can see what Dom was always on about,” he told her. “I’m beginning to understand.” He used one strong arm to hold both of her wrists, keeping her close, using his other hand to gently brush a lock of her golden hair from her cheek. “I thought he was nuts, the way he watched you and dreamed about you but never did anything about it. For eight fucking years.”

He laughed again, but there was more than just cruelty to the laugh. There was something else
, something new and appreciative. “But now?” He grazed his knuckle down her cheek to her collarbone, brushing against the slowly pulsing vein in her neck. “Now I get it.”

Logan swallowed as a wave of queasiness swept over her and was gone.
It was fading. She hoped it would stay that way. She tested her tongue, wondering if she could trust it to talk.

Then she tried. “Sam will kill you,” she told him.

“How can he, Logan?” There was a bitterness to his tone now. “You can’t kill a man twice. I’m already dead – thanks to him.” There was a complete lack of fear in his voice. “He owes me. I did what he asked. Now it’s time for me to make the most of this.”

“By killing me?”

“Did I kill you, Logan? Are you dead?”

Logan
almost rolled her eyes. She’d always loathed that response. Stupid people completely missed the point every single time.

“What
now, then?” Logan asked, trying to think past each moment far enough to actually formulate some sort of plan.

“Now I hitch a ride through the portal and check out the night life in Vegas
,” he told her matter-of-factly.

Clearly he’d given this some thought.

“Sam won’t follow me there. He’ll have what he wants. He’ll have you.” He chuckled again. “Dom was always the best looking one in the band. Time to put it to good use.”

“Hey guys?”

Logan felt Alec turn his head, and she did the same. Katelyn stood at the top of the large hill that separated them from the others. Her expression was one of embarrassment and confusion.

“Um, am I interrupting something?”

“No!” Logan cried.

Alec laughed bitterly. “N
ot at all.” With that, he released Logan, shoving her roughly to the ground. She hit it hard, banging her knee against the nearest headstone, and slamming her hand down upon the thorny stem of a black rose. The thorn instantly pierced, and she hissed in pain. She looked down as blood welled from the fresh wound and slid into the crevices of her lifeline and palm like a red river following tributaries.

The curve and curl of the red against her flesh reminded her of something, and the beginnings of an idea blossomed in her head.

Dominic’s uncharacteristic behavior had Katelyn on immediate alert. She took a step back. “Dom?” she questioned.

“Katelyn Shanks,” Alec said, turning fully toward her and looking her up and
down in a leering fashion. “Why don’t you come here? I can’t quite hear you from this distance.”

“Katelyn, he’s a vampire!” Logan yelled.
“Get the others!”

Katelyn’s gaze skirted from Alec to Logan – and stop
ped when she saw the bloody fang marks in Logan’s wrist. Her eyes widened. She spun, her head whipping around, her blonde hair flying. “Meagan! Mr. Lehrer!”

Alec didn’t try to stop her. He just snickered and stepped away from Logan.

Katelyn turned back around to face them again. She started down the hill toward Logan, running around the tombstones at a fast lope – but she stopped half way, and a look of horror crossed her features.

She was looking at something in the distance, behind Logan.

Logan sat up, pushing herself off the ground to get to her knees. As she did, she pulled the broken rose stem up with her.

Pain niggled at her as she moved
. Her knee hurt, and both of her arms were injured now, one in the wrist, one in the palm. She followed the line of Katelyn’s gaze to the crest of another hill.

T
here Samhain stood, tall and dark and oozing with power. But he wasn’t alone; behind him stood every Harvester he had ever created.

Black lightning sliced through the sky, closer than before.
It outlined the king’s form, carving out a celestial throne for the Lord of the Dead as he looked down on Fall Fields with fierce resolution. It was a sight out of a nightmare or an epic movie still. It was a scene in a story of love and war and conquest.

Logan froze
. Even Alec went completely still.

Behind Katelyn, three more figures emerged – Meagan, Draper, and Lehrer. They, too, went from runn
ing to utterly motionless. The expressions on their faces were overrun with various emotions as they took in the entire, shocking scene from Logan and her bleeding wrist to Dom with his bloody lips to the line of Harvesters and their lord, standing dominant and terrifying against an angered sky.

While they
paused there, speechless and waiting, a new crackling split the air, buzzing and sizzling, sparking an opening between the parties. It was off to the right, not far from where Meagan and the others stood.

The portal
, Logan thought as she pushed to her feet. She felt Sam’s gaze upon her, scorching and all-knowing. She thought of hiding her wrist from him, but too late. He’d seen it.

And when
he looked from her to Alec, Logan could see the fire in his eyes – cold and gray flames that licked like fire and ice.

“Do your worst,” Alec hissed, his own gaze narrowing.

Logan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Alec seriously didn’t look afraid of the Death Lord at all. And she had the sudden impression that he’d attacked her on purpose, just to piss Sam off.

But Sam remained standing where he was, utterly unmoving, ruling the landscape with his mere presence. The Harvesters were like statues beside him, but she could s
ee their eyes burning with those purple and orange lights. They waited for his slightest command, only too happy to do his bidding.