A Strange Fire (Florence Vaine) (34 page)

 A few minutes later she glides up to me, a few minutes within which I
had to listen to her recite every line of the song. A song that has just
started up playing
again
. Does she have it on repeat? The worst part was
when she gave up on singing and began simply saying the words in a creepy
monotone that will stay with me until my dying day. Which might be sooner than
I’d prefer.

 Celine Dion has always given me a creepy feeling, but if I ever survive
this night I think I might have to go and buy every existing copy of
Immortality
and burn them all in a massive fire. I open my eyes properly and stare up at
her. Her gaze rakes over me in a way that causes bile to rise in my oesophagus.
She’s still wearing the weird silky black gown, and now that I have the
opportunity to take her in properly I note a change in her appearance other
than the black veins and the heretic’s cross. Her normally dark blond hair is
currently a platinum white and her eyes are as black as liquid tar.

 “W-w-w...” I struggle to form words under the weight of her greedy gaze.

 Diana cackles out loud. “You’re sort of pathetic when it boils down to
it, aren’t you little lamb? It’s actually quite funny how I feared you could
mess up my plans with that sixth sense of yours. You’re clearly weak, clearly
no threat at all.”

 After she’s spoken I manage to get the sentence out. “Where are you
keeping Ross?”

 “The blond demon child?” Diana purrs. “I’m not keeping him anywhere, in
fact,” she pauses to glance down at the silver watch on her wrist, “I’d say
there’s nothing left of him right about now. My Sisters are just about finished
with him in the other room.”

 An invisible brick hits me in the gut as I process what she’s telling
me, and the scene from my dream, where the witches had been huddled over a
corpse, plays itself over and over in my head.

 They – they can’t have. Eaten him. Ross can’t be dead. He just can’t be.
If he is then this nightmare has just become all too real.

 “B-but I thought you had to wait until an hour before sunrise to kill
him. That’s what Sam said.”

 “A decoy,” says Diana with pride. “I detected that the Nephilim had been
trailing us, so I had several of my Sisters lead him off the scent. The real
killing took place at midnight.”

 My stomach twists and turns, and my head refuses to accept that Ross is
dead.

 “So why take
me
if you’ve already gotten want you wanted from
Ross?” I ask frantically. “Sam said we have to hit an exact age for you to
drain us. Ross was – is a few months older than me.”

 All of a sudden Diana has a long piece of black thread in her hands, a
thoughtful expression is on her face as she twines it over and under over and
under, forming a coil around her wrist.

 “That was one fact your Angel man was right about. At midnight on the
subject’s eighteenth birthday I can drain the highest and most potent amount of
power from them. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t drain at any other
time if it so pleases me,” she stops and a horrific grin forms as her lips turn
upward at the edges. “It simply doesn’t give the same return as it does when I
wait until the proper time. And you, Florence Vaine, are becoming far too much
of an inconvenience.”

 I try to swallow but my throat constricts in fear, and the saliva won’t
go down. She’s really going to kill me now, and I know that what I experienced
vicariously through Lauren is going to be nothing compared to the real thing.
But before she kills me, there’s something I have to know.

 “Is my gran a witch too?” I ask.

 Diana laughs yet again, and I really wish she wouldn’t. It’s the kind of
sound that makes a person welcome death.

 “Your grandmother is a foolish old woman who probably would have done
better to keep her mouth shut. But no, she is not one of my Sisters. She
thought she could benefit from my powers without having to join my coven and do
any of the work. I happened to be working for Marguerite,” a smug look comes
over her, “keeping up my day job so as not to gain the suspicions of the
townsfolk here. One day she’d been drivelling on and on, as she always does
about the most inconsequential of things, when she caught my attention by
mentioning a grandchild with an unusual demeanour. A young girl who would
always know what a person was feeling no matter the circumstances.”

 “Your grandmother put it down to a high level of emotional intelligence,
but I knew better. I began doing some research into your family tree and found
that the Empath gene has been known to run in the Vaine family blood.
Marguerite wasn’t born with the gift, it tends to skip a generation sometimes,
which explained her ignorance. I soon discovered you were living in Tribane
with your father, so I cast a suggestion spell which encouraged him to abandon
his child and send her to live with his neglected old mother. I barely had to
lift a finger really, he delivered you straight into my hands.”

 So Dad’s decision wasn’t divine intervention then, somehow that doesn’t
surprise me. It’s actually quite funny that Diana could manipulate him like
that, he’d hate to know that he hadn’t been in total control, that his decision
hadn’t been his own.
Immortality
comes to an end and begins to play a
third time.

 “Can I ask you something else?” I say, straining to find Diana with my
eyes as she continues to move around me. She seems uncharacteristically erratic
and hyper, like a child guzzling sugary sweets.

 “Of course, lamb,” she replies, her tone dripping with malice and
excitement. She’s stopped reciting the lyrics now, but is still humming along
to the tune.

 I swallow down a gulp that almost hurts, before asking, “Why have you
got that ridiculous song on repeat?” I don’t care if I’m rude to her any more,
since she’s going to kill me anyway. Her face swiftly whips into my vision and
I jump in fright, banging my head back into the hard concrete.

 “Don’t you dare talk about Celine like that you insolent brat!” she
hisses, and this makes me wonder if the original human Diana wasn’t a little
tapped in the head even before she became the evil life draining witch version
of herself.

 The venue of her planned murders being the basement of a crazy hospital
seems all too Freudian. It’s so hilariously appropriate. Maybe she’s
subconsciously asking for help by using this building for her magic. On second
thought, looking into her mad eyes, I take that back. Diana’s way too far gone
now to be helped. She stops glaring down at me then and tilts her head upward,
her jaw unhinges, the skin expanding with it, and a high pitched sound that
makes my ears pop streams from her mouth. It ceases after a few seconds and her
jaw snaps back into place.

 Noisy thumping footsteps sound from outside the room, then the door
creaks open and people begin to crowd the space. I can feel it, as though the
air is being sucked out by too many breathing lungs. Hands grab me by the legs
and under my arms, hoisting me up onto some kind of wooden stand. They tie my
hands behind my back with a rough rope that cuts into the skin of my wrists.

 I’m raised about four feet up from the ground and it’s only at this
point that I have the chance to see the room properly. Dozens of pairs of
greedy eyes peer up at me, the whole coven is here now and they’ve got the
hoods of their robes pulled down so I can see their faces. This fact doesn’t
reassure me one bit, since kidnappers only ever let their victims see their
faces when they know they’re going to kill them in the end. Movies taught me
that.

 In among the gathering I see Blanche and Sheila, which is probably the
one thing that doesn’t surprise me about all this. Close to the front of the
crowd I see the witch from outside the school, her narrow gaze cuts into me as
a sardonic grin takes shape on her mouth and she finger waves up at me. I
wonder who’s taking care of her poor little son tonight.

 I also see several of the nurses who work here among the crowd. Gerty
would be so disappointed if she ever found out. My entire body shakes with
undiluted fear, and that’s not because of the way they all lean towards me
making odd noises that come somewhere in between a hiss and a hum. It’s because
their robes are covered in deep red stains. Blood. Ross’ blood. Oh God. This
means he really is dead.

 A feeling of emptiness takes over me. I feel like Giles when Angel
killed Jenny in Buffy. Only this is real and not just the catharsis of watching
a tragedy on a television screen. The two feelings are nothing alike actually.
This – this is something else entirely.

 A moment later Diana comes gliding through the assembled group with Gran
clutched in her arms. She carries her forward as though she weighs no more than
a feather, and stops just short of me.

 “You know,” she calls to me, “I left one piece of information out when I
was telling you about your dear old gran.”

 Then she whips her neck around to peer down at Gran who trembles in
Diana’s arms. “You just couldn’t leave well alone, could you Marguerite?” she
hisses, before looking back up at me. “She began snooping around and discovered
what I was planning and why I was so interested in you. Even tried to blackmail
me, what was it you wanted Margie?” she asks Gran.

 But Gran only coughs and jitters in fright. I feel like slapping Diana
in the face for bullying my poor frail grandmother.

 The feeling is short lived though, Diana kills it when she tells me with
sick satisfaction, “She told me I could do what I wanted with you, so long as I
used my magic to bring back her sight.”

 Hurt seizes my legs as they turn to mush beneath me, and a lump that
encourages tears forms in the back of my throat. I lock eyes with Gran a second
before she looks down in shame, and the action, along with her aura, tells me
that Diana’s spiteful words are true.

 I think back to the time when she’d been sitting in her kitchen looking
at a vase of flowers in sadness, telling me she’d give anything to be able to
see them properly again. Although the hurt doesn’t run as deep as it might
have. I mean, how could I have expected Gran to love me if she never really
knew me my whole life? And I suppose Dad isn’t such an unexplained anomaly
after all. Gran isn’t completely devoid of badness as I’d once thought.

 “Of course,” she continues, speaking again to Gran, “I do not, nor have
I ever pandered to blackmail,” and then, in a split second Diana snaps Gran’s
neck and her prone body drops to the ground with a muted thud. “Not even worth
draining was that one,” she finishes with distaste.

 I try not to cry as I watch my gran’s dead body lying on the cold bare
floor. I remind myself of her betrayal, but it’s no use. I can’t stop the tears
from filling my eyes as her lavender and silver aura fades into nothingness.
It’s not pleasant to think that if I don’t die tonight, which by the way is
highly unlikely, all I’ll have left in the world is Dad.

 Seeing the dead body of someone you knew is an eye opening experience.
You just keep looking at their corpse and remembering them alive, and thinking,
this is nothing like the person they were
. The lack of animation, and
the knowledge that they’ll never move or smile or breathe again, makes my heart
plunge through the floor.

 Gran had been a beacon of light for me, an escape route from the
nightmare my life had been up until the day my dad threw my luggage in the back
of his truck and drove me to Chesterport. I’d seen her as this infallible,
loving, caring heart of warmth. Just knowing that after school I could go home
to her, and feel the peacefulness she gave to me, helped me to heal from all
the bad things I’ve seen and been through.

 But I guess I built her up in my own head, attributing all of these
positive traits to her that weren’t really there the way I thought they were.
And the sad fact is that everybody has their price. Gran’s had been getting her
sight back. She’ll never see again now. Never gaze at a yellow daffodil or a
red tulip.

 Diana watches me intently as my face becomes increasingly more soaked by
the tears I can’t seem to prevent from falling. Her body almost trembles, like
she’s getting off on my grief. Perhaps she can soak it up the way she takes the
energy of her victims. Then again, she’s probably just enjoying causing me
emotional pain since she’s an absolute psychopath. It sort of completes her
mission doesn’t it? She’s broken me down by killing Gran, and soon enough
she’ll have broken my fragile body too.

 I can’t see too well because I’m crying so profusely, but for a second I
see something that wasn’t there before. At the exact same moment that Diana
grins and trembles, a ball of light flashes across the back of the room. I can’t
make out where it came from, but when I blink away the tears I notice that the
door the coven had come in through and shut behind them is now open slightly.
Another blink and suddenly there are three balls of light in the room, they
zoom from one corner to the next but the witches don’t seem to be able to see
them like I can.

 My eyes wander back to the open door behind the gathered witches just in
time to see John creep inside with Frank and Alex behind him, and the chain
that had been tightening around my lungs releases. Finally they came, but I
don’t think they realised Diana had taken me from Gran’s house. Frank is the
first one to spot me, and when he does his flames blaze as though someone’s
just poured a tank of petrol over them. Soon after John and Alex see me too,
and the three spread out across the back of the room, waiting for their chance
to attack.

 The relief I felt a moment ago dissolves when I realise how outnumbered
they are. Three against what looks like fifty or sixty witches, and where the
hell has Sam gotten to? My question is answered less than a second later when
one of the balls of light dives from the far right corner of the ceiling
straight into the centre of the crowd, and Sam takes shape out of it. His body
is still surrounded by light, a light so much brighter than what I see in him
on an average day. Right now it practically illuminates the entire expanse of
the dank basement. Seemingly out of the palm of his hand, he shoots a shaft of
light that looks like lighting. It knocks at least ten of the witches to the
ground, turning them into a melting heap of blood and skin that soon
disintegrates into nothing. Can he do that because he’s half Angel? Is the
light that came from his hand the weapon of heaven? If it is then the real heaven
surely isn’t the place most people believe in, that’s for certain.