When I opened the back door and stepped out into the garden, all eyes darted to me. Vampire’s eyes were far more striking than human eyes, so much so that they practically glowed in the dark. A chill skittered down my spine.
Lucas and Dru dismissed me and went back to lugging crates, while Ethan continued to survey me with an inscrutable expression.
“No need to look so alarmed. I’m not going to jump you again.” Even as I said it, lust swarmed my belly. Marcel’s potion certainly hadn’t worn off yet.
“I wasn’t worried about that,” he replied flatly.
“What’s going on?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.
“We continued our search of the city tonight.” His voice was as cold as the night air around us. “We found nothing of Theodore, but we did find these things everywhere. Delilah said that she and the witch only saw one today. It seems that night is when most of them come out to feed.”
Oh. So, it was more of the strange mist that was captured in the jars. Repulsion warred with the all-consuming lust inside me. One good thing about Marcel’s potion was that it distracted me from the awful feeling I got from the mist. It moved frantically inside each of the jars, struggling against its capture.
“There are so many,” I whispered, unable to fathom a way of getting rid of it all. Rita couldn’t even figure out how to kill one jar full, never mind dozens.
“This is barely half of what we caught. The rest we stored in the garage at my house, but we ran out of room.” A pause as he ran a hand over his face. “It seems to be multiplying, and the human population is fracturing. There have been endless reports of violent incidents in the news. Things are only going to get worse.”
“What can we do to make it stop?” I whispered.
“Perhaps I’m the one who should be asking you that question,” Ethan said, casting me a speculative glance.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
One eyebrow rose sharply. “It means I’d like to know how exactly you managed to burn off half of Eliza’s face with nothing but the palm of your hand. It’s not just your blood that’s powerful. You have magic in you, too. A lot of it.”
I folded my arms, feeling a little too exposed. “My magic is something I don’t fully understand yet.”
“Is Rita helping you to understand?”
“She’s trying her best, yes.”
“You’ll be formidable when you realise your full potential,” he said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of awe in his voice. I flushed at the compliment.
“I wish I knew how to call on the magic whenever I like. Most of the time it only comes out when I’m in great peril.”
Ethan nodded, his expression turning thoughtful, almost like he was plotting something.
“What are you thinking?” I asked warily.
He scratched his head. “I just had a wild idea … never mind.”
“No,” I urged, stepping closer. “Tell me.”
Just like that, his eyes flashed black, and the next thing I knew his fangs were out and he was advancing on me like he was about to attack. He hissed and crowded me against the wall of the house. I yelped, my heart racing as every tiny hair on my body stood on end.
In a fight or flight response, my magic came to life. My hands whipped out at him, overflowing with burning sparks like a sink where somebody left the tap running too long. He reared back out of range of the sparks and his fangs retracted. His eyes went back to normal, and he gave me a slow grin, looking satisfied. My magic faded.
“Nifty little defence mechanism you’ve got there,” he said, sounding impressed. “When you feel threatened your magic comes out to keep you safe. Interesting.”
I stared at him, mouth agape. “Are you shitting me? I felt like I was about to have a heart attack. You scared me half to death.”
“I was trying to help test your theory and it worked. Now you know that if someone tries to attack you, your magic will come out to fend them off.”
“There are less startling ways to test a theory,” I griped.
Ethan flashed me a grin. “Yes, but this one was more fun.”
“For you, maybe,” I huffed, and he chuckled softly. This was the first time he seemed to genuinely not hate my company in weeks, and I couldn’t help the small woosh of butterflies that filled my chest at his deep laughter.
I scowled at him, resisting the urge to grin as I began heading back inside the house. “Try to keep the noise down. I’m going back to bed.”
I reached out to turn the handle on the back door and gasped when Ethan’s arms slipped around me from behind. I swear I stopped breathing when he nuzzled his nose into the hollow of my neck. “How it kills me to know you sleep under the same roof as that slayer,” he whispered, and my heart didn’t know what to do with itself. He pressed a soft, barely-there kiss just below my ear, and my core tightened. “Your scent is maddening.” I was about to swoon, but then he broke the spell when he continued, “I long for the day when I don’t want you anymore, lumina mea. Perhaps then I’ll have the courage to walk away.”
Air got trapped in my lungs. What he said hurt me deeply, but when I turned around to confront him, he was already gone.
***
The next day I joined Rita in her RV, and we hit the books. Gabriel left her with two large boxes full of magical texts and research material before he, Alvie, and Noreen departed on their travels. I was somewhat envious of them because with everything that was going on right now, I really wouldn’t mind a road trip away from the city.
We sat and read for most of the morning and well into the afternoon, taking notes here and there. Rita was searching for information on how to either destroy the mist or send it back to wherever it came from, while I looked for more details on how to hide Rebecca’s blood and how to retrieve a human from hell.
So, you know, just basic stuff.
I read for so long it felt like my eyes were going to fall out of their sockets, only putting down the dusty old hardback I’d been scanning when Rita slammed her hands onto the surface of the table.
“That’s it! I can’t believe how simple it is,” she exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear.
“What? Did you find something?” I scooted closer to her and peered over her shoulder at the book spread out before her. I flipped to the front cover quickly to see the title. On Other Dimensions and Their Inhabitants by E.J. Edwards. Seriously, where did Gabriel get all these books from? More to the point, who published them? Was there a secret market for educational texts that specialised in the supernatural?
I flipped back to the page Rita had been on, and she tapped her finger down on a small paragraph.
“This bit here explains what the mist is. It’s a kind of physical manifestation of chaos, but not just a manifestation. It’s a parasite too, feeding off sanity. When the mist manages to break out of hell and into other planes where there’s a moral life-force, it infests and drives the plane to self-destruction. In the case of this city, humans are the life-force whose sanity is being drained. It’s likely the mist doesn’t affect the vampires, or you and me, because we’re a mutation. I need to warn Finn about this. He and the majority of Pamphrock’s slayers are human and susceptible to the corruption. It says that once these chaos creatures mix with a foreign atmosphere they multiply, kind of like bacteria in a Petri dish.”