Page 21 of The Vampire King's War

No! I have to find you!

I’ve found you.

Where are you? Come here? I’ll carry you down!

No, Fi. You can’t leave by the stairs.

Fiona didn’t just feel the heat from the second floor now. She felt it from below. Smoke was all around her, blocking out the stairway that curled down to the first floor of their home. But she could see orange and red and yellow through that dense, gray smoke below her.

Libbie, we’re trapped! There’s fire down below too!

Yes, there is. You only have a few moments left. So you have to go, Fi,her sister told her more firmly.

The fire roared like an animal. She could hear the snap and crack of wood as it broke apart with the heat and the flames. There was no way down. None!

I can’t! I can’t get out, Libbie!

You’re not trapped. Neither of us is. Let go, Fiona. Let go, the voice said. Imagine air. Clean air. Endless amounts of it.

I--I can’t!

Imagine our front yard. The white steps. The cracked path. The chalk that we left there yesterday. Remember?

I… I… yes?

Imagine picking up the piece of pink chalk, Fi. Imagine the feel of the chalk in your hands. Dry and powdery and a little silky? Can you imagine it?

I… I can.

Go there. Go to where the chalk is, Fi. Go.

Fiona closed her eyes to the smoke and the heat and the flames and concentrated just as her sister had said. When she opened them, she was on her knees on the pathway that led to her house. There was no smoke. Only the night sky and the churr of crickets.

She blinked her raw eyes, which still stung from the smoke. But her vision cleared enough and she saw the pink chalk lying discarded on the rough stone in front of her. She picked it up.

The chalk… Libbie?

There was an explosion and the sound of glass tinkling. Her head jerked towards her home.

LIBBIE!!!!!

Flames roared out of the upstairs windows like a monster’s call to battle. In the background, she heard the thin wail of the fire engines coming. As she watched the flames consume her sister’s bedroom window, she knew that Libbie was dead. Gone to a place she could not follow.

She’d been nine when this had happened.

She hadn’t been a Vampire yet.

But she’d teleported out of danger all the same.

She’d pushed all of that out of her mind. If she’d thought about it at all, she had believed it a dream, something of her new Second Life mixing with her first. But it wasn’t. It was true. Fiona focused again on the spirit’s face. It was Libbie’s face. Her sister smiled at her.

How did I teleport before I became a Vampire, Libbie?Fiona asked.

Her sister tilted her head and laughed. You know why. You can be anywhere. You can go everywhere. Nothing binds you. Because you are…

“Wyvern,” Fiona spoke out loud.

Yes, you are Wyvern.Her sister smiled and laughed and faded into the sea of ghosts.

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