Page 57 of Midlife Vampire Unexpected

“You are good enough,” Jane said loudly in my head, knowing the wraith would start to fill my head with all of those less than feelings I’d been plagued with my whole life. The feeling I was an imposter, like I wasn’t going to be able to finish the task even though time and time again I had proved I could finish the task. Imposter syndrome was buried under the surface of my conscious mind. My subconscious thoughts were easily instilled in me from a young age and were so far buried, it wasn’t until the wraiths came along, I even realized those thoughts were there.

I could feel them now inside my head convincing me I was worthless. The coven was battling to prop me up. I stayed focused on putting the blood on the demon symbols, even though the pain of the wraiths was becoming intense in my brain.

“You won’t conquer me,” I said, gritting my teeth and fighting the urge to scream and fall. They’d done it to me once before and this time I was connected to the coven through Jane who was going to keep me safe. I reached back out to Jane, mentally gripping onto her hand with one of mine while I thought to finish the blood symbols with the other.

As I finally got the last blood symbol drawn a great swooshing sound came up and a fire surged from the center of the crypt.

“Fuck, it worked,” I said, feeling the pull of the demon gate and knowing I had to get out of there before I got caught up in the worst of the wraiths being sucked into Undirheim.

I turned and ran as fast as I could, grabbing onto a tombstone to try and stop myself from being sucked into the demon portal.

Wraiths flew by me, out of control and shrieking as they were sucked into the fiery pit.

It only took a minute before the entire cemetery was cleared out of the ragged frightening creatures.

Suddenly I was covered in shadows as my fingers on the tomb slipped. I was going to fly into the portal with the rest of the dark creatures.

My fingers slid off the tombstone, but I didn’t move an inch. A man’s hands gripped my shoulders tight.

I looked up and Antonio was there, one hand holding firmly onto a tombstone and the other one wrapped tightly around me as if he was never going to let me go.

Chapter 41

Antonio held me as the last wraith was flowing into the demon fire. Thrain closed the portal himself.

The coven immediately jumped into action. They moved around the cemetery putting the wards back into place and putting the spells back and repairing all the damage had been done by the infestation of the wraiths.

There was one problem though. All the corporal bodies of the dead were moaning in their graves. The wraiths and brought them back to life.

“How do we kill dead people?” I asked. “On second thought, since I’m dead, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that. Don’t tell me we’re going to go to the cemetery and put a stake in everybody’s heart.”

“Oh, hell no,” Bianca said. “I think we’ve got a better solution for this one. It’s not going to make them dead, but it’ll at least get them back to their graves. This is where I come in.”

She shifted into her wolf form and began to howl. As I watched, the dead bodies began to settle back into their graves and pretend as if nothing had happened.

We were all able to head back to The Estate and finally have a moment of respite.

“That’s a powerful skill you have there,” I smiled at Bianca.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t always work out. Thankfully, it’s working now, but it’s not the final solution. It’s just part of the solution.” Bianca explained.

While we were talking on the terrace, Trina laid out a spread in the backyard.

“Well, we faced the wraiths, but you know they’re going to throw something else at us,” Mae said.

The coven all gathered around. I looked from Mae to Bianca to Jane. These were the three women I had a blood pact with. Kartika was the fifth. All we needed to do was find the sixth and I had a feeling the cemetery would be impenetrable. That was probably why the dark Fae really didn’t want us all together. They had seen a weakness and tried to act on it, but the power of the Pentacle of Time and the blood bond that made it was too great.

The only thing worried me at this stage was the fact that we couldn’t actually go out and look for the last remaining member of the coven. We had no idea what species they were, what gender they were, where they lived, or how we were going to find them, but we had to hope like hell we would find them before the next big challenge from the dark Fae.

Antonio came up behind me and put his arms around me.

“Feeling sweet?” I asked curiously.

“Maybe,” he said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Certainly not coming out for warmth. How do you vampires live so cold?” He asked with a chuckle.

“You love it and you know it,” I said. “I cool you down because you, my dear, are way too hot.”

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