Page 9 of Bite of Passage
“Do you want me to arrange bedroom entertainment for you for tomorrow?A fae, perhaps?It might help this…” He waved an all-encompassing hand gesture his way.“Bad mood of yours.”
“No.”He stomped toward his bedroom and checked the locks on all the windows, then locked the indoor metal covers into place over each.Light could kill him.
Gemma.
Fucking magic.
This went right along with the shitty year that wouldn’t end fast enough.He’d fought one too many witches like Petra.
If the woman in the mirror was magic, he had no doubt he’d see her again.He might even be forced to kill her.
ChapterFive
Gemma shookthe rain off her umbrella harder than necessary, as if it would erase the past nine hours.Once inside her apartment, she chucked her soaked shoes and rounded the sofa to sit but tripped on her forgotten popcorn bowl.She hurtled shoulder first onto the sofa’s edge.Popcorn kernels scattered everywhere.
She covered her eyes with an arm and lay on the floor.Her mistake to have left the bowl on the floor during episode re-watch number four before she conked out at one a.m.last night.
Thanks to Skarde, she’d overslept, which meant by the time she got to the hospital Charles had already been discharged.It took two hours to find him and arrange for the nonprofit that assisted seniors after hospitalization to take him on.Once that was done, her car battery had died.She waited hours for the car service to show up and give her a jump.
Val never called, despite Gemma leaving her several voice messages and texts throughout the day.Perhaps she’d gone off on one of her weekend retreats with others in her coven or whatever they called themselves.They danced naked in the mountains for two days and did who knows what else.
She remained prone on the floor and stared at the watermark on her ceiling from the time the toilet in the apartment above hers leaked through.In moments like this, to relax and forget all the stresses, she excavated a memory from childhood.It was the view of a field of little purple flowers.So vivid was the view that she could almost smell the dampness of early morning on the overgrown grass and even hear birds chirping overhead.It soothed her.
For years, she’d tried to find the location of the field and figure out when the memory was from.She assumed it’d been near a foster parent’s home when she’d been three or four, but even after getting the records of who she’d stayed with at that time, she’d never found any fields resembling the one from her memory.
She envisioned walking through the flowers and touching a few of them.
Although it relaxed her, she could feel kernels of popcorn digging into her back.Back to reality.While vacuuming up popcorn, she stepped on the TV remote.The screen lit up on the DVD home screen.Shocked, she tripped over the vacuum cleaner and landed on her ass.
Two episodes were now available.Yesterday’s and…a new one?
Her hand trembled as she clicked off the vacuum and selected the new episode.
A fictional vampire had spoken to her through the TV last night.That was impossible, but so was a DVD that only played one episode a day.
She texted Val.
Really need to talk.Call ASAP.Please.
It had to be in her head.She must’ve pushed something to somehow hide the other episodes last night.
The dissonant themes of the show commenced.She sat on her coffee table and leaned forward, half suspecting the episode would glitch or the disc would stop working.
Skarde’s image flickered across the screen in the show’s opening sequence.The three Hunters and Skarde were in a bar or tavern—or whatever they called it in medieval-esque times.Servers and patrons sneered distrust and hate at the vampire, although they seemed to adore the Hunters.Skarde never got angry, never made a sudden move, and never did anything to attract attention or warrant the hate.Instead, he casually lifted his mug of some sort of alcoholic drink to his lips, letting the taste of it wet his tongue before lowering the pint.Or maybe he was fake drinking.Someone probably poisoned him in the past, making him wary of his drink.
He was a good listener who seemed interested in the conversation of the trio, even sharing information on his firsthand experience with the wizard they planned to visit.They thought the wizard might know more about the crystals Petra wanted.
Poor Skarde.He seemed so tired of his life.She could relate to that sad state.
Wait a second.What had she missed?He’d said something.But she didn’t dare rewind.The whole episode might disappear if she touched it.He’d skipped out on his midnight rendezvous with Petra?That’s what he’d said to the Hunters who now seemed pissed he’d had a chance at getting the crystal from Petra but ditched it.
“The witch knifed me,” he muttered, not that the Hunters cared.“I don’t do witches.”
“That’s right, Petra.He doesn’t want you,” Gemma said out loud.Good for him.
Minutes later, Skarde headed into a dense wet forest alone.The Hunters separated to go to the wizard’s house even though Skarde said he was one hundred percent sure the wizard was in the woods.Why couldn’t the humans believe him or at least stick with him?
She watched in horror as the tricky evil wizard cast a paralysis spell on the vampire.To his credit, Skarde moved cheetah-quick and hit the wizard in the chest with a small knife.A superficial injury, but a direct hit before the spell went into effect.
