“Don’t move or pull away. I know you don’t know me, but I have information for you. I know where your father is.”
My jaw drops and my eyes gape at her in shock. She pulls me into her again. “Wait until I get to the door and then follow me outside.”
She lets go of me then and looks at me meaningfully, before heading toward a side exit. My body won’t move for a minute, and I don’t know if I should follow her or not. This could be a trap, and if I go outside I’ll be walking right into it. But there’s something about her panic, her shaking hands, that makes me believe her. This girl has the answers I’ve been looking for, and I’m not about to let her slip from my grasp.
I push past the crowds to the door she just slipped through, but before I step outside I stand cautiously behind the steel frame and peer out. The girl is rubbing her shaking hands over her bare arms just as a sleek black town car pulls up to the side of the club. She barely has time to react when several people emerge at once, Ethan, Eliza, Jeremy and his bodyguards. Her expression drops, and stark, undiluted fear covers her face.
For a second I feel like I might walk out to her, but I stop myself. This girl has information about my father, but the vampires seem to terrify her, and I can’t let them know that she’s already spoken to me. The girl turns and begins to run away, but a second later Jeremy has her within his grasp, he’d moved so quickly. His hand is holding tightly onto the back of her neck, and then he tosses her to the ground while his bodyguards surround her.
Ethan is standing off to the side, watching Jeremy intimidate the poor girl. He doesn’t move to help her and there is no expression on his face.
Jeremy peers down at her as though he has a million questions on the tip of his tongue. “Now, what is a witch doing on my territory?” he asks finally, after an agonising wait.
“I can help you,” she offers weakly, holding herself with shivering arms that betray her fear.
Whitfield laughs, and it brings back memories of the dream I had last night, where I’d been helpless and tied to a chair. The helplessness of the girl with the eye patch is so similar to what I had felt that it takes so much will power not to run to her aid. I’m too weak to do anything that will stop Whitfield from harming her. So she’s a witch who knows something about my dad, does that mean it’s the magical families who’ve got him? Or is she here to warn me that the vampires are not to be trusted?
“I don’t need help from a pathetic witch, now who sent you here?” asks Whitfield, scowling hatefully. He’s bent over her now, with one hand digging into her thin, pale arm.
She turns her head a fraction to look up at him, and I flinch back in surprise when she spits in his face. Whitfield lets go and throws her to the ground. She crawls backward on her hands as he advances on her with bloody murder in his eyes. But he stops just short of her and Eliza provides him with a handkerchief.
“You have two choices,” says Eliza as her father wipes his face. “You can either tell us what you’re doing here and we’ll kill you quickly and painlessly, or you can continue to refuse and we will torture you until you give us the information we want. Quite frankly, it would be much more pleasant for all involved if you were forthcoming.”
“I’m n-not here for any particular reason, I was observing that’s all,” the witch answers with a stutter.
“Observing what?” Whitfield asks casually, he seems to have calmed down now. In my head I’m praying that the witch comes up with a good excuse for being here, because she obviously wasn’t in Crimson tonight to observe. She came to provide me with information about my dad. I try not to think about the fact that this is what has brought about her imminent death. Both Whitfield and his daughter seem intent on killing her.
“Your movements, what you’re planning. We’re at war aren’t we?” she replies.
Bless her quick thinking. Still, Whitfield doesn’t appear to be satisfied, despite the fact that she’s answered him.
“Indeed we are,” says Whitfield. “A war of which you just happen to be the most recent casualty.” Then he slides his hand inside his dark blue designer coat and reveals a beautiful antique knife. Beautifully lethal.
He lifts the knife and then lowers it to the witch’s throat and presses into her skin. I wonder why he doesn’t just use his fangs, then again, the Governor of South Tribane probably doesn’t lower himself to such base behaviour. Air catches in my lungs. I can’t let him kill her, if not for the fact that it would weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life, but also because she has information about Dad.
“Ah, now I know who sent you,” Whitfield whispers in her ear and then presses his knife in, drawing a small drop of blood. How can he know? Only a moment ago he was threatening her for answers, perhaps his ancient mind suddenly realised who she is.
The witch shakes her head. “You’re wrong, I don’t work for anyone. I’m rogue,” she’s begging for her life now, and I can’t just stand here and do nothing.
Against my own better judgement, my body moves. Words leave my lips in a blur, I feel like I’m having an outer body experience. “What’s going on?” I ask, trying to sound dumb and surprised and not like I’ve been spying on them this whole time as I step out into the alley. All eyes dart to me, and my throat tightens like a vice. But then, before the vampires can react to my presence, something else happens.
A white mist seeps from the sewer drains that line the alley at the side of the club. My eyes are drawn to it as it swirls and takes human shape. A moment later two tall men and a woman stand before the vampires. They all look sort of bedraggled, like they’ve been living rough for the past few nights. The woman’s deep brown eyes land on me immediately, and there’s a strange questioning look in them that I can’t quite decipher.
Then strong arms are dragging me back and closing in around me. Ethan. “You shouldn’t be here,” he says to me, in a low, hard voice. It makes me feel like I’m in danger, because there’s no warmth in his words. Perhaps I pissed him off even more than I thought I did last night.
“You will regret this move,” Whitfield declares, speaking to the magical mist folk who have just appeared out of nowhere. He still has his knife pressed to the throat of the witch with the eye patch. One of the men throws a bolt of mist at Whitfield’s hand, perhaps to loosen his grip on the knife, but it doesn’t work. It only functions to increase his anger. And now, it seems that the witch isn’t going to survive this night, because Whitfield slits her throat in one clean and swift movement.
I whimper and try to break free of Ethan’s hold, but he only tightens it and whispers, “Do not interfere.”
Whitfield drops her slack body to the ground and advances on the three, but the woman makes a hand gesture that knocks him back. There are tears streaming down her face, she’s got long dark brown hair that begins to fizzle with electricity. It’s as though the magic is a manifestation of her grief at seeing her friend killed. She raises her palm at Whitfield, and his bodyguards are now by his side. She talks swiftly, and her words sound like somebody’s put them on fast forward on an old video player, they don’t make one bit of sense.
A stream of white light bursts from her open palm, and Whitfield seems to think better of getting any closer to her now. He nods to his bodyguards, who then swiftly escort him back to his town car, with Eliza in tow. Ethan picks me up without any effort at all and slides me inside the car with him.
A moment later we’re speeding away from the club. Ethan has me on his lap in the back of the car, it’s a bit of a tight squeeze and I’m not entirely comfortable being so close to Whitfield and his daughter, who by the way, clearly despises me. I twist around to look out the back window and find that the three are right on our tail, gliding through the air like ghosts.
“Who are they?” I ask Ethan in a quiet voice, a determined silence permeates the car, and I feel everyone’s attention flick to me when I speak. It makes me wish I had kept my mouth shut.
“That is none of your concern,” says Ethan, and he’s still using that horribly cold tone with me, like he suddenly hates me or something.